The Year of the Fire Horse

As many of you know, in Japan and China the zodiac consists of twelve animal signs, and each year is named after one of them. This new year of 2026 is the Year of the Horse—but more specifically it is the Year of the Fire Horse, which occurs every sixty years.** 

It was 60 years ago that my family and I arrived in Japan for the first time. Even though we were told it was the Year of the Horse, I can’t remember anyone telling us it was the Year of the Fire Horse.

After two years of language study in Tokyo, we moved to Fukuoka City in southwest Japan. We lived in an all-Japanese neighborhood, and the Shibata family next door became dear friends. Mr. Shibata’s given name was Toraichirō, and since tora is the Japanese word for tiger, it was easy to discern he was born in the Year of the Tiger, the same as I was.

In 1974 when I turned 36, three times around the Japanese zodiac, Mr. Shibata celebrated his 72^nd birthday, having completed six cycles. At some point, we learned that Mrs. Shibata celebrated her birthday on January 1 even though she was born at the end of 1906, which was the year of the Fire Horse.

For the Japanese people who take the “superstitions” entwined with the zodiac seriously, it is commonly believed that “girls born in the Year of the Fire Horse will be temperamental, have bad marriages and be threats to their fathers and husbands.”

Since 1906 was the Year of the Fire Horse and thus seen as a bad year, especially for women born with that zodiac sign, Mrs. Shibata’s family registered her birth as being at the beginning of 1907. She did grow up to be a rather strong-willed woman, but Toraichirō-san was a kind, patient man, and we enjoyed having them both as neighbors during the 23 years we lived next door to them.

What can we expect this Year of the Fire Horse (which has little meaning in the Western world)? At the end of each year, there are always many articles published with what is thought to be the best or worst of whatever in the past year. But I want to think only about 2026 (and beyond) rather than looking back over the past year. I don’t want to walk into the future backwards.

In the Old Testament, the writer of Second Isaiah records these words from the Lord God: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!” (43:18-19a, NIV). We do need to learn from what has previously happened, but it is important not to dwell on the past. Rather, we are encouraged to focus on the future where God is “doing a new thing.”

Despite the negative aspects of the Year of the Fire Horse, especially for women, there are positive aspects also. The Fire Horse can legitimately be considered as a symbol of strong will and forward motion, encouraging individuals, families, and communities alike to pursue important changes and reforms.

 In that sense, the Year of the Fire Horse becomes a metaphor for times when intense pressures and rapid shifts do not just unsettle life but also open the way for renewal, growth, and more authentic directions.

Rather than dwelling on 2025 as a horrible year, let’s look forward to this new year being a year of positive change. I am a regular reader of “The Cottage,” Diane Butler Bass’s Substack newsletter. Her January 1 post was titled “Annus Mirabilis Everybody!”

Bass rightly notes that so many pundits labeled 2025 as annus horribilis, a “horrible year.” That, she writes, is “the 2025 consensus: Horrible. A disaster. Glad that’s done.” But, looking forward, she challenges us readers to name the new year of 2026 annus mirabilis, the “wonderful year,” the “year of miracles,” or the “beautiful year.”

She continues, “We can do this. Together. Let’s name this year Mirabilis. … If we start now, 2026 can be a year of wonder, a year of miracles, or maybe even a beautiful year.”

Among other things, with Fire Horse energy, may we USAmericans of goodwill work together to change the direction our nation is heading by voting to change the political leadership of the nation come November.

_____

** As mentioned in my previous (12/31) blog post, Japan has long used the “Western calendar,” with the new year beginning on January 1. But the traditional Chinese-style calendar (generally referred to as 旧暦 (kyūreki, “old calendar”) is still often used when referring to the zodiac, which was borrowed from China. Thus, the “Chinese” Year of the Fire Horse doesn’t begin until February 17.

Remembering Martin of Tours (and Pete Hegseth)

Perhaps many of you don’t remember much (or anything) about Martin of Tours. But he is a man worth recalling, and his commitment to non-violence is commendable for people of all ages to consider and to emulate. 

Icon by Kreg Yingst

Martin of Tours was born around 316 A.D. in what today we call central Europe. He was the son of a Roman military officer. Like his father, he was compelled to serve in the Roman army. Even though a soldier, Martin was drawn to the Christian faith, still relatively new and sometimes suspect within the Roman Empire.

When he was still under 20 years of age, he encountered a poor, shivering beggar on a bitterly cold winter day. Moved by compassion but having nothing else to offer, Martin cut his heavy military cloak in half with his sword and gave one part to the beggar, keeping the other for himself.​

That night, Martin had a vision or dream in which Jesus appeared to him wearing the half of the cloak he had given away. Jesus said to the angels around him, “Martin has clothed me with this garment.” This story may have been embellished with dramatic details, but it captures the essence of Martin’s compassionate character.

This vision deeply affected the young man, leading him to be baptized soon afterward. For two decades or so, however, he continued to be a Roman soldier. But when he was about 40, Martin finally decided he could no longer remain a military man.

According to some sources he had another dream or vision which convinced him he could no longer be a soldier. Julian, the Roman emperor, prepared a military campaign in which Martin’s unit was expected to participate. But before the campaign began, Martin stepped forward and declared, “I am a soldier of Christ; I cannot fight.”

The emperor interpreted Martin’s words not as a matter of conscience but as cowardice, accusing Martin of seeking to avoid battle. Martin replied that his refusal was based on his Christian faith, not fear. This was the beginning of conscientious objection to warfare, embraced by only a minuscule percentage of Christians in the following centuries

The Waldensians, who began in France late in the 12^th century, is the only Christian group that practiced pacifism/non-violence before the beginning of Anabaptism in 1525. But it was challenging for even them and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which began in England in the mid-17th century, to maintain that practice.

In the U.S., conscientious objection to military service was not recognized as valid until World War II. (See my May 20, 2017, blog post about conscientious objectors).

Diana Butler Bass is a well-known and respected public theologian. She posts meaningful articles on Substack twice a week. Her November 11 post was the second one this year about Martin. I decided to write about him after reading “The Warrior Ethos,” her September 30 post about Martin (see here).

The latter was largely Bass’s criticism of Pete Hegseth, who from 2001 to 2021 served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. On January 24, Hegseth (b. 1980) was confirmed as a member of the POTUS’s Cabinet. On an official U.S. government website, he is now identified as “the secretary of war.”

In late September, Hegseth called a surprise meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, to deliver a strong speech to several hundred top military generals and admirals about reviving “the warrior spirit” or “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military.

As Bass wrote, “Hegseth is probably the most openly Christian nationalist true believer in the entire Trump administration …. He always brings Jesus to the war party. Because, of course, in the theology of Christian nationalism Jesus is a Warrior.” In contrast, Bass goes on to state,

No early Christian — not a single church leader, pastor, or theologian —
in those first decades after Jesus lived, taught, died, and rose again would have ever considered their God to be a warrior.

Except in the most metaphorical sense of being a warrior for Love.

So, whose example and words do we choose?—those of Martin of Tours or of the current U.S. Secretary of War? For those who are true followers of Jesus, it seems like a “no-brainer.” What do you think?

Why are Teenage Girls “Not Okay”?

Soon after posting my February 16 blog article in which I referred to Diana Butler Bass, I read Bass’s latest newsletter on her Substack blog called The Cottage (which has 32,000 subscribers!) It was partly about teenage girls, which hit home with me. 

Image from Bass's newsletter

Natalie, my youngest granddaughter, turned 13 that very day. I first mentioned her in the blog post I made on February 19, 2010, three days after her birth, and I will probably refer to that article again in an upcoming blog post.

Naomi, Natalie’s sister, is celebrating her 19^th birthday today, so the youngest two of my five granddaughters are both teenagers. They have been, and are, a great delight to June and me. 

“The Girls Are Not Okay” is the title of Bass’s newsletter (click here to read it). Bass was not writing about all girls, and I am deeply grateful that she was not writing about girls such as my granddaughters, who both seem to be well-adjusted young women. But sadly, many girls are “not okay.”

Bass’s article begins by referring to the new study of USAmerica’s teens released by the Center for Disease Control’s Youth Rick Behavior Survey (YRBS), and she reports the findings were “stark and frightening.” She writes that “the crisis is particularly urgent among teenage girls.”*

The YRBS report states that according to the data, “teen girls are confronting the highest levels of sexual violence, sadness, and hopelessness they have ever reported to YRBS.” (A summary of the YRBS report can be found here.)

Interestingly, Bass seeks to link the malaise of teenage girls to an aspect of contemporary society that would not at first glance be considered a cause of that dis-ease.

“White Christian Nationalism” is part of the problem, according to Bass. She refers to “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” a study released by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on February 8 (see here).

That study indicates that White Christian Nationalists, by and large, “believe women must submit to men” and that “society is diminished when women have more opportunities to work outside of the home.” These ideas reflect a belief in “complementarianism,” a widely held view by evangelical Christians.

Bass (who celebrated her 64^th birthday last Sunday) states, “There is little doubt among historians that second wave feminism of the 1970s improved the lives of women and girls in terms of education, health, work, finances, and overall equality.”

She mentions the significance of the 1974 book All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, authored by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty. As Bass says, that book “caused a sensation in evangelical churches and theological circles.”

June and I, along with many other progressive evangelicals, read that book with much appreciation during the mid-1970s. But a decade later, conservative evangelical opposition had grown to the extent that an organization to oppose the emphasis on gender equality was formed.

That organization called The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was founded in 1987.** That group was the result of anti-equality backlash, and it forwarded the position of “complementarianism.”

While, of course, there are several other important reasons why so many teenage girls are not okay today, I think that Bass is right in declaring that “evangelical theology” with its emphasis on complementarianism for a generation now “bears a significant part of the blame.”

As Bass gladly notes, formerly prominent Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader Russell Moore ten days ago now posted “a somewhat repentant editorial against complementarianism” (see here).

Unfortunately, though, the SBC continues to support male supremacy. Just two days ago Religious News Service reported that “Southern Baptists oust Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church for naming a female pastor.” That’s a bad sign for teenage girls in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

 
Strong egalitarian homes with nurturing parents is one of the most important keys to rearing teenage girls who are okay. I am truly grateful that my teenage granddaughters have such a home—and have also been strongly supported by their egalitarian American and Japanese grandmothers.

_____

* Not long after reading Bass’s newsletter, I read “American teens are unwell because American society is unwell,” a Feb. 15 opinion piece on The Washington Post website. It was directly related to the same YRBS report. And then on the morning of Feb. 17, the WaPo posted “The crisis in American girlhood,” another opinion piece regarding the same report.

** In “Fed Up With Fundamentalism’s View of Women,” the eighth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), I wrote about the founding and influence of this organization among “fundamentalists” (see pp. 240~2). 

Considering Circles

Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks by public theologian Diana Butler Bass is an impressive book that I finished reading a few months ago.* The last chapter is “Circles of Gratitude,” and I have been thinking, off and on, about circles ever since. 

Western society emphasizes pyramids more than circles. Bass (b. 1959) makes this point as she reflects on how she was reprimanded for arranging a classroom in a circle. She then realized, “Circles can be upsetting.” She goes on to say,

For many generations, the structure of Western culture imprinted on our imaginations was that of rows, lines, and pyramids. We were taught that everything was ordered from top to bottom, in vertical structures of family, social institutions, and politics by role, gender, and race (p. 174).

Other societies/traditions are different. For example, in Zen Buddhism what is called the enso circle (pictured above) is considered paradigmatic (see here). At the beginning of “Circles of Gratitude,” Bass cites Tanahashi Kazuaki (b. 1933), a noted Japanese Zen teacher:

The circle is a reminder that each moment is not just the present, but is inclusive of our gratitude to the past and our responsibility to the future.

Also, as explained on this website, “The circle has always been an important symbol to the Native American. It represents the sun, the moon, the cycles of the seasons, and the cycle of life to death to rebirth.”

There has, of course, been some recognition of the importance of circles in both traditional and contemporary Western culture. Most of us are familiar with the story of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. The round table of that 12th-century tale was a symbol of the equality of the knights.  

Although I’m not sure what it signifies, I was surprised to learn that Apple Park, which was completed about five years ago as the headquarters of Apple Inc., is “a perfect circle.”  

So perhaps there has been some recognition in most cultures that circles can represent ideals such as completeness, harmony, and balance. But, still, in much of the Western world, the hierarchical pyramid is often the dominant diagram of relationships.

Perhaps much of the dysfunction, dissatisfaction, and divisiveness in the U.S. currently is rooted in the pervasiveness of over/under relationships. Maybe a paradigm shift to seeing others in a relationship circle would help solve such problems.

Circles can be either inclusive or exclusive. Recently I was reading through my diary/journal for 1982, considering what I was doing/thinking forty years ago. In June of that year, I spoke at the annual Alumni Reunion of my high school. My talk was titled “How big a circle can you draw?”

Of course, I based part of that talk on Edwin Markham’s well-known, four-line poem “Outwitted”:

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in! **

The following image graphically depicts the difference between the circle of inclusion from not only the circle of exclusion but also from what often occurs not only in segregation but also in integration.

Sociologists have long talked about “in-groups” and “out-groups.” In-groups are homogeneous and tend to exclude those who differ. That is clearly depicted in the exclusion circle. Out-groups might form a segregated circle excluded from the in-group—and if forced to integrate they might still be separated although within the in-group circle.

The inclusion circle, though, is the ideal, although it presents various challenges. But at some point, we all need to learn that, deep down, there is no “them”; there is only “us.”

Can you, can I, draw a circle large enough to include all of us? May it be so.

_____ 

* Since Bass’s book was published in 1989, I was surprised, but happy, to see in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star that it was one of the bestselling non-fiction books in Kansas City last week.

** My blog post for Oct. 15, 2015, was titled “Becoming Inclusive,” and it began with a reference to Markham and his poem. Here is the link, if you would like to look at that post (again).

 

Have the Fundamentalists Won?

 Most preachers would be pleased if one of their sermons was remembered for 100 days. But Harry Emerson Fosdick preached a sermon 100 years ago that is still remembered today. That sermon delivered on May 21, 1922, was titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”* 

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878~1969) was, in the estimation of Martin Luther King, Jr., “the greatest preacher of the twentieth century.” He was also one of the first vocal opponents of Christian fundamentalism—and was, consequently, a primary target of the fundamentalists.

In 1921, and less than a year before his renowned May 1922 sermon, Fosdick was the guest preacher at missionary conferences in China and in Karuizawa, Japan. It was an eye-opening experience for him.

In The Living of These Days, Fosdick’s autobiography published when he was 78, he wrote:

It was one of the most informing and revealing experiences I ever had. For one thing, I saw fundamentalism for the first time in its full intensity. The missionary community was split wide open. On one side, some of the largest personalities and most intelligent views one could meet anywhere; on the other, such narrowness and obscurantism as seemed downright incredible.

In “Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Fosdick discussed briefly four of what the fundamentalists considered essential (=fundamental) to the Christian religion: the virgin birth of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, and Jesus’ literal second coming.

However, while he did not agree with the fundamentalists on those points of doctrine, Fosdick’s main criticism was not their doctrinal beliefs as such but their intolerance for those Christians, such as him, who espoused alternative interpretations of Christianity.

He emphasized, “We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian faith clear through in modern terms.”

Fosdick continued, “Now the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship.”

So, this was the pivotal question, “Shall they be allowed to succeed?”

Fosdick’s answer to his question was of course in the negative, and he confidently concluded: “I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed.”

But have the fundamentalists won? This month, various Christian writers have reflected on Fosdick’s 100-year-old sermon, and some have concluded that, indeed, the fundamentalists have won.

For example, James Lupfer, a Florida-based journalist, wrote, “100 years later, Fosdick’s question, ‘Shall the fundamentalists win?’ still echoes.” He concludes in that May 20 article published by Religion News Service, “The answer, improbable at the time, was, ‘Yes, they shall.’”

More importantly, Diana Butler Bass (b. 1959, ten years before Fosdick’s death), a trustworthy American historian of Christianity, posted four essays between April 29 and May 20 regarding Fosdick’s 5/1922 sermon.

The subtitle of the first one is, “A Century After the Question: They Have.”

Near the end of Bass’s fourth essay, she quotes Fosdick’s confident assertion about the fundamentalists failing and then concludes, “I confess that I do not share his certainty. I do not know if they will ultimately win, but they are—right now—stronger than ever.”

But I disagree with Lupfer and Bass and others who agree with them regarding the fundamentalists having won.

True, fundamentalists, now generally known by the label “conservative evangelicals,” have gained and wielded considerable political power and have been victorious in various culture war battles since 1980, but that is not what Fosdick was dealing with in his sermon.

(And it can be credibly argued that the Republican Party has “won” by using conservative evangelicals far more than the latter have “won” by their influence upon the GOP.)

Certainly, conservative evangelicals have “won” in some Christian denominations—such as the Southern Baptist Convention, which did succeed in dispelling moderates/progressives (such as I).

Most of the respected and influential Christian spokespersons cited in public media, though, are not conservative evangelicals (=fundamentalists). The latter are most often described somewhat disdainfully.

To paraphrase Fosdick, “I do not believe for one moment that the fundamentalists have succeeded.”

_____

* Fosdick’s sermon in its entirety can be found at this website.

** For further consideration of this topic, I recommend the detailed essay “Did the Fundamentalists Win?” posted on May 17 by my friend Brian Kaylor and his colleague Beau Underwood. And for more about Fosdick and Riverside Church (where he was pastor from 1925~45), see my 10/5/15 blog post.

A Fourth Great Awakening?

Diana Butler Bass is a perceptive religious scholar and a good writer. Her newest book is “Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening” (2012), and it is an interesting read.

Dr. Bass (b. 1959) was a college professor for a number of years before becoming an independent scholar and author. Her earlier books include these highly regarded works: “A People's History of Christianity” (2009), “Christianity for the Rest of Us” (2006), and “Strength for the Journey” (2002).

On June 6-8, Bass will be the leader of a church-wide adult retreat at Second Baptist Church here in Liberty, and will preach there on Sunday morning. She will also be speaking (dialoguing) at Central Baptist Theological Seminary at a gathering that begins at 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 7.

I finished reading Bass’s “Christianity After Religion” in January and am looking forward to meeting her and hearing her speak next month. I will also be leading a discussion of this book at Rainbow Mennonite Church on the five Sundays in June.

There are clear indications that the Christian religion is in a state of decline in the United States—and in the Western world in general. (The situation is much different in Asia and especially in Africa.)

This decline is depicted by Bass, who is a religious historian and an astute observer of American Christianity. Happily, she is also hopeful for the future. In fact she writes about a fourth “awakening” in her new book.

“The Great Awakening” is the name historians of American Christianity generally use to describe a period in the 18^th century, between 1730 and 1760. New England clergyman Jonathan Edwards (about whom I wrote last October) and Englishman George Whitfield were the main leaders of that significant movement.

A similar movement began around the turn of the nineteenth century and lasted for about 30 years. It came to be called the Second Great Awakening. Revivalist Charles G. Finney was one of the most prominent leaders of that movement.

While not as widely talked about, sometimes mention is made of a Third Great Awakening from about 1890 to 1920. William McLoughlin writes about that in his book “Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform” (1978). The Social Gospel movement, led by Walter Rauschenbusch, was prominent in that “awakening.”

Bass also cites McLoughlin: “Since 1960, Americans have been in the midst of their Fourth Great Awakening” (p. 223). The third, and last, part of her book is titled simply “Awakening,” and she makes much out of the new movement of God’s Spirit.

“The 1960s and 1970s were a spiritual hothouse, a veritable garden of awakening, as people planted seeds of new forms of Christian belief and practice,” she writes.

Although McLoughlin, writing in 1978, speculated that the Fourth Great Awakening would perhaps end around 1990, Bass sees its influence as prominently impacting the present time.

So in 2012 she avers, “I believe that the United States (and not only the United States) is caught up in the throes of a spiritual awakening, a period of sustained religious and political transformation.”

“This transformation,” Bass goes on to say, “is what some hope will be a ‘Great Turning’ toward a global community based on shared human connection, dedicated to the care of our planet, committed to justice and equality, that seeks to raise hundreds of millions from poverty, violence, and oppression” (pp. 5-6).

If this is, indeed, the Fourth Great Awakening, it is quite different from especially the first two, for it is not particularly good news for organized religion.

What Ever Happened to Southern Baptists?

"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” is a highly acclaimed 1962 black-and-white movie. June and I enjoyed watching that psychological thriller for the first time last Friday evening.

Baby Jane was an adorable vaudeville performer in 1917 as the movie begins, and after a few scenes in 1935 most of the movie takes place in the present (1961) when the former Baby Jane Hudson has become an ugly villain, impressively portrayed by Bette Davis.

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not comparing the evil Jane Hudson, or the movie, to Southern Baptists in most ways. But there are, unfortunately, some similarities.

During much of my lifetime, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was a vibrant, generally attractive, growing denomination. Figured as the percentage of the total U.S. population, SBC membership grew by more than 30% from 1950 to 1980.

But things began to change, and the percentage of SBs decreased by nearly 15% from 1990 to 2010. There were multiple reasons, but during that time the SBC, like Baby Jane, had turned rather ugly under the leadership of fundamentalist-leaning leaders.

Consequently, from 1950 to 2010 I personally changed from being a proud (in the good sense of that word) Southern Baptist, to a wary SB, then to an embarrassed SB (as I wrote about in my book “Fed Up with Fundamentalism”), and finally to being a former SB.

The Southern Baptist Convention has long been the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. According to the 2012 "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches," the SBC has 16.2 million members, more than twice the number of the second place United Methodist Church with 7.8 million.

And yet a recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that Baptists are departing from the religious traditions of their childhood faster than any other Protestant group.”

LifeWay Research, a polling firm tied to the SBC, even projects that the church’s membership will fall by half, to 8.5 million by 2050, returning to the level of the mid-1950s.

Decline in membership, of course, is not only a Southern Baptist phenomenon. Diana Butler Bass’s book Christianity after Religion (2012) documents the notable decline of membership in most U.S. Protestant denominations. But the decline in the SBC is among the most pronounced.

There are several possible reasons for the downward trend. Let me suggest just a few:

·   An inability, or lack of desire, to keep up with the changing mindset of the times. Like the aging Jane Hudson, many SBC churches and institutions seem to want to live in the heyday of the past (the 1950s) rather than seeking to cope with the new realities of a new generation.

·   A retroactive stance toward women. Recently Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite posted a provocative article, “Five Christian theologies scarier than Halloween.” One of the five: “women should 'submit’”—such as was called for in the Baptist Faith and Message as amended in 1998.

·   A marked alignment with conservative Republicans. In contrast to Jimmy Carter, the most famous SB politician of the 1970s, we now have Sen. Ted Cruz at the leading SB in Washington. In addition to Sen. Cruz, all five of the Southern Baptist U.S. Representatives who took office in January are conservative Republicans who last month voted against the bill to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling. No wonder many people look askance at SBs!

Baby Jane couldn’t restore her previous attractiveness. But such would be possible for Southern Baptists, and I hope that it will happen—and pray it will happen long before the end of the projected 50-year decline.