What the Pope Said, and What He Didn't Say

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5

The Protestant fascination with the Pope is not unlike the American fascination with the British Royal Family. We separated for good reasons, and we have no desire to go back, but we love to watch from a distance.

With the Pope, it is more than a celebrity fixation. Though he does not lead the whole church, he does lead a substantial part of it. We are part of the same family, and his leadership makes a difference in how the world experiences Christianity.

Pope Francis has been a breath of fresh air in so many wonderful ways. He has re-focused Roman Catholicism on critical issues of economic and social justice and away from a fixation on sexuality, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality.

Earlier this week he held an informal press conference on the papal plane as he flew from Rio de Janiero back to Rome. And he made a remarkable statement. Speaking of the possibility of having gay men in the priesthood, he said, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” . . . . “The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem … They’re our brothers.”

The statement itself did not really break new ground. He was talking about celibate priests, and he was separating homosexual tendencies from homosexual acts. Being gay is not the problem; the problem is homosexual acts.

Those of us in the United Methodist Church are painfully aware of this line of reasoning in which we are supposed to “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” In our denomination, there is no prohibition against gays and lesbians becoming pastors as long as they are celibate. If you agree with our Book of Discipline that the practice of homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” and you believe that homosexual acts are intrinsically sinful, then this makes perfect sense. If you are in favor of the inclusion of gays and lesbians as whole persons, then that position is deeply offensive.

If the entirety of his position on homosexuality were really caught in the statement, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” it would have been an astonishing break with previous Roman Catholic teaching. Sadly, that was not the case.

But the most important thing was not what he said, it was the way that he said it. After delivering his conciliatory and inclusive remarks regarding the possibility of gay men in the priesthood, he did not immediately qualify those remarks so that no one could think he was making a broader statement. He spoke with openness and candor. He made a positive statement without adding a negative qualifier. And he did clearly and intentionally differentiate homosexuality and pedophilia. That is no small thing.

The Stars May Lie, But the Numbers Never Do

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my misery,
and my bones waste away.
Psalm 31:9-10

I am not in mourning. In spite of what I have seen, my eyes are not wasting away from grief. But they should be. And we should all be grieving for our nation.

Over the past few days I have seen dozens of internet postings about Marissa Alexander, a Florida woman who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for firing what she called “warning shots” over her husband’s head. Her husband had a history of domestic violence and she fired the shots after a violent altercation. No one was killed. There were no injuries.

It took the jury less than 15 minutes to find her guilty.

Ms. Alexander is black. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

There are issues with Marissa Alexander’s case. But the broad outlines are hard to ignore. George Zimmerman is “not guilty.” Trayvon Martin is dead. And Marissa Alexander is in prison, while her husband with a history of domestic violence is alive and well.

Racism has been called America’s “original sin” and it is still with us.

We don’t need to argue the specifics of the Trayvon Martin case. On the face of it, it looks bad. But it is just one case. This one case is significant only because of the broader trends. If we look up rates of incarceration, sentencing, capital punishment, unemployment, income, education, or pretty much anything else, what we find is that black people are disproportionately on the disadvantaged side of the ledger every single time. We would like to believe that justice is blind but the statistics say otherwise.

To paraphrase Mary Chapin Carpenter, "The pundits and politicians may lie, but the numbers never do."

In the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s acquittal a white person commented that white people had not rioted after the O. J. Simpson verdict, when a black man was found “not guilty” in the murder of a white woman, and that black people should show similar restraint. And, of course, we should all show restraint. And, so far, things have been relatively calm.

But seriously, O J. Simpson? That’s a great first example. Now we will all wait patiently for the second example.

What the Simpson verdict proved is that money makes a difference. And that in some cases, class may matter more than race.

In the recent court rulings on affirmative action, someone cynically observed that colleges and universities were more comfortable with defining diversity in terms of race rather than class. Racial diversity could be achieved by focusing affirmative action on income. If a colleges and universities achieved economic diversity, they would also achieve racial diversity without ever considering race as a category. Lower income blacks and whites would all benefit. But the present focus on racial diversity allows the colleges to select students from families with higher incomes, regardless of race. And the big gain for the colleges is that such a selection costs less in terms of financial aid.

We know that racism is still a problem in America. We don’t know whether or not George Zimmerman is a racist. The evidence is mixed. We don’t know whether or not the judge, and the jurors and the police officers are racists. But we know that racism is a problem in America. And we know that we have work to do.

We also know one more thing with a reasonable certainty. If George Zimmerman had not had a gun, then no one would be dead. Without a gun he would not have followed Trayvon Martin and the altercation between them would never have taken place. And without a gun, Marissa Alexander would not be in prison. She was not in danger when she fired the warning shots.

Maybe we need to do something about the guns.

Wimbledon: Lessons in Parenting, Sexism, and Torment

Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah’s eyes were delicate, but Rachel was graceful and beautiful. Jacob loved Rachel; so he said, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.”
Genesis 29:16-18

In the NRSV, Leah’s eyes are called lovely, but the Hebrew is uncertain. In the Common English Bible they translate it as “delicate,” with a note that maybe she had poor eyesight. The New English Bible says that her eyes were “dull.” But there was no doubt about Rachel, she was beautiful and graceful.

Jacob fell in love with Rachel as soon as he saw her. He struck a deal with her father, Laban, and agreed to work for him for seven years in return for permission to marry her. But Laban, trying to be a good father, did not want his older daughter embarrassed by having her younger sister married first, so Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah. And he made Jacob work an additional seven years for Rachel. So Jacob had two wives and “he loved Rachel more than Leah.”

I thought about Rachel and Leah when I read the story of BBC radio announcer John Inverdale’s comments about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli.

In the introduction to Bartoli’s final match against Sabine Lisicki, who was favored, Inverdale asked the audience, "Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little 'You're never going to be a looker? You'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight'."

If I can speak for the dads out there, the answer is, “No, I don’t think Marion Bartoli’s dad told her when she was little that she was never going to be a looker.”

When she was asked about the remarks at a press briefing after the match, Bartoli seemed unfazed. "It doesn't matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. That is a fact," she said. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I'm sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes."

The next day she took “being a good sport” to intergalactic levels when she suggested that Inverdale might revise his remarks if he saw her at the champions dinner. “I invite him to come to see me in my dress and high heels tonight at the tournament ball,” she said. “It could change his mind.”

But seriously. This is very bad.

There are at least two things going on here.

The first is sexism. Women are always judged by their appearance. Women are always judged by their appearance. It makes no difference if you are a Wimbledon champion or Secretary of State. And the comments can get ugly in a hurry. It is boorish at best, but it often descends into a form of bullying. On Twitter, the first reactions to Inverdale’s comments were critical, but there was soon another wave of vulgarity and sexual slurs.

The sexism is important and we should not dismiss it lightly, but there is something else going on here. The truth is that we find it very difficult to get beyond our fixation with appearances. It is worse with women, much worse, but it is true with men also.

When psychologists show us pictures of people we don’t know and ask us to imagine the characteristics of those people, we imagine that the attractive people are friendlier and have more integrity than those who are less attractive. We are more likely to vote for attractive candidates and hire attractive workers.

Our prejudice in this regard is never harmless and we will probably never get over it. But if we are aware of our tendency we may be able to mitigate it. And at a deeper level, there may be lessons we can learn.

In Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem about the Civil War, he portrays Abraham Lincoln in the telegraph office of the War Department waiting for word on the Battle of Antietam, reflecting on the will of God, the suffering of war, and freeing the slaves. In Benet’s telling, Lincoln sees his strength as the ability to wait patiently and to persevere as history unfolds.

That is my only virtue as I see it,
Ability to wait and hold my own
And keep my own resolves once they are made
In spite of what the smarter people say.
I can’t be smart the way that they are smart.
I’ve known that since I was an ugly child.
It teaches you–to be an ugly child.

What We Have Lost

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-21

I am often struck by the distance between Jesus and the religion that bears his name. Our harmless, domesticated Jesus, committed to the normalcy of civilization, the preservation of privilege and the maintenance of the status quo has little in common with the radical prophet we meet in the Gospels. Christianity has marginalized and silenced him in ways that Pilate and Herod, and the Roman Empire could only dream about.

As we contemplate the fallout from the recent Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage, it is clear that one of the biggest losers is Christianity.

The problem is not the decision. As followers of Jesus, we might have hoped for a more sweeping affirmation of the rights of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, but the decision moved us in the right direction. The problem is that along the way, Christianity became identified with some of the ugliest and most bigoted arguments against the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

To be fair, identifying Christianity with the “anti-gay” side of this argument is largely a creation of the media. When the television folks look at this issue they often pair a gay activist (who may or may not be a person of faith) with an opponent of same sex marriage who self-identifies as a Christian. Ordinary mainstream Christians are generally ignored by the media. Opponents of same sex marriage almost always say they are against it because they are Christians. Supporters do not as often cite their faith as a reason for their support. But fairly or not, the perception is there.

When young people outside the church are asked what they think of when they think of Christianity, they come up with words like, “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” “narrow-minded,” “intolerant,” and “anti-scientific.”

How did we get so far from the Kingdom of God? Jesus called us to join with God in creating a place where “the hungry are filled with good things, and the rich are sent away empty,” “where the last shall be first and the first shall be last,” where the poor and marginalized have security and dignity, where we love our enemies and put the needs of others before our own. Instead, those who call themselves Christians seem determined to live in the cramped darkness of their own self-righteousness.

A century ago Walter Rauschenbusch called on the church to embrace the Social Gospel in response to the issues and concerns of that time. He called for the church to renew its emphasis on the Kingdom of God as the core message of the Gospel. He argued that the church must do this in order to be faithful to the call of Jesus, and he believed that this was what the world needed from the church. But he also argued forcefully that if the church failed to embrace the Social Gospel it would lose a whole generation of young people. The youth, he said, were already moving. Young people might not understand the theological nuances of biblical interpretation, but they could hear the call of Jesus and they have chosen to follow that call. The church, he argued, would lose its moral authority if it did not move with them.

Our young people today have grown up in a more secular environment. Most of them lack the biblical background that Rauschenbusch could take for granted even among youth who were not directly involved in any church. But today’s young people have followed their hearts and minds, and they have intuitively come out on the right side of this issue when too many of us in the church have come out on the wrong side.

Beyond the position they have taken, Christian opponents of same sex marriage have also done great damage by the way they got there. Almost invariably they are biblical literalists. Their arguments depend on a selective reading of Scripture which misses the great sweep of the biblical narrative. They have used the Bible as a weapon. In the process they have inflicted great harm on LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer or Questioning) persons, especially young people, and they have also convinced countless others that the Bible makes no sense.

The Supreme Court vote was a great victory, but it will take a long time to repair the damage done in the struggle.

Voting Rights and the Supreme Court

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:27-31

Yesterday the Supreme Court eviscerated the most important part of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. They eliminated the provision requiring states and counties with a history of discrimination to get pre-approval from the Justice Department before implementing changes in voting rights laws. Before the day was done, lawmakers in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas rushed to implement laws that will make it harder for African Americans to vote.

In 2006 when Congress extended the Voting Rights Act, the Senate passed it unanimously and the House had only 33 dissenting votes. President Bush signed the measure and gave a speech reminding all Americans that this was one of the most important bulwarks of our democracy.

Without the requirement for pre-approval, states can pass and implement restrictive laws which can only be challenged after the fact. And those challenges would typically work their way through the court system after one or more election cycles had already gone by. If the court did not like the way that states and counties were identified, then it would be better to require pre-approval for every change to voting requirements in every state.

I find myself coming back to Dr. King’s famous declaration of hope, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” King adapted the phrase from the great 19th century abolitionist and preacher, Theodore Parker. King made that affirmation of faith in a speech given on March 25, 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama, at the conclusion of a march from Selma. The whole campaign was “centered around the right to vote.”

The Civil Rights movement was not aimed at achieving “equality” as an abstract concept; it was aimed at achieving equality as a practical reality. Achieving equality as a practical reality required laws. Voting was (and is) critical to changing laws.

In an impassioned dissent from the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared, "The Voting Rights Act became one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation's history." She added, "Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, progress once the subject of a dream has been achieved and continues to be made."

Later this summer, when we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, we will hear a great deal about equality as an abstract intellectual concept. But Dr. King was not killed, or jailed, or reviled, because of an abstract concept. He was killed because he led a movement that was changing America.

Hypocrisy, Christians and Food Stamps

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
I Corinthians 1:26-29

The Corinthian church contained few people who were rich or successful in the ways that riches and success are usually measured. By worldly standards, they were embarrassing. But Paul took their lowly position in the world as evidence of God’s power. They were transforming the world, in spite of the fact that by the world’s standards that was quite impossible.

When Mahatma Gandhi said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ," he was not talking about those who are “low and despised.” He was talking about people with the power to shape events and impose their will on others, who called themselves Christians but paid no attention to Christ’s teachings.

In the on-going debate in congress over the farm bill, Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee has been doing his best to confirm Gandhi’s judgment.

First, he has argued for cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as Food Stamps, by quoting II Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” Never mind that Paul was talking about people who were not working for the common good because they were just waiting for the second coming of Christ, rather than folks who were unemployed because they could not find work. Or that Paul was recommending this drastic step as a last resort. And never mind that Paul was also preaching about establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, where everyone has a place at the table. However you look at it, it is a fundamentally unchristian thing not to help those who are poor and hungry.

But the second part is worse than the first.

The farm bill is about more than Food Stamps. It is also about farm subsidies. And it turns out that Representative Fincher is one of the largest recipients of farm subsidies in Tennessee history. Between 1999 and 2012, Mr. Fincher received $3.48 million in cash subsidies from American taxpayers. That averages about $250,000 per year. Do you think we can find a Bible verse (or maybe a thousand) about rich people oppressing poor people?

I have read the story of Representative Fincher and the farm bill in several places, and almost every time, the article has mentioned that he is a Christian. (I resisted the temptation to type that with quotation marks, “a Christian.”) I saw the story most recently in an essay by Mark Bittman in the New York Times.

In his essay, Bittman chastises Fincher for ignoring “the fact that Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on an ancient religious text that contradicts itself more often than not.” I am well aware of the contradictions in the Bible, but “more often than not” would seem to be an enormous overreach. And although we can all agree that we shouldn’t be enacting public policy based on any religious text, I am very comfortable with using the Bible to inform our approach to the great issues of our time.

At another point in the essay, Bittman says that in order to keep up with legislative issues relating to hunger he routinely consults with David Beckham, president of Bread for the World, which Bittman describes as “a principled anti-hunger group.” In fact, Bread for the World is a Christian lobbying organization engaged in mobilizing individual Christians and churches to influence our lawmakers. If you go to their website today (bread.org), you will find a link for sending an email to Congress on the farm bill.

The vote will be this week. There is still time to send an email.

Leaders Need to Lead

So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Exodus 17:4-6

In the wilderness, the people of Israel complained to Moses because they had no water. They cursed him for leading them out of Egypt so that they could die in the desert. Moses complained to God about the complaining of the people. God responded with a promise of water, but only if Moses would lead and “Go ahead of the people.” And when he went ahead, he would find God, “standing there in front of you.”

There are two messages here:
1. God is always leading us into the future.
2. Leaders need to lead.

A few days ago my friends (Facebook friends) at “Believe Out Loud” posted a picture of United Methodist Bishop Martin Mclee and commended him for speaking out against hate crimes. McLee said in part:

“The problem of bias crimes directed at members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Community continues. As Christians, we are called to respond. Let us begin by offering prayers for the victims and families of those harmed by hate crimes. I encourage pastors to provide anti-bias leadership by teaching and preaching about the harm of directing violence against anyone.”

In spite of the fact that opposition to hate crimes ought to be a no-brainer, statements condemning such violence are important and necessary. And pastors should give leadership by preaching and teaching about such issues.

I wish that Bishop McLee had shown similar leadership in his pastoral letter regarding the situation of the Rev. Thomas Ogletree who faces a church trial for officiating at the marriage of two gay men. In his letter to the New York Conference of the United Methodist Church, Bishop McLee wrote:

“Many of you may have read the recently published article in The New York Times that centered on same sex marriage and The United Methodist Church. The confidentiality requirements of the complaint process prevent me from discussing the case in detail. However, as is the case on many issues confronting the church today, there are multiple perspectives associated with human sexuality.”

That’s all he said about the issue. The letter went on for several paragraphs saying that the United Methodist Church is concerned about many important issues and that we are not a one issue denomination and we have work to do in the world. All of that is true and right and good. But he basically said nothing about the issue at hand.

Our denominational stance against full equality for our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers is not just a bureaucratic technicality. It has real world consequences. And it does emotional violence to innocent people. Emotional violence is not equivalent to physical violence, but it matters. And the emotional violence of telling people they are “less than” can encourage those who are inclined to be bullies.

Bishop McLee is constrained by the Discipline of the United Methodist Church. And he believes it is his duty to uphold that Discipline by letting the trial process unfold.

But while enforcing the Discipline, he could also say that on this issue it is simply wrong.