"Reclaiming Christianity?"

The Sojourners email magazine drew my attention to an article that appeared in the New Republic, entitled "Taking Back the Faith". The writer tries to find the equivalent in the modern Christian environment of William Sloan Coffin, Jr., a voice for socially aware, or "liberal" "mainstream" faith. He then talks to many of the people that were suggested to him. He ends his article by pointing out that liberals often make people embarrassed about their Christianity and that this will hurt the Democratic party until it takes this into account. Here is the link to this article: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060424/wakefield .

A different question, however, is presenting itself to me. It seems that there is a strand in our culture which is allowed to dismiss religion as superstitious, irrelevant, corrupt, hypocritical, you add the adjective. This seems to be a problem that affects both the liberal and the conservative Christian. The reason the Fundamentalist get more press is because they offer more fodder for this stereotype to the media, and because many among them have managed to take a more media-centered approach they are more visible to the media, while the more mainstream or liberal Christians still remain largely invisible, centered in the parish and the denominational structures, .

An example of what prompts me to wonder is this: I saw the movie V is for Vendetta. In the movie fundamentalist religion had entered partnership with totalitarian politics and a Church of England Bishop was portrayed as one of the ring-leaders of the totalitarian political party. He also endulged in his sexual fantasy with young girls whom he hired. Religion was presented as monolithic and evil. Meanwhile the "savior" of the film took it upon himself to murder violently his opponents and to orchestrate the destruction of what he saw as symbols of oppression. Truly many of the people he kills are guilty of horendous crimes, and the authority which should be promoting justice were irredeemably corrupt; nonetheless, there is one scene where he kills about a dozen soldiers when the only one he seeks to kill, with perhaps some reason, he saves until the end. Perhaps the intent is to raise the very question, how evil does one become in order to confront evil. That question, for anyone religious, is as old as the hills. But the question it raised for me was, how has it happened that the organization which attempts to teach loving neighbor as self, and attempts to promote the pursuit of wisdom can be portrayed as monolithically patetic if not evil, and a character who commits needless acts of gorey bloody violence can be portrayed as the hero, and this does not outrage people?

I am beginning to think the churches needs to wake up: there is more at play than the divisions within the church on theology here. I suspect it is the hierarchs of Consumerism realizing the threat Christianity and religion in general has on their devotees. If you cannot serve God and Mammon, and I for one do not think you can, then God is the enemy of Consumerism, and there will be resistence to the message of Religion from those who stand to lose money. If this is true then it has consequences on what we preach and teach. What do you think?

Dark Ages America

Morris Berman has written a book making the case that America is very likely entering a dark age.  He compares our culture to Rome and draws similarities between the fall of that empire and the fall of America.  I am finding the reading very interesting as he provides the fruit of much research and study to support a thesis I have felt in my gut.  I want to read his entire book before making extensive comment, but I find it very interesting, and oddly, encouraging.  Are we as Christians called out to build communities to ride out the "fall" much as Benedict did for Europe in an earlier time?

The dullness of Our Blinded Sight

Yesterday I took Rasheed Toney, a young African American man, to the Marriott Hotel at the Newark airport to get a job application. We discovered that he has to use the web to apply for a job. He does not have internet at home. One has to ask for whom is this convenience? I cannot think of any other answer than for the company. Why do they think that anyone they would want to hire would have a computer? Perhaps they feel that those who cannot afford internet and a computer are those who they would not wish to hire. What it does mean is that a young man will have to go to the library or a career center to do his application, and then to follow up with his email account. This means busfare or quite a long trip each time. It seems to me that we so take for granted that people's economic circumstances are like ours that we frequently create larger obstacles for those who already have a more than fair share. Maybe I am overly concerned, but it does seem that there is not a huge effort to make things accessible to those who might in fact need our aid the most.

New forms for Community

Welcome. On my website I describe an invitation to reflection on new forms of Christian Community. It is my hope that the format of a weblog will be the place to gather data as we begin this discussion. It might turn out that something like a Yahoo! group might be better. This is to be seen.

So I invite you to respond here. Does this sort of group reflection interest you? Are you interested in new shapes of Christian Community for our time and place? Do you know people who are attempting just that? What do you think our first steps should be? Please post your comments here.

Thanks and God bless,
John

Elevated Places for Gangs?

In the Afterschool program we welcomed two inspirational speakers. They talked to the young people about taking their thinking to "Elevated Places" Basically the instruction is what I have learned is called "executive skill", the thinking that allows one to weight the outcomes from one's course of actions. The speakers' ideas were deeply rooted in the issues that confront the youth in my care. They spoke to the tendency many youth have to accelerate disputes to a violent level with sometimes lethal consequences. They spoke to the damage done to people by mysogynistic attitudes and gangbanging. They spoke of the consequences of drugs. They addressed the dangers of listening to music that rehearses one's mind in accepting all these behaviors.

What struck me the most was that these two gentlemen knew how to speak the language of the youth. Though it was clear that some of the youth did not want to hear what was being said, it was also clear that they had to listen to speakers. These ideas were not complicated, and the wisdom of them was transparent. What wondered about was why the youth did not want to hear what was being said. The only idea that comes to mind is that if you take away the gangsta culture from these young men they feel they have very little left that is theirs. They do not have much hope for a future job they are not unaware that their schools are not adequately preparing them. They come from families with struggles, and this is the future they expect for themselves. Recently one child when speaking about his future said, "When I am in jail..." That he would go was his foregone conclusion. The comments that these speakers made indicated that the spoke the language from within the culture.

It is interesting that gang culture is so villianized. What I found very interesting about the perspective of these two men was their affirmation of gangs. The fact that people gather together for mutual support is not the problem. The problem is the kinds of activities that gangs engage in: violence, mysogyny, drugs, prostitution, theft. The other problem with gangs is that they participate in the despair and attempt to build up self image by use of strength of violence, and honor on bullying and gang. I found myself wondering if the gangs are not the instruments we need to reach out to the youth. Could they be somehow convinced to truly act for the welfare of their members? Could they take their violent power and turn it into political power? With the amount of investment in private for profit prisons it is clear that the moneyed white community has no interest in the system changing. It must be the people themselves who must act for an improvement in their situation. The question is whether we on the outside can in any way be a catalyst for this process.

Off to a Simple Start

A first few simple steps toward having a weblog. Yea!