Friday, October 26, 2007

A Justice Call for a Religious Rebirth

And how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
To escape writing of the worst thing of all—
Not the crimes of others, not even our own death,
But the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
So that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
Mere emblems of the desecration of ourselves?

----Adrienne Rich

Faith is a powerful language that at once offers solace and challenges us to fundamentally change who we are. Rich in these lines does not speak in a religious voice, yet her yearning for a passionate desire for freedom is no less profound than the desire to be born again. The same desire for personal transformation is what draws many of us wishfully to churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples.

Faith speaks to the spiritual needs of the individual but it also draws the individual into the needs of the whole community. If we are ever going to learn to live differently we need to see how desire for personal transformation goes hand-in-hand with our social justice work, with our embrace of the neighbor. What is required is a deep and total transformation and it needs to happen by connecting our advocacy for social justice directly, passionately, and personally with our spiritual need to be reborn in the service of God—however we define God.

Images of personal rebirth capture the imagination and the yearning of the soul much more effectively than language stressing mere tolerance. Yet it is the language of tolerance that dominates our liberal congregations and much of our interfaith work. Toleration built on a model of accommodation is easy for us because it doesn’t ask us to change but only to bring others into our already comfortable, safe world. We might buy free trade coffee in our fellowship halls or put Save Darfur signs in front of our congregations but what have we risked?

On the other hand, Christian radical right speak has so hijacked our imagination about personal conversion that it is nearly impossible to think of religious transformation outside a narrow, repressive, life-destroying preoccupation with discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and those who are not Christian.

Yet when we look at a situation in which the richest 1% of adults in the world owns 40% of the planet’s wealth, when the effects of global warming are waging daily havoc on our environment, when the threat of terrorism is only matched by the shameful propaganda of fear based on those threats it becomes clear pretty quickly that tepid toleration isn’t enough.

As a people we need stories of personal transformation. Secular one’s are valuable but richest are the sacred texts, whether the Jewish Prophets, Siddhartha, Jesus, Mohammed, or others. It matters less in whose name we claim our spiritual rebirth but that we claim it as the foundation for a richer, deeper, more personal connection to our work for social justice.

We can see this fundamental transformation in communities all around us. It exists in congregations like the United Methodist Church in Baltimore Maryland whose members embraced Rev. Drew Phoenix as their pastor when he transitioned from female to male and has now covenanted to stay with him despite excessive media attention, a heavy financial burden, and the stigmatization of others in the larger community. When congregations like this one truly wrestle with LGBT equality their sense of who they are as a religious body changes.

We also see real transformation happen in interfaith movements like the New Sanctuary Movement where congregations consciously choose to support and sometimes house illegal immigrants at considerable risk their own security and the security of the congregation.

Our sacred texts don’t ask us to tolerate each other but to embrace one another. Jesus said “Love your neighbor as yourself” not try to get along with your neighbor. The Tibetan Buddhist teaching of tonglen, or exchanging oneself for others, works by consciously breaking down the difference between self and other. This is a radical freedom and it’s not easy.

The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years in order to trust in God, to love freedom enough that they could learn to purge themselves from their oppression in Egypt—oppression defined by an occupying power that imposed a physical and spiritual regime not their own. Those of us on the religious left are in the wilderness right now. We want change but we’re hoping it will come if we write a check or volunteer occasionally in a soup kitchen. Incremental engagement like this is important but real change will only come when we risk who we are--when our personal transformation drives our connection to others. We need religious fervor to carry us there.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Dreaming of a common language beyond platitudes.

Surely at a time when religious fundamentalism in its varied expressions is polarizing nation from nation and people from people, finding a common language for people of faith would be a priority. But how to do that is no easy feat.

On this topic I was intrigued when in a recent edition of On Faith , panelists wrote in on the Dalai Lama’s pronouncement that “All major religious traditions carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness.” While there were a few, most notably the Muslim scholar Sulayman Nyang, who expanded on how the Dalai Lama’s words spoke across religious traditions, most writers dissected the statement to show its limitations.

Susan Thistlethwaite pointed out how when not connected to a social justice context of non-violence the concepts of love, compassion and forgiveness can be as corrupting as they are liberating. She argues, for example, that women are often counseled by religious leaders to forgive their batterers and stay in violent situations for the sake of a misguided interpretation of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness.

Other panelists speak to the real damage done by religion. As Hindu Chaplain Rajan Zed pithily explains: “there are some more things in common in religions: misapplying holy scriptures through selective study and decoding, seeing ourselves as God’s charge d’affaires, claiming to be the lone owner of the truth and all the roads to salvation, positioning the ideal portrayal of one’s own religion with the apparently defective truth of other religions, etc.”

Others challenged the value of lumping together these sentiments and showed the ways varied religious traditions respond differently to concepts like love, forgiveness and compassion.

I agree with many of the panelist; without a context these words are little more than platitudes. Nonetheless, I see the Dalai Lama as an international pastoral voice attempting to articulate a dream shared by many for a common language, to borrow a phrase from the poet Adrienne Rich. Many of us are searching for the principles of love, compassion, and forgiveness in our own religious traditions while simultaneously seeking out ways to connect with similar shared values across cultures and faiths. Think of the new Coexist bumper sticker and tee shirt that are popping up everywhere. The Dalai Lama is speaking directly to this longing.

I know sometimes when I throw together a litany of “good faith values” like love, compassion, and forgiveness—or add in a few others such as hospitality and care for the neighbor—my list can sound shallow and easily exploited for unintended uses.

Yet, it still speaks to a longing for connection. When Rodney King famously stated, "Why can't we all get along," his words became easily mocked as naive and were turned quickly into cliche. Nonetheless, they also spoke to a deep seated pain and longing; they made vulnerable a desire for connection and understanding, a desire in and of itself worth nourishing. Words like "love, compassion and forgiveness" figure the same way and, for all their vague and seeming insipidness, they still speak to a deep human need for connection. Something that we can ill afford to ignore.

Friday, October 19, 2007

unhinged

What do you do when you can’t get your cable hook up?

One option is to go after the Comcast offices with a hammer. As reported in the Thursday Washington Post Style section, a 75 year old woman, Mona Shaw, smashed a monitor, a keyboard and a phone at a Northern Virginia Comcast office. The couple had ordered the combo service (full phone, cable TV and internet) through Comcast but the company came two days late, only did half the job and then turned their service off completely. When they went to the office to complain they were asked to wait outside on a bench for two hours in hot August heat. When someone finally came out it was only to tell them that the manager had left for the day. The couple fretted over the weekend and Mona decided to go back to the office on Monday with a hammer and smashed things up. The story ends by telling us the couple attends a local Unitarian Universalist congregation.

I found this story hysterical and indulged in Unitarian and hammer jokes all day. It is in a sense a “safe” vigilante story—safe because no one is hurt, because the perpetrator is a 75 year old woman, because she’s part of a church known for its peace work. She’s a charming outlaw—a church lady who had too much!

For people who have had horror stories with some aspect of the service industry—and most of us have—it’s a nice little vigilante tale. Yet it also raises serious questions about how the elderly are often ignored and discounted. About how we create systems were violence seems to be the only option left for people. About how destruction of property is lauded as a way to prove one’s vitality and courage. And, how because the women with the hammer is elderly, white, suburban and a church lady, it is easy to identify with her frustration when with a different set of circumstances, and a different casts of characters, the situation would seem threatening.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Faith as the Counter to Fear

“A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they [the disciples] woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’” Mark 4:37-40.

Professor Mary Ann Tolbert preached a brilliant sermon this past Sunday on this passage in Mark and on the power of fear to destroy faith. As she pointed out, the disciples knew Jesus. They had witnessed first hand his miracles; they had been taught about the realm of heaven; they were not new to his power. And yet, when faced with a dangerous storm, they reacted in fear and forgot all they learned and all they believed.

Tolbert argues that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. It was the disciples fear for their own lives that made them retreat inward. Because of their fear they forgot not only Jesus’ power but their love of him as well. Presumably if they were to perish Jesus would too, yet when they cry, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” it wasn’t Jesus but their own skin they were worried about.

Fear has a way of making us small. We retreat into ourselves and look at the outside with foreboding and anxiety. Fear also destroys communities, particularly when manipulated as a mechanism of state power. By keeping people anxious about their own security you also keep them suspicious of anyone around who is in any way different. As the Bush administration’s tactics have revealed, fear is a mighty weapon for inculcating a culture of suspicion against those on the outside of a very narrowly defined norm: immigrants, people of color, LGBT folk. Such manipulation of fear can further be used to legitimate torture on the suspicion that someone might know something and preemptive strike against a country whom we perceive might be a threat.

I am struck by how important an examination of fear is not just of the culture at large but for those of us (and I include myself in this group) who, like the disciples, want to follow Jesus, want to live lives of purpose and justice, but find our courage tested and our faith challenged. I’ve been thinking about this recently in terms of the recent abuses against immigrants.

This Sunday's New York Times reported a recent raid in Long Island of undocumented workers suspected of being part of a gang. Once found, the suspects were taken away without a warrant, without a reading of their Miranda rights, and without the right to a lawyer (unless they could pay for one). To prevent the possibility of their getting legal representation or family support they were transported to York, Pennsylvania rather than questioned locally.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, federal agents indiscriminately barged into homes of legal immigrants as well as illegal immigrants searching for potential offenders. Such actions are not unique to Long Island but are part of a disturbing, well documented trend that has helped the Bush administration set a new staggering record of 195,000 deportations this last year. By indiscriminately raiding homes, the federal agents weren’t simply casting a wide net out of laziness; they were also visibly flexing their muscles. These stories are cautionary tales, letting us know exactly what we could be facing if we go too far in our protection of immigrants.

As a nation of immigrants it’s time to let our outrage over this kind of inhumane treatment be heard. As people of faith we have the added responsibility of explaining how a doctrine of fear not only keeps our anger in check and thus perpetuates a cycle of violence but also deprives us of faith. Faith rests on the conviction that the world we inhabit is worth loving and thus demands our passionate attention. To love our neighbor as ourselves means risking ourselves for someone else; it means stepping out of our own anxiety, our own isolation, for the possibility of a transformation that is bigger than ourselves. When we can ground our actions in a love that encompasses more than our own fears we can find the courage to act even when the risks seem insurmountable.

Many religious communities are testing their faith right now by challenging real fears to their security and well being. As in the 1980s churches, mosques, and synagogues are declaring themselves a safe zone for immigrants dealing with the daily terror of deportation. This New Sanctuary Movement is being closely monitored and the consequences for congregations and individuals within them are not insubstantial. All congregations aren't ready to take part in the Sanctuary Movement, yet if we are going to move away from fear and toward faith we need to start the dialogue about what kind of moral stance we as religious people are willing to take for our immigrant neighbors against hate, workplace discrimination and unjust deportation.