The Congregational Church of Manhasset (UCC)--CONGOblog

My eyebrows raised last week when I saw an article about the Shroud
of Turin. The shroud is a cloth containing the outline of a man that is
claimed to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus. The debate about the
shroud has spawned its own industry of books and second-rate TV
documentaries that run on cable TV channels. It appears that the tests
conducted in the 1980's which dated the shroud to the Middle Ages
tested a patch on the cloth rather than the original material. A new test
dates the original material to a large age range including the time of
Jesus. Let the debates rage on and the video documentarians roll film!

I've always been indifferent to debates like this one. I grew up as an
evangelical in a denomination that self-destructed over similar debates,
except instead of relics the Southern Baptists fought over the Bible. I've
always thought that using modern scientific methodology to prove
miracles sort of defeated the point of miracles. Debates over Creation
vs. Evolution, the Shroud of Turin, or The Da Vinci Code speak more to
the need of Christians to have their faith validated by the tools of the
Enlightenment and Modernism than the nature of faith itself.

I believe that miracles are miracles only for those who see with the eyes
of faith. The determination of an event as miraculous is truly in the eye
of the beholder. It can always be explained away as coincidence, random
chance or self-delusion. Ultimately it takes faith to believe in miracles
rather than miracles to have faith. Remember the children of Israel who
complained against Moses and God even though they had just witnessed
the parting of the Red Sea and the plagues of Egypt. At every step along
their journey when they faced trouble, they forgot the miracles already
accomplished by God. Remember the disciples who walked with Jesus
and witnessed his miracles. They ran away at the arrest of Jesus and
doubted the account of those who first saw the resurrected Christ.

For a modern example of the lack of difference miraculous events seem to
make in the life of believers, check out this article by Ron Sider, a leader
in evangelical social activism. Evangelical Christianity depends upon a
belief in past and present miracles, often emotional interactions with the
divine and above a personal decision to accept Christ as savior and lord.
Despite these things, it turns out that evangelical Christians act just like
everybody else.

Faith is a choice. Miracles can confirm that choice but never produce it.
Faith becomes real when a person chooses to believe in spite of the
evidence rather than because of the evidence.

First it was SpongeBob, now it's Buster Baxter. Buster is a cartoon rabbit
on PBS that has a series called Postcards From Buster. In the series,
Buster travels the country with his father and sends "video postcards"
about real children from different religious and cultural backgrounds.
Buster has covered children living in families that are Mormon, Muslim,
and fundamentalist Christian, as well as various ethnicities like Indian
and Hmong. Some children are raised by single parents and others by
grandparents. One family in Virginia includes five children and the entire
family lives together in a one-room trailer. And continuing this line of
diversity, Buster went to Vermont where he met children raised by a
lesbian couple.

This last episode has raised the ire of religious conservatives and
prompted the Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to condemn the
show. It seems to me that Edwards is concerned more with good politics
than good children's programming. Sensing a chance for quick political
capital with a constituency already disappointed with the President for not
pushing for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage,
Spellings chose to take a sucker punch against a cartoon character. After
all, taking on cartoon characters seems to be a trend with the Religious
Right. Isn't there a school somewhere with underpaid teachers, out of
date textbooks and unsafe conditions that Spellings should be trying to
help?

I was disappointed to hear that PBS, whose president viewed the episode
and considered it appropriate prior to the uproar, has now decided not to
distribute the episode to its affiliates. I am fully aware that PBS gets
government funding and this is a contentious issue, but I believe PBS has
always done a good job of exposing children to the wider world. I grew up
in a largely white suburb in Missouri and Sesame Street was where I
actually saw images of children who looked different than me, spoke
different languages and lived different kinds of lives. Children benefit
from this kind of exposure.

I believe that if our nation is to face the challenges of hate and violence
that plague us in these days, we will all have to reach down deep and
confront the prejudices inside of each of us. As a Christian, I believe that
the teachings of Jesus Christ have a crucial role to play in fostering this
kind of honest self-examination and humble interaction with people
different from us. I am sorry that the face of Christianity shown to our
culture and world is once again one of self-righteous condemnation.

News broke today about an insurance settlement between several NY
insurance companies and Armenian charities. The settlement amount of
$3M was reached over the deaths of many Armenians around the time of
World War I in the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey). Before coming
to this church, I had never heard of the Armenian Genocide, where around
1.5 million Armenians were killed in an organized campaign of ethnic
cleansing and mass executions carried out by the Ottoman Empire. The
Nazis modeled much of their methodology used in the Holocaust from the
techniques used by the Ottoman Turks. We have a number of Armenian
families in our church who had family members killed in the genocide. It
turns out that Congregationalist missionaries were involved in trying to
prevent the genocide and to enlist help from the West. Turkey has never
admitted its role in the genocide and due to its geographical importance for
our country's past efforts in the Cold War and current conflicts in the
Middle East, the United States has never pressed Turkey to come clean
about its past. Truly the victims of this genocide are also victims of political convenience.

Last fall one of the Armenian families in our church led a great book
discussion of The Burninig Tigris by Peter Balakian, a thorough overview
of the genocide which also details some of the role played by
Congregationalists.

1. You simply have to check out the "extravagant welcome" offered to
SpongeBob Squarepants by our denomination, The United Church of
Christ. It's a great response to the religious fundamentalists who have
charged SpongeBob is being used to promote a gay agenda. Such
charges are laughable, but this light-hearted response by the UCC
makes a serious point: namely that too many people only experience
judgment and hostility from the church rather than grace. Make sure
you check out the photo gallery of pictures showing SpongeBob
touring the national headquarters.

2. It appears that Rolling Stone has decided to include an ad for a new
youth-oriented Bible. Apparently, RS has "addressed the internal
miscommunications that led to the previous misstatement of company
policy and apologize for any confusion it may have caused."

Yesterday, I wrote about my love of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.
Sometimes it is offensive and flippant. Often it is lewd. But I still think in
spite of these things that the show does the best job of puncturing the
hot air balloons of pomposity and hypocrisy so common in our culture.
Besides, it's funny.

One of the "correspondents" on the show is Stephen Colbert who does
one of my favorite segments on the DS called "This Week in God". It is
an irreverent but rarely mean look at religious stories in the news. He was
interviewed on Fresh Air With Terry Gross yesterday, and in addition to
just being funny and insightful, he shared that he is a Christian, a
practicing Roman Catholic to be exact. This seemed more than a little
surprising to me considering that Colbert often skewers Roman Catholic
social policy on a regular basis. He shared about speaking at his
daughter's first communion and answering his many fellow comedians'
questions as to how he can actually believe "that stuff". I found it to be a
great discussion of how someone can choose to believe and have faith
without losing his or her sense of humor, intelligence or integrity.

For those who wonder if I only read, watch and listen to "liberal" writers
and thinkers (liberal being a misleading label by those who disagree with
the point being made) , I offer to you a column by Cal Thomas. I don't
agree with many of his views, but I am in whole-hearted agreement with
this column on the fact that neither political party has a monopoly on faith.

Also, for those in our church community, I hope you saw William
Safire's final op-ed columns in the NY Times yesterday. In one of them,
he offers a brief retrospective of his career and notes his debt to Tex
Mcrary--newsman, public relations master, TV and radio personality,
father of one of our current members and husband to the late Jinx
Faulkenbury-McCrary who was a member of our church. Rev. Only
participated in Tex's memorial service a few years ago.

Last week, I mentioned Jim Wallis' book God's Politics. I still haven't
read the book yet, but I've been a long time admirer of him. I saw him
on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and liked what he said. (You can
watch the clip on the Daily Show web site.) It was an interesting
moment on TV. I watch the DS regularly and have even gone to see
tapings of the show several times, yet I've been disappointed at times
with how Stewart has handled a few guests that I really like. In these
cases it seemed like Stewart tried a little too hard to be funny and ran
over the guests, although sometimes the guests were pretty boring.
This time, however, Stewart really seemed interested in Wallis and
seemed to genuinely engage Wallis and his ideas. It was nice to hear a
Christian on television speaking about issues of poverty, peace and
justice--not to mention talking about Jesus' teachings in Matthew 25.

Wallis also was on the NPR show Fresh Air With Terry Gross .(You
can listen to it on-line at the Fresh Air web site. It's the 1.20.05 episode.)
Gross had two guests on: Wallis and Richard Land the head of the
Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty
Commission. I'm sure Gross had these two on in order to offer some
semblance of balance between a conservative Christian viewpoint and
a more liberal Christian viewpoint (I put the modifier "more" here,
because Wallis is not necessarily liberal in a traditional political manner
on some issues, for example he is pro-life in terms of abortion, albeit in
a nuanced way.)

I found the show interesting, because as a regular Fresh Air listener, I
love Terry Gross but find her weak when it comes to interviewing
religious people or talking about religious issues. I felt like she was a
little weak in questioning Land but better with Wallis--probably
because Wallis' viewpoint is closer to her own and because Wallis was
a much better guest in terms of manners.

The contrast between these two people was about more than just issues
and beliefs; it was also in terms of tone. Land was, in short, a jerk. He
was hostile and regularly made presumptuous comments about "liberal
NPR listeners". Most of all, Land spent a lot of time defending President
Bush and literally identifying himself with the Republican Party. I
appreciate Wallis for refusing to identify with one party. It seems self-
evident to me that Christians must always guard against aligning
themselves with a single party or platform. Based upon this interview
and many other comments by Land, it seems to me that he and his
organization are far from ethical and concerned with religious liberty
only for their brand of religion and politics.

I'd like to recommend a book that I haven't read yet--so I guess my
recommendation can only go so far--it's called God's Politics: Why the
Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis. Wallis
and his organization Sojourners was behind last year's campaign God is
Not a Republican...or a Democrat, which Jimmy spoke about in a sermon
near election day. I think Wallis offers a viewpoint on Christians and
politics that is much more faithful to the teachings of Jesus that what
the Religious Right offers. I don't agree with him on everything, but I
am always challenged by him.

Speaking of the Religious Right... where you aware that SpongeBob
Squarepants is a tool of the devil? Check out this article in today's NY
Times. If I wasn't laughing so hard, I'd be crying. When I think of all the
issues that Christ's church should be speaking out against--torture,
poverty, war, corporate corruption, etc.--somehow a cartoon sponge
that lives under the sea doesn't make my list. I guess members of the
Religious Right don't watch the Teletubbies anymore.

Speaking of the Secular Left... check out yesterday's posting at The
Revealer which recounts how Rolling Stone Magazine refused an ad
for a new teen-oriented Bible. The Revealer points out, and I think
rightly so, that similar lame arguments were offered by CBS and ABC
when they refused to air our denomination's "God is Still Speaking"
television ads. Beer, liquor, cigarettes, sex and every other vice under
the sun are apparently okay, but Bibles? Obviously they're far too anti-
establishment for Rolling Stone.

I haven't read Wallis' book yet, but these two examples seem to illustrate
his subtitle.

Yesterday's post generated some traffic to the site and some feedback.
April L. "outed" herself as the person I spoke with after the 11 AM
service on Sunday. Here is some of what she had to say:

Part of our problem, I think, is in our current culture, at least in America
(and as America influences the world.) We have grown tired, insular
and cynical...we trust no one, we are disappointed in failed efforts, and
we are being systematically encouraged to value the wrong qualities...
fame, wealth, beauty, physical achievement, ignorance, canniness, even
deceitfulness, selfishness and the ability to be ruthless to others. Not
that this is anything new, but it has reached a point where old virtues
like honesty, vision, intelligence, cooperation, tolerance and caring are
openly scoffed at. If a great philosophical leader were in our midst
today, I wonder if we would even pay them any serious attention at all.

April went on to mention some thinkers who point out that God has
already sent us enough teachers or leaders to point us the way and that
it is up to each of us to make the kind of difference that Jesus, MLK and
others spoke about. It's worth thinking about.

Every MLK holiday, the Brian Leher Show on WNYC does a special
program in which they invite listeners to call in with a one minute reading
written by someone outside their own ethnic group that is in the spirit of
the holiday. The responses are always fascinating and moving. This
year was no exception. If you missed it, you can listen to it on-line.

I had a discussion on Sunday morning with a church member following
the 8 AM service. He remarked that it was amazing that MLK was able
to be hopeful and point to a less violent world when the late 1960's were
so tumultuous and violent. We both commented that there seems to be
a lack of this same kind of vision today. I had another similar
conversation after the 10 AM service with yet another member. Neither
she nor I could come up with any candidates to fill MLK's prophetic role
for today.

I've been thinking about this conversation and I still don't have any
really good candidates who have the kind of symbolic voice in our
culture that MLK had in his day. Internationally, I can think of
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel and Myanmar's Aung San
Suu Kyi as people who stand as spokespeople for human rights and
freedom. Domestically, I'm left with few viable candidates. Although
there are many authors and activists that I find personally prophetic,
I just don't see anyone who is consistently raising questions about
poverty, injustice and violence.

All last week was spent here at the CONGOblog talking about the
tsunami, and I don't want to overdo it, however there was an article in
the NY Times Magazine on Sunday that I found very thought-provoking.
It is by Susan Neiman who directs the Einstein Forum and wrote the
well-reviewed book Evil in Modern Thought. Take a look--it's worth
reading--if for nothing else than it seeks to address the question of why
disasters like this may provoke compassion or apathy. (registration is
required to view all of the article)

Sorry that it has taken me a few days to post, Fridays and Saturdays
are my days off, so there won't be much posting on these days.

A minister friend of mine sent me an e-mail this week with some musings
about the media coverage of the tsunami. He was frustrated by the
amount of attention being paid to the mudslide in CA while tens of
thousands of people remain in deathly peril in south Asia.

I think he has a fair point, while I have no desire to minimize the tragedy
of the lives lost in CA--and I assure you neither does my friend--I do
think it is a fault of our media and of our culture that our attention turns
so quickly to Americans--usually white Americans--and ignores
suffering elsewhere in the world. Even the coverage of the tsunami
tended to focus upon the relatively few white Europeans and Americans
involved in the disaster. Although I understand that identifying with
the subject of a story is an essential goal of journalism and this happens
easiest with people who already look and talk like us, I think the shift
away from the stories of non-white, non-Western people is about more
than just identification. I believe we want to avoid thinking about just
how bad things are for billions of people in the world.

Much has been made about how people chose to remain in the path of
potential mud slides in CA--I don't have any particular facts on this--but
it is worth noting that most of the people affected by the tsunami were
living in a location they did not choose. The lived in huts along the
coasts making do at a subsistence level. I believe it is worth asking
what economic policies and political choices left these people in the
path of a disaster. The generosity after the fact has been great, but
there is a lesson here about looking at what other groups of people are
out there right now living at the edge of their societies, barely getting
by, and with no means of protecting themselves from an impending
disaster.

Well, on that happy thought, here's a link to some sermons and articles
of various religious perspectives on the tsunami. These links are a part
of FaithandValues.com which our denomination supports.

I've been talking about this with friends and I never once thought
about "why does God do this?" I was thinking....this is nature, we are
the ones in the way...

I don't think God had anything to do with it. This has been going on
for millions of years and it just happened again. Plate tectonics etc...
it just happens...volcanoes too...

Jimmy essentially went this route in his sermon on Sunday--the idea
that God has set up the forces of nature that operate on their own rather
than as a tool of punishment/reward micromanaged by God. Jesus
taught that God causes the rain to fall on the good and bad alike. I
subscribe to this view also, but I want to qualify it by noting that just as
some Christians take their view of God micromanaging every molecule to
an extreme, it's possible to end up at the other extreme--Deism--like a
watchmaker, God created the world, wound it up and let it run on its own.

I believe that God is actively involved with what God has created, but I
also believe that God works within limits. I'm treading on deep
theological ground (and maybe deep piles of other things), but in short,
I believe that in order to guarantee our freedom, free will, autonomy, etc.
God has set limits on how God will work in our world. I believe miracles
can happen and that prayer works, but I believe God is always working
in such a way as to protect our own individual existences. God is always
walking a delicate line between doing the most God can to care for us on
the one hand and overriding our freedom on the other. Because of this,
I believe prayer is essential--it "enables" God to work in our lives and in
the lives of others, because we exercise our free will and open ourselves
and others to God's power. More to come... your thoughts?

Here's another example of an article (from Beliefnet) that gives a cursory
overview of how different religions understand suffering, natural disasters,
etc.

While driving, I flipped over to 91.5 and heard a show out of Chicago
Public Radio on different religious perspectives on the tsunami. They
had Islamic and Hindu scholars on talking. It seemed to offer some
deeper understandings of various religious beliefs. The episode in
question is the January 12 episode. I heard a good Christian caller (a
rarity!) who spoke about Christianity's idea of incarnation --that God in
Jesus Christ became human and experienced what we experience,
especially our pain--this is an important point and one of the reasons I
remain a Christian. See my last sermon and Jimmy's from last Sunday
for more on this point.

The response on Sunday to Jimmy's sermon was very positive. This was
due not only to the fact that it was a good sermon but also because there
seems to be a dearth of theological answers for why God would allow
something like the tsunami to happen. As is the case following tragedies,
the media has been quick to offer stories on various theological
perspectives on suffering. They interview the requisite rabbis, priests,
imams, ministers, etc. and the result is usually a shallow offering that
comes nowhere close to actually dealing with the complexities of
religious responses to suffering.

In my opinion, an example of this shallow religious journalism occurred
on NPR's Morning Edition on Monday morning. I can't speak for the
other religions represented, but I groaned when I heard what the
Catholic priest and Baptist minister had to say on behalf of Christianity.
The priest offered silence (always appropriate in the face of suffering)
and then a lame remark about the Bible pointing to the fact that God
sometimes uses natural disasters to punish people. The minister
sidestepped the issue somewhat and said that God was using the
tsunami to call Christians like him to repentance. I wonder if God could
have found a less destructive way to get this guy to change his ways?

Most of the Christian responses I've seen seem to be largely concerned
with God's sovereignty--in other words, God is all-powerful and Lord of
all, so who are we to question God? This view seems particularly foolish,
since the Bible is full of passages where the writers question God,
especially in the case of innocent suffering (e.g. Job, Psalm 88, and even
Jesus). I am much more concerned with God's morality--that is, how do
I reconcile my belief in a loving God with thousands of dead children.
If I believe that God loves us and is omnipotent, I have to find some way
to explain why a loving God with the power to stop a tsunami would
allow it. My own conclusion will have to wait until tomorrow, because
this post has gone on long enough. What are your thoughts?

Here's the article Jimmy quoted in his sermon on Sunday by Charles
Henderson, former chaplain at Princeton. It's a concise yet well-
reasoned look at the Bible's perspective on evil and suffering. I also
thought William Safire's column on Monday re: Job offered a few h
elpful thoughts. (You'll need to register at nytimes.com to read this
one--it's free.)

A blog--short for weblog or web log--"is a Web page that is frequently
updated usually with personal insights and Web links." (For example,
the preceding definition came from About.com.) The original blogs were
like personal journals or diaries, but blogs became a way for people to
advocate certain viewpoints and for businesses and media to provide
content that is more detailed and up-to-date than normal. You may recall
that bloggers (people who use blogs) played a big part in last year's
elections, especially in the case of the botched CBS story about
President Bush's National Guard Service.

I'm hoping that we at the Congo--Congregational Church of Manhasset--
can use our blog to enrich our community, share information and deepen
our spiritual growth.

The idea to create a blog came to me after Jimmy's sermon this past
Sunday. He spoke about the difficult issue of how God could allow a
disaster like the tsunami in South Asia. I dealt with the issue as well in
my sermon a week earlier. Both Jimmy and I came across a lot of
information, articles and stories related to this issue and wished we had
a way to share more of it (something I'll do in the coming days). I
thought maybe a blog was a way to do it.

Since I'm running this show, I'll moderate the content. I'll do my best to
post to the blog on a daily basis or at least close to a daily basis and I'll
be glad to add reflections, thoughts, information, favorite web sites, etc.
from church folks (or any other wanderers who come in from cyberspace).
Just drop me an e-mail with your thoughts and if it's pertinent and if it's
clean, I'll add it to our blog.