This afternoon Sr Joan Chittester spoke to the 30+ people at the City of God Urban Ministry Conference in Washington DC. I took it all in from the front row and sat amazed for a couple of hours as Sr Joan laid out a prophetic program for the church in the 21st century. Today she was speaking largely to clergy, who make up the largest portion of the group here. I didn't know that Sr Joan was trained as a social psychologist in addition to her vocation as a Benedictine Sister. The range of her learning is broad and her knowledge of modern culture is deep. For those who have not had the pleasure to hear in person, she is down to earth, very energetic, blunt, funny, and slightly irreverent. She is also incredibly smart and exudes a practical spirituality that is at once compassionate, authentic, and cuts like a spear. She spoke fast and with intensity and gave her all for the two hours she was with us. It was very intense, demanding, and prophetic.
Her fundamental message to us, the clergy present, was not to minister in a vacuum. We live in a time of social collapse, but also of social renewal, she told us. This is obvious, of course, but she is firm that what is dying is simply making room for what will be born. She referenced Anthony F.C. Wallace on four stages of cultural renewal: 1) first there is individual stress; here individuals start questioning basic assumptions, in this case church teachings and rules, but do not share these thoughts in public; there is no community of questioning, just a kind of dis-ease; 2) the stress then becomes more widespread and the questioning becomes public in nature; groups form of like-minded people; in one study she worked on with church historian Martin Marty there was a point where liberal Lutherans were finding more in common with liberal Roman Catholics than with conservative Lutherans; this was an indicator many years ago that the uniformity of the church was breaking down; people were starting to listen in to televangelists and preferring them to their own local pastor or priest; 3) now people agree broadly that there is indeed a problem, but there is no consensus on what to do about it; some propose a hyper-traditionalism or a kind of nativism that looks back to a golden age, assuming that if we can do that we can hold on to the past that seems to be receding before us; the fault lies somewhere, probably in authority, perhaps the pastor or the council or other governing body (the national church, for example, or the national Bishop); 4) finally we begin the reconstruction of the new worldview, which is essentially a restructuring of the old institution in a new and vital form; we shed light on the old recognizing that it is the same Spirit at work taking on a new shape.
And who will finally arrive at the answer(s) to this dilemma (and drama) of social collapse? Those of us who are older but who also desire to help the church make this transition are the ones who ask the right questions and allow others to ask them as well. The problem with someone like myself and others like me is that I and others were initially formed in the old institution(s); therefore we carry lots of the old baggage. That puts us in the position of understanding the institution's problems but not in the best place to give the answers. The answers will come from the younger generations, who have left the old institution behind and are free of those forms and thought patterns. Someone like myself becomes a transitional figure, preparing the way for new and vital work ahead. The church is changing and it is sometimes painful. There is no doubt that our church socialization makes it difficult to see the future. Many of us still see the church as the place where spiritual things happen. We haven't always seen the larger world as the real parish. A "church" which, for example, doesn't have a building and all the adornments that a building gives us, including all the paraments, organ, etc. is next to impossible to imagine. We don't understand "church" without all of that. But at least part of the future may look somewhat like that. As far back as World War II Bonhoeffer wondered about such things after he considered the total failure of the institutional church under the Reich to fulfill its calling. Such are the ideas that Sr Joan asks us to think about.
I love the idea of "seeding the questions." I do see that as important, that and trying to breathe new life into old forms and rethink old images and stories of the faith. One thing I can say about Sr Joan. When it comes to thinking about older images and stories she is more than ready to relate them to the modern world with its injustice, greed, and violence. Our priorities are skewed with more money going to pet food than to the poor. I flinched a little, knowing how important pets are to people, and rightly so in many cases. But it does tell a tale of priorities in an age when the military is the most trusted institution and most of our foreign aid is military, when feminism is considered over in America while women worldwide are struggling for the most basic rights, when our national obsession with instant gratification leads to exploitation of land, children, third world nations and precious gifts like the Gulf of Mexico, and when poverty falls most severely on women and children in the so-called "feminization of poverty."
I feel privileged to have experienced a modern day prophet, which she certainly is. But her call to all of us, not only to clergy, is to become the prophets we are called to be. Holiness, she said today, is about virtue, not visions; being there for others; focusing on something greater than oneself; and being present to the Presence, where it is and where it is not. Holiness as a private vision and experience is an old, very old, model that no longer applies. Times have changed and so has our understanding of holiness and spirituality. Our inner spiritual life has to inform our outer expression of it, but it is not complete if it is merely an ascetic discipline. Privatized religion must make its way out of that ghetto to the arena of public responsibility. A new age is forming right under our noses and we are a part of its creation. It is a difficult process, but "everything we do changes the future." There are many emotions that emerge out of this process but I like what Sr Joan says about anger: "If we had been holier we would have been angrier" as we face the injustices in the world and the clear need to realize the vision of the gospel, the reign of God, in the world today.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Urban Ministry Conference in Washington, DC
I am spending a few days in Washington, DC, from June 4-9. I have been fortunate to attend a number of good conferences over the years, but this really is one of the best. There are 30+ people here, many ordained but by no means all, and they represent many different parts of the country. For the record, four of us are Lutheran but I am the only male Lutheran present. There are a number of Episcopalians (the organizers happen to be Episcopalian), some Methodists, a couple of Prebyterians, and one or two non-profit directors. One of the attendees is Diana Ortiz, director of Exodus Ministries in New York. This is similar to Project Turnabout, helping ex-felons gain training and employment after relase from prison. Diana was released from prison herself four years ago after 22 years (I believe) in the prison system, beginning at age 18. She is a truly remarkable and gracious individual and has shared some material and a DVD with me to bring home and share with others. Another couple here some of you may remember from a PBS documentary about slavery in the north. James DeWolf, if I have my history correct, was the largest slave trader in the north, perhaps in history. He alone transported 11,000 slaves from Ghana to Cuba to the US in the north. One of his direct descendents is Dain Perry, who is here with his wife Constance Perry to present the video and have a conversation with us about racism in America. He and Constance, who is Afro-American, facilitate these conversations around the country in all kinds of venues, including churches. The story challenges the standard history that the north was not complicit in the slave trade but in fact opposed it and fought against it. In fact, the north actively benefitted from slavery and the slave trade and was economically dependent upon it. From the construction of the ships to the sugar industry using materials from the cane plantations in Cuba to the "help" in the homes of the wealthy, the north was deeply involved in supporting slavery, even after the slave trade was abolished in 1808 (DeWolf continued to trade in slaves far beyond that year through a political favor from Thomas Jefferson). The documentary was made by descendent of DeWolf, Katrina Browne, a woman who discovered her family's history while a seminary student at an Episcopalian seminary (the family religion, including that of DeWolf). You can check out the video, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, inheritingthetrade.com.
We have visited Emory United Methodist Church, a minstry led by Dr. Rev. Joe Daniels (author of Real Church, Real People). Daniels has taken this community from a dying and small congregation to a vital, three service a Sunday (including a service geared to homeless folks) ministry that is trying to grow into a large multimillion dollar complex that includes affordable housing, transitional housing for the homeless, businesses, counseling, etc. with the original Emory Church right in center. It's a visionary enterprise and Rev. Daniels is nothing if not energetic and visionary. Inspiring stuff and full of faithful risktaking!
There will be more to write and now that I am back on the internet here I will continue to add entries about the conference and my experience here. For now, I'll just say that the key word so far is transformation. The other word I would use is energy. Each of the leaders we've heard from so far are full of incredible energy. I want to reflect some more about all of this, but you can see that this is a marvelous conference. Social justice is linked here with Christian faith in a powerful partnership towards the goal of realizing the reign of God, on earth as in heaven.
The next entries will cover Luther Place Memorial Church, a ministry that specializes in ministry to homeless women; and Sr Joan Chittester, who is speaking this afternoon and evening. I want to reflect a bit more on our racism conversation, which was moving and difficult at many points. There is more to add on both Emory and Luther Place Churches and what some of the characteristics are of these prophetic ministries.
Needless to say when we're not doing something REALLY IMPORTANT we're eating or sleeping. And we're staying in the luxury of modern retreat housing at Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic academic institution. The world may be in great suffering but I can't say that we're sharing that suffering very much. We live in privilege. The only issue is what we plan to do with it.
We have visited Emory United Methodist Church, a minstry led by Dr. Rev. Joe Daniels (author of Real Church, Real People). Daniels has taken this community from a dying and small congregation to a vital, three service a Sunday (including a service geared to homeless folks) ministry that is trying to grow into a large multimillion dollar complex that includes affordable housing, transitional housing for the homeless, businesses, counseling, etc. with the original Emory Church right in center. It's a visionary enterprise and Rev. Daniels is nothing if not energetic and visionary. Inspiring stuff and full of faithful risktaking!
There will be more to write and now that I am back on the internet here I will continue to add entries about the conference and my experience here. For now, I'll just say that the key word so far is transformation. The other word I would use is energy. Each of the leaders we've heard from so far are full of incredible energy. I want to reflect some more about all of this, but you can see that this is a marvelous conference. Social justice is linked here with Christian faith in a powerful partnership towards the goal of realizing the reign of God, on earth as in heaven.
The next entries will cover Luther Place Memorial Church, a ministry that specializes in ministry to homeless women; and Sr Joan Chittester, who is speaking this afternoon and evening. I want to reflect a bit more on our racism conversation, which was moving and difficult at many points. There is more to add on both Emory and Luther Place Churches and what some of the characteristics are of these prophetic ministries.
Needless to say when we're not doing something REALLY IMPORTANT we're eating or sleeping. And we're staying in the luxury of modern retreat housing at Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic academic institution. The world may be in great suffering but I can't say that we're sharing that suffering very much. We live in privilege. The only issue is what we plan to do with it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer
I recently finished a memoir by Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God. He is the son of Francis Schaeffer, a unique and at one time an extremely influential evangelical teacher, speaker, author, and self-made intellectual and pop culture critic. Francis Schaeffer died of cancer in 1984. I once attended a conference put on by Schaeffer's ministry, L'Abri, a retreat center whose home is in Switzerland. Schaeffer was there, with his trademark European knickers, goatee and a noticeable scowl. The conference was an interesting, if unusual, combination of Biblical literalism and course in the Humanities. Great European art, philosophy, music, and literature provided the content, all of it presented with respect and enthusiasm but also run through a Christian evangelical filter that pointed out the historical trajectory away from God at the core of things. At its peak L'Abri, in its home space in Switzerland, attracted artistic and celebrity luminaries from England and America, not to mention large numbers of wandering, seeking hippies. Many were converted and became workers at L'Abri, some left their artistic careers to "serve the Lord," but however it might have affected people it was a cultural phenomenon that fascinated and drew in a generation of 60's kids and later became a major force in laying the foundation for the modern Christian Right. At the center of that development was none other than Frank Schaeffer, who grew up under the shadow cast by his famous father and mother, Edith.
I couldn't put this book down. Not only is it a gripping story of the background to the Christian Right's explosion on the political and cultural scene, it is a story of faith and self-awareness lost and found and lost and found again, with the two poles moving in and out of one another as the drama of Frank's life unfolds. He describes an incredible life, charmed and seemingly cursed at the same time, a child growing up in an atmosphere of missionary zeal and religious absolutism often contradicted by his own humanity and questioning, not to mention his father's rages, episodes of spousal abuse, and personal love for the art and culture he publicly questioned and even warned about.
But Frank is not one sided. His father was also compassionate and stood for justice when it mattered. His mother had wanted to be a dancer in her youth but did not pursue it out of a sense of obligation to God and the saving of souls. He writes of his father's deep love for art and speaks of a several week trip he took with him to Italy when he was 11 or 12 to visit all the museums and churches they could fit in. His father became light and relaxed, unlike the overly serious intellectual evangelist he was known in public to be. On that trip, he notes, his father never said grace at a meal, reveled in the art, and left his Bible at home. When Frank visits his mother in her 90's she dances to the music she once condemned, beautifully, gracefully he says, and she appears radiant and at peace with not a mention of the old pieties she used to routinely pronounce.
It is clear that Frank overdosed on religion and couldn't escape it. He was nearly smothered by it. His intensity, intelligence, intuition, and talent for painting and writing, not to mention a natural sense of rebellion against inconsistency and absurdity, could not co-exist with a narrow fundamentalism, even if his parents were moving personally toward a broader view of the world. So it is ironic that Frank and his father ended up on the road together promoting two feature documentaries put together largely by Frank. The first one emphasized his father's intellectual tour through the Humanities but it also included, at Frank's insistence, the first serious public campaign against abortion and Roe vs. Wade in its last two sections. It is still being shown and studied in evangelical circles today. The two of them went around the country presenting the documentary to huge crowds, holding forth on big intellectual themes and finally encouraging activism against abortion at the political level. They were ignored by people outside of the evangelical subculture, but anyone near that subculture couldn't avoid the Schaeffers. They were the stars and the ones to listen to. They carried the intellectual weight and had the communication skills to rally thousands to the cause. The world had to be saved from itself. The rhetoric was, from the beginning, extreme.
Frank has left all that now and this book is his confession. It is remarkably honest, wonderfully written, funny, at times blunt in its sexual descriptions, and at the end very moving. There is much love in it and just as much despair. Frank tries to say what he sees without romanticizing it. He doesn't spare anyone, including himself. If others saw his parents as the best of saints, he tries to see them for who they really were, flawed but caring human beings.
The greatest casualty of this book is fundamentalism and the American subculture built upon it. Frank sees its shadow, the underbelly of ambition, pretense, startling insanity, and corruption. And he knows what he's talking about. It was his milieu. These were people he spoke with, stayed with, in whose jets he flew around the country, and who hired him to speak at their rallies and to appear on their television and radio programs. When he was young they would be guests at his parent's home. He saw them up close, away from the cameras. I need to point out that he is talking, not so much about the followers, but the frontline leadership of the evangelical movement during the last 40 years.
Frank Schaeffer today is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, a place he can come and go, take in the beauty of faith so it can feed and not starve him. He can "serve the Lord" by being himself, now a writer and painter. He heads his last chapter "Peace."
At the end of the memoir I thought he came out in a place of grace and beauty. He has found acceptance. He has returned to himself. All of the impossible absolutes are in the past. There is nothing to live up to, only being who he is, loving his family, being a better husband and father (he, too, was abusive in earlier years, even to one of his children). His "service" to the world is simply to offer himself, his writing, his art, his confession, his truth.
We may take from it what we will. There is certainly a lesson here about what healthy religion is and is not. Religion can be very crazy and life-denying, often when it is most intense and too serious about itself. God can be the most neurotic of pursuits when we ignore ourselves and our inner passions to serve an ideal that comes from someplace other than our own souls. A God who tells you to be something other than who you are is probably not God at all. If that seems provocative, then read the book. You might be convinced, but maybe you won't. Maybe it's better to give it all up and save the world. But I doubt it.
I couldn't put this book down. Not only is it a gripping story of the background to the Christian Right's explosion on the political and cultural scene, it is a story of faith and self-awareness lost and found and lost and found again, with the two poles moving in and out of one another as the drama of Frank's life unfolds. He describes an incredible life, charmed and seemingly cursed at the same time, a child growing up in an atmosphere of missionary zeal and religious absolutism often contradicted by his own humanity and questioning, not to mention his father's rages, episodes of spousal abuse, and personal love for the art and culture he publicly questioned and even warned about.
But Frank is not one sided. His father was also compassionate and stood for justice when it mattered. His mother had wanted to be a dancer in her youth but did not pursue it out of a sense of obligation to God and the saving of souls. He writes of his father's deep love for art and speaks of a several week trip he took with him to Italy when he was 11 or 12 to visit all the museums and churches they could fit in. His father became light and relaxed, unlike the overly serious intellectual evangelist he was known in public to be. On that trip, he notes, his father never said grace at a meal, reveled in the art, and left his Bible at home. When Frank visits his mother in her 90's she dances to the music she once condemned, beautifully, gracefully he says, and she appears radiant and at peace with not a mention of the old pieties she used to routinely pronounce.
It is clear that Frank overdosed on religion and couldn't escape it. He was nearly smothered by it. His intensity, intelligence, intuition, and talent for painting and writing, not to mention a natural sense of rebellion against inconsistency and absurdity, could not co-exist with a narrow fundamentalism, even if his parents were moving personally toward a broader view of the world. So it is ironic that Frank and his father ended up on the road together promoting two feature documentaries put together largely by Frank. The first one emphasized his father's intellectual tour through the Humanities but it also included, at Frank's insistence, the first serious public campaign against abortion and Roe vs. Wade in its last two sections. It is still being shown and studied in evangelical circles today. The two of them went around the country presenting the documentary to huge crowds, holding forth on big intellectual themes and finally encouraging activism against abortion at the political level. They were ignored by people outside of the evangelical subculture, but anyone near that subculture couldn't avoid the Schaeffers. They were the stars and the ones to listen to. They carried the intellectual weight and had the communication skills to rally thousands to the cause. The world had to be saved from itself. The rhetoric was, from the beginning, extreme.
Frank has left all that now and this book is his confession. It is remarkably honest, wonderfully written, funny, at times blunt in its sexual descriptions, and at the end very moving. There is much love in it and just as much despair. Frank tries to say what he sees without romanticizing it. He doesn't spare anyone, including himself. If others saw his parents as the best of saints, he tries to see them for who they really were, flawed but caring human beings.
The greatest casualty of this book is fundamentalism and the American subculture built upon it. Frank sees its shadow, the underbelly of ambition, pretense, startling insanity, and corruption. And he knows what he's talking about. It was his milieu. These were people he spoke with, stayed with, in whose jets he flew around the country, and who hired him to speak at their rallies and to appear on their television and radio programs. When he was young they would be guests at his parent's home. He saw them up close, away from the cameras. I need to point out that he is talking, not so much about the followers, but the frontline leadership of the evangelical movement during the last 40 years.
Frank Schaeffer today is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, a place he can come and go, take in the beauty of faith so it can feed and not starve him. He can "serve the Lord" by being himself, now a writer and painter. He heads his last chapter "Peace."
At the end of the memoir I thought he came out in a place of grace and beauty. He has found acceptance. He has returned to himself. All of the impossible absolutes are in the past. There is nothing to live up to, only being who he is, loving his family, being a better husband and father (he, too, was abusive in earlier years, even to one of his children). His "service" to the world is simply to offer himself, his writing, his art, his confession, his truth.
We may take from it what we will. There is certainly a lesson here about what healthy religion is and is not. Religion can be very crazy and life-denying, often when it is most intense and too serious about itself. God can be the most neurotic of pursuits when we ignore ourselves and our inner passions to serve an ideal that comes from someplace other than our own souls. A God who tells you to be something other than who you are is probably not God at all. If that seems provocative, then read the book. You might be convinced, but maybe you won't. Maybe it's better to give it all up and save the world. But I doubt it.
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