Will Richardson is a gifted Nashville singer-songwriter with a wicked sense of humor. Back in May, he and I exchanged a few emails during the Jeremiah Wright controversy (remember that?) With apologies to Mick and Keith, he penned this ballad….
If you’re preaching this week and following the lectionary, you’ve been spending some time with the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat. No doubt, this parable (more so than the Parable of the Sower, which precedes it) has an apocalyptic bent (unless you choose to ignore the ending).
Herzfeld discovered that even after the Rapture, you (assuming you’ve been Raptured) can send a messages (as well as important personal data and documents) to your friends and loved ones who get “left behind” — thanks to www.youvebeenleftbehind.com. The first-year subscription price is $40 (not sure about subsequent years, or if the fee is pro-rated if the Rapture occurs mid-year).
Me, I’m not so sure (neither is Herzfeld). As far as important information goes, I’ll take my chances in storing it the old-fashioned way. And spiritually, I have a lot of ‘work’ to do and would not presume (or even wager $40 on) being among the Rapturees. Then again, I suppose it’s about God’s goodness and steadfastness, not my own….
Stacy Spencer is the pastor of New Direction Christian Church in Memphis. He and his wife, Rhonda, are featured in a TIME magazine article this week by David Van Biema: “And God Said, ‘Just Do It’“. The Spencers are part of a small-but-growing number of churches taking on the topic in hopes of encouraging married couples to have more and better sex (and presumably, a stronger, more intimate relationship) based on biblical texts like Genesis and Song of Songs.
The article talks about helping men and women understand the importance of what happens outside the bedroom. From TIME: “For instance, a husband can expect smoother sailing at night if he helps his wife clear her “to do” list that evening, Spencer said in a conference call with his wife, who added, “Otherwise he’s just another thing on that list.”
One of the best quotes in the article comes from someone who questions the new wave of church-sponsored sex programs: “Lauren Sandler, feminist and author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, suspects they are ‘another way of becoming the best Christian wife–to have tons of orgasms so their husbands can go to church the next day and tell people how they really made Jesus proud in the sack.’”
Sorry, that’s just plain funny. Hopefully not true, but funny.
How much will the American people, and the church, put up with before we are lulled awake from our comfy, cozy nap to take action? How much will we compromise as Big Oil twists the gas-price thumbscrews, and other corporations follow suit, blaming it on oil prices?
Off-shore drilling? Sure, go ahead!
ANWAR? Have at it!
The environment? Fuggedaboudit. We’ve got Animal Planet and the National Geographic channels on cable, plus air conditioning and no mosquitos.
The lives of young American men and women in uniform? Just another form of cheap labor, I guess. The grunt work for Exxon-Mobil, BP, and others, outsourced to the Armed Forces.
Sorry to sound angry and discouraged. Maybe I shouldn’t have read the Book of Habakkuk this morning.
OK, I just realized it has been exactly a month since the last blog post. Sorry, ladies and gents, I really have no excuses. But I do have news.
1 - On June 1, I was ordained at Tylersville Road Christian Church in Mason, Ohio, sponsored by the congregation there and also the congregation of Carthage Christian Church in Cincinnati. It was an awesome and humbling experience. I am thankful for those who attended or sent notes of encouragement, who said a prayer for me that day, or who offered encouragement, prayers, and challenges along the way.
2 - DisciplesWorld has a page on Facebook now. So if you’re on Facebook, become a Friend or Fan of DisciplesWorld!
3 - DisciplesWorld released a DVD last month called Beyond Borders: Faith and Action in the Arizona Desert.It has its own website (and Facebook page). It’s a 25 minute documentary targeted to people of faith, about the work of volunteers on the Mexico/Arizona border who are on the front lines of the immigration situation. Disciples, UCC, Methodists, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Presbyterians are featured. To purchse the DVD, you can download an order form (PDF) from the website or call DisciplesWorld and order it by phone. Or, you can order it through Amazon.com (more convenient, but the magazine doesn’t get all the proceeds that way). The cost is $12.95. Check it out! As the producer/director, my hope is that it will be a conversation-starter for Sunday School classes and church groups. I’m also available for talks, workshops, etc. with the video.
You may have heard that the United Church of Christ has invited its pastors, members, other Christians, and the nation to participate in a ’sacred conversation on race.’ This was announced about a month ago, in the middle of the whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama thing. Part of the deal is that ministers will be kicking off the conversation this Sunday by preaching on the subject of race.
We’ll be posting an article on DisciplesWorld’s website tomorrow about the UCC and their hopes for this conversation.
Meanwhile, I came across an interesting blog post from Dennis Sanders, an African-American Disciples pastor in Minneapolis. Frankly, Dennis says well what I (and maybe others) are thinking: let’s have a ‘real’ conversation on race.
Maybe Dennis and I are just feeling more than a little post-liberal crankiness these days (hey, he didnt’call his blog “Oscar the Pastor” for no reason), but it seems like all our conversations about race are short, because they seem to be aimed at identifying systems (and people) that are racist. Not that that is bad…but does it really lead to change? What if we had a different kind of conversation, as Dennis suggests? One where people could just speak their minds.
As a white person, I know that I participate in racism. I know that I can’t always see it and I want to help eliminate it. But white guilt is a dead-end street and I gave up living there a long time ago. [Note: there's a great book called The Heart of Racial Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson which, as a step toward reconciliation, calls for renouncing our false identities, including the "hip white person" identity.]
Now this may seem to contradict some things I’ve said/written in the past, but in my mind it doesn’t. I wish more white people understood more about black liberation theology, but the fact is, most have never heard of it. And most have never participated in anti-racism training. And probably never will. But a real conversation on race, the one we keep on not having in public but having all over the place in private or semi-private, in email and on blogs but NEVER in the church, is the one where whites are allowed to say something like “Jeremiah Wright makes me mad,” without someone looking at them like they’re an unenlightened jack***. And black people need to be able to say what they need to say too. The conversation might be heated, but it need not devolve into death threats. People do need to be able to be real.
And that’s what I LIKE about Jeremiah Wright, and why I don’t find him offensive. It’s not just that I’ve read James Cone. It’s that at least Wright, for all his brashness, is speaking honestly what he believes (even if many people don’t agree).
My son, who is 18, tells me these conversations we ‘old folks’ (i.e. mostly well-meaning liberal Boomers and X-ers) are having about race are irrelevant to his generation. He agrees that racism exists (as do I, don’t get me wrong) and that it is still a problem. The difference is that his peers talk about race in a different (and possibly more authentic) way. Maybe he’s right.
I’ve only met him once, but I wouldn’t have figured Rev. Bob Cornwall for a “Desperate Housewives” viewer. Yet in his latest column in the Lompoc (Calif.) Record, he writes about an episode of the popular show that explored faith and church-going in a surprising way. Bob writes:
If you follow the show, you know that the character of Lynette Scavo has faced a series of challenges that include cancer, seeing a friend being killed by a tornado, along with significant marriage issues.
Having gotten to that point in life without any significant religious training or background, she begins to wrestle with spiritual questions. As she does so, she spies the prissy Bree Van de Kamp and her new husband heading off to church.
Filled with questions, she decides to go to church and looks to Bree for guidance.
Read more about the episode, and what Bob had to say about it, here. For more of Bob - visit his blog “Ponderings on a Faith Journey” on the Christian Century’s blog network. It’s worth the trip.
Some of you may be tired of the whole Jeremiah Wright thing, but I’d be remiss not to let readers know about a great article that puts Rev. Wright’s preaching and remarks into their context, and then explains that context extremely well.
Salon.com’s Sarah Posner interviewed Dr. Jonathan L. Walton, assistant professor of religious studies at UC-Riverside. It’s an excellent interview.
Walton points out, among other things:
1. Black Liberation Theology has been around since the 1960s and can be found in the curriculum of the leading seminaries in the U.S.
2. While Wright and Martin Luther King are two different people, MLK had his own “God damn America” moment toward the end of his career. Walton also says that the sermon he was schedule to preach on the Sunday after he was assassinated was titled “Why American may go to hell.”
3. While Wright’s statements about HIV/AIDS may not be true, they can be seen as shorthand for frustration with the government’s lack of truthfulness on the Tuskegee experiments, Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, etc.
Posner’s interview with Walton takes “black liberation theology” out of quotation marks [as it's been used in the press, as if it's something made up, as in "this so-called 'black liberation theology'"]. If you’re still puzzled and angered by Wright, but open to learning something new, this article will help.
We were fortunate to have one of our writers, Beckie Supiano, in attendance yesterday to cover Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speech/Q&A at the National Press Club. Beckie’s article is posted on the DisciplesWorld website today.
Dr. Delores Carpenter, who was also there, called it “vintage Wright.” Like him or not, you’ve got to respect him for just going there and being himself, which it sounds like he did.
I haven’t had a chance to talk with Beckie yet, but I’m interested in hearing what her impressions were. Not just of Wright, but of the kinds of questions journalists asked him. From some of the reports I’ve read, it almost seems like they’ve got their collective minds made up about Wright. But we’ll see what Beckie thinks.
The big debate in what I’ve read outside the religious press seems to be “What should Obama do?” Salon.com compiled an article from its staff today along those lines. I usually respect Salon’s approach but most of their staff reports just struck me as off-point. The question of what Obama should do is not the right one, in my opinion. Wright is his own man. As is Obama. One’s a preacher, the other, a politician.
The best suggestions I heard from Salon’s staff were that Obama, with all eyes on him now, needs to stop this train-wreck-in-the-making and remind people of what’s going on while we’re all uncritically following this non-crisis: war, poverty, food crisis, destruction of the earth…stuff like that.
By the way, Beckie said only a couple of journalists stuck around for the REST of the day’s events which included a teach-in at Shiloh Baptist Church, and a worship service. The whole event, including the National Press Club breakfast, was part of a two-day symposium on the prophetic witness of the African American Church, sponsored by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Yeah, I know, they had deadlines to meet and stories to file. Too bad though - they might have learned that there’s more to this whole “prophetic witness” thing than they can contain inside a set of quotation marks.
Brings to mind a great line from another prophet, Bob Dylan: “I’ll know my song well, before I start singin’…”
As the rest of the song goes, “…it’s a hard rain’s gonna fall.”
