By R. William Carroll

Brothers and sisters, we are likely too close to the history unfolding before our eyes in Iran to understand it in all its complexity. I for one do not assume that Moussavi will live up to the high hopes many have for him. Of course, he may not live at all. But, even if he does live, he may well disappoint. Perhaps Moussavi will not turn out to be the leader the Iranians in the streets long for him to be—at least not in every respect. At the same time, the first person testimony of the protestors who have taken to the streets is undeniable. Listen to these urgent and heartfelt words from an anonymous college student, blogging in Farsi:

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too...All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelor’s degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them…This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…

Add to this the following comments from President Obama, which are at once grave and inspiring:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

We live in a moment filled with possibilities yet fraught with risk. In such moments, the actions of small people and big people alike have the chance to make a difference for tomorrow’s children. Much depends on our faithfulness in such an “hour of decision.” It would be overwhelming if everything depended on us. Fortunately, it does not. Ultimately, our future lies in God’s hands. We shape that future and mould it by our free decisions. But God directs and perfects it, bringing our history to fulfillment in the Kingdom of God.

Despite our failures of nerve—despite many refusals and denials—God is patiently working out God’s purpose for us. As followers of Christ, we know that more than the world is watching. GOD is watching. And God will not be mocked. It may not seem like it for a time. Evil may indeed triumph for a season. But in the end, all things will be brought to their perfection in Christ. In his remarks, Obama goes on to quote Martin Luther King: “The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Last Saturday, I participated in the ordination of four new priests, including Fr. Steve Domienik, who will begin serving alongside me and the people of our parish this summer. In the ordination liturgy, the bishop prays a powerful prayer that speaks both to the events unfolding in Iran and to the very real challenges we ourselves face in this country today. We offer the same prayer in the liturgy of Good Friday. In it, we pray:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Now maybe providence, which concerns God’s guidance of the world, its history, and everyone in it, is an idea that’s hard to grasp. Some Christians think about it in ways that are magical and superstitious and fail to give sufficient weight to the role of human freedom.

And yet, trust in God instills quiet confidence when all around us swirls in chaos. As we struggle along on the ground, things may seem hopeless. But with God, we can face the future calmly, because the whole of history is under the Lordship of Jesus Christ—who is both Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. In Christ, God has already brought life from death. And so, God is able to overcome; no matter what obstacles we present to the Kingdom.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we do so trusting that God’s Kingdom will come. For we know that, in Jesus, the Kingdom has already drawn near. In Jesus, God has drawn near in mercy, judgment and love. In his ministry, we see God’s Kingdom breaking out among us with sovereign power. And so, no matter how far the arc of the universe bends—no matter how far tyranny distorts it—no matter how far our ways may be from God’s, we keep on trusting in God’s grace—right here and right now—and we know God will prevail.

In Sunday's Epistle, Paul reminds the Corinthians of his sufferings as an apostle. They are for him means of participating in Christ’s resurrection victory. In Paul, we see an icon of our own journeys of faith. The closer we draw to Christ, the nearer we come to the little ones. The closer we draw to Christ, the more we find rejection and defeat in the sight of the world. And yet, we do not lose heart. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

The Christian life is about the kind of trust that lays it all on the line. In light of the Gospel, the values that so often drive us become matters of indifference. We set aside reputation, honor, riches, happiness, and even life itself in order to gain the great pearl of the Kingdom.

As Christians, we believe the last days have come upon us in the Lord Jesus. Behold, says Paul, “Now is the acceptable time; now is the hour of salvation.” Even now, things that are cast down are being raised up. Even now, things that have grown old are being made new.

My brothers and sisters, I ask you: Given the nearness, newness, and now-ness of God’s Kingdom, how will we let it change our lives?

The Rev. Dr. R. William Carroll is rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His sermons appear on his parish blog. He also blogs at Living the Gospel. He is a member of the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

By Jennifer McKenzie

In a column last week, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, decried the actions of Ronald Reagan as the precursor to our current national economic woes. I agree with his assessment and remember clearly the warnings that my Democratic Aunt and Uncle and Mother and Father doled at that time: “This is NOT good for America. This is NOT good for Americans.” But I’d like to take an even bigger picture look at these economic woes from a religious perspective.

The whole gamut of conservative attitudes on government that I believe have gotten us into this (and other) messes seems to verge on one very dangerous premise – one that is surprising in that it runs contrary to the collective conservative religious views. The premise is, “I know best what I need; therefore, let me decided for myself.“ Now, on the surface that seems to fit the religious viewpoint well: Individual choice, individual decision, individual salvation. But a superficial-only look will not do. At the root of this attitude is a different decision, a choice to ignore the belief that in Judeo-Christian tradition there is no individual salvation. And shame on those conservatives who still buy into a political viewpoint that upends their church- and synagogue-going natures. Community is the nexus for all decision and choice, both rational and emotional. I cannot make any decision without creating an impact on others. The community in which we live, move, and have our being is first our local community and state, then our nation, then the world. And all of those levels of community are governed in their contexts by…wait for it…a government. Just like we need our churches to be strong so that we have both nurture and accountability in our spiritual lives, we also need government to be strong and, yes, accountable.

But beyond that, the real curiosity inherent in D v. R politics is this: The conservatives who tend as a group to be more overtly religious are the very ones who seem to be denying the fact of sin. In other words, if we operate on the premise, “I know best what I need; therefore let me decide for myself” (i.e. small government) then we are eradicating the understanding of and belief in our tendency toward sin – failing to always do what is right where the other (my ‘neighbor’) is concerned; ignoring that every single human being is a beloved child of God; putting ‘me’ first and turning a blind eye to the plight of the poor, outcast, marginalized. Why is it, for example, that the most politically and by assumed extension religiously conservative counties in Virginia are the very ones who oppose again and again to care for Christ (ref. Matthew 25) by denying financial resources to the last and the least: homeless children and adults; mentally ill adults; resident aliens (ref. Leviticus 19:33-34)? Does anyone else find it ironic that the liberals are the ones who seem to operate more concretely under the premise that the individual cannot and therefore should not fully be trusted and that the accountability and therefore shared responsibility lies in the collective?

The clear corollary is that the sinful “me first-ness” has found a way into the political landscape surprisingly under the guise of conservative “family values” doctrine. And so, the rich cows of Bashan get richer, the poor marginalized get poorer, the economy goes sideways and no one wants to take responsibility because there appears to be no collective conscience from which to do so.

The Rev. Jennifer McKenzie has served at St. David's Church, Washington, D. C., and Christ Church, Alexandria, Va. She keeps the blog, The Reverend Mother.

By L. Zoe Cole

What in the heck did the California Supreme Court do with Proposition 8? It looks suspiciously like they implicitly denounced California’s system for changing the state constitution. Many proponents of Proposition 8 believe they won, because the Court did not find that the measure itself was invalid. Some proponents of marriage equality fear they lost because the court did not find the measure invalid. Others wonder how a proposition that limits fundamental constitutional rights in any way is simply an “amendment” permitted by a simple popular majority vote, rather than an “alteration” requiring a two thirds vote of the legislature. And still others think the opinion represents illogical fence-sitting.

The decision may be illogical (even Oliver Wendell Holmes acknowledged that the "law does not always keep step with logic"), but it’s about as far from fence-sitting as a secular court can get. Contrary to popular slurs about "activist judges," courts don't make law, much less public policy (as pointed out in a quote from the majority opinion in the New York Times On-line article about the decision), they answer the questions litigants bring. Legal maxims rigorously maintained by most courts also require that an appellate court’s opinion be as narrowly tailored as possible to answer only the questions brought to it and those that cannot be avoided in answering the primary questions. I believe the Court could have gone farther than they did, but Courts are also inherently conservative (again, despite the popular lambasting they often receive). Within the confines of the actual legal situation they were asked to decide, the decision does make sense, even as it leaves room for additional litigation to work out its implications.

Supporters of marriage equality feared that, if upheld, Proposition 8 would invalidate the same-gender marriages that took place between the California Supreme Court’s ruling in The Marriage Cases, (2008) 43 Cal.4th 757, and the effective date of Proposition 8. An "ex post facto" law – which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, is one that makes something illegal, after the fact, so the parallel isn't exact here (because this is a civil case dealing with civil rights, rather than a criminal case), but it is close. As the court points out in its ruling, principles of legal construction require that taking away “vested rights” be clearly intended and not simply an accidental by-product. Because the language of Proposition 8 didn’t specify that it would invalidate previously legal same-gender marriages, it could prevent future same-gender marriages, but not undo existing marriages. If, as has been suggested elsewhere (see, for example the May 26, entry at http://www.dailykos.com), the California Supreme Court intended to give only what it could not legally avoid, then it makes absolute sense that the court would find a way to maintain the legality of these same-gender marriages.

Two things are hopeful for me in the Court’s ruling: 1) the Court’s insistence that its decision does not overturn The Marriage Cases, and 2) their insistence on the right of same-gender couples to establish the same legal relationship that opposite-gender couples do when they marry – just without the same name. "Civil unions" have all the same rights as "marriage," according to the Court, but civil unions are for same-gender couples while marriages are for opposite-gender couples. Emphasis on the similarity of the two paradoxically sets up an eventual challenge on the same grounds the U.S. Supreme Court overturned segregation in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education: separate is not equal. If the civil unions and domestic partnerships are legally indistinguishable from marriage, then the logic of Brown and its progeny will require that either a single term is used or that the terms may be used interchangeably by both same-gender and opposite-gender couples.

The California Supreme Court was not asked in this case to make a decision based on equal protection considerations. They already decided the equal protection questions in The Marriage Cases and have gone to great lengths to preserve their answer. The limited legal issue in this case was whether Proposition 8 was an "amendment to" or a "revision of" the state constitution. The Court answered that the measure was indeed merely an “amendment,” and thus did not require a 2/3 majority vote by the legislature to put it on the ballot, but carefully preserved their previous finding about marriage equality. They didn't have to do that, but they did. The Court also, whether intentionally or not, seems to have created a ruling that will encourage further litigation that will eventually undermine even the narrow limitation on the right of some couples to designate their relationship as a “marriage.”

Other events, such as an overhaul of the constitution as a whole (something also being called for because of the state’s unique economic crisis) or a subsequent ballot measure in favor of same-gender marriage, may obviate the need to overturn the decision the Court has made today. In the meantime, however, the court has raised more questions than it has answered. The more state Supreme Courts hold that civil unions and domestic partnerships involve the same legal rights and responsibilities; and the more opposite-gender couples who chose to create these relationships, although they have the legal right to use the “designation” “marriage” for their relationship, the less justification there is in maintaining a legal distinction among them. If opposite-gender couples can choose “marriage” or “civil union” for their “officially recognized family union,” what legal precedent can prevent same-gender couples from making the same choice between “marriage” and “civil union”? As more states officially recognize same-gender relationships – whether marriage or something like marriage – pressure to reconsider the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) will also grow, as will the sophistication of the legal arguments against DOMA, and in our very mobile society, the need for states to recognize the valid same-gender marriages of those married elsewhere as well as the rights of the children of such relationships.

While it is certainly frustrating to be given only half a loaf, I suspect this will turn out to be a very important decision on the road to marriage equality for all. Although it is difficult to wait for the next case to form itself and then work its way through the right court with the right facts and the right law to be challenged, this may very well be the same-gender marriage equivalent of the US Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which set the stage for Roe v. Wade. In anticipation of the California Supreme Court’s decision on Proposition 8, the news seems to be full of evidence that attitudes toward marriage equality are changing. All the news is good. We are moving toward secular legal marriage equality. Within our lifetimes, our children and our grandchildren will look back and wonder why in the world people ever thought marriage needed to be limited to opposite-gender couples.

The law is not perfect. It does not actually effect social change. Movement in the law merely reflects social change. Brown is a 1954 decision, and yet, miscegenation laws weren't finally struck down until Loving v. Virginia in 1972. Bowers v. Hardwick, upholding Georgia's sodomy law, was decided in 1986, and not overturned until 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. As early as 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court found, in Baehr v. Lewin, that limiting marriage to opposite-gender couples violated the “state” equal protection clause. However, same-gender marriage did not become legal in any state until the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, refusing to tolerate persistent, irrational prejudices against lesbigays. California made essentially the same finding last year in The Marriage Cases. Earlier this year, Vermont – the first state to legalize civil unions – became the first state to legalize same-gender marriage by vote of the legislature.

The court is definitely not fence-sitting here, merely splitting legal hairs in a time-honored manner. In fact, the legal system is moving as decisively as it is capable of toward marriage equality and inexorably toward implementing the changes the culture as a whole is making in its attitude toward lesbigays. Really, it is quite exciting!

L. Zoe Cole is a lay member of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Denver, CO and active in the Diocese of Colorado. Currently, she is a part-time municipal court judge and a full-time writer for EthicsGame.com, producer of web-based ethical decision making tools and training materials.

By Daniel J. Webster

Tax day has come and gone. News video of tax protests is still being shown. There were images of President Obama wearing a Mao hat with the Chinese Communist red star. There were images of makeshift American flags with a hammer and sickle replacing the stars. One news photo showed a woman holding a sign that read, "My God, My Money, My Guns."

My God and my money, indeed.

This Sunday millions of American Christians who attend churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary will hear a reading from the Acts of the Apostles. It's a short reading. In just four verses those who hear Acts 4:32-35 may be a little surprised about how the early followers of Jesus handled their money and possessions.

They will hear "...no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common." The story tells us followers sold their homes and property, gave the proceeds to the apostles who distributed the funds so that there "was not a needy person among them."

I'm going out on a limb here and suspect that, like the woman holding the sign about God, money and guns, most of those protesting on April 15 really and truly believe the United States is a Christian nation. Many of them truly believe the economic stimulus actions by the federal government amount to socialism. That's what they've been told by their favorite radio talk show hosts or cable news antagonist anchors.

The brief reading for Sunday is actually just the beginning of a longer section of Acts that details those who redistribute and those who refuse to share their wealth. St. Barnabas is singled out as one who does right in selling his land and giving the money to the apostles.

But Ananais and his wife Sapphira don't fare as well. They hold on to some of their possessions. Peter calls them agents of Satan. And the consequence for withholding wealth for yourself in this story is death. Both Ananais and Sapphira drop dead when told of their inaction. They might as well have been holding the sign, "My God, My Money, My Guns."

This is one of those uncomfortable readings that are dismissed by millions of modern Christians who believe capitalism is God's will. Don't get me wrong. Capitalism is not evil if it has a conscience. But when capitalism is perverted to create a society that proclaims loudly, "I've got mine. You get yours," then we have a system that promotes death among the least among us.

There have been other images on TV and in the news. A recent "60 Minutes" report on CBS profiled uninsured patients at a Nevada hospital who had their cancer treatments canceled when state tax dollars were withdrawn because of the economic downturn. One patient said it amounted to a death sentence.

In that same story a doctor was shown treating some of those patients for whatever they could pay. He and other physicians were donating, or redistributing their wealth, to take care of those who were needy. They were acting today in the spirit of Barnabas and those early followers of Jesus.

Living in that spirit will really make us a Christian nation for all Americans whether they be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or those of no faith. President Obama, the man vilified as communist or socialist at the TEA Parties, often refers to the multi-religious golden rule when he discusses tax increases for the wealthy. Maybe he should refer to Acts 4:32-35 in the future for those who believe in "My God, My Money, My Guns."

The Rev. Canon Daniel J. Webster is canon for congregational development in the Diocese of New York and Vicar of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Montgomery, New York.

By John Graham

From Isaiah, chapter 55:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

With only a few exceptions (his children, possibly a few fellow lawyers), Abraham Lincoln loved at a distance. From the time he entered public life, he had an agenda for just about every conversation and every encounter. He saw clearly where people fit into a larger picture, and deployed them, with or without their knowledge and consent, to achieve his goals.

Lincoln's father uprooted the family frequently during Abraham's childhood and youth. And Abraham (following in the footsteps of his Biblical namesake?) uprooted himself from his family as soon as he could. He put lots of time and space between himself and what he thought of as his father's brutish insistence on the primacy of backbreaking manual labor. (Lincoln's allies used the "railsplitter" myth to his advantage, but Lincoln himself had long since found better ways to make a living.) Lincoln made himself a master of self-distancing in the bosom of the family.

Despite all of this, though, we don't remember Lincoln as a master manipulator, or as cold or remote in the manner of, say, George Washington. We think of him as "Father Abraham", kind, tender-hearted, staying up late at night to find reasons to pardon deserters. "With malice toward none, with charity for all" captures his legacy.

We can attribute this to three components of Lincoln's character that came into high relief during the blood and fire of the Civil War. First: his wit. Used earlier in his career to flay his opponents mercilessly, it became almost exclusively self-deprecatory during the nation's great trial. Second: his patience. No one left Lincoln's presence thinking that his mind had been elsewhere during their conversation. He listened with great care, sometimes at great length, when the pressures of time and the demands of schedule must have felt overwhelming. He used almost everything he heard for his own purposes, of course, but no one seemed to mind. Third: his flexibility. Within the boundaries of his core principles, Lincoln had no trouble ceding points he regarded as secondary – and he regarded a very broad range of issues as "secondary". He allowed no "litmus tests" to find their way into his small repertory of primary concerns and principles.

Wit, patience, flexibility: these softened Lincoln's shrewdness, his calculating nature, and bequeathed us the image of a compassionate father we now cherish.

A favorite professor of mine used to say, "If the end doesn't justify the means, what does?" We cut some people a lot of slack in this regard, because we believe their hearts are in the right place. Even if they use us, we don't doubt their love for us. We might even be glad to play a part in a performance they're orchestrating. I've heard musicians of great talent say they think of themselves as empty vessels, through which the genius of a Bach or an Ellington can flow unimpeded. Lincoln's colleagues, looking back, felt like this about him. Being loved at a distance by Lincoln, seen as means to his ends, seemed superior to just about any other human love they had known.

In the last four or five years of his life, I believe, Lincoln came to regard God in the way many regarded Lincoln himself. He always used impersonal terms to speak of God: "the Almighty," "Providence," "Divine Being." I don't recall ever reading of an instance in which the term "Father", or any more intimate invocation, crossed his lips. "The Almighty has His own purposes," he wrote in the Second Inaugural Address. In Lincoln's mind the Almighty loved him and the nation he served from a distance, using both as instruments for the realization of purposes higher than either could fully grasp.

Seen in this way, by an age that craves intimacy with God and isn't sure how to get it, Lincoln' religion seems unsatisfying. Still, we face a vast and baffling universe, and even the currents of economic life, let alone the larger forces of history, seem to have eluded our understanding and careened out of our control. Surely some part of us hopes God is not just with us, but far beyond us; that the Almighty has his own purposes, higher than ours. Love from a distance does not fill the void we all sense in our midst, but it offers its own satisfactions. Lincoln's melancholy may have come from the unfulfilled yearning for an intimacy that neither his father nor God, as he understood God, could offer. But his undoubted serenity surely derived from his conviction that human aspiration could not contain or control the Almighty.

The Rev. John Graham is rector of Grace, Georgetown in Washington, D. C. This article will appear in the March issue of the Washington Window.

By Jacob Slichter

In the spring of 2007, as the date of our wedding approached, my then fiancé, Suzanne, and I discussed the political dimensions of marriage. Specifically, we spoke of how two close friends, Joe and Priscilla, had forgone legal marriage altogether because of their objections to the discrimination enacted by marriage laws, bans on same-sex marriage and so forth. In lieu of a wedding, they had a commitment ceremony, a commitzvah as they called it, a label that announced the extra-legal nature of their lifetime union (with a nod to Priscilla’s Jewish roots). “That’ll make Priscilla’s family your out-laws,” one person told Joe. Given my religious belief, I told Suzanne, I wanted to have a wedding and be married, but Priscilla and Joe’s commitzvah raised questions we could not ignore, especially given our support for same-sex marriage.

Our ceremony would take place at Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco, my old parish, where same-sex couples had been joined for years. The auspices of Saint Gregory’s presented no problem; California’s ban on same-sex marriage did. We considered removing the marriage license signing from the church premises and having a separate legal marriage at city hall, thereby keeping the state out of our ceremony. (As it turns out, this was already Saint Gregory’s practice.) Still, this would leave us partaking of legal rights denied to others, and after further reflection, we decided to adopt a modified form of what Joe and Priscilla had done: forgo legal marriage and instead draw up a slew of documents that would approximate legal marriage. If and when same-sex marriage became legal in New York (where we live) we’d get married. Meanwhile, we’d have a church ceremony and exchange rings and vows in public.

The next question was what to tell our wedding guests. What was the point of doing all of this if no one else knew? We briefly entertained a printed statement or an announcement, but we didn’t want to come off as scolding the married people in attendance. I was already wincing over having invited my predominantly atheist friends and family to a church wedding where they would be asked to say such things as “Amen” and “Hallelujah.” We decided instead to inform family and friends of our extra-legal status in conversation, over time.

Our wedding day arrived. We exchanged vows and rings as those atheists belted out their hallelujahs, and we found ourselves swept along a tide that followed us out of the church and into our new life together. Upon our return to New York, I began the process of exploring what it would take to assemble wills, join our finances, draw up hospital visitation agreements, and all the other arrangements necessary to approximate legal marriage. The lawyers I consulted estimated it would cost us thousands of dollars in fees. Put off by the expense, I bought a CD-ROM of pre-made legal documents, but quickly found myself overwhelmed and confused by the number of options. I wondered if there was a simpler, cheaper solution—a civil union in New Jersey? Unavailable to straight couples. We could get married in nearby Massachusetts, where gay marriage was already legal, but New York would not recognize same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, so we’d still be partaking in a discriminatory system. The legal steeplechase occasioned discussion with friends and family about our marital status.

“Wait, Jake, are you married or not?”

“We’re married, but not in the legal sense.”

Straight friends puzzled. Gay friends chuckled. “Just get married. I would.” An email exchange on the subject left an old high-school friend bewildered. “Is Suzanne a man?” Frustrated by how our gesture seemed to arouse only laughter and perplexity, I also felt a rising urgency regarding the legal documents, especially a will. I worried about Suzanne’s financial security in the event of my accidental death. The crosswalks of New York City never felt so dangerous.

Finally, last May, our solution presented itself when Governor David Patterson decreed that New York would recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where it was legal. We picked a date, borrowed a car, and drove to Greenfield, Massachusetts where we lunched with my cousins before strolling over to the town hall. After submitting our application to the town clerk, we went to the courthouse to seek a waiver on Massachusetts’ three-day waiting period, assuming this meant waiting in line for a rubber stamp. But after sitting through separate interrogations with a uniformed court officer (who asked each of us if we were marrying of our own free will), we were ushered into a courtroom and found ourselves standing before a judge.

“You two live in New York?”

“That’s correct, Your Honor.”

“And yet you’ve decided to get married in Massachusetts. Why?”

At last, here was the perfect venue to air our thoughts on marriage equality. Perfect, that is, provided the judge didn’t mind the injection of politics into his courtroom, that he wouldn’t be outraged by our views, and that he wouldn’t therefore reject our waiver request. “Your Honor . . . I have cousins in the area. We thought it would be fun to see them.”

Signed waiver in hand, we slunk out of the courthouse, returned to the town hall, and presented the waiver to the clerk, who doubles as a justice of the peace. She led us outside, stood us under a tree, and beamed as she read from her script. “Marriage is a solemn . . . ” I had anticipated a ten-second procedure, not a three-minute mini-wedding that coupled the legal and spiritual realms we had labored to separate. “And now please join your hands.” We exchanged vows, again, the clerk pronounced us husband and wife, and as she handed me the certificate, I felt only the lifting of my recurring anxiety: getting pancaked by a bus and leaving Suzanne penniless.

So ended our adventure in nuptial social action. I began with my eye on principle and concluded by figuring out how to secure inheritance rights for Suzanne on the cheap, an irony that argues more cogently for marriage equality than anything we had said or done.

I realize that what I had really wanted was to emerge with a sense of mastery—to know we had stirred conversations and reflections, to feel the vibrations moving outward, but all of that seems to have eluded us. We take away only a deepened appreciation for what marriage rights entail—a small prize, but one more real than mastery.

Jacob Slichter is the author of So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, a behind-the-scenes look at the music business. He lives with his wife, Suzanne Wise, in New York City. He has a Web site at www.jacobslichter.com.

Over the holiday weekend, the Daily Episcopalian will be the every-other-Daily Episcopalian.

Excerpted from In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God, by Gene Robinson, and used here with permission from Seabury Books.

By Gene Robinson

Every four years, like clockwork, an army of speechwriters squirrel themselves away in an office in Washington, D.C. and write, and re-write, and probably write again, an inaugural address for the new president of the United States. It’s usually brief, sometimes it’s eloquent, and on rare occasions it’s even memorable. And whether you agree with the words or not, that inaugural speech tells you where the president’s heart is as he begins his awesome tasks.

When Jesus began his ministry, he delivered an inaugural address, too, most likely written without a team of consultants. And like those Washington speechwriters, Jesus also squirreled himself away for a while. Jesus always removed himself for a time of prayer before making his move.

After he was baptized by John at the River Jordan and received the mantle of “beloved Son” from his heavenly father, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness to think about what his life would be about. His experience there in the desert isn’t so much a story of Jesus’ external struggle with the devil as it is the story of his own internal struggle with himself – the temptation to use his gifts in wrong ways, to squander his privilege as God’s beloved. Jesus spends forty difficult days in the wilderness, and emerges filled with clarity about his mission, ready to begin his ministry.

First item on the agenda: A trip back to his hometown, where, like a good Jewish boy, he goes to the synagogue in which he’s grown up. To honor his return, the elders of his synagogue call him up front to read from the sacred texts. He chooses a passage from Isaiah, and in this “inaugural” speech, declares what’s on his heart and what his life and ministry will be all about.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4:7–21)

“Do you hear Isaiah’s prophecy?” Jesus asked the people gathered in that small-town synagogue on that Sabbath day. “What you’re seeing now is the beginning of the fulfillment of those prophetic dreams.” Standing before the people he’d known since childhood, Jesus declared that he would preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recover sight for the blind, and set free those who are oppressed. It was a memorable inaugural speech.

The rest of Luke’s gospel confirms that this is indeed what Jesus’ ministry is about – touching lepers, embracing outcasts, honoring women and respecting children in ways unknown in that culture, loving the poor, refusing to stone the adulterous woman, including Gentiles in the Kingdom, and telling stories of Good Samaritans and Prodigal Sons.

Jesus may have delivered that inaugural message a couple of thousand years ago, but the people who claim to be followers of Jesus must share in the ministry he proclaimed that day. Being Christian isn’t about building lovely churches and having beautiful music and a fine education program and youth group. It’s not about right doctrine, and it’s not even about being “good.”

If you want to know what being a follower of Jesus is about, just check out his inaugural speech. It’s about preaching good news to the poor—whether poor economically or in spirit. It’s about releasing prisoners from all kinds of captivity. It’s about restoring sight to people from all kinds of blindnesses. It’s about working to set free those who are oppressed.

What Jesus’ inauguration tells us – indeed, what Jesus tells us about himself – is that if you want to see God, this is where you need to go, this is what you need to do: preach the good news, release the prisoners, restore sight, bring freedom. You need to do these things with those who are most in need, those most desperate to hear of a God who loves them beyond imagining, with those who are most marginalized, most excluded, most irritating, most angry, most reprehensible, most unworthy, least acceptable by the world’s standards.

I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t exactly fit my idea of good news. Frankly, I don’t like hearing this--partly because I’m one of the privileged. I have more money than I need, I’m blessed beyond my wildest dreams, I live in a house ten times the size of most families in the world. I’m more educated than most people in the world, have never known hunger, have seen a good part of the world, and consume more than my fair share of what the poor of the world produce. I like my comfortable circumstances and my mostly predictable life.

And yet in his inaugural speech, Jesus asks me, “How are you going to spend the privilege you’ve been given? You know of God’s love for you, and you draw enormous strength and comfort from that knowledge. But what good are you going to put that to? What risk are you going to take, what bold and daring thing are you going to do because of – and in service to -- the Gospel? Because if you want to follow me, if you want to know me and be in relationship with me, this is where you’ve got to be: with the poor, with the prisoners, with the blind, the captive, the oppressed.”

A church is more than a mutual admiration society. It exists for more than itself. If we are followers of Christ, we need to go where Christ is – which, as the Gospel tells us, is always with the poor, the dispossessed, and the marginalized –in New Hampshire or New York, in Manchester or Belfast, in El Salvador or West Africa. The question that faces every single person who takes the title of Christian is exactly the same question that Jesus faced in the wilderness after his baptism: “How will we spend the privilege that is ours? What risks will we take for the Gospel? What good will come to others from our knowing God’s love for us?”

Will our participation in our own little part of the Body of Christ —our families, our parishes, our circles of friends-- propel us into caring about the kind of ministry Jesus cared about? Or will we be content to stay safely warm and snug within our beautiful, well-cared-for walls? Will our “inreach” to one another be the security blanket we hold onto for comfort, or will our loving community give us the confidence and courage to engage in “outreach” to those who most need to hear that they too are loved by God?

And there are so many who don’t know of God’s love for them. Some live next door to you. Some sleep at night under bridges in our cities and towns. Some struggle with mental illness or addiction or AIDS in hospitals everywhere. Some scratch out a living in the dirt of a sub-Saharan African village. Who are the poor you can reach, and what is the good news they need and long to hear? Besides the obvious ones in your state or county, what kinds of prisons hold people captive, and what would set them free? Who are the blind, and by what are they blinded? What can you and God do to restore their sight? What fight are you willing to join in Jesus’ name to free someone else from their oppression?

If we are to see God, if we are to be doers of the Word and not just hearers only, we have to go where Jesus went. This is the bottom line: We cannot know God or follow Jesus without participating in the “pain of love and the work of justice.” Every time we gather together as the body of Christ, it’s inauguration day for the Church. It’s a time to celebrate the best news there is: that we are loved beyond our wildest imagining by the God of all creation. And it’s an opportunity to ask ourselves this: From this day forward, what will our life and ministry be about? Just like Jesus, we too are the beloved of God, so how will we spend that privilege? What risks will we take because we are secure in that love? By virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection the Spirit of the Lord is upon us just as surely as it was upon Jesus. And like Jesus, we too can – and must – go about the hard and holy work of fulfilling the Scriptures in our own lives.

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson is Bishop of New Hampshire.

By John Bryson Chane

Karen and I recently returned from a 10-day journey to Palestine, Jordan and Israel. This trip was not your usual pilgrimage to the Holy Land but rather an opportunity to spend time with the new Episcopal Bishop of Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani, whose diocese spans Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Syria and Palestine. I can assure you that what I saw, heard and experienced has brought me to a place where I can no longer sit back and assume that in time all will be well in that troubled part of the world.

Looking back for a moment: In 2003 I joined Jim Wallis of Sojourners, two Anglican primates, five Church of England bishops and leaders from four mainline Christian denominations in the U.S. to meet with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, and urge him not to support the U.S. effort to undertake a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq. We urged patience, the use of soft power and the further support of high level diplomatic talks. We were not successful. But the Prime Minister begged us to return to the U.S. and urge the President to move forward aggressively with the Road Map for Peace, an effort to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. All of us agreed that without solving this conflict, the Middle East would forever be a seething caldron of war and discontent and would also be a breeding ground for the growing forces of indiscriminate global terrorism. Upon our return the President refused to meet with this broad, representative religious community to discuss the Road Map and the rest is a history that we are living with today.

We as a nation pride ourselves on being a great democracy, a “city built on a hill.” And we generally focus on several key ingredients that define a democracy: living by the rule of law and respecting and upholding human rights, especially the right to worship as one chooses. The current condition of Palestinian Christians that I observed in the Diocese of Jerusalem makes me question whether we as a nation are holding Israel, our trusted, democratic ally in the Middle East accountable to these standards.

The West Bank, as occupied Palestinian territory, continues to experience the illegal building of Israeli settler housing. Almost 1,000 new units are being built in Maale Adumim, a settlement in the hills just East of Jerusalem. In Giv’at Ze’ev, another one of the settlements that rings Jerusalem, a new 750-unit building project has been approved. Requests are on the table with the Israeli government to build 350 new homes in Beitar Illit very near Jerusalem. Literally hundreds of new homes are being added to existing settlements in the West Bank; all illegal, all on occupied, Palestinian land, and all built while the Israeli Government casts a blind eye. These settler houses are distinguished by their sturdy construction, red-tiled roofs, manicured lawns and suburban feel that resembles a California housing sprawl. As one drives between Jerusalem and Jericho, huge apartment complexes can be seen, rising high on a hill in occupied land, a painful reminder of broken promises. These settler houses and apartment buildings, constructed by Israel on occupied land, are a violation of international law. The 1907 Hague Convention clearly states that an occupying power may expropriate land only for the public use of the occupied population. Taking West Bank land indiscriminately, as Israel has done, is a clear violation of international law. I ask the question: Is this the behavior of a democracy that lives by and cherishes the rule of law?

Karen and I visited the land owned by Daoud Nassar and his family; more than 100 acres that have been in his family since 1916 when purchased by deed from the Ottoman Empire. The Nassar family has legal right and claim to the property located about 6 miles southeast of Bethlehem in Palestinian occupied territory. It is now in the middle of an area that in 1991 was declared by the Israeli Government as state property. A large illegal Israeli settlement less than 1,000 yards away has emboldened Israeli settlers to come onto the Nassars’ property brandishing rifles and shotguns, firing them and threatening the owners with death if they do not move out. Settler bulldozers have plowed a road through a portion of the Nassars’ olive grove, and have blocked the only road that gives entrance to their house and property with huge boulders. And with the support of the Israeli authorities the settlers have prevented the Nassars from being able to drill wells for water, or connect to available electricity. The settlers say the land is theirs because God gave it to them, and not to the Palestinians. Known as The Tent of Nations, the Nassars’ small farm is a now a center where pilgrims gather to support the family in their quest to end Israeli harassment and the daily threat of a land grab. After spending time at the Tent of Nations and hearing the story of abuse and constant harassment over property that is legally owned and deeded, I ask the question: Is this the behavior of a democracy that lives by and cherishes the rule of law?

While visiting Gaza, on an Israeli permit issued to the Bishop of Jerusalem, I was exposed to a Palestinian territory cordoned off like a prison for those who live there. I have visited many countries in Africa and Latin America steeped in poverty. Gaza is equal to them all. Donkey carts now are beginning to outnumber motor vehicles, as gasoline and diesel fuel is rationed by Israel through the Hamas government to 10 liters by permit every two weeks. Our Episcopal Hospital in Gaza is short of medicines because of Israeli prohibitions, and the hospital can only operate on electricity for eight hours a day because of shortages. I celebrated the Eucharist in a church next to the hospital that still has a gaping hole in the roof left by an Israeli rocket that exploded in front of the altar and left the interior strewn with lathing and plaster. In my protest to the Israeli embassy I was informed it was an unfortunate accident of war. There would be no compensation for damages. The hospital administrator informed me that last year eight patients from the hospital waiting to cross from Hamas-controlled Gaza into Israel for emergency medical care died while waiting for clearance to cross the border to Israel for treatment. I ask the question: Is this the behavior of a democracy that lives by upholding and cherishing human rights?

If you are a non-Jerusalemite Palestinian Christian wishing to enter East Jerusalem for religious worship or pilgrimage, you must have a permit and those permits are difficult to get. Because of these prohibitions, 3 million Christian and Muslim Palestinians are being denied rightful access to their holy sites in Jerusalem, even during religious holidays. Because of restrictions and the obscenity of the separation wall which encloses it, Bethlehem has become a ghost town, with shops and businesses shuttering their doors and with religious pilgrims from other countries the majority of those who walk the streets and eat in the restaurants. I ask the question: Is this the behavior of a democracy that lives by protecting and upholding religious freedom and the right to worship as one pleases?

I am appalled that the Palestinian political movements of Fatah and Hamas play off against each other at the expense of the Palestinian people and their welfare. Their power struggle to control so much of so little is shortsighted and certainly not the way to raise up and strengthen political leadership in order for Palestine to be an active player in negotiating a fair, two-state peace settlement with Israel. The fracturing of Palestinian political leadership and the failure of the U.S. to work with Israel in brokering a two state solution, claiming Jerusalem as a shared holy city for Jews, Christians and Muslims and supporting land swaps for the Palestinians in places where illegal settlers have moved is a moral failure.

Jews, Christians and Muslims have the moral obligation to denounce violence as a solution to any and all disputes between Israel and Palestine. No one has the right to take the life of another in the name of God, and no one has the right to take another person’s land in the name of God. Palestine must have the right to be established as an independent state in possession of territory contiguous with Israel. And Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state contiguous with Palestine. Israel must return to the 1967 borders established by the United Nations with appropriate compensational territory granted to Palestine for land not returned to Palestine in the peace agreement for reasons acceptable to both parties. The holy city of Jerusalem must be a shared holy city for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Anything less violates the ancient traditions of these three Abrahamic faiths and violates their histories as contained in their holy books.

Politicians seeking the highest office in the land who wait on the results of our Nov. 4 presidential election must have the courage not just to speak out in their unequivocal support of Israel, but must also speak out and condemn violations of human rights and religious freedom denied to Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

I support with conviction the right of Israel to exist as a free state, unencumbered by indiscriminant violence and the threat of attack engendered by those who would wish to do her harm. But I am appalled that there has been little or no discussion by presidential candidates about the devastation of the Palestinian economy as a result of Israel’s construction of the security wall. I, as a Christian, am unwilling to remain silent as Palestinians are humiliated, their human rights are violated, their lands are taken from them and they are forced to immigrate to other countries because they feel that they and their children have no future in their ancient homeland. Faithful Jews, Christians and Muslims who do not speak out on these unacceptable circumstances are guilty of the greatest crime of all – the crime of silence! The same is true of our political leaders.

I am reminded of the ominous reflection contained in Jesus’ parable about the landowner and the vineyard. “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the Kingdom. The one who falls on the stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

The Rt. Rev. John Bryson Chane is the Bishop of Washington.

By Lauren R. Stanley

RENK, Sudan – I voted in the presidential election the other day. Felt pretty darned good about it. I’ve never voted by absentee ballot before, and was quite nervous about whether this would really work. But with a lot of help from a lot of people, I got my ballot in plenty of time and sent it back in almost four weeks before the election.

The whole process was quite interesting to my Sudanese friends and colleagues. They couldn’t believe I could vote while living overseas. And they still can’t quite grasp the fact that America’s presidential election takes place in just one day. But what interests them most is the election itself.

Sudanese are following the election at least as closely as Americans. They are inveterate listeners to the radio, and follow everything that is happening, dissecting it as though they were participating themselves. Southern Sudanese are quite supportive of President Bush, because of his administration’s role in helping to get the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed, ending 21-plus years of civil war. That fact alone tends to make Southern Sudanese rather Republican. It’s not unusual for me to meet someone for the first time here and have that person say, “Yes, George Bush!” I’ve even had Sudanese ask me to give the president their personal greetings when I meet him in the United States. (They are heart-broken to hear that the president and I are not on a first-name basis, and that I do not have a standing appointment at the White House whenever I am in the United States.)

What’s most fascinating to watch here is how Southerners interpret everything they hear about the election campaign. They followed the primaries closely, although they don’t quite understand how they work. They listen to news about debates and the conventions and campaign stops and parse what is happening.

And most of the Southerners I know are convinced that Sen. John McCain is going to win.

Why?

Well, first, he’s a Republican, and President Bush is a Republican, so in their minds, that makes them the same, which – again, in their minds – means that McCain automatically will win.

Second, Southerners have great respect for elders, and McCain obviously is an elder. So when they look at McCain, in his 70s, and then at Sen. Barack Obama, to whom they often refer as “that young man,” they see the obvious difference in age and tend to conclude that McCain should win simply because of age.

Third, Southerners here are acutely aware of America’s racist history, and cannot believe that a black man would ever win a national election. Southerners are not shy about bringing up this fact, not only frequently, but with some vehemence.

And finally, Obama’s name and history do not help here. Completely false claims that Obama is a Muslim reverberate in South Sudan. That photo of him dressing up in local attire on a visit to Kenya years ago, and the fact that his grandfather indeed was Muslim, are enough to convince some Southerners that Obama is Muslim as well. The fact that he is a Christian is not listened to or believed by many.

Two decades ago, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya (in the same region from which Obama’s father’s family comes), I was very clearly instructed to never discuss politics with Kenyans. Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to steer clear of political discussions much as many family members do at Thanksgiving dinners. So to hear these discussions now – to have Southern Sudanese initiate them and beg to talk about the election – is odd. I’ve never been overseas for a presidential election, and despite my excitement, I was quite prepared to keep very quiet this time around. I simply wanted to get my ballot, vote and send it back in on time.

But that’s not possible here, not this time. This election fascinates my friends, as it does much of the world, and they feel it will have a huge impact on them. Without help from the United States in many and varied forms, South Sudan would be in trouble, and Southerners are acutely aware of that. And with tens of thousands of Southern Sudanese living in the United States, my friends feel a special affinity for the country.

So every day, we talk about the election campaign. We talk about what was said, and what it means, how each candidate sounded on the radio, what’s been reported and what’s been left out. We try to figure out what the next president will do for Sudan. It’s almost like being in the States.

Come Nov. 4, everyone will be glued to their radios, waiting for the results. (I’ve tried to explain both the time differences and the number of time zones to the Sudanese, but many don’t understand the vast size of the United States, and will be disappointed to go to bed on the 4th with the polls still open.) Come Nov. 5, we’ll do what everyone else will do that day: We’ll talk politics.

Washington may be 7,000 miles away, but with all this talk about politics, it’s almost like being back in the States.

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Renk, Sudan. She is a lecturer at the Renk Theological College, teaching Theology, Greek, Old Testament and English, and serves as chaplain for the students.

By Rebecca Wilson

Recently, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that we must stay in communion with those with whom we disagree in order to leave open the possibility of conversion.

Not too long ago, I might have heard that as spiritual pabulum—a polite plea to prevent schism. But my own conversion, a political one, began nearly a year ago, and today I hear the Presiding Bishop’s words with familiar fear and trembling.

I was an unlikely prospect for conversion. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I live in the bellwether state of Ohio, where partisan politics is nasty, brutish, and endless. The wounds of the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns still fester here, along with those inflicted by a bloody 2004 fight over a draconian constitutional amendment that limits the rights of gays and lesbians. Two years later, a heated gubernatorial campaign resulting in the election of a Democrat was also divisive and polarizing.

So in 2007, many progressive voters in Ohio were angry and dispirited. We had gotten our governor, but also bore the shame of failing to prevent the current presidential administration and the right-wing sore on our state constitution. I was solidly in that bloc. I was civil when I encountered people with whom I disagreed, but I generally avoided situations where I might encounter Republicans. It was just too hard.

Except at church. My little Episcopal parish, a historic church in a struggling city neighborhood, generally attracts people who vote like I do. We are a community that welcomes everyone, gay and straight, and in a place like Ohio, that alone is often enough to drive Republicans down the road to a more conservative parish. But although Democrats are loath to admit it, the Republican party is not a monolith on this (or any other) issue, and our congregation includes people who are both Republican and progressive about human sexuality.

So although I was bone-weary from assault by Republican values and victories, I couldn’t entirely escape politics at church. One Republican, in particular, kept cropping up. Despite our partisan differences, we were thrown together on the cookie-baking committee, at church socials, and in the back pew.

Because we are Episcopalians, we were polite. We began talking over cookies after the service, about innocuous local events, mostly not looking each other in the eye. Soon we edged into local politics, agreeing in nervous laughter that what happened at coffee hour stayed at coffee hour. Then we took the big step from standing together in the parish hall to sitting together in church. I asked him for some advice on a civic project, which he gave freely and graciously, and we met for lunch once. I considered myself very broadminded indeed.

Apparently, however, this was not good enough for God. When I was asked to lead a Sunday morning seminar on faith and politics, I knew, in one of those fits of clarity that sometimes presages wisdom, that to escape the confines of left-wing dogma, the class needed both a Republican and a Democrat. So I took a deep breath and asked my pewmate to teach with me.

Starting with an issue of Yale Divinity School’s journal Reflections, we spent several months reading and thinking about politics and belief. We used the crutch of email to explore our own differences gingerly, feeling out painful partisan topics in writing before we talked about them in person.

The rumblings in my soul, and my stomach, began then. I became vaguely nauseous when people told jokes about Republicans that I previously would have found uproarious. I stopped conversations with fellow Democrats by offering halting answers to a rhetorical question—“what on earth are those Republicans thinking?” I began to hear the excesses in Democratic rhetoric more critically, imagining how decent, well-intentioned people might feel alienated by words that had once felt to me like a righteous shield.

Kathleen Norris writes that “…we can convert, in its root meaning of turn around, so that we are forced to face ourselves as we really are.” Preparing and teaching our class, I often felt muddled, seeing myself as I now understood many Republicans would—as an angry, narrow-minded, bitter partisan. Facing myself meant that I had to temper dialectical thinking with more complex ways of understanding the public sphere, and learn how to regard social problems without reflexively blaming them on a malevolent, scheming horde of Republicans.

I have also had a lesson in loving my enemy. Perhaps inevitably, my teaching companion and I have discovered that the depths of what we have in common make our political differences mostly incidental and often amusing. It has been frightening to trade partisan disdain for true vulnerability, but we have long since become close friends who rely on one another in ways that would have previously seemed preposterous to both of us.

Even so, conversion is sometimes lonely. In losing my partisan fervor, I have drifted from many acquaintances and some friends who regard my behavior as betrayal. Earlier this year I resigned from a client project in which attacks on Republicans—on my friend, who is active in his party, and his friends—had become so vitriolic that they were acting like poison on me. I have found myself in strange places with people I could not have previously imagined knowing, and I have been unsettled by how much I have liked them and wanted them to like me. And sometimes in a conversation, I sense my old way of thinking about an issue fall away, and I miss the comfort of righteous certainty.

Norris also writes that “some of us have found the worst parts of ourselves converted into something better, our small expectations shattered in the presence of God’s great abundance…” On the eve of this election, I think that I have been converted into something better. I am still a Democrat, and my vote for president will reflect that unequivocally. But my small expectations that politics will save us have been shattered. Whether my candidate becomes president or not, what I want most after this election is to be in communion with those who disagree—with my friend and his friends and all of the Republicans and Democrats and other voters who are grieved by the ways we have wounded one another and our country. The possibility of conversion may be all that can heal us now.

Rebecca Wilson is a member of Church of Our Saviour Episcopal Church in Akron, Ohio.

By LeeAnne Watkins

Part 1: Knock on the Door

I’ve got a difficult thing to do tonight.

It started a few days ago with my neighbors down the street. They have these humongous McCain/Palin signs in their yard, and as they were decorating their yard for Halloween they added their usual assortment of ghouls and ghosties.

But this year one of the ghouls was leaning over the McCain sign, holding the severed head of Barack Obama.

My son Shyam and I saw it at the same time, and while I was shocked, he went straight to outrage. “That’s a death-threat to Obama! We have to call the police!” I mumbled something about Halloween being different somehow, and he just looked at me in a puzzled way. Then I mentioned free speech, but he said, “free speech doesn’t include death threats, does it?”

We’ve been talking about it for days, both of us deeply disturbed in a way that gets a little worse as each day passes. We have been wondering what to do, if anything. Calling the police didn’t seem right. Shyam asked his godmother Lisa for advice, and she suggested that he talk with the neighbor and explain how the display makes him feel. Shyam brought it up with his teacher and classmates, but although I hear the discussion was good, they didn’t have any satisfying suggestions about what was to be done. In the end, he and I talked about exactly what we want say, and not say. We agree that I’m the one to deliver the message. So tonight I go to knock on the door of a neighbor I barely know, and without any smooth segue, try to explain what effect their display has had on us.

As I’ve been imagining how I might have this conversation in a way that brings out our best selves, I might try to explain what it is like for my son, who they have never really met but surely have seen. I will tell the neighbor what I overheard my son tell his friend Colin this morning as we drove past the Barack head on the way to school: “It looks like me, doesn’t it?"

You see, my son has dark skin, and black eyes, and black hair, and in that mask he saw a version of himself.

How difficult it must be to be one of the only kids of color in his suburban grade school. There are layers of depth to the experience he must be internalizing about growing up dark in an almost exclusively caucasian Minnesotan town. I intellectually know that Shyam’s not being white puts him at a disadvantage in our world. I know that given the lynchings in Minnesota’s history, and the continued violence toward people of color, that his race will always be a factor in his safety. I’ve known that in my head, but I’ve never felt that deep chill like I did this morning, when Shyam recognized that this level of ugliness is real, right on our street, against him more than the other boys he plays baseball with.

It made me cry a little on the way in to work today. I want to be a good mother of an inter-racial family, and on days like this I feel so ill equipped. I wonder if I should move into St Paul where there are more people that look like him, where there would be more safety in numbers. But that’s an illusion too, isn’t it, the safety in numbers. So what do I do, to make the world a better place not just for all people of color all over the world, but for my boy, on my street? I will knock on the door.

But I fret over how that might go. I have imagined them yelling at me, thinking me a left-wing whacko, giving me a lecture on free speech, on how I ought to mind my own business and not try to control what other people do with theirs. I worry that they will argue that it is simply a joke, a little Halloween fun and I’m making too much out of nothing. Maybe they are right.

But no, they are not right. There are consequences to free speech, and this one has offended and frightened my family. The mother bear in me has been aggravated.

In my best imagining for this conversation, the neighbors quickly apologize, saying they never thought about the implications of their Halloween joke for the dark-skinned boy down the street. At the very least I hope they take down the decapitated Obama head. But I would also hope that they could reach out to Shyam in some way that builds relationship, that strengthens rather than frays our little attempt at a neighborhood community. I guess I’m looking for transformation, on our little street, just this one actual street, changed to look more like the Reign of God. In my best imagining this is how racism is washed away, each of us gathering up our courage to influence the tone of our common life, one difficult conversation at a time, face to face, neighbor to neighbor.

I’m used to preaching on this theme, but I’m embarrassingly anxious about moving my feet to make it so. But I believe in the whole Reign of God thing. I believe that bit about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. I do believe in the example of Jesus as a guide in making that so. So tonight I will knock on my neighbor’s door. I will say my prayers for courage and for the right words and for the Holy Spirit to move between us. I will pray for a better world, for all of us, but especially for Shyam, who will be watching.

Part II: “Tell your son it’s only a mask.”

It was the height of awkwardness. I knocked on that door, stomach in knots, and was nicely invited in to the living room to have a seat. I explained that my goal was only to be a good mom, and ask for a few minutes of their time to explain what effect their Obama display has had on my boy. I tottered around my well-rehearsed sentences. They listened. They were surprised to hear about what my son said about how the mask looks like him, and had to spell out that Shyam has dark skin and dark hair. (it is always interesting to me the way in which people see, and don’t see, race).

Then they said: “Tell your son it is only a mask." And: “If we had a body to put under the mask, we would have" and “We never gave it much thought." And then they went on to say how many people have driven by to run up and have their photos taken with big “thumbs ups" in front of it. And how mine is the first negative comment they have gotten, verses the many supportive ones.

The room got silent. I couldn’t stand the quiet and so began repeating myself until I realized the conversation was pretty much over. I stood to go, they continued to sit. I said ‘good night’, and they wished me a good night too, but I felt their hostility as I made my own way out the door.

What happens now? On one hand, I feel I did what I set out to do, which was to speak out against a situation that was offensive to my family, and my son knows that I did. What my neighbor does or doesn’t do with that Obama mask is only mildly relevant at this point. I acted like the mother (and the neighbor, and the citizen, and the Christian) I want to be.

All this leaves some profound questions. Where is the line between free speech and hate speech? Where is the line between speaking out against a perceived injustice and butting in to someone else’s business? Does our history of violence make that headless black man a symbol of something much more sinister, or is it really just a Halloween mask?

So what is next? I’m prayerfully pondering all sorts of options, including doing nothing at all. Or I might speak with my elected representative on our local human rights commission, or the police chief, or the mayor, asking for advice. Maybe I will make a version of this article into an Op Ed piece for the newspaper. I don’t know. But I do know that I still want to make the world a better, less intimidating place for all people, most particularly my son, even here, particularly here, on my street.

The Rev. LeeAnne Watkins is rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the mother of an adopted son.

By Margaret M. Treadwell

An amazing phenomenon is occurring in America, and the excitement is palpable. Have you noticed the increasing number of young people awakening to their responsibilities and rights as members of a democracy? The good news in this presidential election is the 18- to 29-year-olds stepping up to help heal our troubled country. While volunteering for the campaign, I have seen their actions match their beliefs and words:

• In Iowa, an eyewitness observed the young people trained in the grassroots approach to networking and organization bringing one individual at a time into the voting process months before the election. She said, “They understand that our democracy is fragile and can be lost if only 50 percent of eligible voters come out to vote. There is a spiritual aspect in mobilizing young people to become involved in politics.”

• In North Carolina, a college graduate accepts minimal pay for his work to register voters in rural counties where he often faces racism and threats. His hope, persistence and singleness of purpose are faith in action.

• In South Carolina, my 17-year-old godson writes about his involvement with fellow students who are getting everyone in the area surrounding his school, including inner city Charlestoners, active in registering voters and planning to get out the vote on Nov. 4.

• At the Bethesda Grassroots Obama Office (nicknamed the BOO), the intern program is equally balanced between promoting Obama’s candidacy and providing an educational experience for the young volunteers. An important part of that education focuses on understanding both their own candidate’s and the opponent’s positions.

In preparation for a recent Town Hall meeting, Montgomery County and D.C. high school students chose partners and researched issues for debate with one person taking the Republican position and the other, the Democratic position. Each debater smartly navigated the rough waters of the economy, social security, the war, environment and energy. Said one young woman who took the part of both McCain and Obama for an admirable debate on women’s issues, “The entire intern experience has been so exciting. The (volunteer) staff has given us students real responsibility and a voice.” A welcome sign at the entrance to the BOO reads, “Thank you for bringing your gifts of time, energy, spirit, ideas, talent, supplies, creativity, inspiration, labor, money, humor, passion and patriotism.” A small room set aside for quiet, meditation or prayer posts two printed questions: “Got Hope?” and “What are you grateful for?”

A lawyer who worked on both the 2004 and 2008 conventions says, “The young volunteers now are in sharp contrast to those in the last election. They are more tolerant, open and ready for change. They aren’t cynical about politics and, through their vision, purpose, and hope, they energize every sector of voters.

Her view is substantiated in author John Zogby’s recently published, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House, 2008). Drawing on surveys he conducted over a 20-year period, he predicts an optimistic future, the center of which is a group he labels the “First Globals,” consisting of the current 18- to 20-year-olds in the United States whom he found embrace diversity, feel connected personally to the rest of the world, are the first color-blind Americans and the first to bring a consistently global perspective to foreign policy and environmental issues.

How is this phenomenon changing First Globals’ families? Some family members simply can’t speak about politics without conflict. But a mother talks about her three sons, ages 30, 26 and 22, coming home last Thanksgiving inspired by Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father, and how they convinced their politically weary parents to listen up: “Change is in the air; a new generation is coming along.” Now the whole family is volunteering.

Parents also tell me that although their political preferences may be different from their children’s, the communication about diverse opinions has grown more open and accepting. A father explains, “When a family can sit down together, discuss both sides, disagree and still respect and love each other, our bonds grow stronger.”

And will the young people from both parties come out to vote in November? Will they remain involved if their candidate loses the election? Will their faith be shattered? Or will their youthful spirit and resilience carry them through to find and support the strengths of the new president in reuniting our country no matter what the outcome? How can their families help them accept disappointment, look for positive ways to continue their good work, and never lose their faith and hope?

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the song without the words – And never stops – at all….

Emily Dickinson (from “The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955))

Margaret M. (“Peggy”) Treadwell, LCSW -C, has been active in the fields of education and counseling for thirty-five years. Following a long association with Dr. Edwin H. Friedman, during which she served on his faculty, she co-edited and helped posthumously publish his book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.

By Kathleen Staudt

I recently visited the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (NYAPC) in Washington DC, and enjoyed a fascinating historic tour of the building, especially the “Lincoln Parlor.” Mary Todd Lincoln and the children were members of this church during the Lincoln Administration, and apparently the President relied on the pastor, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, as an informal spiritual advisor. On display in the Lincoln Parlor are photos of the Lincolns and the Lincoln cabinet, and, behind glass, an early draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. The story is that originally, Lincoln intended an arrangement that would have reimbursed the southern landowners for their slaves, essentially a government “purchase” of the slaves, to free them. In private conversations, the president’s spiritual advisor encouraged him to take a more morally consistent position, and the ultimate result was the Emancipation Proclamation as we have it.

Gurley was the preacher at the funeral of the Lincolns’ son Willie (as well as at Lincoln’s own funeral), and apparently met with the president to talk about “the state of his soul” and to listen. Apparently he did make some use of his relationship for what might be called “political” purposes: there are records of his recommending several people for influential political positions. But he seems to be someone whose judgment and integrity were generally held in high regard. He was also known as a preacher who did not preach politics. It appears that there was a relationship of genuine spiritual companionship between Gurley and the President, though they met relatively infrequently and Lincoln never joined Gurley’s church. The obvious spiritual depth of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, together with the story told at NYAPC about the Emancipation Proclamation, give us some sense of the “fruits” of that relationship, but its details were not a matter of public record when those conversations were going on. And , I believe strongly, this is as it should be, when it comes to spiritual advisors to the powerful and famous.

There’s a contrast here to the way that the religious advisors of the powerful have been covered—and, I suspect, manipulated nowadays, and it is dismaying to me. From my training and work as a spiritual director, I know that conversations about the “state of one’s soul” are about a work in progress, God’s work in progress. And there are good reasons why our code of ethics insists on the sacred confidentiality of such conversations. I would think that for a famous person, such a relationship would need to be a place of freedom and absolute confidentiality.

People sometimes quote their spiritual advisors (as Barack Obama does, for example, in his use of Jermiah Wright’s phrase “The audacity of hope”), and that is their prerogative, as well as their spiritual risk. But I grow uneasy –and suspicious– when spiritual advisors themselves take the public stand and talk about their pastoral relationships with candidates From this point of view Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP was profoundly distressing and obviously embarrassing to the candidate, whatever one might say about the theology of the black church and the value of the Reverend Wright’s ministry generally. I had the same problem with a New York Times front page article a few weeks ago featuring an interview with Sarah Palin’s pastor, who spoke of her worship and prayer practices and her request for Bible passages to guide her in her desire to be a faithful leader. Even apart from my personal objections to the theology and the political priorities expressed in this interview, I was troubled by the situation: What are we to think, when the pastors to the powerful give public interviews about those conversations. Are they doing it with the candidates’ permission? Or if not, whose agenda is being furthered?

It seems to me that revealing publicly the details of a spiritual conversation is a kind of sacrilege, a manipulation of holy things to further a personal or political agenda. There’s a commandment against that: You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. It seems to me that public discourse about the theological positions of the candidates – and the pressure on them to explain their beliefs is our most blatant contemporary violation of that commandment. There is good reason why pastors and spiritual companions are enjoined to be very respectful of boundaries and confidentiality. In my view, if there is a genuine relationship of spiritual guidance and companionship, this kind of confidentiality should trump the public’s “right to know” about a powerful person’s associates and beliefs.

What a candidate says about him/herself is another matter – and may or may not be the fruit of good spiritual advice. But I have become profoundly suspicious of anything we hear publicly from a “spiritual advisor” about the state of a candidate’s or President’s soul. There’s a Buddhist saying that “those who know, do not speak, and those who speak, do not know.” This seems to me a good guide for processing media stories about the spiritual lives of the candidates, or of any public figures.

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt (Kathy) keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area, and teaches courses in literature, theology and writing at Virginia Theological Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park.

By Sam Candler

In the United States, we are in the home stretch of a season of voting. Our two political parties scramble daily for our support. Many of us, and our friends and neighbors, have already declared our political choices; and we are hard at work on political campaigns.

During this sprint, I admit two things to my parishioners and friends. The first is that I actually love politics. I know that the partisan mud is deep. I know that every statement has to be filtered through ten screens. I know that attacks and defenses can be severe, and even unfair. But I do enjoy the contests. I also admire most of the candidates. I salute those who have offered themselves for public service; and I salute their campaign workers and office staffs.

However, the second thing I must admit is that there is no way that I –an Episcopal priest, rector, and dean-- can take a partisan stand during our government elections. This is not simply because of tax consequences. We all know, I hope, that Episcopal churches in the United States enjoy the benefits of tax exemption as long as we do not allow partisan political statements in our official church gatherings. Thus, people can still give financially to our churches and enjoy a deduction from their taxes. (What people may not realize is that this particular criterion of tax-exempt organizations dates back only to 1954.)

No, I have another reason that I do not take a partisan stand during our government elections. My reason has to do with pastoral care and with leadership allegiance. I realize that my own parish, a large and rather politically diverse one, contains all sorts of partisan believers and workers. Not only do I have strong Republicans and strong Democrats in my parish, but I also have many of those parties’ state workers and campaign officers. Some folks in my parish attended the Republican Convention and other folks in my parish attended the Democratic Convention.

Does this mean that I have paralyzed myself under the guise of wimpy pastoral care? Does this mean that I have opted out of my religious responsibility of ethical and social leadership? No, I can –and do-- make statements about political and moral and ethical matters.

Rather, I believe that my ordained leadership is not meant to be “merely” political. I am not called to force my ordained leadership into either of the partisan boxes that surround each of our two national candidates. My leadership allegiance is to an agency higher even than the office of the United States presidency. My leadership allegiance is to God and to the mysterious working out of God’s realm on earth. I believe that whatever leadership I have is strengthened if I publicly ally myself only with that higher agency, with our hoped-for kingdom of God.

Essentially, I am wary of the Episcopal Church becoming too associated with either of our country’s two major political parties. I know that we need political parties. I know they do good things. And, I enjoy my parishioners’ political work; and I even enjoy their spirited and sometimes goofy partisanship. But I cannot surrender my public leadership to the support of political parties.

Of course, I will be voting in the upcoming elections. Furthermore, it does not take too long a conversation with me to determine whom I might support. That is not a secret; I simply do not use whatever ordained leadership I have to ally myself with a political party.

Finally, I will always, always, accept an invitation to pray during the gathering of a political party. I have prayed at Democrat gatherings, and I have prayed at Republican gatherings. I have enjoyed both! And I do enjoy attending political gatherings! This year, I pray that these political processes will produce a leader whom God will use for the good.

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By R. William Carroll

Recently, from the pulpit, I issued a call to our parish to raise significant funds, beyond those in our parish budget, to support our ministries that feed the hungry. In the past year, we have added support to the Good Earth Hunger Mission, a new ministry led by a parishioner, which is growing food locally to support area hunger ministries. Our thought was to begin to address the systemic causes of hunger, a global food system that presupposes an oil-based economy (both for transporting food and for making petroleum based fertilizers), a point which was driven home for us by a local organic farmer at a sustainable agriculture workshop at the Mt. Grace Appalachian Ministries Conference, co-sponsored by the Dioceses of Southern Ohio and West Virginia. We want to continue to meet immediate need but begin to think more systematically about the interdependence of social and environmental justice.

My point of departure in the lectionary was Psalm 149:4: “For the LORD takes pleasure in his people, and adorns the poor with victory.”

The context of my remarks came from some statistics cited in the Winston-Salem Journal:

A blizzard of pink slips pushed the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported yesterday.

Worried about the economy and their own business prospects, employers cut payrolls by 84,000 in August, marking the eighth straight month of losses.

So far this year, a staggering 605,000 jobs have vanished -- slightly less than the population of Alaska. The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs a month for employment to remain stable.

A separate report showed that a record 9.2 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June.

Both sets of statistics are staggering. The mortgage figures point to the effects on Main Street of the crisis that is affecting Wall Street as well. There were nods of approval in the congregation when I noted that things are even worse in Ohio (and certainly in Athens County, where I serve) and that they have been for some time. As I observed in the sermon, these statistics are confirmed by the witness of our local hunger ministries and homeless shelter, which are seeing an increasing number of requests for assistance from people who would have previously thought of themselves as comfortably middle class. It is going to be a VERY hard winter.

In this article I want to do something that I didn’t do in the pulpit. (Don’t worry. I’m getting round to it.) My sermon’s purpose was to awaken us to local need and local response. But that is always insufficient. We also need to be politically engaged. Politics is (or can be) a means to address matters of mutual concern, the common good, which the framers of our republic, in the Preamble to the Constitution, called the “general welfare.”

Now, I believe passionately that preachers should avoid advocating parties or candidates from the pulpit. Not only is this the law, but it shows profound respect for the wisdom and conscience of the People of God, a respect that must be maintained if we are to be true to our baptismal ecclesiology. And so, even though I have some strong views about politics and the current presidential and congressional elections, I adhere to the law.

At the same time, though, I think it is the duty of those of us who are responsible for proclaiming Christ to draw attention to the real issues in this election. Surely, the central issues include those concerning war and peace, human rights (where do the candidates stand on torture?) and the rule of law, health care, and the economy.

At the same conference I mentioned above, the keynoter, Tupper Morehead of the Diocese of East Tennessee, who is my brother in Christ and in the Third Order Franciscans, spoke about what he calls “Jesus economics.” He noted that “the Church has the authority to preach Jesus economics in the churches of Appalachia.” We also have the authority to preach this economics in our cities and suburbs. We should take it to the streets, and proclaim it, by word and example, in town and country alike. The Reign of God preached by Jesus has social implications. In it, the first are last and the last are first.

First and foremost, as we cast our vote in November, we must remember the needs of the poor, who lack their daily bread and who are being forced out of their homes. The Republican Party and Democratic Party, and their respective nominees, offer very different perspectives on economic policy. Third party candidates differ even more greatly. They differ on taxation, on the relative roles of markets and regulation, and on what kind of social “safety net” they would offer to the poor among us. All would argue that their policies, in the long run, will create more general prosperity for the American people, and presumably for others around the world.

Christians have a non-negotiable imperative to assess these policy proposals carefully. And, although people of good will may differ about which approach will be most beneficial in fixing an economy in crisis, we have a moral obligation to keep the needs of the poor front and center. Christians can’t approach an election asking “What’s in it for me?” They must always ask themselves, “How does this affect other people?” and especially “How does this affect God’s poor?”

“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people, and adorns the poor with victory.”

The Rev. R. William Carroll serves as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio (Diocese of Southern Ohio). He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is a novice in the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

Sara Miles, director of ministry and pastoral care at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, sent this letter to parishioners this week.

Dear Friends,

I'm writing to you as someone who's a political activist, an organizer, and a strongly opinionated voter. But as the November elections approach, I want to talk to you as your pastor.

It's no secret that there's a lot of time, energy, and money going into stirring up passions around this election. You've read the attacks on Barack Obama and his supporters, on Sarah Palin and John McCain. You've received or sent angry, rumor-filled emails. You've heard or told snarky, hostile jokes about the evils of the other side--whoever "the other side" is for you. You've sat there fuming reading the news or watching TV, and you may even have despaired about the general level of dishonesty, vitriol and division generated by campaigns and their supporters.

I want to ask you to pause and consider how our words and actions during this campaign are going to play out in the years to come. Anger-- especially anger that feels "righteous," when we're raging against injustice and the bad guys-- is addictive. It's hard to let go of. As someone who's lived in wars, during bitter political struggles, and also in post-conflict societies, I can tell you that anger flung around recklessly during a conflict poisons the water of civil society for a long time. And I see how carrying around rage and resentment hurts individuals personally. And as someone who considers herself a part of what we call the Body of Christ, I can tell you that it's impossible to hate a part of that Body without damaging the whole.

So I want to ask you, first, to take a deep breath and pray for your enemies.

Please notice that I'm not asking you to pray that your enemies will repent and see the error of their ways, or that they'll start doing what you think they should do, or that they'll be punished for their wrongdoings. I'm asking you to simply pray for them.

And then I want to ask you, if you feel that the stakes in this election are simply so high that you must do something, to, for God's sake, do something. And by that I don't mean watch more TV, or compulsively follow your favorite political blog. I don't mean forward a nasty email to your friends, or tell a hateful story about the other side to people who agree with you politically.

I mean act. Having a well-developed political opinion is very different than engaging in political action. I urge you to avoid the trap of "right thinking" and ideological purity, and instead to leave your home and your circle of like-minded friends. To get out there and work for your candidate or your cause, going door to door and talking with real live human beings, some of whom will be on the other side politically.

It's always easier to hate the other side when you only talk to people who agree with you. It's harder to demonize people when you have to look them in the face.

And looking people in the face, and honestly listening to what they say--even if you can't stand it---and working as hard as you can for what you believe is right, while praying for your enemies, is really the only way I can see out of the mess our country's in now. I know it's the only way I can escape my own bitterness and self-righteousness.

God willing, I'll be acting this fall. And each morning around eight, during Morning Prayer, I will be praying for all the candidates, and for the people of our country. Please join me.

Love,
Sara

Sara Miles is the author of Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

With apologies to Kermit the frog, it's not that easy being a liberal religious voter.

People tend to pass you over in all the speculation about which candidate the evangelicals and right-wing Christians will support. Nobody polls us, and sometimes it seems as though nobody knows how we see things -- or recognizes that ours isn't "religion lite."

It's confusing, seeing a Presidential candidate who doesn't seem entirely clear whether he's an Episcopalian or a Baptist. I don't cast my vote based on a candidate's religious affiliation, but when a person's been an Episcopalian for 71 years and then during the South Carolina primary last year suddenly tells a reporter, "By the way, I'm not Episcopalian. I'm Baptist," even though he's never had an adult baptism, I think we deserve an explanation. It would help us understand what makes him tick. The Washington Post's faith blog was calling McCain "John the Baptist" this weekend, noting that John the Episcopalian made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 2000, which is also when he called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “forces of evil.”

It's worrisome, seeing a Vice Presidential candidate who calls herself as a "bible-based Christian," prays for a natural gas pipeline, and thinks the U.S. mission in Iraq is a task from God. "A lot of people were praying," James Dobson said recently, "and I believe Sarah Palin is God's answer." What was the question?

It's sad, hearing speech after speech by sarcastic Christians at the Republican convention. What was that nasty tone? We all have our moments, God knows, but it wasn't as though this was road rage -- these people were reading speeches off a teleprompter. Snarky might play well in the convention hall, but seeing it on the small screen I wondered where love thy neighbor fitted in. Exaggeration is certainly no stranger to politics, but hearing one untruth after another from Palin about her own record and Obama's on everything from tax hikes to the Bridge to Nowhere -- not to mention Huckabee claiming Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States" -- I wondered what happened to thou shalt not bear false witness.

And now McCain is running a commercial accusing Obama of supporting legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education to kindergartners." Implying a condoms-and-cucumbers approach to the facts of life, the voiceover intones ominously: "Learning about sex before learning to read?" Obama has repeatedly stated that he favors community-based programs that teach young children to know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch. As a pastoral psychotherapist with years of experience helping sexual abuse survivors, I am all too familiar with the need for programs that protect the most vulnerable among us. To distort this kind of education insults both Obama and anyone who has experienced sexual abuse.

Voters and leaders get into trouble when Christians turn into the home team and all they can think about is scoring. Here's a little news flash: Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." It's not our job or our calling to claim the world or the country or even little Wasilla for Jesus. When we prey on people's fears and bring out the worst in them so they'll vote for us, then we've succumbed to lust for power and lost touch with what's essential. We diminish ourselves and our faith. I've decided to start using Andrew Sullivan's name for people who use the name "Christian" as a political identification: Christianist. "Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith," he wrote a couple of years ago on Time.com. "Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism....I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike."

The God who loves me loves Muslims and Jews and atheists, blacks, whites, and browns, gays, straights, wearers of flag pins, snowmobile racers, Eastern elites, moms of special needs babies, teens who have abortions, Republicans and Democrats, loves us all. Somehow we've all got to start doing a better job of leading this country, not to mention sharing this tiny, precious globe. A good start would be getting our facts straight and respecting one another. That's the candidate who gets my vote. It's not that easy being a liberal religious voter, but it'll do fine. It's not religion lite. It's hard. Demands all the brains and heart God gave us. But it's beautiful, as Kermit said. It's what I want to be.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By George Clifford

Historically, the Christian tradition has relied – at least in its rhetoric – upon Just War Theory to decide when and how to wage war. The six jus ad bellum criteria (just cause, right authority, right intent, proportionality, last resort, and reasonable chance of success) provide a basis for deciding whether to wage war. The two jus in bello criteria (proportionality and non-combatant immunity) guide how a nation wages a just war.

The United States Constitution assigns Congress the power to declare war, i.e., Congress constitutes right authority for the U.S. to wage war. Yet in recent years, presidents have often acted unilaterally citing their role as Commander-in-Chief, their duty to defend the nation, and the need for expeditious action to justify bypassing or minimizing Congress’ role. Concurrently, Congress has often failed to exercise due diligence before authorizing the President to go to war.

U.S. involvement in Vietnam exemplifies those problems. By 1964, the Vietnam War was already well underway without Congressional authorization because of decisions made by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Nevertheless, the Vietnam War’s cost in dollars and American lives had reached the point where President Johnson felt he needed authorization from a dubious Congress. Congress’ consideration of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution followed an alleged attack in international waters upon the Navy destroyer, USS MADDOX (DD-731), by North Vietnamese forces, an incident now known to have never happened. Passed after fewer than nine hours of committee and floor debate, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorized the President “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.” Subsequently, both President Johnson and Nixon relied upon the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as the Congressional authority to wage the Vietnam War. Congress’ failure to engage in a full and open debate about whether to wage war contributed to the U.S. continuing a costly, ill-fated war.

Following 9/11, Congress expeditiously passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Resolution on September 14, 2001, empowering the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and to prevent future attacks. That resolution provided the legal basis for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the administration’s adoption of controversial policies such as indefinitely detaining those the government identifies as “illegal enemy combatants.”

Now the Bush administration quietly seeks Congressional authorization for continued armed conflict with al Qaeda and reaffirmation “that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations.” Passage of this resolution will confer on President Bush and his successors broad wartime powers. Therefore, the resolution merits thoughtful and open consideration by Congress, citizens, and Christians.

From a Christian perspective, I find the resolution troubling for three reasons. First, Just War Theory emphasizes that going to war should be a last resort. The precedent of the U.S. invading Afghanistan based on wording of a similar resolution now exists. What country might this or a future President choose to invade, based on a new resolution? The draft contains no guidance on criteria to be satisfied before the U.S. invades another country. In other words, the proposed resolution is tantamount to Congress abdicating its war making powers and handing the Commander-in-Chief a blank check to make war if and when the President deems it right. The checks and balances written into the Constitution cohere well with the Christian recognition of pervasive sin. Concentrating power in the hands of one person unnecessarily invites abuses.

Second, the resolution attempts to perpetuate an egregious denial of human rights. Enemy combatants remain persons, something that committing a crime, no matter how heinous, can never change. The Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal covenant reminds us that all persons are worthy of equal dignity and respect, i.e., deserve equal rights and equal treatment. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to habeas corpus rights to challenge their imprisonment in court. Passage of the proposed resolution would attempt to circumvent that ruling and undercut our moral obligation to respect every human being as one of God's children.

Third, the proposed resolution tacitly suggests that effective government action can create a secure nation, e.g., allowing the government to wiretap U.S. citizens without a court order will keep the U.S. safe from terrorists. Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official during the Reagan Presidency, said in comments about the proposed resolution, “I do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever. We have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify and indict and convict. They’re not a goliath. Don’t treat them that way.”

Any demonizing of al Qaeda and other terrorists dehumanizes the terrorist, creates additional obstacles to ending the terrorist threat, and is a form of fear mongering. Elusive promises of absolute national security are all bogus. Trusting in the government, and especially in military prowess, for one’s security is a highly addictive, extremely dangerous form of idolatry that seduces many Americans. Whether we like it or not, life is inherently risky. Disease, disaster, or destruction strike frequently, e.g., Representative Stephanie Stubbs Jones death from cancer (sadly only one of thousands each year), hurricanes Gustav and Katrina, and the reports of random violence that appear daily in the headlines.

Jesus instructed his disciples to be as wise as serpents. Every person and government prudently acts to prevent criminal behavior, apprehend criminals, and properly adjudicate them. The demands of justice for all, temperately balancing individual liberty and security, and courageously living in the face of real threats all help to define the nature of those prudential actions. Policies that elevate security to a position of preeminence result in a society in which justice is impoverished and fear rules. Democratic governments that have yielded to fear, as happened in ancient Greece and Rome, generally become dictatorships. Democracy, not dictatorship, is the form of government most consonant with Christianity. As Christians, God calls us to live in community, both as people of faith and as citizens of a particular nation. Strengthened by God, seeking justice and liberty for all, and living boldly in the face of an uncertain, often risky, future is one cost of sustaining a democratic government.

The Rev. George Clifford, a retired priest in the Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years.

By Luiz Coelho

It took several hours and the hardwork of many skilled professionals to install the huge Vermont-granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery. The sculpture, which was donated by benefactors, weighed more than five thousand pounds, and the process of installing the monument was so arduous and impressive that it was filmed by professional cameramen. However, despite the difficulties, Chief Justice Roy Stewart Moore was proud to announce to the media on the morning of August 1, 2001, the successful installation of the monument.

This story might sound like an ordinary episode in the history of public administration in the United States. It was not, though. The monument also portrayed, alongside the Judeo-Christian foundations of moral living, quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the United States’ National Anthem, and various sayings of the Founding Fathers. Many were in favor of the creation of the monument; however, many were also opposed to its installation in the Supreme Court rotunda, because they felt it overstepped the bounds of separation of Church and State. Several organizations filed suit in the United States District Court, asking for the removal of such a monument. Moore, who was already known for trying to implement prayer before trials and for taking his own portable Ten Commandments tablets to court, used the powers of his Office to resist the removal of the sculpture as long as he could. However, eight members of the Alabama Supreme Court intervened, unanimously overruled Moore, and ordered the removal of the monument. In the end, both the monument and Judge Moore were removed from the building.

Moore's story is not an isolated case. In several other instances of American public life, the Courts have removed religious symbols, such as crosses, crèches, and ten commandment tablets, from the public square in the last fifty years at least. Prayers in such environments are also heard less frequently. It can be said that in the United States, religion has been playing a less and less important role in public affairs altogether, even though conservative Christians are still seen in prominent circles both in society and the government.

Some see this trend as a direct attack against “traditional American values”, and – at least their perception of – the society that the forefathers of the United States worked to create. They often cite how peaceful and prosperous life was in the past, when “the Christian God” had a place of public honor among Americans. Many would argue, also, that freedom of religion has always been guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution, and that religious minorities have always had the right to build houses of worship. Are these views and arguments valid? Was religious freedom so evident in the past? Or, was it plainly masqueraded by a certain majority who belonged to one kind of faith only, and who created a set of structures to secure it? How worse, or better, are we now?

Like many people of faith, I dearly welcome the advent of real religious freedom, especially because it frees us to deal with symbols related to the religious life. It might be interesting, then, to see some examples of how public expressions of religion actually have changed in the last fifty years, and if they really helped us achieve more tolerance and full separation between church and state.

It would be inconceivable nowadays to demand anyone to hold to a particular religious viewpoint or to express a belief in God in order to hold a public office. Yet, fifty years ago, it was possible for public organizations to have prerequisites that would limit access to such jobs to people of faith only. For example, in the early sixties, Roy Torcaso was denied his appointment as a Notary Public in Maryland because he refused to declare a belief in God. Article 37 of Maryland's Declaration of Rights stated that a declaration of belief in the existence of God was necessary for any office, profit or trust in that state. The case went to the Supreme Court in 1961, and the Justices unanimously found Maryland's requirement a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. That decision established a legal precedent which created a paradigm shift in the role of faith in the public square. From then on, an acknowledgement of a given religious belief ceased to be a prerequisite for public jobs in every part of the country.

Another example of changing attitudes toward the place of religion in the public square during the last fifty years can be seen in the public schools. The elderly can still recall that it was not uncommon to say prayers, sing religious hymns or even have obligatory religious services in public schools. A series of court rulings, however, has changed the possibility of such practices today. These rulings were the results of complaints by citizens, such as a group of parents of students in New Hyde Park, New York, who complained in 1966 that a public prayer to “Almighty God” was against their beliefs. The case, which became known as Engel v. Vitale, went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that government-directed prayers in public schools are a violation of the Establishment cause. Since that ruling, it has become more and more difficult to hear prayers said in public schools, and subsequent attempts to allow them have been defeated in court. Prayers in educational institutions are confined nowadays, to chaplaincies, religious clubs or associations of common-minded people. But, in no case may a person be obliged to participate in public prayers in school.

Such lawsuits and governmental measures have not appeared out of nowhere. They reflect, in fact, a very noticeable paradigm shift on the American religious scene. When the British allowed European settlers to establish colonies in these lands, most of them belonged to Christian religious groups, often Protestant denominations, although some Jewish settlers found a home here as well. With an increasing immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this profile changed to include more Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. Judeo-Christian religious ideology was still the norm, however, and it is reasonable to say that fifty years ago the overwhelming majority of Americans were Christians, or believers in God. This pattern started to change when immigration from non-Christian countries began to increase.

In their American Religious Identification Survey, researchers at the City University of New York discovered that from 1990 to 2001, the number of people in the United States ,who have a religion other than Christianity increased from 5.8 million to 8.7 million. Such a number, albeit still small, reflects a sizeable minority, which practically did not exist years ago.

Much more significant than the increase in non-Christians is the increase of people who identify as atheist and agnostic. Non-religious people were usually a very small and intellectual minority in the first half of the twentieth century. Today, they compose about fourteen percent of the American population, as pointed out in the aforementioned study, after having more than doubled in size from fourteen million people to practically thirty million people between 1990 and 2001. Together with non-Christians, they compose practically twenty percent of the American population – a percentage that is growing, according to the study.

The gradual secularization of the public square is merely a response to a more religiously diverse society. It is now impossible to ignore non-Christians and those who profess no faith at all. The removal of religious symbols, sometimes under serious protest, is the most neutral answer to a truly pluralistic society, rooted in the freedom of religion articulated in the United States Constitution and several other historical documents of this country.

It has to be said, though, that not only has the percentage of those who identify with a specific religion changed, but the profile of the typical religious American has also changed. In The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict, Robert Ellwood argues that religious traditions in the 1950s were largely intensified by socio-political conditions. He believes that religious organizations used to provide a very important framework upon which families built their lives in the postwar period. Routine religion was part of what was perceived as normalcy, and after all the chaos of previous decades, people needed normalcy. Religion was also seen as the amalgama of American families – especially at a time many families were marked by the loss of beloved relatives. Finally, being religious was a sign of anti-communism; and, the cold war, with all of its implications, was often portrayed as a kind of Armageddon in many households. Back then, religion was completely intertwined with the way society was organized.

However, throughout the last fifty years, a series of movements in American society, such as the sexual revolution, women empowerment, the end of the cold war and fast communications, have drastically changed what Americans might call “family”. What is perceived as a familial arrangement in today’s society does not always correspond to the vision our grandparents shared. There are manifold types of families in our times and a direct genetic link between relatives does not exist in all of them. Families now include both heterosexual and homosexual partners, stepchildren, adopted children, remarried spouses, half-siblings, close friends and a myriad of other groups of people which would take pages to define. Religion, under this new context, is not necessaily the glue that holds families together. Common Sunday after-church luncheons have given way to cell phone calls or even e-mails. And with the rise of the so-called “religious right” in the government, the merger between religion and politics à la the cold war is not viewed favorably in more liberal circles.

Such conclusions are often misinterpreted as the final defeat of religion in the United States. Yet, it can be said that religious freedom was probably never more celebrated and protected in U. S. History as it is in our contemporary, pluralistic society today. The largely-Christian/largely-familial religious environment of the fifties posed a much greater threat to freedom of faith. People were often forced, by social conventions, to follow the same religion (and in many cases, the same denomination) as their parents and grandparents. Marriages often took place within such religious circles, regardles of the true beliefs of the participants. The scenario, nowadays, is markedly different. The latest survey by the Pew Forum of Religious and Public Life reveals an astonishing piece of information: nearly half of American adults leave the faith tradition of their upbringing, either to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether. Roman Catholic and Protestant mainline churches have lost members to newer Christian groups. Those who lack faith, are increasingly comfortable in leaving religious organizations they once belonged to for primarily social reasons. Yet once people find a religion that fulfills their needs, they are moe likely to adhere to it faithfully, and to try to engage in all the possibilities that it provides. Religion is to our generation, therefore, is much more a matter of personal choice than it was fifty years ago.

When the religious spectrum was monolithic, public manifestations of the majority faith were not bothersome to most people. Now, in a much more varied religious climate, it seems logical not to encourage any particular brand of faith in a public space. Thus, the much-criticized secularization of public places is actually an important step toward protecting religious freedom, and creating a more diverse and equaitalbe society. It helps reinforce the values enshrined in the U. S. Constitution and respects people's rights to choose whether to have a faith or be part of a religious institution. It also protects newer churches and religious groups from state-sponsored propaganda of older ones. And, as long as religions have the right to worship in their houses of prayer and act according to their beliefs, their rights are protected. The ongoing changes are definitely for the common good.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By John Bryson Chane

Politicians in both Iran and the United States have been divisive, disrespectful, and inflammatory in their condemnations of each other, in effect increasing the likelihood of a military confrontation. As the Episcopal Bishop of the Dioceses of Washington, DC, who has travelled twice to Iran and found friendship and shared values with Iranian clerics, I think it's time for religious leaders in both countries to take the initiative to find ways to seek peaceful solutions to the complex problems that have plagued US-Iranian relations for years.

Clerics on both sides believe that reconciliation must come from respectful communication. But such dialogue cannot occur in a vacuum, or in environments where people are demonising each other. The stakes are high in the Middle East, and the shrill and negative discourse of both countries' political administrations will not ease the increasing tensions between our countries. We must embrace tolerance and sincere dialogue to reverse this trend.

I have been to Iran twice, the first time in 2006 at the invitation of former President Khatami. More recently, I spent five days meeting with academic and religious leaders in Iran who are very concerned about the possibility of a US military incursion against their homeland. While in Tehran and Qom, one of the holiest cities in Iran, we spent a great deal of time discussing the common religious values and themes shared by both Christianity and Islam. Our commonalities centred on issues of peace as well as the moral prohibition of developing and using weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to agreeing that politicians have been behaving childishly, my Iranian colleagues and I also think that the level of ignorance by Christians and Muslims about each other's religions has been extremely unhelpful in extending positive dialogue between these two great monotheistic religions and our two nations.

A deeper understanding of both nations' cultures, as well as a willingness to face the labyrinth of US-Iranian history, are necessary first steps.

Iran uses the development of nuclear energy and the implied fear of future nuclear weapons as a wedge issue in its relationship with the United States. In its defence, Iran says it is the only Persian, Farsi-speaking country in a region of Arab nations. Once a great power thousands of years ago and now an emerging player in the Middle East in the 21st century, Iran says its future is threatened by nuclear programmes and weapons in the region.

Iran can also look to the history of unwelcome involvement by the United States in its internal affairs. The covert overthrow of popular Prime Minister Mosaddeq in 1953, the propping up and support of the unpopular Shah, the US government's military support of Sadaam Hussein in Iraq's war with Iran, and the failure of the Clinton Administration to embrace the emerging moderate leadership of President Khatami (eventually leading to Khatami's isolation by hardliners in his government) are all painful failures of US foreign policy.

At the same time, the United States has every right to be deeply concerned about statements made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about the Holocaust and the eradication of the State of Israel, as well as the verification of anti-personnel weapons manufactured in Iran and their use by Iraqi Shi'a militants against American troops. And the hostage crisis of 1979, when militant Iranian students took over the US Embassy, still exists as an open wound in the American psyche.

Much of Iran's anti-Israel rhetoric can be attributed to deflected anger at the United States for violating known agreements about the parameters of establishing the State of Israel under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and Israel's development of nuclear weapons without the permission of the United States. The perceived bias of the United States in favour of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has only exacerbated anti-Israeli feelings. (It must also be noted, however, that the largest concentration of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel can be found living peacefully in Iran.)

It is imperative that religious leaders from both countries, who are respected for their scholarship and "religious diplomacy", continue their closely held and critically focused theological conversations unimpeded by visa restrictions too often imposed by the United States and Iran.

Likewise, members of the diplomatic corps on both sides need to acknowledge that they have been unable to broker a peaceful solution to the current crisis between our two countries and that it is time for some more creative solutions. A new 21st century understanding of Track II diplomacy, initiated through theological diplomacy, must go hand-in-hand with the formal diplomatic search for the peace that has always been at the centre of the Holy Books of both Christianity and Islam.

The Right Reverend John Bryson Chane is the Episcopal Bishop of the Dioceses of Washington, DC. He was named one of the 150 most influential leaders in the District of Columbia by Washingtonian Magazine. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

By Jim Naughton

In today’s Washington Post, columnist Michael Gerson once again takes Sen. Barack Obama to task for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In breaking with Wright, Gerson writes, Obama has woken from a theological slumber. But contrast Wright’s words and actions with those of Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, the leader of Gerson’s church, and ask yourself who has been sleeping.

Gerson is a member of the Falls Church in Falls Church, Va. His congregation and the nearby Truro Church, played the key role in leading 11 Virginia parishes out of the Episcopal Church after the Church consecrated Gene Robinson, an openly gay man as bishop in 2003. Most of these parishes joined the Church of Nigeria, which Akinola leads.

The relationship between Akinola, Truro and the Falls Church is a close one. The American churches provide important financial support for Akinola’s ministry, and American clergy frequently write his papers and speeches.

In February 2006, 10 months before Gerson's church made the final decision to affiliate with Akinola, Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (full disclosure, he is my boss) published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post calling attention to proposed Nigerian legislation (here, on page 12) supported by Akinola that –interpreted as narrowly as possible—would have significantly curtailed the rights of gays, lesbians and their supporters to speak about their lives in public, assemble or practice their religion. Interpreted more broadly, language that aimed at stopping any displays of same-sex affection, public or private, direct or indirect, was a prescription for home invasion.

One of the more objectionable clauses in this legislation reads:

Any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment.

Akinola’s supporters argued that Muslims were behind the bill, but human rights activists in Nigeria told a different story. The legislation was advanced by a Christian president, and supported by the Christian Association of Nigeria while Akinola was its president. The bill’s key parliamentary opponent was a Muslim.

The legislation was vigorously criticized by 16 international human rights groups, the European Parliament and the U. S. State Department. It eventually died, but Akinola never backed away from his support, even after human rights groups explained the potentially devastating effect the law could have had on groups working to prevent the speared of AIDS.

In the midst of this legislative struggle, Akinola gave an interview to The New York Times, which appeared on the paper’s front page on Christmas Day, 2006.

The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person’s hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.

Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria’s Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head in wonder and horror.

“This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, ‘Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh!’ I jumped back.”

Akinola's allies in the United States had worked hard to soften his image and distance him from the bill (very, very hard.) but the published record was against them, and after the Times' interview, Akinola stopped speaking to reporters in the U. S.

If Gerson had any trouble with Akinola's behavior, he did not voice it in a column he wrote five months later. In his first effort as a Post columnist, Gerson described Akinola's decision to consecrate Truro's former rector, the Rev. Martyn Minns, as a bishop in the Church of Nigeria, as an "epoch-dividing event," and praised Akinola's vibrant brand of Christianity.

Gerson may have been referring to the failed Nigerian legislation when he offered these highly-qualified reservations, but they are so vague it is impossible to tell:

This emerging Christianity can be troubling. Church leaders sometimes emphasize communal values more than individual human rights, and they need to understand that strongly held moral beliefs are compatible with a commitment to civil liberties for all. Large Pentecostal churches are often built by domineering personalities promising health and wealth.

(The Post printed my letter responding to Gerson’s piece. However, I was unsuccessful in persuading the paper to acknowledge that Gerson had hidden a conflict of interest from his readers in failing to disclose that his parish was involved in litigation over church property on Archbishop Akinola's behalf. This still seems to me a fairly obvious and signficant violation of journalistic ethics.)

In May, The Atlantic magazine raised new and more troubling concerns about Akinola. In “God’s Country,” the writer Eliza Griswold, daughter of the Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, describes a retributive massacre in the Nigerian town of Yelwa carried out in 2004 by a well-organized band of men, wearing clothing and tags that identified them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Akinola was president of CAN during the massacre, which Human Rights Watch reports claimed the lives of approximately 700 Muslims. Dozens of others were kidnapped, raped or maimed. (The relevant sections of the article and the HRW report are excerpted here.)

Eliza Griswold visited Akinola in 2006. She writes:

When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

When these remarks came to light, Akinola’s spokesman released a statement that had nothing to do with the incident at Yelwa, but with later riots over the publication of Danish cartoons, that Muslims viewed as insulting to the prophet Mohammed. Neither the archbishop nor his American followers have offered further elaboration.

Akinola's handling of the massacre in Yelwa and his incendiary comments during the cartoon riots contributed to his defeat when he ran for re-election of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Indeed, members of the Association took the unusual step of denying him the vice presidency, which is usually awarded to the candidate who finishes second in the presidential balloting. His anti-gay crusades, and his efforts to split the Anglican Communion over the issue of homosexuality led to the defeat of Akniola's handpicked successor, in the voting for president of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa. Yet, members of his American flock, which is concentrated in Northern Virginia, but includes a congregation with close ties to the Family Research Council, and other conservative political groups, continues to support him.

These congregations are involved in a high-stakes effort aimed at either driving North American churches out of the Anglican Communion for their acceptance of same-sex relationships, or, failing that, splitting the Communion in two, and claiming leadership of a potentially large faction centered in Africa. This movement is financed by Americans who, with help from British evangelicals, are also its chief strategists. Public fealty to Akinola and one or two other African archbishops is essential, however, or the effort is unmasked as a largely Western enterprise, and loses credibility among Anglicans in the developing world—the very constituency for whom it purports to speak.

As a result, the Nigerian archbishop, whose influence is on the wane among Christian leaders in his own country and among Anglican leaders on his own continent due to his extremism, remains the spiritual leader of Michael Gerson’s parish, and in similarly-minded congregations in Northern Virginia.

Gerson may hold views very different than those of Akinola—just as Barack Obama may hold views very different than those of Jeremiah Wright. But given Gerson’s repeated criticism of Obama over his relationship with Wright, it seems fair to ask whether anything that Wright has said or done is as destructive to the human family or reflects as poorly on the Church as the word and actions of Peter Akinola, and why Gerson is able to pronounce with such supreme condescension on Obama’s failures when his own are so much more damning—and enduring.

Jim Naughton is editor of Episcopal Cafe.

By Ann Fontaine

Last year I updated my anti-racism training as required of lay and clergy leaders in the Diocese of Wyoming. As part of our training we pledged to work against racism in our churches and communities. Since I am white I wondered how I can fulfill that pledge as an ally with those who experience racism because of skin color and/or ethnic group. It is the same question I have when working with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) brothers and sisters.

Reflecting on the struggle by women for equality in church and community, I know there is more to working as an ally than just being helpful and nice. An ally is one who works with others to attain their goals. An ally does not just stand beside one, but also “has one’s back,” offering to watch out for unseen dangers. I know from my own place of needing allies that it needs to be done with respect and consultation. Ask for information and guidance from those with whom one wishes to be an ally instead of assuming one knows best for the other.

Some questions to consider in ally work:

Are there ways that being a white person who is an ally to other racial communities, being a man who is an ally to women, being straight and an ally to lgbt persons, and being non-transgender and an ally to transgender people are similar? Different?

If we are members of marginalized groups what do we look for in non-members who want to be allies?

Are allies helpful or harmful to progress? Is it something in between?

The author, James Baldwin spoke about the danger of allies with savior complexes. Have any of us had experiences with allies who thought of their role in that way? Have we fallen into that mode of acting ourselves?

Working as an ally is often difficult. The story of the Good Samaritan shows how easy it is just to walk on by and not get involved. During Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s people who were allies suffered physical harm and death. In South Africa, white women who belonged to the Black Sash movement and who demonstrated against the white apartheid laws and assisted people negotiating the difficulties of the “pass” laws were shunned by their white friends. Those who ally with people who are transgender, gay, lesbian, and bisexual for civil rights are attacked with name-calling and worse. Those who work as allies are often marginalized along with those with whom they ally. Allies can find themselves on the outside of both the dominant group and the marginalized group. It can be a lonely place unless there are other allies with whom one can work and talk.

The reward of justice and space for all to live into the fullness of their creation is worth the difficulties but it is important not to underestimate what might happen as well as one’s own ability to fail at the task.

A possible Code for Allies might be:

We listen to those with whom we work without judging the perspectives, experiences, and feelings of the members of the marginalized group, even when the words feel accusatory towards us. These perspectives, experiences and feelings reveal what we do not know about those with whom we seek to become allies.

We seek to learn from those with whom we ally in order to educate ourselves and others about the culture and concerns of those with whom we are allied. We examine our fears of “the other. We recognize the interconnectedness of “isms” and other examples of individual and societal prejudice.

We understand the commonalities and the differences among the various expressions of prejudice and isolation of groups.

We identify and work to change our prejudicial beliefs and actions as well as to change the beliefs and actions of others, both individual and institutional.

We build relationships with other discredited, marginalized, oppressed, non-privileged groups.

We work for the equalizing and responsible use of power and authority.

We advocate for policies and activities that support those affected by injustice.

We use appropriate language.

We confront inappropriate language.

We ask questions rather than assume we know the answer.

We take risks.

We appreciate the efforts by members of our ally group to point out our mistakes.

We combat the harassment, discrimination, and physical assault that marginalized groups experience in our society by speaking out, by our presence and by working to change the systems that continue oppression and give one group privilege over another.

We appreciate the risks taken by our allies for their own freedom.

We recognize that groups need to work on their own and with others – even when that means we may be left out of the discussion and work.

We support other allies.

We act as allies with no conditions attached.

What should be done as an ally if one thinks a chosen course of action is unwise or will not work as planned? One option is to ask how the strategy was developed and what it seeks to accomplish. This helps to open up the conversation and perhaps give an opportunity to express questions. Giving support does not require blind obedience, but if the group decides this is the right way to proceed then an ally needs to choose whether to participate or not. An ally who undermines the group is worse than those who are not allies.

In the end it is worth asking why one might wish to be an ally? Why does one think it will be helpful? Is anyone asking for help? Examining motives helps to keep one from falling into savior roles or trying to get needs met at the expense of others.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often quoted Theodore Parker saying, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." If we are to be part of this moral universe becoming an ally helps bend the arc.

In our baptismal covenant we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves and to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. These promises are a foundation for the work of becoming an ally.

We become allies as followers of Christ, who commands us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. The work is for us and our souls as well as for the healing of our communities and the world.

(My thanks to Lelanda Lee, Michael Music, James Toy, the blog Bilerico, Kay Flores, Kristin Fontaine, and Laurie Gudim for their help with this article.)

The Rev. Ann Fontaine, of the Diocese of Wyoming, keeps the blogs Green Lent and what the tide brings in. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.

By George Clifford

The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, in his majority opinion in Baze v. Rees, No. 07-5439, the recent Kentucky death penalty case challenging the constitutionality of execution by lethal injustice, wrote:

Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm’ that qualifies as cruel and unusual [under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment].

A premise underlying Roberts’ comment – that the death penalty is not a kind, gentle act – seems commonsensical to me. Unfortunately, modern culture often lacks an adequate supply of the precious commodity we call commonsense. Why would anyone think that capital punishment, however administered, is not painful?

Societies impose the death penalty on convicted criminals for three reasons. First, a society may intend the death penalty to deter people from committing crime. Deterrence obviously proved ineffective with respect to the criminal justly convicted of a crime. Both death penalty proponents and opponents point to research that supposedly supports their argument that the death penalty deters, or does not deter, crime. From my ethical perspective, the research is irrelevant. My ethical problem with justifying the execution of one individual to deter other persons from committing crimes is that this reduces the one executed to a means to an end, thereby denying that person’s inherent dignity and worth as a child of God. Christians should never view a person as simply an instrument for achieving a goal, no matter how laudable the goal. The Gospel of Luke’s account of the crucifixion portrays Jesus assuring one of the criminals crucified with Jesus that the two of them, that very day, will be together in Paradise (23:39-43). Jesus clearly regarded the criminals crucified with him, who both acknowledged their guilt, as persons worthy of dignity and respect in spite of their crimes. In Luke’s narrative, one criminal experiences transformation, the other does not.

Admittedly, Scripture’s witness on the issue of deterrence, like the research on deterrence, is inconsistent. Some Biblical passages recognize the value of deterrence:

• “Stone them to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do any such wickedness.” - Deuteronomy 13:10-11 • “All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act presumptuously again.” - Deuteronomy 17:13 • “The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you.” - Deuteronomy 19:20

Other passages suggest that retribution belongs to God, undercutting the rationale for deterrence:

• “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people…” - Leviticus 19:18 • “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” - Romans 12:19 • For we know the one who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’” - Hebrews 10:30

I discuss retribution, the third rationale for the death penalty, below. Suffice it to say, the Deuteronomic passages supporting deterrence reflect a more rigid legalism and less robust understanding of personhood than I find in Leviticus and the New Testament. These latter passages point to a developing awareness of the demands of loving as God loves. Not surprisingly, the Baylor Institute of Religion survey, American Piety in the 21st Century, published in September 2006, confirmed that individuals who have an authoritarian image of God are more likely to support the death penalty than individuals who have a benevolent image of God.

Second, society may impose the death penalty intending to prevent a person convicted of a serious crime from further harming anyone else. As a Christian, I have two ethical problems with this rationale. Capital punishment is a final solution that allows no second chance. What if new evidence becomes available that the person executed was, in fact, innocent? Worse yet, what if the executed person is innocent but nobody ever finds the exculpatory evidence? At least in the first instance, society can release and compensate the convicted person discovered to be innocent. No evidentiary standard, no matter how high it is set, can guarantee that absolutely everyone given the death penalty is in fact guilty.

Even more morally troubling to me, the death penalty makes a large number of people – legislators, police, judges, lawyers, jurors, prison officials – complicit in the death of each person executed. William J. Wiseman, Jr. was a member of the Oklahoma State House of Representatives from 1974 to 1980. He admits that for six years his highest priority, like that of every legislator he has ever known, was retaining his seat. Everything else was in a different category of regard and concern. Philadelphia Quakers had educated Wiseman and he opposed the death penalty. He believed that at best it was unjustified and at worst was immoral.

When a bill came before the legislature to re-write Oklahoma’s death penalty law, Wiseman found himself in a difficult position. Ninety percent of his district, as measured by a poll that he had commissioned, supported the death penalty. He was afraid that if he voted against the death penalty he would not be re-elected. Wiseman attempted to rationalize supporting the death penalty by seeking a more humane means of execution. Working with the state medical examiner, who sought out Wiseman after learning of Wiseman’s quest for a more humane method of execution, they drafted what became the nation’s first legislation authorizing capital punishment by lethal injection. Over thirty states have copied that groundbreaking legislation.

Today, William Wiseman lives with the knowledge, the guilt, that he is morally responsible for the execution of many criminals. He sacrificed his principles for political expediency. (William J. Wiseman, “Inventing lethal injection,” The Christian Century, 20-27 June 2001, pp. 6-7) I do not believe that I have the moral right to ask others to kill another person to prevent that person from committing additional crimes when at least one viable alternative exists, e.g., life in prison without parole. This belief mirrors Christian Just War Theory, which requires any potential war to satisfy a number of criteria, one of which is that war is truly the last resort, before waging war with the attendant use of lethal force is morally justifiable.

Third, society may impose the death penalty as retribution against the criminal for the crime committed. The gospels report in several places that Jesus taught his disciples, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31). Jesus’ teaching echoes the Torah (Leviticus 19:18) and the New Testament repeats it several times (Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8). Pretending that Jesus thought that anyone involved in imposing the death sentence on him or in executing him acted out of love for him mocks the brutally cruel reality of his crucifixion. Similarly, no amount of thought or imagining allows me to construe legally executing a convicted criminal as loving that person.

Some death penalty proponents argue that executing the guilty individual somehow expiates, atones for, makes amends, or compensate the victim or victim’s loved ones. Executing the guilty, from this perspective, becomes an act of justice, if not love, for the victim or victim’s loved ones. This entails, as with the first rationale for the death penalty, reducing the executed to a means to an end. In other words, the way to set the first wrong – the crime(s) that led to the imposition of the death penalty – right is a second wrong – the dehumanization of the criminal. Two wrongs never make a right.

Capital punishment is obviously painful. Its principal pain stems not from the method of execution, no matter how agonizing. Prematurely extinguishing a human life causes the real anguish of capital punishment. The executed criminal experiences that pain most intensely. The rest of us are diminished by the loss of a brother or sister and because we ourselves become a little less human every time our society executes one of its members. The time has come to declare loudly, emphatically, and decisively through our political process that capital punishment is inimical with whom we believe God has called us to become. Capital punishment should end, regardless of constitutional issues, because capital punishment is morally wrong.

The Rev. George Clifford, a retired priest in the Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years.

By W. Nicholas Knisely

Pope Benedict has just finished his first visit (as Pope) to the United States. It’s not surprising that many of his statements tended to confuse the people covering the event. The Pope, a former theology professor, shares a trait with the present Archbishop of Canterbury; he speaks in paragraphs, not in sound bites. (And he won’t simplify concepts so that they are easily digestible by the evening newsreaders.) But it wasn’t something that the Pope said, it was something that our President claimed the Pope had said that sent me off on a week’s worth of research and thinking. During a television interview on the eve of the visit, the President expressed his gratitude for the Pope’s teaching that "there's right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of un-dermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies." The President’s statement elicited a flurry of articles and online conversations about how relativism might actually achieve the destruction of society. But the problem is, near as I can tell, the President got the Pope’s thinking just about dead wrong.

I was particularly interested in the question of the proper role of relativism because of my training prior to studying for the priesthood. Part of my studies were spent in theoretical physics (in a small branch of general relativity theory actually) and I’ve been teaching a course on the philosophy of physics for the past six years or so. As part of all that I’ve been digging into the philosophical underpinnings of both classical and quantum physics and trying to see how we might connect the work being done there with the way we as a Church talk about God (literally: Theology).

One of the most important breakthroughs in classical physics in the past century came about as a result of Albert Einstein’s willingness to take the philosophical ideas of Ernst Mach seriously. Mach argued, in effect, that “reality” was ultimately determined by a person’s own observations. Einstein used the idea to construct his postulate of relativity which states that one reference frame’s observation is equally true as another’s even if they contradict, because the laws of physics must be the same for all. There are a couple of shelves worth of books involved in unpacking the statement, but the upshot is that no one observer can really claim priority over another one, even if they contradict each other. In effect, each person’s experience of the world around them is equally valid to another’s. While this was not a universally accepted idea in physics until the second half of the twentieth century (Hitler and Stalin claimed the idea that there was no absolute truth in Science to be preposterous and a result of deviant and Jewish thinking) the concept was repeatedly confirmed in experiment after experiment and is now broadly accepted in the physical sciences.

But a deeper question remains. Given that relativity is experimentally verified in the physical world, how should it be used in the realm of ideas? Do we want to argue that because relativity is a characteristic of physical reality, that it must also be a characteristic of morality? Should it be a fundamental characteristic of theology as well? (If that’s true, then much of the scholasticism of Reformation and Counterreformation theology is automatically overturned.) Benedict, back when he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger, tried to answer these questions. There’s a lovely summary of his thinking available online titled “Relativism, The Central Problem for Faith Today” that walks us through his objections. Apparently the President’s people based the President’s remarks on the title of the essay and not the actual text.

Pope Benedict’s critique of relativism shows that he’s not simply rejecting relativity in a sort of modern versus post-modern reactionary way as the President’s words seem to imply. What the Pope does instead is to look carefully at how various theologians have used relativistic and subjectivist philosophical systems. His critique centers on the observation that the move to reject the very existence of absolutes takes us to a place we don’t want to go. (It essentially forces us to reject any special quality to the revelation of God in the person of Jesus.) But Benedict recognizes the possibility that while ultimate truth exists, it is unknowable by human beings except in approximation.

Painting with a very broad brush, in technical terms the Pope is arguing that Positivism cannot be proven and is even poisonous to theology, and he’s willing at least to enter-tain the principles of PostPositivism (and some of its specific children) as a way of continuing a conversation between science, theology and philosophy. I don’t have space in this essay to unpack fully the meaning of each of the terms above, but a little googling and an afternoon’s worth of reading and all will become moderately clear.

The Pope thus is landing in the same place where most scientists are these days, in post-positivism. Post-positivists admit the impossibility of being able to make statements of fact in an absolutely true way, but still attempt to express truth in a way that is “good enough” for a given purpose. These good-enough expressions come with the caveat that they might be different (pluriform) in different contexts. Post-positivism instead cautions that all attempts to describe truth are ultimately limited and incomplete, but that the attempt should be made. It is not the same as the idea of philosophical relativity which says that there is no unique truth at all, and all claims to truth are equally valid. It’s an important distinction because the implications of a fully relativistic world view take us down roads we know from experience we should not travel.

But keep in mind that while Benedict cautions against the implications of relativism, he doesn’t attempt to solve the problem the way the President’s quote would implies. He does not embrace absolutism as a corrective to the dangers of relativism. Here is Benedict’s key point on the subject in the essay I reference above: “I am of the opinion that neo-Scholastic rationalism failed which, with reason totally in-dependent from the faith, tried to reconstruct the pre-ambula fidei with pure rational cer-tainty.” Benedict goes on to argue that truth can only be approached by means of a path that uses faith and philosophy in a respectful dialogue and that attempting to rely on one or the other is to make a fundamental mistake.

Why does this matter? Look how badly the majority of people have understood the point that the Pope was making. In effect they are force-fitting what he did say into a structure of modernity that they want him to support even while he is explicitly rejecting it. Why do they do this? The idea that there are no fully knowable moral absolutes is not easily accepted by most people. If science and philosophy won’t give us the absolutes we desire then we turn to religion for them, as is what seems to have happened here. The problem is that the absolutes are not readily available in religion either, at least according to Benedict.

This missing of the point is just another example of how desperately people want neat and easy answers to complex and difficult questions. The President’s people got the Pope wrong. They did so because they wanted to be able to say that we are right and others are wrong. (The press got the Pope wrong because they apparently relied on the President’s writers to do their work for them.) But it’s not just the President’s speech writers who chase after the mirage of absolutes. We all want to know for certain what God wants us to do. The problem is that what we want and what the universe gives us are often different. To quote Westley in “The Princess Bride”, we must all “get used to disappointment.” Instead we need to recognize that the best we do is to muddle through, trying to do the best we can and trusting desperately in God’s mercy revealed to us in Jesus. Somehow I think free societies will manage to survive as well.

The Very Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely is Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix Ariz. He serves as Chair of the Standing Commission on Episcopal Church Communication, is active in ecumenical works and was originally trained as an astronomer before he was ordained. His blog is Entangled States.

By Kris Lewis

In the courtyard outside Trinity Wall Street sits a brass sculpture cast from the root of a large sycamore tree that once stood in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Chapel. On September 11, 2001 when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center came tumbling down, this tree absorbed the shock waves that some have likened to a small nuclear blast, and fell in such a way that it shielded the chapel and the graveyard from damage caused by falling debris. I walked by this sculpture each day to enter the church for Trinity Institute’s program on religion and violence but it wasn’t until I was leaving Wednesday evening at the conclusion of the conference, my head and my heart full, that it struck me what an apt symbol this sculpture was for what we’d been doing. Just as this root provided strength and stability for the tree it supported, so too does religion provide grounding for the community of faith. And just as these roots were ripped from the ground by seismic shocks, allowing a tall and proud tree to fall, so too can religion be uprooted, shaken and disturbed by forces of conflict and change. Ironically, the root memorialized here had buffered the effects of perhaps the greatest single act of violence this country has witnessed—an act many have attributed at least in part to religious fundamentalism. And we were here to untangle the roots of religion and violence.

The program began with lofty questions—are religion and violence inextricably linked? Is the perceived link the result of misinterpretation, subversion of sacred texts? Can our religious symbols and stories be reinterpreted, reshaped to break that link? Or must we abandon religion, completely rid ourselves of what many hold to be archaic ways of making meaning, in order to forge a more peaceful world? Hard questions with no easy answers.

The conference speakers, like the attendees, represented the three Abrahamic religions. Each spoke movingly of both their particular faith tradition and their own experiences. Each called into question some of the assumptions made about those traditions and experiences both by those in the faith and those outside it.

Noted Black Liberation theologian James Cone recalled for us the role religion played both in the oppression of African Americans and in their attempt to find meaning in an unjust world. Injustice itself is a form of violence, he reminded us, and the church cannot truly be church unless it calls into question the social structures that support injustice. As long as there is injustice there must be resistance and the church is called to empower the people for that resistance. Moreover, the church should be the source of hope for a people engaged in resisting the violence of an unjust world.

Jewish scholar Susannah Heschel questioned the validity of blaming violence on religious fundamentalists and extremists. What, after all, defines extreme—is it praying once a day or five times? Is dying for one’s country allowed, but not dying for one’s religion? And cannot liberalism lead to extremes just as fundamentalism might? Violence is present in our sacred stories, but how we understand those stories will necessarily affect how we deal with that violence, and so we need to consider how we construct and interpret our religious narratives. The challenge, according to Heschel, is not to erase the particularities of our faith communities, but rather for each community to embrace its own tradition without demonizing the other, all the while remembering that the ultimate expression of God is justice.

Catholic author James Carroll noted how deeply the myth of redemptive violence is embedded not only in the religious consciousness of America but also in our secular worldview. From the Puritan settlers who envisioned a new “Jerusalem on a hill” and who sacrificed the lives of native Americans and black slaves to achieve their vision, through the series of wars fought to maintain freedom but on whose altars the lives of millions of young men were laid, culminating in the current “war on terror,” sanctified violence has been a way of life in this nation. Our challenge now is twofold—to come truly to grips with the violent realities of our past and to wrestle with issues of boundaries, purity, inclusiveness, atonement and sacrifice in a way that allows for both honest self-criticism and hope for the future.

Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan argued that we must promote justice and dignity for all if we want a world of non-violence. Tolerance of the other is not enough; rather we must respect the other and look for places where values and conscience are shared as a foundation for a peaceful world. We must reform ourselves before we can reform others, Ramadan reminded us, and we must work to find meaning in life from God.

(Interviews with Carroll, Cone, Heschel and Ramadan will be featured on the Cafe's Video blog, courtesy of Trinity, Wall Street.)

A pacifist at heart and a firm believer in non-violent resistance, I came to this conference already full of my own questions about the roots of violence and what I perceive to be a failure on the part of the Christian community to honestly confront it. I left with a head full of new perspectives and insights from my own faith community and from those whose faith is different. I left, too, with a heart full of sadness and doubt, seeing the scope of the problem to be even greater than I had conceived. Despite this sadness and doubt however, I also left with a sense of hope—hope born out of the willingness of people of different faith communities to come together to grapple with such difficult issues and out of the experience of sharing my doubts and fears and my dreams for a better world in a group willing to hear them and bear them with me.

The Rev. Dr. Kris Lewis is a graduate of the General Theological Seminary and serves as the Assistant Rector at Saint Mary's Episcopal Church, Barnstable MA. She is learning to see the world with new eyes through photography and keeps the blog My Soul in Silence Waits.

By Christine Gutleben and Lois Wye

Climate change is receiving increasing attention among faith communities, especially The Episcopal Church. As people of faith, we are becoming more aware of our roles as stewards of creation, while developing sensitivities to our consumption habits and our carbon footprints. The Episcopal Church has also put the U.N.’s Millennium Develop Goals on the front burner, recognizing the religious communities’ critical role in reducing world hunger and improving the lives of our brothers and sisters around the globe.

Our Presiding Bishop, Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, has recognized that climate change and world hunger are inexorably intertwined. Testifying before Congress in June of this year, she said, “We cannot triumph over global poverty . . . unless we also address climate change, as the two phenomena are intimately related. Climate change exacerbates global poverty, and global poverty propels climate change.” Bishop Jefferts Schori’s testimony is significant; however, a third critical element is missing from the discussion. Unless we take an honest look at industrial animal agriculture and the food choices that support this system, our progress in mitigating world hunger and climate change will be significantly hampered.

Nearly one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock agriculture – more than the contribution of all transportation systems combined, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) report, Livestock’s Long Shadow. Moreover, the report states that thousands of acres rainforest are cleared to make way for farming—to raise grain not for people or pastured animals, but for feedlots. In many parts of the world, small farmers are forced out of business and into poverty when they are unable to compete with large industrial farming practices. In short, if we want to have the strongest impact on combating both climate change and world hunger, we must do more than turn off the light switch or trade in our SUVs for hybrids; we must change the way we shop and the way we eat.

The problem is one of increasing urgency. The contribution of factory farming to environmental problems, world hunger, and untold animal suffering is rising rapidly. In 1961, the average American consumed 195 pounds of meat per year, by 2001 this figure rose to 272 pounds per year—a 77 pound increase in the last 40 years, according to the FAO. This illustrates that the continual growth of industrial animal agriculture in the United States is not simply a result of having to feed more people, it is also a result of Americans eating more meat. And the problem doesn’t stop there. As our western, meat-based diet is exported around the globe, per person meat consumption is exploding in countries like China and Brazil. The average person in China is consuming an increase of 110 pounds of meat per year, up from 40 years ago; similarly, in Brazil, the average person is now consuming an increase of 113 pounds of meat per year. At this rate, in just 20 years, we will need to produce 5 times more meat than we are currently producing globally, according to the FAO.

Factory Farming and Climate Change

The industrial livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. This accounts for animal agriculture’s direct impact as well as the impact of the resources required for feedcrop agriculture. Methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions, all of which have a more significant global warming potential than carbon dioxide, are also produced in high quantities on factory farms. The U.S. produces the largest portion of methane emissions from farm animal manure in the world, totaling nearly 1.9 million tons annually.

A 2005 report from the University of Chicago entitled Diet, Energy and Global Warming concluded that the average American diet, which includes meat, dairy and eggs produces 1.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide more per person per year than a plant-based diet yielding the same calories. The study notes that producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels and ten times as much carbon dioxide than a calorie of plant protein. The emissions difference between an omnivorous diet and a plant-based diet is roughly the difference between driving an SUV and a compact car. Indeed, however much energy we save through switching light bulbs or driving hybrid cars, we will sooner or later have to address our diet and reduce our consumption of factory farmed animal products if we are serious about mitigating the effects of climate change.

Factory Farms and World Hunger

Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a non-governmental organization headquartered in the United Kingdom, has produced an excellent, 17 minute video entitled, “Eat Less Meat.” This video illustrates the impact of a meat-based diet and factory farming on human health, the environment, world hunger, and animal welfare. According to CIWF, the growing global popularity of meat as a dietary staple and the increasing middle class in many countries has encouraged intensive industrial farming methods in developing countries. This is usually undertaken as a joint venture with western companies, and meat is produced both for export and the local middle class. Local small scale farmers cannot compete and lose their farms. They tend to drift into cities and move from being self-sufficient farmers to landless urban poor.

Moreover, the rise of factory farms worldwide encourages the development of monocultures, wherein farmers are encouraged to grow a single crop solely to be exported for animal feed. Thus, local economies become less diversified and more fragile, affordable food is removed from local economies, and land which could be used to raise food for people is instead used to raise food for animals.

According to the World Health Organization, a hectare of land used to raise crops for livestock can feed only two people, while a hectare of land used to grow rice or potatoes for people can feed approximately 20 people. If everyone in the world were to eat as much meat as the average American, by mid-century it would require four planets the size of earth to grow the grain to feed the animals. Conversely, according to the International Food Policy Institute, if people in the west halved their consumption of meat, and the land used to feed those animals was used to grow crops for people, 3.6 million children in developing countries could be saved from malnutrition by the year 2020.

Factory Farms and Animal Welfare

After World War II, the process of raising animals became largely transformed into one of producing high quantities of meat as cheaply as possible, at the inevitable expense of animal welfare. Animals have been moved from pastures to feedlots and warehouses. Some of the worst abuses of factory farms include battery cages for egg-laying hens, where hens are crammed row upon row into cages so small they cannot spread their wings, and gestation crates, where 400 pound hogs are kept in cages so small they cannot turn around. Most factory farmed animals spend their entire lives without feeling the earth beneath their feet or the sun on their backs.

In the United States alone, ten billion animals will be killed this year for our consumption. Most of these animals will spend their lives inside factory farms. These are God’s creatures, entrusted to our care. They live their lives and go to their deaths without one gentle touch, one act of mercy, from human hands.

We live in a culture where few of us have any idea how food gets to our table. There are rumblings of change within the faith community. In May of this year, Barbara Kingsolver spoke at the National Cathedral about her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, regarding the importance of eating mindfully. In August, The New York Times published, “Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul,” which addresses the need recognized by some in the faith community to treat farm animals more humanely and to practice more sustainable methods of agriculture. These rumblings need to become a roar.

Where do we go from here

Farmer, author and teacher, Wendell Berry, offers this critique of the way we purchase food products without concern for origin. Berry explains that our food choices are critical not only for our own spiritual integrity, but for the health and well being of the earth and all its inhabitants:

We can [not] live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration…in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.

Deliberate, selective, intentional and compassionate food choices that align with our spiritual principles are, in part, what makes food a sacrament – a material reality that conveys the divine. We have the choice to experience the sacramentality of creation or its destruction when we purchase, prepare and eat our food. Berry also reminds us that we are not the center of God’s universe. We exist as dependent creatures within diverse and intricate ecosystems and should consider food choices with this in mind.

It is time our food choices enter into the “carbon footprint” equation. These choices have a far greater impact than has been accounted for thus far and it is time our religious communities consider the ethics of eating as part of any serious work on climate change and the fight against world hunger. As The New York Times noted in its recent article, “If this nascent cause [were to be] taken up by large numbers of churches and synagogues, the economic effect alone could be profound.”

In 2003, the Episcopal Church took the first steps in recognizing this need with GC Resolution D016. “Support Ethical Care of Animals,” condemns the suffering caused by factory farms and calls upon the church to encourage its members to adhere to ethical standards in the treatment of animals and to advocate for legislation protecting them. Farms with stricter animal welfare standards benefit animals, humans, and the environment.

The Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) Animals and Religion program is reaching out to congregations and religiously affiliated organizations to join with it to work in partnership for a more just, sustainable and humane food system. The collaboration between HSUS and the religious community could form a powerful coalition to return industrial agriculture to a more appropriate scale and address the problems inherent in the factory farming system. The HSUS commends The Episcopal Church’s resolution on animals and suggests reducing the consumption of animal products, refining the selection of these products to more humane alternatives and replacing them with sustainably produced fruits, vegetables, grains and legume as important steps in enacting the resolution, reducing one’s carbon footprint, combating world hunger and being better stewards of both the earth and all its inhabitants.

Christine Gutleben is Director of the Animals and Religion Program at the Humane Society of the United States. Lois Godfrey Wye is an environmental attorney at the law firm of Holland & Knight, a student at Wesley Theological Seminary, and a parishioner at the Washington National Cathedral.

Links referred to in this article:
Livestock's Long Shadow Executive Summary (FAO)
Diet Energy and Global Warming (University of Chicago)
Eat Less Meat Video (CIWF)
Factory Farms
Battery Cages for egg laying hens
Gestation Crates
Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul (NYT)
Support Ethical Care of Animals (TEC)
The 3 R's

By George Clifford

I am a fan of democracy. Although every form of democracy has its problems, no other system of government seems better suited to respecting the dignity and rights of all. The other day, I read Cornell West’s Democracy Matters. West notes that democracies have historically had short life spans and then insightfully observes that one can link the end of every democracy to increases in poverty and paranoia. That prompted some reflections about life in America today, the 2008 Presidential campaign, and my Christian faith.

Poverty is on the increase in the U.S. Scholars, politicians, and others point to a variety of causes that include tax policy, business practices, fewer two parent families, etc. Eradicating poverty is a complex challenge without easy answers. As a Christian who prefers to live in a democracy, I must make that challenge a priority. Scripture suggests that God, in the words of the former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. David Sheppard, has a bias toward the poor. Yet I find that even among political candidates who claim to have a strong commitment to ending poverty, other issues generally receive more attention. Anti-poverty messages have little political traction and therefore take a backseat. Nationally, as well as in my home state of North Carolina, anti-poverty programs and initiatives die in legislative committee more often than they come to a vote in the full legislature.

Recently, I also read The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama. Obama worked as a community organizer with the poor before attending Harvard Law School and beginning his political career. Not surprisingly, given that background and his strong Christian faith, Obama has tried to maintain an emphasis on helping the least advantaged among us. I do not intend these comments as an endorsement of Obama; voters must measure the merit of his platform and depth of his commitments against that of the other candidates using a Christian scale. Instead, Obama’s background provides the context for what I found very powerful in his book, his description of how an insatiable need for campaign funds drives politicians into close association with moneyed interests. Politicians solicit donations from prospective donors by cultivating relationships through phone calls, meetings, and campaign events. The longer one is a politician, the more time one invariably and necessarily will spend with those moneyed interests. With time, conversations become more extensive and friendships develop; repeated exposure to the thoughts, prejudices, and worldview of the affluent begins to color the politician’s views and priorities. The process excludes the poor, and even most middle-class, because they are not in a financial position to donate $1000 or more to a political campaign.

Obviously, the electoral system’s structure reflects an inherent bias toward the wealthy rather than toward the poor. Perhaps less obvious is the often publicly unappreciated personal integrity that prevents more politicians from succumbing to the temptations of corruption and illegal campaign financing. Maybe least obvious is that those of us who know of God's bias toward the poor must become more involved in the political process. Voting makes a difference. Campaign contributions make a difference. Volunteering makes a difference. Speaking out makes a difference. Only when God's people get involved can we Christian fans of democracy expect for God's bias toward the poor to become more than empty rhetoric.

Paranoia within the United States also seems on the increase. People talk and act as if they are afraid of terrorism, cancer, crime, losing their job to illegal immigrants, losing their house because they can no longer afford the adjustable rate mortgage, losing their children to drugs, etc. Today’s politicians – from all parties – frequently pander to those fears, seeking an easy way to mobilize support and votes. Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural address famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That thought is deeply rooted in Scripture; in over thirty places, the Bible exhorts us not to fear because God is with us. Tellingly, the authors of Scripture never suggest that people should live without fear for the authors well know that living means being vulnerable and not in control. Paul Tillich went so far as to argue in The Courage to Be that the basic human condition is anxiety, the fear of the unknown and non-being; the Christ answers by giving us the courage to live.

Fear mongering costs lives and impoverishes the living. Hundreds of thousands have died at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars because the United States impetuously and ill advisedly launched a war on terror instead of deliberately targeting the relative handful of extremists who posed a real threat. Security without human rights – indefinite detention of alleged enemies without trial, intrusive surveillance without court orders, etc. – is security without freedom. Family protection legislation outlawing same-sex marriage or teaching abstinence only does nothing to address the real causes of marital failures, denigrates people with a same sex orientation, and promotes unhealthy behaviors that waste healthcare resources. Initiatives designed to exclude illegal aliens build fences, literally and metaphorically, between people and nations, transform productive workers into fugitives, disrupt families, and deprive the U.S. of its arguably most valuable resource, people willing to pay almost any price in order to create a better life for themselves and their families.

The United States faces a host of real problems: poverty, healthcare, crime, terrorism, and many more. Contrary to some naïve Christians on the far right and far left whose faith seems to have an answer for everything, none of those problems has an easy or inexpensive answer; some of the problems do not even have known answers. If an easy, inexpensive answer existed, then somebody would have already solved the problem. The most important contribution that Christians can make to debates about these issues is to insist that politicians stop promoting, and pandering to, paranoia. Real answers require carefully defining the problem and a commitment to finding viable and moral solutions.

In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, slightly more than 60% of eligible citizens voted, according to the George Mason University United States Election Project. Almost 40% did not vote. U.S. wealth is concentrated in less than 10% of the population. Over 90% of the population is poor or middle-class. People who self-identify as Christian comprise 80% of the U.S. population. Those numbers paint a hopeful future – if Christians will get involved in the political process. Voting, contributing, volunteering, speaking out now is how we can help the poor, fight paranoia, and preserve democracy. Whining in 2009 will achieve nothing.

The Rev. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years, with tours at sea, on the staff of the Chief of Chaplains, on exchange with the Royal Navy in London, as the senior Protestant chaplain at the Naval Academy, and as the senior chaplain at the Naval Postgraduate School.

By Steven Charleston

The reviews are still coming in for “Live Earth”, the global music event inspired by Al Gore to raise awareness to the dangers of global warming. Featuring a wide range of pop stars and bands who donated their services, the international concert was performed at nine locations around the world. It is estimated that two billion people watched the show in locations as far apart as Brazil and Japan. The goal, as the former Vice President told the Associated Press, was to raise awareness to the realities of global climate change. His hope was that awareness would lead to action.

Is he right? Will consciousness raising translate into practical response? Once people are alerted to a reality, will they do something about it? That remains to be seen. And it raises a fundamental question for any of us who seek to do what Al Gore is doing: motivate people to change.

For many years now scientists, environmentalists and their allies have been sounding the call to action. While “Live Earth” is certainly one of the most ambitious efforts in that direction, it is standing on the shoulders of a long history of awareness building going back over decades. In fact, the timeline of that history could be traced back to other political figures like Theodore Roosevelt and artists like Ansel Adams. Concern about the destruction of the Earth is nothing new. Questions about why that concern has not become policy are perennial. The reviewers of “Live Earth” are asking it. We should be too.

When do we achieve the tipping point on any justice issue? When does public awareness about an issue, whether it is civil rights or global warming, reach its crest and spill over into public action?

A small group of Episcopalians think they have an answer: get the religious community to do what others have been either unwilling or unable to do. To make a bold step from awareness to action, a partnership between the Diocese of Olympia and the Episcopal Divinity School has proposed a national covenant to reduce green house gas emissions in every parish, synagogue, and mosque in the United States. Challenging all faith communities to stand together to make a public witness to creation, they have proposed the “Genesis Covenant”.

The “Genesis Covenant” is a catalyst. It seeks to get national church bodies, such as the Episcopal Church, to commit to a realistic, but difficult set of goals within a set period of time. It envisions a 50% reduction by all religious institutions in the energy use that fuels global warming by the middle part of this century. It offers a network of support, resources, and information to help national faith communities carry out their pledge. And it seeks to leverage similar action by corporate and political interests who will be challenged to follow the lead of people of faith in doing something concrete to effect change.

The “Genesis Covenant” is “Live Earth” translated into action. Like the international scope of Al Gore’s concert, the “Genesis Covenant” has the potential for a global impact. If it succeeds, it could become a unified movement among all of the world’s religions to turn the tide of global warming. Imagine every religious community from Rio to Tokyo, from Berlin to Johannesburg, from New York to Beijing all joining in a single covenant to stop global warming through direct action on the local national level. The same audiences who heard the music could now begin the dance.

Will the “Genesis Covenant” work? Yes, if we have the will to move from hearing to doing. The “Genesis Covenant” is an invitation to people of faith to take the lead in making that happen. It moves us beyond being a concerned, but passive audience into a coordinated and committed movement. It takes the critical step from awareness to action. It offers us an opportunity to demonstrate in practical terms that people of faith can do more than enjoy the show. They can change the world.

(For more information about the “Genesis Covenant” please contact Episcopal Divinity School’s communication office, ndavidge@eds.edu.)

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Bishop Charleston has been called "one of the best preachers in the Episcopal Church."

By Will Scott

Who are you inspired by? Whose life and witness encourages your own? As I look out on the world that seems on the brink of collapse, I have felt compelled to pray more. I have also looked to the recent past through the wonders of Wikipedia to encounter people who struggled with injustice, violence and faith.

There are many people to whom we can turn for inspiration in these dark times. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day are two individuals supported by their communities who exemplified Christian commitment and struggle, taking the witness and teachings of Jesus seriously and challenging political and economic evil. Yet there are additional people I’ve been wishing I could invite over for dinner recently: Simone Weil, William Stringfellow and Bayard Rustin.

Simone Weil was an eccentric, passionate, and clumsy intellectual who strongly identified with the working class of early 20th century France. Raised in an agnostic family with Jewish ancestry Weil “lived the questions,” as the poet Rilke encouraged his readers to do. Weil was a pacifist, yet with many of her political comrades, found herself on the battlefield during the Spanish Civil War. Apparently after burning herself on a cooking stove, Weil left Spain and went to Assisi. There, in the same chapel where St. Francis had prayed, Weil had a deeply spiritual experience. Weil’s writings after that became more mystical, but continued engaging political and social issues. Drawn to Roman Catholicism, Weil chose not to be baptized because she was fascinated by other religions. Weil’s work challenges our contemporary compulsion to view faith as the same thing as certainty or as an excuse to ignore the beliefs and practices of others. Her life compels us make the cause of the oppressed, of migrant workers, and low income people our own.

William Stringfellow was an Episcopal lay person, lawyer and theologian. While attending college on scholarships, Stringfellow got his start in activism by helping to organize a sit-in at a local lunch counter. Before long, Stringfellow had moved into an apartment in Harlem to work among the poor. His compulsion to work for justice and reconciliation were rooted from the beginning in his Christian faith and belief in the primacy of the Bible. Stringfellow stood in strong support of women’s ordination, and also harbored a fleeing Daniel Berrigan (for acts of civil disobedience.) As a lawyer, he represented victimized tenants and the impoverished. One of Stringfellow’s closest collaborators was his life partner, Anthony Towne. Stringfellow’s life and theology has strongly influenced the work of contemporary theologians and biblical scholars like Walter Wink, Ched Myers and Bill Wylie-Kellerman. Stringfellow challenges our contemporary proclivity to categorize one another along secular political lines like conservative and liberal, instead encouraging us to find the roots of our efforts for justice, equality and peace in scripture.

Bayard Rustin was an African-American Civil Rights leader who was instrumental in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. Having worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rustin strongly influenced the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to nonviolence. Both as an African American and as a gay man, Rustin confronted injustice, bigotry and hatred regularly, being silenced, beaten, and fired at on numerous occasions. Rustin would likely push us toward a fuller embrace of the principles of nonviolence and encourage different movements for justice and equality to work together. Rustin would want gays and lesbians to stand up for the dignity and fair treatment of immigrants, the poor and others, and vice versa. It was Rustin who said, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”

So whose life and witness do you look to for inspiration, guidance and encouragement? Whom do you wish you could invite over for dinner? What would you ask them? What advice might they give us in our time?

The Rev. Will Scott, is associate pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Calif. Raised by a school teacher and a social worker in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, he is drawn to intentional community, the pursuit of global justice, and the church's witness for peace. He blogs occasionally at Yearns and Groans.

By Steven Charleston

The recent death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell has produced an expected flurry of media eulogies and critiques. Both his supporters and detractors have offered opinions about his legacy. If we read between the lines of these many political post mortems, I believe conservatives and liberals alike can find some lessons that the Falwell experience has to teach us. The question is: which side in the debate will learn the most from these lessons?

Here are four of those lessons for our shared reflection as we look at the mirror that Jerry Falwell holds up to all of us, what ever our faith or politics may be:

Lesson Number One: if you can create a constituency, you can exercise political power far beyond your real numbers. The secret is in perception. Jerry Falwell created the impression of a unified grassroots movement. He influenced politicians and supporters because he claimed to speak for a solid block of public opinion. While he did not invent this process, he certainly refined it in the context of American civil religion.

Lesson Number Two: all social agendas rise and fall on the tide of media exposure. In our culture, images on a screen are validation. Falwell was one of the early practitioners of media religion. By using the most contemporary forms of communication, he was able to galvanize large numbers of people to both see and respond to his message. Even those who disagreed with him were talking about him, and as anyone in show business knows, the fact that people are talking is all that matters.

Lesson Number Three: if public opinion is a tightrope drawn between acceptance and rejection, exaggerated rhetoric is a strong wind. Falwell undercut his own credibility (much like his counterpart, Pat Robertson) with outlandish statements that brought him censure and ridicule. There is a moral gyroscope at the center of culture and it can tilt quickly if any leader steps over the line of reason.

Lesson Number Four: personal power is ephemeral while shared values are enduring. The great preachers of the age come and go, but the message they deliver can be forever if it is embedded in the commitments of a community. Falwell’s community remains a potent and resilient force in both religion and politics. His true legacy will not be in how well he is remembered fifty years from now, but in how many people continue to self-identify with the values (or lack of them) for which he stood.

These four simple lessons, among the many that we may identify, are an integral part of the religious landscape of this century. As both conservative and progressive factions contend for social impact, political power, and moral persuasion in the United States and beyond, these lessons from Jerry Falwell will be acted out over and over again. Certainly Falwell’s constituency will be continuing to press for an agenda of values that embodies their political and social agenda. With just as much certainty, they will be confronted by others whose value system is radically different. Both sides will attempt to unify and focus a community. Both will seek to use the media and technology to expand their base. Both will search for language that invites people to believe and to act. But in the end, both will be measured by how well they can transcend images in order to influence reality.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones.

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Thanks to Susan Russell and The Admiral of Morality for recommending in recent days that we honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by re-reading his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Look, too, at this temporizing statement from Birmingham religious leaders, including the Episcopal bishop of Alabama, who opposed the way King pursued his goals.

Those of you in the DC area, might want to celebrate Dr. King's birthday at Washington National Cathedral, which is hosting a speech by Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking at 2 p. m., followed by a concert by hip-hop artist Bomani Arma.

From the Episcopal Public Policy Network:

New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have pledged to bring the Fair Minimum Wage Act to the floor for a vote in the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress. This will be an important FIRST step toward a fair living wage in the United States.

Your support is needed to ensure a "clean minimum wage" bill. A "clean" bill means without amendments. Click here to send a fax to your Senators and Representative.

For ten long years, Congress has raised its own pay but failed to pass an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage - Today a full-time worker earning the $5.15 minimum wage makes only $10,700 annually – that is $6,000 below the poverty line. Due to inflation, today's $5.15 minimum wage is lower in value than the minimum wage in 1950.

Your voice is critical. Contact your Senators and Representatives and urge them to support the Fair Minimum Wage Act to raise the Federal Minimum Wage "without amendments." A vote in the House is expected as early as January 10, with a Senate vote in the following weeks. To fax a letter to your Senators and Representatives, CLICK HERE.

(An interesting posting on this issue onthe blog of The Washington Monthly.)

As a longtime fan of microlending--See this somewhat dated Beliefnet column.--I was thrilled when Muhammad Yunus, the godfather of microlending, recently won the Nobel Prize. Now Connie Bruck of The New Yorker has in-depth account of recent developments on this promising front in the war against poverty. A front, I might add, on which liberal and conservative believers have served with distinction.

The New York Times is in the midst of a four-part series on "how American religious organizations benefit from an increasingly accommodating government." Today's article focuses on how poorly faith-based groups are allowed to treat employees.

The latest from the Episcopal Public Policy Network:

On Sunday, October 15, Episcopalians have an opportunity to help set a new Guinness World Record by standing up against global poverty and supporting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

What is STAND UP?
Launched by the Millennium Campaign, STAND UP is an innovative and exciting challenge to set an official Guinness World Record - the greatest number of people ever to STAND UP Against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals - on October 15-16, 2006. STAND up is supported by the ONE Campaign, the Episcopal Church, and other anti-poverty advocates, and is designed to raise public awareness of global poverty and the MDGs. To learn more, click here: http://standagainstpoverty.org.

Click on contnue to keep reading.

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Garrison Keillor is in a feisty mood. Here's some of what he has to say:

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics -- I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Former Senator John Danforth will speak at Washington National Cathedral tomorrow night at 7:30. Details are here.

To read the speech he gave at our General Convention in June, click on the "continue reading" tab. Video coverage of that speech is here.

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Tim Noah of Slate has a fascinating analysis of the pope's controversial speech at the University of Regensburg. He notes, almost in passing, that "the true whipping boy of Pope Benedict's speech ... isn't Islam but Protestantism. The Reformation, he's arguing, sundered faith from reason and led to the rise of secular culture. Many of us would agree with that statement and count it as a point in the Reformation's favor. But the pope means it as a criticism."

I am still digesting his argument, but the piece is well worth reading.

(Full disclosure: Tim is a friend of mine.)

The visit by former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to Washington National Cathedral earlier this month precipitated a blizzard of demagogic commentary, some of it from the Anglican right. Neither the Cathedral nor the diocese has responded directly to these criticisms, beyond posting the remarks made before and after Khatami's speech by Dean Samuel Lloyd of the Cathedral and Bishop John Bryson Chane of the diocese. However, those interested in learning more about the speech and about diplomatic relations with Iran might find these five contributions helpful.

This balanced report, by Eric Fingerhut of Washington Jewish Week makes it clear that Jewish opinion on the visit was not uniform.

This essay, by Steven C. Clemons, director of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation here in DC begins as follows:

"As the Pulitzer Prize winning historian John Dower tells the story so well about Japan and the United States, states that move towards war often demonize each other's leaders and whole societies in order to stir and consolidate public opinion and steel their citizens for big sacrifices ahead.

"As the White House continues to beat a drum on Iran, leaders on both sides will find ways to dehumanize the other side's key state figures.

"This hasn't happened with former Iran President Mohammed Khatami quite yet, but word is out that Senator Rick Santorum and his allies are outraged about the Iranian leader's visit and out trying to serve Khatami with a subpoena regarding war crimes. But what Santorum hasn't figured out is that his party's CEO, President Bush as well as Secretary of State Rice extended Khatami a visa because he is considered to be one of the good guys in Iran -- and a potential ally in the long run."

It is unfortunate that Bishops John Lipscomb, Edward Little and Geralyn Wolf, who lectured us publicly on our "shallow" understanding of Middle Eastern affairs didn't have a chance to talk to someone like Clemens before they called upon the Cathedral to cancel the event. They might also have been edified by a conversation with former ambassador Joe Montville, who was the Cathedral's principal adviser on the visit. Montville spent 23 years working for the State Department in North Africa and the Middle East before becoming chief of the Near East Division and then director of the Office of Global Issues, and my sense is that the bishops would have been gratified by the depth of his knowledge. We weren't able to arrange these conversations, however, because, schedules being what they are, the bishops weren't able to get in touch with us before releasing their statement to the media.

(Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright thought the visit was a good idea, too. But I digress.)

In this column by Douglas Savage, assistant director of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, writes that: "the desire to fit America's foes into a single, homogenous bundle stands in the way of a more nuanced and ultimately more effective foreign policy. Today's tendency to place every demonstrated or potential adversary that appropriates the language of Islam into the same terrorist basket has led to policy decisions that are ultimately harmful to U.S. interests in the region."

You can feed your inner wonk by learning more about the New American Foundation's recent conference "U. S. Strategy in towards Iran: Thinking Through the Unthinkables--Beyond a binary choice?"

And finally, it is worth remembering that President Bush personally approved Khatami's visa because, as he told Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal : I was interested to hear what he had to say.

Dean Lloyd had it right when he said to Khatami: "In our own time Pope John Paul, II who met in 1999 with our guest this evening, understood that if the church is to facilitate healing and transformation, it cannot live on the margins of controversy uttering hopeful pieties. Rather it must immerse itself in the struggles that convulse the human family. Reconciliation requires us to seek partners to take risks to hear what these potential partners say and to examine what they do. And requires us to submit ourselves to the same searching scrutiny."

Ethics Daily, a Baptist site, has posted an interesting editorial on the Tennessee Senate race. The race pits Rep. Harold Ford, a black, Baptist Democrat against Bob Corker, a white Republican. By most measures, Ford is the more culturally conservative of the two candidates.

Writer Robert Parkham of the Baptist Center for Ethics notes that the "overwhelmingly white Tennessee Baptist Convention claims a membership of 1.1 million in a state with a population of 5.7 million." So Southern Baptists exert significant electorial influcence.

"How they vote will disclose how far Southern Baptists have moved away from their segregation heritage and racial prejudice," Parkham writes.

I have only skimmed the avalanche of commentary occasioned by Pope Benedict's recent speech, but I sure did like this essay by Anne Applebaum over at Slate.
She says, in part:

"...I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon...But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech—surely the pope is allowed to quote medieval texts—and of the press. And we can also unite—loudly—in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies, and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde, and Fox News. Western institutions of the left, the right, and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary—"we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence"—but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus.

Andrew Brown's piece on the speech is also worth reading.

The Washington National Cathedral and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington have been taken to task in some quarters for inviting former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to speak Thursday night. I thought the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd, dean of the Cathedral, addressed those concerns eloquently in his introduction of the former president.

"We’re hosting this event this evening at the National Cathedral as part of this Cathedral’s ministry of reconciliation. This ministry requires us to engage in conversation with nations, faiths and individuals with whom we may have significant disagreements. It requires us to give a respectful hearing to people whose words, and maybe actions, sometimes disturb and trouble us. For us as Christians, Jesus modeled this behavior eating with the hated tax collectors, healing the servant of a despised centurion in the Roman occupying army. His words continue to challenge us. “You have heard that it was said and you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5:43–45) In our own time Pope John Paul, II who met in 1999 with our guest this evening, understood that if the church is to facilitate healing and transformation, it cannot live on the margins of controversy uttering hopeful pieties. Rather it must immerse itself in the struggles that convulse the human family. Reconciliation requires us to seek partners to take risks to hear what these potential partners say and to examine what they do. And requires us to submit ourselves to the same searching scrutiny. Your Excellency, you come to the National Cathedral as one who is open to dialogue with Americans on the role of religion in peace. It’s important that we who have our common heritage in Abraham use our great traditions to come together in understanding, instead of using our weaknesses to divide. We must recognize the painful histories we both carry. We Christians recognize the destruction that we inflicted on the Muslim world during the Crusades. You, yourself, were one of the first leaders in the Middle East to recognize the terrible events of 9/11 and their impact on our country."

Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal breaks the news that President Bush personally signed off on the visa for former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, who spoke at Washington Natiional Cathedral on Thursday night.

The key passge from a lengthy piece based on an interview on Air Force One:

Intriguingly, the president broke a little news on the subject of Iran, acknowledging that he personally signed off on the U.S. visit this week by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. The trip has angered many conservatives because Mr. Khatami presided over the nuclear weapons development and cheating that Mr. Bush has pledged to stop. Why let him visit?

"I was interested to hear what he had to say," Mr. Bush responds without hesitation. "I'm interested in learning more about the Iranian government, how they think, what people think within the government. My hope is that diplomacy will work in convincing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions. And in order for diplomacy to work, it's important to hear voices other than [current President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's."

One thing Mr. Khatami has said this week is that because the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq it will never have the will to stop Iran's nuclear program. Is he right? "Well, he also said it's very important for the [coalition] troops to stay in Iraq so that there is a stable government on the Iranian border," Mr. Bush replies, rather forgivingly.

On other hand, Mr. Bush remains as blunt as ever about the nature of the Iranian regime when I ask if one lesson of North Korea is that Iran must be stopped before it acquires a bomb. "North Korea doesn't teach us that lesson. The current government [in Iran] teaches that lesson," Mr. Bush says. "Their declared policies of destruction and their support for terror makes it clear they should not have a nuclear weapon."

The impression Mr. Bush leaves is of a man deeply engaged on the Iran problem and, like several presidents before him, trying to understand what kind of diplomatic or economic pressure short of military means will change the regime's behavior. One way or another, Iran will be the major dilemma of the rest of his presidency, and Mr. Bush knows it."

As you may know, we've been in the midst of a bit of controversy here on the National Cathedral close over the past week. Last night, former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami spoke at the Cathedral.

Lucy Chumbley, editor of our diocesan newspaper Washington Window covered the event, and we shared her story with the Episcopal News Service.

The text of Khatami's speech, accompanied by photographs of the event are available on the Cathedral's Web site.

Dean Samuel Lloyd did what I thought was an excellent job explaining whythe Cathedral extended an invitation to a controversial figure such as the former president, and I am trying to get a copy of his remarks. Bishop John Chane offered a response to the speech, which you can find by clicking on the "keep reading" button below.

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Have a look at Amy Sullivan's thoughtful piece from Slate on the Democratic Party's declining appeal to religious voters.

An excerpt:

The Pew Research Center's annual poll on religion and politics, released last week, shows that while 85 percent of voters say religion is important to them, only 26 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party is "friendly" to religion. That's down from 40 percent in the summer of 2004 and 42 percent the year before that—in other words, a 16-point plunge over three years. The decline is especially troubling because it cuts across the political and religious spectra, encompassing liberals and conservatives, white and black evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. The Republican Party also experienced a drop in the percentage of Americans who say it is friendly to religion—eight points over the past year. But that decrease occurred mostly among white evangelicals and Catholics and the reasons for it seem obvious: Two years of broken promises by the GOP.

In contrast, the Democrats' crumbling credibility on religion wasn't caused by one thing. And that may be the problem. All at once, the party needs to counter conservative attacks, change the conventional wisdom that Democrats just aren't religious, and expand the party's reach to moderate religious voters. To do that, the party will need a little more faith and a whole lot more work.

The latest from the Episcopal Public Policy Network:

Just before members of Congress left Washington for their August recess, there was a flicker of hope for an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage which was quickly extinguished by political gamesmanship. The minimum wage increase was attached to several other controversial measures, and ultimately they all failed.

For ten long years, Congress has raised its own pay but failed to pass an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage - shocking when one realizes that a full-time worker earning the $5.15 minimum wage makes only $10,700 annually – that is $6,000 below the poverty line. Due to inflation, today’s $5.15 minimum wage is lower in value than the minimum wage in 1950.

Tell Congress it is not OK to use the Minimum Wage to play political games – they need to address the minimum wage on its own merits.

YOUR VOICE is critical over the August Recess. Right now your Senators and Representative are at home – within easy reach of their constituents. Contact your Senators and Representatives – make an appointment with them, or attend a town hall or other public meeting where they will be speaking – urge them to raise the Federal Minimum Wage before the end of the 109th Congress.

To send an email message to your Senators and Representatives click here.

By John Johnson

[ENS] At a Congressional oversight hearing July 19 on the 1996 welfare reform bill, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), a letter from Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold and the leaders of four other Christian denominations pointed out that while "welfare may have ended as we know it ... poverty in our nation has not."

Bishop E. Roy Riley, Jr., chair of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Conference of Bishops, included the letter during his testimony before the House Ways and Mean Committee.

The letter, also signed by the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); the Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ; and Bishop Beverly Shamana, President of the United Methodist General Board of Church & Society, expressed concern that while welfare rolls may have declined after passage of the legislation in 1996, poverty persists.

"We understand that many in Congress may be inclined to celebrate a political anniversary: the tenth anniversary of the signing of PRWORA and the 'successes' of the law that as President Clinton said 'ended welfare as we know it.' This is a celebration in which we cannot join."

In his testimony before the committee, Riley commented on the goals of the 1996 welfare reform efforts, which were to reduce welfare dependence and improve employment, reduce child poverty and improve family life.

"Unfortunately the economic life reality in 2006 undermines broad claims at success. Families are stretched to the breaking point while working full-time for wages that keep them in a low-income status. There are an increasing number of poor, hungry, and uninsured Americans ... at the end of the day, the bottom line is this: nearly 20 percent of the children in this richest nation in the world live in poverty. Whatever else we have accomplished, whatever claims we make for our reforms that fact remains."

The committee convened the hearing nearly ten years after President Clinton signed the measure into law to hear testimony on the successes and failures of the law that substantially overhauled and revised the nation's welfare system. In addition to Riley, the committee heard from former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson as well as policy analysts and economists from the Brookings Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Heritage Foundation and Baruch College.

To see previous statements on the budget from the mainline leaders and Action Alerts from the Episcopal Public Policy Network, go to: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/eppn

Previous statements from the mainline leaders can be found at: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_59751_ENG_HTM.htm
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_65527_ENG_HTM.htm
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_70004_ENG_HTM.htm

-- John Johnson is domestic policy analyst in the Episcopal Church's Office of Government Relations.

Click below to read the letter

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Today's Washington Post confirms rumors that the meek will not come into their inheritance any time soon.

"Poverty forced its way to the top of President Bush's agenda in the confusing days after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans. Confronted with one of the most pressing political crises of his presidency, Bush, who in the past had faced withering criticism for speaking little about the poor, said the nation has a solemn duty to help them.

'All of us saw on television, there's . . . some deep, persistent poverty in this region,' he said in a prime-time speech from New Orleans's Jackson Square, 17 days after the Aug. 29 hurricane. 'That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.'

As it happened, poverty's turn in the presidential limelight was brief. Bush has talked little about the issue since the immediate crisis passed, while pursuing policies that his liberal critics say will hurt the poor. He has publicly mentioned domestic poverty six times since giving back-to-back speeches on the issue in September. Domestic poverty did not come up in his State of the Union address in January, and his most recent budget included no new initiatives directed at the poor.

Read the story.

I want to make sure that you all have plenty to do when I go on vacation at the end of the week, so I am stockpiling online religion-related resources. Have a look at Meaning of Life TV. John Polkinghorne, Anglican priest and theoretical physicist, is one of those interviewed. Among other speakers: Freeman Dyson, Huston Smith and Edward O. Wilson

Among the topics: faith and reason, free will and the problem of evil.

Robert S. McElvaine, who teaches history at Millsaps College has dismantled Ann Coulter's latest sin against charity at Sightings.

My favorite part of the essay are the Beatitudes according to Coulter:

Blessed are the haughty in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who exult over others, for they shall be further rewarded.
Blessed are the arrogant, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for domination, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are those who show no mercy, for they shall obtain the wealth of others.
Blessed are the hard in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who persecute for their own sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when you revile others and persecute others and utter all sorts of evil against them falsely on my account.

Randall Balmer surveys the religious right, and doesn't like what he sees:

"Evangelicals have come a long way since ... 1972. We have moved from cultural obscurity — almost invisibility — to becoming a major force in American society. Jimmy Carter's run for the presidency launched us into the national consciousness, but evangelicals abandoned Carter by the end of the 1970s, as the nascent religious right forged an alliance with the Republican Party.

In terms of cultural and political influence, that alliance has been a bonanza for both sides. The coalition dominates talk radio and controls a growing number of state legislatures and local school boards. It is seeking, with some initial success, to recast Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The Republicans have come to depend on religious-right voters as their most reliable constituency, and, with the Republicans firmly in command of all three branches of the federal government, leaders of the religious right now enjoy unprecedented access to power.

And what has the religious right done with its political influence? Judging by the platform and the policies of the Republican Party — and I'm aware of no way to disentangle the agenda of the Republican Party from the goals of the religious right — the purpose of all this grasping for power looks something like this: an expansion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the continued prosecution of a war in the Middle East that enraged our longtime allies and would not meet even the barest of just-war criteria, and a rejiggering of Social Security, the effect of which, most observers agree, would be to fray the social-safety net for the poorest among us."

Here's the rest.

Today on Slate, Michael Kinsley argues that stem cell research raises fewer moral and ethical questions than the everyday conduct of a fertility clinic.

He writes: "If embryos are human beings, it's not OK to kill them for their stem cells just because you were going to kill them, or knowingly let them die, anyway. The better point—the killer point, if you'll pardon the expression—is that if embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are far worse—both in numbers and in criminal intent—than stem-cell research. And yet no one objects, or objects very loudly. President Bush actually praised the work of fertility clinics in his first speech announcing restrictions on stem cells."

In 2003, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church passed Resolution A014 which:

Urge[s] that the United States Congress pass legislation that would authorize federal funding for derivation of and medical research on human embryonic stem cells that were generated for IVF and remain after fertilization procedures have been concluded, provided that:

+these early embryos are no longer required for procreation by those donating them and would simply be discarded;
+those donating early embryos have given their prior informed consent to their use in stem cell research;
+the embryos were not deliberately created for research purposes;
+the embryos were not obtained by sale or purchase...

And, on a vaguely related matter, have a look at thispiece on advancements in genetic screening.

We have a steady diet of Anglican issues here on the blog lately. As a result I missed Sen. Barak Obama's recent sppech on people of faith in public life. Here is E. J. Dionne's take on it. And there is a good conversation going on over at Street Prophets.

The liberal Center for American Progress has released a new report aimed at shifting the "values" debate onto turf more hospitable to Democratic candidates.

Among the key findings:

• 71% of voters strongly agree that “Americans are becoming too materialistic,” including 71% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, and 72% of Republicans (92% total agree).

• 68% of voters strongly agree that the “government should be committed to the common
good and put the public’s interest above the privileges of the few” (85% total agree).

• 73% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 67% of Republicans strongly agree with a common good focus for government. A similar percentage of voters (68%) strongly
agrees that “government should uphold the basic decency and dignity of all and take
greater steps to help the poor and disadvantaged in America” (89% total agree).

And:

In terms of the role that religious and moral teachings should play in public debate about key issues, American voters focus most on “poverty and hunger” (75% leading or major role); “homelessness” (61% leading or major role); “government corruption” (58% leading or major role); “terrorism” (56% leading or major role); “the environment” (54% leading or major role); and “health care” (52% leading or major role). In a lower tier of issues, 44% of voters believe that religious and moral values should play a leading role in public discussion of abortion and only 37% believe similarly about gay marriage.

The accompanying slideshow is here.

Michael Kinsley's got an interesting column in the Post this morning about health care. Here is the part that caught my eye:

What is the most ridiculous thing about the American health care system? Is it that 45 million Americans don't have health insurance? That is the most embarrassing thing, but it's not beyond all rational explanation. It's a failure of empathy. We -- the majority of Americans who are lucky enough to be covered -- apparently don't care enough to do something about the minority who aren't.

Beliefnet uses the term "faith-based diplomacy" to describe the ideas Madeline Albright advances in this interview. She's talking about the importance of political leaders understanding the role of religious faith in the lives of the world's population.

We used the phrase in a different way in a op-ed piece I contributed to in September 2005. We were hoping to promote a conference at Washington National Cathedral. Our focus was on the role that religious leaders could play in immeliorating global conflcit and some of the conditions that gave rise to this conflict. (The 35 religious leaders who attended that conference produced this statement.)

The piece never saw the light of day, but I have always been fond of it, so I thought I would pass it on. Here's an excerpt:

In the multi-ethinic West, we may identify ourselves primarily as citizens of a country, but on much of our violence-ridden and poverty-wracked planet, people understand themselves principally as adherents of a faith. While ideals like freedom and democracy inform the diplomacy of the West, equally strong ideals of submission to the Divine often inform the aspirations and actions of humanity in other corners of the globe.

The developing world is undergoing a religious revival that will only enhance the role of local religious leaders in shaping national destinies. Whether we look at the exponentially growing Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in sub-Saharan Africa or the continuing trend toward religiously Islamist states in North Africa and the Middle East, it is clear that faith leaders enjoy almost unprecedented influence in the lives of their nations. Moreover, faith leaders, unlike their government counterparts, have the power to speak across national boundaries and connect with people on the deepest of levels: the level of their core beliefs.

Power such as this can be used for good or for ill. Parts of the world where the destabilizing forces of poverty and disease create a climate of hopelessness are ripe for exploitation by religious extremists seeking to motivate terror and conflict. The response of faith leaders committed to peacemaking must go beyond offering a moral vision that directly counters the dark vision of terrorists; we must wage a war against the forces that make their communities targets for exploitation in the first place: poverty, pandemic disease, a lack of basic education, government corruption, and inadequate resources for development. As President Bush observed in 2002: “Poverty doesn’t [itself] cause terrorism…yet persistent poverty and oppression can lead to hopelessness and despair. And when governments fail to meet the most basic needs of their people, these failed states can become havens of terror.”

Click below to read it all.

Read more »

From the Episcopal Public Policy Network:

The unfolding humanitarian crisis among the Palestinian people is endangering the fragile hope that still remains for a two–state solution. President Bush and his administration need flexibility to conduct the required foreign policy involved in Israeli-Palestinian issues – but Congress is refusing to give the President the flexibility needed.

Legislation pending in the Senate (S 2370) needs to be amended in order to allow the President the flexibility to deal with the humanitarian crisis and be able to pursue avenues that might open for negotiations toward a two-state solution – the solution we believe to be in the best interest of Israelis, Palestinians, and the United States. Please write your Senators today asking them to help amend S 2370.

Existing law already prohibits aid going to a terrorist organization or directly to the Palestinian Authority. HR 4681, a far more restrictive and punitive bill than S 2370, passed overwhelmingly despite the fact that the Bush Administration said the bill was "unnecessary ... and constrains the Executive's flexibility to use sanctions, if appropriate, as tools to address rapidly changing situations." If the Senate does not amend its bill, the final legislation that comes out of a joint House-Senate conference committee would do long-term damage to prospects for peace.

I am a garden-variety lefty on many political issues, but I am not so sure that I agree with what former secretary of state Madeline Albright is saying in this Reuters story from CNN's Web site.

Here's Albright: "I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy..."

Well, she knows these guys and I don't, but I find it very difficult to believe that if they were people of strong faith (and even his most ardent critics would concede this about Carter) that this faith didn't inform their religious views. If you have real faith, it can't be compartmentalized. It isn't part of your worldview. It is the font of your worldview.

Albright again: "President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different. The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us."

I'd agree the Bush is disastrously stubborn; he's fact-resistant. That said, there are things about which faith bestows certain convictions. The real struggle is in deciding which of your convictions arise from your faith, and which arise from self-interest or personal preference and then get classified as matters of faith so as to make them non-negotiable.

Albright seems to be saying that Bush's religious views make him rigid, which I take as a knock on religion. Don't believe in Jesus too hard boys and girls or you'll become rigid. I'd say that in Bush's case, the need for what I guess you could call a rigid creed (although, if you were being charitable you could call a firm creed) preceded the embrace of a particular strain of Christianity. But the same can be said about anybody who believes anything.

In embracing the Christian faith, we don't escape our own subjectivity. But we do hope to temper it through membership in a community that holds us accountable to a vision that is larger than our own.

I am no fan of the President's policies. And I think he has granted influence to people with theocratic tendencies. But I think he has done so for political reasons--They are his base.--not religious ones. I wish people would refrain from criticizing his faith. It isn't fair to him, and it isn't fair to God--who doesn't deserve the wrap for what is happening in Iraq.

This Washington Post story is a classic example of the chicken and egg game that reporters and media relations folks like myself play all the time. The headline says the religious left is gaining "visibility." But visibility is largely the media's to bestow or withhold. So today the religious left is more visible in Washington than it was yesterday in large measure because the Washington Post has said so. So the headline could easily read: We write about religious left.

Don't get me wrong. I am delighted that they have written this story.

(I think that in leaving out the role that the leaders of the mainline Protestant denominations played in the campaign that almost derailed last year's morally repugnant and profoundly anti-Christian federal budget, they missed the one instance so far in which religious leaders with the ability to speak directly to people in the pews--as opposed to those who can only get their message out through the media--actually came close to accomplishing something. But that is another story. Or, actually, a non-story, since stories aren't stories until they are written. Which brings me full circle.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I am delighted that they wrote this story, but it is a prime example of those peculiar cases in which it is hard to tell whether they media is discerning a trend, or creating one. It wouldn't be at all surprising if, on the heels of this Post story leaders of the religious left found themselves receiving more invitations to appear on talk shows, ahd an easier time getting op-eds published, etc. This wouldn't be because the religious left was measurably more visible in our society--the folks who book talk shows don't have the time to do that sort of reporting--it would be because the religious left was more visible in the media. (The religious right has benefitted from this dynamic for two decades. It also benefits from the media's perception that the religious right has the power ot make things happen --Washington journalism is always in some way about power-- whereas the religious left does not.)

Anyway, as the religious left gains more "visibility" I think we can expect conservatives to attempt to diminish whatever influence the left might gain by decrying the intrusion of sectarian values into our political life. Sort of like decrying gluttony after you've spent twenty years as the only person at the banquet.

From the Episcopal Public Policy Network:

Did you know that just two months ago the President and Congress cut $39 billion dollars from education, health care for senior citizens and those with disabilities, child support and support for the working poor from last year's federal budget?

Now, leaders in the House of Representatives want to cut an additional $10 Billion from programs serving the working poor, children, and the elderly as well as environmental protections from the fiscal year 2007 budget. These cuts will not be used for deficit reduction but to offset a portion of the tax cuts recently passed and defense spending increases.

In March, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and other Christian leaders wrote to the House Budget Committee their concerns regarding the President's FY 07 federal budget: "As people of faith we must speak with and for the most vulnerable as their voices are least often heard in the corridors of Washington ... We call upon our government to eliminate the inequities in its federal budget and instead act to pass a budget that meets the moral test of serving 'the common good.'"

Your help is needed TODAY! Please e-mail your Representative and urge him/her to oppose the FY 2007 Budget Resolution. Congress may consider this budget this week!

One of the frustration of people whose generally liberal political views are shaped by their faith, is the the difficulty we have had in getting secular liberals to understand what we were up to and to collaborate with us when the issues permit.

I am glad to say that Air America, the liberal radio network, has begun a program devoted to progressive faith communities, and gladder to say that this Sunday, the program will be exploring an issue that has been a hot topic in the Diocese of Washington, and on this blog. (If you haven't read the Following the Money series, give it a look.)

Here's the release:

This Sunday, May 21, on the national radio show State of Belief, Rev. Welton Gaddy exposes the coordinated effort to undermine mainline Protestantism -- and render America's largest denomination incapable of standing up to right wing politics.

In conjunction with the website Talk to Action, State of Belief takes an unprecedented look into the takeover of America’s churches, revealing the ugly truths, personal experiences, and exhaustive research of four leaders:

Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, is, like Welton, a veteran of the purges that marked the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. The strategy, says Prescott, is to keep mainstream denominations in turmoil over wedge issues such as gay marriage, so that conservative leaders can be free to achieve their political and religious goals.

Dr. John Dorhauer, minister for the St. Louis Association of the United Churches of Christ, has seen congregations around him descend into in-fighting, provoked by right-wing propaganda. Dorhauer explains, “What the politically motivated achieve is the silence of the religious conscience voice that has historically led this country....If you take out the 45 million people that are represented by the National Council of Churches, you are going to hollow out one of the cores of our nation's democracy.”

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a United Methodist pastor and research psychologist, has traced the campaign against mainline Protestantism largely to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think-tank funded by uber-conservative industrialists such as Richard Mellon Scaife and the Adolph Coors family. Weaver says that the IRD and so-called religious “renewal” groups are funneling money in "a systematic effort to undermine mainline churches that still have democratic, transparent processes." The problem in countering these efforts, he says, is that "All of these traditions have niceness at the core; while we've been thinking it's touch football, they've been playing tackle."

Welton offers listeners a wake-up call: "The Southern Baptist Convention was lost not because of those trying to take it over, but because of people arguing that it wasn't a big deal."

This issue has never before been discussed on national radio, and continues State of Belief’s focus on how religion is being manipulated for partisan political purposes. It may stun listeners – and it is sure to inspire Protestant congregations to reclaim their role as a positive and much needed healing force in our nation. State of Belief: religion and radio, done differently.

State of Belief is heard nationwide on Air America Radio on Sundays from 5 to 6 PM EST. Information about affiliates, listening live via the internet, or podcasting can be found at www.StateofBelief.com.

Much more information on this issue, including the research and writings of Welton’s three guests, can be found at the website Talk to Action.

The Interreligious Theological Center, a consortium of six predominantly black seminaries in Georgia, has chosen a controversial commencement speaker according to John Blake's story in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

Bishop Eddie Long "preaches what is known as prosperity gospel, that God rewards the faithful with financial success. He declared in a 2005 interview that Jesus wasn't poor. In 2003 Long told a meeting of civil rights veterans in Atlanta that blacks must "forget racism" because they had already reached the promised land," Blake writes.

"In 2004 Long led a march — while carrying a torch lit at King's crypt — where he called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage."

His invitation has caused theologian James Cone, who was to receive an honorary degree, to boycott the ceremony.

"Cone is a King scholar whose influential books argue that Jesus identified with the poor and the oppressed, not the prosperous," Blake writes. "A professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, he is considered the intellectual mentor for a generation of black pastors who came of age in the post-civil rights era.

He won't attend the commencement, he said, because he doesn't want to appear to condone Long's ministry.

"King devoted his life to the least of these," Cone said. "King could have been just like Bishop Long with all the millions he has, but he chose to die poor. He would not use his own message or his own movement to promote himself."

In a written statement, Long said he was a "firm supporter" of the seminary's mission and was honored by the invitation.

"Free speech, spirited debate and dialogue are the hallmarks of all great institutions of higher learning," Long said in the statement.

Leaving aside the political issues that undergird this dust-up, let me ask if anybody out there, liberal or conservative, thinks the "prosperity gospel" has an ounce of legitimacy.

The United Church of Christ has taken the lead in pointing out cable news networks' preference for putting the likes of Jerry Falwell forward as a spokesman for all Christians on holy days such as Easter. Courtesy of Street Prophets and Accesible Airwaves.

"Less noticed during all the comings and goings over at the White House this week was the resignation of Jim Towey, who has run the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the past five years. Towey is a good man--he is perhaps one of the only people in government, Democrat or Republican, who passionately cares about the fact that there are very few ways to track whether programs that receive federal funds actually accomplish anything, making it impossible to tell whether an organization like Head Start, for instance, is meeting the educational goals set out for it or whether faith-based programs are as effective as secular ones.

But Towey also chose to mouth the Bush administration's fiction that government discriminated against faith-based groups until George W. Bush came to save them. And he stayed in his position long after it was clear to most observers that the faith-based office was little more than a political showpiece for the White House. On that score, it may turn out to be very difficult to replace him."

Amy Sullivan has the story on the Washington Monthly's blog.

If you live near a good bookstore or newsstand, you owe it to yourself to hustle on out and buy the Spring issue of The American Scholar. It contains an excellent essay by Marilynne Robinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead, explaining how the Christian right has perverted not only Christianity, but evangelicalism. And how the mainline Churches let them.

Jodi Enda's profile of Barak Obama in this month's issue of The American Prospect features this eye-catching quote from Obama:

"I do think that there’s a strain of the Democratic Party -- it’s not uniform -- that is somewhat patronizing towards people who go to church,” says Obama, who attends the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which is Congregationalist, and keeps a Bible in his car. “If you go to a black evangelical church, there may be traditions that secular humanists might be uncomfortable with -- hoopin’ and hollerin’, wavin’ and dancin’,” he says, purposefully slipping into the vernacular. But, he says, the preachers and the parishioners are talking about the same things that Democratic leaders are: “They’re talking about health care and looking after our seniors and trying to salvage young men from going into the prison system. So there’s nothing alien about it. And yet sometimes, the Democratic Party, I think, just assumes that as long as people are in church that somehow we can’t reach them, that we have nothing in common. That’s simply not true and certainly hasn’t been true historically.”

This reminds me of the experience of a friend of mine who was being romanced to take a high level position in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. His contact with the campaign wanted to meet on a Sunday. But my friend, who taught the Rite 13 class that my older son was in, explained that he had a commitment at church.

The response of his contact? "How quaint."

Poor dumb Democrats.