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conflict and community

conflict and community

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Conflict and community are not mutually exclusive. Violence and community are mutually exclusive.

Rachel Simons is a member of a Word Made Flesh team serving God by working with children in Moldova. In her May 2102 newsletter, she suggests that conflict is in fact “a starting point for community, rather than the ingredient that destroys it,” quoting an excerpt from a blog written by psychologist, Kelly Flanagan:

I think we assume communities are comprised of like-minded people, so we believe in order to preserve community — a marriage, a friendship, a collegiality, a church — we must be like putty, changing our beliefs to match the beliefs of others, or conversely, convincing everyone to believe what we believe. But perhaps an authentic community is a group of people with a vast array of opinions and differences that range from semantics to fundamental incompatibilities in worldview. Yet they are a people commmited to living in the tension, refusing the tempation to do violence to the other’s philosophy or worldview. They have decided they will value people and the stories those people are telling, above feeling perfectly at ease, or right, or validated.

We need to hear such words in a world where we so easily divide into camps and where hostility has become the norm in any kind of dialogue between camps. We must choose another way. We must live another way.

We live with each other, refusing to do violence to each other. We choose to value people, to value each other’s stories, not at the expense of our own stories, but alongside our own stories. We are validated not by common consent, but by Christ. Christ brings us together. Christ holds us together. Nothing else. Nothing else can!

let it shine

let it shine

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This week the United Church of Christ gathers in Hartford, Connecticut to convene its 26th General Synod and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the church founded by the merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Conference of Congregational Christian Churches on June 25, 1957.

UCC 50th anniversary logo

As we celebrate our heritage and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling God’s mission, I pray we can rekindle something of the passion for unity that motivated the birth of this new church experiment: The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. It acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession.

These words from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United Church of Christ represent the UCC at its best. The lines of authority are simple and clear: there is only one source of authority on the church — Jesus Christ! And the lines of connection are simple and clear: any — ANY — who share our dedication to following Jesus are already our brothers and our sisters, no more questions necessary!

Too often, I believe, our church falls prey to the same sort of prejudices and shortsightedness that plague much of Christ’s church. We recognize as kindred in Christ … all who think pretty much like we do! It seems sometimes we expend more energy bashing “right-wing Christians,” “evangelical Christians,” “other-side-of-the-aisle Christians” than bearing a common witness of grace and peace into a hurting world.

I am not suggesting the church forego healthy theological criticism and a faithful prophetic witness. I am not suggesting an uncritical acceptance of “church” in whatever forms it presents itself. But I am saying that the original genius of the United Church of Christ was its recognition that something is broken in the Church and that what is broken is Christ’s own vision of a church that is One.

The integrity of our witness will be demonstrated not only by what we say to the world, but by what we can show to the world, what we can show of our ability to get along even with each other! Does Christ make us one … or not? Do we require further conditions for fellowship and friendship than our common faith in Christ? Is Christ capable of breaking down the walls that divide us … or not?

not ready for a color-ful president?

not ready for a color-ful president?

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It’s a sad commentary on the state of our nation that an intelligent, articulate, Harvard-educated, church-going, family-oriented, compassionate, bridge-building presidential candidate requires early protection by the Secret Service … because he happens to be black. Racism is still embedded in our nation’s psyche — broadly and deeply — so much so that a truly viable candidate of color apparently poses an unacceptable threat.

We like to pretend this bile is not still in us. We like to pretend we are beyond it. Then the man who could be our next president must ask to be protected from those who think him too dark for the job.

(from a Leonard Pitts editorial, Obama’s Rise Fuels Hate)

When will we be the “land of the free” we profess to be, want to be, a land where someone other than a rich, white male could be president? It hasn’t happened yet …

And until it does, our claim to be a land of equal opportunity will ring hollow. And we must continue to bear the collective shame of our intractable racism.

hope for northern ireland

hope for northern ireland

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Even you is the blog of Elane O’Rourke, a UCC pastor in Campbell, California. Her posts are always thoughtful, well-reasoned, well-written … and faithful to the mind and heart of Jesus. I have given her blog a permanent place on my blogroll (see sidebar).

Today Elane celebrates the formation of a Catholic/Protestant unity government in Northern Ireland in a post entitled Thanking the God of the Irish. Her response to this historic political breakthrough shows deep empathy and an appreciation of the long and painful struggle of the folk of Northern Ireland. She concludes her post this way:

I give great thanks today that, after hundreds of years of pain and sorrow, there is hope in Northern Ireland. And I give great thanks that there is hope for other post-colonial countries, including my own, and for all those we continue to colonize and fight in name of the modern nation-state.

I encourage you to read the rest of this post and to check in with Elane often!

not crusaders for jesus, but followers of jesus

not crusaders for jesus, but followers of jesus

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From an editorial by John Buchanan in the February 6, 2007 edition of The Christian Century …

I was representing my denomination on a visit to Croatia, not long after the shooting between Croats, Serbs, and Bosnians had stopped. The Croats are mostly Roman Catholic; the Serbs, Orthodox; and the Bosnians, Muslim. The conflict was about more than religion, but religion added fuel to the fire …

We … met Peter Kuzmic, an American who calls himself a Calvinist Pentecostal and who presides over the Evangelical Theological Seminary is Osijek and also holds a chair in world missions at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Kuzmic has pleaded with American evangelicals to stop using terms like “evangelical crusade” and “Balkan harvest” when they come to the region …

Kuzmic told me about a Serbian businessman named Antol who quit his job to go to work for the Agape Project, a refugee resettlement initiative. Antol’s new job was to bring together money, materials and labor to rebuild Muslim villages that had been destroyed in the war. While reviewing rebuilding plans submitted by a Muslim village chief, Antol noticed that the plans did not include rebuilding the mosques that had been leveled. ‘”Why no mosques?” Antol asked. The chief explained that he knew Antol was a Christian, so he assumed that there would be no help in rebuilding mosques. Antol answered: “We will help you rebuild your mosque because we follow Jesus, who told us to love our neighbors. And he told a story once about a man who stopped beside the road to help a victim whose religion was different from his own.”

Because we follow Jesus!

obama: the role of faith in political conversation

obama: the role of faith in political conversation

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Tolerance and passionate faith are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe the opposite is true. Passionate believers, genuine believers, are more tolerant people, because they understand how tolerant God has been with them!

It is refreshing to hear Sen. Barack Obama, a Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ, speak about his faith and its role in framing his political agenda … and his response to folks who may not share his political agenda. He is not apologetic about his faith. Neither is he dismissive of other people’s faith.

He is right. We need a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this nation, about the role of faith in shaping our values … not slogans and sound bites and accusations, but a conversation, a conversation that includes both honest sharing and respectful listening.

Read this excerpt from his keynote address at Pentecost 2006, sponsored by Call to Renewal, a movement affiliated with the Sojourners Community in Washington D.C. Or read the entire address: Keynote Address: Sen. Barack Obama.

A few days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical School that said the following:

“Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from supporting you.”

The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his commitments to be “totalizing.” His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush’s foreign policy.

But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my Web site, which suggested that I would fight “right wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” He went on to write:

“I sense that you have a strong sense of justice … and I also sense that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason … Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. … You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what grounds we have for making any claims that involve others … I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

I checked my Web site and found the offending words. My staff had written them to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.

Re-reading the doctor’s letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in reasonable terms – those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for his advice. The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own – a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

making sense, moving forward

making sense, moving forward

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We live in a world that is so different from the world of the generations that have preceded us. The pace of change is dizzying. The amount of accessible — unavoidably accessible! — information is overwhelming. We bear the burden of knowing too much, almost more than we can bear to know. It is not only the problems of family and community and region that weigh on our hearts, but the problems of a whole world: famine and disease and natural disaster, war and oppression and unabashed genocide, injustice and mistrust and entrenched hatred. We know so much about the world and about the people who fill it, so much more about so many more people, so many people so different from us as we are so different from them — different traditions, different dreams, different perceptions, different values, different beliefs.

How do we make sense of this world? How do we stretch minds and hearts to “fit” all the information, all the people, in a way that allows us to move forward with eyes and ears still open? As believers, how do we reconcile ourselves and our faith to diverging and even openly hostile points of view?

Some do it by holding tightly to received traditions, by clinging to a clearly defined spiritual calculus that distinguishes between those who are right and those who are wrong, by subscribing to a parochial religious worldview that leaves most of humanity on the outside. In the face of a world full of questions, these folks survive by adopting a faith full of ready answers.

Others do it by redefining “truth” and “righteousness” and “salvation:” what matters is what is true for you, what is right is what allows us to co-exist, salvation is avoidance of conflict. In the face of a world full of questions, these folks survive by believing there really aren’t any answers.

But is there a third option? Is there a way for believers other than strict fundamentalism or uncritical pluralism? Can we make sense of this world without ignoring the majority of the facts? Can we move forward without abandoning our loyalty to a personal God? We need a third way, because the church is being torn apart, dangerously polarized, torn apart by people who are scared, scared of losing their faith, scared of losing their lives, polarized by people scared of obsolescence, scared of irrelevance, scared of being marginalized, scared of losing their souls.

I believe there is a third way. The first two ways have one important feature in common: fear … fear of losing, fear of criticism, fear of being wrong, fear of being irrelevant, fear of the daunting and dizzying and befuddling and overwhelming world in which we live! And the natural response to fear is … fight or flight! Taking control of a situation that is out of control by removing myself or by arming myself. “Solving” the threatening situation by taking a unilateral course of action. But, as believers, when we act unilaterally, when we “take control” — one way or another, we leave God out. We discover a third way when we let God in, when we listen — really listen — to God, instead of deciding for ourselves what we must do to survive and to “protect” the faith!

Perfect love drives out fear.

Love is the third way! Loving God with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength … and loving your neighbor as you love yourself.

God is not a cipher! God is not whatever we think God is or whatever we want God to be! God is a particular being, with a distinctive character and distinctive intentions. It is possible for us to be right about what we think we know of God, and it is possble for us to be utterly wrong about what we think we know of God! We must seek God, listen to God, wait for God, not pretend we already know exactly what God wants, or that we can never know what God wants. Our task is not to use God, as a war club or a slogan, but to love God.

In the same way, your neighbor is not a cipher, but a person, a person who deserves to be loved. Your primary task is not to defeat your neighbor, protect yourself from your neighbor, convert your neighbor, enlighten your neighbor, but to love your neighbor. Love your neighbor!

Don’t be scared! Love God and trust God to love you. In the face of a world full of questions, you don’t have to have all the answers … but you know there are answers!

You don’t have to fight or run away. You can move forward, with confidence in God, with hope for the future, with readiness to love your neighbor who is so very different from you, but equally loved by God. As believers, we take our cue from God, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, a God of love, a God of mercy, a God of grace. We love, we show mercy, we extend grace.

We don’t need to take control. We leave that to God. We know our job …

the sami got me thinking

the sami got me thinking

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Sami dressLast evening my wife and I attended a Sons of Norway gathering as guests of some friends of ours. We shared a catered meal, listened as members conducted club business, and watched with them a documentary on the recent history of the Sami, an indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and far northwest Russia, known for their reindeer-herding, fishing, and colorful dress, among other things. (Photo courtesy: Trym Ivar Bergsmo/Finnmark Tourist Board; click on the photo to see a larger image.)

It was a troubling film. The story of the Sami is so much like the story of other indigenous peoples — in Australia, in Africa, in South America, and on this continent. They are pushed aside, displaced from traditional lands, absorbed or oppressed by the dominant culture. Traditional means of economic production often become unavailable to them, because of the encroachment of competing interests or the degradation of natural resources. They are forcibly “re-educated” in the language and customs of the dominant culture, and their own language and culture are threatened with extinction.

The Sami have done well, adjusting to a new way of life, surviving both within and alongside the European cultures of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, while preserving their own distinctive ways and forging a stronger social and political unity. But along the way, they have been caricatured, belittled, marginalized, and mocked. Just like the aborigines of Australia or the Xhosa of South Africa or the Sioux of North America, they have been treated as a lower form of humanity and their culture demeaned and expunged.

What is it about us? What is it about all of us that is so intolerant of diversity? What is it that makes us want to homogenize culture, to marginalize or eradicate or utterly transform what we find peculiar? We still do it. We disrespect immigrant peoples by proposing “English as official language” laws, supposedly to aid their assimilation into American culture, but oppressors and cultural elitists have always supposed they know what is best for everybody else. We export our preferred economic model and our preferred political model, sometimes by moral persuasion, sometimes by leveraging our power and influence, and sometimes by plain use of force. But we are not uniquely at fault in this. It seems no culture can resist the impulse to see itself as superior to any other culture with which it comes in contact, and to seek, if possible, to dominate and “convert” their “unfortunate” neighbors.

It is more than troubling. It causes me doubt and shame … because Christians, at least Christians in name, have too often been among the “culture-killers.” But I cannot believe, I do not believe, that such behavior is a product of Christian faith itself. This is not the way of Christ or the way of Christ’s faithful followers. Authentic faith does not encourage homogeneity, but diversity: The Spirit’s presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all. And again: There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ, which is not to denigrate the differences between people, but to say that differences in gender or race or social status offer no reason to make distinctions. We are one in Christ; in Christ we have equal value, equal importance … we are equally loved. And what shall we say to the God who is the creator of all living things, of every human person: You may think this is good, but we know better!”?

May God forgive us our cultural biases and our haste in equating “foreign” with “inferior.” And may our witness to Jesus be about spreading the good news of the gospel of peace, not about spreading our particular brand of culture.