Ruminations

A modest proposal: Apocalyptic theology

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:03:56 PST

In 1997, when I was in residence at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, David Tracy proposed to me, quite seriously, that the term “Union School of apocalyptic” be used to identify an increasingly visible and vocal group of theologians and biblical scholars who taught, were trained in, or were strongly influenced by apocalyptic theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York in the 70s and 80s. (The “school” is in diaspora now; Union today reflects little of this influence.)

I have been reflecting about Tracy’s suggestion for twelve years. About a year ago I started floating the idea to some of those on this list. I’ve learned that there have already been some moves along this line, identifying the movement and the prominent figures, if not a “school.” I have not received any cease-and-desist notices, so here is my offering.

[I include myself, even though I am not an academic like the others, because my preaching and teaching was formed at Union and continues to be thoroughly shaped by this way of reading the New Testament.]

The “Union School” of apocalyptic theology:

Great-grandfathers (sort of)
J. C. Blumhardt and Christoph Blumhardt

Grandfathers
Karl Barth
Ernst Käsemann (Tübigen)

Fathers and children directly connected to Union, as either faculty or students
J. Louis Martyn
Paul Louis Lehmann
Raymond E. Brown (Brown began teaching New Testament apocalyptic at Union in the 70s and it strongly influenced his last work, The Death of the Messiah)
Christopher Morse
James F. Kay
Martinus C. de Boer
Beverly Gaventa
Joel Marcus
Nancy Duff
Alexandra R. Brown
Fleming Rutledge

Non-Union affiliates
Paul Minear (Yale)
J. Christiaan Beker (Princeton)
John Howard Yoder (Notre Dame)
James Y. Holloway (Yale)
Paul W. Meyer (Princeton)
Brevard Childs (Yale)
Charles Cousar (Emory)
Gerhard Sauter (Bonn)
Jürgen Moltmann (Tübigen)

Grandchildren
Douglas Harink (Kings, Edmonton, Alberta)
John Barclay (Durham)
Philip Ziegler (Aberdeen)
Joseph Mangina (Wycliffe, Toronto)
Francis Watson (Durham)
Simon Gathercole (Cambridge)
Douglas Campbell (Duke)

Cousins
Will Campbell
William Stringfellow
Bill Wylie-Kellerman
Vernard Eller
Jacques Ellul
William H. Willimon
Kenneth Leech

What is apocalyptic theology?

Here is a short summary by Douglas Harink, followed by a much longer description by me.

"Most simply stated, 'apocalypse' is shorthand for Jesus Christ. In the New Testament… all apocalyptic reflection and hope comes to this, that God has acted critically, decisively, and finally for Israel, all the peoples of the earth, and the entire cosmos, in the life, death, resurrection, and coming again of Jesus, in such a way that God’s purpose for Israel, all humanity, and all creation is critically, decisively, and finally disclosed and effected in the history of Jesus Christ."[1]

Some central affirmations of apocalyptic theology (F. Rutledge)

--Divine agency is central— “God is up to something in the world” (Paul Lehmann).
--Sin and Death are Powers who have invaded the world and established their dominion.
--The human condition is genuinely tragic because humanly speaking, there is no escape from bondage to the Powers.
--The earthly human world is subject to incursion from the divine world—“cosmic breaking and entering” (Martyn)—in Jesus Christ, the end of the ages has come upon us (I Corinthians 10:11).
--The divine apocalypse is less a disclosure than it is an invasion (“O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down”—Isaiah).
--Justification (dikaiosune) is understood less as individual salvation, more as rectification constituting a new world (it should go without saying that the individual's "blessed assurance" is guaranteed also).
--There are three parties in the apocalyptic drama, not two: God, enslaved humanity, and the Powers of Sin and Death. The incarnate Son did not arrive in neutral territory. His entrance called out the demonic forces.
--Jesus Christ waged apocalyptic warfare against these demonic forces (see R. E. Brown on Gethsemane).
--The apocalypse of Jesus Christ means the end of conventional warfare, because the line between good and evil runs through each person (as attested by Vaclav Havel, A. Solzhenitsyn, Primo Levi and many others).
--Apocalyptic metaphor is God’s poetry (Martyn), telling us the truth about our condition and our hope.
--The New Creation dawns even now, in the Church’s participation in the Cross and Resurrection.
--Cruciform Christian witness is anchored by secure confidence in God’s triumph at the ultimate End, the Last Day when God puts an end to Sin, Death, and the devil, establishing the Kingdom of God in its eternal, victorious completeness.

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In the light of the impending eschaton all present arrangements are provisional. The Christian lives according to the lights of the Age to Come. The new state of affairs set in motion by the crucifixion and resurrection evokes a response from us. Our response will be based on the new reality, a witness undermining everything that used to make sense in the old kosmos. “Be not conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2). “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (II Corinthians 5:17); “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober” (I Thessalonians 5:8); “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

When the cross is understood as apocalyptic sign, the Christian community understands that its location is at the frontier of what God is doing in the world, and that the household of God is first to stand before the judgment seat (I Peter 4:17) on behalf of the world. The sign of victory on this frontier is not victory as this world understands victory. The sign of the cross is the “powerful weakness” of Christ; “the new creation is the community of those who…are conformed to the crucified one for the sake of others.”

What does it mean to define the Cross as apocalyptic sign?
Here is a summary:
--The cross signifies the turn of the ages.
--The Old Age of Sin and Death received its predestined, mortal blow when the incarnate Son “was delivered up for our offences and was raised for our rectification.”[2]
--The Age to Come has been inaugurated.[3]
--The distinctive, indeed unique mark of the Age to Come is self-giving love, which plants itself in “this present evil age” as the power of powerlessness.[4]

[1] Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals, 68.
[2] This is my translation of Romans 4:25. Paradidomai (to deliver up, to hand over) has a distinct theological meaning throughout the New Testament. It strongly conveys intentionality and divine direction—see for example Mark 14:41. As for “rectification” (dikaiosune) instead of “justification,” this has been proposed by Martyn among others, and is beginning to gain currency.
[3] “The Kingdom of God has come upon you,” common to the Synoptic Gospels, is another way of saying the same thing. In John’s Gospel, the atmosphere of the turning of the ages is pervasive (“Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the ruler of this world be cast out”). This is none the less true on account of that gospel’s so-called “realized eschatology.”
[4] Vaclav Havel used this phrase, “the power of powerlessness,” to describe the continuing hold that Aung San Suu Kyi has on the Burmese people even though she has been under house arrest for 17 years. Think also of the “power of powerlessness” in the case of Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years and emerged as the father of his country.

R. Crumb illustrates the book of Genesis

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:36:23 PDT

Just as I am finishing up a (small) series of sermons on Genesis, here comes R. Crumb who received an advance of $200,000 from Norton for his just-released illustrated (large) version of that book. Mr. Crumb, famous limner of gross-looking people, has undoubtedly produced a fascinating piece of work, even for those who wonder why such a good draftsman loves to draw ugliness. Even he admits that he has a hard time drawing attractive women.

Some of his comments in an interview for The New York Times are entertaining: the patriarchs “all get pushed around by their wives”; and the picture of the gate of the city of Sodom is quite stunning (so far I have only seen excerpts). His depiction of Abraham’s “deep dark dread” in chapter 15 is certainly compelling; Abraham is having a vision of the Holocaust. The fact that the passage is about something else altogether does not entirely negate the power of the challenge to the whole concept of the covenant.

Mr. Crumb’s version of Genesis is described elsewhere as “humanist.” Indeed, Genesis does show us humanity in its most fundamental condition, more so than any other biblical book, since after all the Creation story is immediately followed by the story of the primordial catastrophe that has caused—as Genesis shows—all subsequent catastrophes among human beings and the rest of the created order. The stories of the patriarchs give us ample illustration of these subsequent catastrophes and failures.

But here’s what Christians who teach, preach, and bear witness need to think about. Genesis is only secondarily about human beings. It is primarily about God, and that’s what a great many people both inside and outside the churches just don’t realize. Genesis just can’t be read as a “humanist” document. Or, rather, it can be read that way, I suppose, just as King Lear can be read as a study of old age, but that would be a pathetically reductive reading. Even if we do not believe in the God of Genesis, it seems to me that we must acknowledge (and teach) that it demands to be interpreted on its own terms, namely, as a story about the God who, Genesis proclaims, is there before human beings can imagine him. This is the God whose Word summons into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17). So no “humanist” version of Genesis can really get at the true purpose of the text. Focusing on Genesis’ reworking of old myths (as Crumb would have it) is roughly analogous to interpreting Shakespeare’s plays as reworkings of old plots.

Here’s what Crumb said to The New York Times (and to NPR, and presumably to everyone else who asks): “The fact that people can persist in the information age to take this as a fundamental word of God, words to live by, rules to live by, that’s really crazy to me.”

My, my. This "information age." What empirical evidence under heaven do we have for this "age" being any less deluded and depraved than any other age? What "information" do we have that gives us "words to live by" that will rescue us from yet more schemes and frauds, drug cartels and billionaire gangsters, environmental degradation, war-criminality, and genocide?

It’s a certainty that R. Crumb will now receive hundreds of hate letters for saying what he did about the Bible, which, alas, which will convince him even more that Bible-believers are crazy.

(A corrective: When we say that the Bible is about God, that's necessary to say first. Only then can we rightly say that the Bible is about God and his people.)

More about Karen Armstrong

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:59:48 PDT

This is more self-indulgent than I generally want to be, but I wrote it while pulled off the side of the road while listening to NPR on the radio (and check Tips for more on this subject by someone other than me, and a critique by Harvey Cox):

I have the telephone number of my local NPR station (WNYC) programmed into my cell phone so I can pull over to the side of the road and argue with the person uttering absurdities about Christianity (it happens often)--but I never, ever actually get on the air. So here is what I want to say about Karen Armstrong, who was interviewed for the umpteenth time on the Brian Lehrer show (I am not at all interested in reading her books, for reasons that will be clear):

No one working from within the Christian tradition would recognize the Jesus that she talked about this morning. It is not responsible to speak about a religious tradition without working to acknowledging its own understanding of itself. Yeah, I know she was a nun, but it didn't take. Calling Jesus an "axial sage," a "towering religious genius" (among other TRGs, of course) or a "paradigmatic human being" (among other PHBs) misses the point entirely.

Ms. Armstrong has forced Jesus into a framework that serves her own theories about "religion," but no reputable New Testament theologian would agree with her depiction of him as one of several "axial sages" who, turning away from Iron Age violence, sought to nurture "transcendence within the self." What Jesus actually did (at the very least) was to announce the arrival of the Kingdom of God in his own person.

Moreover, comparing Jesus to Mohammed (or Buddha, for that matter) as though they were essentially the same is intellectually (not to mention religiously) irresponsible. All these people who talk about Jesus as a "sage" forget, or overlook to the point of perversity, that the faith proclaims him as the crucified One who was raised by God from the dead. Without that, the Christian faith is nothing.

If the Karen Armstrongs of the world want to renounce the Christian confession, they can and should do that, but leaders in the church should make it clear that such people (and they are legion, though few are so articulate as Armstrong) twist the Christian confession out of all recognition and then present it in such a way as to support their own history-of-religion theories.

And God said…

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:11:19 PDT

Well, here goes The Wall Street Journal (new Murdoch version) again. I have always looked forward to its weekly “Houses of Worship” column. Today (October 2), this week’s author, Stephen Prothero, begins this way:

“Any claim of revelation is preposterous. It presumes that God exists, that God speaks, and that all is not lost when human beings translate that speech into ordinary language.”

It is tempting to think that the whole column is a joke, though I suspect not. The rest of it is devoted to a (boring) discussion of a project to recover the “original text” of the Book of Mormon, alleged to have been transcribed in the 1820s by Joseph Smith from golden plates which, conveniently, "disappeared" long ago. This endeavor has just been published by the Yale University Press. Dr. Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. Never underestimate the capacity of religion departments to get Christianity wrong. Except this time, possibly without realizing it (?), Dr. Prothero has it exactly right. The Holy Scriptures of the Christian church do indeed “presume that God exists, that God speaks, and that all is not lost when human beings translate that speech into ordinary language.” Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better.

Now, let’s move off Dr. Prothero’s radar screen altogether, to observe that the trouble arises when the Christian church does not believe this foundational premise of its own Scriptures. That’s what’s at stake, not the debate about homosexuality (although that is admittedly important and needs to be much more serious). The more crucial question is, “Has God said anything to us?” My friend Will Willimon says that everything hangs on these three words from the first chapter of Genesis: “And God said….”

If we had more preachers in the mainline churches who were willing to take a stand on those three words, I believe we would see a renewal of the faith. Does this mean “fundamentalism,” that all-purpose word that the mainline churches’ ruling classes like to attach to those of us who still believe in revelation? Absolutely not. That’s why the third part of Dr. Prothro’s dictum is so perfectly tuned: a lot is lost in the transition from the divine speech to human speech, otherwise we could not bear to hear it in our present condition—but not all is lost. It is the gracious will of God that human beings should be attuned, anew in every generation, to his living voice—the Word in the words.

Stop Karen Armstrong!

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:43:50 PDT

Something really has to be done about Karen Armstrong. I am too busy to do it, but I wish someone else would. She is much more an enemy of faith than is "Hitchkins" (Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins). Here she is on the front page of the Weekend Journal (a section of the Saturday/ Sunday section of the Wall Street Journal, September 12-13) facing off against Dawkins. Two entire pages are given over to this: MAN vs. GOD, the headline says (at least the WSJ continues to go its politically incorrect "exclusive-language" way). The huge illustration shows Michelangelo's God over against Darwin (oh, no, not again...). What has happened to the WSJ? is this Rupert Murdoch at work? the WSJ editorials are hyper-right-wing and not to my taste, but for a long time the paper has been, in certain respects, a friend to the apostolic faith. What has happened?

Dawkins, like Freud, is less a threat to biblical faith than Armstrong, who like Jung embraces a generic, spiritualized, anthropocentric approach to God (exactly what Freud identified in The Future of an Illusion). Dawkins is quite right in ending his article the following way (I am condensing):

The modern theologian is scornful of scientific arguments for God's existence [rightly so--this was always off-track]. We are not so naive as to be hung up on God's actual existence. [Here Dawkins accurately nails a lot of today's "liberal" theology.] "It doesn't matter," Dawkins' theological liberal continues, "whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me."

Dawkins then continues, speaking in his own voice, "If that's what paddles your canoe, you'll be paddling up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God...in objective reality...Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that 'existence' is too vulgar a concept to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right."

Karl Barth, of whom Karen Armstrong is blissfully ignorant, said that he found atheists to be more bracing conversation partners than "religious" people. Certainly we can welcome this last observation of Dawkins, although the rest of his article shows his usual, annoying refusal to see that many serious Christians (Pope John Paul II was a notable example) hold Darwin and orthodox Christian faith simultaneously.

Karen Armstrong and others like her are "religious" without a clue as to the Subject of theology. If she really understands the Church Fathers at any level, one seeks evidence in vain. If she has ever heard of the Reformation she does not indicate it. If she has ever had any serious dialogue with any major Protestant theologian her writing does not show it. If she has ever heard of the doctrine of revelation she shows no sign of it. She is a walking, talking, writing exhibit for Freud's basic thesis: God is what we have made up out of our own wishes and needs.

Who can mount a powerful defense against this sort of thing? Marilynne Robinson, for one, knows better-- but her voice is soft. We need thunder and lightning.

Movie: Andrzej Wajda’s "Kanal"

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:13:43 PDT

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book (still in progress) about the meaning of the Crucifixion.

The Criterion Collection is now bringing all the masterpieces of film to us who are not able to get to the few remaining art houses on just the right days to see them. I am happily in the process of seeing the ones I have longed to see for most of my life.

Kanal (The Sewer) is arguably the masterpiece of the great Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. Released in 1957, it was the first movie to be made about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and it is still the best.[2] Fifty years after its release, proliferating film festivals in Europe have enabled Kanal to find a new, young audience; in Wadja’s words, they have been able “to escape the ‘mono-culture’” of commercial American movies.

Kanal depicts the last days of a Polish Home Army company fighting to the death against the Nazis. The last half of the film involves their last-ditch, brave, hopeless effort to mount a defense of their city. The surviving members of the company, led by their dedicated and disciplined commander, Lieutenant Zadra, move from the outskirts of the city into the center via the sewer system. This is not the sleek, relatively pristine sewer of Vienna where Orson Welles splashes about in wingtips in The Third Man; this is a vile, miasmic cloaca you can all but smell.[3] At the climax of the story, Zadra and his sergeant-major emerge from a manhole into the city streets after hellish hours in the sewer, covered in unspeakable filth, but finally breathing fresh air and ready to take up the fight again. Suddenly, as Zadra rejoices in his temporary reprieve, he becomes aware that most of his men are not coming up immediately behind him as he expected. As the realization slowly dawns on him that they are still hopelessly lost in the maze and the darkness below, he says in anguish, “My company! My company!” He turns, stops, says, “My company!” again, and with excruciating slowness looks down into the hole, stoops, gets a handhold, turns again, and begins to descend into Hell and certain death. “My company!”[4]

This is an image—powerful, though imperfect—that helps illuminate the nature of the rescue performed by Jesus Christ. His emptying himself of his prerogatives, his descent into the sewer of this world, his deliberate offering of himself even when he knew there was no way out for him—all this was done, not simply for individuals of widely varying worth and usefulness, but for “my company.” It is for Jesus’ “company”—his family, his brothers and sisters, his Father’s children, the branches of his vine, the household of God—that he goes down into the depths of our wretched human condition, holding back nothing, enduring all things, confronting the devil himself in his own domain. For this he died: that he might create a new people holy to himself. It is this “company” that he calls into battle against the Enemy, even unto death; promising as he did to his commander Martin Luther King in “the kitchen epiphany,” “I will never, never leave you alone.”[5]

The purpose of telling the story of Kanal in this chapter is to help illuminate the nature of the rescue performed by Jesus Christ. His emptying himself of his prerogatives, his descent into the sewer of this world, his deliberate offering of himself even when he knew there was no way out for him—all this was done, not for individuals of widely varying worth and usefulness, but for “my company.” It is for Jesus’ “company”—his family, his adelphoi, his Father’s children, the branches of his vine, his comrades in arms against the Enemy —that he came down into the depths of our wretched human condition, holding back nothing, enduring all things, confronting the devil himself in his own domain. For this he died: that he might create a new people holy to himself, to be his own light in the darkness until all things are made new.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life With Others is well named.
[2] Not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which was the equally doomed revolt of the Jews. The Warsaw Uprising was not related to the fate of the Jews. It was waged street to street for 63 days as the citizens of Warsaw, formed into an ad hoc Home Army, fought with desperate bravery against the Germans, counting on aid coming from the advancing Russians. The Russians could not have cared less about the Poles and the revolt was mercilessly crushed.
[3] “Everything that happens in these flooded, reeking, tentacular corridors is something that devils would laugh at” (essay by John Simon in the Criterion Collection notes for Kanal). Yet that is not quite altogether true. There is one moment of transvision. A young woman who has helped the Home Army and knows the sewer well is struggling to get her dying lover to the exit leading out into the Vistula River and deliverance; but since she was last there, the exit was barred by the Germans. They are doomed. She soothes the young man's dying with poetic images of green fields across the river. In lesser hands it could be mawkish, but not here; rather, it evokes the passage of the redeemed across the Jordan.
[4] There are some crucial plot twists in Kanal, and an act of betrayal, that I have omitted—partly for the sake of those who might like to see this great film, and partly because I am highlighting the commander’s action for the purposes of this book. Aspects of that action fall short of the parallel to the descent of the Son of God, but then it is not possible for any mere human action to duplicate the universal significance of Christ’s death.
[5] The story of the kitchen epiphany is told in all the biographies of King. It was one of the defining experiences of his life.

Senator Kennedy's funeral

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:48:12 PDT

These reflections are in no sense intended as an appraisal of the legacy of Ted Kennedy. Rather, I am focussing on the letter he wrote to the Pope (readily available on the Web), which must surely touch the heart of every faithful Christian, and on the funeral service itself.

Many of us who could never be Roman Catholics are nevertheless grateful to that tradition for holding the line against acculturation such as we have seen in the Protestant churches. It has been disappointing, therefore, in recent years, to see the RC funeral being altered to accommodate the current trends--in particular, the trend toward allowing eulogies to dominate the service. There are many strategies the church can use to counteract this trend, which has done much to undermine the theology of the Cross and Resurrection, but few have cared to buck the trends. (In my own family we have fought back successfully with two strategies: 1) having all personal remarks at the beginning, before the service itself begins; and alternately, 2) having only a sermon in which various personal reminiscences are included with the proclamation of the gospel. It was very disappointing to see how, at the Kennedy service, the homily with its biblical promises came first, with the eulogies following, so that by the time President Obama spoke, everyone had forgotten the homily.

Another disappointment is the way that the RCs have gone along with this idea that the funeral service is "a celebration of life." If this were specifically identified as a celebration of the Resurrection life of Jesus Christ, that would be OK, but that's not what most people understand by it. Most frequently, the expression is "a celebration of his (or her) life," meaning the life of the deceased. The Christian funeral has never been such a "celebration." The Book of Common Prayer still calls it The Burial of the Dead. Some Presbyterian funerals I have attended have called it A Service of Witness to the Resurrection in memory of ---, which has merit. But calling it a celebration of the life of the deceased has two unfortunate consequences: 1) the denial of the reality and power of death, and 2) an exclusively anthropocentric focus which has come to define the modern funeral. The increasingly popular memorial service presents its own problems: a "memorial service" suggests, to the great majority of people, memories of the deceased. Even if memories of the Resurrection are meant (and few would make that link), the service of The Burial of the Dead is no more a "memory" of Christ's Resurrection than the Lord's Supper is a "memory " of the Last Supper. In both cases, the Lord is present in power--in the Eucharist if there is one, and in the Word if not.

The Cross is also missing from the modern funeral, and was largely missing from Kennedy's funeral. When there is no mention of sin, and of sinners redeemed, a central feature of the gospel is being denied. Of all people, Kennedy himself, in his letter to the Pope, seemed more aware of his sinful condition than anyone who spoke at the funeral. Since his defects of character were so very public and well-known, the omission of any explicit confession or reference to the Cross of Christ can only be judged a case of wilful denial. (Of course the Lord's Prayer does cover those bases, but there needs to be more. If I missed something, let me know and I will make the correction.)

Finally, and perhaps most important, is the whole issue of the nature of salvation. The entire human race is set on the default position that good deeds outweigh bad deeds, and nothing from below can change this default position; preachers of the gospel can only remind us daily that we need to be begotten from above (born again) in order to understand the completely new thing that has happened in Christ. In Him, thanks be to God, the moral calculus has been erased. It was the particular genius of the Reformation to see this.

Kennedy's letter to the Pope, while obviously sincere and deeply moving, displays this fundamental theological error (though, to be sure, only in a muted degree because of the essentially humble tone of the letter as a whole) that sinful deeds can be cancelled out by righteous deeds. We need to be explaining to our congregations on a daily basis: this is not the gospel.

According to an article in The New York Times this very day, "hints of pluralism" can be discerned in Islam. A progressive Egyptian Muslim has scandalized conservatives by writing in his newspaper column that a scantily-clad dancer should be judged by her good deeds, if they outweigh her sins. This may indeed represent a liberalizing tendency in Islam, but it does not in any way represent Christian theology of either the liberal or the conservative variety.

PS. The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Westminster Abbey was a bitter disappointment to many. I wrote a column about this for The Living Church and received 75 approving letters in response--presumably from people of a certain age, since the trends proceed apace. The column is available on this website.

The state of the Episcopal Church

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:34:12 PDT

Here are some verbatim excerpts from an email recently sent to me by a non-schismatic friend--the rector of a church that thrives for reasons that can be deduced from what he says:

It seems to me so sad that so many cannot see the crisis that the church is in. Right now we are in Newport, RI and have just learned that [St George's church] has now closed. Another grand church started and built by the Brown family is down to nothing and probably can't continue much more, and of all things the great historic Trinity Church in Newport, has just been told by their interim Rector that they must suspend their search for a new Rector and organist until they figure out how to pay for them both. He told them that everything is "on the table" including closing down and giving the property to the Preservation Society, to merging with another church. Some of this is a radical shift in demographics and the total secularization of society [in New England].

But interestingly enough, an "evangelical" church has bought the [St George's] building... and the congregation seems to be thriving. Somehow there is a whole level of leadership in the [Episcopal] church that refuses to see the crisis we are in. There is a huge theological crisis of course (it is not primarily, in my view, a crisis of about sexuality but a crisis of theology).

In a second email he continues, as follows:

The problem, as I have described it to many, is that so many leaders of the Episcopal church sound like Unitarian Universalists. They may not be, but that's how they sound when they argue for inclusivity, etc. It often sounds as if they are saying, "we need to be inclusive in spite of the Gospel," when what they should be saying is, "we need to be inclusive because of the the Gospel." And then to "flesh that out." It seems that they just don't know how to say that, or (as is my suspicion) they do not believe the Gospel is sufficiently inclusive.

The UU analogy has been helpful to me. To be able to say, "Yes, the church is called to inclusivity, called to openness, called to justice. But I am not a Unitarian Universalist and I don't want to be a part of a church that is." Of course I have deep respect for UU fellowships and the mighty work that they do. I'm just not one and I don't want my church to be one. I've recently had a number of young people come to [our church] who have been "lightly" attending the big (very conservative) Baptist church in town. They are comfortable with much that is said at the Baptist church but they are not comfortable with the constant railing, and demonizing of homosexuals, and the side-lining of women, etc. So they have come to [our church]. But they would not stick around if the Gospel was not proclaimed here.

He concludes:

My point: The Episcopal Church would be on fire if we faithfully proclaimed the Gospel in this new age. The Gospel is timeless.

The vote at General Convention 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:33:00 PDT

It is hard to know what to think about the state of the Anglican Communion after the actions of General Convention. As one who, at GC in 1976, observed at close range--sometimes sympathetically--the distress of those in the Episcopal Church who opposed the ordination of women, I think I can make two comments: the trauma of that time was less pervasive and less grievous than it is now; and the debate was more scriptural and more theological than the debate about the current issue has been. I could be wrong about this, but that is certainly my impression. The depth of the biblical and theological discussion was considerable in 1976. The essential appeal was made on the basis of real scriptural evidence. The foundations did not seem to be shaking then as they are now.

I suppose some will say the decisions of 1976 were precursors of what is happening now, but on balance there was a great deal of scriptural support for women's ordination (which had the effect of counterbalancing the passages that seemed negative). There was much less talk of civil rights and cultural shifts than there is in 2009. A significant number of ordained women, then as now, could be counted among those who subscribed to the Nicene faith and could be counted on as colleagues in more evangelical circles.

It is different now. The liberal/revisionist (hate these words!) sweep is almost total. I wrote a Rumination a few weeks ago that fits the picture we now face:

http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/ruminations/2009/05/modest-proposal.htm

I am myself of two minds about same-gender marriage, ordination, and the rest of the issues clustered around sexual identity and styles of life. I remain open to being convinced, but the arguments all seem to rely upon secular, cultural factors and a blurry "Jesus loves everybody" theology; he does indeed love everyone, as his life demonstrated, but there is more rigor in his love than we are admitting today. The high frequency of divorce, and its almost casual acceptance by those who choose bishops, rectors, and ordinands, seems to me a pressing issue. Not so very long ago, a once-divorced bishop would have been unthinkable, let alone a twice-divorced one. Many clergy families include unmarried couples living together. Why are we not giving the nature of marriage more attention? and why is there not more support for traditional marriage?

(In any case, the complaint I have about Bishop Robinson is that he deliberately and consciously makes public statements to the effect that he does not believe the Christian Scriptures to be uniquely authoritative, and does not claim a unique role for Jesus Christ. His remarks at the time of the Obama inauguaration made that quite clear.)

The Anglican Communion has been my life. I have always been so proud to be an Anglican abroad. However, it was the Book of Common Prayer that held us together. Now, there is no book of common prayer. Wherever one goes, it is a roll of the dice as to what sort of liturgy there will be, and what sort of theology or anti-theology one will find at services. What is there to hold us together now? One gets the impression that the ruling elders would be glad if all of the evangelicals left for good. There are so few places left for us to stand in The Episcopal Church. Do the ruling classes (I use that term advisedly) even care? They aren't reading this blog, that's for sure.

"The Prayers of the People" done right

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:54:47 PDT

As a visitor to a great many Episcopal churches all over this country for many years, I can attest that the general state of "The Prayers of the People" is deplorable. The revision of the 1928 Prayer Book was supposed to move us away from rote prayers. With very rare exceptions, this has not happened. Most of the prayers in most of the churches are recited in a boring, repetitive fashion, week in and week out--and changing from Form 1 to Form 6 (or whatever) does not improve the situation. We never actually ask anything; instead, we reel off a list of names without differentiation, or we say "For (fill in the blank)" without ever identifying what we are pleading with the Lord to do "for" whomever or whatever.

I can remember only two congregations in my decades of churchgoing where the prayers were prepared and offered with imagination and deep commitment. In both cases they were composed and read by lay people who had obviously been identified as gifted in this ministry. I have never forgotten the way that these lay ministers presented immediate local problems for prayer, while directly upholding community, national and world concerns. The thanksgivings were specific, the world-wide church was remembered in its various needs, and there was a sense that God was really being personally addressed. These liturgical prayers were composed Sunday by Sunday by these gifted lay people, who used the forms provided but expanded them to meet the season, the need, the location, the current situation.

It has been about ten years since I last heard this done really well. On this past Sunday, I heard it again at St. James in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This is a congregation under great strain because their historic building, the oldest church in town, has been deemed unsafe and they have been forbidden to use it. They are meeting in a local rental hall. Yet in the main service last Sunday, the prayers were beautifully composed, earnest, and above all directly related to the concerns of the contemporary situation--from the needs of the specific congregation to the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran. Even better, they were designed to arise out of the biblical readings for the day.

The Rev. Francie Hills, rector, began by identifying two people in the congregation with these specific gifts. She gave them copies of Prayers for Sundays and Seasons, by Peter Scagnelli, published by Liturgy Training Publications (Roman Catholic). There are three books, one for each liturgical year. Francie explained, "We adapt these significantly for our use at St. James," meaning that they add and subtract according to the Episcopal Church and to the local situation, but they have a splendid liturgical template on which to base their adaptations.

Their offering certainly fell upon my ears and heart like manna.

Something new in the world?

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:44:28 PDT

Jonathan Schell's most famous book, about nuclear holocaust, is The Fate of the Earth. A more recent one, however, The Unconquerable World, is one of a very small number of books which, for me, have been mind-altering. His subject is the rise of nonviolent resistance and "people's war" on the world stage in the 20th century. He begins with a trenchant analysis of war according to Clausewitz, whose views he believes are supportive of his conviction that the world is moving toward a new kind of struggle in which the power of ideas carried out under the leadership of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Tutu, Lech Walesa, and others, cannot be stopped. (See previous Rumination about the Palestinians.)

Tienanmen Square is the great exception, but we cannot know what seeds still lie dormant underground, waiting for the breath of the Spirit. In the meantime, should we not all be praying that "an angel in the whirlwind" be directing this storm in Tehran? (Speaking of which, one of the other books that I count among the very few is John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus.)

A call to the Palestinians

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:52:35 PDT

The thing that struck me most about President Obama's speech in Cairo was its direct address to the Palestinians. With particular authority as an African-American, he referred to the history of the civil-rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid crusade in South Africa to strengthen his appeal to the Palestinians to set aside violence. It has often been noted that if the Palestinians had mounted a campaign of nonviolent resistance (a la Gandhi's, Tutu's, or Martin Luther King's), they would have been successful, especially in view of the deeply rooted values of the Torah in Judaism. Obama, addressing the Palestinians, said, with regard to violence, "That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered."

The Palestinians have never had a leader with the commitments of a Gandhi or a King. The Palestinian I respect most, Sari Nusseibeh (author of the indispensable Once Upon a Life) said an astonishing thing in an interview with David Remnick in The New Yorker, a few years ago--he wished the Palestinians would try to act more like the Christian ideal.

Prayer Book revision for better and worse

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:29:21 PDT

On the Day of Pentecost we attended a confirmation at a Presbyterian church and were both amazed and thrilled that the presiding minister borrowed the episcopal prayer from the 1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that s/he may continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until s/he come unto thy everlasting kingdom. Amen.

Every churchgoing Episcopalian knew this prayer by heart, having heard it repeated over and over, year after year, confirmation class after confirmation class, by the bishop as he placed his hands on the heads of each successive confirmand. My husband and I have said it for our own children and grandchildren.

Here is the prayer from the 1979 revised Prayer Book:

Strengthen, O Lord, your servant with your Holy Spirit; empower him/her for your service; and sustain him all the days of his/her life. Amen.

Will someone please explain why and how this pedestrian new prayer, utterly lacking the cadence and majesty of the older one, is better?

(It has been called to my attention that the 1979 BCP does include the old prayer--with "thy" changed to "your"--but I had not noticed it because all the bishops in my purview have used the new one. However, wonder of wonders, just this past Sunday, June 14, Bishop Peter Lee used the old one at a service of confirmation in Leesburg, Virginia.

It occurs to me that the newer prayer is a result of the shift away from the biblical view of the human predicament. We do not believe we need to be defended from anything, but only "strengthened," "empowered," and "sustained," as though we were essentially OK but could use some extra help. In the apocalyptic view of the New Testament, we are defenseless against the principalities and powers without the intervention of "the Lord God of Sabaoth [Hosts]").

Anne Brontë on universal salvation

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:37:46 PDT

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is far less well known than Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, and Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, but in recent years Anne Brontë, the youngest of the famous sisters, has begun to command attention on her own. One reason for the critical neglect of Anne's work was Charlotte's disapproval of the realistic way in which Anne wrote about alcoholism, gambling, adultery, domestic violence, and marital cruelty. Today The Tenant of Wildfell Hall seems proto-feminist in its depiction of a woman's struggle to find her place in the world.

(Spoiler alert: if you are thinking of reading this book, perhaps you will want to return to this post at a later time.)

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tells the story of a beautiful, intelligent, artistically gifted young woman who has come to live in a remote house on the moors of England under the assumed name of Helen Graham. She is secretive, her past is mysterious, and she has a young son—circumstances which cause tongues to wag. Her beauty and fascination, however, cause several men to pursue her, which creates all sorts of false leads and passionate conflicts. In the course of the story, the truth of her marriage to a glamorous but abusive husband, and her flight from him, gradually become known.

Helen is a deeply devout Christian, which would be an oddity in a literary novel today, but all the Brontë siblings, being the children of a clergyman, were to one degree or another biblically and doctrinally literate, and the King James Version was the very foundation of English speech until (alas) the last half of the twentieth century. Quotations from Scripture are found throughout the novel, but Helen's own faith and devotion play a vital role in the narrative, especially in her quest to save her husband from his demons. Running throughout the novel is a debate between Helen and her strict aunt, who is given to quoting biblical passages warning of damnation in order to persuade her niece of her husband's incorrigible wickedness. In arguing with her aunt (who, it must be said, is quite right about the husband), Helen says that she has searched the Bible and found thirty passages which tend to support her hope that God's purposes may ultimately embrace even the lost, and she quotes some of them. I have not been able to identify all of them, for Helen (or Anne) has sometimes conflated one or more passages with others, but this is done with biblical integrity:

The wicked man will not be thrown into hell "forever," insists Helen, but only "till he has paid the uttermost farthing" (Matthew 5:26)
"If any man's work abide not the fire, he shall suffer loss, yet himself shall be saved, but so as by fire" (I Corinthians 3:15)
"He that is able to subdue all things to himself will have all men to be saved" (Philippians 3:21, I Tim 2:4)
"He will in the fulness of time gather together in one all things in Christ Jesus, who tasted death for every man, and in whom God will reconcile all things to himself, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven" (Ephesians 1:10, Hebrews 2:9, Colossians 1:20)

(Some of Helen's thirty passages might include Paul in I Corinthians 5:4-5—"When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Also Romans 11:32—"For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.")

Helen then puts forward a sophisticated linguistic point that has been made by some scholars:

"In [the passages quoted by her aunt], the only difficulty is in the word which we translate 'everlasting' or 'eternal.' I don't know the Greek, but I believe it strictly means 'for ages,' and might signify either 'endless' or 'long-enduring.' And as for the danger of the belief [in eventual salvation even for the wicked], I would not publish it abroad, if I thought any poor wretch would be likely to presume upon it to his own destruction, but it is a glorious thought to cherish in one's heart, and I would not part with it for all the world can give!"

This declaration preserves a remarkable balance between the risk of belief in universal salvation when it encourages disregard of the Commandments and the godly life, on the one hand, and on the other, the buoyancy of faith in the all-conquering grace and mercy of God which gives hope to the world's end..

When this conversation with her aunt takes place, Helen is naïve and untested. She has not yet married her handsome husband and knows nothing of the misery he will inflict upon her. Her biblical views are therefore idealistic, whereas her aunt is quite right in urging her to think again before she undertakes the marriage. However, years later, when Helen has fled from the terrible trap she has fallen into, her faith in God's invincible grace is put to the test. Her husband falls seriously ill, and his death would mean her freedom; yet she returns to him to nurse him. For months at his bedside, she ministers not only to his body but to his soul, urging him to repent and yield himself to his Savior. She learns that he is no Don Giovanni, bellowing his defiance into the flames of hell—rather, he is a cynic and a coward, terrified of death, yet unwilling or unable to embrace faith. He dies in misery, unshriven and unreconciled. Here is what Helen writes to her brother that night:

"Oh, Frederick! None can imagine the miseries, bodily and mental, of that death-bed! How could I endure to think that poor trembling soul was hurried away to everlasting torment? It would drive me mad. But thank God I have hope—not only from a vague dependence on the possibility that penitence and pardon might have reached him at the last, but from the blessed confidence that, through whatever purging fires the erring spirit may be doomed to pass—whatever fate awaits, still, it is not lost, and God, who hateth nothing that he hath made [Book of Common Prayer], will bless it in the end!"

This is quite extraordinary. Note the intellectual rigor that refuses wishful thinking and "vague dependence," but relies solely on the power and mercy of God who "is able even to subdue all things to himself" (Philippians 3:21). I don't really know of a more striking example of the argument for the hope of universal salvation. The theologian George Hunsinger said to me once that, given the ambiguity of the biblical testimony, we cannot speak with certainty of the salvation of all, but like Helen in the story, "We are permitted to hope for it."

In this regard, I often think of what J. Christiaan Beker wrote in his classic Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought—"The final apocalyptic triumph of God does not permit a permanent pocket of evil or resistance to God [to remain] in his creation." (p.194)

A "Modest Proposal"

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:48:52 PDT

Whoa. "Things fall apart" (Yeats). The Church of Scotland, that former bastion of all things Presbyterian, biblical, and evangelical, hits the news with this story about the hysterically anti-gay clergyman The Rev. Ian Watson:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6276839.ece

Granted, no point of view should be judged with reference to its most manic advocates, but there should be far more "conservatives" speaking out against this vicious sort of thing than there have been.

Let's imagine something, for the sake of the argument (in the traditional sense of the word argument). Let's imagine that those opposed to the ordination of active homosexuals and the use of the term "marriage" to describe same-sex unions laid down their arms and acquiesced in the whole array of items on the human-sexuality agenda, a proposal that conceivably might accord with what God is doing in our time.

Would that then mean that the severe divisions in the mainline churches would be healed? Would we be able to reunite and go forward with the mission of the church (our "missional" identity, in the current lingo)?

In a word, no.

One reason for this is that we have not had a serious theological debate in the churches about the sexuality question, but let that go. The other reason is that there is a whole host of issues at stake that have not been addressed in a mutually respectful and probing fashion for a long time; sides were drawn up decades ago and the two camps barely speak to one another. Take for example these foundational matters of doctrine:

--The uniqueness of Christ as the Only-Begotten Son
--The nature of the Trinity
--The definition of the gospel
--The power of sin
--The nature of the demonic
--The doctrine of revelation
--The Bible as the Word of God
--The active agency of God in the world
--The relation of faith and obedience
--The nature of baptism
--The definition of salvation
--The meaning of Christ's death on the cross
--The reality of the resurrection
--The significance of non-violent resistance
--The corporate nature of the Body of Christ

On these issues and many others, the differences between the--what shall we call them? liberals? revisionists? progressives? and the--ouch--conservative regressive traditionalists (can we say evangelicals?) are so vast and have been held tightly for so long that it is hard even to imagine how the conversation could begin. But let us hope and let us continue to bear witness to the promise that with God all things are possible.

Reynolds Price comes out, literarily speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:48:43 PDT

The writer Reynolds Price has attracted notice from many Christian readers, including myself, for his religious and, often, surprisingly theological thoughts. As The New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner notes today, many of us did not notice that he is homosexual. This is by Price's own choice; in his new memoir/autobiography, he explains his silence on the subject this way: “I’ve been more steadily interested in exploring lives involved in complex families with lengthy histories which are endlessly subject to change and fate, and such lives are generally heterosexual.” (As a parenthesis he notes this, as well: “I’ve also observed that few readers are interested, over long stretches, in stories of homosexual life; and I’ve never scorned readers.” Garner observes that this is probably less true than it used to be.)

As an admirer of some of Price's theological observations, I find him interesting. Our understanding of homosexuality is still in flux, and the common practice of reverting to the well-worn biblical passages prohibiting homosexual acts has not proven to be convincing to most people; indeed, the more we do it, the more it turns people off. The God-given distinction between male and female which is so central to the Genesis account of creation points to more fruitful ways of approaching the question while still leaving some space for alternatives.

I do not mean to suggest that Price is ashamed of his gay life-- quite the contrary. He describes his latest memoir, Ardent Spirits, as one of "high adult happiness." I have not yet read it yet--though I plan to--but the excerpts quoted in the review suggest a deeply reflective and nuanced perspective which is quite different from the usual gay manifesto. Thus Price writes, “Sex between men is, in one pure sense, the ideal male sex act, productive of possible affection and a quick intense pleasure — an act that’s profoundly different from female sex, likely as that often is to result in the commencement of a child’s life.”

Reflecting on pirates and substitutes

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:56:58 PDT

Reading about the capture and dramatic release of Captain Richard Phillips prompted two sets of thoughts:

1) The dead pirates

My delight in the prowess of the Navy sharpshooters was a wake-up call to myself. It was truly thrilling to hear of the result: three shots, three deaths--an amazing feat, performed after sunset, with a bobbing boat as a target. I watched the animations over and over with a great sense of satisfaction.

Yet Christians, I think, should beware of rejoicing in the death of anyone (though a sober sense of thanksgiving for justice and deliverance would be suitable). From what we have heard so far, the pirates were almost children. Like child soldiers everywhere, they cannot be said to be fully formed in a moral sense.

It's true that Miriam sang her immortal song of victory: "Let us sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and rider thrown into the sea." I have never been one to lament for the Egyptians "dead upon the seashore." But the Scripture taken as a whole calls us to a larger view of the bondage we all share, "Egyptians" and "Israelites" alike, and a developed sense of our common human predicament.

2) The substitute

It will be another week, at least, before we know all the circumstances of Captain Phillips' capture. There have been reports, however, that he volunteered to be taken so as to protect his crew--and some of the crew said they owed their lives to him. This makes me think of the way that the Crucifixion of Christ has been interpreted--a subject on which I have spent ten years (and counting) of my life.

The theme of substitution has been under ferocious attack for some decades now, and the intensity is increasing (see for instance the article in last month's Christian Century, "God Does Not Demand Blood"). I admit to being somewhat baffled by these assaults, though I am trying hard to understand. The central problem, for many, seems to be that the concept of Christ as a substitute-- or a blood sacrifice-- for the sinful human race leads to masochistic or oppressive behavior, driven by the assumption that "redemptive suffering" is an enslaving concept. There is also a misinterpretation of the meaning of "the blood," which is all too often presented as something God demands rather then something God gives. (Granted, I am not doing justice to the arguments of those who don't like the substitution motif, but I take them up in more detail in my two-thirds-finished book.) One of the most serious problems with these objections is that they tend to be based on a misunderstanding and misreading of Anselm (David Bentley Hart is among those who has mounted a defense of Anselm in this regard.)

It is not necessary to work out a complicated system of supposedly logical steps in order to tell how Jesus Christ stepped into our place. A particular problem with the "substitutionary atonement" or "penal substitution theory" that was so influential in Protestant scholasticism was its excessive rationality, carried beyond that of Anselm. But take the case of Captain Phillips as a snapshot. He stepped into the place of his crew members. He took their plight upon himself. He gave himself up for them. He said (in effect) "not them, but me." Would it be a stretch to say that he substituted himself for them?

Should this basic concept cause so much offense to so many, today? I am arguing that, whereas the complicated legalistic-rationalistic apparatus should be abandoned, the theme/motif of substitution is absolutely essential for a full understanding of our predicament and Christ's total identification with us.

And there is an additional, unique factor to consider. Jesus died not only for the victims and hostages, not only for his own crew. He died also for the pirates and their bosses and for all the people of the failed state of Somalia.

Making “the invisible man” visible

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:30:01 PDT

In a recent sermon posted on this site (“Imagine the Sojourner”), the importance of imagination is stressed with regard to the plight of defenseless people, in particular those suffering under torture. Another way of getting at the same point is to say with the great writer Joseph Conrad, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”[1] Ralph Ellison titled his immortal novel about the black struggle The Invisible Man. We don’t know what kind of president Barack Obama will be, but when the Obamas disembarked from Air Force One in London this week, the whole world could see that the African-American black man and woman are no longer invisible. For that, God be praised.

But Conrad’s task has scarcely begun. It takes work to see another person in Conrad’s sense. It requires effort to imagine oneself in strange, unfamiliar, or discomfiting circumstances. It is not our nature to do this work; it grinds against what is comforting and soothing. We who do not do it should greatly honor those who do—the writers of literary fiction, like Conrad, who make us see the “nigger,” the outcast, the alien. The filmmakers also, in recent movies like The Lives of Others, Gran Torino, Frozen River, and The Visitor, help us to see the Other. But part of the problem is that people who want to avoid seeing the Other—the sojourner, the invisible person—do not seek out such movies or books. All the more reason for preachers to search for illustrations. The good journalists are busy helping us. I found an example this morning (April 3) in The New York Times.

The front-page above-the-fold article is headlined, “Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life Is Buried, Too.” It tells a story that is in all probability not particularly unusual within our bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All over this country, foreigners awaiting deportation are held in detention for months and even years while their cases languish. In this particular situation a Pakistani man named Ahmad Tanveer died from a heart attack while in custody at the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in New Jersey. He was only 43. His chest pains and pleas for medical attention were ignored by the jail officials until it was too late. This happened in 2005, and only now, four years later, has Mr. Tanveer’s existence, let alone his death, been acknowledged by the ICE.

The circumstances of the fresh publicity about this case are very important. The key factors are the Freedom of Information Act, The ACLU, the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee, several months of investigation by The New York Times, and not least the efforts of a 73-year-old Polish Jew named Jean Blum who has been corresponding for years with detainees in the Monmouth County jail even though she could scarcely afford the postage. Ms. Blum’s parents escaped with her from Poland just ahead of the Nazis. Here’s what this representative of Judaism at its extraordinary best said to the Times reporter: “I am very, very aware of the issues that involve displaced persons. I could not turn my back, because that is my history.”

But the most poignant aspect of this story involves a letter from a Nigerian detainee who was in the jail with Ahmed Tanveer. In broken English, laboriously writing by hand, he wrote to a correspondent from the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee. “The jail is trying to cover about Mr. Ahmed death,” he writes. “He die today about 6 pm…Mr. Ahmed before he die was saying this [ICE] officer he lay [lie] too much he all the time lay about what is going on with us here…Death need to be investigated, we care very much because that can happen to anyone of us.”

“Yet like a message in a bottle tossed from a distant shore,” the reporter (Nina Bernstein) writes, “even the fact of [Ahmed Tanveer’s] death was soon swept away…The case underscores the secrecy and lack of legal accountability that continues to shield the system from independent oversight…”

Many columns of newspaper type detailing the missteps, neglect, cover-ups, and bureaucratic indifference follow before the final bit of information ferreted out by this hard-working, inadequately paid, underappreciated reporter. This paragraph is the one that drove me to my computer to write this blog-post:

“The Nigerian detainee who wrote the urgent [painstakingly handwritten] letter, an ailing diabetic, was later released pending a deportation hearing. According to social workers at the Queens-based charity that was his last known contact, he is now a homeless fugitive, lost in the streets of New York.”

Thus Ms. Bernstein has remarkably succeeded in Conrad’s enterprise: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."

“

[1] Preface to “The Nigger of the Narcissus.” Italics and punctuation original.

Thoughts for Maundy Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:12:51 PDT

The Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama, who taught at my seminary (Union in New York), entered into glory last Wednesday. His way of being Christian while engaging with other religions was more faithful to the essence of the gospel than that of most other interfaith enthusiasts.

The New York Times obituary gave this account of his conversion:

Dr. Koyama was born on Dec. 10, 1929, in Tokyo. In 1945, as American bombs rained down on Tokyo, he was baptized as a Christian at the age of 15. He was struck by the courageous words of the presiding pastor, who told him that God called on him to love everybody, “even the Americans.”

This coming Holy Week is a time for reflection on the love of Jesus not only for victims but also for perpetrators, and his prayer for his enemies (us).

Another welcome passage in the obituary is one that reminds me of Prof. Koyama's "water buffalo theology":

Dr. Koyama [used] poetic, not academic, language. As a missionary in northern Thailand, he said, he was inspired to write it as he listened to the “fugue of the bullfrogs” while watching farmers working with buffaloes in the rice fields.
“The water buffaloes tell me that I must preach to these farmers in the simplest sentence structure,” he wrote. “They remind me to discard all the abstract ideas and to use exclusively objects that are immediately tangible. ‘Sticky rice,’ ‘banana,’ ‘pepper,’ ‘dog,’ ‘cat,’ ‘bicycle,’ ‘rainy season,’ ‘leaking house,’ ‘fishing,’ ‘cockfighting,’ ‘lottery,’ ‘stomachache’ — these are meaningful words for them.”

But most meaningful of all from my point of view was the last paragraph in the obituary. Maundy Thursday is not far away, with its now-obligatory footwashing. I am among those not-so-few who dislike the ceremony of footwashing. It takes a lot of time that would be better used in preaching a careful expository sermon about the Christological meaning of the footwashing. Many interpreters have stressed that the primary meaning of Christ's action at the Last Supper is Christological, that is to say, it reveals who he is. The instruction to go and do likewise is the secondary meaning. Since the Gospel of John is so conspicuously Christological, with its primary motive clearly stated (in 20:31) "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," it is always a good idea to look for the epiphany in each passage. The chief message is not "You should wash each other's feet" (it is difficult--not impossible, but difficult--to transpose this meaningfully into a culture unfamiliar with footwashing). The chief message is, "Look what I and the Father are doing for you on the night before my death."

Dr. Koyama, in his simple, gentle way, interprets the story from this angle. He does not interpret it as an exhortation to go and do likewise (which is definitely present in the story but is secondary to the revelatory aspect). He is thinking of how it will be when we meet the Lord:

Once, in discussing death, Dr. Koyama recalled the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. He said Jesus would be with others the same way:
“Looking into our eyes and heart, Jesus will say: ‘You’ve had a difficult journey. You must be tired, and dirty. Let me wash your feet. The banquet’s ready.’ ”

Muggle she was not: Mrs. Charles Darwin

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:06:48 PST

A friend just sent me this remarkable quotation from Mrs. Charles Darwin, gleaned from an exhibition on Darwin at the American Museum of Natural History. In one sentence, Mrs. D. says it all. Here is the verbatim text from the exhibition, with the quotation:

"EVERY THING THAT CONCERNS YOU CONCERNS ME"

Letter from Emma Darwin to Charles Darwin, February 1839 (page 2 of 4)

Dr. Darwin [Charles' father] had advised Charles to keep his spiritual doubts to himself—"some women suffered miserably" if they thought their husbands were not going to heaven, he told his son. But this letter, which Emma wrote soon after their marriage, shows Charles must have ignored his father's advice.

Emma took a much more literal view of resurrection and salvation than did her husband. She believed Charles tended to apply scientific standards of proof to questions of faith, and—as revealed here—his skepticism worried her deeply.

"May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, & which if true are likely to be above our comprehension."

At the bottom of this letter is a poignant note in Darwin's hand. "When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed & cryed over this. C. D."

Muggles among us (Darwin's anniversary)

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:51:49 PST

Darwin's 200th birthday was the occasion for an outburst of scathing commentary on NPR. The biologists and paleontologists were called in en masse and none of them (that I heard, at least) missed an opportunity to heap disdain upon religious believers. Under gentle pressure by an interviewer, one of them admitted that he had a colleague who was a devout Roman Catholic, but by his further comments he clearly indicated that he thought this was "hypocrisy" (his word) on the part of the colleague. This biologist's concept of hypocrisy is a window into his limitations. He was contemptuous of the idea that science is one realm and the transcendent, unseen world another. Richard Dawkins' assault (see my previous Muggle posting) upon fairy tales for children confirmed my belief that some scientists are unfortunately impoverished in their understanding. (As has long been noted, this is less the case among the physicists.)

As an act of protest against Muggledom, I went to Carnegie Hall to hear Haydn's oratorio The Creation. What a radiant, joyous masterwork! Someone said that Haydn, alone among composers, evokes an unfallen world. (Others have complained "too much C major!") The splendor of this music with its famous "And there was light!" and the humor and delight that Haydn brings to his depiction of the animal kingdom, from sporting whale to soaring eagle to lowly worm, is a rebuke to all Muggles.

There really is a challenge here to all who teach the Christian faith. The ability to hold two concepts of reality in one's mind simultaneously seems to be a gift, not an acquisition. I don't see how this gift is to be nurtured without attention given in earliest childhood to poetry, fantasy, mythology, and literary fiction. It is well known that we desperately need more scientists in the United States. Let us hope that our budding young scientists are readers as well.

There is a bumper sticker showing two fish kissing—one is the familiar Christian fish symbol and the other is Darwin. This is pretty corny, but at least it gets the point out there.

Biblical themes in the film Frozen River

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:38:36 PST

The Oscar-nominated performance of Melissa Leo is only one reason to see this gripping movie about some of the most down-and-out people ever portrayed in an American film. Shot in the seemingly godforsaken territory of northern New York State near the Canadian border, the bleak landscape of snow and ice suggests desperation and the end of the road. Citizens and aliens live in trailers and campers on both sides of the border of the Mohawk "Rez," a land of disentitlement, poverty, and lawlessness. These are people—"trailer trash"—that most of us don’t know, which makes the movie all the more important for revealing their lives to us in full and sympathetic dimensions.

Melissa plays Ray, a prematurely aged 30-something mother of two boys. Ray works part time at the Yankee Dollar store, feeding the boys on popcorn and Tang while her husband gambles away the money they were saving to purchase her dream—a double-wide trailer with a Jacuzzi. When he disappears altogether, and Ray faces Christmas Eve with no presents for the boys and the promise of the double-wide vanishing, an opportunity presents itself in the unlikely form of a young, chubby, nearsighted Mohawk single mother (Lila) who earns fistfuls of cash smuggling illegals into the country from Canada by driving across the frozen river and bringing them back in the trunk of whatever car she has managed to beg, borrow, or steal. The police do not bother to interrupt this trade because it takes place in Mohawk country, where there is no border between legal and illegal activity. Ray's car is just what Lila needs, and splitting Lila's rolls of money is just what Ray needs.

The movie was shot on something less than a shoestring in 24 days, using local Mohawks as actors, with film crew members filling in the non-speaking parts. The musical score is both haunting and unobtrusive. In other words, this is the very opposite of a commercial film, and is all the more impressive for it.

Although Ray holds center stage, the development of Lila as a character is really the principal theme of the movie. Lila’s year-old son has been taken from her by her in-laws, and she has developed a persona of stoic, expressionless impassivity. She maintains this front throughout the drama until almost the very end, when Ray performs a sacrificial act that opens the door to a future for Lila—and indeed, for them both. But the moment in the film that I wish to highlight comes earlier. The two women are smuggling in two Pakistanis who are carrying a bundle. Ray is enraged by this; she is willing to smuggle Chinese but not people she suspects of being suicide bombers. She stops in the middle of the frozen river, grabs the bundle from the back seat, and leaves it on the ice. When they arrive at their destination on the other side, they discover that the bundle was in fact a snugly wrapped infant.

Back they go to retrieve the bundle, Ray driving the car as usual and Lila as passenger in the front seat. When they find it, Ray instructs Lila to hold it and keep it warm as they drive back over the ice. Lila says, "It’s dead." Ray says maybe it’s just cold, and urges Lila to hold it close. "The baby is dead," Lila insists with her characteristic lack of affect. "Whatever," says Ray, but tells her to hold it anyway. When they are almost back across the river, Lila sees that the baby is moving. Ray says, "Hello, little baby," sweetly, with a flicker of a smile. They deliver the baby to the Pakistani mother. As they drive back to their decrepit respective "homes," Lila says again, "The baby was dead." Ray says no, it was just cold. "The baby was dead," Lila insists. "Whatever," says Ray, and then, "See, you brought it to life." Looking straight ahead with her unyieldingly stolid expression, Lila says, "It wasn't me. It was the Creator." (The English subtitles, interestingly, capitalize "Creator.")

My mind went to the story of the prophet Elisha and the son of the Shunammite woman who was restored to life by God through the warmth of the prophet's body (II Kings 4:18-37). Surely the movie director did not intend such a reference, but the words given to Lila to speak are astonishing. Did she mean to refer to some Mohawk creator? I'd just as soon not go in that direction. For a Christian, Lila's refusal to agree with Ray that no miracle had occurred points to the God who raises the dead and calls into being the things that do not exist. Without going into further details I will just note that something subtly transformative comes over Lila, represented in a subsequent scene by the first suggestion of a smile we have seen on her hitherto expressionless face; and the movie ends with the melting of the snow and a hint of a new family coming into being. I'll never pass a trailer camp again without thinking of Ray and Lila and the life-giving power of our Creator.

P.S. I have seen the movie twice but have not been able to hear clearly what is said at one point about Christian converts. The most I was able to gather is that some Mohawk converts are not celebrating Christmas. Ray protests that it is terrible to deprive children of Santa Claus. This reminds me of a saying precious to me: a young clergy colleague of mine who had very young children said that he thought Santa Claus was a way of training a child's mind for transcendence. I agree (see previous Rumination on Muggles.)

The death and life of Alison des Forges

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:51:51 PST

Like everybody else, I was distressed to learn of the death of 9/11 widow Beverly Eckert, a heroic fighter for truth and transparency in the face of an obstinate and dissembling Bush administration. All the news on the first day after the plane crash near Buffalo was about her.

But on the second day, when I heard the name Alison des Forges over the radio as one of those dead, I experienced a shock of particular and personal grief. Anyone who has been interested in the subject of genocide, and Rwanda in particular, will recognize her name. Her book about the killings in Rwanda is the definitive account of the subject. She spent virtually her entire life studying Rwanda, and issued early warnings about the genocide. Only ten days ago she was quoted in news reports about the Goucher College professor accused of being one of the Rwandan genocidaires.

I have sent gifts in memory of Alison des Forges to Human Rights Watch and to Paul Rusesabagina's Hotel Rwanda Foundation. I reached the Hotel Rwanda Foundation at www.hrrfoundation.org.

Gran Torino

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:16:29 PST

There's room for debate about this movie. Just how seriously are we meant to take what must seem to Christians to be a strongly Christ-oriented story? Surely Clint Eastwood does not intend what some of us see in the literally cruciform climax? (Yet I’ve never forgotten a scene from The Unforgiven. Here's the relevant portion from my book The Bible and the New York Times:

"Clint Eastwood's young sidekick has just participated in the shooting and the painful and prolonged death of another man. He is shaken, but he reassures himself by saying, 'He had it coming.' He receives no comfort from Clint, who utters this deathless line, 'We all have it coming.'"

Gran Torino is certainly one of the best, most unsparing expositions in film of the tensions in our multiculti American society. The Eastwood character, Walt Kowalski, uses every epithet in the book and more besides—sometimes hilariously, it must be said—to insult his neighbors. These scurrilous outbursts are offset by the loving attention given by the director Eastwood and his screenwriter, Nick Schenk, to the Hmong people and their customs. Admirable also is the razor-sharp view of the plight of young males in our urban subculture—black, Latino, Asian.

Being no great fan of the early, Dirty Harry Eastwood, I do not look in this film for echoes of his earlier performances, but concentrate on this one, which seems to me a masterpiece. Walt Kowalski, a foul-mouthed racist alumnus of the Detroit auto factories, is no Archie Bunker, but far more subtly observed and portrayed. Perhaps the key lines are the ones in which he admits that he has been a failure as a father to his own sons, and that he has more in common with the "gooks" next door than he does with his own family. In many ways the movie is a meditation on fatherhood. There are explicit references to the failure of the Hmong men in the extended family next door. The movie then shows how Walt tries to learn how to be a father figure to his teenage Hmong neighbor. His attempts are off-key, awkward, sometimes painful, but he is teaching—one of the most valuable forms that love can take.

Redemption is perhaps an overworked theme in American films, and no doubt there is a formulaic quality to this one. Yet the nature of the climax is so unexpected, and the symbolism so striking, and the benediction so fitting, that it transcends formula, becoming a true illustration of the justification of the ungodly (Romans 4:5, 5:6).

Praise God for African-American Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Fleming Rutledge) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:57:10 PST

There are countless reasons why white Christians should praise God for the black church, and we saw some of them today at the stupendous Inaugural ceremony. Speaking for myself, my tears started to flow when Aretha Franklin stood up in her magnificent church-lady hat and spun out her famous voice across the millions in the Mall.

Was she worried about being politically correct? "Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride..." Her "fathers" owned slaves, and the Pilgrims are derided today by the bien-pensant, but she stood proudly on their legacy this morning and did not disrespect them by altering the words of the familiar patriotic hymn.

Then Joseph Lowery, one of the few Civil Rights lions still alive, closed the ceremony with as classic a Biblical benediction--ending in cross-cultural humor that touched all the bases--as one could ever hope to hear. Not for him any tender-minded scruples about quoting Scripture; he quoted it robustly, extensively, and in full confidence of the universality of its message.

I am not sentimental or romantic about the black church. It has its manifest failings just like every other branch of the people of God. But it should be celebrated gratefully for its generosity in connecting the hopes and fears of their own community to the hopes and fears of all the years, and its pitch-perfect way of incorporating political aspirations into the great sweep of the story of the salvation of our God.