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Posts from the ‘Ethics’ Category

Dec 30

‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’: Why We Matter

 This is a draft of a chapter for a forthcoming book called “Why People Matter,” edited by John Kilner.  I am expanding on questions and affirmations Kara Slade and I made when we gave a keynote address at the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics.  That essay is online here at this site.  It is thanks to Kara also that we are posting this draft here.  Having worked on it for so long, I’d lost perspective on whether or not it is helpful.  She says it is!  And thanks so much to Meghan Florian for editing this draft and creating the bibliography! – ALH

 

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Matthew 10:29-30 (RSV)

I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me. Civilla D. Martin, 1905

Introduction

You and I are not only individuals. Each individual Christian is part of a larger body. We are part of the Body of Christ. But we are not “just” part of the Body. The Body of Christ cannot itself be measured or parceled. Take the Lord’s Supper as a weekly reminder of this fact of Christian faith. Christians believe the Body of Christ is indiscriminately there, on the table, across the world in ways that not even Google Maps can map. And each individual in the Body of Christ cannot be authoritatively measured or parceled or evaluated numerically. Being part of Jesus Christ means that each individual, as a whole, is whole in an incalculable way. We are each, as little bitty parts of the Body of Christ, unto our own, beloved beyond reckoning by God as individuals. Here I further suggest, with centuries of Christians, that Jesus came in one single body with a name and a history and a story for a reason. Jesus is not a “symbol” of some other truth that is beyond his particularity, whether that truth is political or spiritual or aesthetic. His individual body marks our individual bodies as known by God in ways that must shape how we seek to know one another not as symbols or instantiations of another reality but as real, as incarnate. Numbering people – and trying to know them by a category that can be counted, and assessed, and sent by experts into the right pen – is a lie that Christians need to refuse. This essay is one way to explain why the particularity of Jesus Christ matters for the particular matter that makes each person a unique person. You, and I, and that woman next to us in the pew, each one of us is too inscrutable for a larger description and decisive evaluation by another human being or another group of human beings who seek to study us. Read more

Dec 20

[Alan Felton] What would you do?

We’re delighted to welcome the Rev. Alan Felton to our pages on this fourth weekend in Advent.  Alan currently serves as the pastor of Resurrection UMC in Durham, and in his copious spare time he’s also a preceptor at Duke Divinity School.

What would you do?

What would you do if year after year unarmed members of your community were gunned down in the street by police officers?

What would you do if year after year the legal system returned no justice for these acts of violence?

What would you do if you lived under the constant pall of suspicion and distrust by your neighbors of other races?

What would you do if the American dream of peace and prosperity were denied to you over and over and over again?

What would you do if you were repeatedly told to respect a “system” that was never designed to respect you?

What would you do?

You might do what was done recently in Ferguson, Missouri.  You might do what was done in Los Angeles a generation ago.  You might do what was done in Watts and other communities still another generation in the past.  You might just go out burn the bitch down.

Media outlets were quick to broadcast the anguished reaction of Michael Brown’s mother hearing that her son’s killer would not be indicted on any criminal charge.  That broadcast included the boiling over anger of Michael’s stepfather who repeatedly screamed to “burn this bitch down.”  Part of Ferguson went up in flames soon thereafter.

The media was quick to focus on this angry response and blame it for the violence happening in the wake of the grand jury’s action in the Michael Brown case.  The media was quick to do this because it allowed them to take the focus off the real crime, the killing of an unarmed black kid, and return to telling the comforting myth that our system “worked” even though not everyone agrees with the outcome.

The media also wanted to feed the desire to name “good” and “bad” guys.”  The violence was quickly dismissed as the work of a few criminal elements or “outside agitators.”  The so-called looters were obviously “bad” elements.  They were the anomaly.  They were misguided.  They were the ones who didn’t respect the process.  Maybe (never said directly but strongly implied) they were the ones who just didn’t know their place.

Yet, what would you do if were Michael Brown’s mother or father or stepfather?  What would you do if your son’s body had been left lying in the street on public display for nearly five hours after he was gunned down? What would you do if your dead child’s character had been demeaned and vilified for months after his body had been assassinated?  What would you do if you were part of a community where these things and worse happening are not unusual but the norm?  What would you do?

I grieve the violence in Ferguson.  I am sorry for those who lost their businesses.  Yet, I don’t grieve them more than I grieve the death of Michael Brown.  Insurance can rebuild at least most of what was lost in the flames of Ferguson.  There is no replacing what was lost when Darren Wilson and Michael Brown met in the street on August 9.

That’s why I urge us to not be so quick to condemn a grieving stepfather when he cries out “burn this bitch down.” I don’t condemn him because that is exactly what I wanted to do when I heard the decision of the grand jury. My first inclination was to go grab a rock or a bottle or whatever I could get my hand on and go throw it through a window somewhere.  My first thought after hearing the news from Ferguson was “I hope they burn that bitch down.”  I didn’t go to any of the marches taking place that night or since because I was sorely afraid I would pick up a rock or make a Molotov cocktail and start doing just that.

I’m white.

I’m well educated and middle class.

I don’t have to worry that my son will be harassed or shot by police.

I’m the son of a retired police officer.

I’m a pacifist, a student of Gandhi and King.

I’m a pastor.

I received the news from Ferguson sitting in the church I serve with the cross of Christ I preach under every week in front of my eyes.

And, still, all I could think was “yes, let’s go burn this bitch down.”

W.E.B. Dubois once wrote, “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.”   For those of us who are protected, always have been protected, and always will be protected by the American legal system, maybe it is hard to understand the angry reaction to the grand jury decision.  Yet, for those who not only read what Dubois wrote, but live it every day, it’s not so hard to understand the anger and the violence.

I can’t possibly understand the depth of anger and grief experienced by Michael Brown’s family.  But, I can refrain from condemning them.  I can try to walk a few feet in their shoes.  Maybe if more of us would do that, we might go from wanting to burn this bitch down to celebrating justice for all.

Oct 30

Be Not Afraid

good-spreadI’ve learned how to “tweet.” This involves putting words together to share, using 140 characters. One of my most “retweeted” “tweets” on the internet came out after a tragedy had everyone in panic mode. These were the words: “The world is transfixed by fear. Perfect love whispers in fear’s ear to turn his head toward hope.”

I was paraphrasing a fourteenth-century mystic, Julian of Norwich. I am writing a book about what her visions have taught me about fear. She is really in my head this week because, according to every news media outlet around us, we are supposed to be scared of one another. Restaurants, waiting rooms, and the pump at my gas station have news blaring: EBOLA! ISIS! Short of sleeping at the Eno River, you too will be exposed to the contagion of FEAR.

I recommend an antidote. But first, a history lesson. Julian of Norwich is the name given to the woman who wrote the first book written in English attributed to a woman. We don’t know what name “Julian of Norwich” answered to before she came to be called “Julian of Norwich.” We refer to her by that because, toward the end of her life, she was a resident wise woman in a church in Norwich, England that had long been called St. Julian’s. Sometime near the late fourteenth-century, this woman took the name of St. Julian’s church in Norwich. The church was bombed to oblivion by the German air force during WW II. But it was rebuilt for people who have the means to travel and love the writer known as Julian of Norwich. Tourists who don’t know a fig about the second century St. Julian go there because they think Mother Julian, from the fourteenth century, was holy. They go to see the apartment she lived in, adjacent to the place where people received Mass (the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion) and feel close to her.

St. Julian's Church, Norwich

St. Julian’s Church, Norwich

Norwich, England was a port city. In the fourteenth-century there were “sumptuary laws” in England. This meant that peasants, farmers, and other human beings without certifiably blue blood were forbidden to dress in a way that might allow them to pass above their station. As a port, Norwich had people coming in ships from Europe, dressed in ways that could not be easily sorted. Also, the official English church at this time distributed the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, according to rank and station. The first were to be first to the table, and the middle to be middle, and the last to be very, very last. If there was no more bread by then, so be it. Christianity, as it was practiced in the beautiful, fancy churches that people pay good money to see, was practiced during Julian of Norwich’s time to remind everyone to keep in their place. And, well . . . then there was The Plague. Thousands of people during this period were dying, horribly and suddenly. And they were dying “unshriven.” There were so few priests left alive in some areas to deliver the last rites to the dying that people were dying without being cared for to say confession and receive blessing. People left behind were stricken with fear that their husband, mother, or child was condemned to hell.

The Lollards' Pit is now a pub.

The Lollards’ Pit is now a pub.

Norwich also had what came to be known as “Lollard’s Pit,” a place where heretics were brought by the

church authorities to be burned alive. Fourteenth-century followers of a man named John Wycliffe, a group known pejoratively as “the Lollards,” were thrown in a pit and burned alive as examples of how not to think around the time that Julian of Norwich was bravely trying to write down what she had seen. The Lollards were in trouble for suggesting that regular people ought to be able to read the Bible. This was a dangerous suggestion. If regular people started reading the Bible themselves, they might believe they could think for themselves, without the strictly hierarchical authority of the feudal and church system. Wycliffe and his band of merry men and women had caught an idea that was irrepressible throughout early Christian history. No matter the chaos and rules around you, Jesus had given a new rule. Sit down and eat with your brothers and sisters. And, by the way, your brothers and sisters are those you most fear.

When Julian of Norwich wrote, people were dying by the thousands of disease. People were scared of newcomers, given that they could be carriers of disease, chaos, or heresy. And, Christians were being hanged for saying that Jesus did not care much for the stupid rank and file system. Her answer? Laugh at the devil. Look to Jesus. Keep hope. And don’t let fear be your new religion.

Sheep pen, from the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1320-40

Sheep pen, from the Luttrell Psalter, c. 1320-40

Aug 27

This Labor Day, I Want a Union

I have been working this past year on an effort to encourage people to say the words “labor union” (without epithet) at their place of worship the weekend before Labor Day.  My favorite encounter came this summer.  I was at a worker justice rally in downtown Raleigh one Monday, handing out snappy fliers with a picture of an apple pie.  The flier read “Labor Day is as American as apple pie.  So are labor unions!”  I spotted a labor trailblazer in a group of people, so I waited politely for my turn to talk to him.  I flashed my smile and pulled out a flier, with flourish.  He looked at it and said, without a blink, “Do you have a union?”  “No,” I answered back.  “Why not?” he asked.  Huh. Read more

Jul 2

Unreconciled

A colleague recently explained that his target readers are friends in the State Department. I explained my target readers are readers who haven’t given up on the local paper. About a year ago, I sent an op-ed, unbidden, to the Durham Herald Sun. I heard back that they really liked my piece, and that they wanted to run an essay for the first Sunday of every month. (You can find them all if you want, online.) Academics brag about how many words we’ve written in a day, but I have learned that saying something worthwhile in 800 is tricky. Last month, I wrote something on pornography, online education, and pull-down-screen preaching that was so tricky a colleague I respect told me he finds my work “disgraceful.” I stand by what I wrote. It was a good op-ed. I asked people to think, and to ask good questions, and even to laugh at themselves. The following essay is what I have submitted for this month’s entry. I never ran for student government, at San Angelo Central High, at Emory, or at Yale. I am not comfortable playing by rules if the rules are set by people who are intimidated by the truth. In other words, I never wanted to be Hillary, and I will not vote for her. Here is my first op-ed against the Fellowship Family. I don’t like the way they play cricket. And I am tired of seeing people bamboozled or intimidated by bullies who use the name of Jesus as a geopolitical lubricant. They are not beyond redemption. But their behavior is lacking in grace.

“I know I have to forgive him, because otherwise I won’t get into heaven.” A friend said this to me recently about someone who had treated her horribly. Casting forgiveness as a duty is one take-away message from the New Testament. But how did that particular bumper sticker receive such tenaciously sticky backing in mainline, evangelical circles? Harboring a spirit of revenge is exhausting, even toxic. But carrying around the burden to forgive can also warp a soul. A song I sang as a kid goes: “So high, you can’t get over it. So low, you can’t get under it. So wide, you can’t get around it. You gotta go in through the door.” I remember being told that door was Jesus Christ. How did my own will to forgive become the door to heaven?

A few years ago David Crabtree interviewed me about John Edwards. My answers reflect my crushed hopes that John and Elizabeth Edwards were going to facilitate change in the South. I answered David’s question about forgiveness from the gut, and accidentally got it right. The idea that anyone in the Edwards family had a responsibility to forgive John Edwards seemed off. I had heard people in evangelical circles ask a similar question about the Mark Sanford and John Ensign debacles. Don’t family members have a responsibility to reconcile? When asked about one of my own fallen heroes, I said something controversial, but consistent. No.

I believe no one wronged by another human being has a responsibility to reconcile, for two reasons. First, forgiveness is God’s work. To ask a mere mortal to make forgiveness their duty is to mistake a person for Jesus. Second, I have heard the term “reconciliation” used to elide the ramifications of injustice. The word is often used more for opacity than truth. Camera operators apply a thin layer of petroleum jelly to the lens before an actor’s close-up – to make the image more “forgiving.” “Reconciliation” has been used like petroleum jelly in some circles– to blur the truth. Spokesmen have told people who have suffered injustice to focus their spiritual energy right back onto their former relationship to an individual or a group that has wronged them, and then used the blurring power of “reconciliation” to smooth over the fractures of that wrong.

This constitutes religious gaslighting. In case that term is unfamiliar, here is a definition from Wikipedia: “Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.” Take, for example, a commonly used Biblical passage from 2 Corinthians: “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” Whatever this means to a Christian surviving or recovering from injustice, such passages should not be used to conjure an alternative world where wounds are healed because a third party has described them as healed. I have seen “reconciliation” used like a Jedi mind trick. A Christian leader with sufficient training can almost convince a human being that she didn’t see what she saw and did not suffer what she knows she suffered.

A Christian leader whose name became synonymous with “Reconciliation” is Desmond Tutu, for his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. His name has come up again recently, with an emphasis on “Truth” and the invasion of Iraq. In July, 2012, at a forum on faith and public life, Tony Blair again denied praying with George W. Bush about invading Iraq. Several weeks after the event, Archbishop Tutu publicly refused to appear at a conference on “Leadership” with Tony Blair. “If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth?” Tutu asks in his September 1, 2012 essay for The Observer. Tutu suggests Bush and Blair “should be made to answer for their actions in the Hague,” and reminds readers: “Good leaders are the custodians of morality.”

I want in closing to ask about the glue that has made a bumper sticker version of forgiveness so tenaciously sticky. The Fellowship Foundation facilitates the colossal, week-long, spectacle of faith and leadership that is the National Prayer Breakfast. The word “reconciliation” appears repeatedly on their official website, and I heard “reconciliation” used as often as “Jesus” when I attended the Prayer Breakfast two years ago. I think the concept is being used to dupe perpetrators as well as survivors, encouraging obliviousness or cynicism. (Blair and Bush have displayed both.) Reading Tutu’s words, and thinking about what truthful reconciliation must mean – whether in matters of war, or domestic violence, or racism, or geopolitics – another “R” word comes to mind. That word is “Reparations.” I’d like some glue on that bumper sticker.

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