Falling through a Hole in Time

I spent the week-end feeling like I had fallen through a hole in time.  I went to the middle of the Florida peninsula, to the Lake Yale conference center for a statewide retreat for Lutheran women of the ELCA variety.  Once we might have called it a WELCA retreat, but I get the idea that we're in the process of rebranding.

I say we, but I've only been a WELCA member for about 10 minutes, compared to some of the women that I met this week-end.  In fact, during much of my life, I resisted being a WELCA member.  Those women seemed so different from me.

And after this retreat, I still feel that way, to a certain extent.  But to be honest, I often feel that way no matter what group I'm in.  I'm the one reading different books, I'm the one working in a different creative process, I'm the one who has a different family situation.  Maybe that outsider feeling is just going to be a given in my life.  I've always felt on the outside looking in, since I was little.

You might ask about the hole in time comment.  It's been strange to be at a WELCA event, surrounded by people whom I knew in a different time of my life--at a former church, at Synod Assembly.  Or did I know them at all?  So many of them looked like the women I once knew at my grandmother's church.  And then there's the matter of the ones that reminded me of my grandmother.

I also feel like I zoomed back in time because of the conference center itself.  It's such a different kind of conference center than the kind of glossy conference center that so many cities have built to attract groups like the AWP.  It's cinderblock and metal and sand:

The guest lodging reminded me of motor courts of the middle of the 20th century:

It reminded me very much of various gathering spots for churches of my youth.  Many of the bathrooms still had the tile of my youth.  It's the women's room, so we'll use pink tile!

But there was also a lake, a vast expanse of a lake.  It was much more lovely at sunrise than at any other time:

I didn't take my laptop for several reasons.  I wasn't sure there would be wi-fi, and even if there was wi-fi, I decided it would be good to unplug.  And on the morning that I captured the above shot of the sunrise, I was in a fellowship hall with several people tapping on their phones.  I stood up and said, "We're about to miss a beautiful sunrise."  But no one followed me outside--or even looked up.

When I look back on this week-end, what I might remember most is having time to read--one reason why I wanted to leave my laptop at home.  I've really been enjoying Maria Popova's Figuring.  What an amazing exploration of science and creativity and creating an authentic life.  The book focuses most of its time on amazing women throughout history.

It was fascinating being at this retreat surrounded by women, while reading about women who had been trailblazing such a different life than the one that most of us will be able to create.  I may say more on that later, but I may not.  I knew that I would need some less distracted time to make my way through the 500 + page book, and I'm glad that I seized the time this week-end.

It's another way I feel like I fell through a hole in time--the time to read and the material about the past. 

Bonhoeffer's Meaning for the Twenty-first Century

On this day in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was put to death by the Nazis. Like Anne Frank and many other nameless victims, he came heartbreakingly close to surviving the war.  Like Oscar Romero, he fought against a corrupt government and paid with his life.

Bonhoeffer was one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. A Lutheran pastor, he lived what he preached, actively resisting the Nazis and living in intentional community. He was arrested for his role in an attempt on Hitler's life.
I've written an essay that's scheduled to post today at the Living Lutheran site.  The essay considers Bonhoeffer's idea of cheap grace explored in The Cost of Discipleship, and in it, I spend time pondering whether or not we've been spending time with the wrong Bonhoeffer book.  Lately, Life Together speaks to me more forcefully.

Go here to read the rest of the blog post, along with all sorts of other thought provoking pieces.

On the Death of Christopher Hitchens: Revisiting "God Is Not Great"

With the news of the death of Christopher Hitchens, my mind went back to his book God is Not Great.  Will Hitchens be remembered for his atheist views, for his attack on Mother Theresa, for his attacks on many other people?  It's likely too early to say.

I can't claim to have read his work comprehensively.  Whenever I saw his articles, I read them, and even if I disagreed with his views, he always gave a lively performance.  When it came to his book-length treatment of God and religion, I felt like he missed the point in so many ways.

Here's the review I wrote of the book when it first came out:

First, I should offer some disclaimers. I come from a long line of Lutherans, and some of my family members have been pastors and lay ministers in that denomination. I’ve spent more years of my life attending church services (of various types) regularly than I haven’t. I’m the type of person who goes to monasteries and cathedrals while on vacation, and I’ve even attended services—while on vacation. In my spare time, I read and write theology. For fun. So perhaps I’m the wrong person to write a review of Christopher Hitchens’ book God is Not Great.

I’ll be the first to admit that his writing is wickedly funny, and I’d agree with him on some points. Religion has been used in a variety of harmful ways; most Christians will be the first to tell you that. I haven’t met any Christians, and I’ve met a huge variety of Christians, who deny that Christianity has had its dark years or centuries, like the Crusades and the Inquisition and the failure to rescue more Jews from Hitler’s genocide.

However, for every dark moment that Hitchens brings up, I could list at least five ways that Christianity has transformed society for the better, and Hitchens seems determined to overlook that. What about the Christian cultures (like Scandinavian Lutherans) who rescued Jews from Hitler’s genocide or refused to cooperate? Some of the most successful social justice movements of the twentieth century have been possible because of the faith that undergirded them—for example, the Civil Rights movement in this country or Gandhi’s accomplishments or the monks in Burma who push for change. There are communities all over the planet who live out their faith in concrete ways that transform the secular community around them; think of the Catholic Worker movement or Habitat for Humanity.

Hitchens also takes on the Bible, and the problem that I have with him here is that he’s incredibly literal in his interpretations. He’s worse than most fundamentalists I know. Of course, I’ve been faulted for my approach to the Bible, rooted in my experiences as a poet and an English major, where every story has multiple meanings beyond the literal.

It’s in his approach to the Bible that I first realized the biggest problem I would have with this book. Hitchens seems to have read no theology at all, at least not any that was written recently. He’d have found modern theology has much to offer when he feels revulsion at the idea of a savior who must be crucified because Hitchens will sin two thousand years later. I won’t list all the possible counterarguments here, but there’s a whole discipline in theological studies that addresses issues of redemptive suffering and atonement and the idea of sacrifice and what it means. For example, one school of thought looks at the fact that Christianity emerged out of Judaism and that the first generations of followers tried to undercut the Temple monopoly on the forgiveness of sins and the stranglehold that priests had on the Jews; priests not only collected sacrifices to right sins, but also collected money that was due to Rome. Or you might say that Jesus was crucified for our sins in the same way that Martin Luther King was killed for our sins. Both men came to offer the world a radical vision of peace and justice, and a harshly stratified society had to muffle that vision to avoid uprisings of the oppressed demanding transformation of that society.

When Hitchens attacks what he perceives to be the Church, he seems most upset with the Catholic church, circa 1952. The Church he describes really hasn’t been the way he describes, at least in the U.S. and Europe, during my lifetime. In my lifetime, we’ve seen a decline (and in Europe, almost a death) of mainline Protestantism and Catholicism; we’ve been dealing with some fallout of the time when the Church was predominant, certainly, like pedophile priests, but those most of those headline grabbing crimes are being brought to light decades after they’ve happened. You might counter by offering the spectacle of the Republican Right and their dance with Evangelical Christians for the past quarter decade, but Hitchens doesn’t spend much time on the Evangelical emergence.

Again, his lack of research seems glaring to me. If he had read a book like The Next Christendom, by Philip Jenkins, he’d know that he has much more to fear from Christianity in the Global South, not some phantasm from his youth. In the past decade, we’ve seen Rwanda send missionaries to the U.S. and Europe (an interesting historic reversal) because they see us in need of the Good News. Lately, some conservative U.S. Episcopalian congregations have left to join the Nigerian Diocese.

Why should we care? Many churches in the Global South take the Bible even more literally than U.S. fundamentalists. Take that obscure verse “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18). Many Africans take that quite seriously and literally. Jenkins points out, “Even today, a single outbreak of witch-panic can lead to hundreds of murders in a period of weeks or months. Moreover, one of the main centers of modern witch-hunting activity has been South Africa, the most developed state on the whole continent” (123). If you read Jenkins’ book, you realize that Christianity isn’t in decline throughout most of the planet, and the Christianity that’s practiced, if adopted widely, will have far more unpleasant consequences than the ones that Hitchens contemplates in his book.

The coming clashes of fundamentalisms of all types of religions seem like a far more pressing problem to me, and it’s a problem that gets very little press time or book length treatments or political consideration. Hitchens had a chance to turn the discussion, and he resorted to trotting out familiar arguments about issues that were dead decades ago. What a shame.

If You Must Argue with an Atheist

My atheist friend fell under the spell of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkens. I read God is Not Great, and it turned me off of the whole anti-God genre. Well, to be fair, I was never likely to be seduced by those books. I come from a long line of Lutherans, and some of my family members have been pastors and lay ministers in that denomination. I’ve spent more years of my life attending church services (of various types) regularly than I haven’t. I’m the type of person who goes to monasteries and cathedrals while on vacation, and I’ve even attended services—while on vacation. In my spare time, I read and write theology. For fun. So obviously, I'm not the intended audience for these books.

I agree with one main point of those books. Religion has been used in a variety of harmful ways; most Christians will be the first to tell you that. I haven’t met any Christians, and I’ve met a huge variety of Christians, who deny that Christianity has had its dark years or centuries, like the Crusades and the Inquisition and the failure to rescue more Jews from Hitler’s genocide.

However, for every dark moment that the books of Hitchens, Dawkins, and others bring up, I could list at least five ways that Christianity has transformed society for the better, and the anti-god writers seem determined to overlook that. What about the Christian cultures (like Scandinavian Lutherans) who rescued Jews from Hitler’s genocide or refused to cooperate? Some of the most successful social justice movements of the twentieth century have been possible because of the faith that undergirded them—for example, the Civil Rights movement in this country or Gandhi’s accomplishments or the monks in Burma who push for change. There are communities all over the planet who live out their faith in concrete ways that transform the secular community around them; think of the Catholic Worker movement or Habitat for Humanity.

Let me turn my attention to God is Not Great. In this book, Hitchens takes on the Bible, and the problem that I have with him here is that he’s incredibly literal in his interpretations. He’s worse than most fundamentalists I know. Of course, I’ve been faulted for my approach to the Bible, rooted in my experiences as a poet and an English major, where every story has multiple meanings beyond the literal.

It’s in his approach to the Bible that I first realized the biggest problem I would have with this book. Hitchens seems to have read no theology at all, at least not any that was written recently. He’d have found modern theology has much to offer when he feels revulsion at the idea of a savior who must be crucified because Hitchens will sin two thousand years later. I won’t list all the possible counterarguments here, but there’s a whole discipline in theological studies that addresses issues of redemptive suffering and atonement and the idea of sacrifice and what it means. For example, one school of thought looks at the fact that Christianity emerged out of Judaism and that the first generations of followers tried to undercut the Temple monopoly on the forgiveness of sins and the stranglehold that priests had on the Jews; priests not only collected sacrifices to right sins, but also collected money that was due to Rome. Or you might say that Jesus was crucified for our sins in the same way that Martin Luther King was killed for our sins. Both men came to offer the world a radical vision of peace and justice, and a harshly stratified society had to muffle that vision to avoid uprisings of the oppressed demanding transformation of that society.

When Hitchens attacks what he perceives to be the Church, he seems most upset with the Catholic church, circa 1952. The Church he describes really hasn’t been the way he describes, at least in the U.S. and Europe, during my lifetime. In my lifetime, we’ve seen a decline (and in Europe, almost a death) of mainline Protestantism and Catholicism; we’ve been dealing with some fallout of the time when the Church was predominant, certainly, like pedophile priests, but those most of those headline grabbing crimes are being brought to light decades after they’ve happened. You might counter by offering the spectacle of the Republican Right and their dance with Evangelical Christians for the past quarter decade, but Hitchens doesn’t spend much time on the Evangelical emergence.

Again, his lack of research seems glaring to me. If he had read a book like The Next Christendom, by Philip Jenkins, he’d know that he has much more to fear from Christianity in the Global South, not some phantasm from his youth. In the past decade, we’ve seen Rwanda send missionaries to the U.S. and Europe (an interesting historic reversal) because they see us in need of the Good News. Lately, some conservative U.S. Episcopalian congregations have left to join the Nigerian Diocese.

Why should we care? Many churches in the Global South take the Bible even more literally than U.S. fundamentalists. Take that obscure verse “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18). Many Africans take that quite seriously and literally. Jenkins points out, “Even today, a single outbreak of witch-panic can lead to hundreds of murders in a period of weeks or months. Moreover, one of the main centers of modern witch-hunting activity has been South Africa, the most developed state on the whole continent” (123). If you read Jenkins’ book, you realize that Christianity isn’t in decline throughout most of the planet, and the Christianity that’s practiced, if adopted widely, will have far more unpleasant consequences than the ones that Hitchens contemplates in his book.

The coming clashes of fundamentalisms of all types of religions seem like a far more pressing problem to me, and it’s a problem that gets very little press time or book length treatments or political consideration. Hitchens had a chance to turn the discussion, and he resorted to trotting out familiar arguments about issues that were dead decades ago. What a shame.

I have Hitchens on the brain because I'm about to start reading Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. I loved Terry Eagleton as a literary critic when I was in grad school, and I'm interested to see what a Marxist literary critic has to say about these debates. The first paragraph is a zinger: "Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology. I therefore have a good deal of sympathy with its rationalist and humanist critics. But it is also the case, as this book argues, that most such critics buy their rejection of religion on the cheap. When it comes to the New Testament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing, rooted in a degree of ignorance and prejudice to match religion's own. It is as though one were to dismiss feminism on the basis of Clint Eastwood's opinion of it" (xi). Wow. When I've read the rest of the book, I'll deliver a full report.