progressive involvement

Letter of the poet, W.H. Auden, to his pastor after their parish had begun using a more modern language liturgy

77 St Mark’s Place
New York City 3

Nov. 26th [year not given]

Dear Father Allen:

Have you gone stark raving mad? Aside from its introduction of a lesson and psalm from the O.T., which seems to me admirable since few people go any more to Mattins or Evensong, the new ‘liturgy’ is appalling.

Our Church has had the singular good-fortune of having its Prayer-Book composed and its Bible translated at exactly the right time, i.e., late enough for the language to be intelligible to any English-speaking person in this century (any child of six can be told what ‘the quick and the dead’ means) and early enough, i.e., when people still had an instinctive feeling for the formal and the ceremonious which is essential in liturgical language.

This feeling has been, alas, as we all know, almost totally lost. (To identify the ceremonious with ‘the undemocratic’ is sheer contemporary cant.) The poor Roman Catholics, obliged to start from scratch, have produced an English Mass which is a cacophonous monstrosity (the German version is quite good, but German has a certain natural sonority): But why should we imitate them?

I implore you by the bowels of Christ to stick to Cranmer and King James. Preaching, of course, is another matter: there the language must be contemporary. But one of the great functions of the liturgy is to keep us in touch with the past and the dead.

And what, by the way, has happened to the altar cloths? If they have been sold to give money to the poor, I will gladly accept their disappearance: I will not accept it on any liturgical or doctrinal grounds.

With best wishes

[signed]

W.H. Auden

 

November 22, 1963

I was a freshman in high school, in chemistry class, sitting next to Roger Workman at the third table from the front in the middle aisle.  

It was about 12:30 p.m. when the principal of the school, Arnold Anderson, his voice crackling through the intercom, announced that President Kennedy had been shot.  He didn't say if he was dead, only that he had been shot.  About ten minutes later, Anderson confirmed the President had died.

That weekend was a marathon of black-and-white television--Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, and Smith foremost, each with their retinue of reporters.  Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, was killed on live television.  

The procession of the President's body through the streets of Washington on the way to the funeral contained several elements now considered iconic--the riderless horse, JFK Jr'.s salute, the cadence of the drums, world leaders such as Charles DeGaulle and Haile Selassie leading the international delegations.  Most Americans over the age of 60 will remember this:

 

It wasn't long before the official story of the assassination, the Warren Report, was called into question by a number of reporters and writers.  In a short period of time, most Americans became convinced that the assassination of JFK involved a conspiracy of some sort.  In the 1970's, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed with them.

In more recent years, revisionists such as Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi have argued that the Warren Commission basically got it right.  Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and he fired three shots at President Kennedy, including the final and fatal one that struck the front part of his head.

The Zapruder film clearly shows President Kennedy's head being driven back, apparently by a shot from the front.  The revisionists want to argue that the Zapruder film shows Kennedy's head move slightly forward at impact before an "exploding nerve" drove his head backward.  

In other words, even though, with his head being struck in the front and exploding backward, it looks as though the President was shot from the front, he really wasn't.  They might as well be saying, "Who you gonna believe?  Us, or your own lyin' eyes."

John F. Kennedy presided over the United States at the heighth of its power and influence.  World War II had ended only 15 years before his election, and we were still enjoying the benefits and advantages of victory.  We were well on our way to repairing the damage done by the Great Depression.  Our military power was such that Kennedy could stare down the Soviets over Cuba.

After his assassination, nothing seemed quite right.  Hopeful and optimistic at the beginning of the decade, America sunk into recriminations and hostility, even near chaos, by the decade's end.  Many Americans, inspired by JFK, went into politics in the early 60's.  By the late 60's, politics was out.

It has been 50 years since that fateful day, but his death still haunts us.  Politicians of all stripes, but especially Democrats, tried to mimick the Kennedy style and associate themselves with his energy and "vigor."  They all sounded inauthentic and "tinny."

Was John F. Kennedy a great President?  Yes.  He was smart enough to end-run the military hawks on Cuba, and tough enough to make Khrushchev blink.  To his political detriment, he embraced the civil rights movement.  In his American University speech of 1963, he was looking forward to a world that was not bogged down by intractible ideological conflict.

Of the many books that have been written about President Kennedy and the Kennedy assassination, these would be at the top of my list:  JFK and the Unspeakable, by James W. Douglass; An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek; Kennedy, by Ted Sorenson;  Brothers:  The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, by David Talbott; President Kennedy:  Profile of Power, by Richard Reeves; Johnny, we hardly knew ye, by Kenneth O'Donnell;  and The Making of the President, 1960, by Arthur Schlesinger. 

 

 

150th Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address

Thousands will gather at Gettysburg today to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the delivery of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  

The original occasion was the dedication of a cemetary for the Union dead of the battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863.  The Union's victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg the following day, were the twin turning-points of the American Civil War. (The Union Army used the cupola of the Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg to scout Confederate movements.)

The Gettysburg Address is surely the most-memorized speech ever.  Generations of American schoolchildren learned its cadences, and, at least to some extent, internalized its message.

Abraham Lincoln was a self-taught individual, and he had obviously read widely and deeply in classical literature.  (Garry Wills notes the Gettysburg Address' similarity to Pericles' Funeral Oration.)  

Mostly, though, Lincoln sounds more Biblical than classical.  He was well-acquainted with the King James Bible, and its influence can be seen in much of his writing.

The significance of the Gettysburg Address is not simply in its elevated language, which is magnificent, but rather its influence in shaping the nation's own self-understanding.  Lincoln's speech ratified, and gave new energy, to Thomas Jefferson's egalitarian vision for the country.  

The Jeffersonian influence is in the very first sentence--"that all men are created equal".  Jefferson had chiseled these words into American history in the Declaration of Independence.  Lincoln stamped them with approval, and raised the question, as Jefferson had, of whether self-government can work.  ("Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.")

Lincoln answered that question by asserting "a new birth of freedom", a re-invigoration of our founding principles of self-government, which he defined in a way that is thoroughly Jeffersonian, yet expressed with new force:  "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

 

They've been pulling stunts like this ever since the beginning of the country

The south has been insisting on its own way ever since the Constitution of the United States was written, including while it was being written.  

They're at it again.  The tea party caucus, overwhelmingly white and southern, refuses to recognize and is actively subverting a law that provides universal health insurance coverage.  

The first President to propose a national health care plan was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt.  The Democratic Party has supported universal coverage since Harry Truman.

President Obama ran for president on universal health care.  The Affordable Care Act was passed by both houses of Congress, declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, and the President who proposed it was re-elected by five million votes.  In a constitutional republic, this is supposed to count.

But no, the southerners don't like it.  Joan Walsh slices and dices southern GOP history to remind us of the racial bias that has animated the GOP since at least 1964.  She remembers Lee Atwater in particular.  He's the one who famously said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N–ger, n–ger, n–ger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n–ger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N–ger, n–ger.”

"Defund Obamacare" is the new "states' rights".  What could be worse than a black president passing a law that, in many minds, helps black people?  

In fact, government itself is synonymous in some peoples' minds with helping black people, and is probably the main reason a certain constituency thinks government is the root of all evil.  (Actually, money is.  I just checked.  1 Tim 6:10)

When I was growing up in a rural Kansas environment back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, people liked and generally trusted the government.  We were farmers, and a certain natural grousing about the government comes with the territory, but, overall, even we farmers thought the government was doing a good job.

"I'm from the federal government and I'm hear to help you."  That's the sarcastic punch-line of a supposed joke that I first heard in 1974, told by then Congressman Robert J. Dole.  

What had happened between 1964, when my conservative civics teacher was singing the benefits of the New Deal, and 1974, when Cong. Dole thought it politically wise to unleash an anti-government zinger?  The civil rights movement, when government (finally) came down on the side of black people.  For some, the government has been the enemy ever since. 

 

 

Apple passes Coke as "world's most valuable brand"

Apple, Google, Coke, IBM, Microsoft, GE, McDonald's, Samsung, Intel, and Toyota--the top ten.

Our so-called "decline"

I keep remembering a conversation some years ago with the Canon to the Ordinary of the Episcopal diocese of St. Louis.  (Episcopalians are a little more Shakespearean than we are.  We call these humble servants "assistants to the bishop".)  

He spoke of what he called "the pains of diminishment," and said that Episcopalians had been dealing with this pain for the past few decades.  These pains manifested in various ways--resignation, low energy, general grousing, to name a few.

We are experiencing these same "pains of diminishment" in our denomination.  We've been in numerical decline since the early 1960's.  This continued unabated for about 40 years.  We'd grown used to it, and, frankly, it didn't affect anyone very much.  As long as it dinked along at 10,000 people or so a year, we didn't concern ourselves.

Back in the late 1990's, the topic of membership decline came up in a conversation with former Presiding Bishop, H. George Anderson.  His only remark was to say that "as an historian," he could say that "present trends never continue."  (I remember thinking at the time that, if that's all the thought we've put into this so far, we're a long ways behind the curve.)

He was right, after a fashion.  Sometimes, present trends don't continue.  Sometimes, they get worse.  As we moved into the 21st century, bigger chunks started breaking off, not 10,000 per year, but something on the order of 50,000 or 60,000.

Why was this happening?  What are we doing wrong?  We've done everything we've been told and taught, and the Lord does not seem to be blessing us!  Oh, the "pains of diminishment"!

There is both more--and less--here than meets the eye.  No, it has nothing to do with God turning his back on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), nor are we being punished for something or other.

Most of it is very simple:  The past three or four generations of Lutherans haven't had enough babies.  Some studies of mainline protestant membership loss attribute up to 80% of it to birthrate.  That is no less true in our case.  Once, Rudy and Helga had six or seven children.  Their grandchildren, Biff and Buffy, may not have any.

One of the broadest social trends of the past several decades is that affluence leads to lower birthrates.  That's true for nations, and it's true for churches as well.  Since mainline protestants were the first to gain affluence in the United States, they were also the first to see lower birthrates and the first to see decline.  

Southern Baptists and evangelicals are catching up.  Lower birthrates have likewise led to several years of membership loss in the Southern Baptist Convention.  Good figures aren't available for evangelicals, but they have typically had higher birthrates than the United States population as a whole.  This seems to be changing for them as well.  (Few have noticed yet.  Look for articles on "evangelical decline" to start popping up.) 

So birthrate is one factor, and it accounts for a lot.  It's not the only factor, however.  In the past dozen years, our small rate of decline has accelerated.  Instead of losing 10,000 people each year, that loss jumped to 50,000 or 60,000.  The ELCA is about 15% smaller in 2013 than we were in 2001.

2001 is when 9.11 happened.  That's when a group of religious fanatics blew up the World Trade Center in the name of God.  Evil can be subtle, and, when it is, people accommodate to it more easily than they think.  Blatant evil, however, causes people to recoil in horror, and that's what they did after 9.11.  If religion leads to things like 9.11, they figure they can do without religion.

Religion has been somewhat on the defensive since the late 1960's.  Before then, it was rare to hear religion criticized.  During the 60's, organized religion came in for its share of grief along with everyone else.  The culture was down on the establishment, and the establishment churches felt the pinch.

9.11 provided a slingshot effect.  It accelerated the already-brewing discontent with religion, and broke it out into the open.  "Spiritual, but not religious" has been an attitude that floated under the surface for a couple of decades.  It has come to the fore in the years after 9.11.

True, it wasn't our religion that was responsible for 9.11, and some drew comfort from making that distinction.  The clergy child abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church was not something that happened in another religion, however.  That one happened in ours.  Where 9.11 opened a "religious wound" in the body politic, the clergy sex abuse scandal poured salt in it.

This third factor, which had also been building for some time, was reaction against the religious right.  When people looked at the public face of the Christian faith in the United States, they saw a whole lot of things they didn't like--partisan politics, nutty theology, grim-faced scolds, obsession with sex, and somebody always bashing somebody else.  

If all you knew about Christianity was what you heard or saw through the mainstream media, you would have thought that the Christian faith was hopelessly hidebound and out-of-date.  Its preachers were fulminating on social issues that the rest of the public had long ago accommodated or ignored.  If the public face of Christianity was Pat Robertson, or even avuncular Rick Warren, millions wanted no part of it.

Considering just those three factors, it should not be surprising that many people have left the church.  If that's what we have to offer--violence, rape, lunacy--anybody with two brain cells to rub together would flee, and should flee.

That's the downside.  There is also, however, a very significant upside.  In 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided that rostered gay clergy could also be in a relationship.  It cost us about 5% of our congregations, and 5-10% of the members of most of our churches.

Made matters worse, right?  Wrong.  That decision made a valuable witness to the culture as a whole.  Not to put too fine a point on it, it said that not all Christians were gay-bashers.  I personally know a few people who were rather shocked by the ELCA's action.  They were under the impression that all Christians were obsessed with recreating the cultural and social ethos of the 1950's.

That decision put us on a path that makes it possible for our tradition to survive this century.  Conservative religion can't and won't get there until it jettisons fundamentalism.  Since it is unwilling to do so, it's hard to see what kind of future it has other than hunkering down with the revanchists and trying to ride out modernism.

I like where we are.  Sure, we're in numerical decline, and we're going to decline some more.  Any program that promises to turn things around is bogus, and so are all the exhortations to get out there and be evangelists.  (We've never done this well, and aren't about to start now.)

The thing is, though, that since cultural approval and promotion of religion has died out, that means that the people who attend our churches want to be there.  They don't get any business out of it.  They don't get social approval or reward.  They don't get to be thought of as "holy" by their neighbors--or, if they do, it's not a compliment.  They're there for no good reason except that they want to be there, and want to participate in the mission of God in the world.

Some years ago now, one of the leaders of our church said that he had a weird hobby:  he liked to read old church bulletins.  He had many from the 1920's and 1930's when, he said, the average church paid a preacher (barely) and the light bill (if they had rural electrification).  That's it.  They didn't do much else.

Nowadays, about a third of our churches are involved in some way with Habitat for Humanity.  The vast majority of them have food banks or clothing banks.  They lead mission trips or urban immersions.  They sponsor Scout troops, or recovery groups, or English as Second Language classes.  In fact, it would be hard to find an ELCA church that isn't doing something in their community. 

We are in decline numerically, and for a host of understandable reasons.  We are not in decline as a body of Christians involved in mission.  In fact, on that score, you could argue that we are better than ever.

Worthy of an Oscar

 

 

This is a Chipotle infomercial, in which the word Chipotle does not appear.

Why "millennials" should become mainline protestants

Rachel Held Evans' piece, "Why millennials are leaving the church," went viral a few weeks ago, and, by now, has been read by several thousand people.

The subject is not quite so broad as the title would indicate.  When Evans says "millennials," she means young people in their teens and 20's.  When she speaks of church, she means evangelicalism.  In other words, the title of the piece could well have been, "Why young people are leaving evangelicalism."

There's no mystery to it.  We already know why this is happening.  Based on their research on the attitudes of young people, David Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons found that Christians are perceived as "judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocritical, too political and sheltered."  (See unChristian and You Lost Me.)   

The idea that people would leave evangelicalism strikes some as a crisis.  Evangelicalism is the most market-tested religion in the world.  If people are leaving it, then either the market is fallible, or it has not yet discerned the next angle to promote.

Indeed, when Evans shares her thoughts with her evangelical friends, they suppose that if they tweak the worship service with something the market tells them is "hipper," then millennials will be happy again.

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

None of that will work.  It won't work because it has flim-flam at its heart.  It is willing to say or do just about any dang-fool thing in order to plunk a fanny in a pew.  In the 1930's, Aimee Semple McPherson got attention by riding a motorcycle down the aisle and up on the stage.  Nowadays, the motorcycle has been exchanged for electronic pyrotechnics--billowing smoke, laser light shows, Dolby sound!  

If I was "millennial", I would flee from any church that thought I could be so easily impressed.  I would flee any church that tried to tug on emotional heart-strings in order to manipulate feelings.  I would flee any church that regarded me as another "catch."  (Less George Lucas please, more St. Mark.)

If I was "millennial," I would look for a church that was willing to explore what Christianity looks like in the wake of Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Auschwitz.  I want a Christian faith that explores and interacts with science, not one that denies evolution or the age of the earth.

If I was "millennial," I would be interested in a church that is in dialog with the modern world, not one that, in knee-jerk fashion, rejects what it calls "secularism," but then apes the methods of secularism.  

If I was "millennial," I'd be interested in a church that is able to compete in the "marketplace of ideas."  In the first century, Christianity emerged in a diverse and fluid intellectual world.  Christians had to be pretty sharp to compete, and they were.  The early history of Christianity is studded with the names of great theologians in dialog with the intellectual currents of their times.  

If I was "millennial," I'd like a church that is interested in the experience of people in the modern world.  I'd like a church that doesn't assume it has all the answers, but seeks, rather, to understand the plight of people as they try to negotiate their lives through the confusing thicket of modern existence.  I'd like a church that seeks understanding, not dominance.  

If I was "millennial," I'd like a church that does not combine sentimental piety with fear of hell.  Scrap that along with an inerrant Bible, rejection of reason, and the propagation of legalistic moralisms, usually limited to, and obsessively-focused upon, sexuality. 

If I was "millennial," I'd like a church that understood that people today no longer look to religious authorities or institutions to understand the world.  I'd like a church that understands it will have to learn to persaude rather than pontificate.

If I was "millennial," I would want a church that spoke up for the oppressed, like gays, for example, or palestinians.  Jesus did it all the time.  Why can't the church?

Therefore, if I was "millennial"--if I were someone who was interested in a faith in dialog with the modern world, that had intellectual heft, that liked questions, that had some timbre of the ages in it, that spoke for the downtrodden--then I would become a mainline protestant.

 

Bruce Reyes Chow: "We must keep talking about race"

Bruce Reyes Chow is one of those people whom I've never actually met but whom I feel I know fairly well.  Ah, the wonders of the internet and social media!

Bruce was moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) from 2008 to 2010.  His new book is titled:  But I Don't See You as Asian: Curating Conversations about Race.  I caught up with him recently and he addressed some of the issues raised in his book:

(PI) OK, Bruce.  What causes racism?

Bruce:  There certainly is not one easily determined answer to this one. Some would say it's the history of slavery while others might say that it is a modern outgrowth of interactions between people of different cultures as the globe shrinks.

If I had to name one reason today, I would say that it is our collective inability to see one another as individualized human beings. Now this is NOT about being color-blind or wanting people to so give up culture, but I do believe that we too often see one another as A Black or An Asian or A White that we do not allow ourselves to be empathetic or understanding to what it means to BE Black or BE Asian or BE White. When we do this, we are less likely to appreciate the nuances and complexities of each individual's experience of their racial reality.

I would also say that another cause - can't just stop at one - is our failure to see how institutions and systems can perpetuate an ongoing culture that lives certain racial groups above others.

(PI) Racism has been called the "original sin" of America. Comment?

Bruce:  I have not heard this much, but I can see how this is tied to our history of slavery and exclusion, mostly around African American and Native American and how so much of our economy and culture has been build on our history of slavery and marginalization of people of color...

I think this is an untapped area of discussion to be had because, in a day and age when we want things to be solved yesterday, we must find a way to see that the impact of generations of slavery and racial exclusion will not be solved quickly. Yes, there are always exceptions to every rule, but as a larger narrative for the United States, there is great opportunity in having this conversation.

(PI) What can be done to diminish racism?

Bruce:  Contrary to what some may want, it is not to STOP talking about race. I am a firm believer that deeply conflicted relationships are not served by silence. Whether a marriage or a society, unless we keep talking about and through our disagreements, we doom ourselves to further withdrawal from one another and a building up of resentment and distrust. No matter how difficult we know it to be, we must keep talking about race.

Bruce is a native Northern Californian and 3rd generation Chinese/Filipino who writes and speaks extensively on faith, politics, race, parenting and technology.

Bruce graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Philosophy, Sociology and Asian American studies (1990), earned his masters degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary (1995) and was granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Austin College (2011).

A prolific blogger and sought-after speaker, Bruce's previous books include The Definitive-ish Guide for Using Social Media in the Church (Shook Foil Books, 2012).  His writing can be found on his blog, www.reyes-chow.com, as well as The Huffington Post, Patheos and The Working Preacher.

Bruce is also a Presbyterian Teaching Elder having pastored multicultural congregations for nearly 20 years. In 2008 he was elected to the highest office the 2 million member Presbyterian Church (USA).

Bruce currently lives in San Francisco, CA with his wife, Robin, his three daughters, Evelyn, Abby and Annie and one very cute canine.  But I Don't See You as Asian can be purchased here.

 

"57 pages of abomination"

The North Carolina voter-ID will likely pass.  Here's what it will do:  shorten early voting by 1 week, eliminate same day registration, end  provisional voting, prevent counties from extending poll hours by one hour on election day in extraordinary circumstances (like long lines), and will purge voter rolls more often.  

Oh yes, and the actual voter-ID provision will disenfranchise 318,000 voters.

Just in case the black panthers try to storm the voting booth, the law also provides for "vigilante poll-watchers to challenge eligible voters."

State Rep. Mickey Michaux (D-N.C.), who fought for voting rights in the 1960s, told the GOP majority, "I want you to understand what this bill means to people. We have fought for, died for and struggled for our right to vote. You can take these 57 pages of abomination and confine them to the streets of hell for all eternity."