Is the Transgender Person My Neighbor?

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
Luke 10:29-32

In what we call “The Parable of the Good Samaritan,” Jesus defines what it means to be a neighbor. And along the way he defines what we mean by “privilege.”

Privilege is the ability to pass by on the other side.

Yesterday the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is planning to adopt a rigid definition of gender as a biologically determined status that is fixed at birth by the genitalia with which a person is born. The effect of this change in terms of government policy would be to define transgender Americans out of existence.

According to a memo obtained by the Times, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Health and Human Services is arguing that government agencies must adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”

Sex would be defined as either male or female and fixed at birth:

The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

The new definition of gender would be the most consequential in a series of actions taken by the Trump administration to exclude transgender people from civil rights protections and rescind recent governmental policies designed to extend them. The Times reports that the Trump administration “has sought to bar transgender people from serving in the military and has legally challenged civil rights protections for the group embedded in the nation’s health care law.”

Catherine E. Lhannon, who served as head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under President Obama said, “This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees.”

Roger Severino, who now heads the Civil Rights Office of HHS has been critical of the efforts made by President Obama to increase protections for transgender Americans. Mr. Severino previously led the Devos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation and had opposed the expansion of protections under Title IX to include gender identity, calling it a “radical gender ideology.” 

Severino described the steps taken by the Obama administration as the “culmination of a series of unilateral, and frequently lawless, administration attempts to impose a new definition of what it means to be a man or a woman on the entire nation.”

“Transgender people are frightened,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign. “At every step where the administration has had the choice, they’ve opted to turn their back on transgender people.” 

After the New York Times article was published online, transgender people posted pictures of themselves on social media with the hashtag #WontBeErased

There are approximately 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender. In a nation of 330 million that’s barely 4 tenths of a percent. 

The rest of us can just cross the road and pass by on the other side.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Hiroshima and the Prophetic Vision of Harry Emerson Fosdick

“Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.”

Matthew 5:9

“War is essentially the denial of everything Christ stood for.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

One of our summer traditions is going to the Patten Library book sale. The books sale is part of “Bath Heritage Days,” a festive occasion of craft fares, displays and sales. A few years ago I found a wonderful little book of sermons by Harry Emerson Fosdick called, “A Great Time to Be Alive.”

Fosdick looks better and better to me as the years go by. When I was in seminary, I thought he was a theological and intellectual lightweight. In my estimation, opposing Fundamentalism was obvious. And didn’t he spend his whole career at Riverside Church, bought and paid for by Rockefeller money? But now, when I re-read “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” I am struck by its relevance for our time.

Fosdick’s liberal theology, which seemed so pale and lifeless when I was in seminary, now looks both profound and prophetic. Truthfully, I held those negative opinions based almost entirely on what other people had said or written. My opinion changed as I began to read Fosdick for myself.

Still, I was put off by the title of the book. I assumed that “A Great Time to Be Alive” would be a sugary recitation of happy insights from the 1950’s. Optimism pretending to be faith. A mid-twentieth century version of Joel Osteen. I bought it because I have a small collection of Fosdick books, but I did not expect much.

I was surprised to find a prophetic and remarkably hopeful collection of sermons written and preached during the Second World War. Fosdick’s hope takes account of the stark reality of war, but also looks ahead to the possibilities beyond the war.

The book was published in the summer of 1944, shortly after the Normandy invasion, when the outcome of the war was not yet certain. He believed it was “A Great Time to Be Alive” because so much was at stake for the future of humanity and every decision mattered existentially and spiritually.

Fosdick had the courage, in that perilous time, to declare that war is always at odds with Christian teaching. It may be necessary, but it is never good. 

“Whether one thinks of what our enemies have done to us—of Warsaw, Lidice, Rotterdam, Coventry—or what we have done to them—‘We literally drop liquid fire on these cities,’ says one expert in air warfare, ‘and literally roast the populations to death.’”

He assumes that we will win the war. Hitler will be defeated and Imperial Japan will be

vanquished, but the real challenge will be to win the peace, to create a world which is worthy of the human lives lost in war. “Many Americans,” he writes, “would love to save the world if only they could save it without changing their isolationism, without changing their ideas of absolute national sovereignty, without changing their racial prejudices and their economic ideas to fit the new interdependent world.” Sadly, those words are still relevant. We still want to save the world without giving up anything.

In many ways, we did “win the peace.” The Marshall Plan was an incredible effort to rebuild the nations we had defeated, and it led to decades of post-war prosperity. Although we still have a long way to go, we have made great strides in race relations. And the United Nations, for all its shortcomings, is still at the center of maintaining peace in the world. In other ways, we are still struggling to recognize the ties that bind us together and embrace the interdependence of God’s world.

Today, on the anniversary of dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as we contemplate a chaotic foreign policy and as American Christianity seems to be in increasing danger of losing its soul, Fosdick’s vision is particularly relevant.

In 2009 the Boston Globe described the Hiroshima bombing this way:

Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing. The U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber "Enola Gay" took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed "Little Boy". At 8:15 am, Little Boy was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only .7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was converted into energy - an explosive energy that seared everything within a few miles, flattened the city below with a massive shockwave, set off a raging firestorm and bathed every living thing in deadly radiation. Nearly 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 70,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950. Today, Hiroshima houses a Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero, promoting a hope to end the existence of all nuclear weapons.

It is sobering to remember that the United States remains the first and only country ever to have used an atomic bomb.

The Daily Mail published a stark pictorial of the immediate aftermath of the attack showing horrifically injured survivors wandering through the desolation, picking their way among the corpses just hours after the bomb was dropped. It is particularly chilling to realize that every person pictured would have died of radiation exposure in the weeks and months following the attack.


Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 


*I have published a variation of this post on each August 6 for several years.

Biblical Literalism Is Unbiblical

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:17-18

Last week I participated in a United Methodist clergy discussion group which began with a question about sexual orientation and the Bible and very soon devolved into an argument about biblical literalism. 

Historically, United Methodists have not been biblical literalists. But you would have never guessed that from the discussion.

Which brings us to the Zen question of the day: does biblical literalism cause homophobia, or does homophobia cause biblical literalism? Do folks embrace biblical literalism in order to support their homophobia or is it the other way around?

Either way, they are deeply intertwined. And the literalism does broad damage beyond the issues of LGBTQ inclusion or exclusion. 

Once upon a time I rejected biblical literalism because, as Paul said, “when I became an adult I put away childish things.” Literalism seemed irrational, and I wanted to see myself as a rational, thinking person. One of the things I always cherished about Methodism was our oft-repeated statement that “when we go to church we don’t leave our minds at the door.”

But the biggest problem with biblical literalism is not that it is irrational; the biggest problem is that it is unbiblical. As John Dominic Cross emphatically states, “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

Beyond the mistake of trying to reduce symbolic religious language to a narrow and stunted literalism, there is another issue built into the structure of the biblical witness itself.

Early in the passage we know as “The Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus tells his disciples that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And then he says that not one letter, or even the stroke of a letter of the law, will be lost. The Torah, the written word of God is eternal. It will always exist and it will exist in the form in which it was originally given to Moses.

That might seem like a strong affirmation of the literal meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, but just a few verses later Jesus launches into a series of teachings all of which begin the same way: “You have heard it said,” Jesus recalls, “but I say to you . . .” In those declarations, Jesus rejects whole chapters of the Torah in favor of a new teaching.

Jesus is not contradicting himself. He is doing what authoritative Rabbis  are supposed to do. ("He teaches as one having authority")

Jesus believed in the twofold law, the written and the oral.

He believed that the written law had been given to Moses at Sinai, and he believed that law could not be changed even in the smallest detail. But in each generation the great teachers had the responsibility of reinterpreting the oral law for that generation. 

The oral law was not fixed; it was fluid. The authority for reinterpretation came from Moses himself and that ongoing process was part of the tradition from the time that Moses first received the Law.

The oral law, which was equal in authority to the written law, was an attempt to capture the spirit of the Law. Each generation built on the traditions of the elders who had preceded them. In that sense, the law tended to evolve.

When we try to read the Bible literally, we are using a process that Jesus rejected and we are missing the opportunity to understand its meaning in fresh ways for our generation. We would do well to remember that as we debate those verses that relate to same sex relationships. 

Our understanding is supposed to evolve.

Blatantly Disregarding the Gospel

Wedding of Rev. David Meredith and James Schlachter

Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

The current edition of the online magazine of the ironically named “Good News” movement is headlined by an essay written by Good News Vice-President and United Methodist clergy person Thomas Lambrecht.

The article which is provocatively titled “Blatantly Disregarding Truth,” is about the case of the Rev. David Meredith.

Rev. Meredith is a pastor in the West Ohio annual conference who was charged with three violations of his clergy orders:

1. “Immorality including but not limited to, not being celibate in singleness or not faithful in a heterosexual marriage”

2. “Practices declared by The United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings, including but not limited to: being a self-avowed practicing homosexual”

3. “Disobedience to the order and discipline of The United Methodist Church”

The committee responsible for investigating those offenses dismissed all but the third one and this, according to Rev. Lambrecht, is evidence of “the current crisis” in the United Methodist Church, which revolves around “a critical lack of accountability.”

“The committee has effectively ignored the Discipline,” says Lambrecht, “and decided to impose its own standard of morality, essentially declaring that there is nothing wrong with a clergyperson being in a same-sex marriage or being a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

If that were really what they had done, then it would be a good thing.

Actually, what the West Ohio Conference has done is to go back to the understanding of church law that existed before the Judicial Council rewrote the Discipline to rule that a clergy person in a same sex marriage was therefore “a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

(I pause now briefly because I cannot write that phrase about “self-avowed practicing” without feeling ashamed, embarrassed, and amused. It is hard to think of a more effective demonstration of the irrelevance of the church in the twenty-first century than a focus on rooting out “self-avowed practicing” homosexuals.)

Rev. Lambrecht calls the West Ohio decision an “egregious violation of the church’s law and accountability process.” And he offers the hope of the Good News movement that the decision might be overturned on appeal. This, he argues, “would lead to a restored process that demonstrates that the church is able to hold its clergy accountable.”

And then he concludes:

“If an appeal fails, this committee’s decision will demonstrate that our church is no longer governable. We will no longer be governed by laws, but by people who reserve the right to undermine or ignore requirements that they disagree with. Such an outcome would demonstrate our ever-deepening schism and could only reinforce the movement toward anarchy and the reliance on raw power in our church-values that hardly comport with being disciples of Jesus Christ, let alone leading to the (positive) transformation of the world.”

When Rev. Lambrecht writes about “Blatantly Disregarding Truth,” the truth to which he is referring is the Book of Discipline as it has been interpreted by the committees and councils and conferences that agree with Rev. Lambrecht.

Our Book of Discipline is a collection of resolutions and affirmations intended to guide our life together as a denomination, but it is not The Truth.

The truth of the Gospel is a higher calling. That is the truth by which we judge our faithfulness.

When Jesus told his disciples that they would know the truth and that the truth would set them free, I don’t think he was talking about chasing after LGBTQ folks and throwing them out of the ministry.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

What Jesus Actually Taught

The poor are invited to the feast. Luke 14:15-24

Once Jesus was asked when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
Luke 17:20-21

It is time for my annual reflection on Kingdomtide and why it matters.

Yesterday was the First Sunday in Kingdomtide.

At least that’s what it was when I was growing up. In the old United Methodist liturgical calendar the Sundays from the end of August to the beginning of Advent were known as the season of “Kingdomtide.”

It was a time to reflect on the biblical promise of the Kingdom of God and to ask ourselves what the world would look like if we were serious about building the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus preached the “good news of the Kingdom of God.”

For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was the Gospel. He announced that God was already at work in the world, and we were invited to live in the new reality that God was creating.

The idea of Kingdomtide as a liturgical season began in 1937 and lasted for barely half a century. Kingdomtide just never caught on. Initially, it seemed to have a lot going for it, not the least of which is that stretching out Pentecost, and counting the Sundays after Pentecost, is pretty boring. It also made sense because the fall lectionary texts emphasize building up the Kingdom of God.

And after all, Jesus’ whole message was about the Kingdom of God. That was what he called “the good news.”

But the season of Kingdomtide was doomed by the combined weight of liturgical purity and the concern (which I share) for looking beyond exclusively masculine terms for God.

God is not a King.

When the “new” United Methodist Hymnal was published in 1989, Kingdomtide was gone. I didn’t notice the change for several years. When I saw my error, I briefly surrendered to liturgical conformity and abandoned the season. But it was not long before I changed my mind.

How can we abandon the only liturgical season that is focused on what Jesus actually taught?

Whatever we call it, we need to do it.

Some time in the middle of the last century one of the great preachers said that our most important task is keeping the idea of the Kingdom of God alive in the human spirit. 

In the hyper-competitive winner-take-all culture of the twenty-first century, that task is even more urgent. Notions of economic justice, concern for the poor, non-violence, and simplicity are often seen as naïve or un-American. 

We need to reclaim the language of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is a profoundly political idea. But it does not translate directly into what we popularly associate with “politics.” It is not about political parties or political labels.

As Robert Bellah wrote, "Politics are never ultimate, never absolute. We can and must fight the good fight for a better republic and a better world. But our hope does not depend on any political outcome. Our faith and our hope derive from Jesus Christ, who survives all nations and all politics."

In these deeply troubled times, it is easy to feel hopeless, but it is precisely in times such as these that we need to be grounded in Jesus’ message.

When his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he told them to pray first for the Kingdom of God to come on earth. Two thousand years later, that should still be our first concern.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

*A version of this post was first published on September 1, 2011.

The President's Rally in Phoenix

When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples; and as they were eating, he said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another, “Is it I, Lord?”
Matthew 26:20-22

Is it I, Lord?

There are many strange scenes in the Bible, but this is one of the strangest.

We commonly call this “The Last Supper.” Jesus is celebrating Passover with his disciples. And he tells them he knows that one of them will betray him. Immediately they begin, one by one, to ask him, “Is it me? Am I the one who will betray you?”

Christians have wondered for two millennia how all of them could be asking that question. How could they not know the answer?

I thought of this scene as I contemplated the President’s rally in Phoenix.

There is an almost (or more than almost) messianic quality to the loyalty and praise he receives from some of his followers. Many believe that he has sacrificed his life to serve the country. They see the Trump White House as a forerunner of the Kingdom of God.

Where Christians might believe that “if Jesus said it, then it must be true,” in a similar way many of Trump’s supporter believe that if Donald Trump said it, then it must be true. So when he says that the television cameras have been turned off, they believe him even if they can see that the cameras are still on. 

And he does seem to believe that he is the Messiah.

But in this case I was not thinking about similarities. I was thinking about a profound difference.

David Smith wrote an article for The Guardian, reporting on interviews he had with Trump supporters at the Phoenix rally. He interviewed nine people, so it hardly qualifies as a scientific study, but the results are interesting.

Most of it was very predictable. They voted for him because he is not a politician, because he is not afraid to say what he thinks, because he will shake things up in Washington, and, amazingly, because they trust him.

One woman voted for him because she “didn’t want someone being investigated by the FBI sitting in our president’s seat.” She did not seem aware of the irony in her statement.

They were asked whether or not they thought that Mr. Trump was a racist. Not surprisingly, they all said no. They did not think he was a racist. In fact, they were certain he was not a racist. 

They knew this because each of them said in one way or another, “he believes what I believe.”

There is logic to it:

“I am not a racist. Mr. Trump believes what I believe. Therefore, Mr. Trump is not a racist.”

When Christians discuss that interchange at the Last Supper, they often marvel that the disciples would have so little self-knowledge that each would think himself capable of betraying Jesus.

But I think that misses the point. The Disciples doubt themselves precisely because they know themselves all too well. They know their own weakness and moral frailty. And they know the darkness that can cloud the human heart.

When we look back on the great moral divides in human history we often feel certain that if we had lived in that time and faced those issues we would have been on the right side. We would have stood with Jesus against the violence of the empire. We would have sided with the abolitionists. We would have been against child labor. We would have supported women’s suffrage. We would have marched for civil rights. 

And if we had lived in Germany in the 1930’s we would have resisted the Nazis.

In other words, we are certain of our own goodness. 

The Trump loyalists in Arizona were not asking, “Is it I, Lord?” 

“Am I a racist?”

A year and a half ago, before the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump was interviewed about the surprising revelation that he was actually a Christian and that he went to church. Frank Luntz asked him if he had ever asked God for forgiveness and he basically said, no.

Of course not. 

A real Trump supporter would know that’s a pretty silly question.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Hiroshima and the Prophetic Vision of Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Blessed are the peacemakers, 
for they will be called children of God.”

Matthew 5:9

“War is essentially the denial of everything Christ stood for.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

One of our summer traditions is going to the Patten Library book sale. The books sale is part of “Bath Heritage Days,” a festive occasion of craft fares, displays and sales. A few years ago I found a wonderful little book of sermons by Harry Emerson Fosdick called, “A Great Time to Be Alive.” 

Fosdick looks better and better to me as the years go by. When I was in seminary, I thought he was a theological and intellectual lightweight. In my estimation, opposing Fundamentalism was obvious. And didn’t he spend his whole career at Riverside Church, bought and paid for by Rockefeller money? But now, when I re-read “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” I am struck by its relevance for our time. 

Fosdick’s liberal theology, which seemed so pale and lifeless when I was in seminary, now looks both profound and prophetic. Truthfully, I held those negative opinions based almost entirely on what other people had said or written. My opinion changed as I began to read Fosdick for myself. 

Still, I was put off by the title of the book. I assumed that “A Great Time to Be Alive” would be a sugary recitation of happy insights from the 1950’s. Optimism pretending to be faith. A mid-twentieth century version of Joel Osteen. I bought it because I have a small collection of Fosdick books, but I did not expect much.

I was surprised to find a prophetic and remarkably hopeful collection of sermons written and preached during the Second World War. Fosdick’s hope takes account of the stark reality of war, but also looks ahead to the possibilities beyond the war. 

The book was published in the summer of 1944, shortly after the Normandy invasion, when the outcome of the war was not yet certain. He believed it was “A Great Time to Be Alive” because so much was at stake for the future of humanity and every decision mattered existentially and spiritually.

Fosdick had the courage, in that perilous time, to declare that war is always at odds with Christian teaching. It may be necessary, but it is never good. 

“Whether one thinks of what our enemies have done to us—of Warsaw, Lidice, Rotterdam, Coventry—or what we have done to them—‘We literally drop liquid fire on these cities,’ says one expert in air warfare, ‘and literally roast the populations to death.’”

He assumes that we will win the war. Hitler will be defeated and Imperial Japan will be 
vanquished, but the real challenge will be to win the peace, to create a world which is worthy of the human lives lost in war. “Many Americans,” he writes, “would love to save the world if only they could save it without changing their isolationism, without changing their ideas of absolute national sovereignty, without changing their racial prejudices and their economic ideas to fit the new interdependent world.” Sadly, those words are still relevant. We still want to save the world without giving up anything.

In many ways, we did “win the peace.” The Marshall Plan was an incredible effort to rebuild the nations we had defeated, and it led to decades of post-war prosperity. Although we still have a long way to go, we have made great strides in race relations. And the United Nations, for all its shortcomings, is still at the center of maintaining peace in the world. In other ways, we are still struggling to recognize the ties that bind us together and embrace the interdependence of God’s world.

Today, on the anniversary of dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as we contemplate a chaotic foreign policy and the threat of long range missiles in North Korea, Fosdick’s vision is particularly relevant.

In 2009 the Boston Globe described the Hiroshima bombing this way:

Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing. The U.S. B-29 Superfortress bomber "Enola Gay" took off from Tinian Island very early on the morning of August 6th, carrying a single 4,000 kg (8,900 lb) uranium bomb codenamed "Little Boy". At 8:15 am, Little Boy was dropped from 9,400 m (31,000 ft) above the city, freefalling for 57 seconds while a complicated series of fuse triggers looked for a target height of 600 m (2,000 ft) above the ground. At the moment of detonation, a small explosive initiated a super-critical mass in 64 kg (141 lbs) of uranium. Of that 64 kg, only .7 kg (1.5 lbs) underwent fission, and of that mass, only 600 milligrams was converted into energy - an explosive energy that seared everything within a few miles, flattened the city below with a massive shockwave, set off a raging firestorm and bathed every living thing in deadly radiation. Nearly 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately, with possibly another 70,000 survivors dying of injuries and radiation exposure by 1950. Today, Hiroshima houses a Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum near ground zero, promoting a hope to end the existence of all nuclear weapons.

It is sobering to remember that the United States remains the first and only country ever to have used an atomic bomb. The Daily Mail published a stark pictorial of the immediate aftermath of the attack showing horrifically injured survivors wandering through the desolation, picking their way among the corpses just hours after the bomb was dropped. It is particularly chilling to realize that every person pictured would have died of radiation exposure in the weeks and months following the attack.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.