Lessons in life and dying from a friend

My friend Mike died last week.

We were the same age. We grew up together in Marinette in northeast Wisconsin. Worked our way through Boy Scouts together. Played at each other’s houses. Studied in the same classrooms. And then, over time, we drifted apart. Until this past year. That’s when I learned that Mike was dying of cancer.

In less than 12 months, we re-established a friendship and Mike and his wife, Nancy, taught me amazing lessons about living with the prospect of dying.

In our initial contacts, Nancy wrote of Mike: “He is doing well with his treatments.  I am amazed, each day, how well he handles this journey we are on.  Never once have we asked ‘why us?’  We feel so blessed that we have each day to love each other and enjoy our retirement one day at a time.  Not everyone is so lucky to have a long goodbye with the one they love.“

Just a note about the actual diagnosis. Mike had stage IV small cell lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones and a bit to his liver. The initial diagnosis came on May 2, 2012, with the expectation that he might live for about a year. He beat that by about a month.

We lived 300 miles apart, but we managed to meet three times face to face over the past year. We communicated in between by email. And we held each other in prayer all along the way. 

An email Mike sent out to a network of friends in late July of 2012 offered clues to his attitude: “The chemo is working to slow the cancer down… I am losing a lot hair, but I have discovered the joy of hats! … I am happy and fulfilled.  This is wonderful journey, and the biggest adventure of my life.  And I am getting plenty of time to be ready for the big event.” 

He understood that Nancy and their kids and grandkids were not quite as thrilled with this big adventure, but he was not about to let a simple thing like dying cramp his style.

Mike wrote me in early December to say that the growth of the cancer had slowed enough so that the resumption of chemo had been postponed.  “Spiritually, new wonders everyday,” he added.  That’s what really seemed to matter to him. He was experiencing a sense of God in wholly – and holy – new ways.

Dying also shifted Mike’s view of the world a bit. Our conversations often touched on religion and politics. I though Mike might enjoy one of my favorite magazines, Sojourners, so I got him a subscription. He liked it, noting that “Liberal values without spiritual values are bleak.  I hate judgmental liberalism, just as I hate judgmental conservatism.  Sojourners looks at liberal values with a strong Christian feeling of hope and love.   It looks at what we can do to build, not to defend or destroy.”

Later, he would strive for greater peace within, writing that “I avoid all things that thrive on negative energy, like the news, gossip, cruelty, conflict, or bad humor (the cruel, the meanly sarcastic, and the sacrilegious).  I can look out our bedroom window and see our snow covered hill, trees, sunrise and moonrise.”

Mike sent a health update on Groundhog Day – Feb. 2. Continued growth of the cancer, more pain and fatigue, chemo about to resume. But he also sent a second message that day to those who were more attentive to his spiritual journey: “Spiritually, I feel healthier than ever. My prayer and meditation life is rich… Since I can't volunteer outside the home anymore, I was able to join our parish prayer ministry, since I now have plenty of time to pray. I really enjoy praying for all of you in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, etc. who are praying for me… God is good.  God is great.  Hope is eternal.”

If hope was eternal, so was Mike’s sense of humor about a situation that would lead many of us to despair. By mid-February, Mike could really feel his body slowing down: “My material world is shrinking, and so is my body. Just like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, ‘I'm melting! I'm melting!’ We had to get a handicapped parking permit for our car. I walk like a crooked old man, with a crooked old stick, but let's face it, that's what I am…”

Within the next few days, Mike shifted from the chemo regime to palliative care with Hospice. He was thrilled: “Now I can look forward to a happy, peaceful death surrounded by loving family, friends, and a fully qualified, fully experienced and fully compassionate medical team. Nancy is a little weepy, but happy/sad weepy.  I feel like the Packers just won the Super Bowl.”

And then a pitch for prayer: “So anyway, keep praying for a happy, peaceful death for me.   If you are praying for me, let me know, as I add you to my prayer book and I will pray for you too everyday and I hope to pray for you when I get to heaven.... God willing.  Bless you all with love, peace, and joy,”

In late April, Mike sent out a detailed medical update, laced with his own brand of humor.  “I just wanted to send you the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of my final earthly journey, focusing on the old jalopy called my body that is on its last miles… I am so grateful for this last year to get to contemplate my life, reach out and discover old friends, strengthen my ties to my family, reach out to others who are suffering from a loss, and even reconcile some emotions stemming from the past.  Fruitful!”

He recognized God in the care that others showed for him, especially that of his beloved Nancy. “I have never felt so loved by God and so close to Him.” He signed off, “May we all live forever in love, peace and joy.”

His final email went out on May 21, just nine days before his death. “I have shared with many of you how well I am doing spiritually,” he wrote. “I feel so close to God, I feel like I can almost touch his face and feel his breath.”
  
Mike died early in the afternoon of May 30 – the traditional date for Memorial Day, the day his father’s plane was shot down during World War II. Nancy was at his side, the kids were in the house. Now he is with God.

Notebook jottings - Part 2

The Religion Newswriters Association conference continues in Bethesda, Md. Here are a few more notes from Friday and Saturday at the event.

At a presentation called "50 Shades of Evangelicalism," a group of younger evangelicals talked about the growing diversity among this substantial slice of Christians in America. The diversity does not all move in one direction.

Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, for instance, noted that even though younger evangelicals trend more liberal on social issues, their support of Mitt Romney now is higher than that for John McCain four years ago. Patton Dodd, executive editor of Bondfire Books (e-books), said younger evangelicals often struggle with how to define themselves, since they don't fit into conventional stereotypes. And Sarah Pulliam Bailey, the new managing editor of Odyssey Networks after serving as the online editor at Christianity Today, said that when she was a student at Wheaton College, just outside Chicago, she found that "a lot of people know where they are from but they don't know what they are right now."

Brad Russell of FaithVillage.com, a new social network with appeal in the evangelical world, wondered if "evangelical is still a valid term." And panelists talked about the debate among the evangelical leaders about who could be called an evangelical and who could not. Is author Brian McLaren still an evangelical if he supports gay marriage? Dodd said the issue is do you identify yourself or do others define you.

Russell said a significant change in attitudes on social issues like gay marriage reflected a greater tolerance of a pluralistic society: "What's not right for me does not have to be a matter of law for everyone else... Younger evangelicals have grown up thinking their stance in the public square has been defined for them." They no longer accept that.
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Perhaps the oddest session of the conference was one where representatives of the Obama and Romney campaigns faith outreach operations were invited to "tell war stories from the front lines."
First, the two from the Obama campaign - Broderick Johnson and Michael Wear - refused to let C-Span video the session. Then all three of them said in many different ways that faith really did not matter that much in the election, even though that was their area of focus. As Bob Smietana of the Nashville Tennessean tweeted:  "Faith advisors on panel want to talk about works, not faith."
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Stephen Prothero discussed his new book, The American Bible: How Our Words United, Divide and Define a Nation. It's a collection of 27 texts with a varieties of commentaries on each that he defined as "the texts that we value and fight about." He said that the U.S. is "held together not by a common creed but by a shared argument." And that plays out in the pages of this book.

Prothero acknowledged that sometimes the argument can get out of control. He suggested that the great thinkers of the past modeled how people could engage in public conversation and he cited the Jewish tradition of two kinds of arguments - one on behalf of the self, the other on behalf of heaven. An argument on behalf of heaven recognizes that truth resides there, not in any one of us, so as we listen and as we talk, we can come closer to the truth.

A Mormon trio on the Mormon moment

Jana Reiss converted to the Church of Latter Day Saints as an adult, has written a lot about it and would generally be considered fairly knowledgeable about the faith.

But she said she was brought up short after addressing a group of Protestants who asked her about the "white horse prophecy." This is something attributed to Mormon founder Joseph Smith about his followers who would come from the Rocky Mountains on a white horse to save the U.S. Constitution as it hung by a thread. Whether Smith ever said it is in doubt, but it has gone into circulation around the prospect of Mitt Romney being the first Mormon president of the U.S.

That's one example from a panel of Mormons today talking about how their faith has gotten a lot more attention in the past few years, whether because of the Romney campaign or the hit Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon.

There has been a lot of interest in what is unusual or exotic about the faith, said Terryl Givens, a Mormon scholar at the University of Virginia. "So the Mormon sense of self has been challenged," he told folks attending the Religion Newswriters Association annual conference in Bethesda, Md.

Darius Gray, an author and film producer, said that in the past when controversy around his faith arose, the leaders would run for cover or issue inflammatory responses. Now they are telling their story in very human terms, which he appreciates.

Yet Mormons still deal with accusations that they are not truly Christians, even though the name of their faith is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Givens said Mormons are "bewildered" by the claim that they are not Christians. He said the evangelical Christians have a theology derived from Christians of centuries past and are not willing to consider other understandings of how one follows Jesus.

That prompted Reiss to say that for her, it's been "a very painful year to be a Mormon."

She told of watching the Republican convention on the night a series of Mormon speakers talked about the way Mitt Romney had lived out his faith, using easily accessible language instead of insider talk. "I had a sense of Mormons being welcomed in the public square," she said.

The next day, she received word from the Academy of Christian Editors that her invitation for membership was being rescinded because she was a Mormon - a notification that hurt her deeply.

Gray, who is an African American, noted that he is about to celebrate his 48th year as a Latter-Day Saint and talked about the change in attitudes in the church that once barred blacks from the priesthood. He helped tell those stories in a movie called Nobody Knows: The Untold Stories of Black Mormons.

Gray said that overall, he was pleased with the greater understanding of the Mormon faith and of Mormons that he senses is occurring. "The Latter-Day Saints aren't as weird as some may have thought," he said with a chuckle.

But it was Givens, who has a new book coming out on Monday on Mormon beliefs, got into the heart of Mormon theology by outlining what he described as the five core beliefs:

• Humans have a heavenly father whose heart beats in sympathy with human hearts,
• Humans pre-existed as spirit beings, 
• Mortality is not a catastrophic fall but an ascent to greater godliness,
• God has capacity and desire to save entire human family
• Heaven will see the preservation of relationships most valued on earth (a reference to eternal marriage).

Schools, faith and freedom

So who is protecting free expression of religion in public schools these days?

Here's one surprising answer - the ACLU.

Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, told journalists at the Religion Newswriters Association annual conference on Friday about efforts in defense of students:

• Fighting a rosary ban in one school (it was banned because some gangs were using it as a symbol)
• Defending a Native American students' right to have long hair as a religious expression
• Arguing that a student had a right to sing "Awesome God" as an entry in a student talent show
• Making sure students were allowed to use a Bible verse as their personal quote on a yearbook page

Of course, the ACLU also jumps in when schools try to impose a particular religious viewpoint on students.

Mach talked about a public school in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, that set aside a day devoted to "converting as many people to Christ as possible" in all-school assemblies. Students who chose not to attend the assemblies were given the "option" of serving time in detention.

Charles C. Haynes, one of the nation's top scholars on the First Amendment who directs the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., argued that the general consensus on how to handle religious expression in public schools has grown fairly strong, while agreeing with Mach's observation that while "the rules are clear, there are rampant and repeated abuses."

Haynes said that the 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning organized prayer in public schools - a decision long vilified by conservatives actually "opened the door to more discussion of religion in schools than ever before." The guidelines that have emerged over the half-century since then have created space for thoughtful examination of various religious traditions and left open room for individual student expressions of religious beliefs.

But those are also areas that are still contested on the ground, as Mach suggested. Haynes said one of the on-going struggles is over when a student may give a religious expression to what is essentially a captive audience, as compared to a prayer group gathered for an extra-curricular activity. Some groups try to rig the rules to make sure their viewpoint - and only their viewpoint - is the one that is favored.

A second area is over how courses approach the Bible. "There are a lot of stealth laws to encourage Bible courses," Haynes said. While there is nothing wrong with treating the Bible as an academic subject, he contended, what some districts do is use a Bible course as a form of religious instruction - and that violates the notion that public schools should not favor a particular religious belief.

Looking more broadly at the First Amendment protections for freedom of religion, Haynes quoted James Madison's observation that the more diverse we are as a people, the more protection of freedom of religion for everyone there will be. When one faith is overwhelmingly dominant, it is easier to steamroll those who don't share that faith.

Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the American Catholic bishops, reminded the audience that "everyone is a minority somewhere." The ACLU's Mach echoed that, saying, "Virtually all religious groups have been in the minority at one time or in one place."

Arguments over religious expression are nothing new in U.S. history. Haynes noted that Alexander Hamilton tried to form what we would now call an early version of the Christian Coalition while Madison and Jefferson argued for a free marketplace of religious ideas.

Haynes praised the U.S. for have "the boldest free expression of religion of any country" yet cautioned that "the vitality of religious freedom depends on the minds and hearts of the American people."

Notebook jottings as journalists gather

The Religion Newswriters Association is gathering for its annual conference this week in Bethesda, Maryland. Here are a few vignettes along the way.

Joanna Brooks is a professor at San Diego State University and the author of “The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith.”  She said that in the run-up to the presidential debate on Wednesday night, some Mormons were fasting so that Mitt Romney would have a successful debate. "We're all going to fast to make sure our guy kills in the debate ... and he does!"

Brooks also noted that there is a "feminization of heresy in many traditions ... women who do not speak in orthodoxy are excluded."
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In a discussion over what's fair game about religion for reporters to ask candidates, David Campbell, a ;olitical scientist at the University of Notre Dame and co-author with Robert Putnam of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, offered this proposition: "Religion is relevant only to the extend it has a plausible connection to what that person would do in office." Bill Keller, the former executive editor of The New York Times, argued in a column last year and in person on Thursday that journalists should be "less shy about probing the religious beliefs of candidates." He said a candidate's religious beliefs can be a window in how he or she views science, gay rights and a host of other issues. 
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David Beckmann, head of Bread for the World, exuded great enthusiasm as he talked about the progress in the battle against global poverty. "The world has cut in half the number of people in extreme poverty in the last 30 years," he said. Using Biblical imagery, he called this "the Biblical exodus of our time."
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Thomas Reese, S.J. is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. He said that too often we cite violation of church state boundaries just because we disagree with someone. "If I disagree with you, then you are violating the separation of church and state," he said. That ignores that "politics is a hard and ethical endeavor."

He observed that while the Catholic bishops still hold to the "consistent ethic of life" approach of the past generation, their emphasis has shifted away from economic issues to things like contraception, abortion and gay marriage. He noted they will grant "prudential judgment" to people on issues around things like poverty, but say that on things like abortion or gay marriage, there can be no dissent. That, Reese said, is "a fundamental misunderstanding of prudence."

Reese also posed this question: "Did the Nuns on the Bus have more impact than (the bishops' religious liberty campaign known as) the Fortnight of Freedom?"
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The brand new dean of the National Cathedral, The Very Rev. Gary Hall (brand new as of Monday), talked about his vision for the future work of the Cathedral as we gathered in a conference room seven stories up in this magnificent building. One element is to use the Cathedral's "convening power" to focus on the intersections of faith and public life. Another is to build on a tradition of interfaith dialogue to be a convening presence for interfaith ministry. Another is to be even more a part of "healing the wounds and addressing the needs of the people of Washington D.C. And, of course, there is the matter of raising $20 million in the next five years to repair the damage done from the August 2011 earthquake.

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Sally Quinn, who started the "On Faith" section of the Washington Post web site six years ago, welcome journalists covering religion to Washington - "a spiritual hardship post." She told of starting "On Faith" because she was concerned about the lack of coverage of religion everywhere, including the Post. She could not persuade editors to do much, but Don Graham, the publisher, told her to start a religion web site on the Post's site. "I didn't know anything about religion and I didn't know anyting about the web," she said. So she gathered smart people from both fields together and now On Faith is a powerhouse in the field of journalism about religion. When her friends asked her if having a religion site would not stir up controversy, she told them in Washington, "people's egos are much more sensitive than their souls."

Religious liberty? How about for mosques?

One of the subtexts of the political season this year has been the debate over religious liberty. Has the Obama administration’s rules on making contraceptives available for free to employees violated the rights of Catholic institutions that oppose artificial birth control?

The American Catholic bishops have launched what they call a Fortnight of Freedom to defend their right to deny contraceptive coverage in insurance plans for their employees. They have gone to court to challenge the government’s ruling.

But a recurring theme today in panels at a session for journalists from across the nation who cover is religion is that this misses the real threat to religious liberty in this country.

Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest University Divinity School 's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, said that the spate of attacks on mosques “is a critical religious freedom issue” as she talked with Religion Newswriters Assoication participants in a conference on religion and politics at the Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington , D.C.

“We’re not talking about religious freedom if we’re not talking about that,” she said.

Since early August, there have been nine acts of vandalism or arson at mosques in the U.S, including one last weekend in Toledo, Ohio.

There was also the shooting of worshipers gathering at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek near Milwaukee in  early August.

In a separate session later in the day, Sally Steenland of the Center for Amerian Progress said that while there are many components to religious liberty, “the most basic one is the freedom to worship.”

Attacks on mosques, attacks on worshippers on a Sunday morning, are far more of a threat to religious liberty than the ongoing legal battles defining the boundaries of the relationship of church and state.

Jerome Copulsky, who teaches history at American University, noted that too often, the idea of religious freedom is being used to "shore up the privileges of the dominant religious traditions" in this country instead of to protect those traditions that are most vulnerable.

Meditations from a Mountain

Mt. Rainier, July 14, 2012

I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come? – Psalm 121                                            

At first sight, Creator God, the mountain seems so powerful, so majestic, so unchanging.

It seems to be such a good image of you, the one whose creative power released the energies of the universe and sustains them across the eons.

As we draw closer, the power of the mountain increases. So does a sense of foreboding. How does one approach such a magnificent and sacred place?

With awe, with respect, with boldness, much as we might approach you.

We watch the early morning light begin to dapple the summit. We see it spread its brilliance across the vast sweep of the highest reaches of this place.  We watch the light reflected off the whiteness of the snow-covered slopes. We sense the illumination you bring into our world, into our lives.

But this mountain is not unchanging. Volcanoes of the past have changed its shape. Glaciers crawl down its sides, grinding away its surface, spreading into the valleys they have carved out of landscape. Are you, too, a power that remains in motion, reforming and reshaping your existence in our lives?

And the forces that bring change to the mountain bring threats to our lives. The glaciers open and swallow up hikers. Some day, the bubbling lava below the surface will break through again, reshaping the landscape once more, covering cities and people in the process.

We recognize the terror masked in the beauty and we hope that your creative force will carry us toward renewed life rather than to imminent destruction.

Along the slopes, tiny flowers in blues and yellows and reds and purples stand out among the lush green carpet or accent the brownish gray of the rock. They are delicate, vulnerable, yet bring so much beauty to what is such a harsh landscape. The mountain nurtures them, just as you nurture us as we live as vulnerable people made in your image and sustained by your love.

And then the clouds begin to swirl around the peak. The clarity of earlier times is gone. The mountain is obscured. We know it is there, we can still feel its presence, but now it is an unseen presence. Sometimes when we look for you, O God, we cannot see you. The clouds of life, the mists of doubt make you hard to find. Yet we trust that you are always there.

It’s dusk now,

The mountain still towers over us. The deepening shades of the sky begin to absorb this powerful, majestic, site.

There is a stillness in the air. In the stillness, beneath the mountain, we sense your presence in our lives.

Be with us, Creator God.

Help us find you in the glories of your world,

in the moments of terror in our lives,

in our vulnerable times and when we feel lost in a fog.

Be with us as we climb the paths before us,

trusting that your love and your care will be with us wherever we may go.

When we lift up our eyes to the mountain,

let us find you there, may your help be always with us.

Amen.

The Spirit of Justice

I had an opportunity to offer the invocation at the beginning of a vigil at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 9, 2012, marking the first anniversary of the passage of the bill that severely limited the collective bargaining rights of public employees. The vigil was organized by We Are Wisconsin. About 250 people gathered on the Capitol steps at the State Street entrance, many of them holding battery-run candles glowing in the darkness. Here's a link to a video.


How many were here last February as this Wisconsin uprising began?

How many were here last March as the crowds grew and the demands for justice grew louder?

When you were here, could you feel a kind of spirit moving through these crowds, a spirit that took us out of our own little worlds and connected us to something much bigger?

Could you feel a spirit of community?
Could you feel a spirit of justice?

For those of us in faith traditions, there was a bit of God in those spirits.

Now let me ask you something else?

Remember the many groups that have come together here seeking justice?

The firefighters and the farmers?
The teachers and the prison guards?
The police officers and the students?
The retirees and the nurses?

The list goes on and on.

In the midst of all those groups at each of the rallies last year were people from many of the different faith traditions that make up the spiritual quilt of Wisconsin.

Many of us carried this sign, a sign that says “All religions believe in justice.”

It’s a theme that runs through the Hebrew scriptures and it's a theme that runs through the words of Jesus. It’s part of a core Muslim pillar of sharing wealth. It’s within the Buddhist concept of compassion.

For those like me who are in the Christian tradition, this is a season we call Lent, 40 days devoted to thinking about how we can better live out what we believe before we celebrate the hope that comes with Easter. For some, it is a time of fasting, of giving things up.

But it’s also a time to remember the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah – the very prophet Jesus quoted when he defined his mission as bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed.

Isaiah is channeling God in this passage:

 "This is the kind of fast day I'm after:
   to break the chains of injustice,
   to get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
   to free the oppressed, to cancel debts.

"If you get rid of unfair practices,
  if you quit blaming victims,
  if you quit gossiping about other people's sins,
  if you are generous with the hungry
  and if start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
then your lives will begin to glow in the darkness.

“You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.”

We’ve been through a very tough 12 months in Wisconsin,
a year when the rights of workers have been diminished,
the rights of voters have been restricted,
the needs of the poor have been trampled.

We’ve been through a year of blaming victims
and a lack of generosity of spirit or of money.
We have seen the fabric of our Wisconsin community frayed around the edges.

So if you are so inclined, would you join your voices with me in this prayer? Could you answer each line with “Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

Divine Spirit, we call you by many names, but we join together in seeking your presence among us this evening.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

We gather here holding in our hearts those who have suffered so much during the past year, those whose incomes were diminished, whose jobs were eliminated, whose future is more uncertain.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

We gather here holding in our hearts those who have felt the sting of animosity from elected leaders, from amplified voices, from fellow citizens.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

We gather here holding in our hearts the pain of friendships shattered, families divided, close bonds broken in the midst of the turmoil of this past year.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

And we gather here holding in our hearts hope for a better future, a place where everyone’s labor will be honored and rewarded, where everyone’s place as a citizen will be respected and protected, where no one will lack a place to sleep or a meal to eat or the medical care they need.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

Give us the wisdom and the courage to restore what has been ruined,
to rebuild and to renovate our democracy,
to make the community livable again.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

Say it again.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

Say it again.
“Let the light of justice glow in the darkness.”

May it be so.

NCEW makes me a Life Member

The National Conference of Editorial Writers, a group I have been part of since 1984 and that I served as president in 2002, this year honored me with a Life Membership. It practical terms, it means I don't have to pay fees for future conventions. But what is more important is the recognition from my friends and colleagues in the opinion-writing world of journalism.

This text is posted on the NCEW web site, but it is in the members-only section, so I am posting it here. Below the text is my response. Thanks to all who made this possible.

From the NCEW Convention, Sept. 17, 2011, in Indianapolis, IN.

This year’s honoree as an NCEW Life Member is gentle man, but also a man with firm, well-grounded convictions he never shies from defending. During his fourteen years as an opinion writer, he wrote with style and argued with substance. His soft spoken approach belies the intensity of his convictions.


He well understands that a key role for opinion writers is to help those he serves to understand and deal with the complexities life presents. His principled approach to his chosen profession made him a valuable guide and his graceful style fortified with persuasive substance made him an effective and respected writer and editor.


His understanding of and loyalty to his home state and its capital was at the heart of his long and productive career.


But his leadership was not confined by the Wisconsin state borders. He brought his skills to the NCEW as a committee member, board member, Foundation trustee and, ultimately, as president. During his service on the NCEW board and during the years he held the ladder offices leading to his presidency, he was always the voice of reason, steadiness and creativity. He cares deeply about our profession and about how NCEW can make its members better at their craft.


His leadership leading up to and during NCEW’s management changes set him apart. He was sensitive to the needs of all involved and yet deeply committed to the need for NCEW to move to a new level of operation. His skill and grace were nowhere more apparent than during that difficult transition.


When he decided to shift his devotion to "speak truth to power" in a different venue as a minister of his faith, a newspaper colleague wrote that he was "one of those men who actually practice what they preach." His NCEW colleagues know the truth of that.


Therefore to Phil Haslanger, with appreciation and deep and great affection, NCEW renders its most significant honor, Life Membership, for all that he has done and all that he will continue to do.



I could not be at the convention to receive the award, so Neil Heinen of WISC-TV in Madison arranged for me to do a video response. Here's what I said:


Why, oh why, you might ask, when I should be with you in Indianapolis to be totally surprised at this wonderful award am I instead sitting in Neil Heinen’s TV studio talking to you in disembodied form?


While you are letting that dinner settle in and awaiting what I know will be a delightful presentation by Joel Pett, I am on an airplane somewhere between North Carolina and Wisconsin. I’m now on the board for the Religion News Service, run by the Religion Newswriters Association, and that meeting is still going on. I also need to be back for that church thing I do on Sunday mornings where we have some special things happening tomorrow.


I’m really sorry not to be with you tonight, especially when I get this incredible honor from my friends and colleagues at NCEW. I know how significant this award is – not because I get a price break on future conventions (that’s nice, of course) but because it represents a recognition by some of the most important people in my professional life of my connection to this amazing organization.


Since I joined NCEW in 1984, it has been the primary journalism organization that has nourished me professionally. It was an NCEW seminar in San Antonio in 1995 that introduced me to the possibilities of using the Internet as a new way of extending the opinion role of journalism. The insights I gained there led me to be part of the team that moved my own paper in Madison, The Capital Times, into what we then called cyberspace. That experience continues to enrich my work in connecting people, whether through journalism or the church world I now inhabit.


It was through NCEW that I had the chance to be part of a group having lunch with Ronald Reagan at the White House, with Kofi Annan at the United Nations, to go deep inside Cheyenne Mountain where the nation’s air defense system was headquartered and to share a seat on the King Kong ride at Universal Studios with a couple of Pulitzer Prize winners. There is no end to NCEW convention stories, of course, but you can hear some of those from the folks you are sitting with tonight.


Mostly, I just want to say thanks for this honor, thanks for all NCEW has done for me professionally and personally over the years, for the many friendships that have grown out of this organization. I’m glad that over the years, I could play a role in helping lead it through some times of transition. My best wishes to all of you as you navigate the choppy waters of journalism in 2011 and help create a future where informed opinion can emerge from the cacophony of public life to strengthen our democracy.

Atheism out of the shadows

“The new atheism has been more than matched by the new sectarianism,” author and civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer told the nation’s religion journalists today.

Kaminer was part of a provocative panel called “Atheism Revisited” at the annual conference of the Religion Newswriters Association, help this year in Durham, N.C.

Todd Stiefel, head of the Stiefel Freethought Foundation based in Raleigh, N.C., has as his goal to more than match the sectarian forces in America.

While acknowledging the deep prejudice in the U.S. that faces anyone who proclaims they do not believe in God or doubt the existence of a divine being, Stiefel is part of a new civil rights movement hoping to build on the increase in Americans who stand outside any of the traditional religious currents.

“We need the same passion as other movements for equality,” he said.

For New Testament scholar and best selling author Bart Ehrman, who teaches at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the story is more personal than societal. Still, he told how his public movement from evangelical Christianity to agnosticism has narrowed his job options, gotten him disinvited from speaking engagements and hurt the sales of textbooks he has written.

The fact that a panel on atheism was at center stage for a group whose stock in trade is writing about religion for mainstream media was notable in itself. There is a recognition that there are good stories to be told among those who reject belief as well as those who embrace it and recognition that one of the trends in American society is an increase in those trying to increase the acceptance of those who reject religion.

Kaminer, who writes for The Atlantic Monthly among many other publications, said she traces the growth in the free-thought movement to what she called “the faith-based attacks on Sept. 11.” She said that people saw “the potential viciousness in religion” and rejected religion (although she acknowledged that for religious people, the reaction was to blame people for adhering to the “wrong” religion.

She talked about the therapeutic approach that seems to have dominated a lot of the discussions of atheism in recent years. Atheist talk about “coming out,” about forming “support groups,” and self discovery and self expression. “It’s been a highly successful movement from a therapeutic standpoint,” she said. “From a political and legal perspective, it’s been less successful and the therapeutic approach may even be counterproductive.”

She said that the free-thought movement has increased the visibility of atheists, but not their clout. “It is inconceivable for anyone to run for high office as an atheist,” she noted.

But Stiefel would like to change that, saying his mission is “seeking full equality for all free-thinkers.”

He told stories of groups rejecting charitable donations from atheist groups, of proselytizing by some military chaplains, of hiring discrimination against non-believers. He told of families torn apart when a son or daughter “comes out” as an atheist or agnostic.  And he told how the fastest growth among agnostics and atheists is among those 18-25.

Stiefel also talked of plans to boost the public visibility of the movement – community service projects, celebrity endorsements and a Reason Rally next March 24 on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Ehrman talked about his own journey from a “hard-core, borderline-fundamentalist Christian” to one whose doubts about God increased as he explored the issue of suffering and where God fit in the midst of life’s tragedies.

Making a moral pitch on the economy

It does not take a lot of insight for a political scientist to say that the economy will be the most salient issue in the 2012 presidential election. But exactly how that plays out – and how religious factors affect the equation – provided good material for John Green and Laura Olson.

One important variable may be how the candidates cast the debate over the economy in moral terms.

Green is one of the nation’s pre-eminent students of the connections between religion and politics. A professor at the University of Akron, he is also a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Olson is a professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. They spoke at the annual conference of the Religion Newswriters Association on Friday in Durham, N.C.

Olson argued that the real task for both President Obama and whoever his Republican challenger is will be to mobilize the religious middle in this country – a group that constitutes about a third of the electorate.

Will the budget debate be framed around the morality of not leaving the next generation to pay the bills of this generation? Or will it be framed around protecting the least of those in society?

There are moral values underlying both of those appeals, but they have their touchstones in different religious groups.

Catholics, for instance, while identified most often with issues around abortion, may well resonate with talk about social justice, a concept deeply imbedded in the teachings they grew up with, a concept that is often framed as part of a consistent ethic of life.

Many Protestant denominations, too, have emphasized Jesus’ message of caring for others as central to their faith. And yet there are also strains of not passing on one’s burdens to others, of not forcing charity but seeing it as a voluntary good that underscores some of the conservative approaches to the economy.

Olson was one the one who articulated the moral dimensions of the budget debate most thoroughly in this discussion. Olson cautioned that part of the needle that candidates have to thread on these issues is that Americans are quite ambivalent on expressions of faith by public leaders. They want leaders to be “moral” but not too “sectarian.”

So a lot of the language around issues like the economy will be framed broadly, but with an appeal to moral values that candidates hope will make sense to the voters they are targeting.

Muslims in America: From fear to the future

The early stories are about fear.

Americans fear about Islam after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Muslims fear about what life holds for them in this nation.

The current stories are about crossing bridges, tentatively at times, but with some sense that there may be something better on the other side. Students of different faiths share service projects.  Adults begin to share their beliefs.

The stories of the future grow out of the histories of other beleaguered religious groups in this country – Catholics, Jews, Mormans.

The stories were told in many ways by many voices during a day-long seminar today at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. They were told by professors, by religious leaders, by students, by journalists.

The gathering was for members of the Religion Newswriters Association as it began its 67th annual conference. The session was hosted by Duke’s Islamic Studies Center.

First, the fear.

Eboo Patel, the founder and leader of the Interfaith Youth Corps, a dynamic voice for crossing those bridges that separate faith traditions, recalled the signs he saw at protests: “All I know about Islam I learned on Sept. 11.” They were signs reflecting the fear of Americans who knew little about Islam and who let the attackers who not only hijacked airplanes but who also hijacked Islam define this long, rich and varied religious tradition.

The fear is reflected more recently in signs opposing the use of Shariah law in America, the efforts in 16 states to ban the use of Shariah law – efforts based in a fear stoked up by those who would demonize Muslims with no basis in reality.

The fear was reflected in the experience of Nona Sherif as she arrived for classes two years ago at Duke and met a woman on her way to the bookstore who grabbed the cross around her neck and held it out towards Sherif with a look of terror on her face.

The fear was reflected in the phone call Patel received from his mother after efforts to build a Muslim community center in New York City burst in to a spasm of anti-Muslim feeling across the nation. She told Patel his kids’ names – Zane and Kalil – sounded to Islamic and he ought to Americanize them before it was too late.

Charles Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offered some facts as an antidote for Americans’ fears.

He recently published a book called The Missing Martyrs: Why Are There So Few Muslim Terrorists. He talked about the data he had gathered. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been 175 arrests in this country for Muslims suspected or convicted of acts of terror. That’s not quite 18 a year … and some of those were arrested as they were headed to foreign lands like Somalia to join terrorist groups there.

Kurzman’s point is not that there are not threats from terrorists, but they are not anywhere near as overwhelming as the fear industry would have us believe. And, important in the context of this day’s discussion, they represent an infinitesimal fraction of the Muslims in this country.

Imam Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke, does not deny that there is what he called “the cancer of Islamic terrorism” in this world. But he called for a better understanding of the roots of that terrorism not in the theology of Islam but in the political and economic actions of major world powers.

“Radicals, extremists, are not products of Islamic theology or Islamic societies,” he said. “They are products of deeply broken societies, products of American foreign policy, products of greedy economic policies.”

When someone challenged him on citing American foreign policy as a factor, he asked that as an American Muslim, he be given the same opportunity to call for a better foreign policy that other Americans have.

He also told one of the most compelling stories of the day. Last month, he was in Afghanistan, where for the first time in his life, he came face to face with Muslims who believed it is their duty to kill Christians and Jews.

“I went ballistic,” he told me later. He said he pulled a Koran out of his pocket and argued verse by verse with them. He was so shaken by the experience, he now plans to go back to Afghanistan every summer to build programs to counter that kind of ideology.

“There is a form of Islamic theology that prepares the ground for violence,” he acknowledged. “That theology is reinforced through certain foreign policies and economic policies. People who are not religious at all suddenly find resonance in that theology. It will take global efforts to eradicate this poison,” he said in explaining his hopes for this project in Afghanistan.

But in the midst of the fear, there are efforts in this country to find the bridges that will ease the fear.

Meredith Rahman, a sophomore at Duke studying French and biology, noted that the head of the Muslim Student Association on campus is not a Muslim. This is a bridge.

The other students all talked about the pressure they feel as Muslims in a largely non-Muslim environment to explain their faith, to act in proper ways, and yet they also described that as an opportunity to help shape a more pluralistic society.

Patel calls this an example of how Muslims in America are moving from “the architecture of the bubble to the architecture of the bridge.”

He noted that Muslim immigrants who came to this country initially focused on building their own institutions, on staying relatively separate from the dominant culture, much like Catholics and Jews did as their communities took root in America. That was the bubble.

The reaction to Sept. 11 changed that. Muslims came to realize that they had to engage the wider community, they had to become part of the American experience. Just as Catholics and Jews and Mormans faced deep-rooted prejudice at one time and now are part of the American mainstream, he sees that happening to Muslims as well.

“We are going to be part of the story of American opportunity and expansion,” Patel said.

(Patel and other speakers also cautioned that there are two very different Muslim experiences in the U.S. – the immigrant Muslim community that is getting most of the public attention, and the large African-American Muslim community, that has lived a very different experience in this country. He acknowledged the absence of the African-American Muslim view on this day.)

A few days with the nation's religion writers

Greetings from Durham, N.C.

I'm here with journalists from around the country who write about religion for the nation's newspapers, magazines, web sites, etc. The group is called the Religion Newswriters Association and it's one of the fine professional associations for journalists.

Today, we'll explore "Muslims in America: The Next 10 Years" in a pre-conference program at Duke University. One of the speakers willl be Eboo Patel, whose book, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American the Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, is on deck for our next Friday morning book group at Memorial UCC.

Other things coming up - tonight, the author of a new book on teen sexuality; Friday, sessions on the new evangelical mega-churches that serve many sites simultaneously and are breaking new ground in the use of social media tools; a panel on religion in the 2012 elections; a briefing called "Youth in Crisis: What Everyone Should Know About Growing Up Gay;" how journalists can use social networking effectively.

Then on Saturday, breakfast with the family that inspired HBO's "Big Love" series; reports on studies of changes in American congregations; on the depth and complexity of America's religious landscape and a new study on the demographics of American Muslims. There will also be a provocative panel called "Atheism Revisited."

It promises to be a very rich few days. Stay tuned.

Voices for social justice in a divided state

On Aug. 18, 2011, I was part of a group of religious leaders who unveiled a statement drawing on our faith traditions to address the breach in the social covenant in Wisconsin during the past eight months. Here are my comments at the news conference. Afterwards, a group of us took the statement to Gov. Scott Walker's office as well as to the legislative leaders of both parties in the Assembly and the Senate.

As a pastor at a local congregation, I get several calls a week from folks who need financial help to keep from being evicted or need help paying overdue utility bills or people feeling domestic violence who need a security deposit for a new place to live. As pastors, we experience the issues facing people on the margins of society in a very personal way.

We're gathered here at Grace Episcopal Church, which hosts one of the primary shelters for homeless men in the Madison area. The congregation I serve helps with meals at the Community Meal Program and gathers items for food pantries. All of us here look for ways to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, care for the sick. And these are important actions.

But we also know that there are conditions in our society that make things harder for people on the margins. So we also look at issues of justice. In the United Church of Christ, when someone is baptized, they promise to follow in the way of Jesus, "to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice." Seeking justice is a core part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

That's why we make our voices heard on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, the oppress in public debates. Our statement on the social covenant looks back at how that has frayed in the first half of this year. But we are also looking forward, signaling that our voices will continue to be raised on behalf of those being left out. Our statement focuses on the state level, but we know this has an impact on the county and city as well. Scott McDonell from the Dane County Board is here. He and his colleagues need to keep the needs of the most vulnerable in mind as they approach this year's budget.

We know that in a democracy, elections are the heart of the democratic process. We know in Wisconsin over the last year through a series of elections that the people of this state are closely divided on the direction this take is taking. We also know that a democracy is more than voting. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution spells out the many forms of democracy - freedom of religion, which means our voices have a place in the public square, recognizing that other faiths, even other understandings of Christianity, also have a place in this debate. The First Amendment also talks about freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. We've seen a lot of that around this Square in the last eight months. And it talks about the right to petition our government.

Now we are going to walk over to the Capitol and petition our government as we deliver copies of our statement on the social covenant to the governor and the leaders of the Legislature. We hope you will join us in being voices for those who are most harshly affected by the actions of the last several months.

UCC folks "imagine what's possible"

There was sand everywhere at the national gathering of the United Church of Christ this past week.

There was a small sandy beach at the foot of the stage that was the platform for worship. There was sand in the bright red cabanas at the far ends of the assembly hall. There was the expanse of a sandy desert projected on the screen across the back of the stage. And, of course, there was sand on the real beaches of the Gulf shore along the coastline near Tampa.

This gathering is called a General Synod - the 28th such gathering since the UCC was formed in 1957. It is the decision-making body for our denomination, but it is also a place to connect with the many and varied segments of the UCC, to delve into vital social issues and to get new energy in those times when we feel we are just wandering on the hot sand.

"Imagine What's Possible" was the theme of this gathering. As the event moved toward it's conclusion, the images of sand gave way to images of water - an ocean on the screen as well as fresh branches dipped in water that was sprinkled over the crowd at the closing worship as we sang about "crashing waters at creation" and "living water, never ending" that can "drench our dryness, make us whole."

This was a place where younger clergy could stage an unannounced "flash mob" communion service in the lobby of the convention center.

This was a place where Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts could challenge the crowd to live in such a way that when the news media find them, “they find you living in authentic faith, a faith in service to humankind. Make sure they find you up to your knees in the muck of the nation’s troubles, working and praying for changes that other people deem impossible.”

This was a place where delegates could live out those words when the left the hall to join tomato farm workers in a protest outside a nearby Publix grocery store seeking a one-cent increase in what they pay for a pound of tomatoes so that the workers could receive their first increase in wages in 30 years.

This was a place where one of our new leaders, J. Bennett Guess who was elected to head Local Church Ministries, said that the measure of our success is neither membership nor money given, but rather mission. “McDonald’s doesn’t tell you how many stories they have,” Guess said, “they don’t tell you how many employees they have. They say what matters in a service industry: billions and billions served. The church needs to learn to do the same.”

One way the UCC is going to do that is with a major initiative this fall called Mission 1 – using the first 11 days of November to focus on feeding the hungry and confronting food-related injustice. We’ll be exploring that more at Memorial UCC in the months ahead.

During the Synod, we adopted a number of resolutions highlighting some of the difficult issues in our world.

The battle for rare minerals in Congo that are used in our cell phones and computers has brought horrible oppression on the people of that nation. The UCC said it would advocate on behalf of the people of Congo.

The threats to gay and lesbian people in many nations put their lives at risk and the UCC promised to fight against that.

The suspicion of Muslims in this country festers and the UCC promised to work against such hostility.

There were resolutions on mindful eating, adoptions for gay and lesbian couples, the nuclear test ban treaty, political prisoners in Puerto Rico.

We also took a step toward smoother relationships among Christian denominations by adopting a common statement on baptism shared by Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church. This should remove an obstacle that sometimes gets in the way when people change denominations.

And within the UCC, we streamlined our governing structure so there is a smaller but still widely representative governing board and fewer barriers between the various agencies that work within the UCC.

The leaders of the UCC sketched out the three "core values" they see within our denomination - continuing testament, extravagant welcome for all, and changing lives.

We had powerful worship services throughout the week, but it was the ending of the final worship service that really offered an image of hope for our future. As Rev. Geoffrey Black, the general minister and president of the UCC, took the stage, he invited the teens and young adults to join him on and around the stage. They came by the hundreds. Then the teens offered a blessing to Black and the four other top leaders of the UCC (three of them newly elected) and the officers, in turn, offered a blessing to the young people.

Then music and dancing broke out, the young people took the branches and sprinkled the crowd with water as a reminder of baptism and finally, standing alone once again on the stage, Geoffrey Black sent us all out to do God’s work in our world, to carry the light to all the earth.

Woodstock for Preachers - final notes

After a week of hearing some amazing preachers and musicians, participating in a wide variety of worship, sharing stories with colleagues and gathering materials to bring back home, a few final notes:

Barbara Lundblad, preaching professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, offered a rich menu of options for thinking about Ordinary Time – that time between Pentecost and Advent. It does not really need to be so ordinary, she said, offering great opportunities to explore the stories and themes that really define the realities of every day life for Christians in some ways even more than the big feasts do.

Brian McClaren took us on a journey of spiritual development, from simplistic to complex, from perplexed to harmonious. And then he led us to scripture texts and spiritual practices that allow us to sink into each of those stages.

Diana Butler Bass offered a provocative look at “Christianity After Religion” (which happens to be the title of her next book that will be out next February). The key idea from her two-hour presentation – belief, behavior and belonging are the ways people enact religion and those are all in flux. We are creating the new future.

And since the end of the world is coming on Saturday, musician Nate Houge suggested we had all made a wise decision to spend our continuing ed money early in the year this year.

Actually, I think it was a good idea even if the sun rises again on Sunday.

Falling, dying and then what?

Death was in the air as Barbara Brown Taylor talked at the opening session of the Festival of Homiletics last Monday.

The death of a grain of wheat in the ground.

The death of a man on a cross.

The death we fear in our own lives.

The death of churches as we once knew them.

“It’s hard to preach the Gospel to people who are scared to death of dying,” Taylor said. She’s a noted author, teacher, preacher.

She talked of how people come to pastors looking for the Jesus who can give them a pass on “the full catastrophe.” Then they meet the Jesus who said “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

That’s not a message calculated to increase church membership, Brown noted.

And then pastors themselves start focusing on a message that will bring to people to their church. But then, Brown added, “it’s hard to preach self-preservation is the presence of the cross.”

This led to her key observation: “No one is much interested in learning to fall. We all want to rise.”

So then maybe we learn how to find salvation in the falling.

She talked of being at the bedside of someone dying. Death is very literal in this case. And yet as the family gathers around, stories are shared, good-byes are said, hands are held in prayer, touches are exchanged, there is life emerging from the death.

She talked of a family devastated by the falling economy. No more meals out, cable television gone, no trips to the movie theater. Instead, there are books read together, games played on the living room floor, meals around the kitchen table. Is it what they were used to, what they had hoped for? No. Was there high anxiety? Yes. And was new life emerging out of the falling? Yes.

“There are worse things than falling on the ground that can happen to a grain of wheat,” she suggested. The grain of wheat dies and gives birth. Jesus knew about bread. Jesus knew about life.

Death was in the air. And so was life.

Trust this, Brown suggested. When you are falling, “God will know what to do with you next.”

Or as Anthony Bailey said as he thanked Brown for her words, “We are all waiting to fall into the waiting arms of God.”

Speak boldly, listen deeply

For Walter Brueggemann, the message was one of speaking boldly the things preachers often feel they cannot say.

For Krista Tippett, the message was one of listening more carefully, more deeply, to those who may disagree with us.

Both are vital messages to people engaged in the very public role of preaching in the nations’ congregations. They came in very different voices at the Festival of Homiletics this week in Minneapolis.

Brueggemann looks like what I imagine a Hebrew prophet would look like – tall, white hair (what hair there is), grumbly voice, piercing eyes. But he also has a sense of humor not often associated with those prophets. And he has a resume as a scripture scholar and professor that includes more than 50 books.

And as befits someone who looks and sounds like a prophet, today he used the story of Jeremiah, that dour profit of Israel, as his model for what happens to preachers when they are unable to speak hard truths. It tears at their guts, he said.

Or perhaps George Carlin and his seven words that could not be said on broadcast television should be the model, he suggested.

“George Carlin is not the last one who has a list of the unsayable,” Brueggemann said. “There is, for instance … you.”

It’s hard for today’s preachers to say that the war is stupid, that capitalism has failed in its excessive greed, that oil spill is a measure of Western technological hubris, that we have forfeited our democracy to a secret government protecting the wealthy. They can’t say that parents racing to get their kids to soccer practice and dance lessons will never win the rat race or that we can’t welcome the immigrant.

“It takes so much energy to remember what not to say,” noted Brueggemann. “What we cannot say (echoing Carlin) is that the body is fragile and smelly and cannot be otherwise. What we cannot say is that our body politic has the smell of death about it.”

OK, that’s harsh. And Brueggemann was quick to note that as a tenured professor, he has a lot more latitude to be harsh than the average pastor in the pulpit – what he called “such a dangerous place as you are every week.”

Then again, Brueggemann suggested, “you will get your self back in telling the truth before the authorities.”

Tippett is a soft-spoken radio host whose public radio program, “On Being” (formerly “Speaking of Faith”), explored people’s beliefs in a thoughtful, respectful way. And she is fascinated by how that kind of listening can lead not to agreement but at least to a deeper respect across ideological and theological lines.

“Listening is part of truth telling,” she said, reflecting on what Brueggemann had said. But it sure has a different feel to it.

She quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and martyr during the rise and fall of Nazism who said, “Christians are talking when they should be listening.” She noted that in the American political landscape in recent years, Christians have not been famous listeners.” (And those doing the speaking don’t have quite the same views as Brueggemann.)

So in an era when the pace of change has forced fundamental questions about life and relationships and authority and faith to the forefront, Christians have centuries of resources to draw on – but that requires asking questions with deep meaning and listening with sincere interest to the variety of answers.

“There is something redemptive and life giving that comes from asking better questions,” Tippett said, with the experience of one who has asked questions for years. The task for preachers, she said, is to “help people live the questions until they can be answered in their fullness.”

She talked about her conversation with Frances Kissling, the woman who for many years led Catholics for Choice. Now in retirement, Kissling is working on creating new relationships with her political opposites.

Two key questions Kissling asks:
What can I see that is good in the position of the other?
What troubles me in my own position?

This is not to reach agreement, Tippett noted. It is to understand better what the other – and you – believe. And a task for the church is to create the safe spaces where those kinds of conversations can take place. It goes back to that old Christian practice of hospitality.

Speak boldly, said Brueggemann, even about things you think you are forbidden from saying. Listen deeply, said Tippett, even to those you disagree with sharply. For both, a care with words and an honesty of spirit, a vulnerability of self and a tending to the soul are critical.

Gospel shouts and the blues

Notes from the Festival of Homiletics this week in Minneapolis.

The blues notes from pianist Kwasi Kena were still echoing in the room when Rev. Otis Moss III strode to the pulpit. He’s the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and one of the most dynamic young African-American voices of our era.

The scripture text he read was a bit obscure – a passage from the Jewish prophet Ezra about the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. A new generation of Levites – special temple workers – were appointed to oversee the construction. When the foundation was done, priests in their vestments and the Levites with cymbals sang songs of praise and gave thanks to God. But, wrote Ezra, the older generation “who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.”

Or as Otis Moss said, “they could not distinguish between the Gospel shout and the blues moment.”

He talked about the role of the blues in Africa-American culture, whether in music or food or comedy, where ‘joy is always married to sorrow.” He talked about the “blue note” – waking from addiction lying in your own vomit, the son returning from two tours in Iraq only to be murdered on the streets of Chicago.

“If you want to learn to worship, you must learn how to weep,” Moss said. “If you want to get to the joy of Easter Sunday, you’d better deal with the pain of Good Friday.”

Moss knows how to play with words, to create rhymes and construct words to keep his audience engaged and laughing. But he kept coming back to the notion that God is a God who knows the blues. If we are true to our history as human beings, we too have to include the blues in our Gospel songs.

World, church, sanity, insanity

Notes from the Festival of Homiletics this week in Minneapolis.

At first, it sounded like they had very divergent views on the “world” versus the “sacred,” these two preaching superstars.

Tom Long, a Presbyterian who teaches at Candler Seminary in Atlanta, talked about the tensions between sanity and insanity, how those who think they are sane may in fact be part of the demonic insanity of the world.

Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian who teaches at Piedmont College in Georgia, warned against pitting the “world” against the “church.” As she told the 1,700 or so preachers at others gathered here for the Festival of Homiletics, “watch your language, especially when you are talking about the world.”

Long was reflected on the story in Mark’s Gospel of Jesus driving demons from an insane man into a vast heard of sheep that plunged to their death. He talked about the “apocalyptic combat between the holy and the demonic” that runs through Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus, adding that often “it’s hard to tell the difference between the holy and the demonic.”

The religious bureaucrats of Jesus’ day, after all, “checked their DSM4s and said, yes, he’s insane all right. Not even CPE could help him.” (Acronym decoder: Diagnostic Statistical Manual and Clinical Pastoral Education)

Long talked about the 19th century composer and pianist Franz Liszt, who was a rock star in his era, then confounded people when he threw himself into a lifestyle modeled on Jesus. As he was dying, writing a piece of music that Long described as moving from frenzy to shalom, Liszt’s son-in-law, Richard Wagner, said to Liszt’s daughter, “I think you father is insane.”

Who was more insane, asked Long? The musician wrestling with the deepest questions of life or the one whose martial music and anti-Semitic writings would become favorites of Adolph Hitler?

While Long was not exactly casting the world against the sacred, BBT worried that too many preachers do just that – including an earlier version of herself. She described the transformation she went through that led to her book, An Altar in the World,” where she went beyond the church-based use of tangible items – water, bread – to the patterns of church life that led her to see the sacred in filling a cat dish with water or eating a cucumber sandwich at her desk.

Instead of pitting the world against the church, the flesh against the spirit, she wondered what happened between the creation stories of Genesis and the line in the Epistle of James that says, “whoever wishes to become a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

What happened, she said, was Caesar. The Roman emperor defined himself as God and Jesus created a world in opposition to Caesar’s world. This was not the same as calling flesh bad. Jesus, after all was the word made flesh, the incarnate God.

BBT talked of finding the sacred in the line at the post office as a little girl kissed her wounded hand, in the chemotherapy room where she sat with her father, in the walks and touches and thirsts that fill her life.

Watch your language, she told the crowd. God is in the world.