July 4 around the CCblogs network

by Steve Thorngate

CCbloggers have had a wide variety of things to say about the July 4 holiday.

James Lumsden gives thanks "for the blessings and challenges of this era." Andrew Thompson celebrates freedom for good things, rather than from bad things. Chris Brundage highlights the wisdom of Ben Franklin, while Bruce Prescott recites James Madison's definitive document on church and state. Keith Herron points to King David and the "messy work" of building and sustaining a nation, and Ellen Haroutunian observes that "America isn't easy."

Michael Ruffin picks apart the America-as-Christian-nation myth, and Peter J. Walker confesses that he isn't exactly proud to be an American. Julie Clawson highlights freedom-fighting heroes of the non-white-male variety; Matt Shafer commemorates revolutions that, unlike our own, were nonviolent. Milton Brasher-Cunningham reminds us that Woody Guthrie's patriotic song was written in response to Irving Berlin's, while Chad Holtz celebrates Interdependence Day. My fiancee and I reluctantly agree to exchange vows in a flag-adorned chancel.

"God help me," says Wayne Stacy. "I love the Fourth of July!"

On the shelf: A Recipe for Hope: Stories of Transformation by People Struggling with Homelessness by Karen M. Skalitzky

by Meg E. Cox

A woman who lives on my block walks all day long. On the coldest days of winter she's bundled up warm. In the spring if there's rain in the forecast, she walks clutching an umbrella under a clear blue sky. In the hot weather she wears a thin, sleeveless top. But always she walks, around and around and around.

Last year she walked with a neck brace on.

I don't know her story. I do know she has a home. I suspect that she feels safest when she's outside.

For months I've been smiling and greeting her whenever we pass on the sidewalk. I tried a few times to strike up a conversation, but she responded only with an apologetic, "I don't speak English."

But a couple weeks ago, she started a conversation with me. I learned that she enjoys the hot weather because it's like home, in Kazakhstan. I said that maybe someday we could enjoy a cold drink together. I don't know if she understood, but if I come out to my front porch with two glasses and a pitcher, my meaning will be clear. And then maybe I will learn her story, and maybe she will gain a friend who can be of help sometime.

Some 20 years ago Lisa Nigro of Chicago quit the police force because she kept playing social worker to the people who called for help. She'd heard of a cafe in Atlanta that served homeless people, making a point of treating them with dignity and respect. So she and some friends borrowed a Radio Flyer wagon and filled it with bagels, cream cheese and coffee. "Good coffee," she said. "Not shelter coffee, which tends to be watered-down." They pulled the wagon around Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, served coffee and bagels and talked to people.

Soon Nigro and her friends were serving eggs Benedict and quiche Lorraine from the back of her car, and next they converted a donated bus into a free restaurant. Their work attracted publicity, and the publicity attracted resources. Soon Inspiration Cafe was born, where guests can order food made to order and can access case management, housing assistance and other services—such as culinary training at Cafe Too, a full-service restaurant (at which I recently enjoyed a delicious roasted-eggplant melt).

The contributors to A Recipe for Hope are people who serve and are served by the cafe and its parent organization, Inspiration Corporation. Author and cafe volunteer Karen Skalitzky gathered their stories with a tape recorder and organized them into categories—fortitude, generosity, trust and so on—and supplemented the narratives with recipes by eight Chicago chefs who volunteer at the cafe.

Skalitzky asked each contributor, "What does it mean to tell your story?" One responded indirectly when Skalitzky brought her the manuscript of her spoken words: "We sit side by side in the same tiny office cubicle and the woman reads it to herself. By the last page, she is rubbing my back. 'You understand,' she whispers. 'You understand.'"

What the contributors ask of us, Skalitzky writes, is simply "a willingness to engage, to see, to listen, to be changed."

Next time I see my neighbor walking, I will ask her name. If she welcomes me in conversation, I wonder how I will be changed.

Imagine this

by Richard A. Kauffman

Ecumenical News International reports that Richard Dawkins, the academic who is militantly atheistic, is backing Britain’s first atheist camp for children (article summary only). For children ages seven to 17, the camp will include lessons on rational skepticism and moral philosophy, as well as traditional outdoor and musical community activities. The sing-along will reportedly include John Lennon's “Imagine,” which contains the lyrics: “Imagine there’s no heaven—it’s easy if you try.”

A spokesperson for the camp says there will be very little in the camp program that attacks religion.

Blogging toward Sunday: Good, unpopular news

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10)
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Mark 6:14-29; Ephesians 1:3-14

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

I serve a funky little Lutheran congregation, a liturgical and sacramental emerging church. Someone recently asked, "Do you think the church you planted will, you know, get really big?"

I smiled broadly, looking up at the sky and then back at my friend. "Um," I said, "well...no." She looked at me, shocked at my seemingly low self-esteem. "There's just not a huge market for the message 'Jesus bids you come and die'," I explained. "People don't exactly line up around the block for that. But 'Jesus wants to make you rich!' seems to be doing really well right now."

It's easy enough to understand the attraction. On some level we all want to be victorious, successful and wealthy. So if someone is willing to tell me that Jesus happens to also want that for us, well, sign me up! That's good news.

Except that it isn't. It's not good news, just tempting news. Jesus knew that.

He knew how tempted people would be to hop on the Superman-miracle-worker-healer-rock-star bandwagon. This is why in Mark Jesus keeps instructing people not to not tell anyone about the healings and miracles—because there is no way to know what this God/man is about based only on miracles. We only see who he is when we look upon the cross. The problem is that we'll choose the miracles every time.

This is perhaps why the Gospel writer puts the John the Baptist story here, totally out of time and place. The disciples are riding high on the power of Jesus' healings, teachings and miracles, and it is in this state that Jesus sends them out. In last week's Gospel lesson, he tells them to do their work in poverty and to expect rejection. Just in case we don't get it yet—in case we think that this thing is about our own glorification—we are now told of John the Baptist. Lest we think that this whole following-Jesus thing is about glory and not the cross, we are faced this week with the stark contrast between Herod's glory, wealth and power and John's suffering, poverty and weakness.

It just isn't about cash and prizes. It's about a suffering God who offers us life and salvation, a God who bids us come and die. Is there a line around the block yet?

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor serving House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, and the author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury). She blogs at Sarcastic Lutheran and God's Politics.

The flag by the altar

by Steve Thorngate

I'm getting married in six months in my fiancee's hometown. We don't live there or belong to a local congregation, so we had to find a suitable church—a search based less on aesthetics or convenience than on how accommodating a place is to our plans for the ceremony. The pastor of the church we settled on is happy to turn virtually the entire service over to our clergy friends from other places and traditions. We're welcome to write our own liturgy, bring our own musicians and distribute the communion bread ourselves.

In fact, the only thing the pastor said "no" to was our request to move the American flag from its prominent place right next to the altar.

It didn't take long to decide not to push him on this point. We're sensitive to the fact that we will be guests in someone else's worship space, that the church and pastor are being graciously hospitable to us. It's also helpful to keep in mind that the church-and-state ship sailed back when we chose to get married in a church in the first place.

Still, the flag will be hard to ignore—because if it were our church, we'd be leading the charge to have it permanently removed. But it isn't our church, and it's appropriate for the place to represent its own community's values rather than those of the folks borrowing it for a day. I'm also aware that this is harder to let go of for the not-so-great reason that our guests might infer that we are in favor of the flag's presence—after all, it'd be easy enough for us to move it. (Not so with the Bible-verse wood carving over the altar, quoted from the gender-exclusive King James, which gave us barely a moment's pause.)

As for flags in churches more generally, CCblogger Chris Brundage is less bothered by the practice than I am—where I bristle at nationalistic symbols usurping the real object of our allegiance, he allows that "love of country is a part of love of neighbor." We both agree, however, with CCblogger Michael Ruffin's critique of the idea of the U.S. as a Christian nation. Barbara Brown Taylor's December 2001 piece for the Century is worth revisiting as well.

What do you think?

(See also this list of 40 ways to celebrate Interdependence Day, an alternative July 4 observance courtesy of the folks at the Englewood Review of Books.)

Save me from the wrath of God

by Tom Johnson

I often use the two-year daily lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer for my personal reading. A few weeks ago, I was disturbed to find that all of that day's readings had to do with the wrath of God. I hate this aspect of the Bible, and to have it highlighted in all four readings left me no out—no way to avoid the topic, no spiritually uplifting lesson to emphasize.

Instead of a comforting psalm, there was one by Ethan the Ezrahite that praises God for 18 verses, reminds God of God's own promises for 19 and then spends 14 more verses detailing how God's wrath has been unsheathed against God's people. It concludes, "Lord, where is your steadfast love...?"

Then there was the reading from my least favorite book of the Bible, Ezekiel. God tells the prophet to lie on his left side for 390 days, one for year of Israel's punishment, and then on his right side for 40 days, one for each year of Judah's punishment. The prophet does all this while trussed up in ropes so that he cannot move, eating and drinking once a day after baking his bread on burning human dung. When he protests, God relents—allowing him to bake his bread on cow flop instead, so as to avoid uncleanness. God will punish his people until "lacking bread and water, they will look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment."

Damn Old Testament—you are always doing this to me! Like Marcion the heretic, I hurried to the New Testament for relief from this angry, uncaring deity. But on this particular day, the epistle lesson informed me that people who have personally experienced God cannot be restored to fellowship with God if they fall away. They are like ground that produces thistles and thorns and deserves to be cursed and burned. The writer thinks this might not happen to his readers, since God is not so unjust as to overlook their good works and love. Two cheers for God.

Surely the gospel would rescue me before I went down to breakfast. Jesus does rebuke James and John for wanting to call down God's wrath on a Samaritan village. But he goes on to tell us that following him will leave us with no place to lay our heads, no need to bury our parents when they die and no time to say goodbye. If we look back, like Lot's wife, we are not fit to be disciples of the kingdom. Not quite what I was hoping for.

As I prayed the Lord's Prayer, the request "lead us not into temptation" suggested to me that God had done exactly the opposite that morning: God had tempted me by forcing me to meditate on God's wrath. Instead of being saved from the time of trial, I was given a trial from which I wanted to be saved.

If this keeps up, where will it lead? My faith is fragile enough! I already have God right where I want God—cornered and boxed in by God's own steadfast love and faithfulness. But then that's what Ethan the Ezrahite thought too. God jumped out of that box and refused to be trapped into being merely a comforting God of love.

God's wrath rubs my psyche raw; it leaves my spirit dry. The wrath of God is the stinking, shuffling elephant in the room of my peaceful, orderly theology. I may ignore it, but it's there—and I am tired of cleaning up its excrement.

I want to be saved from the wrath of God.

Tom Johnson is a retired professor of religious studies (George Fox University) and a former PCUSA pastor. He lives on Whidbey Island, Washington.

Nature vs. nurture

by Richard A. Kauffman

Evolutionary psychologists once claimed that men prefer women with Barbie-like figures. But, as Sharon Begley writes in Newsweek, a new consensus is emerging that suggests this preference arises only in cultures in which women are economically dependent.

In countries like Britain and Denmark, where women tend to be independent, and in non-Western cultures where women are responsible for food gathering, men don’t show a preference for women with an hour-glass figure. In countries where women are seen as adornment—Japan, Greece and Portugal—men do prefer an hour-glass figure. American men take a view that lies somewhere in the middle of those two poles.

Section 5 survives

by Meg E. Cox

In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declined last week to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, surprising voting rights activists, who feared that the Court would gut the historic law.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965—and Section 5 in particular—is credited with finally enfranchising African-Americans in the South, a full century after the end of slavery. After last week's Court decision, a caller to Talk of the Nation told of doing get-out-the-vote work and discovering that a high proportion of older black voters had registered for the first time in 1968, the year of the first presidential election following enactment of the legislation. Recognizing the VRA's importance made the civil rights movement more real to her.

For many school children in the U.S., the civil rights movement is encapsulated in annual celebrations of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and in compositions that begin, "I have a dream." Many of their elders don't know much more about the movement than they do. More surprisingly, even some civil-rights-era activists don't know much about the VRA and what it does and doesn't do, as I discovered several years ago.

Here are the basics on Section 5:

• It only covers jurisdictions that were found to have a particularly poor voting rights record when the VRA passed in 1965, most of which are in the South.
• Covered jurisdictions cannot make changes to their voting rules without the approval of the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges. Preclearance is important because it turns back discriminatory changes before they have a chance to influence the outcome of an election.
• Jurisdictions can bail out of the preclearance requirement if they can show that they no longer discriminate. Some have already done so, and the new Court decision makes this easier.
• Sections of the country not covered by Section 5 often see the enactment of potentially discriminatory voting rules—such as registration requirements that disproportionately affect people with lower income.
• Even where Section 5 is in effect, discriminatory changes can get through if officials in the Justice Department are ideologically predisposed to discount discriminatory potential. Efforts to pass overly strict identification requirements gathered steam nationwide after Justice let such a law stand in Georgia.

The Court's preservation of Section 5 was a welcome surprise, but it doesn't end the need for vigilance to protect the right to vote for all adult citizens. And, as Tom Goldstein writes, Section 5 itself isn't out of the woods yet.

Experiencing Evensong in the U.K.

by Amy Frykholm

With its cavernous Gothic churches and its declining membership, the Church of England might not be the place you would look for the next trend in worship. But if I could dictate the direction of worship in the United States, I would nominate Evensong for a revival. Every Sunday evening, in almost every Anglican church, people gather for a simple sung liturgy as an end to the Sabbath and an entrance into the new week. This liturgy is striking for its ancient beauty, depth and quiet.

The office of Evensong was established by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer in the mid-16th century. Cranmer was charged with reworking traditional liturgies for the newly formed Church of England. He took elements from the monastic services of both Vespers and Compline, simplified and shortened them and rendered everything into the English language. Cranmer was later burned by Queen Mary of Scots in 1556, but his liturgy has remained with few modifications.

While Cranmer intended for Evensong to be sung every evening, in contemporary churches the main Evensong is on Sundays. The liturgy has three parts: preparation, lessons and prayer. It always includes sung versions of the Phos Hilaron ("O Gracious Light"), the Magnificat (Song of Mary) and the Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon). It also includes the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed, sung or spoken.

On a recent trip to the U.K., I found myself attending every Evensong I could find. One Sunday evening I went to a parish church in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. Five people assembled as the choir, and though no more than 20 gathered for the liturgy, it was beautiful and powerful. Outside othe world continued at a frantic pace. Sometimes a siren drowned out the choir. But inside, peace momentarily reigned. Sabbath happened.

Blogging toward Sunday: More rejection

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9)
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10; Mark 6:1-13; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

The Gospel is always proclaimed by flawed mortals—otherwise it would never be proclaimed at all. The Gospel is also always heard by flawed mortals—otherwise it would never be heard. Hence there is a beautiful and incarnational link between the two pericopes that make up this week's Gospel lesson.

In the first Jesus enters his hometown, Nazareth, having just outdone himself in the miracle department: he raised a young girl from the dead. But he's hardly been elevated to superhero or superhealer status—recall that in last week's reading, the people laughed at him. The rejection our Lord meets in his hometown is different from what he faces elsewhere only in degree.

We might be tempted to look down our noses at the people of Nazareth for responding to Jesus the way they do. But we would miss an important point: we too disbelieve. We too are apt to restrict what we think God is capable of in our lives and our communities.

Such a reaction also overlooks the connection between this episode and what follows. The rejection Jesus experiences allows his disciples to know that in Christ God has entered the human condition in an entirely real way, complete with suffering. The disciples are no longer ever alone in their weaknesses and so-called failures—and neither are we. As they go out two by two, they do so knowing that even Jesus, God the Word, came to his own and his own received him not. In this way God glorified the stranger.

Rejection has been the traveling companion of the Gospel from the beginning. Don't take it personally.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor serving House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, and the author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury). She blogs at Sarcastic Lutheran and God's Politics.

Guns-in-church day

by Richard A. Kauffman

The AP reports that a Kentucky pastor encouraged his members to wear their firearms to church this Saturday to celebrate the Second Amendment and Independence Day. "We're just going to celebrate the upcoming theme of the birth of the nation," said pastor Ken Pagano. "And we're not ashamed to say that there was a strong belief in God and firearms—without that this country wouldn't be here."

But John Phillips, an Arkansas pastor who was shot twice while leading a service in 1986, said: "It is unconscionable to me to think that a church would be a place that you would even want to bring a weapon."

On the shelf: Out of Darkness, Into Light by Jamal Rahman, Kathleen Schmitt Elias and Ann Holmes Redding

by Amy Frykholm

It's difficult to push past platitudes when discussing someone else's faith. How do you meaningfully engage in dialogue without either asserting your own superiority or lapsing into "all faiths are really one"? How do you share the intricacies of intellect, emotion and experience that constitute a life of faith if you're talking with someone who doesn't share that faith?

Most of us, I would venture to guess, don't make much of an effort. If we have interfaith friendships, we talk about kids and dogs and sports—maybe even politics—but avoid religion.

For those interested in going deeper, I recommend Out of Darkness Into Light. This is not a guide for interfaith dialogue, since it assumes that one has already accepted that other people's faith traditions can illuminate one's own. Instead it is a guidebook for spiritual practice. Sufi teacher Jamal Rahman, about whom I have written before, has teamed up again with two friends—Jewish scholar Kathleen Schmitt Elias and Christian scholar Ann Holmes Redding—to write about the "spiritual path."

Rahman begins each section of the book with a meditation from the Quran, using themes such as finding spiritual teachers, the mystery of God and how to pray. Elias and Redding build on Rahman's reflections in brief essays about how Jewish and Christian traditions make use of these themes.

The book is divided into three sections: "Spiritual Guidance in the Abrahamic Traditions," "The Mysteries of Life" and "The Path of Surrender and Provisions for the Journey." These themes don't always weave together seamlessly, and they shouldn't—religious traditions are not all perfectly matched at every turn. The structure of using Islam as the opening context also sometimes produces a "me, too" tone in some of the Jewish and Christian essays.

At the same time, this book contains a wealth of Muslim, Christian and Jewish texts that shed light on what this journey toward God might be about. After reading the book, I understand all three Abrahamic traditions more deeply and feel more akin to all three, while also understanding better why and how my roots are Christian.

Rediscovering mutual aid

by Celeste Kennel-Shank

It's difficult to find bright points in the economic downturn. I do see some, however, in examples of churches banding together and their members deepening a sense of interdependence.

In the Anabaptist tradition we have a set of practices called mutual aid—sharing resources to meet needs among believers. Biblical roots for mutual aid include the early church's practice of sharing possessions and the proceeds from property sold, along with Paul's encouragement to the Corinthian and Macedonian churches—this Sunday's epistle reading—to give to Christians in Jerusalem for a "fair balance between your present abundance and their need."

With some of our congregants experiencing economic strain, our Mennonite church is revisiting the place of mutual aid in church life. We have restarted an education scholarship fund to aid college and seminary students as more families struggle with higher tuition costs.

In addition, we are taking several steps toward developing a community of goods and a community of skills. Practically speaking, the community of goods is a list of items that households are willing to share with other members, as needed. My husband and I offered an air conditioning window unit, a duffel bag, a juicer appliance and bongo drums. The second category includes skills such as baking bread, editing research papers and preserving food.

The lists will be compiled on our church Web site. Instead of buying an item that I would use only infrequently, I can consider borrowing it instead. Recently a couple from our church asked if they could borrow our air conditioner for visiting family members. When they came to pick it up, we shared a meal and got to know each other better before we loaded the air conditioner into their car.

Our church has focused on external need as well. During Lent we went without small luxuries—such as a $2 cup of coffee—in favor of pooling money to send to Mennonite Central Committee. Through these shared efforts, church members deepen relationships outside of worship and planned events.

I'm learning that the best way for a church to get through tough times is to do it together.

Celeste Kennel-Shank is a lay worship leader and preacher at Chicago Community Mennonite Church.

Gary Dorrien, Robert D. Francis and the Century editors on health care reform

by Steve Thorngate

For the first time in 15 years, Congress and the White House are having a go at significant health care reform. The new issue of the Century includes three pieces exploring the need for change, the process of the debate and the likely outcomes.

The issue's editorial discusses the controversy over the "public option"—the plan, supported by the president and the Democratic leadership, for a public insurer to compete with existing private ones to cover health care for the general public. Social ethicist and single-payer advocate Gary Dorrien supports the public option as a compromise but stresses that it will improve things only if its details have some teeth. Robert Francis, domestic policy director for the ELCA, explains how he and his counterparts in other churches balance the sometimes different demands of representing denominational policy and participating in the larger debate.

Blogging toward Sunday: Turning off the engines

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 8)
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Mark+5:21-43; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15

by Donna Schaper

There is a resurrection in generosity, in opening your hand and unclenching your fist. The daughter of Jarius knew this when Jesus allowed her father to convince him to come over. Jesus went out of his way, and the result was a healing.

Resurrection often results when the tables turn and the poverty of the rich is exposed so that the wealth of the poor can be shown. Jarius's wealth was his persistence. He overcame a part of his own grief; he kept on keeping on.

This week's texts are great stewardship texts. Why not use them that way? We can ask for money more than once a year! We also can encourage generosity as often as possible. These texts are about people who love something or someone so much that they don't bother to count the cost.

The consequences of generosity are clear: it enriches us. "The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little." Little David becomes strong enough to handle great giants. Our biggest giant is often anxiety. When we turn off the engines of our anxiety, we find ourselves powered by a greater fuel.

One night a friend sailed her boat into its berth so quietly that I was awed by the silence. She turned off the engine at just the right moment, so that the boat didn't even glide through the water—it just got home. It was as if angels picked up the whole rig and moved it into its narrow space.

I knew that night how I wanted to die. I'd thought before about how to die a beautiful death, but I'd never had any answers. A moonlit sailboat outing on a Miami night didn't seem like a chance to prepare for death. But there I was broadened from a narrow space, edited out of a whole lot of serious, damning self-consciousness. Generosity often comes by surprise after the engines are turned off.

For things to really change inside us and around us, we have to turn off the engines of anxiety and turn on those of peace and persistence. Stewardship is not the only result: giants may be killed, our daughters raised from the dead.

Donna Schaper is senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City. Her most recent books are Grassroots Gardening and Living Well While Doing Good.

New leadership on food reform

by Steve Thorngate

The American Medical Association's hemming and hawing over a health insurance "public plan"—and the president's speech to the group on Monday—threaten to overshadow another piece of news from the AMA annual meeting: on Wednesday, the doctors' association approved a new policy resolution making the connection between physical health and sustainable agriculture.

The public health consequences of status-quo food production are a major talking point among food-movement types, but hearing this from the medical establishment is a positive development. The AMA policy explicitly supports the following:

• modeling "a healthy and ecologically sustainable food system" in medical facilities
• legislative work for "a healthier food system," including farm bill advocacy
• educating the public

Meanwhile, as Eddie Gehman Kohan argues persuasively, Michelle Obama has emerged as the leader of the food movement. On Tuesday, the first lady gave a wonky food policy speech—at a White House event for local fifth graders. The White House posted both a transcript and a video:



During the election, sustainable food advocates were less than optimistic about the candidate from the corn state of Illinois. (They knew they couldn't count on Congress, where the chair of the House Agriculture Committee is currently occupied with trying to derail climate change legislation.) It's an unexpected and pleasant surprise to see the first lady make food a signature issue.

(See also Norman Wirzba's call for a sunshine-powered economy, Amy Frykholm's list of things you can do and my review of Mark Bittman's Food Matters.)