Coffee and Conscience

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice
of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of the scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.Psalm 1:1-3
Just a few years ago Starbucks was closing stores and laying off employees in a desperate attempt to restore profitability. Today they are expanding, and the Starbucks stock price is at an all time high. At the shareholders meeting this week, the man responsible for the turnaround, CEO Howard Schultz, announced record profits of more than 1 billion dollars, and said that conscience was a key component of the company’s success.

Companies, he said, need to give back to their communities. He argued that it is good for business and essential to restoring the American Dream. “We’re heading into a crucible,” he told the shareholders, “something that’s really going to test the conscience of the country. It’s a test we cannot pass by being bystanders.” He talked about the growing gap between rich and poor and potential “cuts in social services we haven’t seen since the great depression.”

He criticized the government for not doing enough to resolve the debt crisis, or help create jobs and restore the middle class, and he criticized banks for not loaning more money to small businesses. He also insisted that business leaders can no longer wait for Washington to act.
Starbucks has created a jobs program that makes loans to small businesses and non-profits. And he announced the company’s commitment to the goal of job creation by investing $180 million in a new plant in Augusta, Georgia, as well as the expansion of existing facilities in South Carolina.

During the meeting, two shareholders stood up to question the company’s decision to support same sex marriage in Washington State. Each time, he answered calmly and respectfully, noting that not everyone agrees with their stand. “But,” he said, “I want to say candidly, this was not a hard decision.” We looked at the issue, he said, “through the lens of humanity.”

He went on to say that he wanted the company to stand for something more than a product and he wanted the company employees to feel like they were part of something larger than themselves that would make a difference in the world. Last year Starbucks employees contributed nearly half a million hours to volunteer projects in their communities, and the company is working hard to recycle more and be more environmentally friendly.

Looking at a business “through the lens of humanity” does not guarantee financial success, and “doing good” does not automatically translate into “doing well.” But without a concern for the common welfare, real success is impossible.

Jimmy Carter and Biblical Christianity

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”Matthew 5:11-12
Jimmy Carter has probably endured more ridicule than any other living President of the United States. He is the punch line of a thousand jokes.

One of the things I admire about him is that he doesn’t seem to care. Not caring what people think about you is not a helpful character trait in a politician. And the truth is that he never was a very good politician. But he is a remarkably faithful Christian. His statements and actions seem odd to many political commentators because Christianity is at odds with popular politics and culture.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Senior Religion Editor for the Huffington Post, and great grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the greatest leaders of the Social Gospel, recently interviews President Carter about his new book, “NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter.” I want to share two of those exchanges.

When asked about whether gays and lesbians should be accepted in the church, he gave a direct, yet measured response:

“Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

“I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.”
In another exchange, Raushenbush noted President Carter’s commitment to peacemaking, and then asked how he interpreted Jesus’ declaration that he came, “not to bring peace, but a sword.” Carter responded:

“For the last 35 or more years, my wife and I have read the Bible last thing every night and just last week we read that passage and discussed it a little bit. . . . He was predicting what would happen, that his teachings might cause divisions among people as they decided to follow God’s ordained duties such as peace, humility, service to others, alleviation of suffering, forgiveness -- when we face those conflicts, we should adhere to the principles that never change, to the moral values that are taught through religion.”
Peace, humility, service to others, alleviation of suffering, forgiveness—those are not qualities that we often find in our leaders. And when we find them, we do not value them.

Education and the Reproduction of Privilege

Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
They will abide in prosperity,
and their children shall possess the land.Psalm 25:8-10, 13
Rick Santorum made headlines by calling President Obama a “snob” for insisting that every American should go to college. What the President actually said was that every American should commit to a year of training beyond high school. He talked about four year colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeships. And as it turns out, the former Senator endorses that same goal.

Higher education is an important factor in economic success. And its importance is increasing. Thirty years ago, college graduates earned an average of 50% more money than those with only a high school diploma. Today that difference has increased to 80%.

Americans have believed in education as the great economic ladder by which even the poorest citizens could climb into the middle class. But recent data indicate that may no longer be true. Education, in fact, may solidify and increase class barriers.

In an essay in Monday’s New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall talks about college as an institution that reinforces class stratification. Citing a report by Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and co-author of a report on how college access increases inequality, Edsall observes that at the most competitive colleges almost three quarters of all students come from families in the top quartile of income and that only three percent come from the bottom quartile. As Carnevale puts it, “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”

In the United States there are a little more than one thousand colleges classified as “competitive,” and almost exactly the same number of community colleges. But the student bodies of those two groups are from the opposite ends of the income scare. At the competitive colleges, nearly eighty percent come from families in the upper half of the income distribution. At the community colleges the same percentage comes from low-income families.

We like to think of the education system as a class-blind meritocracy. Standardized tests, like the SAT, don’t know and don’t care what a student’s family income is, or where her parents went to college. But in practice, SAT scores correlate closely to income. The higher the income, the higher the score. Those scoring at the upper end are on average, from wealthier families.

The problem is exacerbated by shrinking scholarships.

In the late 1960’s, when I was applying to college, my dad was the pastor of three small churches on Cape Cod. Our income was barely above the poverty line, but I received a full scholarship to Wesleyan University (tuition, room and board, and money for books). Need based scholarships at that level do not exist today. If I were applying to college today, I would get a “package” of grants and loans, with an anticipated college debt that would take decades to pay off.

This means that those rare students from the lower income levels who do have excellent grades and score well on standardized tests are far less likely than their more affluent classmates to enroll in college, and more likely to leave before graduation. Thirty years ago a Pell Grant (the federal scholarship program) covered 99 percent of the cost of community college, 77 percent of the cost at a public four year college, and 36 percent of the cost at a private four-year college. According to Education Week, today those percentages had dropped to 62, 36 and 15 percent. Grants are shrinking as costs are rising.

Since the founding of our nation, we have believed in the ideal of a “class-less” nation. We knew that there were gaps in income. But we believed in universal education as the best way to shrink those gaps and provide opportunity for every citizen. And the huge middle class gains after the Second World War, seemed to offer proof that the ideal could become reality. Today we face a series of economic factors which have made upward mobility much more difficult.

The system we have trusted to break through the barriers of class, now does just the opposite. As Anthony Carnevale stated, “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.” We need some serious reform if we are to reclaim our dream.

Peg Laurence, Ellen DeGeneres and the New Reality

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?Isaiah 43:18-19a

On the front page of The North East Independent, a local weekly newspaper, there is a story about Peg Laurence, a local lawyer who died last Friday at the age of 63. She was remembered and celebrated as a community activist and a renaissance woman who loved golf, sailing and football.

As I read of her many causes and commitments, I was impressed by the scope of her life. She must have been a wonderful person. But what most caught my attention was the picture that went with the story. The caption said, “Peg Laurence (left), shown with partner Lise Iwon . . .” It was not a story about a gay woman. It was just a story about a woman who happened to be gay.

This is, in the words of Isaiah, “a new thing.”

The judge who married them in Massachusetts told about how they met in Law School 32 years ago and it was “love at first sight.” Nieces and nephews recalled the importance of “Auntie Peg’s influence” on their lives and the lives of their children.

While the political debates go on about gay marriage, the day to day reality is changing. As Isaiah proclaims God’s message, “now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that the organizers of what was supposed to be a national boycott of J.C. Penney to protest the company’s hiring of Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson, have given up. The Times wrote that, “The Christian family group called OneMillionMoms.com announced Thursday that it's backing off a nationwide boycott of J.C. Penney.”

In that context, shouldn’t the word “Christian” be in quotation marks? Admittedly, they call themselves a “Christian Family Group,” but apart from that self-definition, what would indicate that they are in any way reflecting authentic Christian values?

We should be very careful about deciding who is or is not a “real” Christian. And even though it turns out that “OneMillionMoms.com” actually only has about 40,000 members (as Ellen DeGeneres said, “I guess they rounded up to the nearest million), I don’t really want to throw them out of church. But it does trouble me that the name is unthinkingly ascribed to the most narrow minded of those who claim to be Jesus’ followers.

And how is it that Christianity is so often identified with preserving the status quo? We wrote the book on “New.” Literally.

As the passage from Isaiah illustrates, the idea of God’s ever-creating newness is a biblical theme that predates Christianity. But it is hard to think of many themes that are more central to Christian faith. As Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Corinth, “When anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Football and Violence

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped.
For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek.
They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.
Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment.
Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.
They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.
They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth.
Therefore the people turn and praise them, and find no fault in them.Psalm 73:2-10
If you Google “Saints” today, your search results will first show stories about the New Orleans Saints football team and the “bounty scandal.”

An investigation by the National Football League found that former Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams ran a bounty pool, which paid out cash awards for injuring specific players on the opposing team. The investigation revealed that in addition to Williams, Head Coach Sean Payton and General Manager Mickey Loomis also knew about the bounty system and did nothing to stop it.

According to the report, the bounty pool was used to make payoffs to players who inflicted game ending injuries on opponents. If the opposing player was knocked out of the game, a Saints player received $1,500 for the “Knockout.” If an opposing player had to be helped off of the field, the payoff was $1,000 for a “Cart-Off.” These payments were doubled or tripled in playoff games.

Football has always been a violent game. It would be naïve to think that the Saints were the first or only team to have a bounty system on opposing players.

The iconic picture of an exultant Chuck Bednarik celebrating over the motionless form of Frank Gifford in 1960 reminds us that game ending injuries are not new.

But today the injuries are mounting up at an alarming rate. Former players are suffering the long term effects of repeated concussions. The players are bigger and faster. And the helmets and pads which were designed for protection are also used as weapons.

No one tackles anymore. Defensive players “hit” receivers and running backs. Players are praised for delivering a blow to opponents. The rare traditional tackle, where the defensive player wraps up the ball carrier with both arms and brings him to the ground, never makes the highlight reel. Compared to the “hit” that sends a player somersaulting, a tackle is boring.

As a football fan, this worries me, but the problem is bigger than the game.

The league will crack down on the Saints. No matter how much they may think that the “hits” and the violence are good for ratings, the prospect of costly lawsuits from injured players will force them to make clear that intentional injuries cannot be tolerated. And there is also the possibility that there could be criminal indictments. It is, after all, against the law to pay one person to injure another.

But the problem is bigger than the game.

Yesterday on a sports talk show they were comparing the Saints’ scandal with the Patriots’ “spygate” scandal of a few years ago. They were talking about which one was worse. As a fan, asked the host rhetorically, which would you rather have your team involved in, a bounty system on opposing players or taking illegal videos of the other team? “It’s not even close;” he answered himself, “what the Patriots did was much worse.”

Paying a player for injuring someone is not as bad as taking illegal pictures. Seriously. The intentional injuries, in his mind, did not compromise “the integrity of the game.”

What a strange moral calculus. It sounds like something that the “fans” at the ancient Roman Coliseum might have said about the gladiators.

It leads me to ponder the nature of men (not women, just men). Here we are in the twenty-first century living far more sheltered lives than our prehistoric ancestors did, and we choose to define ourselves by making believe that football is real life. We don’t just live vicariously. We live vicariously through a make believe world.

I love football. But the players are not warriors. And it’s a game.

To risk life and limb to protect a loved one, or to save someone, is a noble thing. To intentionally injure someone to win a game is wrong and crazy at the same time.

If this is who we are; if this is how supposedly sane and well educated men think, it is no wonder that younger and less mature men so often turn to violence to settle their differences.

More Thoughts on the Birth Control Debate

Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.I Corinthians 7:2-7

The Apostle Paul is regularly criticized for having a bad attitude toward women, and for infecting Christianity with it. As a long time fan of Paul’s theology, I have spent many hours defending Paul’s views with friends and colleagues. And just for the record, I want to say again that many of the worst “anti-female” passages attributed to Paul were not actually written by him. And we need to take all of it in context.

But compared to the sentiments expressed in the recent debates about health care and birth control, Paul sounds like the voice of reason, even after two thousand years. Within the covenant of marriage, he argues, the satisfaction of sexual desire is not a sin, and married couples should not withhold that pleasure from each other. And note exactly what he says, “Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again.”
One is hard pressed to conjure up an argument against birth control from Paul’s perspective.

In the conflict between Roman Catholic agencies and institutions and the requirement of the Affordable Care Act, that employee health insurance provide free coverage for birth control prescriptions, the church has argued that as a matter of religious freedom it should be allowed to deny that coverage to women. Religious freedom is enshrined in the first amendment to our constitution, and it is cornerstone of who we are as Americans. But that is not the last word. This is a real healthcare issue for women, as well as a serious family issue.

I wrote earlier about how similar coverage is already mandated in 28 states and many Roman Catholic institutions already comply with those mandates.

In one of the doomsday arguments against the regulations, opponents raised the specter of Catholic Charities being “forced” to close and thereby putting a giant hole in our social safety net. There is no doubt that Catholic Charities is a major supplier of social services to the poorest people in our nation, and they deserve our thanks for that ministry. But we should note that of their $4.67 billion annual budget (in 2010), $2.9 billion (62%) came from federal grants. Only $140 million came directly from Diocesan churches. The rest came from in-kind gifts, investments, community campaigns, and program fees.

And one more thing to think about: The Roman Catholic agencies in question already provide coverage for Viagra. It is not surprising that many women’s groups see the whole argument as profoundly anti-female.

Nostalgia, Conformity and the Prayer Banner

The old men have left the city gate,
the young men their music.
The joy of our hearts has ceased;
our dancing has been turned to mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head;
woe to us, for we have sinned!
Because of this our hearts are sick,
because of these things
our eyes have grown dim . . .Lamentations 5:14-17
Tonight the Cranston School Committee will meet at Cranston East High to decide whether or not they will appeal the ruling of a Federal Court judge that the prayer banner at Cranston West is unconstitutional and must be removed.

One politician has issued a “call to arms” to defend the banner, and another has called the student who brought the lawsuit, Jessica Ahlquist, “an evil little thing.” People are angry. The young woman has been threatened and insulted repeatedly.

If Jessica Ahlquist had any doubt that she was right to reject religion, the hateful response of people who call themselves Christians has erased that doubt. And ironically, the reaction of those who want the banner to remain represents a total rejection of the values expressed and prayed for in the banner:

Our Heavenly Father,
Grant us each day the desire to do our best,
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically,
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers,
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others,
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win,
Teach us the value of true friendship,
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
Amen

But this isn’t really about prayer. It’s about nostalgia. It’s about mourning for a way of life that is gone. For supporters, the banner represents a time when life was good and safe; a time of shared values and shared goals. People got married before they had kids. Moms stayed home and took care of the kids. Divorce was rare. The middle class was strong. A high school diploma was a passport to financial security. Men worked for the same companies for thirty or forty years and retired comfortably.

Taking down the banner is one more reminder that those days are gone.

And more than that, it forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that those days never really existed in the way we want to remember them. Our harmony was built on conformity. We told ourselves that the conformity was voluntarily embraced and universally welcomed. But that’s not really true. Gays were in the closet and blacks were at the back of the bus (literally in the south, and figuratively in the north). Racism and sexism were normative. The disabled were kept far away from the rest of us. We claimed to have homogeneity, but we achieved that by denying any evidence of diversity.

In his defense of the banner, talk show host John DePetro repeatedly insisted that since the banner had been in the gym for fifty years and no one had complained, there was no reason to remove it now. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Amy Levin, of Temple Torat Yisrael in Cranston, presents a very different picture when she talks about discussing the banner with members of her congregation who attended Cranston West when the banner was first put on the wall. She recalls,

“I asked them how they had felt as Jewish students sitting in the auditorium with the prayer banner on the walls. They told me that they felt uncomfortable, that their parents felt uncomfortable with the prominently-displayed school prayer in the room in which the school assembled. They told me that in the 1960s, their parents were afraid to speak about against the presence of that school prayer. Fifty years later, Jessica has given public voice to the discomfort of generations of students who came before her. She has voiced concerns that those parents were hesitant to raise fifty years ago. She has been subjected to the treatment that others feared to bring upon themselves.”

This isn’t about faith and prayer. It’s about nostalgia and conformity. Those values may feel comfortable and desirable, but they are not Christian.