In response to Sarah Palin's recent claims that climate change is based on "junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood," Al Gore said that "global warming is not a political issue but a moral one,” he said. Which is it? Is it immoral to do nothing about global warming?
A Family Tree: Rooted in the Earth
One of the most foundational stories in Christianity is the story of Adam and Eve. Their story begins as God forms humanity from out of the dust of the earth. For Christians, our identity is derived from our origins found in the dust of the earth. Humans are irrevocably tied to the earth and to all of creation which was brought forth from the same earth. We are tied to the waters, to every animal of the field, and to every bird of the air. And for this reason Christians and humans have a moral imperative to act against global climate change. We must act to preserve the earth because the earth is who we are.
We are becoming increasingly aware of our lineage, sprung forth out of the earth, as climate crisis threatens. As the earth warms, both drought and flood inhibit the ability of farmers to produce crops. And with the pangs of hunger and starvation our relationship with the earth and our common ancestry from the dust become agonizingly apparent. As glaciers melt, communities around the world will find that the nourishing waters are no longer springing forth from the earth. And with the pain of thirst, our common ancestry from the dust becomes more readily apparent. As global water levels rise, many communities’ ability to merely dwell on the dust from which they came is threatened. And in the midst of exile we are reminded again of our common ancestry from the dust.
It is our moral duty and imperative duty as humans to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsting, and to give shelter to the homeless. We do this because the hungry, thirsting, and homeless are who we are, they are human. In this same way, it is our duty as humans to act to alleviate climate crisis because the earth is who we are.
The beginning is important because it tells us about the end. Not only is our past tied to a relationship with the earth, but our future as well. Our future and hope lies in our terrestrial identity. Our hope is that life will again spring forth from the earth. Especially in this time of ecological distress, our future rests on the earth’s ability to nourish us. Therefore, humanity must move forward aware of our earthly identity and act to combat global climate crisis.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A Family Tree: Rooted in the Earth
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Don't Ask, Don't Tell: the military & religion
The Fort Hood shootings have raised questions again about how the military should handle the personal religious beliefs of its soldiers, whether they are evangelical Christians, Muslims, Wiccans, and so on. What is the proper role of religion -- and personal religious belief -- in the U.S. armed forces? Should a particular religious affiliation disqualify someone from active military service? How far should the military go to accommodate personal religious beliefs and practices?
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: the military & religion
Ever since the beginning of the first gulf war in the early nineties, derogatory terms like “hajji” and “raghead” have become part of the US military vocabulary in order to dehumanize enemies in the middle east. However, the result of this technique is that not only is the enemy dehumanized, but so are the soldiers themselves. It is the role of religion in the military to humanize the soldier.
Humanity is defined and exists in as much as we are in relationship; with other humans, with creation, and with God. Christians within my tradition confess that humans are created in the image of God. In particular, humans are created in the image of a God who is always in relationship with itself, with the world, and with humans.
And so, when we dehumanize the enemy, we end up dehumanizing ourselves. Yet, militaries around the world are always tempted to dehumanize the enemy and soldier alike in the pursuit of military objectives. But it is the task of religion and faith to keep both the soldier and the enemy human. Doing so, religion forces the military to recognize the full humanity of its service people. When religion humanizes the soldier the military is confronted with the fact that service people’s theological convictions and faith cannot be partitioned off from their military tasks. Rather they are whole people who must deal with both the congruency and incongruence of their faiths and the work they are called to do.
This must be of great concern with a humanized military. The stresses we all face in determining whether our actions and vocation are consistent with our understanding of God are only amplified in a military context. The military must take seriously the significant psychological and theological stresses that its service people endure. Let me be clear here, the heinous actions of Hasan at Fort Hood cannot be understood or blamed on any single factor, let alone the particular stress of rectifying faith convictions with military service. But in the wake of this incident, increasing cases post traumatic stress disorder and military suicides in Iraq the military must take seriously these extreme stresses by providing appropriate treatment and its decision making on all levels.
But a humanized military can be one of our society’s greatest assets. A military filled with soldiers who are in relationship with the other is a military that is truly empowered to stand on the side of the oppressed and defenseless. And when the military does this, it is in right relationship with religion and faith.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Avoiding the 'D' Word
This week's On Faith Question from the Washington Post:
Proposed health-care reform legislation includes a provision that allows Medicare to pay for "end-of-life" counseling for seniors and their families who request it. The provision -- which Sarah Palin erroneously described as "death panels" for seniors -- nearly derailed President Obama's health-care initiative. Some Republicans still argue that the provision would ration health care for the elderly. Does end-of-life care prolong life or does it prolong suffering? Should it be a part of health-care reform?
Avoiding the ‘D’ Word
Most people in the United State are not prepared to talk about death. Culturally, we are bombarded with ideas and images that only propagate life, seemingly ignoring death. As I watch football on Sunday afternoons, a relentless stream of commercials peddling cures to erectile dysfunction, show images of how we can continue to live life to its fullest, even as death approaches. And on the most popular medical dramas of our times, shows which utilize the intense emotions surrounding death in the medical fields, death is far from a reality. Just look back to Grey’s Anatomy from a couple of seasons ago, when a main character dies, only to be brought back to life through a twisting of plotlines.
I must also admit that religion and Christianity in particular, have not been particularly helpful in preparing people to deal and talk about death. Many churches now hold ‘Celebrations of Life’ rather than funerals. They choose to focus wholly on the person’s life, rather than acknowledge the fact that this person has just died. Even in the quiet conversations in parish halls, congregants will avoid using the ‘d’ word all together, preferring to say that someone has ‘passed on’ rather than to say that someone has died.
It is because of this cultural conditioning to avoid death, even in thought, that ‘end of life’ counseling must be included in any health reform legislation. Dying is a part of living. Unfortunately, most individuals and their families are not prepared to deal with the realities of dying on their own. They need the outside support of medical and palliative care professionals in order to help provide comfort to both the patient and their families in the midst of the stress and anxiety of death with which they are most often not prepared. As Christians, we proclaim a God who is present not only in the exhilarating moments of living, but also in the mundane and even in our dying. End of life counseling can be a source of comfort, reassurance, and presence in a situation where our cultural support leaves us standing alone. Families need this support and by providing it, we point to the God who is present and bringing comfort not only in our living but also in our dying.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
God is Bringing Goodness; Whether We Believe It or Not
Q: Is there good without God? Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion? From where do you get your sense of good and evil, right and wrong?
God Brings Goodness, Whether We Believe It or Not
I don’t believe in believe. If ever there has been a word whose theological currency has been exhausted it is “believe.” All I have to do is turn my television to a number local public access channel to find televangelists exhorting me to “just believe” and the goodness of salvation will be mine. It is this tattered and worn understanding of belief which I find to be the crux of this week’s question. ‘Does good only come through believing?”
To this question I must resoundingly respond in the negative. Within my Christian tradition goodness does not come through believing. The focus is not on the works of the faithful, whether that work is believing or feeding the hungry. Rather the focus is on what God does and is doing. And what God is doing is bringing goodness and life in the midst of this world. I believe that God is fully immersed in this world bringing justice, peace, and goodness through those of us who are both saint and sinner, both the dust and the arising.
Yet at the same time, I must profess that what we do believe is important. It shapes the way we view and interact with the world. It is important that I believe that God is fully immersed in this world, because it calls me to full engagement with this world. What we believe determines how we engage the world, but my faith rests in the power of God to bring life and goodness into this world with or without my belief.
As I considered this question my thoughts turned to the Living Room Café. The Living Room Cafe is a non-religious based organization located in Woodlawn on Chicago's south side, and a place where I am occasionally privileged to volunteer. It provides restaurant-style meals, case management, support groups, life-skills training, and financial assistance to homeless men and women. And even though the Living Room Café isn’t an explicitly religious or faith-based organization, it is readily apparent to me that God is moving and bringing goodness through the work of this organization. And at the same time what the Living Room Cafe believes matters. Their belief, that goodness can be found even in and amongst the homeless, marks and shapes their ability to cultivate goodness in the world. God is bringing goodness into the world, whether we believe it or not.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Widespread Panic: Why We Need Hate Crimes Legislation
Congress is expected to expand federal hate crimes laws to add "sexual orientation" to a list that already includes "race, color, religion or national origin." Is this necessary? Should there be special laws against crimes motivated by intolerance, bigotry and hatred? Isn't a crime a crime?
Widespread Panic: Why We Need Hate Crimes Legislation
Hate crimes cause wide spread panic and fear. Christians must work to check such fears with peace and hope. Special legislation recognizing these fear mongering crimes is one way to oppose such terror.
Compared to other crimes, hate crimes are perpetrated because of the identity of the victim, whether their race, sexual identity, color, national origin, or religion. And as a result, there is more than the individual victim of the individual act of hate. All people of that particular group are affected. They must live in fear that they might become victims solely because of who they are.
Hate crime is terrorism. This is perhaps the best example to illumine the seriousness with which we must take hate crime. In the events of September 11th, thousands of Americans were murdered because of their identity, because of who they were. And yet, they were not the only victims. Rather the whole United States, Americans everywhere, were inflicted with terror and live in fear, still to this day, because of this crime of hate.
Hate crimes based on race, sexual identity, color, or religion act in the same way. Hate crimes inflict unchecked fear and terror in the populations that see themselves aligned with these groups. They cause wide spread emotional damage. They cause people to fear because of who they are, because of how they were made.
In the face of such anxiety and fear, Christians must work for peace and hope. Like the God who created life and order out of the primordial chaos, Christians must work to bring life and peace against fear and terror. Laws specifically against hate crimes are one way of doing so.
Christians must take very seriously crimes perpetrated because of someone’s deeply embedded identity. In our creation stories we claim that humanity was created in the image of God. There is a unity with all of humanity being made in the image of God. Perhaps there will come a day when there will be no need for specific hate crime laws. That day will come when we truly recognize our unity, when all of humanity feels threatened by violence anywhere. We must recognize our common humanity, that we are all made in the image of our creator. And that violence anywhere is a threat against humanity everywhere.
But that day has not arrived. Here on the south side of Chicago, school children are continuing to die in the streets. Fear and anxiety spreads uncheck amongst the public school children of this city. And yet this violence is seen only as a problem to be solved, not as a threat against us all. Currently, that story repeats itself; here in Cook County and around the world. Until the day comes when we are just as aghast by crimes against the other as with crimes against ourselves, we need hate crime legislation.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Love in a Time of H1N1
-Polls show a majority of Americans are concerned about the H1N1 virus (swine flu), but also about the safety and efficacy of the swine flu vaccine. Is it ethical to say no to this or any vaccine? Are there valid religious reasons to accept or decline a vaccine? Will you get a swine flu shot? Will your children?
Love in a Time of H1N1
God calls Christians to be engaged with the world, to do God’s work with our hands. For this reason Christians have a valid religious reason to accept the H1N1 virus. In particular, those who are called to work and care for those most vulnerable to the flu must seek the vaccine on religious grounds.
For those who fulfill their vocational callings by working with the sick, elderly, and the young (those most susceptible to the H1N1 flu) there are only two realistic options: vaccination or quarantine. For the sake of those most vulnerable to the flu, their caretakers must be vaccinated or removed from their positions of care. With these two options, Christians are called to be vaccinated and to engage in their work of care and healing.
It is this same call to care and healing which marked the identity of the meager Christian movement in the 2nd and 3rd century. As the Antonine and Cyprian plagues ravaged Rome, killing up to 2,000 people a day, most people of means fled the city to avoid the deadly effects of the disease. Those who stayed within the city sought quarantine and shelter from the sick.
But in these times many Christians sought out the sick and dying. In the face of epidemic, they sought to bring comfort and healing to those facing disease and death. One of the results of this radical offering of love and care was that Christians gained a level of immunity from close contact with the disease and survived the plagues in greater numbers than those who sought quarantine. But more importantly, the Roman world was greatly impressed by the Christian’s witness of love in action. It is this fulfillment of the call to do God’s work with our hands that played an important role in the development of the Christian movement.
In our times, people of faith are called to seek that same immunity, this time through vaccination, so that we might do God’s work of healing and comfort with our hands. A faith that calls for quarantine, that calls for disengagement from the world, until the time when all danger has passed, is a faith that has little bearing on the realities of our world. Rather, Christians are called to engage this world, to offer actions of love and care. Vaccination empowers God’s people to do God’s work in the world.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Hope: The Antidote to Terror
Q-- Eight years after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, fighting continues. Religious extremists in the Taliban and al-Qaeda retain significant power there. What is our moral responsibility to the people of Afghanistan? If religion is part of the problem there, how can it be part of the solution?
For more than thirty years Afghanistan has been a country mired in turmoil and military upheaval. Beginning with Soviet invasion, then civil war, and US invasion in 2001, the Afghan people have been a people unable to find rest from war. Several generations have now matured in Afghanistan that have known only the realities of daily life grounded only by the certainties of violence and death. Since the US invasion into Afghanistan in 2001, over 30,000 civilians have died. Against this bleak history, the Afghan people deserve hope.
With Afghanistan’s history of military instability, some might argue that we are justified to leave Afghanistan as we found it, as a place in continual conflict. Yet, as muddied as the situation may be, we have a greater responsibility to the Afghan people. We need look no further than the phrase which former President George W. Bush used to coin the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, “The War on Terror.” If we are to truly defeat terror and eradicate terrorism then we must work to oppose terror with hope; hope is the only true victor over terror.
Hope is our moral and religious responsibility to the Afghan people. To a people stuck in recurring, decade long cycles of violence and instability, we are called to offer hope that their past isn’t doomed to repeat itself. They deserve the hope that when the United States leaves, we won’t be back again. They deserve hope in a future that is not tied to the industries of war and the dealings of death.
God brings hope in the midst of death and to those who mourn. And so we are called to help bring about hope in this place. In this way, religion can be a part of a solution. A solution where the concern is not the ability of the other to harm us or inflict death, but the concern is of the other’s ability and ours to have hope in a different future.
We are called to build the foundations of this future. We are called to help build the foundations of civilization, eroded over the past thirty years of war. We are called to build infrastructure, provide health care, and education. We need to put into place the building blocks of a society and economy not reliant on the industry of war. In doing so we will be helping to shape a hopeful future and clear a new path forward for the Afghan people. After more than thirty years, they deserve it.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Check Out My Post in "On Faith"
Be sure to check out my response to this week's On Faith question on nuclear disarmament on the Washington Post's site:
http://tinyurl.com/ycodx86
Sunday, September 27, 2009
What's Next, Non-Believers in the Pews?
Here's this week's On Faith question from WashingtonPost:
Dozens of major religious groups and denominations are urging Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to renounce a Bush-era memo that allows faith-based charities that receive federal funding to discriminate in hiring. SHOULD RELIGIOUS CHARITIES THAT RECEIVE FEDERAL GRANT MONEY BE ALLOWED TO DISCRIMINATE IN HIRING?
What’s next, non-believers in the pews?
As a pastoral intern, I have been subjected to countless committee meetings that almost always got around to one question: How do we reach the unchurched and non-believers in our communities? As a seminary student, I repeatedly find myself party to debate and concern over the decline in membership of mainline protestant denominations.
My experience as a future religious leader of my church leaves me somewhat baffled at not only the legality but the common sense of discriminatory hiring practices by faith-based organizations. At a time when evangelism committees and whole church bodies wrestle and struggle to attract new members, it doesn’t make sense for churches to be in the business of turning people away. It makes even less sense when the people in question are offering to devote their professional lives towards the mission and hope of the faith based institution, more than a weekly offering and scattered worship attendance. Envelopes dropped in church offering plates are rarely marked return to sender, so it makes little sense why an offering of the work of one’s life would be rejected. How can churches hope to get new and different faces sitting in the pews, when they are barred from the offices of the church’s charities?
This Bush-era memo is certainly unconstitutional; it denies individuals the right of religious liberty. But Jesus also weighed in on the issue in a scene from the gospel of Mark. The disciples found someone casting out demons. And they excitedly tell Jesus that they stopped the man because he wasn’t following them. To this group of disciples (who it turns out aren’t that great at following either) Jesus replies, “Do not stop him; Whoever is not against us is for us.”
If a faith based charity has faith in their work, in their deeds of power, let both the believer and the non-believer work and strive together to feed the hungry, to serve the poor, and to prevent juvenile delinquency. To do so requires faith. It requires faith in a God who is big, big enough to work and bring social change through the hands of the both the believer and the non-believer alike. And it requires faith that is bold enough to consider the possibility that faith can be voiced just as clearly through the work of one’s life in the world.
It is when these disparate voices are mixed together towards a common cause that faith movements are enriched not broken down. Dialogue between people of different faiths but of a common cause and heart gives rise to self-reflection, clearer articulation of faith, and renewed motivation for the work of the organization.
Besides, the world needs all hands on deck. Poverty, hunger, and violence issues at the heart of humanitarian aid are pressing enough that they demand as many hands and as much work as is possible. And it is with this looming background of need that we must remember; all who are not against justice, sustenance, and peace are for us.