Month: April 2022

s Ri;es

Jesus made it clear that the commandments to love were the standards by which values and actions must be judged. They are not commandments that sound good in theory but short on practical application.  They are commandments from God, not sentimental bumper stickers or wall hangings.  To paraphrase the letter of James, don’t tell me you’ve been washed in the blood of Christ, show me by your words and deeds that you are at least trying to follow in Jesus’ way of love.

That brings up the third subject in this brief series of columns about values and actions.  Has God said anything definitive about social and economic politics?  The answer is a loud yes and found most clearly stated in the ethical prophets writing about 800 years before Christ.  My favorite is Amos, whom I’ve drawn on for several columns over the years.  Amos was a farmer called by God to go to the king of Israel and explain why devastation was on its way if he and his people didn’t change their ways.  While he was at it God, speaking through Amos, had a few things to say to each of the nations surrounding Israel. It added up to a condemnation of social and economic injustices that had tested God’s patience.  They are the same problems nations, including our own, face today.  To be clear, God never expresses an opinion about the form of government a nation should have, but sets firm standards for how it governs and the kind of societies it creates.

What were the things that raised God’s ire?  Putting God’s words as recorded by Amos into contemporary English, they include these:

Destroyihg an enemy’s food supply

Ethnic cleansing

Inciting civil violence

Disrespecting legitimate civil authority

Manipulating the poor into bondage

Cheating the poor out of the necessities of life

Usury

Preferential justice for the rich and powerful

Sexual promiscuity

Drunkenness

Showing contempt for the poor

Elaborate but meaningless worship practices

Presumption of God’s favor for one’s self while oppressing others

Excessive income inequality

Lack of compassion for the suffering of others

There are more, but these are the highlights.  They speak not only to personal behavior, but even more to the public policies established and enforced by the government.  The nexus of religion and politics is not a private matter.  It’s a very public matter.  Those who claim to follow in the way of love cannot avoid making their voices heard, as Amos did, when governments and public behavior fall dreadfully short of God’s standards that put the greatest emphasis on issues of justice and equity.

What justice and equity mean has changed dramatically, not only in the light of Jesus’ commandments to love, but also in our ability to understanding what God is saying now in the conditions of the world we live in.  The fundamental questions Christians are obligated to ask in the political arena are how best to make the society more just and equitable for all people.  Answers may be hotly debated, but they can never be in the form of clever ways to self righteously suppress and oppress.

Christians cannot expect  centers of power and the general population to hear, understand, and respond.  Nevertheless, like Amos, they must declare in voice and deed what God has commanded.  It’s a slow march toward greater justice, but it cannot falter.

Customary social and political values are not  made Christian values simply by claiming that they are.  It doesn’t matter how traditional or newly minted they are.  Each has to be judged by the commandments to love God, love neighbor, love self, and love each other as Jesus loves us.  Everything in scripture and all religious teachings hang on adherence to these commandments.

It wouldn’t be much of a hard thing to do if things would stay the way they should be, which by human standards is usually the way things used to be. The problem is, things are never the way they used to be and we cannot go back.  The way things are today will pass quickly into a future of conditions and relationships unknown.  Futurists love to take a stab at what they will be, but are seldom right.  It means everything always stands in judgement by the commandments of love.

They are commandments Christians are supposed to obey, but no one is compelled to do so, and what obedience looks like is often not clear.

Loving one’s self is not narcissistic self love, but the comforting consolation of knowing that one is deeply beloved of God.  The parable of the good Samaritan reveals the neighbor can be a stranger, a person one does not like, someone not to be trusted.  To love that neighbor is not only to be a help in need, but to willingly receive help from the one you do not trust.  And don’t forget the innkeeper who took on the burden and cost of caring for an injured man without any guarantee he would be paid as promised.  

Loving others as Jesus loves us raises the question: how does Jesus love us?  It can be answered only by examining the gospel records for what Jesus said and did.  Guessing doesn’t count.  Sentimental platitudes don’t count.  Only by examining the gospel records can the question be answered in ways we are to apply own in our own daily lives. 

It’s with that kind of unflinching examination that we can judge our own social values and the values that others proclaim as being Christian.  Do my values, or theirs, honor God’s holy name?  Do my values, or theirs, show respect for who I am as a child of God? Do they show respect for the dignity of every human being?  Do they contribute to the healing, reconciling work of Christ?

The world was never the way it was.  Conditions are always changing, and in our age it seems they are changing much too fast.  It means that whatever comfort we have that our social and political  values are Christ like, they must always be subject to challenge and examination.  There will always be new ways of walking in the way of love that will feel odd and uncomfortable at first.  It’s always thus, and always will be.

A recent Heather Cox Richardson piece (April 18, 2022) discussed how Russian and Hungarian leaders assert high moral principles as justification for harsh policies limiting freedom to defend what they call traditional values. With no apologies, they condemn all things tolerant of LGBT persons, and the general moral degeneracy of Western liberal democracy.  Only the firm hand of authoritarian government can restore moral order, according to them.

HCR went on to note that the same line of reasoning has gained ground in the American right wing and among conservative Christian evangelicals who would like to codify their social values as the law of the land.

It’s a frightening scenario for at least two reasons. First, as a Christian theologian I find it appalling that the title Christian can be attached to what is clearly not Christian.  So called traditional values about gender, sex, marriage, reproductive rights, race and class are social conventions of recent origin having but marginal connections to the moral imperatives given to us by God through Christ Jesus.  In every age, no matter what the social norms have been, they have always been challenged by and in conflict with God’s moral imperatives.  

Even the diligent work of discerning what it means to follow in the way of Jesus in a rapidly changing world has to stand in judgement by the law of love.  If less conservative Christians are certain that the Authoritarian right is wrong and cannot legitimately claim the name of Christ to justify their beliefs, it is equally true that more liberal Christians can claim no more than provisional faith that they are on a more Christ like path.  Neither conservatives nor liberals can take social values, slap the name of Christ on them, and call it Christian.  New England Puritans tried.  It didn’t work.  It should have been an easy lesson to learn.  Apparently not.

Second, since the end of WWII, mainline conservatives have defended the rights of individuals from what they believed to be excessive governmental intrusion into personal ives.  As they leaned further into libertarian ideology they entered a revolving door that led  to favoring government that would no longer regulate business or protect human and civil rights, but would impose a puritanical moral code on all persons and institutions.  It would have the odd effect of creating a nation with no moral standards for business, industry and governmental operations, but strictly enforced moral standards on the lives of individuals. A mutant form of Orwell’s 1984 would be in place; one in which autocratic rule, oligarchical corruption, and a servile population would be deprived of nearly all of its personal freedom.

In a bizarrely curious way, significant elements of right wing America believe that would be a good thing. Through strangely colored glasses they think it would maximize their rights and freedoms.  Those that believe it is the Jesus thing to do are the most deluded. If by chance any of them read this column, they will not believe it and accuse me of being the worst kind of heretic.  I fear they are in a box from which there is no way out.  Moreover, they have demonstrated the political acumen needed to impose the box on the populations of several states, intending to do the same for all.  What could kill liberal democracy in the end is not the radical right wing, but the complacency of the voting public that takes freedom for granted, and Christian leaders unwilling to boldly proclaim the way of love as the way of Jesus Christ.

CNN, MSNBC and other mainstream cable news networks are relentless in covering the biggest issues of the day ad nauseam.  And that’s a problem.  Two or three stories reported on, speculated about, and commented on by every single news personality becomes tedious, even when the issues are of world wide importance. To spice things up now and then they offer a bit of whatever is salacious, scandalous or sensational.  It’s very foxworthy of them.

They could do better and I suggest they must do better.  It’s unlikely they will take counsel from a retired country parson any more than I would take advice from them about theology and, as well, I fit not a single one of their preferred demographics.  So I’ll begin by saying what follows is based in part on what CNN International does so well as it casts a wide net to cover news of importance and interest to a global audience.

Diversity of subject matter is a problem and it seems to me there’s a simple solution toward expansion. There are fifty states. Something of economic or political importance is happening in each one of them every day.  Some news is of purely local interest, but some has national implications that need to be made known to a wider audience. 

Bracketing the usual suspects of scandal and violence, state and regional issues of economic and political importance offer a huge menu from which to draw thereby enriching the American public with a deeper understanding of what is going on in places other than their home town, New York and Washington, DC.  

Local news media do the best they can to keep readers and viewers informed about what is going on elsewhere, but with limited resources it’s too easy to rip and read what has already been opined to date by cable news.

Subject matter diversification shouldn’t be all that difficult for the big cable networks.  The ground work is already done by existing sources: Federal Reserve district banks, major statewide newspapers, regional think tanks, local NPR and PBS stations, etc.  What cable news needs is imaginative staff who can discern the wider importance of local or regional issues.  Think of them as news skunkworks insulated from the oppressive atmosphere of cynical marketing types and bottom line bean counters.

The networks might even dare to begin offering important economic and political news from Mexico and Canada.  Canadian provincial news is especially important to northern tier states, as is Mexican state news to southern border states.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt Americans to be better informed about what is gong on in our neighboring countries.

Making cable news more diversified in this way would leave more than enough room to go on and on about the big national and international issues.  It might cut down on the endless chattering of pundit panels.  It would certainly help create a more well informed public, perhaps leading to less civic divisiveness.

Lent began with a Country Parson column suggesting a lenten discipline of being intentional about bearing the light of Christ in daily life.  As I got into Lent, it became obvious that being more intentional about receiving the light of Christ when it came near was as important as bearing it.  

It’s especially important to reflect on that thought during our annual remembrance of the week that turned from light to darkness.  It  began with the enthusiastic, if superficial, welcome of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.  The days turned quickly into a gauntlet of accusations, attempts at arrest, threats of violence, and finally betrayal leading to Jesus’ humiliating, torturously painful death.  In spite of it, the night he was betrayed, Jesus ate with his closest disciples, lovingly giving the gift of Holy Communion to the very ones who would betray and abandon him. 

It was a week long demonstration of humanity’s inability and unwillingness to receive the light of Christ, even when borne by Jesus himself.  The priestly elite rejected him as a heretic.  Sadducees feared he was a threat to their relative safety and prosperity under Roman rule.  To Pilate, Jesus’ life was no more than the  cheap cost of pacifying a restless population.  With the exception of a few women, his disciples hid in fear for their own lives.  It appeared to nearly all that Jesus was a failure as a messiah of any kind.   Enemy and friend, believer and unbeliever, all were unable and unwilling to receive the light of Christ that was in their midst.

It’s not a simple matter.  In one sense, it had to be that way, otherwise how could the power of the Resurrection be made known to them and to us.  In another sense, the failure to receive the light of Christ by the powerful elite, rag tag band of disciples, and facile public, was no more than a display of the ordinary human condition no different than our own.  Fear, selfishness, greed, lust for power, and suspicion  that divine love is a fantasy create barriers to the light of Christ among all people in every place and time.  Why God so loved the world remains a mystery, but it is that love that came to free us from the bonds of the human condition.

Trusting Jesus is always problematic, and it can be especially difficult in times of war, pandemic, domestic violence, blatant corruption in public life, and feelings of darkness.  Yet Jesus is the light that the darkness cannot overcome. 

As Christians, we are called to bear the light of Christ even in darkness.  It’s something we can’t do unless we are able and willing to recognize and receive it when it comes into our lives.  Holy Week is a time to reflect on our reluctance  to do that.  It’s not that we are bad people, it’s that we are human.  No better than all those people in Jerusalem. Our witness to the power of the Resurrection can embolden us to move on and do better without self recrimination, just as the disciples did.

I’ve been thinking about public morality since writing a piece about Barr’s 2019 address to the Notre Dame law school.  Public morality is the words and behaviors that are acceptable within public arena.  Standards vary from arena to arena, but are always about what happens in public view.

There are two basic types of Public Morality standards: customary and legal. Legal standards are the laws that define and protect rights and safety, with enforcement through due process.  I want to lay them aside and focus on customary standards of public morality.

Customary standards are “the way we do things around here.”  Public arenas allow much freedom of expression, but it’s not unlimited.  “The way we do things around here,” establishes social boundaries for what is acceptable and expected. Generations of sociologists have spent entire careers trying to catalogue them: their works are both informative and entertaining. The point is, customary standards establish boundaries beyond which one is deemed to have breeched what is acceptable public behavior.  Enforcement is through various forms of social pressure from rude ostracizing to helpful mentoring, with the disapproving look of a mother’s glare in the middle. More violent forms of enforcement are recorded in our history and celebrated in today’s revenge-as-justice movies. It doesn’t take an academic to figure it out; just ask any high school kid how it works in their school. They’ll explain it to you. 

The questions are: who has the ability to set standards; how are they enforced; who is entitled to be exempt; and how do violators earn redemption?

Customary standards of public morality exist at every level of community, which means they exist at the national level: What is the acceptable American way we do things around here?  National standards for public morality are set most powerfully by the president and members of Congress as most often featured by the press and in social media.  They influence the way things are done in Washington D.C., how the nation is perceived in the world, and give social license to the American public for the ways they can behave in public.

For instance, Sen. Joe McCarthy made it morally acceptable for Americans to engage in thoughtless red-baiting. Richard Nixon so violated the customary norms that he paid the price of being ostracized.  Lyndon Johnson raised civil rights to a new definition of public morality that overturned  two centuries of acceptable behavior.  He also redefined what was morally acceptable in war and paid a heavy price, not unlike Nixon’s.  Reagan made it morally acceptable to make corporate profits more important than middle class prosperity.  Yet among all the good and bad there was a general sense of what was and wasn’t morally acceptable in the national public arena. It established the ideal, if not reality, of civility and integrity. Guided by the collective customary of national political leadership, it influenced what was and wasn’t morally acceptable public behavior at every level of society.  

Then came Trump.  He and his prominent allies in political office, aided by right-wing media personalities, violated almost every norm of public morality, and got away with it.  It signaled the nation that the old standards of public morality no longer need be observed.  Opinion untethered by a reasonable assessment of facts was deemed as valid as any other opinion; indeed, alleged facts became as good as verified facts. Theft and corruption became smart business practice.  Personal integrity gave way to personality cult loyalty.  Insulting bombast and macho chest thumping were signs of toughness. The virtues of our electoral system were held up to ridicule, and suppressing voting rights became virtuous.  American ideals of the common good were abandoned for the good of the powerful, rich few.

It corrupted the national sense of public morality, and made it acceptable for leaders at every level of society to behave the same way.  

GOP leadership buried the corruption of public morality under  a campaign to regulate the private morality of individuals by targeting gender, marriage, family structure, and so on under the guises of religious freedom and the alleged corruption of personal morality.  The party that boasts it stands for individuality and self-reliance would impose the full force of government on the private lives of individuals and families, depriving them of fundamental freedoms.

Restoring  customary standards of public morality more attuned to the long cherished ideals of American democracy will not be easy, but it is necessary.  Once decadent demagogy has been let loose, it’s hard to reestablish standards of civil decency because it’s no longer clear what those standards are or should be.  The methods by which the nation used to work out new understandings have been so corrupted that they no longer work, and what will work is yet to be determined. 

It is into this space that I agree, in part, with Barr.  The church, particularly the mainline and Roman Catholic churches have major roles to play, no matter declining church attendance. The message from the pulpit remains a strong, influential voice declaring what public morality must be.  The more that message can be aired by public theologians, the more influence it will have.  In cooperation with other communities of faith, it is the way we can recover the “soul of America.”