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Labor in the Shadow of Sabbath

A Labor Day sermon

Text: Ephesians 4:25-32

by Ken Sehested

         This weekend we mark another Labor Day holiday, both here and in Canada (excepting Quebec). At least 80 other countries celebrate the first of May as a workers’ holiday. Jamaica has the most interesting Labor Day tradition. For most of its colonial history the country observed “Empire Day” on 24 May in honor of British Queen Victoria’s birthday and her emancipation of slaves in 1938. But in 1961 Empire Day was supplanted by "Labour Day" on 23 May, to commemorate the 1938 labor rebellion which led to independence. And the day’s focus is not on picnics, retail sales and car racing but on community service projects.

         As with so many of our holidays, we have mostly forgotten the severe conflict which provides the historical context. In the latter decades of the 19th century industrialization was hitting its stride in the developing world. The technology of commerce was producing massive amounts of profit and a widening gaps between rich and poor. When recounting the history of the holiday, many Labor Day histories point to a massive march by sweatshop workers in New York City in 1882, demanding a shortening of the 12-14 hour workday. The workers’ chant was "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest. Eight hours for what we will."

         U.S. President Grover Cleveland and the U.S. Congress were so concerned about the rising tide of discontent by working people that within days of the march a law recognizing Labor Day was approved.

         The demand for an 8-hour workday was considered radical and outrageously unreasonable by politicians and industrial leaders alike. Most of us generally think of full-time employment as a 40-hour week. It’s wasn’t that way until very recently.

         Some of you know about the Haymarket Square riot in Chicago in 1886, which prompted similar strikes around the world, and the Pullman strike in 1894. A lot of strikers were killed, and the U.S. Army was deployed, in these and other incidents. It took a while, but in 1992 the city of Chicago erected a memorial to the “Haymarket Martyrs.”

         Several of the websites I researched don’t mention any of these conflicts. And again our memories are scrubbed of those who refused to be silent in the face of oppression. Both Hebrew and Christian Scripture repeatedly testify that the worst thing that can happen to us is that our memories are scrubbed of the bloodied timbers that mark the way to where we are. In the words of that famous hymn by James Weldon Johnson:

         God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
         Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
         Thou who has by Thy might
         Led us into the light,
         Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
         Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
         Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

         Forgetting God always occurs when we forget the struggles of the past. For ours is a God that speaks and acts when slaves cry out.

         Unfortunately, the church doesn’t officially mark Labor Day in its calendar of special observances. I had to ignore the recommended lectionary texts for this Sunday in order to speak about Labor Day. Which I think is unfortunate. If someone put me in charge, I’d add one season to the liturgical calendar. Starting with Labor Day in early September and ending with Thanksgiving. Maybe call it Laborfest. The theme: the repentant movement from mammon to manna, the former identified by Jesus as the competitor to devotion to God (“you cannot serve God and mammon,” Matthew 6:24), the latter recalling the sustenance provided the Hebrew slaves during their wilderness journey (freely given to all, regardless of merit, and specifically designed to prevent hoarding).

         [The obvious downside to this idea: Given the country-specific calendar distinctives of these holidays, this would only work in the US.]

         Why would I go messing with liturgical history? For the simple reason that no issue receives more attention in the Bible than economic justice. More than 2,000 specific texts, 1 out of ten in the synoptic Gospels. For comparison, the Bible has 6 texts that mention same-sex relations, and most if not all of those are about rape or child abuse.

         In one short sentence (Matthew 6:24), Jesus said the opposite of serving God is not serving the Devil. The opposite of serving God is serving mammon, a common Aramaic word for the power and influence that comes with wealth.

         It’s unfortunate that the one activity which marks the better part of every day of our lives—our work (and that includes the study done by students)—has been segregated off from that which is considered holy. Even the word “holyday,” which is when most folk get to abandon their employment, literally means “holy day,” sacred. At least by implication, all others days, when we work, are judged to be profane.

         But this is not how our creation story was framed. In Genesis God is busy as a bee, creating dry land, and sun and moon and stars, and birds of the air and four-legged creatures of the ground, and plants of every kind, and then human beings. It must have been an exhausting six days. And, as we are prone to tell it now, God had to take a nap, a day off, a leisure vacation, a leave of absence. Time to forget about the office, turn off the cell phone, ignore your e-mail.

         God, like Stella, had to get her groove back.

         Several years ago I served on the board of a new retreat center that was forming, particularly to serve the needs of clergy. One of the first tasks, of course, is to come up with a mission statement. Following the first days of our conversation, I wrote some reflections to share with others on the board, and this is part of what I wrote:

         “If the purpose of the Sabbath House is simply to provide time and space to allow clergy to recuperate from the wearying effects of congregational leadership, then we will have failed in our mission. Even worse, we will have become complicit in a pattern of institutional pathology: binding up broken spirits and exhausted imaginations in order to send them back into a system ordained for failure (or vocational compromise). The exorbitant demands placed on congregational leaders (clergy and laity alike)—much like the pressures exerted on “nuclear families” in modern Western culture—are relentlessly out of balance. The mission of the Sabbath House must be more than allowing clergy an escape to catch up on sleep and on reading. A vision of sabbath-keeping must be articulated as a critique of accepted patterns of congregational life.”

         The biblical story is different from how it’s usually told. Sabbath is not kept in isolation from labor. God didn’t need to take a cruise to recover from exhaustion. Rather, the Sabbath was the point of orientation for all labor. When it is good, and fruitful, and satisfying, labor is always done in the shadow of Sabbath.

         I like the way activist Emma Goldman says it: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

         I also love the James Openheim poem and subsequent song “Bread and Roses,” which emanated out of a 1912 women’s strike by textile workers in Massachusetts:

         As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
         The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
         No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
         But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.
         Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
         Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.

         God didn’t need a day at the beach to forget about creation’s labor. God brought creation to the beach and said, “This is magnificent!”

         Today’s text from the Apostle’s epistle to the church at Ephesus is basically a series of proverbs offered to assist the congregation in transforming the conflict that is bound to arise anytime humans attempt to live together. Be truthful and shun lies, he said. “Be angry, but sin not”—that’s one of my favorites, because so often in the church just being angry by itself is considered a form of weakness, when in fact the capacity for anger at the state of the world is the one way we know we’re still paying attention. Put away wrath and wrangling “with malice”—wrath and wrangling are a normal part of life together, but it must be done without malice. Forgive, Paul writes, because you have been forgiven—reminding us that our capacity to forgive others is dependent on our willingness to be forgiven by God.

         But my favorite of all these proverbs is v. 28: “Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands.” If you only read the first half of that verse, you’d think it comes from the Department of Justice, or the Better Business Bureau. But the text continues: honest work is done not in order to escape prosecution; not because it’s good citizenship; honest work is done “so as to have something to share with the needy.” Notice again the connection between honoring God and repairing the economy.

         So, what are we to do with all this? Some things like we’ve already done: You may not know that our congregation was the first organization of any kind in Asheville that was formally certified as a “Living Wage” provider. (There are now 150 of them, most of them businesses, organized by the Just Economics organization, in which a number of our members are involved and to which we’ve provided mission grants.)

         We do things like supporting immigrants—our members played a key role in the “Feast of the Holy Innocents” observance last year that highlights the plight of undocumented workers.

         There are also things that all of us can do in our everyday lives. A couple years ago I circulated a list of ideas called ‘Kid-friendly way to celebrate Labor Day.”

         A simple way to connect with hourly-wage earners who grace our lives (often in unacknowledged ways) is a simple act of thank-you. So consider having your kids (adults can do this, too!) do one of the following in the coming week:

         On the night you put out your trashcan, use a poster board to write “Thanks for your work! Happy Labor Day” in large letters. Tape it to your garbage can (so the sanitation truck driver can see it), or attach it to a wooden stake, putting it next to your garbage can.

         Write a similar note to your mail carrier and tape it to your mailbox. Do a homemade card and offer it to a grocery store clerk where you shop; or to a teacher; or drop it off at your local library or police or fire station.

         Be creative. You may have other ideas to say thank-you to the countless number of people we often take for granted.

         In a very few minutes time I bet you could come up with dozens of other ways to say thank-you all year round.

         Let me leave you with my most-favorite poem, which speaks of the intimate connection of the bounty of labor and the blessing of sabbath. This is how we learn to labor in the shadow of sabbath:

         Whatever is foreseen in joy
         Must be lived out from day to day.
         Vision held open in the dark
         By our ten thousand days of work.
         Harvest will fill the barn; for that
         The hand must ache,
         The face must sweat.

         And yet no leaf or grain is filled
         By work of ours; the field is tilled
         And left to grace.
         That we may reap,
         Great work is done
         While we’re asleep.

         When we work well,
         A Sabbath mood
         Rests on our day and finds it good.

         Wendell Berry, from Sabbaths, North Point Press, 1987

#  #  #

Circle of Mercy
5 September 2010

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

The Summer of Betrayal

A roundup of things best forgotten

by Abigail Hastings

Maybe it’s the extra week we were gifted with this summer—what with Memorial Day falling on the first possible Monday and Labor Day on the latest possible one, giving us 15 weeks of “cultural summer” instead of 14 (also noting that extra “leap second” we got to the world clock in June). Or maybe there was something in the contaminated water or fire-scorched air. The summer of 2015 is one for the history books, especially if you’re a fan of upside down world.

I’m talking about things not being as they seem and how that leaves us feeling a bit unmoored, sending us to reevaluate what we thought was solid and trustworthy. Of course I’m not talking about politicians—they long ago took us on circuitous paths of duplicity (setting the scene for the “anti-politician” candidates of this summer’s dog days). Few should be very surprised at embezzling FIFA officials, stock market vagaries, or that prisoners can escape maximum security prisons once in a blue moon (another rare event we had this summer). We can’t even feel very betrayed by the tumultuous weather—firestorms, floods, mudslides. That’s what Mother Nature does and if anything, she should feel betrayed by us in what shaped up to be the warmest year-to-date (well, just in the past 4,000 years, to be fair).

We lost two newsmen this summer—(officially) in June of NBC’s Brian Williams and then in August, of Jon Stewart, named “the most trusted newsman” according to one poll. Williams, who garnered a dozen Emmys and a Peabody award while anchoring the most-watched evening news program, was described by Walter Cronkite as a "‘fastidious newsman’ who brought credit to the television news reporting profession.” I mean, if you can’t trust Uncle Walter’s opinion, who can you trust?

And there’s the rub… who can you trust? It’s a gut buster and here’s why: it’s primal. Someone comes into your ancient fire circle and you’ve got to size them up pretty fast. Friend or foe? Your life may depend upon it. In the beginning, you’ve only got to go on what they say… and then hold tight for what they do.

That’s what became so confusing about Bill Cosby—not only an upright citizen with a doctorate in and passion for education, but the guy who made us laugh and gave us a critically historic sitcom. When he called young African Americans “knuckleheads” for the way they talked and slung their pants, no one would have suspected that his moral compass had been off-course for decades.

That may be in part because we suffer from “normal guy” profiling, fodder of TV reporters with a “perp’s” neighbor in what is the all-too familiar “in-cue” (first four words of the on-air interview): “He seemed so normal…” 

We make assumptions about people who seem to be leading “normal” lives, or even stellar lives. Or someone who seems so benign—like Jared Fogle, the smiling, slenderized Subway sandwich pitchman who is headed for prison for statutory rape and harboring child pornography.

Far from normal, unless you count birthing your own township as normal, the eldest boy in what seemed to be the squeakiest clean family compound on the block—Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting—admitted to inappropriate sexual tendencies that led to molestation of his sisters, addiction to pornography, and accounts on the now-famously-hacked infidelity website, Ashley Madison. (There’s something well-scripted about Ashley Madison’s betrayers getting betrayed—kind of a heaping dose of double cross karma for them and that shadowy company.) 

Fundamentalism didn’t save the Duggar boy—although finding Jesus has been credited with saving the 4 times married, “who’s-marriageable” expert, Kim Davis, country clerk in Kentucky who knows every Adam needs an Eve, created alongside her or fashioned from his rib, depending on which part of the Genesis you want to be literally true.

Speaking of the Bible, you’d be hard pressed to find many stories in there that don’t involve betrayal of some sort—but it seems that David went out of his way to keep it regularly in the storyline. The House of David (prominently featured in Judeo-Christian lineage) was also pretty much a House of Cards. Did people feel betrayed when their wunderkind succumbed to sexual desire that resulted in adultery and murder? Did people say, “geez, he was such a good smiter. I thought he was such a good guy.” Did they notice how David arranged for Bathsheba’s husband to be killed simply by having Uriah’s men betray him by retreating in battle, leaving him high and dry (and dead)?

Sex trips a lot of people up—actually most people if statistics on infidelity are accurate. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of Doctor Zhivago, the movie that set aside a good portion of the Russian revolution to focus on the (Egyptian-Lebanese playing a Russian) actor Omar Sharif’s two loves in the film, one his wife, one not so much. Love triumphs in various ways amid the frozen beeswax ice castles of the film—yes, beeswax. They had to shoot the movie in Spain where snow is scarce, so bee’s labor to the rescue.  But we expect a certain amount of illusion in movies—what we don’t expect is for movies themselves to be a dangerous place.

Maybe we thought there might be something related to people being murdered at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, linking a violent act to this fairly violent take on the Batman story. But for two people to be shot and killed during the screening of Trainwreck­—a comedy for chrissake—it seeped into boundaries we thought we had negotiated in a civil society. Not a comparison by a long shot, but for some reason, I thought if my purse was going to be stolen in a record store, as it was many years ago, it would be in the Rock and Roll section, not the Classical. But that’s how we devise our boundaries—this route should be ok, that one isn’t. This side of town is, never go to the other one.

Our minds click with that referent, often implying racial divides, literal and societal, and the deep woundedness that continues to characterize us. And here’s where two betrayals converged in the most horrific way this summer: in prayer, in church, in accepting the other, only to be betrayed by the other. No place is safe, no people are safe when hate is incarnate and weapons within easy reach. But it was just one more tragic addition to what is becoming our reckoning on racial bias. With the outward signs of bigotry eroding over the past 50 years, we are left to come to terms with the covert ones. Like the tide going out to sea, we’re confronted with all that has been underneath there all along—police betrayals (how many black lives were lost unjustly in pre-camera days?); incarceration of people who were framed, or evidence tampered with; or the stark reminder with the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that black lives and the poor didn’t matter any more in that epic disaster than they do any other day.

We are wading into deeper waters here than we have before. Note our confusion about how to even talk about race—the summer started with the buzz about Rachel Dolezal electing to be black, as if that were as easy as changing one’s hair color (yeah, she did that too). It makes you think of this exchange from the groundbreaking 1960s sitcom, “Julia,” in which Diahann Carroll applies to be a nurse with Lloyd Nolan over the phone:

Julia Baker: Did they tell you I'm colored?
Dr. Chegley: What color are you?
Julia Baker: Wh-hy, I'm Negro.
Dr. Chegley: Have you always been a Negro, or are you just trying to be fashionable?

If there are blurred lines anywhere, it’s a lot more on race than in other places—but we’re not really ready to talk about that. A lot of people would be surprised to know whose blood is really flowing in their veins and in their past. But that suggests an honest conversation about how we got to the divisions we’ve inherited—on whose backs, and on whose sexual betrayals (particularly abhorrent given the Bible-thumping pietism of those serial slave master rapists).

When I had my son, my young niece asked my sister what color he was. “You mean his hair?” She pointed to her arm and said, “no, I mean, what color?” What an interesting world that would be, where skin color was just another thing to note, like eye or hair color. But of course we’re talking so much more than surface things, even if Martin Luther King did urge us toward character and not skin tone. With race in America today, we’re into the complexities of culture, tradition, social status and finally, some kind of accounting for what happened and what could happen to turn round right (or at least, righter). And some in the African American community, understandably, do not care about conversations. Why do they have to instruct us on how to be simply humane and fair? (Has something to do with ears to hear, eyes to see, with our white brethren — but maybe we could just start with prison reform and level the playing field a bit while dreaming up the next thing to rectify.)

As unthinkable as the Emanuel AME Church shooting was, I can’t help but think that it opens a kairotic moment that we dare not miss. I didn’t know what the tipping point would be for the Confederate flag’s demise (at least in government usage)—I assumed a few more white folks would have to go to Judgment Day before there was hope of getting these insults out of view. And speaking of insults, how cruel of the flag defenders to betray the intent of the flag’s designer, who was quite clear about what he hoped it would be remembered for: “As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism.” (William T. Thompson, May 4, 1863). Ok, sure, call it about heritage if you want to—just be clear about what heritage that is.

I didn’t really intend to overwhelm you with summer betrayals—I haven’t even mentioned the dangers of falling balconies or stadium plunges, other places you thought were safe. Or someone you thought of as a guy’s guy, Olympian athlete and all, who’s now sporting Versace couture dresses and pearls. Or Atticus Finch support groups. Or the fact that gun violence might show up not just in the news but on the news as it’s being reported, live, right there along with your breakfast cereal.

A long time ago (at the beginning of this post), I wrote “a roundup of things best forgotten.” Let me be clear: I’m referring to something very specific here. We should never forget the lives lost or (crucially) the way they were lost. And we should keep a little questioning voice inside us when we buy an image whole cloth, forgetting that people are always more complex than we think they are. But we are called upon to be resilient, even upon betrayal. What could be more poignant than the shortest of questions, et tu? or as Malcolm X put it, “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.” 

We can’t conceive of things not being, to some extent, what we think they are. I’m still a little flummoxed that bacteria grows on bars of soap (and not the good kind of bacteria). I mean, c’mon, on soap?

It’s paralyzing not to trust that this elevator will go where it’s supposed to, that this person will deal honestly with my money, that my friend has got my back instead of planning the best place for the knife. So what I’m suggesting is that while we forge resilience about the inevitable betrayals ahead of us, try to forget that sinking feeling when you first heard the lies, misrepresentations, or tragedies of 2015. Don’t stay in that ground-quake of your being, that sense that you don’t know what’s real. Resist the notion that that’s all the world is—a series of awakenings to harsh truths. Notice instead that for every disappointment or cataclysm, there was an opening for a reaction that surprises. The forgiveness of the Charleston church families, the Germans holding signs saying “Welcome” in Arabic to war-torn refugees. Live in that place even while we swap stories of betrayals that we didn’t see coming, yet will survive together.

Take a page from the Talmud: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

The Summer of 2015 may have asked us to abandon many things we thought we knew—but that is little more than a summer awakening, for there is much work to do, and if you like a little prayer with your politics, you will be well suited for it.

©Abigail Hastings @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

20 August 2015  •  No. 34

Early New Year’s resolution? One year from now, August 2016, marks the centennial of the National Park Service. If you haven’t already (or even if you have), begin planning to spend some time in one of the parks. One resource to get started is the PBS series, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,”  by producer Ken Burns. Go here for more views of spectacular national park photos. (Photo above: Storm in Arches National Park in Utah, Anthony Quintano/Flickr)

Coincidentally, attention to national park history offers the chance to be aware of moral ambiguity in human affairs. Former US President Theodore Roosevelt was arguably our greatest environmental president, not to mention his courageous resistance to corporate wealth’s influence in public affairs. But he was, arguably, our most imperial and racialized president when it came to our nation’s role in global affairs. (Re. the latter, see “The Imperial Cruise: A secret history of empire and war” by James Bradley.) Awareness of this ambiguity is essential for any attempting to mount a morally-high horse.

Invocation.  Listen to Wendell Berry read his short poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.”

Call to worship. Wish we could occasionally start church like this or this. When I read the 2 Samuel 6:14 account of David “dancing before the Lord,” clogging comes to mind.
        Clog dancing (aka “buck” or “flat foot” dancing) is native to my part of the world here in the southern Appalachian mountains, growing from the cultural interactions of Scots-Irish, African Americans (the banjo is an African instrument) and Native Americans. Near to where I live, the Mars Hill College Bailey Mountain Clogs have been national clog champions a couple dozen times. In its origins the dancing was not choreographed or uniformed—individuals or groups improvised a wide array of steps and styles.

Audaciously hopeful news you likely won’t hear about. The Republic of the Marshall Islands, a nation of 70,000 citizens in the north Pacific (about half-way between Hawaii and Australia), has filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice in the Hague and US federal court against nuclear weapon holding countries demanding they comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s requirement of nuclear disarmament. From 1946-1958, the US exploded 67 nuclear weapons in the region. In 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission regarded the Marshall Islands as "by far the most contaminated place in the world.”

Overlooked in the political dust storm kicked up by the nuclear arms deal with Iran is the larger context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, signed by the US and 190 other nations. The treaty’s preamble calls for “the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery . . .”

The Obama administration's 2016 budget calls for a $348 billion investment over the next 10 years to initiate a rebuilding of the entire US nuclear arsenal. The National Defense Panel, appointed by Congress, found that the price tag over 30 years could be as much as a $1 trillion.

¶ “Here’s a wild thought. What if [the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s Article VI] were recited aloud every Sunday in churches and other public spaces across the nation, the way congregants at my parents’ church recited the Apostle’s Creed when I was a boy? Each word, slowly uttered, welled up from the soul. The words were sacred. Isn’t a world free of nuclear weapons—and beyond that, free of war itself—worth believing in?” —Robert C. Koehler, “A Wedge for Nuclear Disarmament”

Call to confession. “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.” —Simone Weil

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto created this mesmerizing visual timeline (14+ minute video), showing each of the 2,053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998. Beautiful and chilling at the same time.

Hymn of praise. “I give thanks to the waves upholding me, hail the great winds urging me on, / Greet the infinite sea before me, sing the sky my sailor’s song. / I was born upon the fathoms; never harbor or port have I known. / The wide universe is the ocean I travel, and the earth is my blue boat home. —Peter Meyer, “Blue Boat Home,” sung to the tune Hyfrydol

More hopeful news. “For one day last week, 78% of Germany's power was generated by renewables like solar and wind. The country is spending €200 billion [US$223 billion] to move away from fossil fuels permanently. . . . Economists predict the renewable industry will create upwards of 80,000 jobs. . . . In 2011, Germany made headlines when the small agricultural village of Wildpoldsried in the state of Bavaria produced 321% more energy than it needed." —Araz Hachadourian, Yes Magazine

Related news, closer to home. “With the amount of wind-generated power in the US reaching record highs and its cost dropping to new lows, two Department of Energy reports released Monday suggest that the renewable energy revolution might be upon us. According to the “2014 Wind Technologies Market Report,” wind saw the most growth of any power source in the U.S. last year with total installed wind power capacity reaching a total of 65.9 gigawatts in 2014—enough capacity to power over 17.5 million homes.” —Lauren McCauley, “With Wind Prices at a Record Low, Is the Clean Energy Revolution Upon Us?

Muslim leaders and scholars from 20 countries made a joint declaration Aug. 18 at a conference in Istanbul, calling on Muslims and all nations worldwide to address climate change. “Our species, though selected to be a caretaker or steward (khalifah) on the earth, has been the cause of such corruption and devastation on it,” the statement says. —SojoNet

Words of assurance. “You have drunk a bitter wine with none to be your comfort. / You who once were left behind will be welcome at love’s table. / You have come by way of sorrow; you have made the long way home; / But the love that waits for you, you will someday come to know.” —Julie Miller, “By Way of Sorrow,”  sung by the Wailin’ Jennys

An aftereffect of the 17 July massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was recovery of a forgotten history: use of the Confederate battle flag in Southern culture was in fact a political response to the modern civil rights movement. Here in North Carolina residents are just now learning that construction of the majority of Confederate monuments in the state—82 out of 98—occurred after 1898, decades after the Civil War when white supremacy campaigns seized power by force and took the vote from black North Carolinians. For stories of a different sort, read Timothy Tyson’s “Commemorating North Carolina’s Anti-Confederate heritage, too.”

Claims that the South is the source of racial (among other) ills is “crude regional stereotypes [that] ignore the deep roots such social ills have in our shared national history and culture.” —Thomas J. Sugrue, “It’s Not Dixie’s Fault”

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Matthew Cooke has produced “Race Baiting 101”  (11 minute video). Essential viewing, summarizing several hundred years of history and presented in a visually engaging way.

¶ “Almost everything [since Barack Obama’s election] has made it clear that in America, the patterns that began in the 17th century are still all-too-much with us, and will be with us, until we figure out what it means . . . [as] Martin King [was] constantly saying to us, ‘America, you must be born again!’" —Vincent Harding, “We Are Creating a New River,” interviewed by Lucas Johnson

Preach it. “A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them—make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.  What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, 'America, you must be born again!'” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Centennial of the lynching of Leo Frank . . . and the struggle over the meaning of freedom. In August 1913 the body of 14-year-old laborer Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta. The company’s Jewish-American superintendent, Leo Frank, was eventually convicted of the crime and sentenced to death by hanging. Two years later a last-minute commutation of the sentence to life imprisonment sent Frank to a prison farm. On the night of 16 August 1915 a group of men from Marietta, Georgia (Phagan’s hometown), abducted Frank and drove him to Marietta for a public lynching. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s “Centennial of the lynching of Leo Frank.” )

In case you missed it: Richard Blanco, son of Cuban immigrants to the US, was asked to write and deliver a poem on the occasion of the US Embassy’s reopening in Havana, Cuba, Friday 14 2015. Listen to his performance of “We All Belong to the Sea Between Us.”

A CBS News poll the week after Obama’s 17 December 2014 announcement about reestablishing relations with Cuba revealed that 77% of US citizens that the ban on travel to Cuba should be lifted. That result was confirmed days later by a Washington Post-ABC News poll showing 74% support, including 64% of Republicans.

Photo at right by Stan Dotson, of a bridge over the Rio San Juan which empties into the Bay of Matanzas on Cuba’s north shore almost due south of Key West, Florida.

Example of how headline writers subtly shape information. Compare these two coverage headlines of the 14 August ceremony officially opening the US embassy in Havana, Cuba: CNN: “US Flag Raised Above Embassy in Cuba.” MSNBC: “US Flag Flies Over Cuba.”

Lectionary for Sunday next: What is pure religion? (Hint: see James 1:27.)

Just for fun. Hot Scots drum line. Five guys, in kilts, entertaining antics and stunning rhythm (3+minutes).

Call to the table. “God is the tallest woman on earth with curly red hair all the way down to her toes, and she has really yummy, yummy hands." —Kenzie B., age 4

¶ “I think the United States has the potential of being a true superpower on earth. . . . But the measure of it is if we are a champion of peace. And a champion of human rights. And a champion of democracy and freedom. And a champion of environmental quality. And a champion of being generous to people in need. Those are the marks, in my opinion, of a superpower for which we should be striving.” —former US President Jimmy Carter, interview in The Atlantic magazine, 13 July 2015

Altar call. “Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting “Holy sh*t . . . what a ride!” —Hunter S. Thompson

Closing hymn. “Genuine Negro Jig,” Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Art by Ricardo Levins Morales, ©RLM Art Studio

Benediction. “The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Centennial of the lynching of Leo Frank . . . and the struggle over the meaning of freedom”

• “Give wisdom to legislators,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 72

• “By the Word of Truth,” a litany for worship inspired by James 1:17-27

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

Centennial of the lynching of Leo Frank

. . . and the struggle over the meaning of freedom

by Ken Sehested

            In August 1913 the body of 14-year-old laborer Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta. The company’s Jewish-American superintendent, Leo Frank, was eventually convicted of the crime and sentenced to death by hanging. Two years later a last-minute commutation of the sentence to life imprisonment sent Frank to a prison farm. On the night of 16 August 1915 a group of men from Marietta, Georgia (Phagan’s hometown) abducted Frank and drove him to Marietta for a public lynching. Though identities of the lynch mob were well-known—including a former governor, a mayor, and several current and former sheriffs—none were charged. Half of the state’s Jewish population fled following the lynching.

            Three things endure.

            First, the memory of this trauma has been long forgotten, except within the Jewish community.

            Second, the fuel of rage triggering this violence included the exploitation of industrialism’s slave-wagery—this was the economic engine that overwhelmed and eventually displaced the South’s industrial-agrarian slave system. The human rights promise of the Civil War’s slavery abolition morphed into another form of bondage.

            Third, the formerly populist Georgia politician and newspaper editor Thomas Watson, who previously supported African American voter rights and opposed the death penalty, was by now a white supremacist. Two weeks after Frank’s lynching, Watson wrote that "the voice of the people is the voice of God."

            Five other things also endure.

            First, prosperity creates social amnesia. Prosperity has demanded a white washing of our history. It is no accident that we are, as a nation, unfamiliar not just with Leo Frank’s lynching but also with the lynching of thousands of African Americans and others judged unworthy of breath.

            Second, part of the white washing of our history falsely elevates the influence of the abolitionist movement’s bright vision of human rights for all. (Which in no way diminishes the debt we still owe to its courageous profile. As with the modern civil rights movement, its supporters were few until the gains were later consolidated and baptized as social consensus.) While slavery was certainly the cause of the Civil War, that bloody conflict was not primarily between competing visions of human rights. Rather it was about competing requirements of industrial manufacturing’s slave-wage system over against the needs of industrial agrarianism’s slave-labor system.

            Third, in the prophetic words of Bryan Stevenson, slavery didn’t die. It merely evolved, into the current pattern of mass incarceration, especially of African Americans but also of the poor more generally, to create what Michelle Alexander calls “The New Jim Crow.”

            Fourth, Thomas Watson’s statement that “the voice of the people is the voice of God” remains the most challenging theological counterclaim to the consistent witness of Scripture. Critics of religious faith are exactly right in their diagnosis of the human propensity to create gods who look and act like us.

            If prosperity creates social amnesia, it also creates theological stupor. Proper remembrance was and remains the key to those whose ancestors were instructed at Mt. Sinai about the shape of post-Pharaohic freedom—particularly its Sabbath (Jubilee) provisions (see especially Leviticus 25, Deuteronomy 15, and Jesus’ urgent petition for the “year of the Lord’s favor” in Luke 4:19) which included care for the poor, for the migrant, and for the land itself and, at the Last Supper, where Jesus urged his followers to “do this in remembrance of me” in fidelity to his cruciform life.

            The peculiar shape of this kind of freedom is urgently needed in a culture where:

            •Political “freedom” means unlimited contributions to those who aspire to public office, literally creating the best elections money can buy.

            •Economic “freedom” means the “free” market’s justification for penetrating and commandeering the economies of other nations.

            •Military “freedom” rests on the explicit policy warrant of preemptive war.

            •Ecclesial “freedom” in churches means “don’t ask me to make commitments.”

            Chiseled on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency’s lobby is the King James rendition of John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." It stands as cover for that agency’s practice of torture under the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” People of faith cannot escape this massive ideological struggle over the use and abuse of freedom language. We need reminding of the novelist Flannery O’Connor’s paraphrase of that same line: “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you odd.”

            Finally, among the most stubborn facts we must face is this: Because our virtues as a nation are considerable, we tend to think our vices unremarkable. Such is not the case. And if we are to rightly interpret our condition, we must take seriously the whole story. If we long to be exceptional, the only way forward is to read our history rightly, repent our hard-heartedness, and repair the resulting damage. “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

News, views, notes, and quotes

13 August 2015  •  No. 33

Invocation. Through the sorrow and the sadness, Stand by me. / Through the heartache and the madness, Stand by me. / Arms of mercy, sure surrounding, hearts protected, ne’er confounding / Joyful singing, grace astounding, Stand by me. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s original lyrics to the Charles Albert Tindley hymn, “Stand by Me.” )

Diplomatic breakthrough. “It took three years, but all 193 member countries of the United Nations have signed on to a resolution to create new and stronger protections for the world’s wildlife. The resolution calls on countries to beef up courts and law enforcement to protect wildlife, and encourage communities to join the fight against poaching, trafficking, and selling illicit goods taken or made from threatened animals.” —Leigh Henry, of the World Wildlife Fund, told ABC News

World Elephant Day was yesterday, 12 August. “After the killing of Cecil the lion last month, wildlife conservation is back in the spotlight. Ivory trafficking and poaching kill 35,000 African elephants each year. The Wildlife Conservation Society launched the 96 Elephants campaign—the number of animals killed each day—to raise awareness of this issue. About 800,000 African elephants have been killed over the last three decades, according to WCS. Wildlife tracking is the fourth-largest illegal business in the world, according to the European Commission.  More than 60 tons of ivory were seized in 2014 and 44 tons were seized in 2013, according to Reuters. A shipment of ivory worth approximately $6 million was seized in Singapore in May. —Charles Poladian, IBT Pulse

“Baptism” by Ade Bethune, ©Ade Bethune Collection, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN.

Hymn of confession. “There’s blood on my hands / And my lips aren’t clean / Take me to your river / I wanna go / Take me to your river,” Leon Bridges, “River”

They have names. Unarmed black men killed by police since Michael Brown’s death on 9 August 2014. Ezel Ford, 25, Los Angeles, CA 8.11.14 • Akai Gurley, 28, Brooklyn, NY 11.20.14 • Tamir Rice, 12, Cleveland, OH 11.22.14 • Rumain Brisbon, 34, Phoenix, AZ 12.2.14 • Jerame Reid, 36, Bridgeton, NJ 12.30.14 • Artago Damon Howard, 36, Union County, AR 1.8.15 • Jeremy Lett, 28, Tallahassee, FL 2.4.15 • Lavall Hall, 25, Miami Gardens, FL 2.15.15 • Thomas Allen, 34, Wellston, MO 2.28.15 • Charly Leundeu Keunang, 43, Los Angeles, CA 3.1.15 • Maeschylus Vinzant, 37, Aurora, CO 3.6.15 • Tony Robinson, 19, Madison, WI 3.6.15 • Anthony Hill, 27, DeKalb County, GA 3.9.15 • Bobby Gross, 35, Washington, DC 3.12.15 • Brandon Jones, 18, Cleveland, OH 3.19.15 • Eric Harris, 44, Tulsa, OK 4.2.15 • Walter Scott, 50, North Charleston, SC 4.4.15 • Frank Shephard, 41, Houston, TX 4.15.15 • William Chapman, 18, Portsmouth, VA 4.22.15 • David Felix, 24, New York, NY 4.25.15 • Brendon Glenn, 29, Venice, CA 5.5.15 • Kris Jackson, 22, South Lake Tahoe, CA 6.15.15 • Spencer McCain, 41, Owings Milll, MD 6.25.15 • Victor Emanuel Larosa, 23, Jacksonville, FL 7.2.15 • Salvado Ellswood, 36, Plantation, FL 7.12.15 • Albert Joseph Davis, 23, Orlando, FL 7.17.15 • Darrius Stewart, 19, Memphis, TN 7.17.15 • Samuel DuBose, 43, Cincinnati, OH 7.19.15 • Christian Taylor, 19, Arlington, TX 8.7.15

Lawn laws. Recently an Ohio woman, Sarah Baker, refused to mow her lawn and is faced with a $1,000 fine. Here’s what she wrote: “My township calls my lawn ‘a nuisance.’ But I still refuse to mow it.”

Manicure fetish. “Lawns are a big part of contemporary American life. There are somewhere around 40 million acres of lawn in the lower 48, according to a 2005 NASA estimate derived from satellite imaging. ‘Turf grasses, occupying 1.9% of the surface of the continental United States, would be the single largest irrigated crop in the country,’ that study concludes.
        “Other folks are ditching their lawns because of the amount of water they soak up—nine billion gallons of it per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Think of the miracle that is the modern water supply—pristine water pumped hundreds of miles, passed through shiny state-of-the-art filtration systems—we then intentionally dump billions of gallons of that water out on the ground!” —Christopher Ingraham, “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck”

¶ “The grass lawn as a status symbol has its origins in European aristocracy. The very first lawns were grassy fields that surrounded English and French castles. Castle grounds had to be kept clear of trees so that the soldiers protecting them had a clear view of their surroundings. It wouldn’t do for enemies to be able to sneak up on the castle through the forest.” —Emily Upton, “Why we have grass lawns”

¶ “It doesn't need to be this way—there are plenty of low-maintenance alternatives” to high-maintenance grass lawns. —Owen Woodier, “Tired of Pursuing the Perfect Lawn? Consider These Alternatives”

Intercession.  “Down to the River to Pray,” Alison Krauss.

Water facts.
        •Globally, some 840,000 people (more than the population of San Francisco) die each year from a water-related disease. One in nine people in the world lack access to safe water.
        •Nearly 97% of the world’s water is salty or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2% is locked in ice caps and glaciers.
        •Every 20 seconds a child under five years of age dies from waterborne illnesses
        •Diarrhea killed more children in the last decade than all armed conflicts since the World War II.
        •By 2030, nearly half of the world’s population – the majority living in underdeveloped countries – will be living in areas of high water stress.
        •One-third what the world spends on bottled water in one year could pay for projects providing water to everyone in need.
        •85% of the world population lives in the driest half of the planet.
        •American use 5.7 billion gallons per day to flush toilets. If everyone in the US flushed the toilet just one less time per day, we could save a lake full of water about one mile long, one mile wide and four feet deep.
        •US residents use more water than people in other countries do—about 151 gallons per day on average for domestic and municipal purposes. In the United Kingdom, people live a more water-efficient lifestyle, consuming just 31 gallons per day. In Ethiopia, people have to make do with just 3 gallons per person per day.

Bottled water folly.

Left: A boy picks through trash on the Ciliwung River in Jakarta, Indonesia, collecting plastic straws that he can sell in the local plastics market. (Plastic Disclosure Project photo)

        •According to Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, 45% of bottled water brands comes straight from the tap, including the two highest selling brands, Aquafina (from PepsiCo) and Dasani (from Coke).
        •Worldwide, bottled water consumption more than doubled between 1997 and 2005, with US residents tipping back the largest share—about 7.8 billion gallons total, or 26 gallons per person in 2005.
        •Some 1,500 plastic water bottles are dumped in land fills and the ocean every second.
        •Bottled water costs as much as $10 per gallon compared to less than a penny per gallon for tap water.
        •Worldwide, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to make water bottles, but in the U.S., less than 20 percent of these bottles are recycled.
        •The total estimated energy needed to make, transport, and dispose of one bottle of water is equivalent to filling the same bottle one-quarter full of oil.

Cleansing flood. “Take Me to the Water,” Nina Simone.

Hydraulic fracturing. “The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation estimates each well, per frack, will require 2.4 to 7.8 million gallons of water. This translates into roughly 400 to 600 tanker truckloads of liquids to the well, and 200 to 300 tanker truckloads of liquid waste from the well. An eighteen-wheeler weighs up to 80,000 pounds. Day-in, day-out, these trucks destroy roads and bridges, leaving towns to clean up the mess.

Right: “The Next Weapon,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 2010

Water wars? “The world is at war over water. Goldman Sachs describes it as “the petroleum of the next century”. . . . It is often forgotten that the revolution against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad began this way, when youths of the southern Syrian town of Daraa, angry at the local governor’s corrupt allocation of scarce reservoir water, were caught spraying anti-establishment graffiti. Their arrest and torture was the final straw for the tribes from which the youths came.” —James Fergusson, “The World Will Soon be at War Over Water”

A 2012 study by the US director of national security summarized: “During the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will experience water problems shortages, poor water quality, or floods that will risk instability and state failure, increase regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States on important US policy objectives. Water problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth.” —Global Water Security

¶ “Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists." —former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin

The Pacific Institute, which studies issues of water and global security, found a fourfold increase in violent confrontations over water over the last decade. —“Water and Conflict”

Preach it. Faith is “a habitual confidence given us by Another in whose hands we can relax. . . . It means that what causes us to belong is a pattern of desire produced in us by someone we cannot see who is giving us the strength to live in the midst of this world as though death were not. . . . It is the giving to us of this desire which we normally celebrate with that inverted religious rite called baptism.
        “In this rite, we agree to undergo death in advance, so as to live thereafter with death behind us. It is an inverted religious rite, since it is not the crowd which gathers to drown the victim, but the candidate, not frightened of becoming a victim, who walks through the waters of being drowned so as to emerge on the other side into the welcome of those who are already living with death behind them.” —James Alison, Broken Hearts & New Creations: Intimations of a Great Reversal

Lection for Sunday next. Putting on “the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-20) and the martial character of faith. (See the poem at right by Walker Knight.)

¶ “Christianity is about water: ‘Everyone who thirsteth, come ye to the waters.’ It is about baptism, for God’s sake. It’s about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time it’s also holy, and absurd. It’s about surrender, giving in to all those things we can’t control; it’s a willingness to let go of the balance and decorum and get drenched.” —Anne Lamott

Hymn of assurance. Another “Stand By Me” tune, performed by Bruce Springstein and friends. The hit song, first sung in 1961 by Ben E. King, was inspired by the spiritual “Lord Stand By Me” and contains lines drawn from Psalms 46:2-3.

Altar call. "Theologian Willie Jennings says that whiteness is not a skin color but a way of life, a way of seeing the world in which people of color are marginalized. Americans can discuss the structure of whiteness and seek to be instructed about its impact, and those discussions are needed. But the times call for actions that change it, and some of those actions are right at hand.” —The Christian Century editorial

Left: Art by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM

Benediction. May your days be fruitful, your nights restful, and the presence of the Spirit bountiful in all your comings-in and your goings-out but especially in the those times when faithful love, hopeful plans and joyful resolve are met with deceitful spite, painful despair and sorrowful grief. —Ken Sehested, note to a courageous peace activist in Africa

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “Water of Life: A baptismal prayer”

• “Come to the Waters: Litany of Confession and Pardon”

• “Baptism: ‘Infant’ or ‘believers’ style? One congregation’s story of attempting faithfulness to the truth in both historic traditions”

• “Wade in the Water: Baptism as political mandate”

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

 

Baptism: “Infant” or “believer’s” style?

One congregation’s story of attempting faithfulness to the truth in both historic traditions

        When Circle of Mercy Congregation began in 2001, the founding pastors—Joyce Hollyday and Nancy & Ken Sehested—intended affiliation in both the Alliance of Baptists and in the United Church of Christ. This choice required making some kind of decision on the practice of baptism, since the Alliance is faithful to the Radical Reformation's tradition of “believers” baptism, the UCC to Reformed and Catholic tradition of “infant” baptism.

        To prepare for this part of the discussion leading toward the congregation’s bylaws, Ken Sehested wrote the reflection below. The congregation later approved specific language for its policy (posted below, following the initial “policy reflection”).

§ § §

Policy reflection on baptism

      It’s likely that the single-most divergent religious practice in our Circle is our respective confessional traditions’ theology and style of baptism.

      In the history of the church, the vast majority of Christian communities have practiced some form of baptism. (Our Quaker friends are among the exceptions.) It seems clear from the New Testament and from other early Christian documents that baptism was a common (probably required) rite of initiation into membership. The form was likely some kind of immersion in a fresh-water lake or stream; and the actual mechanics probably involved squatting in water, at least up to the chin—but there’s no scholarly consensus on this question.

      But the earliest known manual of church discipline indicated that, if running water was not available, pouring a pitcher of water over the baptismal candidate would be an acceptable substitute.

      Nowadays, most churches practice baptism by “sprinkling” water on the heard ("aspersion"), pouring water over the head or by immersion. Some groups stemming from the 16th-17th century Radical Reformation—generally referred to as the “Anabaptists”—practice baptism by affusion (pouring water over the head of the candidate). Many modern descendants of the Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish, Brethren) still practice this form of baptism.

      More significantly, however, is the question of: Who is invited to the baptismal waters?

      Two traditions prevail: those who believe in baptizing the children (including infants) of baptized members, and those who hold to the “believer's baptism” tradition of baptizing only those who make personal affirmations of faith.

      We are proposing that the Circle of Mercy apply for membership in two denominational bodies, the Alliance of Baptists and the United Church of Christ, which have different baptismal policies. So what are we to do?

      I do not believe we should simply say: “Oh . . . whichever you prefer . . . doesn’t matter.” I have my bias, as a deeply-rooted baptist; and I also believe, on objective grounds, that baptism by immersion is a more powerful religious ritual. But I also believe COM should honor the various forms of baptism we represent (as well as the conscientious objection to this ritual); and that we should develop rhythms and rituals which allow both for “infant baptism” and “believers’ baptism” traditions.

      I think it can be done. My argument rests on an important theological premise.

      In its variant practices with regards to baptism—and in its best moments—the church has always attempted to say two important things about God’s redemptive work in the world.

      First, that the initiative of grace is God’s, not our own. We are not self-sufficient, nor are we self-generated. Those who argue for infant baptism have (in their best moments) emphasized this reality, along with the insistence that faith is communally-formed, that the spiritual formation of individuals involves being nurtured and cultivated in a community. And this cultivation begins with the first breath (if not before).

      This tradition of baptism—at its best—the responsibility of the entire believing community is emphasized.

      Second, for a relationship to thrive it must be mutual. The Radical Reformers’ “believers’ baptism” tradition began not as an argument over how much water was necessary. The argument centered around this controversial assertion: Membership in the State and membership in the Church are not the same thing. Being a citizen is not the same as being a Christian. They argued that, in the New Testament, the decision to “follow” Jesus very often involved a rupture of social life, even a conflict with ruling authorities.

      In this tradition of baptism—at its best—sought to emphasize the personal investment (and risk) in the decision to follow Jesus. Such decisions, they argued, could not be made until one reached an appropriate age of accountability, until one could intentionally and conscientiously make the decision.

      Interestingly enough, both traditions—at their best—also developed supplemental rites and habits to reflect their liturgical opponents’ position. Those practicing infant baptism developed various forms of “confirmation” or “rites of initiation” programs—usually a period of intensive education for children approaching puberty. And those upholding believers’ baptism practiced “baby dedications” as part of worship and developed intensive early childhood religious education programs.

      These variant practices tended to produce distinct institutional styles and patterns.

      Those practicing infant baptism tend to be more fluid and ambiguous about the precise moral content of membership requirements, more indulgent of the foibles of any particular member. (Picture: from the “Godfather” movie, the alternating scenes of mafia boss Michael Corlione, during the baptism of his child in a Roman Catholic Church, at the precise moment when members of his “family” were undertaking a bloody massacre of a rival group.)

      Those practicing believers’ baptism tend to be more disciplined, stricter about the shape of moral character among church members, less indulgent on questions of character. (“We don’t smoke and we don’t chew and we don’t go with the girls who do.”)

      I believe we should develop a baptismal policy—and a general culture which reflects this policy—combining the insights of both these traditions (and, hopefully, minimizing the blind spots of both); that we should allow for both infant and believers’ baptism (as well as for the possibility of conscientious objection to the ritual); and that we should develop a vision of spiritual formation that includes the relevance of communal nurture and the need for personal decision.

      (Here is one scene from my imagination for the coupling of these traditions. It involves doing baptism in the late spring or summer, when streams and lakes are warmer. When a person seeks baptism, or a child is presented for baptism by its family, the entire congregation adjourns for worship at a lake or stream. For a “believers’” style rite, the person and his/her family—biological or self-selected—would wade out in the water for the candidate’s immersion. For the baptism of an infant, the entire family—maybe the entire congregation—could wade out into the water together for the sprinkling rite.)

      Whatever practice/policy finally agree on, it will affect our understanding of membership requirements and communion. More comments for reflection on those matters in subsequent notes.

§ § §

Section 4 – Baptism
(from the Circle of Mercy Congregation's bylaws)

       Our congregation seeks to pioneer a new path in the practice of baptism. Our founding represents the merging of two ancient baptismal traditions within the Christian community: of what are commonly called the traditions of “infant baptism” and “believer’s baptism.” (See the “Reflections on Principles and Policies” document for a fuller discussion.)

        We believe that “loving enemies” was the central message of Jesus and thus the principal character of God. Paul wrote that “while we were still enemies” (Romans 5:10) God sent Jesus as a unilateral, transforming act of disarmament.

        We mirror this conviction in the presentation of children to the community of faith (signified by some as “infant baptism,” by others as “blessing” or “dedication”). In this act, the community enfolds the young, long before they are able to reciprocate. Then, once an age of accountability is reached, those same young ones are challenged to embrace the community of faith and its mission (signified by some in the “confirmation” process, by others as “believer’s baptism”).

        In the first act, the community embraces the child; in the second, the child—upon maturity—embraces the community.

        The awkward part for us is that the church has one dramatic ritual (baptism) but deep and competing biases as to when in a person’s spiritual journey this ritual is to be performed. There is no simple recommendation for our practice.

        The important thing is that we communicate the holistic vision of the paradox that we are both chosen by God and that we choose God: that God is the one who initiates the drama of reconciliation; that the awareness of being embraced by God is essential for the human capacity to embrace God and God’s purposes in creation and redemption; and that all are called to intentionally align themselves with “the God Movement” (Clarence Jordan).

        Therefore, we recognize the legitimacy of both forms. Those desiring to signify the initiation of the faith journey may, after discussion with the pastors, choose the form of their baptism. We urge the parents (or legal guardians) of all children to allow the congregation to baptize, or to bless, their young ones as an indicator of covenant responsibility for the community’s role in the forming of faith.

        While the pastors will serve as overseers, they may involve any others in leadership as seems appropriate.

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News, views, notes, and quotes

6 August 2015  •  No. 32

Invocation. With haggard hearts each voice / imparts this plea for constancy. / Draw near, dispel confounding fear, / with Heaven’s clemency. / Each tongue, by supplicating lung, / invoke bright morning’s rise! / Through darkest night let love’s Delight / condole all mournful eyes. (Continue reading Ken Sehested’s “Draw Near.” )

Marvel in the stunning visual effect of reflective photography, like the one at right by Arty Ali. A search of “reflective photography” yields a number of sites. My favorite is “One Hundred Remarkable Examples of Reflection Photography.”

Call to worship. Watch James Taylor perform “Shed a Little Light” with the (South Carolina) Low Country Singers, to mark, mourn, transpose and transfigure the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

The man who stopped the desert. “Yacouba Sawadogo is an exceptional man—he single-handedly managed to solve a crisis that even scientists and development organizations could not. The simple old farmer’s re-forestation and soil conservation techniques are so effective they’ve helped turn the tide in the fight against the desertification of the harsh lands in northern Burkina Faso.” —Sumitra, “Meet Yacouba Sawadogo—The Man Who Stopped the Desert”

Left, photo by Andrea Borgarello/TerrAfrica.

More remarkable news on the lgbt front. Last week the Boy Scouts of America ended its ban on openly gay adult leaders, though the new policy exempts church-sponsored local units, allowing them to maintain the restriction. The move was supported by 79% of the Scouts’ national executive board, composed of 71 civic, corporate and church leaders.
        •In related news: A New Jersey jury found a gay-to-straight conversion therapy organization guilty of consumer fraud in state Superior Court. Three gay men and two parents sued JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing), saying it made gross misrepresentations in the sale and advertisement of its program and that it constituted an unconscionable commercial practice.
        Also related news: The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a groundbreaking ruling protecting gays and lesbians from employment discrimination.

Prayer of confession. “When I closed my eyes so I would not see, my Lord did trouble me. When I let things stand that should not be, my Lord did trouble me.” —Susan Werner. Listen to the full song, “Did Trouble Me.” This has become a favorite in our congregation's worship.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing: 70th anniversary. It’s hard to say precisely how many people died in atomic bombing of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945). Each city’s population was uncertain, and the bomb blasts and resulting fires incinerated scores of bodies. The figures most widely used are 60,000-80,000 immediate deaths in Hiroshima, with tens of thousands more dying in the months to follow as a result of serious injuries and radiation poisoning. In Nagasaki, at least 40,000 died instantly, another 10,000-20,000 dying from injuries in the following months. Long-term fatality estimates reach as high as a quarter million.

Keep in mind, though, that the earlier firebombing of Tokyo killed an estimated 100,000 people in one night, the deadliest single bombing raid of the war, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“‘My God, how many did we just kill?’ The day Hiroshima was obliterated 70 years ago, through the eyes of the bomber crew – and the few who survived,” an hour-by-hour account of 6 August 1945 of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, by Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie, Daily Mail.

Ranking American military and political leaders’ criticisms of the atomic bombings:
        • “[I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” —Admiral William D. Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff
        • “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” —Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet
        • “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” —Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet
        • The use of the atomic bomb "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . ." Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission)
        •”[H]ad we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials.” —Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations
        • “General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster [speaking of the atomic bomb]. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa.” —Weldon E. Rhoades, General Douglas MacArthur’s pilot
        • “[W]e didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.” —Brigadier Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cable summaries in 1945
        • "[I]t wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." —Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe

Post just-war theory. “There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.” —US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who designed and implemented the massive bombing campaign against cities in Japan.

“Thomas Merton and the Original Child Bomb” is one of a group of what Merton called “anti-poems,” this one spurred by news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This site has a link for a 27+ minute audio rendition, beginning with the original news broadcast of the bombing of Hiroshima by President Harry Truman, along with several pieces of music. A remarkable listening experience. Consider using it as a guided meditation.

Left: Atomic bomb-defaced angel sculpture at the Urakami (Roman Catholic) Cathedral, Nagasaki, Japan. The Cathedral, filled with worshipers at the time, was near ground zero.

Censoring film of atomic bomb’s effect. “In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan sixty-six years ago this week . . . the United States engaged in the airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. . . . The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for twenty-five years.
        “’I always had the sense that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb,’ said  Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the US military film-makers in 1946. ‘I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those [film] images out. . . . They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done—at a time they were planning on more bomb tests.’” —Greg Mitchell, “The Great Hiroshima Cover-up: How the US hid shocking footage for decades”

Make time for these four brief profiles by Dan Buttry on “Read the Spirit” site: On the Korean slave laborers who were killed in Hiroshima; Japeses painters Iri and Toshi Maruki, who created 15 wall-sized paintings of the Hiroshima aftermath; US Army Air Corps Chaplain George Zabelka, whose parishioners included the crews of Enola Gay and Bock’s Car, the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and Sadako Sasaki and the “peace crane” story

Right: "Sadaku and the Thousand Cranes" sculpture by Daryl Smith, Seattle, Washington.

The US has 18 Trident (“Ohio-class”) submarines. Each can launch nuclear missiles with the explosive equivalent 5,000 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. After the first sub’s missiles are unleashed, the next 17 simply bounce the rubble.

Other anniversaries:
        • Name that invasion. “A century ago, American troops invaded and occupied a foreign nation. They would stay there for almost two decades, install a client government, impose new laws and fight insurgents in bloody battles on difficult terrain. Thousands of residents perished during what turned out to be 19 years of de facto U.S. rule.” —Ishaan Tharoor, “100 years ago, the U.S. invaded and occupied this country. Can you name it?”
        • Voting rights. 6 August is the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a piece of legislation that literally required the spilling of blood, most notorously on "Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama. The American Civil Liberties Union has a brief “Voting Rights Act” timeline, which concludes with recent state efforts to scale back accessibility to the polls. Significantly, this past Wednesday a federal appeals panel overturned a strict voter identification law in Texas, saying that it discriminated against black and Hispanic voters, violating the ’65 Voting Rights Act.
        • Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre—declared a genocide by the International Court of Justice—when more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnians, mainly men and boys, were killed in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.

Left: “Mothers of Srebrenica prayer” at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial.

Lection for Sunday next. “Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with [the Beloved]. Don’t even hang around people like that.” —Ephesians 5:6-7, The Message

This is what worship is for. “It is not sufficient to discuss the present crisis on the informational level alone, or seek to arouse the public to action by delivering ever more terrifying facts and figures.  Information by itself can increase resistance, deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness.  We need to help each other process this information on an affective level, if we are to digest it on the cognitive level.” —Joanna Macy, Despair and Empowerment in a Nuclear Age

My favorite piece of musical satire. “No one likes us—I don't know why / We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try / But all around, even our old friends put us down / Let's drop the big one and see what happens.” —Randy Newman, “Political Science”

Just for fun: Classical music with a comedic kick. The Salut Salon quartet.

Preach it. “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. . . . Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war than know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” —General Omar Bradley

Closing hymn. “And finally brethren after while, the battle will be over. For that day when we shall lay down our burdens, and study war no more.” —Moby, “Study War”

Benediction by Victor Hugo (at right).

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Featured this week on prayer&politiks:

• “The melody of restful hearts,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalms 46 and 130

• “Draw Near,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 130

• “Amnesty,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 130

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor. Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.

Your comments are always welcomed. If you have news, views, notes or quotes to add to the list above, please do. If you like what you read, pass this along to your friends.

 

In praise of the undazed life

A personal recollection about my Dad, marking the anniversary of his birth in 1922

by Ken Sehested

“Why stand ye gazing . . . ?" (Acts 1:11)

       My Dad wasn’t the least bit athletic; nor were others in his family. So we’re not sure where my sporting interest and coordination came from. I played every kind of ball available, whether organized or sandlot ad hoc. (And, last I heard, I still own my high school’s record in the discus throw.

       Dad found a way to stay connected with my love of sport by volunteering as an assistant coach of my Little League baseball team. It required little experience—or skill, for that matter. Only attentiveness. (There’s a lesson in there for us all.) It certainly wasn’t for the glamour.

       The demands of his job meant he arrived late to practice—straight from work in his grease-smudged overalls, having wrestled large diesel engines all day. No one noticed his attire, though, since most of us came from blue-collar homes.

       Our practice field was a baked dirt lot on the edge of a Mexican American neighborhood in our small West Texas town. It would be a few years before African Americans were integrated into our schools and cultural institutions (like Little League baseball). But Chicanos were school-and-playmates from an early age. My earliest Spanish language tutoring involved schoolyard cuss words.

Right: Walking in Dad's boots, circa 1954.

       On the field, two-handed catches were stressed. Anyone failing to do so had to run to the railroad tracks in the distance, through patches of tumbleweed and prickly pear cactus. From time to time foul balls grazed passing autos. Cracked bats were heavily taped and reused.

       Local businesses sponsored different teams in the league, providing bats and balls and game uniforms—though I don’t recall them using our jerseys to advertise. The “Mad Men” ad culture hadn’t yet infected backcountry regions like ours. Moms repaired the occasional uniform tears. Our head coach bought us hotdogs and colas after every game, win or lose.

       We were taking infield practice one afternoon when, from the corner of my eye, I was startled to see Dad sprinting toward the road paralleling our field, yelling “Hey! Hey!” The rest of us stood gazing, frozen in shock—focusing now on a young boy rumpled on the pavement, having fallen from the back of a passing pickup truck. (Pickup bed passengers were a common sight in that era.)

       Whether it was Dad’s yelling, or other pickup passengers, I don’t know; but the driver quickly screeched to a halt.

       Luckily the boy suffered no serious injury, though the pavement took a layer of skin from parts of his face, arms and hands and knees. Likely some lingering frightful memories, too. The whole affair was over as quickly as it began. And we got back to play, nursing dreams of dramatic game-ending catches and big league walk off home runs.

       Even so, to this day when the memory arises, it plays in slow motion: Dad running. Yelling. The rest of us gazing like deer in a headlight daze.

       I want to live undazed like my Dad.

       More than any other, this is the injunction under which I live, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in complaint: drawn back, through and from beatific gaze, toward Jerusalem’s deceit; back toward skinned children; back toward the site of Heaven’s assault on Earth’s duress.

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©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

 

News, views, notes, and quotes

23 July 2015   •   No. 31

Hark, here—aka "the Gerald Angel," in my role as prayer&politiks’ guardian angel.

The usual weekly “Signs of the Times” column will be abbreviated this week and next, to allow Ken to focus on other deadlines.

This week features a batch of new annotated book reviews in the “What are you reading and why?”  section of this site.

Also, this short story:

"In praise of the undazed life:
A personal recollection about my Dad, marking the anniversary of his birth in 1922."

“Why stand ye gazing . . . ?" (Acts 1:11)

My Dad wasn’t the least bit athletic; nor were others in his family. So we’re not sure where my sporting interest and coordination came from. I played every kind of ball available, whether organized or sandlot ad hoc. (And, last I heard, I still own my high school’s record in the discus throw.)

Dad found a way to stay connected with my love of sport by volunteering as an assistant coach of my Little League baseball team. It required little experience—or skill, for that matter. Only attentiveness. (There’s a lesson in there for us all.) It certainly wasn’t for the glamour.

The demands of his job meant he arrived late to practice—straight from work in his grease-smudged overalls, having wrestled large diesel engines all day. No one noticed his attire, though, since most of us came from blue-collar homes.

Our practice field was a baked dirt lot on the edge of a Mexican American neighborhood in our small West Texas town. It would be a few years before African Americans were integrated into our schools and cultural institutions (like Little League baseball). But Chicanos were school-and-playmates from an early age. My earliest Spanish language tutoring involved schoolyard cuss words.

On the field, two-handed catches were stressed. Anyone failing to do so had to run to the railroad tracks in the distance, through patches of tumbleweed and prickly pear cactus. From time to time foul balls grazed passing autos. Cracked bats were heavily taped and reused.

At right: Walking in Dad's steel-toed boots, circa 1954.

Local businesses sponsored different teams in the league, providing bats and balls and game uniforms—though I don’t recall them using our jerseys to advertise. The “Mad Men” ad culture hadn’t yet infected backcountry regions like ours. Moms repaired the occasional uniform tears. Our head coach bought us hotdogs and colas after every game, win or lose.

We were taking infield practice one afternoon when, from the corner of my eye, I was startled to see Dad sprinting toward the road paralleling our field, yelling “Hey! Hey!” The rest of us stood gazing, frozen in shock—focusing now on a young boy rumpled on the pavement, having fallen from the back of a passing pickup truck. (Pickup bed passengers were a common sight in that era.)

Whether it was Dad’s yelling, or other pickup passengers, I don’t know; but the driver quickly screeched to a halt.

Luckily the boy suffered no serious injury, though the pavement took a layer of skin from parts of his face, arms and hands and knees. Likely some lingering frightful memories, too. The whole affair was over as quickly as it began. And we got back to play, nursing dreams of dramatic game-ending catches and big league walk off home runs.

Even so, to this day when the memory arises, it plays in slow motion: Dad running. Yelling. The rest of us gazing like deer in a headlight daze.

I want to live undazed like my Dad.

More than any other, this is the injunction under which I live, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in complaint: drawn back, through and from beatific gaze, toward Jerusalem’s deceit; back toward skinned children; back toward the site of Heaven’s assault on Earth’s duress.

#  #  #

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now

by Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther (1999), reviewed by Vern Ratzlaff

The book of Revelation in the Christian canon, interpreted literally, has resulted in bizarre scenarios and fanciful prediction tables.  Conventional interpretation saw it written when the early church was suffering great persecution.  But historical analyses find no evidence for a widespread persecution of Christians in first-century Asia.  “Evidence of both historical documents and the text of Revelation itself suggests that it was seduction by the Roman Empire from within a context of relative comfort that describes the original audience” (p. xxii).  “Revelation is a call to have faith in G-d rather than the empire . . . and is a call to how the disciples were to live in the midst of empire’ (p. xxiii).  “Revelation, like all the other biblical texts, was involved in a pitched battle over issues of spirit such as economics and politics” (p. xxiv).  “The empire itself stood in contradiction to the ways of G-d” (p xxvii).  “Revelation casts a critical eye on Rome’s economic exploitation, its politics of seduction, its violence and its arrogance” (p. 116).  “It was a reminder to the followers of Jesus of the commitment they had made at their baptism” (p. 117).  “The futurist preoccupation with Revelation ignores the verb tenses referring not to a sequential future but to the always co-present other reality in which G-d and the Lamb have already conquered empire” (p 124).  Heaven and earth have the same postal code but represent differing perspectives.  “When the lies and injustices of empire are given currency, there is earth.  Whenever the truth of G-d is believed and practiced, there is heaven” (p 128).

A powerful treatment of the early church’s faith in the face of empire, and a call to that same faith to us.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.