How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

Psalm 109:

1Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

3They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

4For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

5And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

6Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

7When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

16Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

17As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

19Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

20Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

21But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

22For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

23I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

24My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

25I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

26Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

27That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.

28Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

29Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

30I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

I would say, in the beginning, that this is a "difficult" psalm for worship, because it refers throughout to an individual. There is little room here for the collective voice, the corporate spirit of the body of believers. That's not an insurmountable obstacle, of course. Psalm 22 is in the first person, too, as is Psalm 23. And really, it isn't the personal narrative of the Psalm, it's the call for retribution; the same problem that keeps Psalm 137 from being heard regularly in worship, even though almost everyone knows the first six verses:

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

We generally cut if off after that, and for good reason. It's not a universal psalm; it's a psalm of Exile, a lament of the homeless, but "home" here means, not a dwelling or a fixed abode, but an entire country. In that context, the desire for brutal vengeance is understandable, if still shocking. Out of that context, well....

But take Psalm 109 a few verses at a time, and notice the logic of its narrative:

1Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

3They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

4For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

5And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

6Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

The wicked man has beset the psalmist, and despite showing love and good, the psalmist has been paid with evil. So what does he ask for, except that the evil man be paid in like coin? Not a remarkable sentiment, but not exactly a vengeful one, either. What the psalm asks for is justice, and while Christians understand the plea for justice to be one that falls on the just and the unjust alike, it's still not an un-Christian sentiment to turn to God and ask for it, especially in the name of the poor.

7When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Now that's pretty clearly the "difficult" part, and while C .S. Lewis and St. Augustine might prefer more metaphorical, and thus "theological," interpretations, that won't do. For one thing, I still remember the first lesson I learned in seminary, from the first day of my first class in studies of the Hebrew Scriptures. The professor, the dean of the school, announced that the scriptures we were about to study were not written as a prelude to the Christian scriptures of the "New Testament," and shouldn't be understood that way. It was an invaluable lesson, and obviously one I've never forgotten. This stands several centuries of Christian exegesis on its head, but it also undermines (and underscores) the hoary seminary joke about exegesis bringing "extra-Jesus" to the scriptures. So let's take the words of the Psalm at face value and in context, and try not to import, any more than necessary, an outside frame of reference (and certainly one as foreign as Christianity would have been to the original psalmist) into them.

What these words ask for is obliteration, the removal of the wicked from the earth. And really, who can argue with that? The argument with this call is almost entirely Christian (which does not negate it; but in fairness, this argument must be held in abeyance for a moment): such an obliteration would wipe out all, since in Christian humility all have sinned and fallen short. But that is Augustine's theology, from the 4th century. Already we are engaging anachronism to apply it retroactively to words that couldn't possibly presume Augustine's Platonic Christianity. Set aside that frame, and the words become less remarkable, or notable only for their seeming vitriol. But we already know the sin of this person who should be condemned, and the claim by the psalmist is not entirely personal (although it is the psalmist who has been beset):

6Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

17As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

19Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

What is being asked for is the reward for evil, a reward brought on not by the curse of the psalmist, but by the actions of the condemned. And notice what this person has done; he has persecuted the poor and needy man, and "he might even slay the broken in heart." This is a man who "remembered not to show mercy." And this violation is not upon the psalmist, but against the covenant. The right understanding of these words is not that an individual seeks vengeance, but that a member of the group seeks to preserve the order of the community. As Krister Stendahl put it:

It is pointed out that for the Jew the Law did not require a static or pedantic perfectionism but supposed a covenant relationship in which there was room for forgiveness and repentance and where God applied the Measure of Grace.

That "covenant relationship" is not between me and God, but between the nation (understood as a familial or tribal relationship, not in the post-19th century geo-political sense) and God. As a member of that nation, it is the responsibility of all to uphold the covenant. Think of the inverse of Abraham's famous argument with God: if only 10 people are found to be just in Sodom and Gomorrah (where the sin was failing to show hospitality, not homosexual acts), then surely the cities should be spared. This is not, in other words, collective guilt, but a sense of collective responsibility. The evil man has defied the basic rules of the covenant. Of course he should be expunged from the community; not to keep it pure and holy, but to establish basic justice. By the same token we all want to see the criminal punished, if only to establish that crimes against society (i.e., other persons) cannot be allowed, lest all order and justice decay into chaos and anarchy.

The nature of the punishment, of course, is still the central issue. I'm not trying to re-write this Psalm, even as I try to understand it.

The Psalmist goes on to make this attack by the evil man a personal one, again. But no attack by an evil person is ever without impact on someone; all evil is ultimately personal to some victim:

20Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

21But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

22For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

23I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

24My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

25I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

That last line is perhaps the most telling. How do you become a reproach to someone, if you are not also, in some measure, their responsibility? And how do you become their responsibility? Who, as the lawyer asked Jesus, is my neighbor? The answer under the covenant was clear. The answer given by Jesus, is equally clear, if somewhat broader; or at least less open to limitation. But here also is a person about to be obliterated, and what justice exists in that? Even Job's life was not taken from him; surely the psalmist is justified in asking that he be spared, as he is faithful, and that the wicked be removed, as that is all they deserve. And included in this prayer for vengeance, is a prayer for salvation:

26Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

27That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.

28Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

29Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

30I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

A prayer not all that distant from the concluding verses of Psalm 22, a psalm which gets heard in many churches during Holy Week.

There is the issue of sin in this psalm. Our modern understanding of the term is complex (to say the least), but it is also almost entirely the product of Augustine's Confessions; which is to say it is not at all the understanding that a pre-Christian, and more particularly pre-Augustinian, psalmist would have. What Krister Stendahl wrote about interpretations of Paul equally applies here:

...it is exactly at this point that Western interpreters have found the common denominator between Paul and the experience of man, since Paul's statements about 'justification by faith' have been hailed as the answer to the problem which faces the ruthlessly honest man in his practice of introspection. Especially in Protestant Christianity--which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and in the piety of the Middle Ages--the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the light of Luther's struggle with his conscience. But it is exactly at that point that we can discern the most dramatic difference between Luther and Paul, between the 16th and the 1st century....

And, of course, the even more dramatic difference between Paul in the 1st century, and the Psalmist, in another country, another age, concerned with other problems than the conversion of the Gentiles.

It's the opening that intrigues me: "Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;" It seems to me a gentler form of this cry from Isaiah:

64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--

64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.

A familiar sentiment at Advent, it turns out. It's the plea to God that is most interesting to me, because it sets this call apart from a mere cry for vengeance. This is a cry for justice from the author of justice, and yes, the person calling for it is not disinterested in the outcome, but who among us could be, and call the result, or the demand for it, justice?

So after all that wandering through the lines, where do I come down on this? I agree with Stephen Chapman of Duke University: "Imprecatory prayers were meant to remind the faithful of the covenant they held with God and the consequences that would follow if that covenant was broken." Although I have to say I made it all the way through seminary with ever learning the term "imprecatory prayers," and I don't put much stock, as a theologian, in the concept of categories of prayer. I understand it's use as a scholarly or even literary term, or a term of Biblical studies; but I don't understand the categorizing of any prayer made sincerely. Maybe it's the Pietist in me.

What of the psalm itself? What is a Christian reading of it? Well, you have to begin with the context of the prayer, which is the covenant with Israel. Misunderstand that, and you misunderstand the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. Even the term "Old Testament" used to pay homage to that concept, if only slightingly. Put the psalm back in that context, and what do you have? A prayer for God to do justice. But Christianity reminds us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and any prayer for justice is a prayer against the interests of the one praying, as well as against those the "imprecation" is called down on. Ultimately this is still, in a Christian sense at least, a prayer of humility: the imprecation called for is pressed upon God. For Christians, it is a prayer offered like any prayer: in the context of "the Lord's prayer." So whenever we ask that a sinner be punished, we ask that we be punished, too. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." You can pray this psalm as a Christian, so long as you end with those words; so long as you keep those goals in mind; so long as you remind yourself your anger can be taken to God as well as your praise, but God is not you, and you are not God. This prayer asks for justice; so does the prayer of Our Savior. This prayer asks for God to rule; so does the prayer of Our Savior. This prayer asks that the poor be saved. So does the prayer of Our Savior. And both prayers remind us: be careful what you pray for; because you might get it.

If we remember that, there is no evil in this prayer, and no room to offer it as an "imprecation" against Barack Obama, or anyone else, because we realize we do not stand outside a charmed circle, or inside one, and what we asked for is always visited upon us first. Are prayers of imprecation, then, Christian? Only if they are prayers that begin with "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Any Christian prayer that does not begin there, cannot truly be said to be a prayer.

IMHO, anyway.

There's a Biblical warrant for that humility, too; warrant that pre-dates the Gospels. Psalm 19:14:

14Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Which is why it helps to read the whole, and not just the parts.

Amen.

Inconclusive unscientific postscript: Southern Beale (via Bouphonia) finds the source of the original "prayer", and makes the point for both of us.

War is Peace

Bumper sticker seen on the back of a Lexus also sporting two very faded magnetic "ribbons" and a John Cornyn sticker:

If you want peace
FIGHT FOR VICTORY!

The irony should speak for itself; but apparently it can't. Of course, it wasn't that long ago that a pistol was called "The Peacemaker", and then a missile system got the same appellation. As we prepare to enter the holy season of Advent (well, "we" being some Christians, and not all of us, even then), the appeal to a Pax Romana is especially appropriate. And trenchant.

1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

5To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

Pearls Before Swine

I suppose I should say something about Psalm 109:8; or rather, all of Psalm 109. Or perhaps all of the Psalms. Well, why not all of the Scriptures?

I agree that Psalm 109 falls into the "difficult" category* (though I'd never go to C.S. Lewis for exegesis), along with Psalm 137:

1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

2 We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

3 For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

It made a fine Bob Marley tune, and a nice song for the eucharist scene in "Godspell," so long as the last five verses weren't used. There are many such Psalms in the Psalms. Matthew puts one, the first lines of Psalm 22, in Jesus' mouth on the cross. And while it ends with hope and reassurance, and leads almost directly to Psalm 23, Psalm 22 is certainly a song about the depths of despair. Which is a modern malaise we all identify with (or think we do), whereas the quest for vengeance, for justice on the level of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is not supposed to be in our hearts or even in our scripturs anymore. So this is a "difficult" psalm; and made more difficult when it is taken out of context, chopped into little bits, and sprinkled on our civic discourse like so much parsley or seasoning or, in this case, like sprinkles on a political ice cream cone. The problem is not just the abuse of this psalm in this way; it's the abuse of scripture in general.

As I grow older and move deeper into what it means to be a minister (especially a minister without pulpit, a sort of rojin pastor), I reflect more and more on how Scripture, the holy texts of Christianity,* should not be used among people who do not understand the context of the words. If it weren't such an offensive image, I'd use the Biblical image of casting pearls before swine: except the people who are casting the pearls in the case of linking a prayer for the President to Psalm 109:**, are the swine, and the scriptures, even this "difficult" psalm, are the pearls. So the metaphor falls down; yet if I apply it as Jesus did, I'm as offensive as Jesus originally was; because, outside of Luke's gospel, there's little evidence in the gospels that Jesus was that concerned with the sensibilities or even the concerns of Gentiles. That concern comes from Paul, who never mentions the teachings of the historical Jesus, and from Luke, who is basically Paul's biographer. (This isn't to say Jesus scorned Gentiles, but he clearly gave them little attention or concern in the other synoptics, or in the Gospel of John, where Jesus is actually "schooled" by a non-Jewish woman!). The metaphor, you see, comes out of its context; and perhaps even in it's context it is "difficult" today. But that's only another reason not to throw it around freely, or to blithely use Scripture as if the audience one addresses all knows and understands those words as you do. As a pastor of a church I found out all too often that assumption was invalid inside the four walls of the sanctuary (and all too often the error was assumed to be mine; everyone is sure their interpretation of Scripture is the right one, and the pastor should mainly reinforce it. It's quelle scandale, as we say in Lubbock, when he/she does not.) Outside the confines of the believing community, it's getting harder and harder to find people who even know the "Bibilical stories" of Adam and Eve, or Jonah and the whale, or Noah and the Ark; much less any who understand the Psalms as the "prayerbook" of the Bible. In Calvin's church the only source for sung verse was the Psalms; but after 19th century America and Charles Wesley, almost no Americans know any of the Psalms beyond "The Lord is My Shepherd" (which everyone knows, like "The Lord's Prayer," only in the KJ version. Which is another matter....) But as I learned over the course of four years in seminary: unless you understand the scriptures from a confessional basis, you don't really understand the use or meaning or import or proper approach to the scriptures. They may be read as literature (I've taught them as such myself), but that is not the understanding of the Church Universal. While some passages in Scripture may be "difficult" (Psalm 109 is hardly the only one), that difficulty is changed by a confessional approach to those same passages. It's an approach only available to, and only understood by, the members of a community, and meant to be communicated only to those members by other members, be they ordained or lay. Even then, it is usually poorly understood, or even misunderstood. As time goes by, however, I become more and more convinced that, especially if the scriptures are "holy," heilige, set apart to remain pure, they must be handled as such, and not bandied about in secular discussions or political arguments as if they had only one meaning, one interpretation, one understanding, and we all, believer and non-believer alike, agreed on it.

The Scriptures, especially when used in an exhortation to prayer (itself a heilige practice which has no place in the public arena, be that arena a former basketball court, or in a TV studio in front of a camera crew), are misused when they are taken out of the community of believers and used to persuade or assault persons outside that community (which can be another community of believers as surely as it is a secular and wholly non-religious, or at least non-Christian, community). The problem with this "slogan" is not just the other verses in the Psalm, or the "difficult" nature of the words, or even the non-Christian application of those words to another person (who is permitted by "judge not, lest ye be judged," to judge another worthy of death from the hand of God, and ask for that death?). The problem with this slogan is that scripture is, to the believer, the living Word of God and a source of light and life to the believing community. It is a source of finding and understand the most Holy God. It is not a commodity, and it should not be treated as such. Those that do, damage all of us; and perhaps themselves, most of all.



*Though I will point out the Psalm tells a story, and ends with these words:

30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul.

It is, in other words, a Psalm seeking vindication by a righteous person, a person faithful to God. And part of the rebuke here is of the rich who condemn the poor; a hard attitude to disagre with, for me; though I suspect the people using this Psalm don't think President Obama is abusing the poor. The question of righteousness, as Krister Stendahl has pointed out in the context of understanding Paul, is a vexed one, almost a cross-cultural and anthropological one. Suffice to say in this short space that Psalm 109 should not be read out of its original context, nor read so simply as to be merely the words of a crank or an angry person. As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Psalms are probably the most human document in the Scriptures. Reading them, we see ourselves, warts and all. Difficult, yes; but what would be more appropriate in a collection of books about the relationship between Creator and the Creation?


**and Judaism, but I only speak as a Christian

It's mighty reckless....

Schools in Texas are adept at inculcating positive attitudes toward capitalism. A study conducted in the Dallas area suggests that children start school holding rather naive notions about economic matters. At an early age, they believe in economic equality and support government-sponsored efforts to redistribute economic resources across society. As they progress through school, they come to value private property, private enterprise, and private possessions and become suspicious of labor unions and government. Moreover, they believe that the poor, if they so desired, could improve their economic status and climb out of poverty without any government assistance. One observer concluded that Texas's schools serve "primarily as a mechanism not only to legitimate the corporate order, but also the general structure of social inequality in American life."

--James W. Lamare, Texas Politics: Economics, Power and Policy. 7th edition. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Belmont, California 2001, p. 18.

I keep telling people I was never that good a student in school....

Christmas is coming....

In their observances of Christmas, Americans had begun to create a symbol of non-denominational Protestantism that fit well into the pluralist culture in which they lived. The festive air of churches, draped with nature's greenery, shining with candles, and filled with music, invited wary strangers to enter. Inside, they could imagine a haven in which old and cherished values survived, a world removed from an ever more complex and confusing temporal one. Church visitors and members alike could bypass the theological questions that divided them along sectarian lines and participate together in the pomp and ritual of the services. Synthetic, short-lived, and to some degree superficial, this association of believers at Christmas helped satisfy a vague but growing need to identify and solidify a sense of community that went beyond the confines of church walls.

Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America. New York: Oxford University Press 1995, p. 33.

Ms. Restad is writing about America in the early 19th century, not America in the early 21st century. I thought the context might need that much explanation.

Cake? Or Death?

Because this is a little too bitter to leave standing alone for long:

I'm driving in this morning, and get this information on the radio as a "teaser" for a show I don't normally listen to, and I don't have the information at my fingertips for a link, which means you'll have to take my word for it; but it makes sense to me. It seems the greatest worry of the people of Afghanistan (remember them?) is not violence or the Taliban: it's poverty. Good ol' grinding, wearing, "Third World" poverty. In Afghanistan the strength of the central government, if this teaser can be trusted, doesn't matter nearly as much as the inability to feed themselves, or provide for their families.

Gee, maybe they're like us after all, huh?

Somewhere alone the line we decided, as a people, that poverty matters far less than security. We came to the conclusion that prosperity literally flows from the end of a gun, because without security nobody can own anything or rely on the future to provide more than today's daily bread. Security is what society must provide first, and then prosperity will flow from all the freedom all those guns and guards and walls provide freedom for.

Or something like that.

And yet, just off the top of my head, I think of the USSR, and how secure it was, across Russia and into Eastern Europe. Stalin especially made everyone secure, except, of course, his enemies. And that security continued up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. That Stasi of East Germany was notorious for making sure everyone was secure; and yet who was more prosperous: East Germany, or West Germany? Who was more prosperous? Europe, or Russia? Anarchy and chaos are hardly conducive to prosperity, except for the criminals, but do law and order command prosperity, bring it along in their wake? Even a quick glance at recent history belies the notion.

But we worship "the market" as if it were a great, green god, and an inscrutable one: a god completely oblivious to our prayers for intercession, to our pleas for benison. "God helps those who help themselves," we say; but we don't mean the God of Abraham, we mean the market when we say that, and we mean the market is a god, but one of the old gods: one of the gods who rains blessing and curses apparently indiscriminately, apparently without regard, building up and tearing down on a whim or a plan we can never discern. Law and order is a plan we can discern. Law and order is something we can use to impose control. Law and order makes things, well...orderly. Or at least we think it will, if we just have enough of it. And if there is no order yet well, then, just a little more, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.

Or shall it?

Prosperity flows, not from our control, but from mystery. Prosperity is recognized in faith. We have a long history of humanity that teaches us this, a history that stretches back to the very roots of our Western civilization, a history that teaches social justice leads to prosperity, not force of arms or military power:

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)

And as I've noted before, citing Walter Brueggemann, Solomon's reputation for wisdom was purchased, not earned, and his interests were in being a military power, not in being just:

Jump ahead about 400 years, to the impending Babylonian Exile. Now comes Jeremiah, descended from a long line of priests, from that very village where Solomon exiled the priest who had supported his brother. And now Jeremiah tells the reigning king:

Let not the wise boast of their wisdom,
nor the valiant of their valour;
let not the wealthy boast of their wealth;
but if anyone must boast, let him boast of this:
that he understands and acknowledges me.
For I am the LORD, I show unfailing love,
I do justice and right on the earth;
for in these I take pleasure.
This is the word of the LORD.

There is a direct rebuke of the descendants of Solomon there. Solomon who purchased his wisdom and his palace and his power and even the Temple, with his central concern for Solomon, and what Solomon could obtain, and own, and control. Solomon who used his control of horses and chariots to exact tribute (read: taxes) from others; who used the location of Israel along the trade routes to exact a toll for what passed through the land, and made sure the money went to Solomon, not to the community. Solomon cared about Solomon, not about:

How good and pleasant it is to live together as brothers in unity!
It is like fragrant oil poured on the head
and falling over the beard,
Aaron's beard, when the oil runs down
over the collar of his vestments.
Is is as if the dew of Hermon were falling
on the mountains of Zion.
There the LORD bestows his blessing,
life for evermore (Psalm 133)

The LORD bestows the blessing freely. Solomon makes sure the blessing is recovered and rewarded to Solomon. Solomon, like the Pharoah, says there isn't enough to go around: not enough money, not enough power, not enough wisdom, and I, Solomon, must control it all, must deal in it, must buy and sell in all the marketplaces, of arms, of ideas, of palaces, even of religion. Because of this, says Jeremiah, comes the Exile.

And, just because I've said it before, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel:

It can't be said too often: the Exile that shattered Israeli history like a brick through a window, that set Western civilization on the course to expect an apocalypse and an eschaton and a Messiah (from Christianity to Star Wars to the Matrix), did not come about because of the apostasy of Israel, but because of the injustice of Israel. Solomon wanted to preserve Israel by military force, too. That way, however, is always the path to injustice and failure. Ezekiel gives us the picture of God's spirit leaving the Temple because of the abominations performed there, because it is no longer holy.

We needn't consider ourselves a holy country, the chosen of the God of Abraham, to take the lesson to heart. Security is never achieved first, and prosperity second, and social justice a dismal third or fourth. And we should note that, not only did the Exile become the defining feature of Israelite history; it became one of the defining events of Western civilization. The prophets promised the people of Israel that one day all nations would stream to Zion, drawn by their justice and righteousness as the true children of Abraham, as a people blessed by God the Creator. The yin to that yang, if you will, is that the nations are just as affected by the unrighteousness of Israel, which caused God to leave them to their own plans and schemes and their own dreams of prosperity achieved through military power, not faith and trust in justice.

When will we ever learn?

"This is an outrage, it's an abomination; and there is a moral duty here."

1000 people in New Orleans at a free healthcare clinic. 90% have two or more diagnosed problems; 82% diagnosed with life threatening conditions. 4 taken directly to hospital: do not pass "Go," do not collect $200. Not all of them "poor," but none of them with insurance.

And tonight Keith adds that only 1000 were treated because New Orleans, 4 years after Katrina, still doesn't have the medical equipment necessary to treat people who are ill or injured. The equipment the clinic needed was simply not available to borrow, not even for one day, not even for 1000 people. As Gene Robinson said to Keith, this is an outrage and an abomination. And there is a moral duty here.

And we should be ashamed, but we don't even notice. We should be appalled, but we don't even care. Personally, socially, perhaps as Christians or Jews or Mustlims or atheists or simply human beings, we care. In small groups, perhaps we care. But politically, as a nation? We don't give a shit. The pictures of New Orleans drowning, those horrific pictures of 4 years ago, aren't on TV anymore; and we don't care. We never did. The poor of New Orleans existed because we didn't care. The drowning and abandonment of New Orleans happened because we didn't care. Four years later, we still don't care. New Orleans lacks medical facilities, medical equipment? Who knew? Who cared? Who cares now?

Individually, perhaps we do. As a people? We don't care enough to not even give a shit. We're obsessed with Sarah Palin, or whether Obama bowed to a foreign leader, or even over what he's doing or not doing about health insurance reform (it isn't health care reform now, everyone has admitted that). We don't care. We don't care. We don't care.

Thanksgiving is coming, and we will once again congratulate ourselves on how much we care. It's a lie. We don't care. Men and women are dieing and suffering and being injured and broken in Afghanistan, ruined for life; and we don't care. New Orleans is still recovering, New Orleans has been abandoned, the poor in this country have been abandoned: and we don't care.

Give thanks for what you have this year. Give thanks because it is yours, and you have it. Give thanks you aren't poor, in New Orleans, or anywhere else in America, or in the world. Give thanks, and don't consider for a moment that while we might be compassionate, as a nation: we just don't care.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is only for the people we care about. Give thanks you are among them. That's all it means, anymore.

Soup's Still Hot!

I could blame Wounded Bird, and give this immediate relevance, but I should rather confess the limitations of my education, and admit I just found this poem today, though its application seemed immediately obvious.

Show me dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear.
What! is it she which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robb'd and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth, and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or on no hill appear?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she'is embrac'd and open to most men.

--John Donne

There's more than one interpretation of that closing couplet, and Donne certainly loved paradox and contradiction. But I can't read it at least as a reference to that Protestant shibboleth, the "Whore of Babylon," which puts quite a twist on Dr. Donne's sentiment that the church must be a place of true hospitality, open to all*

*Yes, it is my hobbyhorse. And hooray for Dr. Donne!

November 11, 2009

I like this picture. It reminds us that in the midst of life, we are in death. It reminds us that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, and what we know of those witnesses are their bones. Their bones, and our memories. Hamlet in the graveyard would say that's all that's left:

There's another: why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,
his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he
suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the
sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of
his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be
in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes,
his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers,
his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and
the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine
pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him
no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than
the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The
very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in
this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
...
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
me one thing.

HORATIO

What's that, my lord?

HAMLET

Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i'
the earth?

HORATIO

E'en so.

HAMLET

And smelt so? pah!

[Puts down the skull]

HORATIO

E'en so, my lord.

HAMLET

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may
not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

HORATIO

'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET

No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

But the fact that we are here to remember it proves him wrong. One cannot blame Hamlet; he is a young man just facing the prospect of mortality, struggling with whether or not to give death (donner le mort, "the gift of death") to Claudius, whether to accept death himself. That we are dust and bones cannot be denied; that that is all we are, can.

This picture reminds us that it is through this material world that we know what we know, and it is through this material world that we know who we know. The absolute dichotomy of dualism is false, especially when it leads to what Dom Crossan labels "sarcophobia." This image reminds us of that, too. The bones that once saw and spoke and mocked and grinned, also bore witness to the incarnation represented by the Madonna and Child that sit before them. And they still bear witness to it. They bear witness to it's reality in time as well as in space as well as in flesh and blood. Reality, which is not to be confused with existence. The bones bear witness to existence, but where is that? Present only in memory, present only as a memory. And if there is no memory, was there no existence? Was their existence insignificant, unimportant, pointless? Did they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to no purposeful end except to avoid what might come after? Did conscience indeed make cowards of them all?

Or did they bear witness to what they bear witness to now? Being dead, is their communication "tongued with fire beyond the language of the living"? And how do we know they are dead, or were ever alive, except as they were, and are, still a part of this world?

PEACE

O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
Arise, O Christ, and help us,
And deliver us for thy Name's sake.

AMEN.

O Christ, when thou didst open thine eyes on this fair earth, the angels greeted thee as the Prince of Peace and besought us to be of good will one toward another; but thy triumph is delayed and we are weary of war.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the very earth groans with pain as the feet of armed men march across her mangled form.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life, not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the people who are called by thy Name are separated from each other in thought and life; still our tumults, take away our vain imaginings, and grant to thy people at this time the courage to pro-claim the gospel of forgiveness, and faithfully to maintain the ministry of reconciliation.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, come to us in our sore need and save us; 0 God, plead thine own cause and give us help, for vain is the help of man.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ of God, by thy birth in the stable, save us and help us;
By thy toil at the carpenter's bench, save us and help us;
By thy sinless life, save us and help us;
By thy cross and passion, save us and help us.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

Then all shall join in the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

--The E&R Hymnal

What Happened near Killeen

First, the story itself is horrific: a man armed with automatic weapons does the maximum amount of carnage/damage one can do, in the amount of time between the first shot and the "first responder" who brought him down. There is a reason military bases maintain very tight control over weapons on base: they know what those firearms are capable of.

But imagine trying to set up metal detectors at a military base covering nearly 160,000 acres, with a population of over 33,000. I've lived in town smaller than that, attended schools smaller than that. Establishing a "gun-free" zone in such an area is literally impossible. Yet the military does everything it can to do so, anyway.

The horrific irony of the location is that Killeen, Texas was almost single-handedly responsible for the concealed weapon law in Texas. In 1991 George Hennard drove his truck into the Luby's in Killeen, got out, and went on a shooting spree. As Wiki notes, Suzanna Hupp, one of the customers in the Luby's who survived, later testified to the Texas Legislature that, had she been allowed to carry her handgun into the restaurant, she could have brought down Mr. Hennard and ended the carnage. Of course, had Ms. Hupp and several other customers been armed, who would the shooter be, and how could anyone be sure there weren't accomplices?

Yesterday, on a military base with people trained in first aid and combat, the scene was total chaos. The alleged assassin was brought down during the shooting, and yet, per news reports this morning on NPR, it was several hours before officials realized the man being operated on with four bullet wounds was the suspect in the crime, not a victim; and that the woman being treated for gunshot wounds was the person who stopped him. There were, for hours, stories of multiple shootings and multiple assailants and suspects. The scene, in other words, was chaos, in a place where people are trained to handle chaos as well as any of us can.

So consider how much worse it might have been had everyone on that base been armed, and able to respond. We are so accustomed to shootings in the movies that we are sure if it happened near us, we'd already know who the shooter was, and so who to shoot. But real life is not a movie, and our eyes are not the camera which tell us who to pay attention to, and who is going to pull out two automatic handguns and begin firing. Underlining my point:

Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of "friendly fire," that in the mayhem and confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/fort-hood-shootings-7-dea_n_347366.html&cp

Which, of course, is the kind of thing that never happens in the movies!

The sad irony of Killeen, one noted in news reports yesterday which mentioned the Luby's shooting from 18 years ago, is that once again we find out guns are the problem, not the solution. But we will praise the police officer (rightly) who stopped the crime, and pay little attention to the criminal's ability to commit the crime in the first place.

In the meantime:

1	God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2	Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3	though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
4	There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
5	God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
6	The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
7	The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
8	Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
9	He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
10	Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
11	The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge

May the wars indeed cease unto the end of the earth, and the bow be broken, the spear cut asunder. God's peace and mercy to those who died, who were wounded, to their families, and to all the families on Fort Hood.

For all the Ain'ts, Part Deux, or The Anti-Kierkegaard

So I opened an envelope yesterday with this book in it (not for me, for the bookstore where I work). You can't read the subtitle from that picture, but it's particularly pernicious: "Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God's Favor."

That last bit is the part that annoys me the most: increasing in God's favor by making yourself better off materially. The "spiritual insight" offered by this tome, according to Mr. Osteen's own words on the back cover, comes down to one sentence: "You are closer than you think."* Closer to achieving wealth, of course, because "A global recession has forced many to postpone their dreams and cancel their plans." The future being all and only about how much better off I'll be than today, apparently, and a global financial collapse being merely a test of my faithfulness. "Your dream may be just around the corner. You may think it will take another two years. But if you stay in faith, who knows? It may just be two months more."

Or not. Who knows?

Faith and God as cosmic slot machines. Does it get any worse than that?

*The most spiritual word on the dust jacket of this book, by the way, is "God." And that's only used as an adjective to describe what you will earn any day now!

Good grief.

All Saint's Day 2009

The fact is that the world does not understand the eternal. Temporal existence has a temporal and to that degree an activist conception of need and also has a materialistic conception of the greatness of a gift and of the ability to do something to meet need. "The poor, the wretched, may die--therefore it is very important that help be given." No, answers the eternal; the most important is the mercifulness be practised or that the help be the help of mercifulness. "Get us money, get us hospitals, these are the most important!" No, says the eternal; the most important is mercifulness. That a man dies is, eternally understood, no misfortune, but that mercifulness has not been practised is....The eternal maintains wiht immovable firmness that mercifulness is the most important. No thinker can be so stiff-necked as the eternal is about its thought; no thinker can be so calm, so undisturbed by the urgency of the moment and the danger of the moment which seem to enforce the view that is is most important of all that help be given in every way; no thinker is so calm, so undisturbed, as the eternal. And no thinker is so certain as the eternal that men must finally, nevertheless, come around and think his thoughts, for it says: just wait; we shall talk about this in eternity, and we shall talk simply and only about mercifulness and simply and only about the distinction--merciful/not-merciful. O, that I could portray the countenance the eternal will assume when the rich man answers the question whether or not he has been merciful: I have given hundreds of thousands to the poor! For the eternal will look at him amazed, as one who cannot get into his head what he is talking about; and then it will again put the question to him: have you been merciful? Imagine that a man went out to confer with a mountain about his affairs or that someone had dealings with the wind about his enterprises--the eternal will not understand any better what the rich man says of hundreds of thousands and what the powerful man says of having done everything.

Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, tr. Howard and Edna Hong, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962, p. 302.

On going off Daylight Savings Time

If space and time are connected, why don't clocks make me look smaller?

For All the Ain'ts!

On All Hallow's Eve, let me just ask Amanda at Pandagon:

Why do you think people used to go to church?

19th century America saw an explosion in church singing, for a lot of reasons, not least of which was it gave people a chance for public performance when few such opportunities existed. I remember the "karaoke" of my childhood: shaped note singing in my grandparent's Primitive Baptist church. It was beautiful, even if no one sang the hymns any better than drunks in a bar belting out pop songs, even if the music was printed for people who couldn't read music. Church was the chance to do what people have always loved to do: make music. Make music, that is, without learning to play an instrument or having to perform on stage. Maybe that's the line of demarcation, and certainly the dusty hymn tunes of old are just that: dusty. Some are familiar and comforting, but some are just old. But pop music? Honestly; who can really sing that stuff? And isn't it meant to show off the singer?

Which, I understand, is the point of karaoke, and to each his own, of course. But still, if you're gonna say this:

That’s why Halloween is the perfect day for this. The explosion in Halloween’s popularity tells you the whole story. I’d say in Austin, it’s easily the biggest day of the year, barring the time the Longhorns won the national championship. This is because you have a huge population of adults who have thrown the finger to the whole grow up and get boring process, but the trend is nationwide. The question is no longer “are you going to dress up?” but “who are you going to be?” Performing for others has almost completely lost its stigma, and thank god. The performer enjoys it, and the audience enjoys it (even if they’re waiting their turn). It’s a lot like sex---once the taboo comes off for you, you wonder what you were so worried about for so long.

I'm gonna have to say that's the one thing I hated about Austin: the tiny minority who thought the city existed for them, and were always 'too cool for the room,' and who imagined life revolved around 6th Street and SXSW, when most of us who lived there paid no attention to either (or to Eeyore's Birthday, for that matter, though I always liked the idea of that better).

Yeah, I mean rest of the city: the cranky old guys like yours truly. Those of us who actually worked for a living, and grew up, and found the narcissism of youth boring. I was born old. What can I say?

It's the first highlighted passage I refer to, obviously. The second is another matter, and it speaks to the "American Idolization" of American culture. We are all now stars of our own legends in our own minds. Or something. Nothing against belting one out in karaoke bars, mind you (though it's never gonna be my thing), but "Don't quit your day job" has something of value to those of us actually trained in music. Why not do impromptu Shakespeare, while you're at it? Or put together q quick scene from Beckett? A pick-up version of "Our Town," anyone?

I think there's a reason that hasn't caught on.

And maybe that's the distinction between singing in church, and singing karaoke: both are performance, but there is quite a distinction in the space and the purpose. Sure, there are prima donnas in churches, especially in the choirs. Sure, some people love to sing solos, and it ain't always "to the glory of God," though they will demurely say it is (as they accept the congratulations afterwards).

Amanda sez:

Technology has a lot to do with this shift in public attitudes about performance and emulation. Social networking, blogging, etc. have created a huge incentive for people to put themselves on display, when previously they may have just kept their opinions mostly to themselves. Video games helped, too. They used to be considered something mainly for children, but now it’s completely acceptable for grown adults to sit down and pretend to be someone else doing crazy stuff for long periods of time. If you think about it, games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero (and now DJ Hero, which we just got yesterday, apologies for the lack of an evening post) were inevitable, and they landed at just the right time to explode in popularity. Even a few years earlier, I think more people would be wildly ashamed to strap on a plastic guitar and pretend to play it. Nowadays, though? People fight to get the chance. On the negative bent, I think the ubiquitous reality TV shows have also pushed along this further.

Again, my first thought is: "There's a reason for that." And, again, I'm old enough and cranky enough to not exactly celebrate this as a "good thing." Yes, technology has changed our expectations, but it seems blogging and social networking has mostly convinced us of the importance of ME! Which was the other nice thing about singing in church: you didn't have to listen to you. Singing weakly as the organ thunders out, or strongly in a congregation with no other instruments than voices, you madea joyful noise and became a part of something larger, maybe even better, than yourself.

I still remember the Christmas Eve service I sang with a boy's choir. We had practiced Britten's "Ceremony of Carols" for what seemed like an eternity, and when we sang that night, we were part of a program with other choirs and the pipe organ. So, besides our singing, there was a lot of standing and listening (and being grateful I didn't have a solo!) In the final song, one we had practiced but never with the other choirs, everybody sang as the organ roared and thundered, and I felt my voice joining all the other voices, the voices together becoming an instrument equal to the organ, but all just human throats and tongues and teeth and mouths. And I had the closest thing to a mystical experience I've ever had in my life. I rose out of myself, almost lost myself, in that great instrument of song and praise and joy we were all making. We were all one instrument, and for that brief instant any sense of self as almost entirely lost. 40+ years later, almost all the details of that night are gone, but I still have that one.

Try having that experience with Karaoke.

Tomorrow, I need to find church where we can belt out "For All the Saints" together, and nobody has to listen to me. It won't be the day after Hallowe'en without it.

The Shoes of the Cultural Historian

I keep mentioning H. Richard Niebuhr's seminal book, and I keep failing to lay out (or find the post where I laid out) his central analysis on the subject of Christ and Culture. Niebuhr analyzed the question and recognized five "typical partial answers" to the questions: "Christ? Culture? One or the other? Both? Neither?" He explains his method in the first chapter of his book.

Five sorts of answers are distinguished, of which three are closely related to each other as belonging to that median type in which both Christ and culture are distinguished and affirmed: yet strange family resemblances may be found along the whole scale.

Answers of the first type emphasize the opposition between Christ and culture. Whatever may be the customs of the society in which the Christian lives, and whatever the human achievements it conserves, Christ is seen as opposed to them, so that he confronts men [sic] with the challenge of an "either-or" decision....

Recognition of a fundamental agreement between Christ and culture is typical of the answers offered by a second group. In them Jesus often appears as a great hero of human culture history; his life and teachings are regarded as the greatest human achievement; in him, it is believed, the aspirations of men toward their values are brought to a point of culmination; he confirms what is best in the past, and guides the process of civilization to its proper goal. Moreover, heis a part of culture in the sense that he himself is part of the social heritage that must be transmitted and conserved....

Three other typical answers agree with each other in seeking to maintain the great differences between the two principles and in undertaking to hold them together in some unity. They are distinquised from each other by the manner in which they attempt to combine the two authorities. One of them, our third type, understand's Christ's relation to culture somewhat as the men of the second group do: he is the fulfillment of cultural aspirations and the restorer of the institutions of true society. Yet there is something in him that neither arises out of culture nor contributes directly to it. He is discontinuous as well as continuous with social life and its culture....Christ enters into life from above with gifts which human aspiration has not envisioned and which human effort cannot attain unless he relates men to a supernatural society and a new value-center. Christ is, indeed, a Christ of culture, but he is also a Christ above culture....

Another group of median answers constitutes our fourth type. In these the duality and inescapable authority of both Christ and culture are recognized, but the opposition between them is also accepted. To those who answer the question in this way it appears that Christians throughout life are subject to the tension that accompanies obedience to two authorities who do not agree yet must both be obeyed....So they are like the "Christ-against-culture" believers, yet differ from them in the conviction that obedience to God requires obedience to the institutions of society and loyalty to it members as well as obedience to a Christ who sits in judgment of that soceity....In the polarity and tension of Christ and culture life must be lived precariously and sinfully in the hope of a justification which lies beyond history....

Finally, as the fifth type in the general seris and the third of the mediating answers, there is the conversionist solution. Those who offer it understand with the members of the first and the fourth groups that human nature is fallen or perverted, and that this perversion not only appears in culture but is transmitted by it. Hence the opposition between Christ and all human institutions and customs is to be recognized. Yet the antithesis does not lead either to Christian separation from the world as with the first group, or to mere endurance in the expectation of a transhistorical salvation, as with the fourth. Christ is seen as the converter of man [sic] in his culture and society, not apart from these, for there is no nature without culture and no turning of men [sic] from self and idols to God save in society.

Neibuhr devotes a chapter each of his book to carefully examining these five types. The chapter titles provide helpful handles. In order, the five types are labeled:

1) Christ Against Culture
2) The Christ of Culture
3) Christ Above Culture
4) Christ and Culture in Paradox
5) Christ the Transformer of Culture

As I say, the fuller explanations and explorations make up the book itself. But this is enough to start with. Now, what to do with it? Well, as pointed out in comments a bit earlier:

"The issue is who is in charge." I find it interesting that for all the talk about homosexuality, the catalytic factor in both the Pope's invitation and in the recent breakaways in TEC was not about gays. They complained a lot about a gay bishop, but nobody left. They left when a woman was elected Presiding Bishop, and the Pope's invitation comes now that it's clear that it's inevitable that women will be ordained bishops in the CofE.

Gays may be an abomination, but at least they're still men...
Sherri

Quite so, sez I. And that introduces the game of "Which Category is that one in?" You can play at home. Just decide which category that sentiment falls in, and why. Niebuhr gave examples of notable figures, which I excluded, for each of his introductions, above. Be your own H, Richard Niebuhr! Decide where Pope Benedict fits, and ++Williams, for bonus points! Make it a family game night! Put on a pot of soup while you're at it!

The Shoes of the Fisherman are some Jive Ass Slippers!*

James Carroll and Ross Douthat discusses the Anglican Communion/Roman Catholic issue in terms (without mentioning them) of Richard Niebuhr's analysis of Christ and Culture, which is a very interesting way to go. Carroll says:

The invitation to “disgruntled’’ members of the Church of England’s extended family to abandon the Thames for the Tiber is a rejection of contemporary human experience, a resounding response of “No!’’ The church against the modern world, after all. Not only a cruel assault on a fellow Christian communion that is valiantly struggling to strike a balance between liberal and conservative impulses; not only an insult to loyal Catholic liberals who will be denied what converted Anglicans are offered (notably a married clergy); not only a slap at women and homosexuals whose progress toward equality is a global measure of justice; not only a stark contrast with the common Anglican practice of fully welcoming alienated Roman Catholics, while eschewing any pressure on them to convert - there is more.

Equally damaging, the Vatican’s preemptive exploitation of Anglican distress explicitly ducks the large and urgent challenge facing every religion and every religious person, which is how to positively reconcile tradition with the massive changes in awareness, knowledge, and communication that come with the scientific and technological breakthroughs that daily alter the meaning of existence.

Douthat agrees "there is more," but the "more" is not modernity nor the reaction to it, at least by Christians. The "more" is Islam:

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

What's interesting is that even Douthat can't accept that modernity is the enemy. That is, after all, a primarily "fundamentalist" point of view, and while there are Opus Dei and other arch-conservative Catholic movements, there is no real equivalent of fundamentalism in Roman Catholicism. This is because fundamentalism defends Protestant orthodoxy, among which is the principal of direct access by the believer to God, without the intermediary of an institution. Islam has taken to fundamentalism because, like Protestant Christianity, it does not depend upon an intermediary to be a necessary component of Islamic faith.

Carroll sets the dichotomy between Christ (or church) and culture this way:

While the Vatican and its recruits just say no, the rest of us attempt to apply tested modes of ethical reasoning to revolutions, for example, in genetic science that separate reproduction from sexuality. While the Vatican just says no, the rest of us reckon with the ways in which the woon of poverty. While the Vatican just says no, the rest of us see the link between triumphalist rejection of pluralism and the intolerance that undergirds most of the world’s violence.

Douthat sets it this way:

This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.

This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.

At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.

It's an interesting argument because it is essentially a cultural argument: he who has the most numbers, wins! It's not even the quasi-theological argument that more members is a sign of God's approval. It's simply the argument that numbers equals success, and success equals power, and power equals victory, so "the more ecumenically minded denominations" are dull and losers (I have to agree with him, by the way, on those "interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel." But that agreement doesn't negate what I see as the justice of Carroll's assertion about what is going on in spite of church hierarchies.) Then there's the view of Hans Kung (everybody into the pool!), who says, more or less, what I've been saying:

After Pope Benedict XVI's offences against the Jews and the Muslims, Protestants and reform-oriented Catholics, it is now the turn of the Anglican communion, which encompasses some 77 million members and is the third largest Christian confession after the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Having brought back the extreme anti-reformist faction of the Pius X fraternity into the fold, Pope Benedict now hopes to fill up the dwindling ranks of the Catholic church with Anglicans sympathetic to Rome. Their conversion to the Catholic church is supposed to be made easier: Anglican priests and bishops shall be allowed to retain their standing, even when married. Traditionalists of the churches, unite! Under the cupola of St Peter's! The Fisher of Men is angling in waters of the extreme religious right.

Extreme religious right, of course, is a matter of perspective:

[The Anglican Church] is already suffering from the consequences of the heedless and unnecessary election of an avowed gay priest as bishop in the US, an event that split his own diocese and the whole Anglican communion. This friction has been enhanced by the ambivalent attitude of the church's leadership with respect to homosexual partnerships. Many Anglicans would accept a civil registration of such couples with wide-ranging legal consequences, for instance in inheritance law, and would even accept an ecclesiastical blessing for them, but they would not accept a "marriage" in the traditional sense reserved for partnerships between a man and a woman, nor would they accept a right to adoption for such couples.

One wants to point out it is a communion, not a "church," and the Archbishop of Canterbury is not a kind of ersatz Pope. But one really wants to say: "Really, Fr. Kung? Really?" And then one re-reads his recap of reconciliation between Rome and Canterbury, and one realizes one has encountered yet another strand of Christ and Culture, because Kung's argument ends here:

As I wrote in 1967, "a resumption of ecclesial community between the Catholic church and the Anglican church" would be possible, when "the Church of England, on the one side, shall be given the guarantee that its current autochthonous and autonomous church order under the Primate of Canterbury will be preserved fully" and when, "on the other side, the Church of England shall recognise the existence of a pastoral primacy of Petrine ministry as the supreme authority for mediation and arbitration between the churches." "In this way," I expressed my hopes then, "out of the Roman imperium might emerge a Catholic commonwealth."

With, again, Rome in control. Mitey Rome. Gee, I wonder why reconciliation hasn't happened earlier in the past 500 years?

Kung's argument is not about numbers, but about history. Who wears the Shoes of the Fisherman, and who doesn't? Except that isn't a bedrock concern of Protestants, be they Anglicans or evangelicals, fundamentalists or members of the United Church of Christ. The issue of authority is itself a cultural issue: but if there can be only one, whose culture will it be? Far from approaching the question of whose rules rule, we can't even agree on where the playing field is. Between these three, we can't even tell what we're fighting for, or who we're fighting. And maybe that's still the problem: the issue is not who has power, but who is in charge. That's still the fundamental divide between Rome and those not with Rome. I do not condemn Rome, or Canterbury, for that matter. But I do hold to what I consider the central teaching of the gospel: the power of powerlessness. And that teaching gives no power to hierarchies, or judicatories, or anyone. Yet it puts us at the obligation of everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord. And everyone who doesn't. If we would be first of all, we must be last and servant of all.

Which raises a whole new set of interesting cultural and theological questions.

*A song by Charles Mingus, not an invention of yr. humble host

What Keeps Mankind Alive?

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts --Bertolt Brecht

Take a moment to connect this:

The argument of this fascinating and deeply provoking book is easy to summarise: among rich countries, the more unequal ones do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator you can imagine. They do worse even if they are richer overall, so that per capita GDP turns out to be much less significant for general wellbeing than the size of the gap between the richest and poorest 20 per cent of the population (the basic measure of inequality the authors use). The evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett supply to make their case is overwhelming. Whether the test is life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity levels, crime rates, literacy scores, even the amount of rubbish that gets recycled, the more equal the society the better the performance invariably is. In graph after graph measuring various welfare functions, the authors show that the best predictor of how countries will rank is not the differences in wealth between them (which would result in the US coming top, with the Scandinavian countries and the UK not too far behind, and poorer European nations like Greece and Portugal bringing up the rear) but the differences in wealth within them (so the US, as the most unequal society, comes last on many measures, followed by Portugal and the UK, both places where the gap between rich and poor is relatively large, with Spain and Greece somewhere in the middle, and the Scandinavian countries invariably out in front, along with Japan). Just as significantly, this pattern holds inside the US as well, where states with high levels of income inequality also tend to have the greatest social problems. It is true that some of the most unequal American states are also among the poorest (Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia), so you might expect things to go worse there. But some unequal states are also rich (California), whereas some fairly equal ones are also quite poor (Utah). Only a few (New Hampshire, Wyoming) score well on both counts. What the graphs show are the unequal states tending to cluster together regardless of income, so that California usually finds itself alongside Mississippi scoring badly, while New Hampshire and Utah both do consistently well. Income inequality, not income per se, appears to be the key. As a result, the authors are able to draw a clear conclusion: ‘The evidence shows that even small decreases in inequality, already a reality in some rich market democracies, make a very important difference to the quality of life.’ Achieving these decreases should be the central goal of our politics, precisely because we can be confident that it works. This is absolutely not, they insist, a ‘utopian dream’.

With this:

For more than two hours on a dark Saturday night, as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was allegedly gang raped and beaten outside a high school homecoming dance, authorities said.

As hundreds of students gathered in the school gym, outside in a dimly lit alley where the victim was allegedly raped, police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed.

"As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN.

Is it merely coincidence that this horrific crime occurred in California? Is there no possible causal relationship at all?

It is, of course, too easy to say there is one, and run screaming away denouncing materialism or classism, or pronouncing class warfare or creating any other shibboleth from this comparison. But does that make the comparison entirely invalid? Can we only compare general trends (as the argument from The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Betterby Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, obviously does)? Can we not draw any particular lessons from a general analysis of this kind of horror? Criminologlists do:

Criminology and psychology experts say there could be a variety of reasons why the crime wasn't reported. Several pointed to a problematic social phenomenon known as the bystander effect. It's a theory that has played out in lynchings, college riots and white-collar crimes.

Under the bystander effect, experts say that the larger the number of people involved in a situation, the less will get done.

"If you are in a crowd and you look and see that everyone is doing nothing, then doing nothing becomes the norm." explains Drew Carberry, a director at the National Council on Crime Prevention.

Carberry said witnesses can be less likely to report a crime because they reinforce each other with the notion that reporting the crime isn't necessary. Or, he says, witnesses may think another person in the crowd already reported the incident. The responsibility among the group becomes diffused.

"Kids learn at a young age when they observe bullying that they would rather not get involved because there is a power structure," Carberry adds.

So there's that. There's also the almost existential problem of the "other:"

This detached mentality can be especially pervasive among youth, who are too young to comprehend what victimization means, said Salvatore Didato, an organizational psychologist in New York. When a teenager -- or anyone -- -doesn't have a personal bond to the victim, they are less likely to help out.

Experts say sometimes bystanders see the victim as less important than the person committing the crime, who appears to wield power. "The victim to them is a non-person," Didato said.

We could invoke Levinas and Derrida to examine that issue. But do the abstractions of French phenomenology really give us any purchase on a story like this?

Moving from generalities to specifics is always a problem, especially since generalities themselves tend to be vague and glittering. As the reviewer of the books notes:

Is the basic claim here that in more equal societies almost everyone does better, or is it simply that everyone does better on average? Most of the time, Wilkinson and Pickett want to insist that it’s the first.

But statistics point to averages, not to specifics. They posit trends, they don't read the tea leaves of ordinary lives in all their peculiarity and particularity. So it's unfair to even imply that people in California particpated in a gang-rape because California is as shockingly unequal in its distribution of wealth among its citizens, as a group of those citizens were towards the welfare of one individual.

Or is it? It seems obvious this group thought as a group; that the victim was "other," a non-person with whom no sympathy was needed, or perhaps merely allowed. Some came to watch the spectacle when they heard of it, some came to participate; no one so much as went back inside and activated their cell phone. Why? Were they each, individually, that evil? They each had an individual motivation, but that motivation was driven as much by the group as by their conscience, or apparent lack of conscience. Sartre famously said of his existentialist ethics that it made the individual responsible for all of humanity, that when the individual chose, he/she chose for all humankind. This case could practically be a textbook example of Sartre's argument.

But why would people make a choice like this? Could it have nothing to do with the larger society? It's a dangerous parallel but an apt one: we accept the argument that "ordinary Germans" accepted, even participated, in the atrocities of Nazi Germany in part because of the state of Germany after World War I, and the broken economy and hyperinflation that made Hitler's rise to power, again at least in part, possible. It was the reason we rebuilt Germany and imposed the Marshall Plan after the war was over, so we did more than devote our attention to the state of the nation to historical analysis. Is it impossible to apply that analysis to ourselves, to say that the evil men and women do is not in part due to inequalities that society could correct if it chose to? Can we really say that these two things, happening together (the report of the analysis, the report of the crime) are merely happenstance? Is the ability to see the victim as a non-person, as someone without power in the situation and therefore irrelevant, even non-human, not at some level tied to social and economic inequalities which teach the very same lesson on a community-wide scale?

In theological circles, we discuss this in terms of the covenantal and imperial economies. Of course, when we discuss such things in public, we get slapped around for it. Maybe we should discuss them anyway.

More Soup!

Nothing new under the sun:

That's because, while he regards the Pope as the boss, and has welcomed the Pope's visit to these shores next year in the usual grovelling terms (the "joy" of "all" Anglicans), the Pope obviously regards him as insignificant - not worthy of advance notice of an action that basically and potentially takes traditionalist Catholic priests en masse out of his Church and short circuits the female bishops decision making and the whole matter of the Covenant and Anglican identity.

Nothing at all:

The first step towards unity is that our brother the patriarch of Constantinople should recognize the primacy and dignity of the apostolic see...and correct his former obstinancy. The causes of diversity of faith and custom between Greeks and Latins cannot be removed unless the members are first united at the head. For how can questions be discussed between dissenting and antagonistic bodies when one refuses to obey or agree with the other?

Pope Paschal II to the Emperor Alexius, 1112. Quoted in Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. Southern follows this quote with an explanation:

In other words debate is futile unless we first agree who is right; and then of course it is unnecessary.

Something like that.