Old Hymns and Hope - revised

"The Dust Bin of History" was the name of a column I wrote. Its sole purpose was to bring attention to 21st century people who just "didn't get it.” Usually, they were very odd and second-rate characters found on the third paragraph of a news story who were caught up in ideas popular a hundred years ago, or even worse, pretending they understood how concepts expressed a hundred or even a thousand years ago should be interpreted today.

But located on the front or back of a newspaper, each of them had one common characteristic: their voice and/or actions represented ideas, faiths or political points of view that people in the successive generations from now, will just shake their head and wonder, “Why?”

History is filled with “dust bins” – ideas and people whose names and ideas are forgotten like flecks of dust. Does anyone remember the names of folks who nailed Jesus to a cross, who believed in slavery or who relegated women to the kitchen? Names like Caligula, Jefferson and Hitler come to mind but they were the leaders of lost causes.

I wonder how many of the "common" folks from those times went along with their leaders’ thinking. Did they say, “Well, I’d rather keep my old fashion belief." or "He represents how I feel." or “My tried and true feelings always worked in the past.”

I can never know how people felt then; all I can ask now is; why do change or the future frighten them so.

When I was in college I had a conversation with the Chair of the English department which ended with her saying: “Oh, Frank, logically prejudice cannot survive … not in America.” So in the 70s I thought that if this country could move beyond the “gay" issue, beyond narrow-minded folks and divisive rhetoric, then perhaps, just perhaps, we could move into a brighter future.

Decades later I now realize that some women died before they had the vote; that slaves died enslaved and that many gay persons will never see a world of equal rights...

There is an old Christian hymn whose first line reads: "The strife is o'er, the battle done, the victory of life is won." I can hear the tone as I write those words. It is a restoration song whose words point to that better future.

I live in the hope that the strife surrounding gay persons will be o’er and that the victory of life will be won.

A SIMPLE EMAIL ... draft 2

This was my own way of explaining one sense of my faith in light of the media attention given to some high-profile, fundamentalist Christians and their attitudes. It's not complicated.

In your email you mentioned our "buddy," the Rev. Fred Phelps! God love 'em! A reporter said recently that when he wrote a story about Phelps (and his family church) he came away feeling "dirty." I have had two run-ins with him -- once at church and once at a community event. I’d say feeling “dirty” is a good word!

And if you have not heard last week Rev. Phelps lost an 11 million dollar law suit for taking one of his "Glad American Soldiers are Dead because America is Tolerant Towards Fags" protests to the grave site memorial of an American Soldier who was killed in Iraq. That is just hateful.

That same reporter said that when he mentioned Phelps to other pastors in Topeka, Kansas, where Phelps is from, that they would turn away as if in disgust. But the point is well taken; those same pastors preach from the same Gospel and in some, but not all, cases may preach a similar but less public version of the "Phelps interpretation" of the Bible.

The reason I said "God love 'em" is because more than anyone I can think of the Rev. Phelps, and his "God Hates Fags" ministry, continues to draw attention to the hatred and prejudice that gay people face and how it continues to be used to justify social inequity and individual attacks on them. Like it or not, Phelps’ brand of theology is the natural extension of any so-called Biblical interpretation that says "homosexual practice is sinful."

The "light on the hill" here does not come from that Biblical misread but more importantly from the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It gives equal rights to all of us not just to him and his despicable attendance at military funeral. In fact the idea of equality under justice seems lost on a host of believers.

What I don’t understand is why folks call out a small group of Christians: “the Phelpses and the Pat Robertsons and the Benny Hinns” of our world and lump their version of the Bible together to indict all Christians.

I've been lucky enough to meet two of the great Christians prophets of our time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And there are many, many others ... Historically, the Anti-Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, St. Francis of Assisi… so, in the ways they “reconcile” their faith, you could say, so do I.

Forgive me, but I think your time would be better spent in reading about the likes of Dr. King than spending time with a few nut cases who will eventually be relegated to the dust bin of history.

"The pendulum in the Christian world has swung back to the moderate point of view"

David D. Kirkpatrick reports for The New York Times: "Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America.... Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful.... The 2008 election is just the latest stress on a system of fault lines that go much deeper."

I have lived through this pendulum winging ... and it does swing ... both ways. The link connected to the title above takes you to the New York Times article. Swing, swing ... but it does not tell you about the bigots and jerks who are not old or dead or retired ...

Religion doesn't confer right to discriminate

There are two bills -- HR 3685 and 3686, before the House of Representatives which seek to give gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered protection from discrimination in the workplace. Naturally, President Bush indicated that he'll veto the bills.

A statement from the administration (on 3685) indicates that his main issue with the bill is that it "is inconsistent with the right to the free exercise of religion as codified by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."

So, being a Christian means you get to deny people jobs based on what goes on in their pants when they're not at work?

Christian & Tattoos

Several months ago I was finishing a retreat at a mountain top monastery in Santa Barbara. On the last day the Prior preached. He began by referring to the last addition of The Christian Century. The lead article is entitled, "The Christian & Tattoos - Marked"... it was the center of his sermon.

After briefly restating the article, he said, "...that getting tattooed seemed to be a kind of sacrament, a way of bearing in the body and before the world something about one's deepest identity. And that, in a world lacking in 'rites of passage,' it becomes an experience that our American culture by and large lacks."

"Christ himself is marked. Our tradition teaches that the resurrected body of Jesus -- that mysteriously transformed yet recognizable human presence, that flesh bearing the wounds, the very scars of the life-giving passion -- is not discarded or thrown off or transcended, but is exalted and honored and seated in the heavenly places. It is a radical claim ... a challenge to our own experience of living in these particular bodies, in this material world. It reminds us that we -- body, soul, spirit, and our whole creation has an external and exalted destiny.

"Jesus is marked. And so are we. Each of us bears the 'imago dei', the divine image, whether we are aware of it or not. And each of us who has been baptized within Christ, bear his mark, his cross, his wounds on our soul. We, each of us, have been tattooed, if you will, into God's gang, God family ... thought we all too often betray those marks by our hatred and disobedience. But it is there.

"I wonder this morning what would happen if our marks, the tattoos of our faith, were to suddenly become visible. What would they say, what would they portray? What would the world read on our bodies/our souls/our lives/our action individual or corporately on that Body which is Christ's Church?

"I have to remind myself: I do have some choice. And the question I ask myself today is: What does the tattoo of my life say to me, to those around me, and to a suffering and fragile world? And what would I like it to say? Were I to visit a tattoo parlor this afternoon what would I have inscribe on my arm, my forehead, my heart? Sh'ma Yisroel? Simul Justus et Perccator? God is Love? Jesus is Lord? God be merciful to me a sinner?

"What would you choose; for in a sense we must choose daily, hourly. What would you choose? May God grant us all the grace to choose well.