Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

Today is New Year’s Eve in the Western world, but as I have done in previous years, I am posting this after the new year has already begun in East Asia. So, in true Japanese fashion, I am wishing each one of you a Happy New Year! 明けまして、おめでとう御座います!* 

The new year, 2023, is the Year of the Rabbit according to the zodiac of China/East Asia. The Chinese New Year doesn't begin until January 22, but for a long time now Japan has celebrated January 1 as New Year’s Day, although many of the ancient traditions are still maintained to varying degrees.

As most of you may know, in East Asia there is a sign for each of twelve years rather than twelve signs in one year as in the West, and each sign repeats in a twelve-year cycle.

It is easy to guess what year a person was born in if you know their sign, so in Japan it is common to ask for a person’s zodiac sign rather than asking their age. If a young senior citizen says they were born in the Year of the Rabbit, you could easily guess they were born in 1963, not 1951 or 1975.

“People born under the sign of the rabbit,” according to this website, “are gentle, sensitive, compassionate, amiable, modest and merciful, and have strong memory. They like to communicate with others in a humorous manner.”

My father was born in the Year of the Rabbit (so as you might guess, he was born in 1915), and the characteristics given in the previous paragraph seem to have fitted him well. How do they seem to fit those of you who were born in, say, 1939, 1951, or 1963?

What can we expect in the Year of the Rabbit, 2023? Early this month, I received a special issue of The Economist titled “The World Ahead 2023.” Every year they publish this sort of special edition, which I always find interesting and helpful.

This time, though, I didn’t find editor Tom Standage’s “Ten trends to watch in the coming year" to be particularly beneficial. The first two were “All eyes on Ukraine” and “Recessions loom,” but perhaps most any of us could have predicted the same things.

I did, though, think that these words from his final paragraph were thoughtworthy.

In retrospect, the pandemic marked the end of a period of relative stability and predictability in geopolitics and economics. Today’s world is much more unstable, convulsed by the vicissitudes of great-power rivalry, the aftershocks of the pandemic, economic upheaval, extreme weather, and rapid social and technological change. Unpredictability is the new normal. There is no getting away from it.

So, yes, what the world will experience in the year ahead is quite unpredictable—although to a large degree, that is true for every new year.

I asked ChatGPT what the world could expect in 2023. It quickly replied, “It is not possible for me to predict with certainty what will happen in 2023, as the future is always uncertain and can be influenced by a wide range of factors.” That was pretty much a no-brainer.  

But the “chatbot” did suggest four “potential developments” that could take place in 2023, including, “It is likely that there will be continued progress in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology, which could lead to new products and services that change the way we live and work.”

That is consistent with what Economist editor Standage mentioned as one of the expected ten trends in 2023. Apple is set to launch its first virtual reality headset, which they suggest may be the next “best thing” in the “metaverse.”** Will they change society as much as iPads/iPhones have? We'll see. 

Regardless of what might happen in 2023, the Year of the Rabbit, I pray that it will be a good year for you—and for the world at large.

_____

* If you don’t have Japanese fonts loaded on your computer, you may not be able to see the Japanese words in this sentence.

** As envisioned by Octavia Butler in her 1998 dystopian novel Parable of the Talents, by 2033 such virtual reality headsets were being replaced by the superior Dreamasks. 

Though . . . Yet

 Yesterday was Christmas Day, the first time for Christmas to be on a Sunday since 2016—and the next time won’t be until 2033. On the week before Christmas, my church’s theme for the Sunday worship service was “Do you see what I see?” and yesterday it was based on Habakkuk 3:17~19.

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” has been a popular Christmas song since the 1960s. Perhaps few people have recognized that that song was written as a Christmas prayer for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.**

While the second verse voices the title, the song begins, “Said the night wind to the little lamb / Do you see what I see?” And what is seen is “A star, a star, dancing in the night / With a tail as big as a kite.”

A writer for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (see here) explains that the latter phrase “can be interpreted in two ways: as the bright star of Bethlehem that leads the Magi to the baby Jesus—or as the sight of a nuclear missile in flight.” 

But the plain plea of the song is in the last verse: “Pray for peace, people, everywhere.” Sixty years later, that is still a pertinent plea. 

Do you see what I see about the coming global crisis? While there is certainly serious concern about nuclear war in the year ahead, my main fear is much more long-ranging, namely, an increasing concern about climate change and the collapse of the world as we know it. 

My first blog post of 2020 was “Climate Crisis: The Challenge of the Decade,” and beginning on Jan. 25 of this year I have posted a few articles referring to what seems to be an unfathomable crisis because of overshoot.

(To see/review what I have written this year about that, click here to read that 1/25 post, and then at the bottom of that article click on the tag “overshoot.”) 

What can we learn from Habakkuk 3:17-18? 

Earlier this month, a Bible study group of my church studied/discussed much of the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, and on Dec. 12 we shared what we had thought/written about the final verses of that short prophetic book—and some shared their thoughts yesterday in our Christmas worship service.

Here are the words of Habakkuk 3:17-18 from the New International Version of the Bible:

Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

(Bolding added)

In reflecting on those powerful words, here is what I wrote to be shared yesterday:

Though global warming continues to worsen 

and sea levels keep on rising,

though droughts increase in severity

and floods become even more destructive,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

Though the world’s economy spirals downward

and standards of living begin to plummet,

though accustomed to luxuries decrease greatly

and hardships significantly proliferate,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Though domestic polarization becomes grimmer

and troubling discord roars across the land,

though worrisome threats of war persist

and rogue nations increasingly rattle their sabers,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

Though civilization’s collapse becomes more imminent

and impending doom seems progressively threatening,

though the future appears increasingly uncertain

and sure hope begins to seem illusionary,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior. 

I am still working on articulating the basic reason for the yet affirmation, but primarily it is due to my faith in the eternal God whom I believe to be the Creator and, yes, the Consummator of the universe. 

As Creation was in a far more distant past than traditionally conceived, so Consummation will most likely be in a far distant future.  

_____

** The story about the writing and meaning of this Christmas song is told by Kathy Warnes here. She reports that Noel Regney, who wrote the lyrics, said that of the numerous renditions of the song his favorite was the one by Robert Goulet, which you can hear here on YouTube.

They’ll Know We are Christians by Our ??

In this last blog post before Christmas, I am writing about the central message of Christmas and also writing about what I want both those of you who are Christians, as well as those who are not, to read and think about deeply.

Christmas is the celebration of love. This past Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the theme for that last Sunday before Christmas was love.

There are various Advent traditions and practices, but according to the Christianity.com website, the selected Bible passage for Dec. 18 was the third chapter of John, with those best-known words of the Bible, 

The longstanding practice of giving Christmas presents is largely rooted in the gifts of the Magi who came from afar and presented gifts to baby Jesus. But the first and greatest Christmas gift was none other than God’s loving gift of Jesus himself to humankind.

Christians were long known for their love. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” is one title given for a gospel song written in the 1960s by Peter Schottes, a Catholic priest.

In the 1970s and ’80s, I enjoyed singing that song with Christian friends and fellow church members in Japan. Here is its second verse and the chorus:

We will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
We will walk with each other, will walk hand in hand,
And together we’ll spread the news, that God is in our land

And they’ll know we are Christians,
By our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.*

The lyrics of that gospel song are loosely based on words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of John: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:35, NIV)

In addition, though, until perverted by its alliance with political power, Christianity from its beginning was a religion of love for all people—and it still is when it is faithful to Jesus Christ.

Some Christians are now known for their hate. In my Dec. 10 blog post, I introduced Octavia Butler and her two dystopian novels. I have just finished reading the second of those, Parable of the Talents (1998).

In that prescient book, the U.S. elects a new President in 2032, a man who is an ardent advocate of Christian nationalism. In fact, he formed a new denomination, the Church of Christian America (CA).

The most alarming characteristic of that new church is its horrendous persecution of those considered to be “infidels.” Lauren, the protagonist of both novels, experiences unthinkable suffering at the hands of fanatical CA believers. They, indeed, were “Christians” known for their hate.

Perhaps you have seen the recent news stories about a restaurant that refused to serve a Christian group because of what they deemed was the “hatred” of that anti-gay group toward their employees.

Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Va., posted on Instagram (here) that they “denied service to the group to protect its staff, many of whom are women or members of the LGBTQ+ community.”

After reading about that happening, I came across a YouTube video titled “Hate Preachers: Bigotry and Fearmongering by Extremist Christian ‘Leaders’.” That video includes several clips of preachers saying almost unbelievable things, especially about LGBTQ people.**

Posted on YouTube eight months ago, that video has had 117,000 views, and when I accessed it last week, the first of the more than 1,600 comments said, “I simply don’t have enough hatred in me to be a Christian.”

How exceedingly sad that this is how some people view Christians now!

During this Christmas week, my plea for all of us is that we will fully accept the love of God manifested on that first Christmas and broadly implement that love. And, indeed, may all of us Christians be increasingly known by our love for all people.

____

* Here is the link to a YouTube video with those words being nicely sung.

** Some of these are affiliated with New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, a relatively new organization you can read about here. 

Evaluating Three McCarthys

As far as I can remember, I have never personally known anyone with the name of McCarthy. But I have known about three “men” with that name, and I am posting a brief evaluation of those three here.

Charlie McCarthy was the name of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Beginning back in the 1930s, Edgar Bergen (who was an actor, comedian, and ventriloquist), made Charlie McCarthy a popular and beloved figure in American entertainment from 1937 on for decades. 

I probably heard Bergen and McCarthy on the radio in the late 1940s. During those years my birth family would often sit around the dining table in the evenings listening to radio programs. Surprisingly, Charlie was well known as ventriloquist Bergen’s dummy even though he couldn’t be seen.

Bergen (1903~78) was the father of the well-known actress Candice Bergen (b. 1946). In her early girlhood years, she was irritated whenever she was referred to as Charlie McCarthy’s little sister.*¹

A few years after I first heard of Charlie McCarthy, as a high school student I began to hear some about a Senator named McCarthy.

Joseph McCarthy (1908~57) was a U.S. Senator (R-Wis.), first elected to the Senate in 1946. He was relatively unknown until early in 1950 when he began charging that there was massive Communist infiltration in the U.S. government.

Margaret Chase Smith, Maine’s Republican Senator from 1949 to 1973, was a leader in the opposition to Sen. McCarthy’s spurious charges. Heather Cox Richardson wrote about that on June 1, 2022, noting that “once upon a time, Republican politicians were the champions of reason and compromise.”

In 1954 the Senate finally voted to censure McCarthy, and according to a Senate webpage, “Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.”

But McCarthyism—and it is interesting that his name is one of the few names that became an “ism”—has continued to live on, most recently in Trumpism, another instance of a name becoming an ism.

Roy Cohn (1927~86) was Sen. McCarthy’s chief counsel in the 1954 hearings, and then he was Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and ’80s. A Yale history professor’s opinion piece about the connection of McCarthyism to Trumpism was published on Dec. 4, 2020.

Kevin McCarthy is a current U.S. Representative (R-Calif.) and the top Republican in the House. First elected to Congress in 2006, McCarthy (b. 1965) was elected as GOP majority leader in 2014, the fastest-ever ascent to that pivotal leadership post.

McCarthy is a Southern Baptist, and his pastor in Riverside, Calif., flew to Washington to offer the opening invocation of the House on the day before McCarthy was installed as the majority leader. The next day, McCarthy told a D.C. group of religious conservatives that he was “proud to be a Christian.”*²

During the impeachment investigation in 2019, Cleveland Plain Dealer cartoonist Jeff Darcy referred to Rep. McCarthy as “President Trump’s ventriloquist dummy puppet.” He then added, “Out of respect to legendary ventriloquism puppet Charlie McCarthy, the two are not related.”*³

Soon after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, McCarthy was highly critical of Pres. Trump, rightfully calling it an "unprecedented attack on our nation." He said that Trump's words and actions "helped to encourage the actions of the rioters" and that the President's "betrayal of his office and supporters" was a "dishonor to the country."

However, before the end of that month, McCarthy backtracked his criticism and even went to Mar-a-Lago to visit with Trump. He seems to once again to be “my Kevin,” as Trump has referred to him through the years.

Now Rep. McCarthy is vying to become Speaker of the House when the 118^th Congress convenes on Jan. 3, 2023. Implying McCarthy’s lack of integrity, columnist Dana Millbank wrote on Dec. 2 that McCarthy “sells his soul to extremists in hopes of eking out enough votes to become speaker.”

Clearly, Charlie seems to be the best of the three McCarthys.

_____

*¹ I first remember Candice Bergen as the leading actress in Sand Pebbles (1966), one of my favorite movies.

*² Even though I was a Southern Baptist for 65 years, I have far more respect for Rep. Jamie Raskin (see my Dec. 10 post) who is a Jew, than for Rep. McCarthy. That is largely because of the latter’s hypocrisy or opportunism—and for his besmirching the good name of Christians.

*³ Here is the link to Darcy’s cartoon and article about Kevin and Charlie.

Note: The fourth paragraph about Rep. McCarthy was generated by ChatGPT, the new AI online program. I just slightly modified what it wrote from my prompt asking for McCarthy's criticism of Pres. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Happy Birthday, Congressman Raskin!

Back in July 2015, I posted a blog article titled "Happy Birthday, Senator Graham!” That was on the occasion of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 60^th birthday—but I thought more of him then than in the years since.

This post is about Representative Jamie Raskin, who celebrates his 60^th birthday next Tuesday. I do not expect to be disappointed in him as I have been in Sen. Graham. 

Jamin Ben Raskin was born on December 13, 1962, the son of Jewish parents and the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants to the U.S.  Raskin, who goes by the name Jamie, has B.A. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University.

For more than 25 years Raskin was a constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law. In 2006, he was elected to the Maryland Senate, where he served until 2016 when he was elected as Maryland’s 8^th district Representative to the U.S. Congress.

On July 1, 2021, Raskin was one of the seven Democrats appointed to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Last month with nearly 80% of the vote, he was re-elected as a Representative for the third time.

Raskin has long lived in Takoma Park, Md., a D.C. suburban city that is adjacent to Silver Spring (where my two sons live).

Rep. Raskin suffered an “unthinkable” week from the last day of 2020 to January 6, 2021. The tragic story of that week, and much more, is told in his book Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy (2022).

On December 31, 2020, Raskin's office announced that his son Tommy, a graduate of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring and a second-year student at Harvard Law School, died at the age of 25.

(My younger son, Ken, has taught at Blair for more than 20 years now, but he didn’t know Tommy; currently there are around 3,600 students at Blair, the largest public high school in Maryland.)

On January 4, 2021, Raskin and his wife posted an online tribute to their son, stating that following a prolonged battle with depression, Tommy had died by suicide. That was an unthinkable tragedy for the Raskin family.

In a farewell note, Tommy wrote, "Please forgive me. My illness won today. Look after each other, the animals and the global poor. All my love, Tommy."

Tommy was buried on January 5. On the very next day, Rep. Raskin was in the Capitol with his daughter and son-in-law during the January 6 Capitol attack.

On that fateful day, Raskin had to experience the unthinkable attack on the U.S. Capitol—with the realistic fear that he could be killed along with many others gathered there on what should have been routine congressional business.

Hours later he began drafting an article of impeachment against President Trump, and six days later House Speaker Pelosi named Raskin the lead manager of Trump's second impeachment.

His book, Unthinkable, focuses on his son's life as well as his preparation for the impeachment trial. Whether you read all the book or not, I highly recommend reading the powerful 35-page Prologue.

(Raskin’s book should be available in most public libraries; I read the Kindle version checked out from my local library.)

Rep. Raskin is a man of intelligence, empathy, and moral integrity—at least that is my appraisal of him at this time.

We often hear negative things said about the top politicians in the country. I had a friend who regularly referred to the Congresscritters. And, sadly, there are some of Raskin’s colleagues in the 435-member House of Representatives who doubtlessly merit widespread criticism.

While I regret that there are many current House members who are of rather small caliber—and many of those have been re-elected for another two years—I am grateful that there are also many Representatives of high quality, and certainly Rep. Raskin is one of the best.

The House will likely be rather chaotic in the coming two years, but after the 2024 election I strongly hope for a better House with more exemplary members like Raskin.

_____

Note: I asked the Chat GTP online AI program (https://chat.openai.com/chat) to improve my concluding paragraph. I agree with their lengthier, and unaltered, statement, which was produced in less than ten seconds:

In the coming two years, the House of Representatives may experience a great deal of turmoil and unrest. However, after the 2024 election, I am hopeful that we will see a more cohesive and effective House, with members who are dedicated to serving the best interests of the American people. One such member who exemplifies these qualities is Representative Jamie Raskin, who has shown himself to be a thoughtful and principled leader. I believe that with more members like Raskin, the House will be better able to tackle the challenges facing our nation and work towards a brighter future for all Americans.

Novelists as Prophets: The Examples of Celeste Ng and Octavia Butler

Good, creative novels are beneficial for their readers not just for the enjoyment they induce but also for the ideas they produce. This post is about two dystopian novels, one published earlier this year and the other back in 1993.

Celeste Ng is an American novelist whose parents were born in mainland China and in Hong Kong. Ng (b. 1980) became widely known with the publication of Little Fires Everywhere in 2017 and the eight-episode 2020 streaming television series based on that book.

Although I found Ng’s 2017 novel a good read, I was more impressed with her 2022 novel Our Missing Hearts. The title of Steven King’s Sept. 22 review in The New York Times sums it up well: “Celeste Ng’s Dystopia Is Uncomfortably Close to Reality.” 

Following what is called the Crisis, the federal government seeks to make the U.S. great again. This is attempted partly by the passing of the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act (PACT).

Under PACT, questionable books are not only banned, those found offensive are pulped and turned into toilet paper.

Further, because of what is believed to be a major economic/cultural threat by the Chinese, there is considerable opposition to anyone who looks Asian. The main characters of Ng’s novel are a Chinese American woman married to a White man and Bird, their 12-year-old son.

The children of parents considered by PACT to be culturally or politically subversive are “re-placed” in foster families. Consequently, Bird’s mother goes missing in order to spare him from being re-placed.

The impact of Ng’s novel was lessened somewhat by the midterm elections, which turned out to be a win for democracy and a loss for the MAGA voters and the authoritarianism they were (many perhaps unwittingly) supporting. Prejudice against Chinese/Asians, however, may continue to increase.

Perhaps to a small degree, the election turned out as it did because of what can be called self-negating prophecy. Sometimes things don’t happen as predicted because enough people take action to keep those dire predictions from being fulfilled.

In that way, novelists, and especially those who write creative dystopian novels, can be seen as prophets who declare what will happen if appropriate steps are not taken to prevent those dreadful situations from taking place.

Let’s hope that is also true with regard to a second novelist I am currently reading.

Octavia Butler is an engaging Black writer whom I was not aware of until recently. More than thirty years ago she planned to write a trilogy of dystopian novels. The first of those is Parable of the Sower (1993), and it was followed by Parable of the Talents (1998).**

Unfortunately, Butler died in 2006 at the youngish age of 58 before she finished the third volume. I have just finished reading Butler’s chilling first book and have started to read the sequel.

Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren, a precocious African American teenager—and religious “philosopher.”

In that 1993 novel, climate change, economic recession, and extensive misuse of drugs lead to a total breakdown of society. Beginning in 2024, Lauren experiences horrific loss and suffering, which ends to an extent for her and her companions with the founding of a religious community in 2027.

(Early in the sequel, Butler has Lauren writing about one of the candidates for the 2032 presidential election in the nation still beset by ongoing societal problems. His appeal to the voters is, “Help us to make America great again.”)

Perhaps sometimes “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls,” but they are more effectively written in books by novelists such as Celeste Ng and Octavia Butler.

May we be smart enough to understand what such novelists are saying and proactive enough to help their dystopian novels to become self-negating prophecies.

_____

** Here is the link to “Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to ‘Make America Great Again’,” a long, July 2017 article in The New Yorker. June (my wife) doesn’t like to read dystopian novels, but she found this article about Butler to be quite interesting.

Francis Xavier, an Extraordinary Missionary and Saint

The Feast of St. Francis Xavier will be celebrated in Goa, India, this Saturday. That special yearly observance commemorates and honors Xavier and his remarkable Christian missionary activity (see this link). He died 470 years ago, on December 3, 1552.

I have mentioned Xavier several times in my blog posts through the years, the first being on Aug. 15, 2009, my twelfth post on this blog started the previous month. 

Francis Xavier was born in 1506 in what is now northern Spain. When he was 19, he enrolled in Paris University, the world’s premier university at the time.

While a student in Paris, Xavier became friends with Ignatius of Loyola, and he became one of the seven original members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) started by Ignatius on August 15, 1534.*

Xavier became one of the most famous Jesuits of all time in spite of his early death only eighteen years and a few months after the formation of that new Roman Catholic order. Further, he became one of the most effective Catholic missionaries of all time, even though he served only 10½ years.

Xavier’s missionary work began on May 6, 1542, when after a treacherous sea voyage of several months he disembarked in Goa, the center of Portuguese activity in the East. He worked there with considerable success for about three years.

For the next three years, Xavier engaged in missionary work in what now is the country of Malaysia. It was there that he met Anjirō, a Japanese fugitive, who accompanied him when he returned to Goa.

Xavier was the first Christian missionary to reach Japan. With Anjirō as his interpreter and guide, Xavier left Goa in April 1549, and exactly four months later, on August 15, set foot in Kagoshima at the southernmost part of the Japanese island of Kyushu.

For a little over two years, Xavier engaged in energetic missionary work—and struggled with the Japanese language, which he reportedly called the “Devil’s language,” designed to keep the Gospel out of Japan.

His contact with the Japanese Emperor in Kyoto proved disappointing, but he then had considerable success in what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture at the southern tip of the major island of Honshu. He also enjoyed a measure of success in what are now Nagasaki and Oita Prefectures on Kyushu.

Surprisingly, Xavier didn’t think he was particularly successful in Japan, but he established the work for other Jesuit missionaries there and scholars have estimated that more than 300,000 people in Japan converted to Christianity over the next fifty years.

Xavier is widely known and respected in Japan to this day. I have been to the St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church in Yamaguchi (see here for a picture) and have seen the statue of Xavier in downtown Oita City (pictured below). 

Xavier’s impressive legacy is well worth noting. While still in Japan, Xavier longed to go to mainland China and to evangelize there.

After a short visit back in Goa, in April 1552 Xavier set off for China. In late August, he arrived at Shangchuan Island, less than nine miles from the mainland, but he was not allowed to enter the country that was closed to foreigners. As he waited and waited, he grew ill and then died on Dec. 3.

His remains were taken back to Goa where they are preserved in a silver casket within Bom Jesus Basilica there.

Xavier’s dream of entering China and meeting the Emperor was fulfilled by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was born less than two months before Xavier died.**

Xavier was canonized 400 years ago, in March 1622, and in 1927 he was named the Roman Catholic patron saint of all missions.

He is justly credited for his idea that missionaries must adapt to the customs and language of the people they evangelize, and for his advocation of an educated native clergy.

Partly because of Xavier’s emphasis on education, the Jesuits founded many universities around the world.

In the U.S., currently there are 29 Jesuit universities, including Xavier University in Cincinnati and Rockhurst University here in Kansas City, where I had the distinct privilege of teaching for 17 semesters from 2006 to 2014.

_____

* See my Oct. 25, 2013, blog post titled “In Appreciation of Ignatius and the Jesuits.”

** See my blog article about Ricci posted last month on Oct. 10.

Note: While teaching at Rockhurst U., I sometimes showed my classes part of a DVD titled “Xavier: Missionary & Saint.” That 2006 PBS documentary is now available for viewing (here) on YouTube. 

In Praise of Koinonia Farm

On the day after his 100^th birthday anniversary, on 7/30/12 I posted a blog article titled "In Praise of Clarence Jordan.” This article is about Jordan’s Koinonia Farm which is celebrating its 80^th anniversary tomorrow (on 11/26), and I am posting it in deep appreciation for their decades of faithful work. 

Clarence Jordan was a farmer with a Ph.D. in theology. Born in 1912 in the small town of Talbotton, Georgia, about 90 miles south of Atlanta, Jordan graduated with a degree in agriculture at the University of Georgia in 1933. The following year, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister.

Then, in 1938 Jordan earned a Ph.D. in Greek New Testament from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and four years later he started Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia, about 65 miles south of where he was born.

Clarence Jordan sought to be a “demonstration plot” farmer. An article in the December Sojourners magazine is titled “The Radical Southern Farmer White Christians Should Know About.” In that piece, Jordan is cited as saying,

While I love books and have a passion for knowledge, I have thought the real laboratory for learning was not the classroom but in the fields, by farming, and in interaction with human need.

So, the 440-acre Koinonia Farm, named after the Greek word for fellowship and joint participation, was designed to be a “demonstration plot” of the Kingdom of God in the here and now of southern Georgia.

According to the Sojourners article, Jordan conceived of the farm as being

cooperative and communal ... interracial, controlled by investment of time (life), rather than capital; based on the principle of distribution according to need; [and] motivated by Christian love as the most powerful instrument known to [people] for solving [their] problems.

Clarence Jordan has recently been hailed as the preacher of “the inconvenient Gospel.” Just last month a book containing some of Jordan’s writings and sermons was published under the title The Inconvenient Gospel: A Southern Prophet Tackles War, Wealth, Race, and Religion. 

Issued by Plough Publishing House on October 25, I bought a Kindle copy that day and read it before attending (on Zoom) the book launch event sponsored by Plough on Oct. 28.

One of the three panelists on that webinar was Starlette Thomas, a young Black pastor and journalist. Her opening remarks were largely the same as the Introduction that she authored for the book. Starlette’s explanation and praise of Koinonia is also printed in the Autumn 2022 issue of Plough.**

Koinonia Farm has had influence far beyond southern Georgia. In the 1970s not long after Jordan’s death in 1969, Koinonia Farm began to market some of his sermons on long-play vinyl records—and I listened to some of those, with considerable delight, in Japan.

I had heard of Jordan and Koinonia Farm while a seminary student (at Jordan’s alma mater) in the 1960s, but it was after hearing his sermons preached with a captivating southern drawl, that I became a big admirer of Jordan and what he had done in Georgia.

The influence of Jordan and Koinonia Farm expanded beyond Georgia in other, more important ways. Millard Fuller (1935~2009) was a self-made millionaire by age 29, but he gave up his wealth and moved to Koinonia Farm in 1968, where he and his family lived for five years.

Under the name Koinonia Partners, Fuller started Habitat for Humanity in 1976, and in 1984 he enlisted Jimmy Carter as a hands-on supporter—and Jimmy and Rosalynn continued to do volunteer work with Habitat into their 90s. (The Carter home in Plains was about ten miles from Koinonia Farm.)

The number of people currently living at Koinonia Farm (see their website here) is small, but they are valiantly working to keep alive Clarence Jordan’s vision of maintaining a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God. For that, I remain deeply grateful.

And in reflecting upon Koinonia Farm’s existence for 80 years now, I am challenged to think about how June and I, and our church, can be more intentionally a part of a demonstration plot for God’s Kin-dom.

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** Starlette’s article is titled “The Raceless Gospel,” a concept she constantly emphasizes. She is director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative at Good Faith Ministries and host of the Raceless Gospel podcasts.

Note: In addition to the new book about Jordan issued last month, I highly recommend Dallas M. Lee’s excellent book, The Cotton Patch Evidence: The Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm Experiment (1942–1970), first published in 1971 (3^rd ed., 2011).

The Relevance of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

The circumstances of the United States (such as it was) in 1863 and now in 2022 are greatly different, but there is much to learn from President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation issued then. Consider the relevance of Lincoln’s lasting words written in that momentous year. 

Here in the U.S., this Thursday (Nov. 24) is Thanksgiving Day, and across the country people will be scrambling to be with loved ones for that traditional time for families to be together—and sometimes finding traveling difficult as depicted in the 1987 comedy film Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

The USAmerican Thanksgiving Day “myth” is traced back to 1621, and for decades from the early days of the USA in 1789 on, national thanksgiving days were observed only intermittently.

But on October 3, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Pres. Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation, calling for November 26 of that year to be a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

This year, then, marks the 160th year that Thanksgiving Day has been observed annually, and for the last 80 years the official national holiday has been on the fourth Thursday of November.

In recent decades, Thanksgiving Day has become less and less a time for giving thanks to “our beneficent Father” and more and more a time of feasting, arguing with relatives around the dinner table, watching football games, and even shopping for Christmas presents.

Perhaps the time has come to go back to Lincoln’s proclamation and to recover his original intention. The fall of 1863 was certainly not the “best of times” to have a national day of thanksgiving. But in spite of the difficulties the President was looking back with thanksgiving and looking forward in hope.

In January 1863, Lincoln issued the Proclamation Emancipation, changing the legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free.

Then, exactly three months before that 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation, the victorious battle at Gettysburg on July 3 marked the turning point in the Civil War. Thus, in that call to national thanksgiving, the President noted the coming likelihood of a “large increase in freedom.”*

Lincoln’s call for thanksgiving also included an appeal for citizens “to fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

In his second inaugural address, delivered seventeen months later on March 4, 1865, Lincoln reiterated his call for thanksgiving with an appeal for magnanimity. That magnificent speech/sermon ended with these words:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.**

In this month of the U.S. midterm elections, which were held following a long period of militant mud-slinging and rancorous political campaigning, let’s join in the spirit of Lincoln to give thanks that democracy and the common good were largely victorious.

Further, as we celebrate Thanksgiving Day this year, let’s ask our family and friends to join us in going forward “with malice toward none and justice for all,” seeking to do all we can to create a nation, and our own neighborhood, with peace and justice for all. 

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* Lincoln’s outstanding Gettysburg address was delivered on November 19 of that year. I recommend reading Heather Cox Richardson’s last Saturday’s informative “letter” regarding that address (see here).

** On Feb. 28, 2015, I made a blog post titled “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech/Sermon,” which was how I referred to his second inaugural address.

In Grateful Memory of a Theologian Named Rosemary

Not many Christian theologians have been named Rosemary. In fact, not many Christian theologians before this century were women. But Rosemary Radford Ruether was a noted theologian and a leader of feminist liberation theology. She was born on November 2, 1936, and died in May of this year. 

Claremont School of Theology photo

Rosemary Radford was born in Minnesota, the daughter of an Episcopalian father and a Roman Catholic mother. When she was 12, her father died and she moved with her mother to California where she attended Catholic schools.

Rosemary graduated from prestigious Scripps College, a private women’s school in southern California, and then earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Claremont School of Theology, a United Methodist institution.

While still a student at Scripps, she married Herman Ruether in 1957, and eight years later they had three children—and she had her Ph.D. and was authoring a book. During her lifetime, she wrote 36 books and more than 600 scholarly articles and also gave a formidable number of public lectures.

Ruether’s teaching career was spent entirely in Protestant schools: Howard University, Pacific School of Religion, and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary where she taught the longest. But she was a self-identified Catholic for her whole life.

Rosemary Radford Ruether is best known as a pioneer feminist theologian and an advocate of ecofeminist theology. Her major books are Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983) and Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (1992).

The subtitle of the second chapter of Ruether’s 1983 book is “Male and Female Images of the Divine,” and she concludes with a subsection titled “Toward a Feminist Understanding of God/ess.”

There is strong opposition to any reference to a Goddess in Christianity, since that term is always feminine, but little opposition to the use of Christianity’s use of God, which has overwhelmingly been seen as male, at least until recently. Ruether’s term helped correct that theological error.*

To overcome the powerful and long tradition of envisioning God as male, Ruether uses the Goddess image to emphasize that God is equally female, which is the same as saying that God transcends gender bifurcation.

With regard to her ecofeminism, Ruether was the first to connect publicly the domination of the earth with the oppression of women. In her 1992 book, she sought to “demonstrate the interconnectedness of domination and deceit, the social systems of power over women . . .” (p. 8).

Ruether is also known as a critic of such traditional Roman Catholic stances as birth control, the ordination of women, papal infallibility, and the rejection of liberation theology. In 2008 she published a slim book under the title Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican: A Vision for Progressive Catholicism.

In that book’s Introduction, she calls for a church that is multicultural, that acknowledges its fallibility, lives by grace, is liberated from sexism, is democratic, and is committed to the poor and the oppressed (see pp. 4~11).

Rosemary Ruether was a liberation theologian and modern prophet. In my university lecture on liberation theology (both in Japan and at Rockhurst U. here in Kansas City), I introduced Gustavo Gutiérrez, James Cone, and Ruether.

Just as Gutiérrez wrote about liberating the poor in South America from economic exploitation and Cone wrote about liberating African Americans from racism, Ruether wrote about liberating women from male domination. All three advocated that liberation on the basis of their Christian faith.

In Four Modern Prophets (1986), author William Ramsay summarizes the work of four modern theologians who epitomized the struggle for freedom and justice. Those four are Walter Rauschenbusch, Martin Luther King, Jr, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Ruether.**

Ramsay contends that much of Ruether’s theology was an effort to apply the teaching of Jesus “to contemporary concerns, not only sexism but also racism and economic oppression” (p. 87).

When I heard of Ruether’s death back in May, I was saddened that the voice of this prodigious theologian and prophet had been silenced, but I am grateful that she continues to speak through her numerous books and articles.

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* In February 2015, I made a blog post titled “Using Gender-Neutral Language for God.” (Inexplicably, there have been over 3,000 pageviews of that post.)

** I have previously posted blog articles about the first three of these (see especially here, here, and here). I am happy now to be making this post about Ruether.

Election Reflections (Nov. 2022)

The results of Tuesday’s midterm elections in the U.S. are mostly, but not completely, known at this point. I thought about waiting until my Nov. 15 blog post to share my election reflections, but I decided to go ahead and write this on the day after those important November 8 elections. 

Although most of you Thinking Friends and other of my blog readers know which political party I identify with, please know that I write what I do here primarily from the viewpoint of a progressive Christian believer, not as the member of any political party.   

THE MOST ENCOURAGING RESULTS:

** Democracy is surviving. In spite of challenges, it seems that democracy is alive and well in the U.S. Historian Mark K. Updegrove tweeted that Tuesday’s “big winners” include, “Democracy, with huge voter turnout and many high-profile election deniers losing big.”

On Nov. 2, President Biden gave an important speech urging the citizenry to protect democracy. Yesterday, one week later, he gave another speech in which he said that Tuesday had been “a good day for democracy.”

** The Democrats will probably retain control of the Senate. Although we will not know until after the runoff election on Dec. 6 in Georgia, it seems likely that control will remain with the Democrats. This is of great importance for the President, especially for the appointment of judges.

** Two noteworthy results in Pennsylvania. Not only was the election of John Fetterman crucial for the Democrats retaining control of the Senate, the defeat of Doug Mastriano’s bid for the governorship was also a victory for religious freedom and maintaining the separation of church and state.

** Two noteworthy results (maybe) in Arizona. The likely re-election of Sen. Mark Kelly was also crucial for the Democrats, and the probable defeat of Kari Lake for the governorship was also significant as she is one of the most outspoken MAGA Republicans and “darling” of right-wing extremists.

THE MOST DISAPPOINTING RESULTS:

** The Republicans have gained control of the House. Although it may be several days before the final numbers are known, the Republicans now have a small majority in the House.

Why is this disappointing? Among other things, the January 6 Committee will likely be disbanded before completion of its work, legislation to fight global warming will probably lessen greatly, and perhaps there will be impeachment charges against Pres. Biden and Attorney General Garland.

However, the size of the GOP majority is far less than most political pundits expected.

Here are the opposition Party’s House gains in three recent midterm elections: the Dems. gained 31 seats in 2006, the Reps. gained 63 seats in 2010, and the Dems gained 41 seats in 2018. This year the expected “red wave” was more like what one of my friends called a “pink puddle.”

** The defeat of good candidates by questionable opponents. There are many names that might be noted here, but two of those are Mandela Barnes, who lost his bid for the Wisconsin Senate seat, and J.D. Vance, who won the Senate seat in Ohio.

Barnes (b. 1986) narrowly lost to incumbent Ron Johnson, a staunch ally of Donald Trump. Barnes was vying to become the first Black Senator from Wisconsin, but lost by just 1%, perhaps mainly because of the racist attack ads against him (see here).

I was impressed by Vance in the movie Hillbilly Elegy, based on his 2016 memoir. But even though he was originally a critic of Trump, in Oct. 2021 he expressed agreement with Trump’s claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Subsequently, Trump endorsed Vance.

I was also sad that Stacey Abrams lost (for the second time) her bid to become the governor of Georgia. But I am hopeful that she will be instrumental in the re-election of Sen. Warnock in the Dec. runoff as she was in 2020.

Well, there is so much more that could (and maybe should) be said about this week’s midterm elections, but this, in part, is the view from this Seat/seat at this point. How do things look from where you are sitting?