Category Archives: Culture

Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 the Legislative Branch, Section 7: The process of making laws:

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Section 7: The process of making laws:

The making of laws for the nation is a complicated process and in the past congress only two percent of bills became laws. Section seven of the constitution is fairly concise but the actual process of passing a bill into law is much more challenging. Unlike the School House Rock bill sitting there on capitol hill, most bills never do become law for various reasons. Below is a quick introduction based on the Constitution and the U.S. Senate’s flowchart and attachments for how a senate bill becomes law.

Bills must pass both houses before they become law and then must be presented to the president for their signature. The passage of a law can be a messy process since both houses of congress must agree to the same provisions in the bill for it to pass both houses. A bill may be proposed by a senator, representative, may come for the White House, be referred to the House or Senate by a State Legislature, Organization, Scholar, or Constituent. A bill will need a sponsoring Representative or Senator to introduce the bill into the Senate and the bill once introduced begins its long process of consideration. The one major qualification that the constitution stipulates is that any bill raising revenue must begin in the House of Representatives

If there are no objections to a bill being considered it is referred to an appropriate committee within the House or Senate, logged in the appropriate house’s journal, given a number, entered into the Legislative Information System (LIS) and made available in the Senate and House document rooms. The committee is then required to conduct hearings and is expected to hear witnesses from both called by the committee chair and the minority party members. Once the hearings are concluded the committee debates and considers amendments to the bill and determines whether the bill will be recommended to the full senate or house of representatives. A vast majority of bills never make it out of committee, in the 114th Congress (our latest congress, which began on January 6, 2015, only has had 6% of the bills make it to the floor for a vote). A bill that makes it through the process of committee markup a member of the committee may move the order the measure reported to the Senate or House of Representatives. It takes a physical majority of the committee to report a measure to the Senate or House of Representatives. The bill may be reported with no changes, with amendments in various sections or in one amendment as a substitute. What this means is that the bill if it comes out of committee may be the same, may have individual portions of the bill altered or amended, or the entire bill may be rewritten as one amendment.

For those bills that make it to floor consideration they are now considered by the entire House of Representatives or Senate (based on which body they are moving through). The floor consideration typically begins with opening statements by the chair and ranking minority member of the reporting committee and appropriate subcommittees. The first amendments are typically those offered by the committee. Each amendment must be disposed of either by agreeing to vote on it directly or to table it (tabling an amendment effectively works as a vote to defeat the amendment if the motion to table passes). While an amendment is on the floor a Senator/Representative may propose an amendment to the amendment (second-degree amendment) and the second-degree amendment must be voted on before the original amendment (first-degree amendment) can change. This can become a complicated process but once all the amendments are acted upon the bill itself can be moved to the voting process.

One fifth of those present can ask for a roll call or recorded vote, otherwise a vote can be by voice vote, unanimous consent or by division (a process for obtaining a more accurate count of a voice vote). For example, if a bill is approved by the Senate then a final copy of the bill (reflecting all the amendments) is prepared, signed by the Secretary of the Senate, and delivered to the House of Representative (if the bill comes from the House then this process is the same except that it goes through the House and is delivered to the Senate).

Following the example of a bill that comes from the Senate and is referred to the House of Representatives, the House will then act upon the bill in a similar manner to what the Senate has. If the bill makes it through the House of Representatives and it has no amendments to the bill the Senate passed (it is exactly the same bill) it is returned to the Senate to be enrolled (this is the final copy of the bill that passes the House and Senate) and is signed by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House to be delivered to the White House. If the House has amended the bill the Senate may either agree with the amendment or request a conference. If the House and Senate go to conference, then designated members of both will negotiate to resolve the differences between the two proposed versions of the bill. Once a majority of House and Senate conferees agree to a conference report (a final version of the bill negotiated in the conference committee). Both houses must vote to approve the conference report before it is enrolled, signed by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House to be delivered to the White House.

Once the bill finally passes both houses it is sent to the President who has ten days to act, or it they do not act it becomes law in 10 days (Sundays excepted). If the president disapproves a bill (veto), that disapproval may be overridden by a 2/3 vote of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. This does not happen very often (of 2,574 vetoes only 111 have been overridden).

The making of laws for the nation is a complicated process and in the past congress only two percent of bills became laws and yet it is a process that slow down the process to consider the impact of the proposed legislation. It is a process that by nature requires compromise for legislation to become enacted. In theory it should ensure that voice both in favor of and opposed to the legislation should be considered prior to a piece of legislation being voted upon.

Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 the Legislative Branch Sections 1-6

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Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

Even though most people in the United States at some point took a government class where the basics of the constitution and the U.S. form of government were taught, I am aware that often things learned in high school or college are easily forgotten. I often find myself in conversations with individuals, even those who may speak emphatically about defending the constitution, who speak in ways that show they do not understand the U.S. Constitution and the form of government it establishes. This has not been helped by the proliferation of opinions put out across multiple media seem either unaware or who willfully deceive those following them on how the U.S. system of government and legal system works.

I am not a constitutional scholar but I am a person who does have a profound respect for the work of the original crafters of the constitution as well as the long process of amending the constitution. This is both a refresher for me as I re-examine these foundational documents of our republic and an attempt to make the constitution itself easier to understand for those who read it. Also for those who want to effect change within our society it is essential to understand how at a basic level how our government and legal system is structured. If you would like to look at the text of the constitution it can be found at http://constitutioncenter.org/media/files/constitution.pdf.

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution in summary

Section 1: The first branch of the U.S. government laid out in the constitution is the legislative branch, which is responsible for the establishing of laws to govern the country. The formation of the bicameral (two house) legislative branch was a compromise to address the concerns of both the smaller states who feared that they would not be fairly heard if population was the only means of representation and larger states who wanted greater representation based upon their larger populations.

Section 2: The House of Representatives, the larger of the two parts of the legislative branch where the representation is based upon the population.

Qualifications to be eligible to be elected to the House of Representatives: 25 years of age, citizen of the United States for seven years and an inhabitant of the state where they have been chosen. The Representatives serve two year terms, elected on even number years, and do not have a limit on the number of times they can be re-elected.

The number of members in the House of Representatives is fixed at 435. This number was fixed in the Apportionment Act of 1911 and then tied to the U.S. census in the Reapportionment Act of 1929. Originally within the constitution Native Americans were not counted and African Americans (primarily slaves when the constitution was written) were counted as 3/5 of a person. The constitution was not a perfect document and so individual pieces, like this, had to be amended later. (In this case Ammendment 14 in 1866 readjusted the method for counting for representation, several ammendments to the constitution are specifically working to expand the right to vote and participate in the legal system due to discriminatory practices).

The House of Representatives has the sole Power of Impeachment, the ability to bring charges against a civil officer or government and can do this by a majority vote of the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives does not try the Impeachment, that is outlined in section 3 with respect to the Senate. The division of power within the legislative branch for impeachment proceedings is one of the checks and balances built into the system of government we have inherited.

Section 3: The Senate, the smaller of the two parts of the legislative branch where each state is entitled to two representatives.

Qualifications to be eligible to be elected as a Senator: 30 years of age, a citizen of the United States for nine years and an inhabitant of the state where they are elected.  Senators serve for a six year term (1/3 of the senate is up for re-election at each even number year and do not have a limit on the number of times they can be re-elected).

Since there are two senators for each state the senate has 100 members. The Vice President of the United States serves as the President of the Senate but has no vote except in the case of a tie.

If articles of impeachment are brought from the House of Representative the Senate will try the impeachment proceedings. If the President is tried then the Chief Justice of the United States will preside and it takes 2/3 of the Senate to vote in favor of conviction for the impeached individual to be convicted. Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton were both impeached but were acquitted in the Senate and therefore had no action taken against them. Richard Nixon technically was never impeached because he resigned before the House could vote on impeachment. The maximum penalty that impeachment proceedings can lead to is removal from office and disqualification for hold any high office in the United States. Impeachment does not remove the possibility of civil or legal proceedings after impeachment, but except in rare cases legal proceedings can’t be brought against a person in and Office of Honor (Representative, Senator, Judge, President, etc. see for example Section 6 below).

Section 4:  Refers to the election of Senators and Representatives which is primarily left to the states to determine the time, place and manner of the elections and it requires the congress to assemble at least once a year. In the seventeenth amendment the treatment of senators and representatives is fixed to occur in the same manner (now a part of our national elections). The Twentieth amendment will fix the time of initial assembly of the congress for the year as January 3rd at noon.

Section 5: Sets the quorum for each house at a majority of its membership and allows for the houses to compel the attendance of absent members. Each house determines its own rules of meeting, can punish members who act disorderly and even expel a member with a 2/3 vote (censure and lesser punishments require only a majority vote). Each house is required to keep a journal of its proceedings that will be published, but may exempt parts that require secrecy. It also requires both houses to not break for longer than three days while congress is in session (so that one house doesn’t by inaction delay the action of the other house).

Section 6: Requires that Senators and Representatives are compensated for their services. Since 2009 the basic salary for a Senator or Representative has been $174,000. It also exempts Senators and Representatives from arrest except in cases of Treason, Felony and Breach of Peace while attending at session of their house, returning to or from their respective house, and they may not be arrested for any speech or debate in those houses. This is also an important concept within the balances of power because it prevents the Executive branch or state or federal authorities from threatening members of the legislative branch with imprisonment for dissenting. Senators and Representatives to preserve the separation of powers cannot at the same time as they serve in the House or Senate assume a role within the executive or judicial branch.

The first six articles provide the foundation for the senators and representatives to do the primary work they are appointed for: the process of making laws and raising and appropriating funds for the functioning of the republic. The process of creating laws, the responsibilities and limits of the legislative authority and the limiting of the authority of the states closes out this article but these topics are detailed enough that they will constitute their own post in this series.

Technology, News and the Distorted View of Reality

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When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s the way we received our news was very different from the way we currently consume our news about the world around us. The technology was beginning to change but it was still a time of the three primary commercial networks (NBC, CBS and ABC) with the Public Broadcast Channel. Later Fox would come in on the UHF channels and cable TV would begin to emerge. It was a world of newspapers which were published daily and news programming which would be on at regular morning, evening and nighttime schedules. Perhaps the world moved slower: there were no cell phones, no social media, no internet. It was a world my children wouldn’t recognize and while I don’t want to get caught in a nostalgic idealization of that period I do want to reflect upon the changes that technology and our use of technology has changed us and how the economic models behind these technologies have shaped the news media we consume.

In 1980 a change began within the existing media of television with the advent of CNN, a network devoted to around the clock news coverage. Through a number of events, like the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the Persian Gulf War and the expanded political coverage of Presidential campaigns CNN and then additional dedicated news channels, like MSNBC or Fox News, began to shift the consumption of news from dedicated news times within the day to more frequent viewing throughout the day. Many organizations began showing news programming throughout the day in their waiting areas instead of networks programming. In the 1990s, as more people began using cable TV, the continual availability of new programming and multiple news channels cause the evolution of new types of news programming designed to keep people tuning into the various stations to keep the revenues for those channels going (since advertising is the economic driver of network and cable news). When news is viewed as a consumer product and the purpose is to keep people continually tuning into new and new commentary programs it needs to generate some type of reaction to keep people engaged. The media long ago figured out that people are emotional creatures and that emotions like anxiety and shared disgust would keep people coming back to their channels. This has led to a distorted perception of reality based on what will continue to get people tuning in and increasing the ratings of the news programming rather than an accurate perception of reality. Most people believe, for example, that the world in which we live is less safe than the world they grew up in but statistically this is not true, but media presents to people a reality that is focused on the most violent and most memorable crimes and creates an anxiety that is not based on a balanced view of our world.

As we entered the 21st Century the age of digital information continues to alter the way we get out news and has continued to lower the threshold of review for publication. With the advent of the internet the average user now has access to incredible amounts of information but relatively few ways to effectively filter that information. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo all use algorithms to attempt to bring relevant information to the searchers screen but just because a website may be relevant does not ensure it is accurate, honest or true. While websites, blogs, twitter feeds and other places have provided access to people who would not have been able to publish through newspapers, journals and print media they also have removed or significantly lowered the peer review process designed to help insure that information is accurate. Especially with the advent of social media sites like Facebook where people can share information and links and the Facebook algorithm attempts to compute what other people want to see based on likes and shares (and an economic model that pays on advertising on a per click basis) it has led to intentionally misleading or incorrect but ultimately profitable reporting that causes people to view articles based on their shared opinions, disgusts and paranoia. In the past election the proliferation of false and misleading articles based upon a person’s political persuasion continued to build the level of anxiety and mistrust in the political and electoral system. It has become increasingly easy to create echo chambers by surrounding ourselves digitally with people who reinforce or enhance our beliefs, biases and prejudices. It has become much easier to criticize another person’s views without ever having to encounter and experience the other person as a real person because of our digital technology. While the availability of information through the internet and the vast data it can provide is a remarkable technological breakthrough the economic engine of the digital reporting cycle and its continual reinforcement of the truth we want to see, rather than having some peer reviewed or other method to attempt to make the news we consume an accurate picture of reality has led to what many are beginning to term a post-truth reality.

In our society news is a consumer product and probably always will be and yet there are a number of ethical questions that we should be asking about the news that we consume. Is there a way to create a better system that provides a news media that reflects reality better than profitability? Are there ways to encourage people to become critical consumers, especially online, where the threshold for publication is incredibly low and there is no accountability for publishing dishonest or misleading information presented as news? Are we willing to settle for a smaller America where our tribe of people is only those who agree with us, who may look like us and believe the same way that we believe in or are we willing to experience the cognitive dissonance of engaging with someone whose reality may be very different than our own? With each new technology there is an ethical lag as we attempt to figure out the ethical implications of the new technology, what would an ethical consumption of digital media look like? What would be the expected ethics of media presented as factual reporting?

These are not easy questions but they are things that we need to wrestle with if we want a nation of citizens that can make informed decisions then we need the information they receive to be accurate. If we are only consuming media that feeds our anxieties, disgusts, prejudices and biases then we will continue to have an increasingly polarized and divided society. Perhaps it is my idealistic nature but I do believe an ethical media is possible, although difficult, in age of digital consumption.

 

Toward Healing a Broken Republic

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Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

Image of the U.S. Constitution from http://wvconstitutionaladvocates.com/u-s-constitution/

As an inquisitive person I am constantly trying to understand what is happening in the world around me and how to describe and faithfully impact it. I try to pay attention to not only the religious tradition I am a part of but also the broader trends in society. In October of this year I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues about the political landscape nationally and locally and what that meant for the church. As a person who generally approaches the world in a positive way I was seeing the challenge as also an opportunity for the church to be a place where we can address some of the issues that have arisen within our society, particularly highlighted in the political elections of 2017. I would later write Wisdom of Story 4: Daring to Imagine a Bigger Story at the conclusion of my working through Brené Brown and Glennon Melton Doyle’s class on The Wisdom of Story and I Pray that I am Wrong… the day after the election of Donald Trump to serve as the President of the United States.

For me this blog is a kind of chalkboard or whiteboard for my mind, it is a place where I can wonder about things both secular and sacred. Over the past week I’ve been writing down things I want to reflect upon on pieces of paper but I’m, at least for now, going to put up some of the ideas here so that I can begin to work on them. A lot of these have emerged out of conversations I have either heard or been a part of in the past week and the list will probably grow. Some may be self-explanatory others are little more than reminders so I don’t forget.

Beyond a Politics of Disgust

Masculinity and Femininity: What Does it Mean to Be a Man or Woman Today and How Has That Changed (and why might it be different across generations)

A Fractured Republic: What are Democrats and Republicans Nostalgic For and Why has their vision diverged so drastically

Living With the Things One Can Change: The Wisdom of Ecclesiastes in an Unsettled Time

Gifts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and Why Knowing these Documents is so Important: Published as

Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 The Legislative Branch, Sections 1-6
Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 The Legislative Branch, Section 7: The Process of Making Laws
Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 The Legislative Branch, Section 8: The Powers of Congress
Understanding the Constitution of the United States: Article 1 The Legislative Branch, Section 9-10: Limiting the Powers of Congress and the Independent States

Expanding the Tribe we hear from: How do we hear the voices of another who differs from us? Perhaps exploring the book of Ruth compared to books like Ezra and Nehemiah

Political Correctness and Common Decency: Political Correctness has often been labeled as a bad thing, but what is it and did we ever have common decency?

What are the civil religions of the United States and is there still a civil religion in a secular, postmodern age

What do Postmodernity, Secularism, Pluralism, etc. have to speak to our current context

Does Digital pluralism necessarily lead to a Post-Truth era

From Nostalgia to Casting a New Dream

The 24 hour digital news cycle, the loss of review, the flood of data and the skewed perception of reality (Or is our addiction to news causing our anxiety on purpose) Coming on December 2, 2016 as Technology, News and the Distorted View of Reality

Shame and Anti-Racism Training

The Fall of Anakin Skywalker and the Rise of the Dark Side in American Culture and Politics

I Pray That I Am Wrong…

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As a person who dearly loves this country and the dream of what it can be I dearly hope that I am wrong….

After an election that has caused long lasting trauma for people on the left, right and in the middle and where fear and anxiety were the dominant emotions we the people elected Donald Trump. I dearly hope that those who voted for Donald are right and I am wrong, that he is somehow better than what he appears to be: a better leader, a better learner, and a better human being. I pray that somehow he can learn that as the President of the United States he is no longer a reality TV star or a business man who maximizes his own personal profit at the cost of many others. I pray that he will neither destroy the credit of the American people with rash economic decisions or with our moral standing in the world. My fear is that he is not the type of man who will put the needs of the people before his own needs but I dearly hope that I am wrong.

As a veteran who gladly committed my service to this country when I was younger and who still has a strong attachment to not only my former regiment but to those who serve in any of the armed services and our allies across the globe, I dearly hope that President Trump will take the time to learn the intricacies of diplomacy and the importance of the promises our country has made in the past. Whether it is the Breton Woods accords which guaranteed commerce across the oceans protected by U.S. naval power or the alliances like NATO which continue to serve a vital role in preserving and protecting and providing a space in which freedom and democracy have a chance. I pray that he can understand the importance of things like the Geneva convention not only for our standing in the world but for the safety of our own soldiers when they are called into action. I hope that he understands that just because the executive branch of the United States government can call upon the complete set of weapons in the U.S. arsenal that force is only used as a last resort and that there are consequences for the type of warfare he so casually talked about in his campaign. I pray that his own seemingly fragile ego does not continually place those who are willing to serve in conflict because of a perceived insult to his person. Perhaps President Trump will be able to enhance America’s standing on the world stage, and for those who elected him to make America great again I pray that you are right and my fears this day are wrong.

As a Lutheran pastor who cares deeply for not only those who are members of my congregation but those well beyond the walls of any Christian community who are my neighbors, I hope that the language of scapegoating that was so rampant in the Trump campaign for president ends and there is no additional harm done. As a white straight male who has not spoken up enough on behalf of my friends and neighbors of color, of different or no religion, who are LBTGQ or are people with disabilities, I apologize. I refuse to see a future that reflects my denomination’s past in 1930s Germany. I will stand with you, perhaps falteringly at first as I learn how to use my voice, but I will not see a future where they came for my Muslim neighbor, but I was not Muslim and I did nothing, then they came for my Latino/Latina brothers and sisters and I did nothing. Granted as a white straight male I probably could coast through with little fear that my own personal status would be impacted, but that is not the America I believe in. I do believe it is self-evident that all men (and women) are created equal as our founding fathers could so boldly state in the Declaration of Independence.

To those who are celebrating this day, please know that almost half of your fellow Americans are mourning. Your version of the American dream and theirs may be somewhat different but I fear that you have elected someone who will not allow either sets of visions for the American dream to prosper. I pray that I am wrong…

But if I am not wrong and Donald Trump is not able to be an effective leader, to learn the role of President and assume the responsibilities that are a part of the office and that he can become a decent human being for the four years of his term then:

I hope that you can pay a fraction of the attention to the electronic communication of the new president that you have paid to Hillary Clinton’s during the past twelve years. Hillary Clinton was far from a perfect candidate but the news story of her emails was probably the key piece in the strategy to win this election but now the bar is set. Does the communication coming out of the office of President befit the office, is it causing harm to America’s security, is it antagonizing movements around the world that put our diplomats and military in dangerous situations? If President Trump’s previous actions on twitter are any indication I fear greatly for the security of our country. Again, I pray that I am wrong.

I hope that you can pay a fraction of the attention that you have paid to Bill Clinton in his affair with Monica Lewinsky to President Trump’s words and actions while in the presidency. Particularly for those of you who elected Trump when you have opposed other presidents on moral grounds I hope that you will apply the same standards for him. We have elected a person to the highest office in the land who, if he was a professional athlete, probably would not be able to play on any professional sports team. I hope you understand the message you sent to our daughters about the type of language that we are willing to tolerate when someone speaks about their bodies. Maybe Trump will be able to learn how to be a person who has the highest respect for women. I have my severe doubts but again I pray that I am wrong.

I fear for the damage that will be done to the U.S. and global economy and not just for my own self-serving reasons. Yes, I fear that the anxiety in the market will hurt my retirement account and could damage the long work of debt reduction I have undertaken in my personal life but my fears are greater for my children’s generation. I fear that people like my son who is autistic will not be able to find coverage for his healthcare needs since Trump and a Republican congress will likely overturn the Affordable Care Act and return us to the free market system of insurance without protections for those who are unable to get insurance. I worry that the trend of Republican presidents to decrease taxes, increase both military spending and the overall budget while reducing revenues will continue to add to the deficit that myself and my children will continue to have to pay back. I worry that the turning away from the advances made in alternative energy sources and an increased reliance on coal and oil will continue to have a negative impact on the world my children will inherit. I pray that I am wrong on this.

This day, like every day before, I will get up and go to work. I will pay my bills, my taxes and make sure my family has food on the table. I will pray for my country and those who have been elected to serve it. Yet, on this day I need to voice my own fears about the man we have elected to be our president. I pray that my fears do not come to pass. Yet, I have not given up working for this country to be the country that I love where all men and women are created equal, where we are a nation that other nations look to as an example of freedom and justice, to be a place where everyone has an opportunity for the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

The Need to Remember Rightly

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170px-911_Tribute_(perspective_fixed)

On a day when there will be a number of calls to ‘Never Forget’ I want to add a caution that we need to be willing to remember rightly. The destruction and violence of September 11, 2001 cost the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims their lives and impacted the lives of many others physically, emotionally and economically. Remembering rightly we can pause and remember the emotions of the day, the sadness the confusion, the fear and the desire to put things right that many people felt, in fact you cannot remember an event rightly without the emotion that goes with the event. However, sometimes the call to ‘Never Forget’ can be transformed into a call to ‘Never Forgive’ and as a follower of Christ that is a place that I cannot remain. In Christ I am called to love my enemies, to pray for those who persecute me so that I may live into my identity as a child of God. (Matthew 5.44f) ‘Never Forget’ can also become transformed into ‘Never Again’ where any numbers of actions are justified by the fear of some other entity or individual causing harm or destruction. Remembering may have the function of a shield to protect us from easily allowing harm to come to us again, but as Miroslav Volf insightfully says:

It is because they remember (emphasis original) past victimization that they feel justified in committing present violence. Or rather, it is because they remember their past victimization that they justify as rightful self-protection what to most observers looks like violence born of intolerance of even hatred. So easily does the protective shield of memory morph into a sword of violence. (Volf 2006, 33)

If we are to remember, to grieve, to mark the day then let us also remember who we were on that day. The events in our life matter to our identity but we should never allow an act of senseless violence to transform our identity into something different. We have had a dozen years of acting on the memory of September 11, 2001 and having the memory act upon us, of stealing our attention for both good and ill. But we do not need to allow the beast of this tragic memory to shape us in its image or allow it to impact our own ability to interact with others, to love and to trust. If we do that terror has won, and in attempting to ‘Never Forget’ we become trapped into a cycle of violence. If we remember September 11, 2001 we also need to reflect upon our own reactions to that day as a people. In our responses in many ways (militarily, economically, security, etc.) we need to examine: are we allowing the fear that the events of that day to transform our identity as a people into something different?

Our memories and stories define us as individuals and as a people and as important as the events of September 11, 2001 are they are not the central events in either our nations’ story or specifically to me as a Christian and as a pastor to the story of our lives in Christ. To allow the memories of September 11, 2001 to take over that central part of our identity would be to neglect the other central stories of our identity. Within my own calling I follow a God who is both just but who justifies the ungodly, who can love me and my enemy, who meets me most concretely at the very point of injustice and rejection (in the crucifixion). As Martin Luther said in The Freedom of a Christian:

A Christian lives not in himself (sic), but in Christ and his neighbor. Otherwise he is not a Christian. He lives in Christ through faith, in his neighbor through love. By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor. Yet he always remains in God and in his love. (Volf 2006, 198)

So as we remember this day may we remember in the light of love and reconciliation. May we remember rightly in light of our own identities and not allow the terror of the day to redefine who we are.

purple rose 01 by picsofflowers.blogspot.com

The Father’s We Seek

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Saint Joseph the Carpenter, Georges de La Tour (1640)

Saint Joseph the Carpenter, Georges de La Tour (1640)

On Mother’s Day I wrote about women being more than mothers, and on Father’s Day I’m going to take a different angle because I think men struggle with a different issue and that is in society they are at best fathers only after they are whatever other role they have. To understand why this is I’m going to approach the male concept of shame, which is different than shame for women. For women shame comes from the inability to fit into the expectations of perfection defined first by looks and second by motherhood. Shame for women comes from how others view you and how you view yourself. Shame for men comes from being perceived as being weak or a failure. For men the societal expectations are: emotional control, primacy of work, pursuit of status and finally violence (the ability to take or protect that which is yours). Yet in relationships men are expected to put these things aside and be vulnerable, to share in the nurturing of children, to show restraint (it is very easy for a man to injure a child just due to the strength differential and the preponderance of rough play that is sought from fathers by boys and girls alike), and to enter into a world that is still defined by women’s expectations in the home. Just as women have struggled with the predominantly male expectations of the world of work, men have struggled with the very different set of expectations within the home.

Just as there was a time when a woman’s worth was tied to her ability to bear children, a man’s worth is still tied to his ability to provide security in terms of protection, shelter, food and comfort. Men are still primarily viewed as producers in society, and some of this is reflected in the way that employers view men taking time off for their family’s needs. Men do not give birth, but frequently they are expected to be back on the job within days of their wife or significant other giving birth. Men are looked upon as not having their work priorities straight if they take time off to be with a sick loved one, and this also  can extend to women as well-but the societal expectations are not as strong (although the expectations of perfection that women in the workplace put on themselves may be).

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are important and should be celebrated, but I get the impression that of the two holidays Father’s Day is viewed as the lesser of the two. Perhaps this is because for men fatherhood is a secondary identity, second to their ‘real’ identity in the world of work. In the past couple generations while the role of men as fathers has changed the expectations in the working world have not decreased, nor has their compensation increased and like women they find themselves trying to live well between the worlds of word and home. As the workplace is learning to value women for who they are and the gifts they bring (and I understand that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done here), so in the world of the home as men become an increasing part of the world at home it will mean that the expectations in this world will need to begin to shift as well to be able to account for the gifts that men and women can bring.

I know I am leaving the issue of single parenthood unaddressed, which I definitely sympathize with being a single dad, but on Father’s Day I hope I was able to help us think about how we might help our young men be the fathers we hope they will be.

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On Templars, Gnostic Gospels and Conspiracy Theories

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400px-Templar_Flag_6.svg

I was asked to read Steve Berry’s The Templar Legacy because the person who read it really enjoyed it but it provoked a lot of questions for them. Steve Berry’s book took me a while to get through because I never felt engaged in the storyline, partially because I probably do have enough historical background to laugh at some of the claims the story makes and because he wasn’t as good of a story teller as Dan Brown who writes in the same genre (Devils and Angels and The DaVinci Code among others). We love that which is secretive, we enjoy a good conspiracy theory and too often we have encountered our lives in a sense that either one point of view is true or another is so a discrepancy in a source, for example, is enough to discredit everything about a view (which is simply not true) but let’s get into the heart of the controversies of the book:

The Knights Templar: occasionally the heroes, but more frequently the nemesis in these stories a secret shadowy organization with roots back to the crusades and at least The Templar Legacy gets the time period of their dissolution right with the conflict with Philip IV and Clement V. This is a complicated part of history where that is commonly referred to as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church or the Avignon Papacy where the French King basically controlled the Clement V who never visited Rome during his 9 years as pope. The templars, a military order of the church, did go through what many consider a shameful set trials which were indeed motivated by power and wealth and their pope never interceded for them but rather allowed them to be tortured and then dissolved. Many people want the story to pick up again, to reincarnate the Templars in the Free Masons or many other modern organization or to make them a shadowy society still existing in practice and wealth 700 years later. It makes for a good story and plot, but it stretches the limits of credibility to the breaking point to think of a medieval organization suited for the crusades continuing to exist and flourish in modern society.

Contradictions in the Gospel Stories: Are there contradictions in the accounts in the four gospels that are a part of the Christian cannon? Absolutely! That is one of the many reasons that biblical fundamentalism doesn’t work, but was not a significant source of conflict for the church. The Christian church never felt compelled to create a harmonized gospel, but rather to let the gospels we label Matthew, Mark, Luke and John stand as authorized windows to seeing what Jesus is like. They are different-Mark is probably the oldest and reflects the characteristics of oral storytelling by its structure. It is designed to be memorized by its structure and so events are probably not in strictly the order they happened but arranged in a way that help memory (remember that at the time of its composition most people couldn’t read-but their ability to listen and remember was probably far superior to today). Mark probably recorded the stories in the time around 70 CE, a time when some of the original witnesses to the stories were beginning to die or be executed so there would be a written memory that the community could go back to. Mark has no birth or resurrection stories, it simply tries to narrate predominantly the actions of what Jesus did. Matthew and Luke both follow Mark’s pattern and then add some material (predominantly teachings) that they both shared in common as well as individual stories which are specific to each gospel. Mark, Matthew and Luke are often called the synoptic gospels because they share a similar pattern and although each has its own points of emphases, they share a lot in common. John was probably the last of the gospels written which is less concerned with what Jesus does and much more with who Jesus is and what Jesus means. John tends to go into long dialogues where Jesus will say things like, “I am the bread of life, I am the gate, I am the good shepherd, I am the way, the truth and the life” and many more almost philosophical sounding monologues. One minor note that I got a kick out of in the story was that it got it backwards saying that John has no time period and the synoptic narrate a three year pattern of ministry which is exactly the opposite. John with its patterns of Jesus appearing a different festivals is where we get the standard three year time period of Jesus ministry.  One of the great gifts was that the early church never felt the need to iron out all the differences but was willing to live with the tensions that are present as a part of the mystery of the faith.

The Gnostic Gospels: As Christianity spread throughout the ancient world and encountered more and more cultures and people and it got farther away from its Jewish roots people began to understand Jesus in light of their own expectations and previous experiences creating an identity crisis (I write about this in the Place of Authority 2-3: The Early Church’s Identity Problem). The Gnostic gospels are frequently brought up as another great conspiracy theory of the church pushing out the authentic view of who Jesus was in favor of a Jesus that favored the formation of the church the way it became-honestly I wish the people who write things like this would actually bother to read the Gnostic gospels which are readily available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. But let me spend a little time with the Gnostic gospels and maybe demystify them a little bit. Many ‘Gnostic gospels’ were discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and they are not all part of some unified group. The Gospel of Thomas gets a lot of attention and has been made out in movies (like Stigmata) and books (like The DaVinci Code) to reflect the true words of Jesus. Now where this comes from is actually some scholarly work that is not near as controversial as it sounds: I mentioned above that Matthew and Luke share a lot of material in common, a lot of Jesus’ sayings and there has been a long running hypothesis that there was some common written source for these materials that both Matthew and Luke had access to, and the predominantly German scholars working on this called this common source Quelle which is the German word for common. And because we are often lazy Quelle became shortened to Q and so this is the mysterious Gospel of Q you will sometimes see referred to in culture (I remember an X Files episode where they walk into this church and they are flipping through these additional gospels and one of the ones is Q-not so controversial when you know what it is).

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Some scholars think The Gospel of Thomas is old because it is more of a wise sayings of Jesus without any stories and it does share a lot of material in common with Matthew and Luke, other scholars think Thomas takes the material from Matthew and Luke. Regardless when you read Thomas there just isn’t a lot there that is new to get excited about and frequently little snippets are quoted out of contexts to make Jesus sound like he is anti-institutional to which I respond read Mark, Matthew and Luke and see how many problems Jesus had with the organized religion of his own day and his own protest against it which is far more radical than anything in Thomas. Sometimes authors will try to bring in some of the other Gnostic Gospels, for example Dan Brown makes use of a particular snippets from the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary which help his story, but like prooftexting often does, do not coincide with the general portrayal of even these gospels. When you read some of these gospels you quickly realize that this sounds little like the Jesus in the earlier gospels and sounds a lot like something that comes out of the Greek Culture. I know I’m a geek that I actually have read these sources and can retain a lot of this, but it also keeps me from getting too uptight about a lot of these things.

Is Christianity dependent upon the resurrection?: Yes it is and I think we need to be OK with that. We may never be able to prove historically the resurrection, but if Jesus was just a wise person who could tell a good story and utter wise sayings then we place him up with people like Plato, Aristotle and many other great orators and philosophers-but at the heart of the Christian story is that in Jesus we say, “this is what God is like” as controversial and strange as that is. Now I’m not saying that if a person cannot accept the resurrection that there is nothing to be learned from Christianity, I am convinced that as a way of life it does have a lot to offer, but Paul in 1 Corinthians says it well in his extended argument about the resurrection (the early church struggled with this too) when he argues if Christ wasn’t raised then our hope in resurrection is false and:

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  1 Corinthians 15: 19

Granted many people do not make a lot of sacrifices for their faith, but for those who do it is living in light of a hope for something greater-that God is indeed active in the midst of the world and they are a part of what God is doing in the midst of that.

Conspiracy Theories: They can be fun and make for a good story, and It is OK to question the broadly received story, but conspiracy theories often have little relation to anything recognizable as reality and the thrive in ignorance. I enjoy the stories as much as anyone else, but I also hope that more churches would be places where we can ask difficult questions and pastors would feel adequate to engage them or to ask others who may be able to help them engage these questions. Ultimately questions like this should be fun and not threatening because they give us an opportunity to ask some of the challenging questions of what we believe.

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More than Mothers

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Guido Reni (1575-1642)-The Penitent Magdalene

Guido Reni (1575-1642)-The Penitent Magdalene

I first want to say that I think Mother’s Day is a fine holiday and that mothers often play one of the most important roles in the lives of their children. That being said, I do think that Mother’s Day can become a time when we see the expectations of women limited to child bearing and child raising and women are more than that. What got me thinking about this was an exchange I overheard between a mother and her grown daughter with another woman. After wishing a happy Mother’s Day to the mother, this woman turned to the daughter wishing her the same, and when the daughter replied that she isn’t a mother the woman’s response was, “Oh, but you will be someday.” I have no idea if being a mother is a part of this young woman’s hopes and dreams for her future, but she is very successful and gifted in her own right. In her late twenties she is both working and working towards and advanced degree in the medical field, continues to remain active within the church and I am sure is active in many other things. I would hope that we can value her, and many other women for who they are as individuals.

There was a time when a woman’s value was tied to her ability to bear children. Countless stories in the Bible rotate around the struggle of women who are barren and have their shame removed through an intervention of God: think of Sarah who in her 90s finally bears Isaac, or the struggles between Rachael and Leah, or Hannah, or Elizabeth just to name a few. Yet even in each of these ancient stories, with a worldview over two millennia old, these women did have value both to God and the people most important in their lives well before they bore children. It was society that placed the expectation upon them that their worth was tied to the future they ensured through children (and in particular male children). I chose the image of Mary Magdalene to start this post because she is one of the women in scripture and tradition never mention bearing children and yet she is valued as one of Jesus followers and becomes one of the first witnesses of the resurrection. One of the gifts of our time has been the greater opportunities afforded to women to define themselves in ways that wouldn’t have been allowed a couple generations ago. I look forward to my own daughter being able to make choices that will help define the life she will live as she grows and to carve out her own role within the world.

One of the gifts of my vocations is getting to know and be a part of people’s stories and valuing people as individuals, for who they are. I do think it is important to value mothers, but I also think it is important to value the 97 year old woman who never had any children of her own, or the fromer teacher in her late 80s that never had a family of any type, the women I know who never wanted to get married or have children, those who may want to have children but infertility or miscarriages have prevented this from becoming a reality, those who at this point in their lives are dedicating themselves to their education or their career, or those who gave a child up for adoption for whatever reason or lost custody of their children. I do think this is an issue where we still treat men and women a little differently, but my plea in the midst of all of this is can we value people first and foremost for who they are, and on days like Mother’s day if they happen to be a mother then celebrate that and if not please don’t make them feel guilty for not being one.

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Have We Made The Church Into A Gated Community?

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Gated_Entrance

The church has sometimes been compared to a country club when it becomes primarily a social activity, but as I have become aware of some of the broader trends in the church over the past generation I began to realize that this derogatory reference missed the point. You see a country club is a social and entertainment function, and while it may connect with work and family it often remains one isolated segment, but one of the major movements in Christianity has tried to become something much more. When I first started thinking about this my first thought was to use the term ghetto, which Wikipedia defines as “a part of the city where a minority group lives, especially due to social, legal or economic pressures.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the inadequacy of this provocative term because the church is not a minority group, and unlike minority groups in a ghetto which may not have a choice to reside within the area they are confined to, the church has over the past 30 years increasingly walled itself off from the outside world. Many processes of developing a culture of the programmatic church have become more and more church-centric, where we train people to participate in church activities which are separated from the rest of their life in the world, where people can listen to exclusively Christian music, watch authorized Christian television and videos, read Christian approved books, shop in Christian bookstores, date on exclusively Christian matching sites and become more and more isolated from the rest of the culture that has little or no interest in the predominantly conservative Christian sub-culture. It is a mindset where the rest of the world is filled with evil influences and it is a church against culture mindset that has been manipulated and played by both media and political forces for their own gain. As Reggie McNeal insightfully states:

The idea of what it meant to be Christian became synonymous with what it meant to be a committed church person. Further, the measure of personal devotion to God was the degree of one’s separation from the world outside the church. This meant centering one’s life on the church and its activities, usually pulling away from people who weren’t willing to do the same. The primary focus of evangelism was converting people to the church culture. (McNeal 2009, 42f)

We have created our own gated community, a place where we can stay and not have to venture out into the world very much. More and more portions of the Christian church have pulled away from the rest of the world in a reaction of fear. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way, nor was it ever meant to be this way but this is not new, it has been a process that has taken place over the long history of the Christian church. Until recently mission work entailed converting the people you were doing mission work among to not only Christianity but also the broader culture that the missionaries were coming from and the work became linked with colonialism to the point where the “three C’s of colonialism” were Christianity, commerce and civilization. (Bosch 1991, 305)

Perhaps there have been moments in time where a predominantly Christian in title civilization existed, although I have yet to see a civilization truly based on love of God and neighbor, and perhaps many long deeply to a return to some mythic Christian age, but the reality is that we live in a thoroughly secular age in a pluralistic and post-modern world. There is an increasing sense that at least some churches have moved to a footing of church against culture, rather than openly going out and engaging the culture the is out there in the world. Success in this view of church meant creating ‘full-service’ churches with exercise gyms, day cares, schools and coffee bars. Now there is nothing wrong with any of these things and in a purely attractional model of church where people see what is going on and they naturally want to be a part of this it sounds great. But what happens when people don’t want to live in gated communities with homeowners associations? What happens when the people within the gated communities view the outside world as a danger? What happens is isolation.

The other problem is that the gated community model of church looks very unchristian, at least as far as it relates to Christ.  When Christ was constantly moving beyond the boundaries of what the religious people of his own day considered acceptable, and the early church found itself being pushed farther and farther out into the world, much of contemporary Christianity has been content to shelter behind its own wall creating bigger and better programs. Unfortunately Reggie McNeal hits on the head some of the things I have heard from people outside the church:

The program driven church has produced a culture that is despised, not just ignored, by people outside the church. Their antipathy for what we call Christianity exists for all the wrong reasons. Basically it comes down to our failure to demonstrate the love of Jesus, passing by people not like us on the other side of the road on our way to building great churches. (McNeal 2009, 93)

Many of the things that we do as church are very good things, and I am fortunate to serve a congregation that is increasingly active in the midst of the world—but as a programmatic church we do struggle with this. How do we begin to shift the measurement from how much time people spend doing church activities within the walls of our church to the manner in which their time within the walls of our congregation equips them to be a blessing to the world around them. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. (Matthew 5: 13)

Salt is not just for seasoning, in Jesus’ time salt was for the preservation of foods-but it only preserves if it is rubbed or somehow absorbed into the item that is being preserved. We may forget that it was predominantly the Pharisees as they were portrayed in the gospels who were worried about being contaminated by the outside world, that the contamination of the outside world would dilute their own righteousness. In Jesus we see just the opposite, a movement outward where holiness and righteousness become a blessing and transform those primarily kept on the outside of the walled cities of his time or excluded from the synagogues. Think on how many times a person who is unclean (like lepers or the woman with the flow of blood) or sinners and tax collectors are mentioned within the gospels. Perhaps we too need to learn how to take down the barriers we have set up to isolate ourselves and be willing to see where Christ is already at work in the midst of the rest of the world.

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