April 2007 - Posts
Ivy Bush alumnus
Marvin is too modest to post this on his blog, but he was on the front page of today's
Salisbury Post. His church had a service of healing to remember victims of the shootings at Virginia Tech. It was a good article, and I'm so glad to see a good article about a mainline church in our newspaper. Marvin has posted the
transcript of his homily over at Avdat.
You scored as Keith McIlwain. You are Keith McIlwain! You abhor all violence, except the savagery of the gridiron.
Lorna Koskela | | 58% | Keith McIlwain | | 58% | Art Ruch | | 50% | Gavin Richardson | | 33% | Allan Bevere | | 33% | Abi Carlisle-Wilke | | 25% | Jonathon Norman | | 25% | John the Methodist | | 17% | Theresa Coleman | | 8% |
Which Methoblogger Are You?
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As one commenter observes, my friend Ken "always knows the right words to say." Here are some of
Ken's thoughts from his blog,
Bear Witness to the Love of God in this World:
Of course, there is the event---the shootings, coming surely from an irrational motive. There is next the media frenzy, tragedy communicated for corporate profit through emotional manipulation. There is the search for a narrative that hooks the culture: in this case, who is to blame? The head of security? The school president? And there are later the lingering questions: Why do some perish and others survive? And what could possibly have been the motive? I find myself limiting my consumption of television coverage of the event to no more than a few minutes a day. I appreciate President Bush's presence in Blacksburg, and his comments, which I heard on radio. If you read this blog, you will know that I am not a fan of President Bush, but he really is at his best when he expresses compassion. Had he functioned in this way after Katrina, life would be very different in our country. I have convictions about the manufacture of the weapons that were used in this incident, but now is not the time for this debate (again, the scary thing here is that I agree with President Bush). That time will come later.There's no doubt that this was a terribly painful tragedy, especially for the families, students, and faculty at Virginia Tech. There is something, however, bothersome about all the media coverage, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Ken hints at this. I think it has something to do with the assumption that our lives are so boring that we need a tragic story like this to stir our emotions. That last sentence makes no sense, I know, but think about it, and maybe you can find a better way for me to express that thought.
I have not watched much
tv coverage of the event, but whenever I do, I keep thinking, "yes, but they go through something like this every day in Iraq," but I know
now's not the time to make that argument either.
Now's the time to mourn, to remember, to offer any encouragement we can to the members of the Va. Tech community.
The Lord is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed!*********
We're off to Florida this week for Spring Break.
Have a great Fifty Days!
Note: this is for anyone who might be a delegate to Western North Carolina Annual Conference of the UMC this summer. I am not a member of the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA), but I support much of their work, and I do go to some of their meetings, especially when they have an interesting speaker. The speaker for this year's luncheon meeting will be Tom Sanders. He is going to speak about the war in Iraq. The MFSA Luncheon will be at 12:30pm on Thursday, June 7 at Lambuth Inn-- The International Room. The cost of the lunch is $8 with box lunches. Please send RSVP’s to Shelly Webb @
webbsf@brevard.edu . Below is a bio for Tom Sanders:
Tom Sanders grew up in Asheville and holds an AB in History from Duke University (summa *** laude) and a PhD in Religious Studies from Columbia University. He was graduate assistant to the noted theologian and political thinker, Reinhold Niebuhr. For 9 years he taught Religious Studies at Brown University where he became a tenured Associate Professor and did extensive research and writing on religious change in Latin America.
In 1968 he changed fields completely, becoming Associate for Latin America of Universities Field Staff International, a group of specialists on developing countries sponsored by a consortium of American universities. In this position for 20 years he wrote in-depth articles on Latin American countries, especially Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, and visited annually the supporting universities, lecturing and giving short courses. After 1988 he taught Political Science and International Studies at Connecticut, Tulsa, and Earlham. He has authored or co-authored 5 books and over 160 articles.
In 1992 he retired in Asheville. Aware that the Muslim world was poorly understood by Americans, he dedicated much of his time to studying the politics, economics, ethnicity and other characteristics of predominantly Muslim countries. He has visited many of these countries, Turkey at least 10 times, and taught himself Turkish. He has also studied Arabic twice in Cairo.
He has taught in the College for Seniors, UNCA, for 12 years. He is a frequent teacher and speaker in Western North Carolina on Islam, the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Sooo, according to
this article from United Methodist News Service, the attorney for the United Methodist Church is warning churches to stay out of politics. Our primary mission, he says, is to make disciples for Jesus Christ, not get involved in politics. Churches can take stands on appropriate issues, just so long as they remain an “insubstantial part of their ministries.” Hmmm. Good thing William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day didn’t have lawyers like this.
Never mind that conservative churches have been doing this for years, and the IRS only noticed it when liberal churches in California started to get in on the act. I am not defending liberal or conservative churches when they endorse a particular candidate. Endorsing a particular candidate is just plain foolish, no matter what way you slice it, because you never know what a particular candidate will do in the future. But telling churches to stay out of politics? That betrays an impoverished understanding of the church AND politics.
John Howard Yoder reminded us that the ministry and community of Jesus Christ is itself a politics. The gospel radically redefines what we mean by “politics,” since the community and kingdom inaugurated by Jesus now set the standard for the ‘polis’ called church. When folks tell the church to stay out of politics, it usually means they have bought into the Enlightenment’s assumption that faith is private (it has to do with what we do in our hearts with God) and politics are public (having to do with the social networks in which all people share). The resurrection of Christ bursts the boundaries of categories like private and public, leaving them behind like the burial clothes that once bound him.
It’s bad enough when Caesar tells the church “stick to saving souls; leave the public work to me.” But when the church starts telling itself that, we risk losing something more important than our tax-exempt status. What will it profit us to gain the whole world of tax exemption, if we lose our soul? I fear that if we stay out of politics in order to keep the IRS happy, we are trading in our inheritance for a mess of porridge. There are worse things than losing our tax-exempt status. Accepting Caesar’s account of our social reality would be one of them. The ecclesiologies and epistemologies that go along with such accounts will produce churches that unfortunately rob themselves of the very resources they need to serve the world. I am certainly not asking the IRS to take away the church’s tax-exempt status, but neither do I want us to keep that status at the cost of losing our theological bearings.
Here’s a related question: do our lawyers tell us what our mission is allowed to be? Or do our bishops and theologians articulate our mission -- and then ask our lawyers to help us work out the details of carrying out that task? I know plenty of wonderful Christian lawyers. They make great servants of the church, and are often great Christian lay leaders. But it is their theological and spiritual vision that helps shape the church’s mission, not their legal expertise. Their legal expertise (which is often quite important) enters the conversation only after we have together sought out our vision of what it means to be church.
"All narratives that offer themselves as significant make us and others pay for our adherence to them. We seldom wish to acknowledge this, and we comfort ourselves with the lie that we can live our lives without harming those around us. But we are tied together too intimately for any such illusion to be sustained." -- Stanley Hauerwas,
Truthfulness and Tragedy, p. 12.
*****
A few weeks ago, I was making plans to go to the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, an ecumenical gathering of Christians from around the country who would worship at the National Cathedral on March 16, march to the white house, and there conduct a prayer vigil to voice the Christian hope for peace even in Iraq. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. Why not take our daughter with me?
She was excited for the opportunity. It would mean a chance to fly for the first time, to miss a day of school, to see her aunt and cousins, and in general to have a whirlwind of fun in 24 hours. She immediately took me up on the offer, but then later, she sighed, “But Daddy, I don’t want to get arrested.” “No problem, sweetheart, we won’t be getting arrested at all.” I didn’t bother explaining that there would be some there who probably would be getting arrested; I didn’t feel called to civil disobedience at this event, so there was no need troubling her mind with unnecessary burdens.
The day of the event finally came, but there was one surprise: the weather. We participated in a spirited worship service inside the National Cathedral, but then we were sent out into the cold, the snow, and the sleet to march almost four miles to the White House. Like the courageous father that I am, I promptly got in line to take the bus to the White House (still recovering from foot surgery, you know). I gave my daughter the option: want to ride on the bus with me or walk to the White House with your aunt? (We didn’t know at the time how bad the weather was outside). She decided she would rather walk with her cool aunt than ride with her embarrassing father.
Later that night, my toasty-warm bus arrived at the White House, where I waited for the parade of candle-clad protesters to make their grand entrance. When my daughter and I re-united under a big “Christian Peace Witness” sign, the tears were running down her cheeks: “Daddy, I’m c-c-c-cold. I’m freezing and my wet feet are turning blue. Take me home, Daddy, now!” She had walked almost four miles through the snow, ice, and wind to make a witness that I had encouraged her to make. Most of the marchers had not been bothered by the weather, but we were from the sunny South, and we only got to see snow on television. We certainly had not expected snow in Washington in the middle of March. Her tears flowing, her nose running, her hands shaking, we stayed only a few minutes at the White House before retreating to the safety of our hotel room.
I had just asked her to make sacrifices for something I believed in, a process I suppose that started when I had her baptized. "Lord," I prayed, "you know I can’t stand to see my daughter cry; don’t put me through this again any time soon. But if you have to, give me the wisdom to know that the cause I am making her sacrifice for is a worthy one."
Martin Luther said that your god is whatever you are willing to sacrifice your children for. I hope I will only sacrifice my daughter for the true god, not any idols.