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. 

Embracing Hopelessness???

Advent Decoration
Rainbow Mennonite Church

This past Sunday, Dec. 2, was the first Sunday of Advent in the liturgical calendar of the Christian Church. All around the world churchgoers were challenged to think deeply about the theme for that significant Sunday. That theme was hope. 

De La Torre’s Emphasis on Hopelessness

In recent blog articles, I have mentioned Miguel De La Torre’s 2017 book titled Embracing Hopelessness—most recently here on Nov. 25. This seems to be an appropriate time to consider—and to question—his main point.

De La Torre (b. 1958), professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver (Colo.), is an accomplished scholar, prolific author, and one recognized by his peers as a notable leader in the field of social ethics. He was elected President of the Society of Christian Ethics in 2012.

Early in his book on hopelessness Miguel starkly states his pivotal idea:

Hope, as a middle-class privilege, soothes the conscience of those complicit with oppressive structures, lulling them to do nothing except look forward to a salvific future where every wrong will be righted and every tear wiped away, while numbing themselves to the pain of those oppressed, lest that pain motivate them to take radical action. Hope is possible when privilege allows for a future (p. 5).

From that perspective, Miguel is quite critical of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s emphasis on the “theology of hope” as well as of the philosophy of progress as seen in Hegel’s dialectical idealism or Marx and Engels’s dialectical materialism.

“Hope, and the historical progress upon which it rests,” Miguel argues, “fosters a demobilizing conformity” (p. 64). By contrast, “The hopelessness I advocate,” Miguel writes, “is not disabling; rather, it is a methodology propelling the marginalized toward liberation praxis” (p. 139).

Thus, he avers, “It is not hope that propels people [such as the Central American asylum seekers] to the desert where more often than not death awaits; it is desperation. . . . Hopelessness is an act of courage to embrace reality and to act even when the odds are in favor of defeat” (p. 140).

What Can We Say?

De La Torre’s rhetoric, it seems to me, is quite extreme—and perhaps it was his intention to use such rhetoric in order to draw attention (and perhaps to sell books). Consequently, I have serious questions about many of his contentions.

His ideas, however, must be taken seriously.

For example, it seems to be quite clear that in the past, touting the hope of Heaven was used as a means to pacify people in the present who longed for a better life on earth. The primary example is, undoubtedly, the use of “pie in the sky” promises to enslaved people in the USAmerican South.

And if one believes that the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, as MLK and President Obama believed, perhaps that belief spawns a hope that stifles action. If things are going to get better anyway, maybe we don’t really need to do anything.

Does that kind of hope impede the struggle of or for those at the bottom of societal structures? Perhaps.

Still Embracing Hope

Nevertheless, I cannot embrace hopelessness.                                  

I agree with Miguel’s contention that hope should never be allowed to blunt social consciousness or countenance inaction in the face of injustice.

But more often than not, surely, hope spurs people to action in the face of despair, to active endeavors toward betterment instead of acquiescence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.   

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Precisely!

Let’s remember those words as well as these from Romans 15:13. 

Barnet's Brilliant Book

Vern Barnet has long been one of the outstanding religious leaders of Kansas City. The accompanying picture was taken of him at the 2016 Annual Interfaith Community Thanksgiving Dinner, held for the first time on the campus of William Jewell College.

The Barnet Award

At that most enjoyable gathering on Nov. 13, the Vern Barnet Interfaith Service Award was given to Lama Chuck Stanford, a retired Tibetan Buddhist leader who has long been active in Kansas City.

Barnet founded the Kansas City Interfaith Council in 1989, and after his retirement as head of that organization, the Vern Barnet Award was created in 2010—with him as its first recipient.

(Last year’s recipient of the award was my good friend Ed Chasteen, former professor of sociology at William Jewell College. June and I enjoyed sitting at the same table with Ed and his wife Bobbie at last week’s Thanksgiving dinner.)

For many years Vern (b. 1942) served as a Universalist Unitarian minister, and he is minister emeritus of the Center for Religious Experience and Study (CRES), which he founded in 1982. In 2011, however, he was baptized in an Episcopalian church, and is now said to be an active Episcopalian layman.

His main love, though, still seems to be interfaith activities.

The Barnet Book

Vern is also an editor and author. He co-edited the 740-page Essential Guide to Religious Traditions and Spirituality for Health Care Providers (2013). The most recent book he authored, however, is not directly about religion.

Vern’s book Thanks for Noticing: The Interpretation of Desire was published in 2015. He describes the book as a “prosimetrum of 154 sonnets, glosses, and other commentary, in which the sacred beauty of sex and love is explored.” (A prosimetrum is “a text composed in alternating segments of prose and verse.”)

Vern’s sonnets are consciously linked to Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. But, to be honest, I am over my head in trying to expound upon the meaning and significance of either Shakespeare’s or Barnet’s sonnets. But I have been moved by many of Vern’s sonnets I have read.

For full disclosure, I must admit that I have not read nearly all of Vern’s book, although I do intend to keep reading it little by little--which is the way it needs to be read. Thanks for Noticing is quite obviously a brilliant book as well as a very erudite one.

Barnet’s Sonnets 78 to 86

The 154 sonnets in Vern’s book are grouped into eight sections with titles taken from the parts of a Catholic mass. The most theological part is the one titled “Credo,” and those sonnets, numbers 78 to 86, are the ones to which I have paid the most attention.

(Many of the 154 sonnets are about sex and sexuality, and I will leave it to others to write about the meaning and importance of those.)

Sonnet 78 is titled “Advent,” and as next Sunday, Nov. 27, is the first Sunday of Advent I have read and re-read that insightful sonnet—although the Eucharist does not have the same meaning to me as it does to Episcopalians or Catholics.

“Postmodern Faith: What is Truth?” is the title of Sonnet 84, and it ends with this couplet:

                                I know the Gospel is a pious tale,

                                                But who cares facts when worship cannot fail?

By these words Vern seems to urge us to a pre-modern/post-modern “mysticism” that is not fettered by facticity. Direct experience of God (Ultimate Reality) is more than, and far greater than, having (or seeking) only factual knowledge.

That is one important lesson bundled in Barnet’s brilliant book.

Listening to Richard Rohr

The pun is intended, but the man who is now a Franciscan priest, prolific author, and wise teacher was named Richard when he was born in Kansas in 1943, the first son of Richard and Eleanore Rohr. The way he writes and speaks, though, is more like a reassuring purr than a roar.

 Although I don’t agree with some of his Catholic beliefs and don’t find some of what he writes particularly helpful, on the whole I have found in recent years that Rohr is, indeed, a wise teacher and someone worth listening to.

On our way to Tucson the last of September, June and I made a brief visit to the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque. That is a rather modest facility for the organization that Rohr founded in 1986, and it has been the hub of his activities for nearly 30 years now.

As expected, we didn’t get to meet Rohr. It was meaningful, though, to spend some time in the Visitor Center and to talk with the woman who worked there.

We also walked the Labyrinth of the Dancing Christ. CAC issues this invitation to their guests: “Walk the seven circuits slowly, circling inward to rest at the center in Presence. As you circle outward, carry with you the awareness of union with all in the Divine.”

 I don’t know if we got the full benefit, but we found it meaningful to slowly walk in and out of the labyrinth.

 A few days ago I finished reading Rohr’s 2009 book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. It is a fine book that needs to be read slowly and thought about deeply. Throughout, Rohr calls for religious growth.

Rohr states, “Transformation into love is the heart of religious conversion.” He also says that mature religion involves “letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness” (pp. 87-88).

He goes on to say, many of those who have negative views toward religion are “right in what they are suspicious of, which is usually the immature form of religion, a form that is largely dominant today” (p. 120).

Now I am all set to start reading Rohr’s book Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent.

Although I don’t remember anything ever being said about Advent at the Baptist church that I attended weekly as a boy, for many years now I have belonged to churches where Advent is observed.

In recent years I have also often read daily devotions during the days of Advent. This year I will be listening to Richard Rohr each day from this coming Sunday, the beginning of Advent, until Christmas.

To this point I have read only the Introduction in Rohr’s Advent book. He says there that Christmas is more than “the sweet coming of a baby” and that the Word of God “confronts, converts, and consoles us—in that order. The suffering, injustice and devastation on this planet are too great now to settle for any infantile gospel or any infantile Jesus.”

Noteworthy words!