Don't Take My Word for It

Today's post is a repeat from 2010, my first year of blogging - CK

"Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned." 

 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama 

I love debate and dialogue. It is invigorating to be in an environment where the free exchange of ideas is welcomed. For some people, the need for security overrides the ability for dialogue. In an uncertain world with an unclear future, fundamentalism has an appeal for those who desire certainty and stability. We do not have to look far to see examples of Protestant fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism and Catholic fundamentalism. All of those movements represent a loss of nerve and a lack of faith. 

When creativity and security cannot be found within, we scramble and redouble our efforts to build a superficial structure from without. There is the hope that seeing things as black-and-white will give us security. The irony is that those external structures cannot offer the security and stability that most of us desire. Ideology becomes defined by boundaries, vilification, and demonization. Danger is at hand when people blindly follow any ideology without thinking things through for themselves. Those who fail to use their God-given reason are like the fearful servant in Jesus' parable who buried his meager talent in the ground. 

The Dalai Lama is one of my heroes. I am inspired by what he has to say about human dignity, freedom, and compassion. I am encouraged and heartened by his joyfulness. I imagine that dogma and ideology are very important to him, but he has the inner security that allows him to hold dogma lightly. I once heard a story about an encounter that the scientist Carl Sagan had with the Dalai Lama. Mr. Sagan was privileged to meet with His Holiness while traveling in India. The scientist was impressed with the religious leader's knowledge and interest in science. At one point in their conversation, Mr. Sagan asked him, "What would you do if science were to prove without a doubt that there is no basis for reincarnation – that it does not exist?"

Without any hesitation, the Dalai Lama said, "We would abandon it. We would stop teaching it." He went on to talk about scientific contributions to the world. 

Mr. Sagan was quite surprised by the Tibetan leader's answer and that he spoke with such candor. After some discussion, the Dalai Lama then asked Mr. Sagan, "By the way, how would you go about proving that?" Reportedly, Mr. Sagan was uncharacteristically speechless. 

Several years ago on ABC's Nightline, Ted Koppel was interviewing the Dalai Lama. He asked a question on the same subject of reincarnation. "Do you remember any of your previous incarnations?" The spiritual leader chuckled in a self-effacing manner and answered, "At my age, I have trouble remembering what happened yesterday!" 

 As we search for truth, we would do well to look to role models who exhibit joyfulness, compassion, and inner security. They are the ones who can be open to dialogue, who can question the validity of ideas. They are the ones who have the freedom to examine, to reflect, and to abandon anything that contradicts experience and logic.

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Voting Your Faith and Values as a Citizen

 

Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching

I talked about the dangers of single-issue voting in my post on Sunday. To run with one issue to the exclusion of all others has resulted in many miscarriages of justice. For those who may not be familiar with the breadth of Catholic Social teaching, I have taken the following themes from the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. There follows a comparison with the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism.

Life and Dignity of the Human Person

The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. This belief is the foundation of all the principles of our social teaching. In our society, human life is under direct attack from abortion and euthanasia. The value of human life is being threatened by cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and the use of the death penalty. The intentional targeting of civilians in war or terrorist attacks is always wrong. Catholic teaching also calls on us to work to avoid war. Nations must protect the right to life by finding increasingly effective ways to prevent conflicts and resolve them by peaceful means. We believe that every person is precious, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person.

Call to Family, Community, and Participation

The person is not only sacred but also social. How we organize our society -- in economics and politics, in law and policy -- directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. Marriage and the family are the central social institutions that must be supported and strengthened, not undermined. We believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society, seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable.

Rights and Responsibilities

The Catholic tradition teaches that human dignity can be protected and a healthy community can be achieved only if human rights are protected and responsibilities are met. Therefore, every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities--to one another, to our families, and to the larger society.

Option for the Poor and Vulnerable

A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first.

The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God's creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected--the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property, and to economic initiative.

Solidarity

We are one human family whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they may be. Loving our neighbor has global dimensions in a shrinking world. At the core of the virtue of solidarity is the pursuit of justice and peace. Pope Paul VI taught that if you want peace, work for justice.1 The Gospel calls us to be peacemakers. Our love for all our sisters and brothers demands that we promote peace in a world surrounded by violence and conflict.

Care for God's Creation

We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.

A View from A Different Perspective

As a comparison, here is the witness from a different faith perspective, on the other end of the spectrum, so to speak:

The Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalists Association found on the UnitarianUniversalists Association website:

Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote seven Principles, which we hold as strong values and moral guides. We live out these Principles within a “living tradition” of wisdom and spirituality, drawn from sources as diverse as science, poetry, scripture, and personal experience.

As Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove explains, “The Principles are not dogma or doctrine, but rather a guide for those of us who choose to join and participate in Unitarian Universalist religious communities.”

1.      1st Principle: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2.     2nd Principle: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

3.     3rd Principle: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

4.    4th Principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5.     5th Principle: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6.    6th Principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7.     7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

*   *   *   *

Most faith traditions have a holistic vision for a fair and equitable society. When you go to the polls to vote, consider how to best implement your values and hopes for a better world.

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A Maundy Thursday Prayer for the Notre Dame Cathedral

(Associated Press photo)

Prayer for the Notre Dame Cathedral

Our Lady graces many chapels throughout the world, often as a nook off to the side where she draws in the seeker who has become weary from the crush of the world. She also comes in grandeur, calling to our highest hopes and aspirations, as on the River Seine in Paris where that ancient cathedral stands shattered and smoldering from devastating fire.

Many stood to weep and to sing hymns of devotion even as the flames continued to rise. We join our hearts with the people of that ancient city who feel immeasurable loss. We join hands with the people of that ancient faith, many of whom have come in recent years to see their Church shattered as well. 

May Our Lady instill in all of us the courage to rebuild this ancient and sacred space to speak beauty and hope to all the world.

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An Independence Day Reflection

[The following essay was first posted on July 4, 2017]

Photo from Max Pixel

Today on our nation’s birthday, I will spend some time in gratitude for the wonderful country that is the United States. I will not, however, spend any time conflating God and country. The one is a natural human response that anyone might have for his or her homeland while the other is a dangerous move toward the idolatry of nationalism. That danger of conflating faith and patriotism came home to me last Sunday when we sang the soul-stirring "America the Beautiful" in church.

Brian McLaren had a brief discussion on his blog regarding the difference between nationalism and patriotism. He also shared some thoughts with Patheos publishers on the meaning of Christian identity as it related to patriotism in a YouTube video.

God and Country?

My own conflict came to light for me many years ago when I was a Baptist seminary student. I was in school in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge – a beautiful environment for learning. While in school, I was involved in youth ministry in a nice suburban church in Novato, California, which is further up U.S. Highway 101 in northern Marin County. 

One Sunday, right before the choral anthem, the pastor (a fine man who had given me some excellent guidance and advice) called for us all to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (it was on the Sunday that fell just before Independence Day). One of my best friends even went up to hold the U.S. flag. In all fairness, my friend was in the military reserves and several in the congregation were military as well. I am sure that they, like many other of my Baptist colleagues, saw no conflict. I, on the other hand, felt like I had been delivered an unexpected side-blow.

During that time of worship which I saw as a time for contemplation and the turning of one’s attention toward God, I was suddenly called upon to stand in allegiance to my country. Of course, I was proud of my country – and patriotic – but to me, in that setting, in that sacred space, the worship of God took precedence above all else. 

I had first begun to parse out the difference between love of God and love of country when I was a freshman in college. I learned in my Western Civilization class about how St. Augustine saw the necessity of reassuring the faithful that their faith need not be devastated by the fact that the Roman Empire was falling apart. He set it all out in his written work, The City of God. It occurred to me that just like those earlier times when Rome and the Church were seen as inseparable, we American Christians too often were conflating God and country. 

The way I framed it for myself then, trying to follow Augustine’s lead, was that if I did not fully separate my faith in God from my love of country, then my faith might not hold up if my country were to fail. More important, I might not properly distinguish the demands of faith vs. the demands of citizenship.

Taking it to the Classroom

It just so happened that in seminary that semester I was taking a field supervision class which met every week to examine issues we were experiencing in church ministry. I brought my dilemma to the group – of having faced the inner conflict of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance in the context of Christian worship. 

In the discussion that ensued, some were surprised that I would have such a conflict. One person said that he saw patriotism as a Christian duty. "What about Vacation Bible School?" someone else countered, "we always lead the children in the Pledge of Allegiance there, in church, while teaching kids the Bible." Another said that I was sounding more like a Jehovah’s Witness than a Baptist (Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in saluting the flag or pledging allegiance to the United States since their duty and allegiance should be to the Kingdom of God). 

Later in the week, one of my classmates stopped me to offer a word of encouragement and expressing admiration that I “put myself out there on the line” in the group discussion. I had not seen anything “heroic” in my questions, I was simply bringing forth my own honest discomfort and conflict that had occurred during a time of worship.

A Young Country and an Old Faith

Since those days, I have parted from my Southern Baptist heritage for many reasons. Nevertheless, it remains ironic to me that a group that has made the separation of church and state one of its hallmarks should have conflated God and Country so that the line between patriotism and faith is practically indistinguishable. Our great country is, after all, not even 250 years old while the Christian faith is over 2,000 years old. 

Though I have not been in a position of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance during worship in the intervening years, I still witness the unexamined conflation of God and country, as in the case I mentioned earlier with using "America the Beautiful" as a closing hymn in church. During that service last Sunday, I closed my hymnal and remained silent throughout the hymn. I listened, wondering if perhaps I could make that a prayer for country rather than an exaltation of nationalism in the context of worship. I decided, no, that would be a stretch.  It is a beautiful song that I prefer even over the National Anthem, but for me it does not belong in church.

Love for Country and Peace among Nations

(The following is from a previous Monday Music post on this blog)

The tune "Finlandia" was composed by Jean Sebelius and has been used for other hymns ("Be Still My Soul" is one example). "This Is My Song," by Lloyd Stone, was written when the poet was 22 years old. It was after WWI and the song is a beautiful example of having love for one's country while recognizing the need for peace among the nations. The song is performed here by Indigo Girls.

                    This is my song, O God of all the nations,
                    a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
                    this is my home, the country where my heart is;
                    here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
                    but other hearts in other lands are beating
                    with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

                    My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
                    and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
                    but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
                    and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
                    O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
                    a song of peace for their land and for mine.

                                                                       ~ Lloyd Stone



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Another Look at Faith and Politics

The following essay was first posted on November 8, 2012. It was titled, "My Best Wishes to the Republican Party," and it was an appeal for the party to return to its roots that had served our country well. We had a balance in the "point-counterpoint" between the Democratic and Republican perspectives. At the time, I saw increased levels of fear and hate in our public discourse with the advent of the Tea Party and the Republican's catering to their movement. At the time, I understood the fear and hate in our national dialogue to be a hindrance to our ability to come to a consensus in matters that are important for community and national life.

I stated at the time, "The next couple of years may reveal whether the Republicans will do some soul searching or simply redouble their strident and provincial efforts." As we have seen with the Presidential election last November and the continued support of Roy Moore in my home state of Alabama, the Republicans have indeed doubled down in their appeal to fear and hate along with the promotion of white supremacist views.

The Alabama senate race between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore is at the moment a statistical dead heat. Whoever wins the special election next Tuesday will depend upon who turns out to vote. In my 2012 essay below, I expressed dismay over both the faith and the politics that were at the forefront. Today my dismay is only increased when I see how professed people of faith can simply disregard their own values in their efforts to win a political victory. In the case of Roy Moore, even before any of his interests in teenage girls surfaced, he was not fit for the senate based upon his record as a judge, his white supremacist views, and his misunderstanding of church and state.

Here is that essay from 2012. You can judge for yourself how well it still applies to our current state of affairs.

My Best Wishes to the Republican Party

I did a blog post a while back, How the Republicans Could Win by Losing. The point of that essay was that the Republican Party has changed over the past 30 years by increasingly catering to the radical right wing and that a loss in the presidential election might cause the party to steer back to what it used to stand for.  The next couple of years may reveal whether the Republicans will do some soul searching or simply redouble their strident and provincial efforts.

We have seen the Republican Party veer from its staid roots of business and enterprise to embrace the religious right and oust some of its most solid members. Long time Republican senator Richard Lugar of Indiana was rejected during this election cycle by his party in favor of a Tea Party radical as was Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania back in 2010.  In Indiana’s case, that senate seat will now go to a Democrat.  The radical right-wing element of the Republican party has made it clear to long-respected  moderate Republicans that they are no longer welcome.

It is Time for a Divorce

The union between Christian evangelicals and the Republican Party has not been good for either.  I grew up a Southern Baptist and have friendships with evangelical Christians that have continued to this day.  I chose to leave the Baptists but continue to claim my Christian heritage.

Increased levels of Hate and Fear

The marked change that I have noticed among evangelicals that is most distressing to me is the level of hate and fear that I see coming from them. There was a time when conservative Christians tried to be a light to the world wherever they happened to be.  When the Republicans co-opted the “Religious Right” and snagged them into the political system, many of those Christians, so it seems, became so identified with the political party that they lost the heart of their own faith-identity. Instead of seeking to preach the love of Christ, the Religious Right began to see political opponents as enemies. Never mind what Jesus said about loving one’s enemies, the Religious Right began to see their true mission to be a political cause that would seek to vilify and remove anyone with different views.  I have been appalled by the levels of fear and hate projected throughout the social media on the part of my religious friends, many of whom I have known since their younger days when they had better judgment.  

Unsavory Appeals to Matters of Faith

If right-wing politics has distorted the faith of conservative Christians, religion has been just as bad for the Republican Party. I can remember when Democrat Jimmy Carter was running for president and spoke freely of his Baptist faith as a born-again Christian. Gerald Ford was his Republican opponent and his Episcopal tradition did not quite know how to respond to such born-again talk. Since those days, the Republicans have capitalized on the sentiments of born-again Christians. They have expanded on Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy to bring the Southern white voters into their fold, and the evangelicals were just one element of that strategy.  By convincing Southerners that their party was the place where traditional values were honored, white evangelical Christians came in by the thousands, first as “Reagan Democrats,” then as registered Republicans as the Southern states shifted from Democrat to Republican. 

Today, politicians freely appeal to the religious values of voters with buzz words like “right to life,” and “family values” while instilling fear that Democrats would take away our religious freedom if given the chance to serve in public office.  The result has been that many conservative Christians have bought a political package with an agenda of selfish exclusion and myopic hate. It is time for Christians to look to the rock from which they were hewn and it is time for Republicans to return to the examples of their more staid and responsible leaders of the past.

Regroup and Retool

My point is that I have seen better examples of faith and better examples of political action than has been exhibited by the Religious Right and the Republican Party over the past few years. The presidential election this year [in 2012 when this essay first appeared] has demonstrated that a significant number of Americans are rejecting the fear, hate, and exclusion demonstrated by the new Republican Party. I hope that this means that we as a country have made a turn. I hope that we can continue to put racism, enmity and division behind us and begin to work together to build a country that works better for the common good.

Unfortunately, the election result also shows us that a significant number of Americans are fine with racism, enmity, division, and provincialism. There are still a lot of people who will vote to cede power to wealthy corporations and think that they are securing their own liberty. There was not a “landslide” political win.  My hope is that we will begin to see a more reasonable Republican Party that does not kowtow to the radical right. I would love to see responsible Republican opponents who respect science and education.  We need a healthy two-party system, not one of gridlock and bitterness.

Whether the Republican Party will rethink its options or redouble its narrow efforts is yet to be seen.  Nevertheless, my hope is that in our current struggle we can rise to our better angels (to borrow a phrase from another Republican: Abraham Lincoln). My best wishes go to the Republican Party. I hope that they can return to the political arena with a healthier message and a true concern for the country that is not clouded by fear and hate.     

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Faith and the Liberal Arts

[Note: A version of this essay first appeared on this blog in July of 2013 under the title, "A Faith of One's Own."]

Samford University's Reid Chapel
(Photo by Charles Kinnaird)

Today's essay is a variation on the theme from last week about the benefits of a liberal arts education.  Today I take a brief look at my exploration of faith within a liberal arts curriculum. 

It is important to be a part of a faith community, but it is also important to have a faith that you can buy in to – one that makes sense within your worldview and the life that you live.  An important step in helping me to find a faith that I could buy into came when I was a college student at Samford University. 

I chose to pursue a double major in English Literature and Religion & Philosophy.  As it turned out, these two branches in my liberal arts education helped me begin to forge a faith I could call my own.  There was one professor in the Religion Department, Dr. Karen Joines, who was particularly controversial. His specialty areas were Hebrew, Old Testament studies, and archaeology.  He was seen by many as a “liberal apostate” who should be removed from our Baptist institution. It was my English studies that helped me to have a different view, and a much greater appreciation for our liberal professor.

Sacred Story

In Karen Joines’ classes, it was okay to believe what you wanted to believe, but he wanted you to grapple with the questions of faith and to understand why you believe as you do. He wanted us to understand the deeper meaning of the Resurrection story, asking questions like, “If you could have set up a video camera in front Jesus’ tomb, what do you thing you might see when you played it back?” and “If there were no afterlife in Heaven, would you still live the Christian life?” us to understand the deeper meaning of the Resurrection story, asking questions lik

The single most important lecture I heard during my four years at Samford was his lecture in Archeology class on mythopoeic thought. That lecture opened up new vistas for me. It affirmed my love of poetry, nature and spirituality. It brought to me a heightened sense of wonder seldom found in the classroom.

There were other things he said in his classes that have stayed with me through the years. They were the closest things to rabbinical sayings that I have heard first-hand. He talked about Jacob, emphasizing that he went limping after his name-changing encounter with the angel. Referring to the book of Daniel, he told us that in our life we will be asked to bow the knee to Nebuchadnezzar, “and if you know what's good for you, you will bow to Nebuchadnezzar – but you better not." (It didn't take me long in the real world to know the truth of that comment, which I came to see as a kind of “Jewish koan”). On another occasion told us about Micah, in the book of Judges, who lost his silver idols and declared, "They have taken my gods away, and what am I to do now?"

Perhaps his most controversial chapel lecture was his “Funeral for a Friend,” in which he described, again in quite poetic language, the death of God, or more accurately, the loss of our concept of God as real life unfolds. Dr. Joines challenged the assumptions that we brought from our Sunday school days, but he was showing us what sacred story is about.

Finding the Connection in Literature

While many were livid with what they saw as apostasy, it occurred to me that if Karen Joines spoke the same words over in the English Department, he would be viewed as a defender of the faith. You see, while my colleagues in Religion classes were having difficulty dealing with doubt and things that might challenge their faith, I was seeing the world of literature deal with much harsher crises.  My studies in the English Department showed me how to honestly deal with the questions and challenges of life. Literary people were not confined by doctrine and did not have to restrict life to theological boxes.

I was reading Shakespeare, who wrote more on the human condition than anyone else in the English language. More important, he dramatized the conflicts and struggles common to us all. I was also watching Huck Finn wrestle with the notions of race and slavery, I saw Atticus Finch strive for justice in the segregated South. Moreover, I was beginning to understand the beauties of poetry, which I have come to see as our own “open canon of scripture,” to which we continue to add with each passing year.ish language, and who, more importa

The result of grappling with questions raised by literary writers was a larger appreciation of life. There was no condemnation for stepping out of the boundaries, no call for the firing of professors. There was just the exhilarating process of examining life, love, joy, sorrow, struggle, and friendship.

My double major in English and Religion helped to open my eyes to a wider world as I wrestled with finding the meaning of the life I am attempting to live. I carry from my studies a particular treasure in that gift that Karen Joines gave in my religious studies – that vibrant sense of the poetic along with an honesty to face struggle and doubt within the context of faith.  He inspired a freedom to live unbound by outdated notions.

*    *    *

Post script: I have attempted to carry on the idea of sacred story, as Karen Joines demonstrated to us in his classes. I have recast some of the Old Testament stories in a kind of personal midrash in “Tales of Isaac: Part I - The Altar and Part II - The Blessing,”  “Discovering Esau,” “A Blanket for an Old Man,” and “The Mark of Cain.” I also tried to follow up on Dr. Joines’ lead in “When Your Gods Are Taken Away.”

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Don't Take My Word for It

[The following essay was first posted on July 7, 2010. I re-post it today as I think of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and and the difficult days that are upon us. As Harry Emerson Fosdick put it, "Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.]

"Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned."

~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I love debate and dialogue. It is invigorating to be in an environment where the free exchange of ideas is welcomed. For some people, the need for security overrides the ability for dialogue. In an uncertain world with an unclear future, fundamentalism has an appeal for those who desire certainty and stability. We do not have to look far to see examples of Protestant fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism and Catholic fundamentalism. All of those movements represent a loss of nerve and a lack of faith.

When creativity and security cannot be found within, we scramble and redouble our efforts to build a superficial structure from without. There is the hope that seeing things as black-and-white will give us security. The irony is that those external structures cannot offer the security and stability that most of us desire. Ideology becomes defined by boundaries, vilification, and demonization. Danger is at hand when people blindly follow any ideology without thinking things through for themselves. Those who fail to use their God-given reason are like the fearful servant in Jesus' parable who buried his meager talent in the ground.

The Dalai Lama is one of my heroes. I am inspired by what he has to say about human dignity, freedom, and compassion. I am encouraged and heartened by his joyfulness. I imagine that dogma and ideology are very important to him, but he has the inner security that allows him to hold dogma lightly. I once heard a story about an encounter that the scientist Carl Sagan had with the Dalai Lama. Mr. Sagan was privileged to meet with His Holiness while traveling in India. The scientist was impressed with the religious leader's knowledge and interest in science. At one point in their conversation, Mr. Sagan asked him, "What would you do if science were to prove without a doubt that there is no basis for reincarnation – that it does not exist?"

Without any hesitation, the Dalai Lama said, "We would abandon it. We would stop teaching it." He went on to talk about scientific contributions to the world.

Mr. Sagan was quite surprised by the Tibetan leader's answer and that he spoke with such candor. After some discussion, the Dalai Lama then asked Mr. Sagan, "By the way, how would you go about proving that?" Reportedly, Mr. Sagan was uncharacteristically speechless.

Several years ago on ABC's Nightline, Ted Koppel was interviewing the Dalai Lama. He asked a question on the same subject of reincarnation. "Do you remember any of your previous incarnations?" The spiritual leader chuckled in a self-effacing manner and answered, "At my age, I have trouble remembering what happened yesterday!"

As we search for truth, we would do well to look to role models who exhibit joyfulness, compassion, and inner security. They are the ones who can be open to dialogue, who can question the validity of ideas. They are the ones who have the freedom to examine, to reflect, and to abandon anything that contradicts experience and logic.

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[You might be interested in reading an account of the Dalai Lama's visit to Birmingham, Alabama and his speech on secular ethics here)

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Some Thoughts on Independence Day

Photo from Max Pixel

Today on our nation’s birthday, I will spend some time in gratitude for the wonderful country that is the United States. I will not, however, spend any time conflating God and country. The one is a natural human response that anyone might have for his or her homeland while the other is a dangerous move toward the idolatry of nationalism. That danger of conflating faith and patriotism came home to me last Sunday when we sang the soul-stirring "America the Beautiful" in church.

Brian McLaren has a brief discussion this week on his blog regarding the difference between nationalism and patriotism. Also this week, Johnathan Aigner, on his church music blog, Ponder Anew, illustrates some of the danger in linking love of country with worship of God.

God and Country?

My own conflict came to light for me many years ago when I was a Baptist seminary student. I was in school in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge – a beautiful environment for learning. While in school, I was involved in youth ministry in a nice suburban church in Novato, California, which is further up U.S. Highway 101 in northern Marin County. 

One Sunday, right before the choral anthem, the pastor (a fine man who had given me some excellent guidance and advice) called for us all to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (it was on the Sunday that fell just before Independence Day). One of my best friends even went up to hold the U.S. flag. In all fairness, my friend was in the military reserves and several in the congregation were military as well. I am sure that they, like many other of my Baptist colleagues, saw no conflict. I, on the other hand, felt like I had been delivered an unexpected side-blow.

During that time of worship which I saw as a time for contemplation and the turning of one’s attention toward God, I was suddenly called upon to stand in allegiance to my country. Of course, I was proud of my country – and patriotic – but to me, in that setting, in that sacred space, the worship of God took precedence over all else. 

I had first begun to parse out the difference between love of God and love of country when I was a freshman in college. I learned in my Western Civilization class about how St. Augustine saw the necessity of reassuring the faithful that their faith need not be devastated by the fact that the Roman Empire was falling apart. He set it all out in his written work, The City of God. It occurred to me that just like those earlier times when Rome and the Church were seen as inseparable, we American Christians too often were conflating God and country. 

The way I framed it for myself then, trying to follow Augustine’s lead, was that if I did not fully separate my faith in God from my love of country, then my faith might not hold up if my country were to fail. More important, I might not properly distinguish the demands of faith vs. the demands of citizenship.

Taking it to the Classroom

It just so happened that in seminary that semester I was taking a field supervision class which met every week to examine issues we were experiencing in church ministry. I brought my dilemma to the group – of having faced the inner conflict of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance in the context of Christian worship. 

In the discussion that ensued, some were surprised that I would have such a conflict. One person said that he saw patriotism as a Christian duty. "What about Vacation Bible School?" someone else countered, "we always lead the children in the Pledge of Allegiance there, in church, while teaching kids the Bible." Another said that I was sounding more like a Jehovah’s Witness than a Baptist (Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in saluting the flag or pledging allegiance to the United States since their duty and allegiance should be to the Kingdom of God). 

Later in the week, one of my classmates stopped me to offer a word of encouragement and expressing admiration that I “put myself out there on the line” in the group discussion. I had not seen anything “heroic” in my questions, I was simply bringing forth my own honest discomfort and conflict that had occurred during a time of worship.

A Young Country and an Old Faith

Since those days, I have parted from my Southern Baptist heritage for many reasons. Nevertheless, it remains ironic to me that a group that has made the separation of church and state one of its hallmarks should have conflated God and Country so that the line between patriotism and faith is practically indistinguishable. Our great country is, after all, not even 250 years old while the Christian faith is over 2,000 years old. 

Though I have not been in a position of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance during worship in the intervening years, I still witness the unexamined conflation of God and country, as in the case I mentioned earlier with using "America the Beautiful" as a closing hymn in church. During that service last Sunday, I closed my hymnal and remained silent throughout the hymn. I listened, wondering if perhaps I could make that a prayer for country rather than an exaltation of nationalism in the context of worship. I decided, no, that would be a stretch.  It is a beautiful song that I prefer even over the National Anthem, but for me it does not belong in church.

Love for Country and Peace among Nations

(The following is from a Monday Music post on this blog last year)

The tune "Finlandia" was composed by Jean Sebelius and has been used for other hymns ("Be Still My Soul" is one example). "This Is My Song," by Lloyd Stone, was written when the poet was 22 years old. It was after WWI and the song is a beautiful example of having love for one's country while recognizing the need for peace among the nations. The song is performed here by Indigo Girls.

                    This is my song, O God of all the nations,
                    a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
                    this is my home, the country where my heart is;
                    here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
                    but other hearts in other lands are beating
                    with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

                    My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
                    and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
                    but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
                    and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
                    O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
                    a song of peace for their land and for mine.

                                                                       ~ Lloyd Stone



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Bearing Witness to the Times: Fault Lines

President Donald Trump speaks to the Faith & Freedom Coalition's
Road to Majority Conference June 8, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Photo by Alex Wong—Getty Images

                               

"Trump tells Evangelical Supporters, 'We're Under Siege'"

(Headline from Time Magazine)

Fault Lines

Some say it took about 400 years

For Rome to fall –

At least to fall all the way down.

If that is true,

People still saw it coming.

Barbarians fighting in the streets

Is no small harbinger, after all.

By the time it began to crumble

Rome had become identified

With faith and security.

Indeed, it was seen as
The full measure of Christendom.

The well-heeled faithful

Saw despair in the fault lines.

To that despair

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote

The City of God.

In part, he sought to set forth

The ideal of that city

Not built by human hands

Which can guide our efforts

In living and organizing

Our public life.

The greater part

Was in the bishop’s assurance

That the end of Rome

Was not the death of faith.

Time has borne out his wisdom

And should have made it clear

That faith does not rest

Upon the foundations

Of the cities we build.

Nevertheless,

On our own shores

We set a shining city on a hill

Declaring a Christian nation.

We wed our faith

To our national pride,

Not allowing ourselves 
To foresee the day

When that city would fall.

                                                                                             ~ CK

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Dying Churches and Post-Modern Religion in a Secular Age

Predictions are Never Easy

So much is being written now about the future of the church and whether faith will be relevant in the years ahead.  Predicting the future is a tricky thing, even when predicting the near future. We can think we have all the facts that allow us to foresee how events will unfold, and still be surprised at how things really shake out. I witnessed one example of failure to predict the future when I was a senior in college. The year was 1977, and one spring day, the headline in the morning paper read, “Speed Limit will be 90 by the year 2000.” The headline caught my attention, as I am sure it was intended to do. The reasoning laid out in the lead article was that with the country converting to the metric system, the current speed limit of 55 mph would be equal to 88.5 kilometers per hour. Since dashboards would be divided in degrees of ten, 90 kilometers per hour would quite logically be the speed limit under the new metric system.

As I read the article, it made perfect sense. The country was in the process of converting to the metric system. We had been seeing Celsius temperature readings along with Fahrenheit on time-temperature clocks at banks around town for some time. We were even beginning to see a few kilometer signs posted along some highways. Furthermore, with the oil crisis that we were still emerging from, everyone knew that our 55 mph speed limit was in place to stay. It was a matter of conservation in light of limited fossil fuels and uneasy Middle East alliances. Moreover, we had found that the lower speed limit on our highways was actually reducing accidents and saving lives. There was no reason to doubt that the metric system would be fully in place and the speed limit would remain at 55 mph.

The reality turned out differently, however. Metrication soon foundered. I don’t know if people thought is was too European, to communist, or too hard to figure out, but the whole metric idea in the U.S. was abandoned. The next big surprise was that when oil prices came down, congress eventually figured that with a seemingly endless supply of cheap oil, there was no reason to keep to a 55 mph speed limit. Thus, my hometown paper’s very reasonable prediction of the near future was a total miss.   

The Future of the Church

Sojourners magazine is running an interesting series, “Letters to Dying Churches.” One recent installment by Brandon Robertson, “To the Dying Church from a Millennial,” is an interesting take from an evangelical perspective.  He expresses the idea that it is not the church that is dying, but rather “Christendom,” or the institutions and structures that propelled a triumphalist Eurocentric culture which included Christianity.  While we are seeing a death which many of us recognize, it is not necessarily the death that we imagined.  Robertson sees a church whose "best days are ahead," yet in new forms and formats that are different from the accustomed institutions of the past (you can read the essay here).  While some mainline churches are lamenting their decline in numbers, and the sight of once vibrant churches closing their doors saddens many, there are others who are proclaiming that the Christian faith is nowhere near dead.

Embrace the Secular City – Imagine No Religion

Reading the Sojourners article reminded me of my experience in college reading Harvey Cox’s The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. Cox foresaw a kind of end to organized religion as it reconfigured to address the needs of the modern age. He stated, “The age of the secular city … is an age of no religion at all.” He focused on the positive aspects of what can happen in a secular age as long as “secularization” rather than “secularism” takes hold. Cox saw that the anonymity and mobility found in the city were changing the way we relate to one another. The author cited the parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of helping someone in need even when anonymity precludes a personal relationship. Harvey Cox was exploring the implications of how new social norms would affect the practice of faith. His book was one of the seminal documents of modern faith that was being taught when I entered college in 1973.

The Secular City still has important things to say even today.  In the mid-1960s, it presented readers with a prescient view of how urbanization and secular orientation would influence the world. The future, however, unfolded a bit differently from the way Harvey Cox envisioned. Twenty years later he would write and equally exciting book, Religion in the Secular City. In that book, Cox acknowledges that the modern city has indeed seen an expansion of religion rather than no religion. He examines two of the dynamic religious forces at work: the resurgence of fundamentalism and the rise of Liberation theology. You can read an academic review of the book here. 

Harvey Cox would later write an article for The Christian Century, “The Secular City, 25 Years Later.” It is quite interesting to read Cox’s thoughts as he takes into account unforeseen movements and so many changes, good and bad, that have occurred in the intervening time. Bear in mind, this article itself is dated, having been written in 1990. You can read the entire article here, but toward the end of the essay, Cox writes:

“Tucked away on page 177 of The Secular City comes a little-noticed paragraph that perhaps I should have used as an epigraph for this essay, or maybe it should be put in italics. Secularization, I wrote, "is not the Messiah. But neither is it anti-Christ. It is rather a dangerous liberation." It "raises the stakes," vastly increasing the range both of human freedom and of human responsibility. It poses risks "of a larger order than those it displaces. But the promise exceeds the peril, or at least makes it worth taking the risk.

“All I could add today is that we really have no choice about whether we take the risk. We already live in the world-city and there is no return. God has placed us in this urban exile, and is teaching us a more mature faith, for it is a quality of unfaith to have to flee from complexity and disruption, or to scurry around trying to relate every segment of experience to some comforting inclusive whole, as though the universe might implode unless we hold it together with our own conceptualizations. God is teaching us to approach life in the illegible city without feeling the need for a Big Key.”

Intergenerational Voices, Many possibilities

Harvey Cox has made some brilliant observations about the realities of faith lived out in the world. He is still around and represents the generation that preceded my own. Brandon Robertson, the millennial who wrote the piece for Sojourners, represents the generation after mine.  In other words, I am looking at views spanning three modern generations. The insights shared by these two writers demonstrate that faith in the modern age is quite a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon. It is also something of a cautionary tale to see that often our best predictions are quite different from what actually unfolds (as in no religion in the secular city, or the metric system in the USA).

We are certainly witnessing a state of flux in the realm of faith and spirituality.  In addition to the position stated by Robertson in Sojourners, many evangelicals are finding new meaning in the older liturgies of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Episcopalian churches.  People from Jewish as well as Christian backgrounds are finding their center in Buddhism. Indeed, in the U.S. many of the world's religions are living in proximity as never before. One thing about the current generation that was not seen as frequently in past generations is that people more readily move from the faith expression they inherited to another faith expression that suits them better (that's what happened with me). While some faith expressions seem to be dying, others seem to be rising. It is a great time to be alive if you are a seeker. Many of us may hazard a guess as to what faith will look like in the future, but there are sure to be surprises as the future continues to unfold.


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Photos: 
Upper: Church steeple of First Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Ala.
Middle: Stained glass window St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Birmingham, Ala
Lower: St. Simenon's Orthodox Church, Birmingham, Ala. 
All photographs taken by Charles Kinnaird

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