“Religion Needs Atheism”

Can I just say how proud I am today to call Samir Selmanovic my friend? He’s a SDA minister who despite all the nay-saying and even credible reasons not to try moved his beautiful family from LA to NY to plant Faith House Manhattan, an experiment in bringing all three Abrahamic faiths together in community and shared space to learn from each other. It’s hard to convey how heavy a lift it has been, but they are persisting and have recruited some great people to lift with them, and they’re doing it!

Samir gives me eyes to glimpse possibilities for the kingdom of God that are far beyond what most who talk about God’s hopes, dreams and desires can even imagine. The world is literally dying for want of more people like Samir.  He wrote an article for the The Huffington Post (I completely overlooked them when I was shopping that McLaren interview–dang!) today, “Religion Needs Atheism”. Do yourself a favor; check it out!

interview with brian mclaren: THE SAGA continues

Well, I finally discovered at least one reason Christianity Today wasn’t interested in my interview of Brian.  They were preparing to slam the book!  At least it seemed that’s what they were hoping for.  The reviewer they chose was Scot McKnight, who is himself a friend of Brian, which may in itself make-up for any lack of enthusiasm McKnight may have felt in publicly critiquing Brian’s theology.

About the same time a friend, Amy Moffit, asked if I’d be interested in publishing more of Brian’s interview.  I tried my best to contain my excitement.  I subtly screamed YES!!!!!!!!!! across the internet. I don’t think it came off as over anxious.  I framed the interview this time as a partial response to the issues raised by McKnight.

Again it was at just under 4,000 words, so the exchange is broken up into 4 parts–A, B, C & D.

You can find Brian’s response to Scot and other critics here and here.

interview with brian mclaren: THE SAGA

So Brian graciously agreed to giving me the first major interview post-release of his newest book A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, but I couldn’t find any print outlet interested in publishing it!  Sojourners turned me down and Christianity Today, Christian Century, The Washington Post and The New York Times just ignored me. I was hurt (not really; rejection is part of the process). I just figured each of them had someone with more cachet and/or skill than I that they would eventually tap to interview Brian. I surely couldn’t imagine that they would ignore the most recent and provocative offering of one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” (2005).

Dejected about missing out on the big time, I came back home to my good friends at the God’s Politics blog. Ryan Rodrick-Beiler, Sojo web editor, has been an amazing ally who has given me venue and helped me to grow as a writer. He was kind enough to publish nearly half of the 4,000 word article written for print (a length almost unheard of in the internet publishing market). Thanks always Ryan!

Find the sojo edit in two parts here and here.

A Prayer for Haiti: A Response to Robertson, Rush and Others

Originally published with sojo.net…

Hear our cry, O Lord. Attend unto our earnest prayer. From cracks in the earth, O Lord, do we cry unto you.

We first confess that we do not know how to pray for a tragedy such as this. With each statement we oscillate between glibness or melodrama. Our neighbors in Haiti have suffered calamity. Attend to them. Be gracious unto them. Not in some disembodied way (at least not exclusively) but through us may your grace abound toward them. Keep people alive. And though it is absolutely unfair to ask of anyone in such a desperate state, please grant them patience.

Break our hearts, even as yours breaks as you witness the 100,000 or more dead, the 3.5 million or more injured and/or homeless as well as the 2 million children impacted by the earthquake. Break our hearts with the images of unfathomable devastation and massive displacement of people that for now assault our airways around the clock. Break our hearts with acute awareness of what it means to hear that all triage facilities, morgues and cemeteries are already full. Break our hearts with the rows of the unburied dead and the stench of bodies decomposing in night time temperatures that top 80 degrees. Break our hearts with the specter of disease and unrest. Break our hearts that we may learn to grieve with you for your beloved world.

May Haiti once again prick our consciences as it should have in 1806 when it became the first fully democratic nation in the western hemisphere and embodied, though imperfectly, the ideals for which we still had only words, “We hold these truths to be self evident that all… are created equal… with… inalienable rights.” May Haiti once again prick our consciences as it should have when Frederick Douglass reminded America at the 1893 World’s Fair that

“until she [Haiti] spoke, no Christian nation had abolished Negro slavery. Until she spoke, no Christian nation had given to the world an organized effort to abolish slavery…. Until she spoke, the slave trade was sanctioned by all the Christian nations of the world, and our land of liberty and light included. Men made fortunes by this infernal traffic, and were esteemed as good Christians, and the standing types and representations of the Savior of the World… and of them it was said that they died in the triumphs of the Christian faith and went to heaven among the just.”

May Haiti now prick our consciences with questions of our duties of interpersonal love and international justice: Where do you bury over 100,000 dead? How do you do so in time to avoid the spread of disease? How do you absorb all the rubble in an environmentally responsible way―in a way that doesn’t make an already poisoned habitat even more inhospitable for its inhabitants? How do we quiet our culturally colonial predilections in order to cooperate with respect with an already existent leadership in Haiti and not to overrun or usurp them? How do we remediate the West’s historically predatory relationship with Haiti which helped divest Haiti of its natural resources, so that the Haitian populous (not just elites or foreigners) can thrive and find their place in a now global society? How do we create conditions in which the Haitian diaspora can return, maintaining their desire to thrive, and help rebuild their native land if they so desire? Who will provide homes to the 100,000 previously orphaned Haitian children whose ranks have likely more than tripled? Who will open their doors to refugees, transcending the inanely demonic stereotypes of Haitians as a hereditarily dirty, shady, lazy, violent or otherwise despicable people? With these questions and more, prick our consciences that the Haitian struggle for survival becomes our own struggle for an embodied virtue.

Afflict us with empathetic anxiety for those now almost a week neglected, whose mouths grow parched for want of clean water, whose bellies cramp for want of nourishment. May we share in the anxiety of those who see planes landing afar off, but are left to wonder when or even if aid will make it to them. May we chafe at the mobs of roving bad actors terrorizing those in agony. May we grieve with those who now suffer the indignity of watching their dead scooped up by bulldozers. May we appreciate the frustration of those who have begun to erect monuments of corpse and boulder as a testament against being forgotten. Afflict us with empathy for any who lack the same basic human dignities to which we’ve grown accustom.

Yet do not leave us paralyzed or estranged in our collective sorrow as we all too often are; from the ashes of our sympathies may our moral imaginations rise with fresh convictions of how to embody your hopes, dreams and desires as best we understand them. Whether it be the ability to text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate a meager $10 that has raised over $10m for the Red Cross’s efforts, or the use of Facebook as a database for photos of and communication between missing persons and their families, or Alyssa Milano’s use of Twitter to challenge CEOs to match her $50k pledge to relief, or more simply, my own students at Pine Forge Academy’s efforts to incarnate their faith by sending money for water to what is for about 15% of them the land of their heritage. Make our imaginations for service as fertile as the need. May we hear your call to stand in the gap for Haitians (and those in need anywhere) as long as is necessary. All that is happening even now is just the beginning of what will be needed to redress the historic humanitarian crises that were exponentially accentuated by the trauma of a category 7.0 earthquake. As Americans, we have cultivated such short attention spans. Please stretch our attentiveness to meet the needs of our neighbors.

Augment the efforts of NGOs and charities organizing and working to alleviate Haitian suffering, particularly organizations like Partners in Health, Oxfam, Grassroots Int’l, Action Aid and Doctors Without Borders that facilitate indigenous solutions and labor to build the internal capacity of a country. In addition, enable short-term and long-term crisis relief orgs, such as World Vision, Save the Children and CARE. Sustain large and small faith initiatives, such as the Salvation Army and Catholic Relief Services. Even abet those who have adapted their missions to meet present need, such as UN Peacekeepers and US military. Help their efforts to be coordinated and effective.

Furthermore, Gracious One, even as we lament we must also repent and openly surrender to your regenerative spirit the meaner meditations of our hearts. In the mist of this mind-blowing catastrophe, there are those who have said awful things. One suggested that Haiti has in essence brought affliction upon itself; in doing so he also, perhaps inadvertently, implied that God’s will may have been better served through Haitians’ continued enslavement. Another characterized Pres. Obama’s quick and unequivocal response to the Haitian crisis as a racially motivated political stunt and has since encouraged Americans not to support the President’s attempts to raise money on behalf of Haitian relief. Yet another has advocated the continued deportation back to the chaos in Haiti those who previously counted the conditions of their lives there so awful as to merit the risk of survival in open shark-infested seas for a chance at merely undocumented subsistence in the US. I must confess that I have wanted to excoriate those who speak this way, but at some point, as followers in the way of Jesus, must we not question the fruitfulness of responding to such drivel? Besides, more tragic and worrisome than that there are those who would deal in such bunk is that there is a market for it. I do not recall Jesus responding to every foolish or even destructive imagination of those around him. Thus, as a most imperfect vessel seeking to bear your most perfect grace I now pray, Father, forgive them, and teach us to forgive. Nevertheless, may these men fade into obscurity, because their audiences become enchanted by a more beautiful song.

Still, in all his irreverent twaddle, Pat Robertson was right about one thing. Haiti is a land that has suffered under the scourge of what might as well be called “curse.” Typical of the colonially minded, Robertson just didn’t spread the blame far enough around, and we would be remiss should we end our prayer without asking forgiveness for the part we’ve individually and corporately played as unwitting (and in a few cases witting) exploiters of Haiti. As Tracy Kidder reminds us, “while earthquakes are acts of nature, extreme vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade.” Haiti does not just happen to be the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. Heretofore, it has been Haiti’s encounters with a physically and culturally, then economically, then politically colonizing Western world that has systematically divested it of the wherewithal to thrive, and we in willful ignorance never knew that it has more often than not been America’s insatiable resource consumption, clandestine corporate agendas and dastardly national interests that have driven repeated assaults on Haiti’s national health. We condemn the lies we’ve told ourselves for so long. Haiti hasn’t only had perpetual bad luck and awful leadership; we―the West―have been Haiti’s curse! We took Haiti’s gold; we demanded the over-cultivation of it’s signature crops (i.e. sugar, coffee and indigo) to the point of soil depletion; we‘ve held it hostage to predatory trading and lending practices; we clear-cut its forests ensuring pervasive soil erosion that poisoned the water supply and made the land generally infertile for adequate crop production; and when Haiti had few natural resources left to speak of, we devalued its currency in the world markets, making it near impossible for Haiti to buy enough of the basic resources it so desperately needs; in the meantime, we sustained the strongmen who cyclically exploited the common people in order to maintain the gross inequities entrenched under Spanish, French, British and American occupations; we trained the strongmen, we sold them the guns, and we became the all too eager depositories of all they stole from their nation. Sure there has been plenty indigenous corruption, but we too have been more than culpable in rendering Haiti too weak to fend for itself.

But now, we repent. At least as individuals, we turn away from our previously assumed benevolence, and we commit ourselves to actual goodwill and generosity of spirit―yes, even altruism. From now on, we will seek to understand the true nature of our nation’s interaction with other nations and support equitably beneficial treaties and alliances. Recognizing our part in Haiti’s persistent poverty, some of us even commit to lobbying for full forgiveness of all of Haiti’s international debts, including any portion of the $100 million of aid recently pledged by our President that is expected to be paid back. By your grace, we will police and prevent (if at all possible) Haiti’s insidious transition from victimhood at the hands of despotic greed to victimhood on the altar of corporate greed that all too often results as global corporations attempt to cultivate new markets. We will also demand that our leaders not try to remake Haiti “in our image and after our likeness”―what are mere sociopolitical challenges for us, might for them pose crises―but will respect Haitians right to self-determination, even at the risk of disagreeing with us. All this and other or more, we commit to because we are vaguely beginning to grasp the awesome charge and glorious privilege of being called by your name to be participants in your hopes, dreams and desires for the good of your beloved world.

Our attempts at love and justice will be feeble at best. Please compensate for our shortcomings. Thank you for entrusting us.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen

“WE will define the character of our country…”

Did you hear my President! This is why Barack Obama is the hope of this country…

“…That’s why I’ve directed my national security team to develop a strategy that addresses the unique challenges posed by lone recruits. And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that Al Qaida offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death, including the murder of fellow Muslims, while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.

To advance that progress we’ve sought new beginnings with Muslim communities around the world, one in which we engage on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect and work together to fulfill the aspirations that all people share — to get an education, to work with dignity, to live in peace and security.

That’s what America believes in. That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but

we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want. And so long as I am president, we will never hand them that victory.

We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

And in this cause, every one of us — every American, every elected official — can do our part. Instead of giving in to cynicism and division, let’s move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people, for now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship, a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.

That’s what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism. That’s how we will prevail in this fight. And that’s how we will protect our country and pass it, safer and stronger, to the next generation.”

Irrascible and Irreconcilable, Both

Sojo was kind enough yet again to post an article from me. I’m critiquing the language being used by Christians in the public square to perpetuate a senseless fight with Muslims. Here’s a highlight (actually the first part of the quote was edited out):

“Imagine you and I meeting somewhere, and I insist on calling you “George” (provided your name isn’t), and then I proceed to talk among my friends about you―your beliefs, motivations, hang ups―though we’ve never met before. How long would it take you to resent me?… Why can’t we listen to our Muslim countrymen and -women for the language by which to designate the radicals who defame their beautiful religion? That’s not a matter of political correctness… it’s the Golden Rule.”

The article was posted in two parts―Part A, Part B. Please check it out, and join the conversation!

The PR of Personal Experience

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has taken a lot of flack for her recognition of the part personal experience plays in the judicial process. Of particular absurdity in the criticism of her has been the charge that white men aren’t afforded the same latitude of expression as “minorities” when it comes to valuing their experiences, which sounds to me like hypochondriacs complaining that they don’t get as much face time with the doctor as sick people do.

Here is Stephen Colbert’s take on the matter…

I envy Colbert’s ability to take a concept and turn it back on itself. Colbert’s commentary indicts. How often do we try to resolve issues of inclusion this very same way?

“Praise Song for the Day”

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

~Elizabeth Alexander, Inaugural Poem for Barack Obama, 20 Jan 2009

Nonvoter

A friend of mine sent this to me yesterday. I wish I had it before the election. I would have sent one to everybody!

Uncle Jay’s 2008 Year in Rearview

Leslie’s favorite is “You Better Watch Out!”