I am a Christian Too

Clearly, I haven’t been blogging consistently when I do at all, at least not here. I’m really not sure what I’m going to do with this blog, whether to retire it or renew it. In the meantime, however, I’d like to encourage any readers still checking in here to take a look at another blog. A close friend of mine, a very, very close friend as a matter of fact, is blogging here, and unlike this blog, he is not blogging anonymously.

Take a look, let me know what you think.Caffeine
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Via Andrew Sullivan, some Christians apparently aren’t big fans of the Constitution:

Ante Pavkovic, Kathy Pavkovic, and Kristen Sugar were all arrested in the chambers of the United States Senate as that chamber was violated by a false Hindu god. The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ.

In response, John Scalzi tells us “Jesus Says: Don’t Be A Dick”:

Some people really and truly believe that what Jesus wants is for them to be dicks to everyone who isn’t their particular, mushy-headed stripe of Christian…I think it’s fair to remind them of a number of things:

1. Whatever the rationale, they’re being dicks.

2. At no point in the Bible does Jesus say “be a dick in My name.”

3. Lots of other Christians seem to get through life without feeling called upon to be a dick in the service of Christ.

4. Indeed, when many of these Christians discover to their dismay that they’ve been a dick about something, they will frequently fall to their knees and say, “Forgive me, Lord, for I have been a total dick.”

5. And He does.

6. That’s a hint.

Read the whole thing — it’s hilarious, and it has a rather poignant theological point. Classic.

Every once in a while, USA Today comes out with something that belies its reputation for only delivering “McNews”. An editorial in today’s issue is one of those pieces. Mary Zeiss Stange asks a simple question regarding the debate over gay clergy in Protestant denominations: what would Luther do?

Like his role model Paul, [Martin] Luther was a product of the social prejudices of his time and culture: a time when the concepts of homosexuality as an “orientation” or a “lifestyle” were still unheard of. But would the man whose break from Roman Catholicism involved a revolutionary rethinking of the role of sexuality in human relationships take such a negative view of homosexuality today? Most probably, given the way his theological mind worked, he would not.

Very timely given the latest in the ELCA.

From the Washington Post:

The Vatican said Tuesday that Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ. Some Protestant leaders responded that this would hurt interdenominational dialogue.

Ya think?

(h/t.)

Some bad news, I’m afraid. From the Reuters report:

An appeals panel in the largest U.S. Lutheran body has ordered a gay pastor removed from his ministry because he is in a sexual relationship with another man, officials said on Thursday.

The decision from the Committee on Appeals of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is final in the case of Pastor Bradley Schmeling of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta.

[...]

That policy will likely be challenged and could be revised at the church’s annual meeting in Chicago next month, but even if it is changed Schmeling would not automatically be reinstated since that usually requires a separate process that can take up to five years, a church spokesman said.

[...]

A disciplinary committee which presided over Schmeling’s trial earlier this year ruled that he should be allowed to remain on the clergy roster until after the August meeting to see if the church changes its policy.

That same panel said the policy of allowing gays as pastors but forbidding them to have sexual relations is “at least bad policy, and may very well violate the constitution and bylaws of this church.”

But the Committee on Appeals in a decision made public on Thursday ruled that the disciplinary panel did not have the power to keep Schmeling on the roster pending the convention, and ordered him removed immediately.

Pretty cold to over-rule the disciplinary committee and remove him immediately. So now the Churchwide Assembly next month has a choice — change the bylaws of the church to allow gay clergy, or tell a congregation that they may not call the pastor of their choice and remain in the ELCA. Hopefully this will bring the assembly to see the error of its vote in 2005.

More at Lutherans Concerned.

*yawn*

*stretch*

*rubbing eyes* How long have I been asleep?

Three months.

Anything happen?

Lindsey and Britney are in rehab. Paris is in jail.

Bush still President?

Yes.

We’re still in Iraq?

Yes.

Still torture, rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretaps, signing statements and other assaults on the Constitution and the laws of the United States?

Yes.

*sigh*

I’m going back to sleep.

This is just so cool. I usually leave blogging on the Episcopal “troubles” to Father Jake and other Episcopalians better able to talk about Anglican politics, but this just demands some comment.

The new “Reformation” is a way-overused metaphor — the second Reformation has been declared hundreds of times, without it having happened yet. (Hmmm…reminds me of the second coming.) So I’m not about to call this equivalent to Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the Wittenburg church door. But it certainly is reminiscent of Luther’s pivotal statement “here I stand…I can do no other.”

As Christians of a progressive persuasion, we are very good at listening, at empathizing, understanding the other side’s hurt, at walking a mile in their shoes. We look to reach compromise, to make everyone happy, or at least leave no one upset. And this is a good thing, a Christ-like thing, that we should never lose.

But at some point, compromise requires compromising the very Gospel itself. At some point, compromise requires us to stop being faithful servants of Christ. It is at this point that we must, with Luther, state that here I stand, I can do no other.

It seems the Episcopal House of Bishops has reached just such a point. They have issued “A Communication to The Episcopal Church from the March 2007 Meeting of the House of Bishops.” This is essentially an answer to the Anglican Primates from around the world who have been poaching congregations in the US, and in the Dar es Salaam Primates meeting, demanded a mechanism for foreign pastoral oversight of Episcopal churches that dissent from the ordaining of gay Bishops.

The first part of the communication recounts the Episcopal Church’s repeated attempts to reconcile with the conservatives in the world-wide Anglican Communion, particularly those from the global south, and how those attempts have been repeatedly rebuffed. They make it clear that they have been trying to do all the listening/working together/empathizing/compromising stuff for quite a while, to no avail. It appears that Dar es Salaam has become the equivalent of a papal bull that the conscience of the House of Bishops will not tolerate:

We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.

The rest of the communication is a rather forceful rejection of the demands made on the Episcopal Church by the Primates at Dar es Salaam.

As I have often thought regarding my own denomination, schism is not something to be avoided at any cost. At some point, faithful following of our Christ requires us to say “no” to compromise. I have no idea how this will play out in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, but if the price to avoid schism is to recant on this statement from the House of Bishops, then it seems far too high a price to pay.

With apologies to C.S. Lewis, through some amazing technical hackery, I have intercepted the following email:

Hello Wormwood -

I want to congratulate you on your latest piece of handiwork with your patient. Putting the thought into his head that our enemy actually desires that humans suffer was a master stroke. Now he is busy preaching that compassion and (ugh!) caring for other humans is contrary to our enemy’s desire. The belief that pain and suffering is good is a meme that has always been a very productive one for our forces, but that has been in decline over the past few centuries.

But do not rest in our fight against more accessible health care in the U.S. I have personally been very involved in this battle over the years, but am afraid that the tide has been turning against us of late. We have been very successful convincing Americans, especially Christian Americans, that universal health care is a “government take-over” of health care (I take particular pride in that turn of phrase, which was in fact originally authored by me). We need to continue this line of attack, convincing them that, instead of Americans coming together to collectively provide for the needs of each other through their representative democracy, universal health care is a power grab by an ominous government bent on taking over control of their lives. You need to make sure that your charge continues to view “the government” as a monolithic autonomous monster, not as a vehicle by which the citizenry works for the common good. Remind him that our enemy has been evicted from the government by the “fiction” of the separation of church and state (oh, how ironic, that we claim this bane of our existence is actually in our forces’ favor!) and therefore, government involvement in health care, no matter how compassionate, no matter how good, is godless and must be opposed by Christians.

I also encourage you to continue with your current attack on Christian compassion with this idea that, because their savior suffered, suffering is somehow good. I am reminded of one of my past victories. A Christian woman was married to a non-believing man*. When her husband went into the hospital, I was able to convince her to give the doctors specific instructions to deny pain medication to her husband so that he would suffer, thereby doing penance, and subsequently able to join her in heaven. Oh how delicious, making her believe that her evil cruelty was an act of love and obedience to our enemy! I shall treasure the taste of her husband’s suffering for eternity!

Of course, you must prevent your charge from re-reading his Bible, particularly the passages in the New Testament about love (how I hate that word) for their neighbors, or about caring for the sick as an obedient response to the love our enemy unwisely wastes on humanity. Above all, do not let him turn to Matthew 25.

Keep up the good progress with your charge. He moves further and further from the influence of our enemy, all the while thinking he is being obedient. Soon he will be ours completely!

Regards,

-Screwtape

* A true story related by the Pastor of my church in his sermon this past Sunday.

I honestly don’t know of a single left-of-center political blog that hasn’t posted on the Marcotte/McEwan/Donohue/Edwards affair. Most left-of-center Christian blogs have posted at least once on it, if not several times. But not me. Until now.

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to technorati.com, search for “marcotte mcewan” and click on any link that comes up. Forgive me if I don’t bother with links in this post — there are so many good posts to link to, I can’t begin to do justice to them all, so I’m just going to write.)

Every time I started writing a post about this saga, I ended up spending my time reading other bloggers’ posts about it, until I wasn’t sure how I felt about it anymore. Or I no longer agreed with what I had just written. Either way, I wasn’t able to actually post about it myself.

Now that it has played out, presumably, to its end, and everyone has written their fill, I can finally write something about it without getting distracted. Of course, I’m way behind everyone else, but then I’m always way behind everyone else. If you’re still reading this blog, then you’ve accepted that fact, so I feel no need to apologize. Let me just say that, if I have a fault, it’s that I have to think (well, maybe over-think) through something before I can write about it. So sue me.

Why has this whole sorry affair attracted so much blog ink? Well, it’s about blogging, and bloggers, and divisive politics, the Christian right (of the worst sort), religious taboos, sex (kind of), and how we feel about public discourse of religion. It’s an ambiguous morality tale where all sides are right, but all sides are also wrong. In short, it’s perfect for blogging.

(Except for me, because of the aforementioned personality quirk.)

Bill Donohue is a reprehensible bigot — let me get that out first, lest anyone misconstrue where my sympathies lie. The idea that Catholics, or Christians in general, should aggressively defend themselves against anti-Christian speech (real or imagined) by getting people fired, yelling on cable news shows or mounting PR battles is entirely unbiblical and unChristian. “Blessed are the meek.” Sound like Bill Donohue to you? Me neither. “Turn the other cheek.” “They will know you by your love.” “Love your enemies.” Donohue has been so entirely co-opted by our divisive political culture that he is the poster child for how not to act like Christ. He is the anti-evangelist. Any unchurched person seeing him on television would decide that Jesus teaches us to be a bully, running around screaming at people we don’t like. He’s the anti-evangelist, losing souls for Christ.

On the other hand, I like the secular liberal blogosphere. I’ve occasionally read posts on Shakespeare’s Sister and Pandagon when linked to from some of the blogs I regularly read, and always found them interesting, intelligent and pretty funny. But, there is a definite anti-Christian thread through much of the left half of the blogosphere. Just think of Markos, Kevin Drum, Atrios, etc etc. — atheists, or at least agnostics, all. They’re not anti-religious (although many of their commenters are) but they talk about Christians, even liberal Christians, as though they have just discovered the platypus. We look funny, they’re not sure what all our appendages are for, or why we’re here, but they’re happy to let us go on doing whatever it is we do.

As you go deeper into the liberal blogosphere, however, the presumption arises that anyone enlightened, intelligent and reality-based enough to be a liberal must also be an atheist. The corollary to this is that anyone superstitious enough to be Christian must also be a whackjob. And unfortunately, the Christian right gives them plenty of evidence that this is the case. The distinction between a progressive, dare I say intelligent, Christianity and fundamentalism is lost on them.

Maybe just one link. Faithful Progressive has asked for respect from the liberal bloggers:

I’d like to see blogs move away from offensive Howard Stern like comments about religion. Maybe some of the big blogs will now pledge to at least limit such profane nonsense from both their posts and comments? Is that really too much to ask for a constituency that is, in all likelihood, bigger than the Netroots?

It would be great if bloggers complied with FP’s request. But I have a different view. We are not a constituency that has to be courted and cultivated to earn our votes and support. We aren’t about earning respect, or not directly anyway. If we are to be prophetic voices, then we will say and do what we are called to do regardless of any respect or lack thereof. We aren’t in this to be welcomed on the Democrats’ team, praised, appreciated or loved. Sure, it would be nice, but if the early Christians held on to their witness in the face of the Roman lions, surely we can stand up in the face of snarky comments about the virgin Mary.

So I figure we should let the blogosphere be the blogosphere, but just make sure we add our voices to the conversation. If we are good at proclaiming our message via our blogs, it will get through, people’s minds will be changed, we will have an impact on the national conversation and our leaders and their policies will reflect that. But more importantly, we will be doing what we are called to do.

In the meantime, though, I wish Bill Donohue would shut the f*** up.

For the past couple weeks, Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris have been having an online debate on faith. They have already covered a lot of territory, and it’s still going on. I am finding this “blogalogue” fascinating.

Although he’s a political conservative, Sullivan reflects a fairly moderate, and in some respects, a progressive Roman Catholicism. For example, although I heartily agree with his larger point regarding the ineffability of God, Sullivan is more pluralistic even than I’m willing to go:

Do I believe that other religious traditions, even those that posit doctrines logically contrary to the doctrines of Jesus, have no access to divine truth? I don’t. If God exists, then God will be larger and greater than our human categories or interpretations. I feel sure that all the great religions - and many minor ones - have been groping toward the same God.

But what of Sam Harris? As the author of two books that advocate atheism and condemn relgion, all religion, it would be easy to dismiss him as I’ve dismissed Richard Dawkins in the past. But I find Harris is rather different than Dawkins. Where Dawkins is so convinced of his correctness that he can’t be bothered to learn anything outside his own field of genetics, Harris seems to be really trying to understand this whole religion thing. His conclusion so far is that it doesn’t withstand rational scrutiny, but he seems open, as demonstrated by his willingness to engage with Sullivan, to changing his mind. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t bluntly and forcefully state his case!

You seem to have taken particular offense at my imputing self-deception and/or dishonesty to the faithful. I make no apologies for this. One of the greatest problems with religion is that it is built, to a remarkable degree, upon lies. Mommy claims to know that Granny went straight to heaven after she died. But Mommy doesn’t actually know this. The truth is that, while Mommy may be rigorously honest on any other subject, in this instance she doesn’t want to distinguish between what she really knows (i.e. what she has good reasons to believe) and 1) what she wants to be true, or 2) what will keep her children from grieving too much in Granny’s absence. She is lying–either to herself or to her children–but we’ve all agreed not to talk about it. Rather than teach our children to grieve, we teach them to lie to themselves.

I’ve met people that come across in person like Harris does in print. They are very smart, brilliant even, and with their formidable intellect have come to a particular conclusion on a topic. They don’t mean to be rude or arrogant, but can’t help stating the truth as they see it, and won’t change how they see the truth until and unless someone pokes a hole in their logical argument. They are unwilling to concede anything in the name of tolerance or manners, but only in the face of superior reasoning or new information. I find Harris to be an engaging writer and a worthy intellectual foil for us believers.

But he’s still wrong in several areas, sometimes spectacularly so. In particular, his depiction of religious moderates as less faithful than conservatives:

How does one “integrate doubt” into one’s faith? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing it if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights—scientific (“You mean the world isn’t 6000 years old? Yikes…”), mathematical (“pi doesn’t actually equal 3? All right, so what?”), and moral (“You mean, I shouldn’t beat my slaves? I can’t even keep slaves? Hmm…”). Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously. So why not take these books less seriously still? Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves? They were not, as your friend the pope would have it, “written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost.”

[...]

Religious moderates—by refusing to question the legitimacy of raising children to believe that they are Christians, Muslims, and Jews—tacitly support the religious divisions in our world. They also perpetuate the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence in order to have an ethical and spiritual life. While religious moderates don’t fly planes into buildings, or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they refuse to deeply question the preposterous ideas of those who do. Moderates neither submit to the real demands of scripture nor draw fully honest inferences from the growing testimony of science. In attempting to find a middle ground between religious dogmatism and intellectual honesty, it seems to me that religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

Harris has several fundamental misunderstandings here. First, moderate and progressive Christians don’t believe the Bible was dictated by the Holy Spirit. For us, saying the Bible is “inspired” by God reflects the fact that God acted in human history, and humans were inspired by God’s actions to first, talk about their understanding of these events, and later, to write about them. Sure, the Holy Spirit acted to help them understand, talk about and write about what had happened to them, but in no way did the Holy Spirit “dictate” the Bible, the Pope’s comments notwithstanding.

This doesn’t mean we don’t take scripture seriously. In some ways, we take it more seriously than conservatives, as we try to get to successively deeper layers of truth in the Bible. And this is really where the Holy Spirit acts — to help us to understand God’s will through the words in the Bible. This is also where the body of Christ, the Christian church, acts. Through worship, fellowship, study and sacraments, we are brought into a clearer understanding of God’s plan for us and the world.

Harris is also wrong when he says that moderates refuse to question the preposterous ideas of religious conservatives, as this blog demonstrates. Pastors and priests have spoken out against the rapture (”the rapture is a racket“) and against violence of every kind. For Harris to say otherwise shows he hasn’t listened to many sermons in mainline protestant churches.

And lastly, Harris is wrong when he says moderate Christians don’t submit to the demands of science. We don’t reject religion because it can’t be proven scientifically, but we accept evolution because is has been. As Sullivan rightly points out, science is true, but not all truth is scientific truth. Moderates and progressives understand this, and embrace truth wherever we find it.

This is no betrayal of faith, it is a deepening and enriching of faith. Religious moderates certainly haven’t betrayed reason either, as the writings of theologians from Augustine to C.S. Lewis can attest. We have integrated faith and reason by way of the Holy Spirit, and elevated both.

The Sullivan/Harris blogalogue continues, and I’ll be following it closely. Sullivan is holding up the Christian side well, but Harris is certainly no slouch, and it will be interesting to see where this leads.

Update: Andrew Sullivan’s latest is here, and is his most impassioned defense of the faith yet — a must read.

The panel has delivered its decision on the disciplinary hearing for Rev. Bradley Schmeling, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta (details on the hearing here; more details on the hearing and the decision here). The hearing was conducted to decide whether Pastor Schmeling, who is in a committed same-sex relationship, should be removed from the roster of ELCA clergy. Schmeling’s church was unanimously supportive of him, and made it clear that, if forced to choose between their pastor and the ELCA, they would stick with their pastor.

I find the committee’s decision simply brilliant, although it wouldn’t seem so at first blush. They have ruled that Pastor Schmeling will be removed from the clergy roster on August 15, 2007. Why August 15th you ask? Well, the next ELCA Churchwide Assembly will end on August 11th. A majority of the committee, although a very close majority, feels they do not have the power to change the ELCA Bylaws, so they are queueing this up for the CWA to correct before their ruling takes effect.

They go further, however. To quote directly from their decision:

In the event that the Committee on Appeals determines that paragraph b.4) of Definitions and Guidelines is unconstitutional[...], then this committee would find, with near unanimity, that there is nothing about Pastor Schmeling’s acknowledged and stipulated homosexual relationship that would impede the proclamation of the gospel or the right administration of the sacraments. If relieved of the specific requirements of Definitions and Guidelines and permitted to decide this case under the standards of constitution chapters seven and twenty, this committee would find almost unanimously that Pastor Schmeling is not engaged in conduct that is incompatible with the ministerial office, and would find with near unanimity that no discipline of any sort should be imposed against him.

Translating: Pastor Schmeling is morally fit to be a pastor, it’s just the current rules that get in the way. Whether the rules are set aside on appeal or not, they recommend that the Churchwide Assembly change the Definitions and Guidelines and Visions and Expections, the two documents governing behavior of ELCA clergy, to remove the prohibition against committed same-sex relationships. This is so cool!

I think there are a couple different things going on here. It is easy to argue against gay rights or for a scriptural basis for condemning gays when it is in the abstract, but when someone that you know and love comes out as gay, it’s not so easy. Given a choice between adherence to a legalistic doctrine on the one hand and love for a gay son or daughter, most Christians embrace the latter, and rightfully so — just look at our Vice President. Similarly, it’s easy for a church body to intellectually argue about Biblical and church law, but when faced with a decision to kick an entire congregation out of the church, it’s not so easy. Especially so when the pastor in question is clearly called by God and by his congregation to his ministry! Choosing between church legal documents and the love of God so evident in Pastor Schmeling’s ministry, it’s not hard to choose.

So why not just dismiss the case without any discipline? By way of analogy, many have criticized Roe v. Wade not for its legalization of abortion, but because it was decided by the judiciary and not by the legislature. The conservative attacks on activist judges started with Roe v. Wade. Think how different the debate would be if it had been decided by Congress! Advocates for abortion would have to try to change the hearts and minds of the electorate instead of just attacking activist judges.

I have to wonder whether the same dynamic is at play here. If the panel had tried to “legislate from the bench”, they and their decision would become the focus of attacks by Word Alone and the IRD. But if the CWA changes the bylaws, the conservatives will have to try to change the hearts and minds of ELCA Lutherans, a much harder task.

Pastor Schmeling and his backers can appeal the decision between now and August, but I suspect it will come down to a vote at the Churchwide Assembly in August. The vote may require a 60% super-majority, but I think it will pass. Like the hearing committee, the CWA won’t be debating this in the abstract, but will be hearing directly from fellow Lutherans whom this decision will directly affect. Even if they are opposed to gay clergy, they would have to vote against congregational autonomy and self-governance. They would have to decide to evict a church because of their choice of pastor. I may be naive, but I just can’t see that happening.

First, a couple notes on this series of posts on liturgy. I make no attempt here to provide any of the theological or historical background for the liturgy — I’m not really qualified to do that. Instead, these are my personal reflections on the Lutheran liturgy, good and bad, and nothing more.

Second, I should note that so far I’ve been dealing with the traditional setting. My church alternates between the traditional setting and a contemporary setting and variations thereof. All follow the same liturgical structure dating back thousands of years, but the contemporary service has updated music with guitars and piano instead of the organ. Maybe I’ll get around to commenting on the contemporary service, but for no particular reason I’ve started with the traditional one.

Lastly, the ELCA is currently rolling out a new hymnal that is getting some press in Lutheran circles. I haven’t seen it, but my understanding is that it doesn’t change any of the current “settings”, or services, but consolidates some of the contemporary settings that have been in use, along with the traditional settings, into one book. Hence, it doesn’t really change my comments here, I don’t think.

So on to the liturgy. I think the structure of the liturgy is inspired, divinely so — its flow is just so…perfect. Last time I wrote about the Confession and Forgiveness of Sins. So now we’ve all admitted we’re sinners and heard that we are all forgiven, so what’s next? God’s kingdom is what’s next. There is only one possible response to God’s forgiveness — singing our praises to God. This is the Hymn of Praise:

This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia.
Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God.
Power and riches and wisdom and strength, and honor and blessing and glory are his.
This is the feast of victory for our God. Alleluia.
Sing with all the people of God and join in the hymn of all creation:
Blessing and honor and glory and might be to God and the Lamb forever Amen.
This is the feast of victory for our God, for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign.
Alleluia. Alleluia.

I like this particular form because it borrows so heavily from Revelation. It feels like practice for the heavenly kingdom, and every Sunday is supposed to be just that — a foretaste of the feast to come. I also like the phrase “feast of victory”, which of course is referring to communion, but it’s very evocative of my favorite image of the Kingdom: a party. We so often think Revelation is eschatological, foretelling the rapture, the final battle, and Christ’s return. Of course, I believe the rapture is a racket, but worse, it distracts from the incredible portrait of God’s kingdom found in Revelation — a feast, a celebration, a party! The Hymn of Praise is meant to be this kind of joyful praise as practice for an eternity with God.

But then there’s the reality. It’s Sunday morning, and I’ve already argued at least once with every member of my family. I’m sleep deprived, because I’m always sleep deprived, and I’ve just missed my one opportunity of the week to sleep in. Problems at work and home are bouncing around in the back of my mind. So there I am — grouchy, tired and distracted, singing the Hymn of Praise. The difference between living in eternal bliss in heaven and living out our mortal and temporal lives couldn’t be more apparent. Which is why we need to practice the Kingdom in church every Sunday.

So at best, the Hymn of Praise for me is a time for centering my mind on church as a foretaste of the feast to come, as an opportunity to practice an eternity of heavenly praise of God. At worst, it’s a reminder of how much I let all the crap in my life get in the way of my relationship with God, a reminder to let it all go and return to what really matters by turning it all over to God. Only then am I prepared to listen to the Word of God, which I’ll talk about next.

An interesting issue has come up at church. This is a happy problem, not one of those controversies that can rip a church apart, and no one’s threatening to leave the church over it. A cellular telecommunications company has offered us a tidy sum in return for installing cellular transmitters on our bell-tower, something like $20,000 a year.

When this came up at our annual congregational meeting a couple weeks ago, several people expressed concerns over potential health and safety issues. The choir loft is underneath the bell-tower, and some were worried whether it would be safe for those sitting there. We’re in earthquake country, so there were questions about what would happen to the transmitters in an earthquake. Lest anyone think these concerns are just due to an ignorant technophobia, one of those voicing these concerns is a rocket scientist. No, really, he’s a real rocket scientist, with a PhD in Physics from, I think, MIT. So these concerns are well-founded, valid, and not to be dismissed out of hand.

I spoke up during the meeting, though, with another view. After the meeting, I got an email from my rocket scientist friend asking for more input, and herewith my reply to him:

Thanks for asking for my input. Let me try to explain where I was coming from.

In the meeting, it seemed that everyone was pointing out the potential problems, the downside, as if they were looking for a reason to reject the proposal. I understand there are potential problems, and I’m not minimizing those, but I believe we should also look at the upside, which is the money, and money = ministry. For this reason, we should be working to find a way to make it work instead of finding reasons to turn it down.

I don’t have a preconceived idea of what the money should be used for [...] But let me just give some examples to make my point. During Christmas we had that program where you could buy an animal for someone in the third world for Christmas. Think of how many goats $20,000 would buy! Or how many students [at our local community college where we help needy students with meals] we could help with $20,000! Or how many scholarships to [our church's K-8 school] we could give! We need to remember that we are to be about ministry, and that takes our time and effort, but also money, and here is an opportunity to get some funding for ministry.

I’m sure if you and [another member with concerns] worked through the issues with the telecom company we could reach a deal that would work for them and for us, and would give us some money for ministry. That’s what I’m hoping for.

Thanks for asking.

Grace and Peace,

-Bob

Christians have always had a conflicted relationship with money. On the one extreme, there is the prosperity gospel of Joel Osteen and his ilk, or John Tetzel’s selling of indulgences in the Catholic church 500 years ago. For them, money is a way to buy favor from God. At the other extreme is the monastic vow of poverty or the Puritan condemnation of money as the root of all evil. Meanwhile, most churches struggle to balance their budget year after year, while a handful of megachurches are able to raise money for extravagant building programs. Christianity seems to have a love-hate relationship with money.

But we need to remember that it takes money to do ministry, and the more money we raise, the more ministry we can do. Not that we should ever put the health and safety of our congregations at risk, but neither should we be so risk averse that we don’t seize opportunities to expand our ministry. I trust that those in my church investigating this cellular deal will make the right decision. I just want them to remember that sometimes God and Mammon are on the same side.

Over the years I’ve tried to occasionally tackle some of the theology classics, such as Mere Christianity and Miracles by C.S. Lewis, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich’s The Courage To Be. (Yes, I am a total nerd — reading theology for fun.) So now I’m reading Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr (the younger brother of Reinhold Niebuhr, another author on my list). Having blogged for several years about the current conflicts between religion (both left and right) and culture (left and right) in the U.S., I always felt we have been experiencing a unique dynamic in a unique cultural context. Then I read the opening words of Chapter 1 in Niebuhr’s book, written 56 years ago:

A many-sided debate about the relations of Christianity and civilization is being carried on in our time. Historians and theologians, statesmen and churchmen, Catholics and Protestants, Christians and anti-Christians participate in it. It is carried on publicly by opposing parties and privately in the conflicts of conscience. Sometimes it is concentrated on special issues, such as those of the place of Christain faith in general education or of Christian ethics in economic life. Sometimes it deals with broad questions of the church’s responsibility for social order or of the need for a new separation of Christ’s followers from the world.

The debate is as confused as it is many-sided. When it seems that the issue has been clearly defined as lying between the exponents of a Christian civilization and the non-Christian defenders of a wholly secularized society, new perplexitiies arise as devoted believers seem to make common cause with secularists, calling, for instance, for the elimination of religions from public education, or for the Christian support of apparently anti-Christian political movements. So many voices are heard, so many confident but diverse assertions about the Christian answer to the social problem are being made, so many issues are raised, that bewilderment and uncertainty beset many Christians.

In this situation it is helpful to remember that the question of Christianity and civilization is by no means a new one; that Christian perplexity in this area has been perennial, and that the problem has been an enduring one through all the Christian centuries.

He goes on to describe just how the conflict between Christianity and the civilization in which it finds itself has reappeared repeatedly throughout history, beginning even during the life of Jesus. And it continues today.

This reminds me of why we read the classics: so that we don’t reinvent the wheel out of our narcissistic belief that our experiences are unique.

Alexandra Pelosi (whose mother was sitting behind our President last night) has made a documentary on evangelicals. Her tour guide throughout was Ted Haggard, former pastor of the New Life (mega)Church and former President of the NAE. She completed the documentary a week before the revelations of Haggard’s drug-enhanced sexual liaisons with a male prostitute. This interview in Newsweek focuses mostly on her reactions to Haggard’s fall and its impact on her documentary, but there is also this:

Early on in the film, Haggard tells you, “Surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group.” He then asks a pair of married, young male parishioners standing nearby how often they have sex with their wives. One of them responds, “Every day. Twice a day.” Then Haggard asks the man how frequently she climaxes. “Every time,” the man says. Leaving all the subtext aside for a moment, I’m wondering if this exchange was in the very first cut of the film, even before the revelations about Haggard came to light?
Yes, it was just a pure, weird coincidence.

What did you think of that conversation when you first witnessed it? And what do you think watching it now?
Well, look, evangelicals have issues with sex. The two biggest issues for them are gay marriage and abortion, both of which are about sex on some level. And he’s standing in the parking lot of a church talking all about sex.

But when I saw that exchange, I wasn’t thinking about either issue. I was thinking about Ted Haggard’s dishonesty. And it also made me wonder about how truthful the other two men were being.
I just think that they’re the only three men in America who have sex with their wives every single day. And hey, good for them.

So sure, the subsequent revelations about Haggard cast all of this in a different light, but let’s just ignore Haggard’s repressed sexual orientation for now. This whole conversation, apparently initiated by Haggard, is totally bizarre!

Let’s start with the claim itself, that evangelicals have better sex lives. What is this supposed to mean? That people with good sex lives are more apt to be evangelical? It’s more likely he meant that being an evangelical Christian improves one’s sex life. When Jesus says we shall have life and have it more abundantly, was he talking about sex every day, twice a day? I’m kinda thinking that wasn’t what Jesus meant. So what is Haggard getting at?

Maybe he’s thinking it’s good evangelism: “if you aren’t satisfied with your sex life, come to church!” After all, sex is used to sell everything else, maybe he figured he could use it to sell Jesus. Now that would be an interesting way to reach the unchurched.

Here’s another thing I can’t help but wonder about — the reaction of the two men of whom Haggard asked a rather personal question. What would you do if your pastor asked you how often you have sex, and how often your wife had an orgasm? I’d be convinced I had stepped into an alternate universe. Now I’m certainly not hung up about sex, and if he asked me these questions in a private conversation because they related to, say, a personal or spiritual crisis I was having, then sure, I’d be happy to talk about it. But in a parking lot? With cameras rolling?

So I suppose the two men clued in to the fact that this was evangelism going on here. But what’s the right answer? “We only have sex for the purposes of procreation, and we are careful not to enjoy it!”? Clearly not — the correct answer is “every day, twice a day” and she climaxes “every time”. That, of course, is nothing but juvenile swagger of the sort most of us grew out of when we started shaving. As far as I’m concerned, anyone that talks about how much sex they’re getting has gotta be a virgin.

Which perhaps is the truth underlying this whole exchange. I’m just speculating, but perhaps this conversation was an attempt by some men with some issues about sex to prove to the outside world that they are just as much “swingers” as all those people having all that sex out there in the secular world, except that their sex is within the bounds of Christian marriage (whoops). Perhaps they imagine that the non-churched are having all this sex, so they have to demonstrate that they are too, and in fact having even more than the non-churched. “Hey, we’re Christians, but that doesn’t mean we’re not ‘wild and craaaaazy guys!’”

I don’t know, I guess that’s being pretty uncharitable, and I don’t mean to be. It’s just this little anecdote prompts so much head-scratching that I can’t help but wonder at the inner life it reveals about the participants. And all this without even considering Haggard’s closeted homosexuality! It boggles the mind.

Update: It looks like Pelosi’s documentary is on HBO tonight, Thursday Jan. 25th, at 9 PM.

Elmo at p.o.s. 51 has a post on a hot-button issue for conservative Christians — whether only Christians get to go to heaven. Elmo’s interest in this theological topic stems from some of the ECUSA’s Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s comments in the press. From a Time Magazine interview from last July:

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?

We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.

An article of faith for conservative Christians is that God’s grace is unavailable to non-Christians. And yet, I agree with Bishop Jefferts Schori. While I have maintained on this blog that I am theologically orthodox, have I finally revealed my true spots as a theological liberal? Hardly.

William Placher stakes out the various positions on this theological conundrum thusly (my paraphrase):

• Exclusivists believe that all non-Christians will go to hell
• Inclusivists believe that there are “anonymous Christians”, saved by Christ without necessarily understanding it is Christ that is saving them
• Pluralists believe that good Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims can go to heaven

While the pluralist position may be more recent, and hence “liberal”, theologians have been debating exclusivism vs. inclusivism for centuries. Dante, author of The Divine Comedy in the 14th century, was an inclusivist, as is Roman Catholic teaching today. C.S. Lewis, certainly no theological liberal, was an inclusivist, as anyone who’s read The Last Battle, the last book in the Narnia series, can attest. So the inclusivist position has a rather orthodox pedigree. It’s just not true that only exclusivists are Real Christians^TM.

But let’s go to the heart of the matter — John 14:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Conservative Christians automatically see this as a statement about how to get to heaven — make a decision for Christ, say the sinner’s prayer, be born again, and join the local megachurch. But there’s another way to read this verse — as a trinitarian statement about who Jesus is in relationship to God the Father. Jesus seems to be explaining that, as one of the three persons of the trinitarian Godhead, it is Jesus who bridges the great divide between the Father and a fallen humanity. He isn’t saying anything about what we have to do to get into heaven, but is telling the apostles who he is.

So is this interpretation correct? As always, context is important. Before Jesus’ statement about the way, the truth and the life, he talks about heaven:

Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

So it’s easy to think that this is all about how to get a dwelling place in heaven reserved in your name. But a few verses later John says:

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

[...]

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

This is a description of Jesus as a part of the Trinity. Jesus is explaining who he is and how he relates to God the Father and God the Spirit. To turn this into instructions on how to get to heaven is missing the whole point. Jesus is God, but plays a unique role within the Trinity — he makes God visible to us, and he sends us the Holy Spirit.

As Jefferts Schori says, we are putting God in an awfully small box if we turn Jesus’ words about who he is, and who the trinitarian God is, into instructions for getting into heaven (and keeping everyone else out).

But back to Elmo’s post. He received an email from Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson of the ELCA on this topic. Bishop Hanson says, in part:

Bishop Schori’s remarks about those who are saved represent a specific theological school of thought that became increasingly popular at the Second Vatican Council and beyond. While it does not deny that Christ is God’s revealed means of salvation, it opens the door for the possibility that God has the capability of saving fallen humanity through a variety of means. Such a position would be in accordance with the biblical principle that God desires the salvation of every human being. We are certain that God accomplishes such salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We are not certain that God also will act in other ways to proffer salvation. Only God knows how God will act to redeem the world.

I agree. (Good thing too, since Bp. Hanson is the head of my denomination.) Bishop Hanson is speaking inclusivistically here, not exclusivistically.

There is much more to say here (Jefferts Schori expanded on her statement in an NPR interview last November; Bishop Hanson tactfully criticizes Jeffert Schori’s choice of words in that interview; Father Jake had some interesting thoughts; etc.), but I’m going to leave it there for now, save one closing thought.

Where we stand on this issue of whether non-Christians can be saved gives a clear picture of what kind of a God we believe in. Does God set up a rigid credal test for who’s in and who’s out? Will the victim of a priest’s sexual abuse who subsequently rejects Christianity spend an eternity burning in hell while the priest who abused him is forgiven? Is the Kingdom of God a private club, for members only?

Or is God’s grace limitless? Does God make the effort to reveal Godself to those unable to receive God through the Christian church, for whatever reason? Does everyone, no matter where or into what circumstances they are born, have an equal chance at salvation? Is God just? Is God love?

I know which God I believe in.

Update: Day-by-day updates are available here, although since it’s a closed hearing, there’s not much hard news — still, it’s uplifting to hear of the events from the point of view of the defense team.

Update II: The hearing ended on Tuesday Jan. 23rd, and a decision must be issued before Feb. 7th. Details here.

I’m afraid the ELCA, which, as is typical for us Lutherans, has tried to keep everyone happy with the whole gay clergy issue, has stepped right into the middle of it. The Bishop of the ELCA’s Southeastern Synod, Bishop Warren, has elected to conduct a disciplinary hearing to remove Pastor Bradley Schmeling of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta. In spite of the current ELCA rules requiring celibacy for gay pastors (which the last Churchwide Assembly regrettably voted to keep in place), the Bishop has a great deal of latitude in how to deal with partnered gay clergy. Unfortunately, he has decided on a disciplinary hearing.

From the Washington Post, we hear how the St. John’s congregation prepared for this hearing by performing an act of sublime servanthood and humility first modeled by our Lord:

Members of the oldest Lutheran congregation in Atlanta washed their pastor’s feet — and he washed theirs — in a gesture of mutual support as he prepared to go before a tribunal that may defrock him for living with another man.

The Atlanta Constitution has a moving story about a life-long Lutheran who went from staunchly opposing Pastor Schmeling when he was first called, to donating money for his defense in his hearing:

James Mayer is a 70-year-old truck driver from South Carolina who calls himself a “tough Lutheran.”

But when he talks about what’s happened to him during the past six years, his eyes well up. He swallows hard and sighs. Then the tears come.

[...]

“My mother preached the Bible; Daddy lived the Bible,” he says. “If I said I needed help, he was there. The words ‘I love you” weren’t part of his vocabulary. It was just something I knew.”

Mayer says he saw the same quality in Schmeling. He somehow made people know that he cared for them. He made time to help. Made time to meet complete strangers. Made time to make everyone welcome.

By the time Mayer learned that Schmeling had a partner, he says it was “irrelevant” to him.

“I wasn’t surprised,” he says. “If you find someone like Pastor Brad that everyone likes, you know that he was going to run into someone who was gay and who felt the same way the rest of us do.”

St. John’s is conducting services and prayers around the clock during the trial. Meanwhile, Bishop Warren has tried to keep the whole hearing completely under wraps. According to one of Pastor Schmeling’s advisors, the Bishop has closed the hearing and tried to get Schmeling to agree to media silence. Schmeling has refused.

This is not a situation forced on Bishop Warren by church rules, or by anyone outside his Synod. Now perhaps Bishop Warren felt he had to pursue this course of action to keep the other ELCA churches in his synod happy — after all, this is the deep south we’re talking about. But regardless, he is at risk of losing one of the few growing congregations in the ELCA, since St. John’s has said they’d rather leave the ELCA than lose their pastor. How many churches would say the same thing about their pastors, gay or straight? Again, from the Washington Post:

“Everybody in the congregation feels Bradley was really called to us, and nothing has changed about that. Regardless of what happens, I don’t see our position that he’s our pastor changing,” Ballew said.

Asked whether parishioners would rather keep Schmeling or remain in the ELCA, Ballew momentarily fell silent.

“We have long ties to the Lutheran Church; we would never leave voluntarily. I don’t see that changing either, not from our standpoint,” he said. “But I can’t really speculate on what the bishop would do.”

There’s something wrong when a denomination forces a thriving congregation to choose between their pastor, whom they believe has been called by God to serve them, or staying in the denomination.

Please pray for Pastor Schmeling and St. John’s. And for Biship Warren.

And then, without a word of explanation, he began blogging again…

Mark Tooley of the IRD, the arch-conservative organization working to create schism in mainline denominations, has another piece in the American Spectator, this time criticizing a statement by over a thousand clergy calling for an increase in the minimum wage. Tooley quickly goes to one of the stock criticisms of mainline protestantism:

But note the tone of utter moral certainty from the prelates. The various Episcopal and Lutheran bishops, presbyters, and Methodist functionaries who signed on, along with an ecumenical smattering of others, would never and probably could never proclaim with such certitude any traditional articles of their own faith such as the virgin birth or bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ [...]

It’s funny how often I’ve seen this meme get thrown around, that mainline protestant denominations have somehow abandoned orthodox belief. Via Father Jake, here is another very recent example from two conservative ex-Episcopalians, now-Nigerian Anglicans, causing schism in Virginia:

The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith — saying that traditional theism is “dead,” the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is “a barbarous idea,” the Bible is “pure propaganda” and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.

To which the Rev. Penelope Duckworth replies:

However, in more than 20 years of ministry, I know of no Episcopalians who would say the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection “a fiction,” or the Bible “pure propaganda.”

Similarly, having sat in Lutheran pews my whole life, I don’t know any Lutheran that would say such things. There may actually be some, but if I’ve met them they haven’t confessed such beliefs to me. I certainly have never heard a Lutheran pastor, nor clergy from other mainline churches I’ve visited, say anything along these lines from the pulpit, or even in private. In the ELCA we recite the Apostles or Nicene Creed every Sunday, and none of us cross our fingers.

So where does this come from? Well, there is retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, who pretty much rejects orthodox Christian theology. (Of course, Rev. Duckworth is still correct, since not even Bp. Spong would say the Bible is “pure propaganda”.) What’s interesting is that some of the wording used by the Virginia Episcopalians echoes some of the wording of Spong’s 12 “theses“: “theism is dead”, salvation through the cross “a barbarian idea”, etc.

So that’s it. The Nigerian Anglican Church in America, or whatever they call themselves, is a response to a single retired Episcopalian Bishop. Never mind that Spong does not represent anyone but himself, and that the ECUSA sticks with a traditional Christian orthodoxy, much less the rest of the mainline. Apparently we are all Spongians now.

Small wonder that IRD and the ex-Episcopalians trot out the same line. It turns out there are some close ties between the Virginia churches, the IRD, and of course, Fox News.

But the real story here, despite the conservatives’ protestations to the contrary, are political and social, not theological. I didn’t quote Mark Tooley in full above. He goes on to say:

…would never and probably could never proclaim with such certitude any traditional articles of their own faith such as the virgin birth or bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, not to mention moral teachings about homosexuality or abortion. On these issues, they would likely boast of their “diversity” of opinion.

There it is — abortion and gay rights, along with increasing the minimum wage. The idea that one could be both theologically orthodox and socially and politically liberal is anathema to the conservatives. It is a very dangerous idea, since it opens the way for a faithful understanding of Christianity to not only allow, but demand, social justice and a compassionate society. And the conservatives certainly can’t allow that to happen.

Just for fun I thought I’d start a series on the Lutheran liturgy, specifically that contained in the Lutheran Book of Worship used by the ELCA and ELCIC. In this first post, I’ll start at the beginning of the liturgy with the Confession and Forgiveness of Sins.

My apologies up front, because I’m doing this from memory (I don’t have a copy of the LBW here at home, and it’s not available on-line). After a few preliminaries, the heart of the confession is the following:

We confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your son, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen.

This is spoken by the entire congregation, including the Pastor. In fact, the Pastor is not standing up front facing the congregation, but is turned around facing the cross along with the rest of us. We are not confessing our sins to the Pastor, but the Pastor is confessing his/her sins along with everyone else to God. As we say it to the cross, we are acknowledging that it is by way of the cross that we even dare to ask for forgiveness. And it is through Christ’s death on the cross that we receive it.

I love this. Sure, it may not be seeker-friendly to those that don’t like to think about their own sinfulness, but this confession is so levelling. By this I mean that everyone of us admits, right up front, that we are sinners and in need of forgiveness. It reminds me of the practice in 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous - when someone speaks, the first thing they say is something like “hi, I’m _____, and I’m an alcoholic”. This strips away any facade the speaker might have that they are any different, any better, than anyone else in the room. Anything they say following this statement is said in the context of the fact of their alchoholism. They can’t preach down, put on airs, or pretend that they’ve licked their addiction to alcohol. No matter who they are, they are still powerless over their addiction.

The confession in the Lutheran liturgy serves the same purpose. Everything that follows during the service is said and done in the context of this confession. We are all sinners (even those officiating at the service), we are all powerless over our sinful condition, and none of us can pretend otherwise. We all need grace.

I often wonder why we say this in the first person plural instead of the first person singular. By saying “we”, it allows a pretense that I’m participating in this confession on the part of those other poor sinners in the congregation even though I personally led a sinless life this week. Instead, notice how more powerful and personal this is:

I confess that I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself. I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what I have done and by what I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart, I have not love my neighbor as myself. For the sake of your son, have mercy on me. Forgive me, renew me and lead me, so that I may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name.

On the other hand, it loses the communal feeling of the original, and after all, we are confessing our sins not just alone but also in community, so the first person plural is appropriate. But I try to keep in mind both the I-ness and the we-ness of the confession as I say it.

This is followed by a declaration from the Pastor (now facing us) to the congregation:

God, who is faithful and just, forgives us all our sins. As a called and ordained minister in the church of Christ, I declare to you the forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Pastor doesn’t forgive our sins, she/he declares to us the forgiveness of our sins by God. I have often wondered why this declaration is preceded by the Pastor’s credentials: “as a called and ordained minister in the church of Christ”. If the officiant is not called and ordained, would I be any less forgiven? Does it take an ordained Pastor to tell me, to remind me really, that Christ’s death and resurrection have given me the means of grace? I understand that Pastors are called by God, and that they have gone through a long process of education, discernment and ordination, and for that I’m grateful. But I’ve never been clear on why that needs to be stated at this particular time. Perhaps it’s meant as a further assurance that the promise of forgiveness is true, but I’m forgiven regardless.

And ultimately it’s this forgiveness that allows the liturgy to continue. Having communally and individually admitted that we’re all sinners, and having heard the assurance that we are forgiven, we can then get down to business: praise and thanksgiving.

Update: It turns out the claims made by PEER are entirely bogus. For a complete debunking, see the Skeptics Magazine here. I apologize for getting duped.

Sure, some things have changed since the mid-term elections, but some things stay the same:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

Compared to federal funding for abstinence-only programs to combat AIDS in Africa, this is small beans. But it’s so symbolic of the Administration’s pandering to a small special interest group. Young-earth Christians are a minority of a minority - these fundamentalists reject even intelligent design, because it acknowledges the earth is more than 6,000 years old.

There are plenty of conservative Christian views worthy of theological refutation, but this isn’t one of them. As Pope John Paul wrote, “truth can not contradict truth”. Young earth creationism isn’t theology, it’s heresy, a doctrine that separates us from God. This doctrine forces a false choice: acceptance of a demonstrably erroneous proposition, or unbelief in God. If these were the only two choices, I’d have to go with unbelief in God. Young earth creationism denies the glory of God’s creation, of God’s divine work. It does this by promoting a literal reading of the Bible where none is necessary, negating a deeper appreciation of God’s creative act.

I guarantee you that Bush is not a young-earth creationist. But this is a political pay-off to a powerful special interest group that propagates this particular heresy. 2009 can’t come soon enough.

(Via Political Animal.)