to thine own true self, be

Manage decline??

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 19:34:49 +0200

When I first began as Bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, Archbishop George Carey invited me to attend the annual College for Bishops of the Church of England. This has proven to be very enriching to my ministry here, in a variety of ways.

At my first meeting, I asked other new bishops what their “baby-bishop” course had taught them. “Our job is to manage decline,” replied one, morosely.

“Manage decline?” I thought. That literally turned my stomach. I could never settle for that… (Neither, as it turned out, would they.)

All the Episcopal Church’s overseas dioceses are growing, so I have had other challenges. But numerical decline is certainly happening in the United States. Recently, at a meeting of some of our bishops, one said, “We have all read the Hadaway Report, but we avoid talking about it. Soon all the Greatest Generation will be gone, the Boomers will be on fixed incomes, we lost Gen X, and the Millennials don’t know anything about church. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.”

The smell is not just about Episcopalians, but all Christian churches in America, with the possible exception of the Assemblies of God. The number of reported atheists has doubled in the past ten years. In a potboiler article for Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan enjoined readers to “forget about church, just follow Jesus” as a way to deal with this decline.

Hmmm. Problem is, you can’t follow Jesus alone. Christianity is a communal phenomenon, and so we can’t just “forget about” church. Nor can we make the biblical Jesus more palatable to our minds, as Sullivan recounts Thomas Jefferson doing for his age. Who needs yet another guru? And locking ourselves up in mental towers double-moated ’round with declarations, confessions, and other unquestionable assertions of The Truth violates the Summary of the Law: we are to love God with all our mind, which basically means asking questions and trying to find answers (which only lead eventually to more questions).

All these have been tried over and over, and they all fail. Nor will it do to manage decline until we do a genteel shuffle off this mortal coil. Imagine standing before the great judgment seat of Christ, and boasting, “I managed decline better than anyone else, and all for you, Lord.”

No. We need to wake up and smell the coffee, all right, but that doesn’t mean brewing new strategies to attract and hold members. Sullivan talks about St. Francis of Assisi. It reminded me, the bishop, of Innocent III trying to figure him out, and the dream he had of Francis holding up a church building. I am a great admirer of Francis and his impact on the church of his day down to our times. And I am also an admirer of Thérèse of Lisieux, and her Little Way, a call for ordinary people to follow Jesus in their lives by allowing themselves to be loved, and in return, to love.* One of the better things John Paul II did was to declare her a Doctor of the Church…

Two people, holding up the simplicity, as well as the enormous difficulty, of following Jesus. And so many more, vastly more than fit in any calendar of saints. Really, if we started to focus on the hard, sweet task of loving our imperfect selves, and other imperfect people, as God in Jesus loves us, we would be worrying about serious matters. For the Gospel is about life and death... and new life.

Worry about numerical decline after we have accomplished the following:

1.) a church that is truly transforming the world doesn’t worry about size and numbers. It is wholly concerned with the proper work of the Church, which is transformative worship of God through Christ in the Spirit, and helping those who have been thus transformed to accomplish their ministries in the world.

2.) a church that is helping all its members realize each one’s gifts for God’s mission will have a new standard for judging success: percentage of people actively engaged in accomplishing each one’s unique role in the economy of God’s salvation.

3.) a church of people unselfconsciously loving God and neighbor will continue to have institutional issues: that’s what bishops are for, among other things. I remember once a conversation with a Maronite Christian woman who was telling me about a hermit saint of Lebanon, a truly holy man, “unlike you”, she said. “Huh?” I said, my usual articulate self. She explained that as a bishop, I had to deal with the world and therefore could not be holy. Hmmm...

There is a wonderful set of modern windows in St. Pierre de Montmartre, Paris’ oldest church. They depict moments of Peter’s life, My favorite (see above) is of him trying to walk on the water, seen from below, from under the water. (It came to me one day that this is the vocation of a bishop, to see things from below, for that is the perspective of a servant.)

Finally, for a long time the percentage of American Christians was quite stable, meaning that claims of “church growth” were actually no more than shifts in the overall population from one outfit to another. The general decline in number of Christians means that illusion is gone, thank God. This should engender a lot of soulsearching. Liberals might leap too quickly to point fingers at evangelicals; conservatives may continue to claim that schism can be justified in the name of purity. The self-righteous will probably keep on being infatuated with their selves. But all fingers merely point back to ourselves. It is “Christ in us, the hope of glory”, or it is nowhere else. If we do not as church grasp that and then give it away, we deserve to wither and die.

Those who are just happy to know that they are beloved of God, and that this love needs to be returned to God through other people, will not worry unduly about the issues du jour, nor declining numbers. They will focus on giving God due worship for unmerited love and eternal life, and they will judge themselves, not others, for not being loving enough in return. Such people transform the creation. It is what we are to become.

I pray a prayer fairly often, as I am confronted with some hard challenge of bishop’s work: “Lord, this church thing was your idea, not mine: you fix it!” Effective, if unpoetic. God will take care of the church, one way or another. And the Holy Trinity will continue to pour out upon us unfathomable mercy, unmerited love, and surprising, powerful gifts of healing and transformation. We have therefore pressing business at hand. Here is one poet’s way to describe that:

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here's my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.

* I recently learned about Episcopal Carmelites. See here.

Booting the English...

Fri, 6 Jan 2012 12:16:33 +0100

Joan of Arc —Jeanne d’Arc — remains a fascinating and mysterious figure. Born 600 years ago today, she has become a polyvalent symbol in French politics, regularly invoked by all the parties across the spectrum, Communists to Extreme Right. Today President Nicolas Sarkozy is visiting her birthplace of Domrémy, in Lorraine. Of course, he is also officially launching his presidential campaign...

You can find original materials from her trials here. The more interesting account is the transcript of her first trial. Her own words, transcribed by her enemies, are remarkable. She is clear in her thoughts and precise in her choice of words. In fact, her discourses are claimed by some to be the beginning of modern French.

I am not interested in her legend, her épopée, as the French say. Too many rascals have used it for their benefit over the centuries. What is historically attested in manuscripts of the time, however, is very strange indeed. Who were her “voices”? How did she have seeming moments of clairvoyance, which she attributed to those voices? How did she instantly learn warcraft, when all she had studied was sewing?

Why would God apparently intervene in the course of history of one nation over another?

There is something Christ-like in her story. Jeanne d’Arc’s recapitulation of his Passion: the trial of an innocent at the hands of the religious authorities of the time, the forgiveness of enemies, the brutal execution, all by an illiterate teenage girl of all people, remains very challenging. Beyond the paranormal is the very typical murder of a scapegoat. Like Christ, the intended effect of discrediting her failed.

The English were “booted” out of France. The nation came together. Perhaps God does use people in various nations for the welfare of their country. Ancient Israel itself is the primary example, after all.

There are three great French women saints, each with an extraordinary story: Bernadette Soubirous, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Jeanne. Of the three, Jeanne d’Arc is the strangest. Like Thérèse, her words have enduring power. Like Bernadette, she was a visionary. But her story is so particular, so rooted in a very precise context, that she seems to challenge us far more than the others.

Bon anniveraire, Jeanne. Prie pous nous, s’il te plaît...

Start 2012 right — change something!

Mon, 2 Jan 2012 13:50:41 +0100

Karen Tse is a member of Emmanuel Church, Geneva,Switzerland, part of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, of which I am Bishop in charge.

She is one of many, many people in our congregations who make a difference in the world.

And our congregations make a difference too. The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Paris, France, made Christmas a bit brighter for 2,835 children, for example. Though it is the largest congregation of the four Anglican jurisdictions in Europe, that is over 2 boxes per member! Then there is the program of Christ-the-King, Frankfurt, Germany, which helps U.S. deportees to Germany make a life in that country. And of course, St. Paul’s-Within-the Walls, Rome, has the only daytime refugee center in the entire Eternal City.

In fact, every one of our congregations has people who have discovered God’s unique call to them and accepted it, to participate in the Holy Spirit’s transformation of creation. And each community is doing something unique as well to touch people who are not their members, in the power of the same Spirit.

I am so proud to be their bishop... and humbled as well.

A blessed and holy New Year to you, Gentle Reader, and all whom you love.

The Beauty of Christ (Christmas 2011)

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:42:57 +0100

Christmas 2011
Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
Paris, France
The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon

Charles Sanders Peirce is often referred to America’s greatest philosopher. There is ample reason to do so, but one could also call him America’s greatest scientist, or mathematician, as well. There is ongoing research today in all kinds of fields, including philosophy, science, mathematics, even military science and avionics, dealing with ideas developed by Peirce.

Peirce was also an Episcopalian. (I shall resist the temptation to say, “naturally…”) Late in life, a letter to a friend he described his conversion to Christianity and the Episcopal Church as motivated by “the beauty of Christ.” The power of beauty drew him, almost despite himself, to believe.

Now, on Christmas Day, is not the time to discuss the very rich thought of Peirce. I simply want to ask where one can see the beauty of Christ.

Note that we are not asking about the beauty of the story of Christ, a beauty that the Christmas liturgy, with its wonderful lofty readings from Isaiah and Hebrews and John, and its glorious music, is uniquely capable of expressing. But all the world’s religions have some beautiful stories of the creation, of gods and goddesses, and so forth.

No. We are not talking about a beautiful story. Where can you see today the beauty of Christ?

To start with Christmas, think of the innumerable representations of Jesus and his mother, Mary, usually called “Madonna and Child.” Or imagine the much fewer images of Jesus with Joseph, say, Joseph teaching his Son how to plane a plank, as my father once taught me in his organ-building shop. What is the expression on Mary’s face as she gazes at her baby? How does Joseph look at Jesus?

We can see the same expression on other people’s faces. Think of the young woman leaning out of a van handing a blanket to a homeless man on a freezing-cold night. Imagine a soldier’s face as he gives first aid to a wounded comrade, under fire. Or a real story: Mother Teresa of Calcutta began her true life’s work when she came across a man dying the street in that city, as so many still do. She dragged him off the street into an alley, and stayed with him until he died. I am interested in what he saw as he was dying, gazing at her (frankly) very homely face…

He saw the beauty of Christ. It is the same face of these other people we have conjured up. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth called it “the human face of God.” St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “For the God who said, ‘Out of darkness let light shine,” has caused to shine in our hearts the knowledge of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.” That is what we see reflected in the face of these people. It is the irresistibly attractive beauty of Christ.

But there is more. The beauty of Christ, as we drink it in, reveals to us something even deeper. The human face of God shows us what God is like. By definition, God is unknowable, but we are given glimpses nevertheless, through revelation. “The knowledge of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ” shows us that God is love.

Not that God exists and loves us. That is not good enough. No, God’s very being is love, because God is relation. When we say, “God is relation,” this is a technical description of the Holy Trinity.

By the way, this had a great influence on Charles Peirce, which you can read about for yourselves. But God the Holy Trinity is Love, love for you and for me. When we gaze on the beauty of Christ, we can expand our view to see the image of God as well.

Look again at the Madonna’s face in your mind’s eye. Then add her son looking up at her. See how Jesus looks at Joseph to make sure he is planing the plank correctly. How does the homeless man look back at the girl giving out blankets? Or the wounded man staring at his buddy trying to staunch his wounds? What do the faces of Mother Teresa and the dying fellow look like when you put them together?

In these thought pictures, there is not only one face but two. Not only one person but two people. And between them there is a relationship. This relationship is the image of the relations at the heart of God, of the love of the God who cannot help but be Love.

Do you see it? There is Jesus, the human face of God. There is the same beauty of that face revealing the image of God, in which we are created and called to be. It is irresistible because the glory of God in the face of Jesus is what each of us has in many ways experienced in loving others and in being loved. Not just romantic love, though that certainly cannot be discounted, ephemeral though it may be, for it shows us something of the divine. Parent and child, husband and wife, friend and friend, soldiers in combat, are some of the relationships that mirror at their best some hint of what God is like. They are the image of God whose beauty is Christ.

This, my friends, is that elusive “true meaning of Christmas.” And the meaning of Good Friday. And Easter. And Pentecost. And every day. You and I are beloved of God who is Love and who is at the origin of all the Love we have ever experienced or given ourselves. And God who loves us in Christ calls on us to love in turn.

First of all, to love yourself. You and I both know just how hard that can be, because we know ourselves. But God doesn’t care about our cynicism, our bad habits of thought, our memories of the evil we have done or that has been done unto us. Tonight, we are being told that we are beloved. That God delights in every one here, just as we are. And we are being invited to love ourselves back in the same way.

And then God who first loved us asks us to renew and grow our love for others. First, with those whom we know. And then finally, for those we do not know. God in Christ offers you and me the power of the Love of God, what we call the Holy Spirit, to enable us to cultivate love for humanity, love for this planet, love for creation. And to enable us to act on that love.

Christmas is the moment to reflect yet again on the real beauty of Christ. To hear again that we are created in the image of God. That we are beloved beyond our knowing. And that we can love ourselves. We can love one another. We can care for the whole of creation.

Because first we are loved, and we know this, for we have seen with our own eyes the beauty of Jesus Christ.

Is Capitalism Moral, &c.

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:47:27 +0100

Is capitalism moral? Over the past five months I have been mulling over the question of the morality of capitalism in my Huffington Post blogs. Due to length I had to cut up the essay in several posts.

Here they are:

The original post: “Wrong Question...”

Part Two: Arguing the moral dimension

Part Three: The heart of the problem

Part four: Needing a scientific macroeconomics

Comments, please...

All my Huffington Post blogs here

Now for something completely different...

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:39:03 +0100

Sometimes you just have to get a good hearty laugh. Watch the above video, created by the fifth grade class of Quinhagek, an Inuit village on the Kuskokwim River Coast in northern Alaska.

Hallelujah indeed! What fun they had making this... and what must they have learned... including about that German who wrote Italian music in England. But also videography, teamwork, and organizing a whole village into a project.

Only quibble, kids: the plural in English is not formed by apostrophe-s. Just add an s...

The journey of your Churches in Europe

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:06:41 +0200

The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe Embarks on Third Strategic Plan for Future Mission

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –

October 27, 2011, Florence, Italy - Delegates to the 2011 Convention of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe convened at St. James Church, Florence (October 20-23), launching Vision 2012: God’s Mission has a Church. Vision 2012 marks the beginning of the Convocation’s third strategic mission initiative since 2000. After a yearlong consultation process, the Vision 2012 plan will be finalized to guide the work of the Convocation during the next five years.

Convocation Bishop in charge, Pierre Whalon, celebrated the opening Eucharist, with the Rev. Mark Dunham, Rector of St. James’, preaching. The sermon — rich in its historical and Scriptural imagery — wove a dramatic tapestry of the story of God’s creation. “We are part of that continuum of God’s creation, and it is the transforming Gospel message that is carrying us all to God’s future,” he said.

After the opening formalities, the Rev. Mark Barwick, chair of the Bishop’s appointed team for strategic vision, began the work of the strategic plan. The predominant theological motif of Vision 2012, The Word Made Flesh: Incarnation and Mission in Europe, unfolded throughout three program sessions that followed. In the opening plenary session, Barwick reminded the gathering that just as “Jesus was born in the fullness of time, to a particular time and place — making real the power and beauty of God — and we are now invited to consider “how we in the Convocation are called to incarnate the Word with which we have been entrusted, in our time and place.”
Next, Bill Tompson, a catechist at the American Cathedral in Paris and also a member of the Bishop’s team for strategic vision, carried forward the Vision 2012 theme with an exegesis of John 4 and the story of the woman at the well. Delegates were encouraged to undertake mission as did Jesus, meeting the unexpected “other” in a horizontal sense…in an act of love and acceptance…“sharing the living water with one another, seeking a God who alone can satisfy our spiritual thirst.” He emphasized that we do not go out to do for others in mission; we go to be transformed in doing.
The three program sessions followed a Convocation-developed programmatic method, Transformed by Stories (TBS), which integrates presentations, thought provoking scripture, and storytelling in a manner that creates opportunities for spiritual formation while planting seeds for future mission. Link to article at: See a video introduction to TBS here.
By example, at Convention, Frauke Omoruyi presented the story of the Heimkehrer (“the one coming home”) ministry at Christ-the-King in Frankfurt. The ministry is serving those deported to Germany from the US, helping the deportees to adjust to life in Germany. Many do not have any ties in German nor do they speak German. Most are young people whose families failed to naturalize them properly when they first entered the US legally as children, and subsequently, as young adults lacking legal immigration status, they have are deported after having committed minor crimes. The ministry was featured recently in a German television documentary.
Findings from the TBS-style discussions in Florence will be “woven” into a larger narrative that will form the basis for the strategic planning process in June next year. Mark Barwick, designated Convention “weaver,” reported some initial impressions of the Convention’s “home group” findings and used storytelling to lead off his own plenary session. He playfully evoked the story of Zarafa, a giraffe presented in 1824 to Charles X of France by the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt. To reach the king, the giraffe was “walked” across France from the harbor in Marseilles to Paris. Barwick offered a parallel vision of a modern day Episcopalian in continental Europe…something not often seen before in its time and certainly not well understood…something viewed to be bit strange and mysterious… but yet, like the giraffe, the Episcopalian also exists as a creature of God making a journey in foreign land.
Speakers throughout the weekend continued to exploit the idea of the Convocation’s “giraffe-ness,” a metaphor that came to symbolize both the growing pains and programmatic successes that have come to define the Convocation’s determined, collective effort to incarnate God’s mission in Europe. The Presidents of Council of Advice, the Commission of the Ministry of the Baptized, the European Institute of Christian Studies (EICS) and the Convocation’s Youth Commission reported on activities and progress made by their committees since the previous year’s convention. Delegates watched Bishop Whalon’s video to introduce the multimedia CD for EICS’s ongoing Transformed by Stories project. TBS materials, including the CD and a TBS manual, are being prepared for release in anticipation of the upcoming summer General Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.
In tandem with the Vision 2012 program, delegates adopted resolutions concerning funding for the annual clericus gathering, set up a fund for eventual Title IV expenses, set guidelines requiring repayment in the current budget of any previous year deficits incurred in a previous fiscal year, and nominated a committee to oversee the Convocation’s very successful bilingual Prayer Book project. (Spanish, French, Italian, German). A balanced budget of € 363,894 ($ 491,257) was passed, including € 205, 598 ($ 277,557) in parish assessments. Delegates elected new members to serve on the Council of Advice, to fulfill the duties of the treasurers, and to represent the Convocation the Convocation at the synod of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe. The Convention also endorsed an EICS-led proposal to affirm a General Convention resolution regarding life-long formation as the goal of Christian Education for all, and further, joined many other dioceses in calling for a special convention to consider a major reorganization of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.
The annual convention gathering always seeks to highlight the leadership gifts and the community of the host church. The logistics team at St. James’, which began its work one year in advance of the Convention, mastered all of the details necessary to create a welcoming atmosphere and to ensure that delegates and guests experienced a very special- weekend long event.
Friday’s Morning Prayer was held at the historic medieval baptistery of Florence. Monsignor Timothy Verden, an American Roman Catholic priest and canon to the Archdiocese of Florence, noted that this was the second time that Episcopalians had read Morning Prayer in the Baptistery, and that, in 2004, Bishop Whalon had been the first non-Catholic to preach there in over 800 years. Following the Daily Office, the Monsignor treated the group to a presentation on the 12-century mosaics covering the Baptistery’s great dome.
Other highlights of the convention included an the annual Bishop’s dinner, an elegant “Tuscan” affair held at the Excelsior Hotel situated on the Arno River. Arias by Puccini serendaded the diners. Later, Bishop Whalon named the recipients of the annual Bishop’s Awards, thanking them for their contributions to the life of the Convocation: Elizabeth Chard and Maude Jacopozzi of St. James’, outgoing Council President Tiffany Israel, the Rev. Val Littman, and the Very Rev. Zachary Fleetwood. Alongside Cathedral senior warden Peter Fellowes, Bishop Whalon named Dean Fleetwood a honorary life Canon of the Cathedral, at the request of the Cathedral vestry.
The delegates then turned the tables, offering “The People’s Award” to the Bishop and his wife Melinda in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Bishop’s consecration. He was the first elected (non-appointed) and is currently longest-serving Bishop in charge in the history of the Convocation. He thanked the people, recalling, “no other elected bishop has such an experience, or served such a unique group. You have trained me to be a bishop for the cutting edge of the Episcopal Church, which is what you represent in spirit, in creativity, and in vision.” At the close of business, the convention delegates refused the Bishop’s call for adjournment, and to his amazement, stood to pray together for the blessing of the Holy Spirit on the Diocese of New York’s convention on October 29, when it will elect a new Bishop Coadjutor, and upon Bishop Whalon, who is a candidate in that election.
On Sunday, Bishop Whalon closed the convention with the final Eucharist, which included two baptisms, two confirmations, and a reception. The Bishop reiterated the continuing themes of his episcopacy in describing “our journey together in mission in Europe…the future belongs to God, and you belong to the future.” Representatives from Christ Church, Clermont-Ferrand, carried the Canterbury Cross out of the church and on its way to France, where it will stay until the next annual convention convenes in Clermont-Ferrand, October 2012.
Contact: Jere Skipper, Canon for Communications and Administration, The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, at: canoncece@gmail.com

Feeling Moody, Standard, and Poor, too

Sat, 9 Jul 2011 11:09:25 +0200

How long, O Lord, how long?

Three years ago, the ratings agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor were up to their eyeballs rating subprime derivatives as AAA, instead of absolute junk. They helped as much as anyone else to bring on the economic crisis of 2008. Millions of people lost their jobs. The Rest of Us taxpayers had to hock the United States of America by several trillion more dollars to save the financial system, including the so-called Masters of the Universe who had brought on the disaster by playing casino with our money.

What happened to the credit-rating agencies? Nada. Zip. Niente. Nitchevo. It has been reported that the SEC is looking into their role in the mess — finally. Three years later. The same reporter noted that they should be thankful it’s the SEC and not the Justice Department. Sheesh!

Meanwhile, the same agencies have been busily warning the European Union that attempts to help Greece and Portugal will be equivalent to those countries defaulting on their sovereign debt. What the — ? Cui bono? Who stands to gain?

Remembering that Goldman Sachs helped the Greeks gin up phony numbers to get them into the Eurozone might be a clue. No wonder so many leaders are sounding off against the rating agencies.

Now they’re after China. I wonder how long it will be before the G8 or the G20 comes down on these agencies. Probably after we have to pony up yet more borrowed money to fix another near-collapse of the global economy.

Problem is, every investor needs a ratings agency that can be trusted. Maybe that is quaint. Maybe we should all just buy gold… But when we are reduced to a hunter-gatherer economy again, will even gold be worth anything?

[Click on the “Interviews, &c.” button above for lots of new stuff: a press bibliography, an essay on same-sex unions, a lecture in German, &c.]

Rape as a policy: not just in Congo

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:12:00 +0200

A pregnant young woman goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth…

Today we remember this story told by Luke. We can easily understand the reason for Mary’s trip: she is having a baby “out of wedlock.” She needs to escape the notice of the villagers of Nazareth.

Today seems like an especially good day to think of brutality toward women as policy. Sister Hatune Dogan, above, received last August in her town of Warburg, Germany, the Verdienstmedaille des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland or the Medal of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from that country’s president, Christian Wulff.

The Sister is a Syrian Orthodox nun who counsels Iraqi Christian women raped and often mutilated. Rape is not just a heinous crime committed by a weak man looking to assert his dominance. It is also a widespread means of policy for subjugating women and breaking the will of entire communities to resist the imposition of power. This is why hundreds of thousands of women in Congo and the Great Lakes region of Africa have been raped. It is also, mutatis mutandis, why it is open season on Christian women and girls in Iraq and elsewhere.

I once asked a police officer, a specialist in sex crimes, how he defined rape. Even if a man and woman are naked together, and then she changes her mind and says no, if he forces her to have sex that is fully culpable rape. In other words, no woman ever “asks for it.” No man is incapable of controlling himself. There are no excuses, ever.

That needs to be the standard everywhere in the world.

There is a huge amount of work to be done. Sister Hatune says she doesn’t have any more tears, and then breaks down. We all need to start crying, and then we need to get angry. A lot more must be done to make rape as policy a crime against humanity, and not only the rapists but those who direct them must be caught and given exemplary punishments. The women who have been attacked need care. They also need to be helped to be reintegrated into their families and communities. No victim of rape should be made to feel ashamed — only the rapist.

We men also need to learn how to help women who have been raped. Going out and looking for vengeance on the attacker(s) might make us feel better, but not our sisters, our mothers, our wives and girlfriends. She needs to know that we still love and cherish them, that our feelings for them are not changed.

Things could get even worse for Christians. Mary ran from the opprobrium of her community. Time to put an end to this, after 2000 years!

One crackpot preacher

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 14:12:43 +0200

One lone crackpot preacher, in Gainesville, Florida, announces he's going to burn a Koran.

Worldwide attention suddenly focuses on Terry Jones and his tiny congregation, which is actually a cult of personality rather than a real church. Governments and religious leaders across the globe call on him Not To Do It. Months go by. Will he burn a copy, or not. Not a truckload of Korans. Not a case. Nope. Just one. The world waits, seemingly with bated breath.

Then months later, he does it. Up go the pages in smoke, in front of a huge crowd of … 30 people. All the major news organizations around the world report it. Ten people subsequently die in anti-Koran-burning demonstrations in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

It seems clear that the Taliban, rocked back on their heels by American and Afghan advances in their stronghold, used this minor incident to whip up anti-American feeling. Politics and religion have never been far apart anywhere in this world of ours, and the Net jams them together 24/7.

Contrast this with routine Bible burnings in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world. Or attacks on churches, often resulting in their complete destruction. Or murders of Christians. The world's news organizations have routinely ignored these until recently. Somehow, the media moguls sensed something when the Syriac Catholic cathedral in Baghdad was attacked by a suicide squad, and Asia Bibi was condemned to death in Pakistan for an argument with her neighbors. Maybe it would sell more Internet advertising.

But why give so much attention to the above-mentioned crackpot? Cui bono? Fanatical Islamists? The ordinary Muslim whose religion brings, to quote President George W. Bush, “comfort and solace to billions”? Rep. Peter King and his smearing, I mean, hearing, on Islam in America? The American Atheist Association? Inquiring minds, &c.

The clear rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States doesn't get media traction. Doesn't sell. But the Koran-burning does, apparently. Asia Bibi does too (for which I am grateful). But all this, viewed as a whole, is about the whipping up of resentments on all sides. Keep the combats going. More terrorist attacks, and attacks foiled, to report on. Pundits can keep punditing. Fox News can fulminate some more. Al-Jazeera and CNN can duke it out for the best Special Report on The Latest Crisis. Bloggers will keep on going wild. Nike can sell more sneakers.

The world's gonna end anyway, right? Right, Mr. Jones? So why not sell more weapons and click more Google ads, while there are still buyers. What else could this be about?

I dunno… Maybe I'm the lone crackpot preacher.

Statement on Libya (French and English)

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:06:34 +0100

Déclaration de Mgr Pierre Whalon sur la situation en Libye
Évêque Épiscopale en Europe
23 avenue George V
75008 Paris

Le monde regarde la Libye aujourd’hui avec inquiétude, et depuis des semaines les églises prient pour son peuple. L’Organisation des Nations unies a enfin décidé de soutenir le peuple libyen contre le dictateur Moammar Qaddafi, mettant terme à une période d’indécision durant laquelle l’armée des mercenaires de Qaddafi a pu employer des armes modernes contre les sans-culottes des révoltés. Nous ne pouvons qu’espérer que l’action des forces de la France et de ses alliées sera efficace, tout en rappelant qu’il n’y a pas d’attaque « chirurgicale » .

La question morale d’une « guerre juste » est plutôt simple lorsqu’un pays est attaqué et son peuple doit de défendre. Depuis l’intervention américaine en Irak, la politique de frappe préventive est très discutée. Le fait que Qaddafi a dû faire appel à une armée mercenaire pour essayer de réprimer le soulèvement de son peuple pourrait être un autre cas de figure : la communauté internationale a-t-elle le droit d’intervenir dans une telle situation ?

Oui, et pour plusieurs raisons : le peuple révolté nous en supplie, la Ligue arabe et donc les pays voisins demandent cette intervention, et notre conscience de la souffrance du peuple libyen, et de ce qui attend les insurgés si Qaddafi gagne sa guerre contre son propre peuple, nous l’exige.

J’appelle tout chrétien, et toute personne de bonne volonté, d’œuvrer pour le soutien du gouvernement naissant de Benghazi. Prions tous pour nos propres pilotes à qui on a fait appel, pour une fin rapide des combats, et pour l’instauration d’un gouvernement de la Libye par les libyens qui respecte les droits de l’homme.

Statement by Bishop Pierre Whalon of the Episcopal Churches in Europe on the situation in Libya

The world watches Libya and worries, and for weeks the churches have been praying for her people. The United Nations has decided at last to support the Libyan people against the dictator Muammar Gadhafi, ending a period of indecision during which Gadhafi’s army of mercenaries were able to use modern weapons against the lightly armed insurgents. We can only hope that the actions of France and her allies will be effective, while remembering that there is no such thing as a “surgical strike.”

The issue of a “just war” is rather simple when a nation is attacked and has to defend itself. Since the American intervention in Iraq, the question of preventive strikes has been widely discussed. The fact that Gadhafi has to use mercenaries to try to repress the uprising of his own people could be another case to consider: does the international community have the right to intervene in such a situation?

Yes, and for several reasons: the rebels have requested it; the Arab League and therefore the neighboring countries have asked for it, and our own awareness of the suffering of the Libyan people, and what awaits the insurgents if Gadhafi wins his war against his own people, requires it.

I call upon all Christians, and all people of good will, to work for the support of the government being born in Benghazi. Let us all pray for our own pilots who have been called upon to act, for a swift end to all combat, and the beginning of a government of Libya by Libyans that respects human rights.

Jaw-jaw, or War-war?

Wed, 9 Mar 2011 09:05:53 +0100

Winston Churchill famously said, “It is better to jaw-jaw than war-war.” Clearly, it is only when dialogue has ceased that the fighting can begin. But it is equally true that two sides — nations, religions, tribes — are either on the path to peace, or the path to war. There is no third way — none.

René Girard, that great student of human motivation, describes in his new book, Battling to the End (original title Achever Clausewitz*) how war starts from mimetic rivalry, following the classic theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz. He described it clearly in his unfinished treatise, On War. As hostile feelings and intention between two peoples grow (the ground of war), “reciprocal actions” take place. In these reciprocal actions, Clausewitz fears a possible escalation to extremes, from “armed observation” to absolute war, but believes that counterweights to extreme action (such as fear of the enemy’s potential for destruction, the “friction” of real elements (terrain, logistics, commanders’ will, etc.), and the “fog of war” will always forestall such an eventuality. Underlying every conflict, Clausewitz detected a “strange triad” (eine wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit): “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity”; forces like “friction” and “the play of chance and probability”; and war “as an instrument of policy.”

Since the beginnings of Islam, Christianity has been in a difficult relationship with it. When we are celebrating what we have in common, we are on the road to peace. When we perceive our differences as rivalry, we are starting down the road to war. In the 21st century, war is waged less and less between nation-states, but through terrorist groups who serve as proxies. There is certainly enough reason to wonder whether we have once again allowed “violence, hatred, and enmity” to surface in our relations as religions.

Of course, this is an abstraction. Religions do not relate, people do. But as we see fanatics hounding Christians out of the Middle East — ancestral lands they have lived in centuries before Muhammad’s birth — the question becomes, whom are we dealing with? The killings of two government officials in Pakistan, seemingly with impunity if not outright approval, because they opposed the draconian blasphemy laws in force in that country, ups the ante. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said last Monday to the Pakistani government: “Do not imagine this can be ‘managed’ or tolerated.”

Those of us who have been “jaw-jaw”-ing have even more items to talk about. In America, there is a growing movement to reject Islam out of hand. Peter King, the congressman chairing the Homeland Security Committee for the House of Representatives, wants to hold hearings on the place of Islam in America. In Europe, David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France have denounced multiculturalism as a failure. There are disturbing trends being instrumentalized all around, Muslims praying in the streets of Paris, North African Muslims being discriminated against in Spain.

Are these perhaps the “reciprocal actions” Clausewitz and Girard warn against? More dangerously in the long term, the threat of violence against moderates on both sides silences the voices of reason, those who understand best the value of dialogue.

This writer had the privilege to be part of the Washington Christian-Muslim Summit , which made a step toward the commitment of religious leaders to act for peace. But we need more and deeper dialogue with Muslims, in America and elsewhere. We Christians have something to explain to our dialogue partners, namely, that we have come a long way from our own tendency to murder everyone who disagreed with us. There were the pogroms against the Jews that indirectly helped the Holocaust to occur. The wars of religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decimated Europe — at least a third of the population was slaughtered in the name of the Prince of Peace. This laid the groundwork for the rise of modern atheism.

And there were the Crusades. They were an unabashed denial and betrayal of Jesus Christ as well, as western Christians used the conquest of Jerusalem by a Muslim army as an excuse for war. We must recall not only the slaughter of all the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, but also the sack of Constantinople by Christians against other Christians.

We learned two things from our history: first, no religion should ever run the state, for it will end up being corrupted by the exercise of power. Islam is not exempt from this principle, by any means, as history shows very clearly. Neither is Judaism or any other religion. State atheism has the worst record of all. Second, no one should ever be put to death because of religion. Every human being must be free to encounter the divine on his or her terms, as Article 18 of the United Nations Charter states, and which all the Middle Eastern nations have signed. These two principles, written as it were in an ocean of human blood, are universal. They alone can stay the rise of hatred, if respected.

This means that Muslims must re-examine their own traditions, if we are to find the road to peace. We Christians have a tool developed over the past two hundred–fifty years. I am referring to what is generally known as the historical-critical method of examining the Bible.

This method examines the sacred texts from the point of view of historians and literary critics. Line up the four Gospels so that you can read them all at once, what is called a synopsis. Soon any reader will begin to notice how similar they all are, and how divergent as well. Matthew, Mark and Luke are more similar — John stands out. Matthew and Luke seem to follow Mark, though each adds some materials of his own, and the two have material in common that Mark does not. How did these happen? What might they mean? Another kind of historical criticism collects and compares ancient manuscripts so as to compile texts that are as faithful to the originals as possible. Still another looks at ancient languages like Ugaritic and Aramaic to see what might lie under the finished Hebrew and Greek texts.

While some Christians complain that scholars using these methods are too skeptical, most Christians accept the value of historiography and literary studies of our Scriptures. We can now establish the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth and demonstrate that the origins of the Church began with him, specifically, immediately after his death. We can show that our biblical texts have far more historical backing and accuracy than any other writings of the ancient world. Of course, none of this is ground for believing in Jesus Christ, but it discredits the claims of real skeptics that, for instance, Jesus never existed, that the New Testament is a fraud, or that the Church was an invention of Saul of Tarsus or later people.

By the same token, these studies undermine fundamentalistic readings of the Bible.

Many scholars, including some Muslims, have begun to examine the Koran and the origins of Islam with similar techniques. Their work is being increasingly published. For example, Etienne-Marie Gallez has a new, massive two-volume investigation of the origins of what eventually became Islam. (Le messie et son prophète : Aux origines de l'Islam) Among the findings of these scholars is the strong influence of Ebionite and Nazorean Christians on the earliest Muslims. These people read hardly any of the New Testament, and lived in expectation of a military-political Messiah on earth who would establish their religion around the world by force. The rise of the Damascus caliphate also strongly influenced the editing of what became the Holy Koran, as the interests of the caliphs were highlighted in the succeeding editions. There is also the collecting of the hadith, sayings of the Prophet, over centuries, and how they changed.

The name Muhammad occurs only four times in the Koran, and twice he is called Ahmad. Why? How did he come to be seen as the central figure, the last Prophet? Why is the story of Caliph U’mar (Omar)’s peaceful conquest of Jerusalem in 634 completely contradicted by other historical sources of the time? What do these mean? These are the types of questions that the historical-critical method raises in relation to Islam.

They are questions that we Christians need to ask our Muslim brothers and sisters to examine for themselves. It is not for us to presume that we can know the answers for them. But unless our dialogues are conducted not only in the respect that we are all people of faith — the real ground we all share — but also a quest to find the truth together, “jaw-jaw” will eventually be silenced, and new wars of religion will become inevitable. The fundamentalisms that are distorted versions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are setting down the first leg of the strange and terrible triad of war, enmity between peoples. The movements of intolerance in the Middle East, mirrored by developing movements in the West, are the modern equivalent of armed observation. Terrorists perform “reciprocal actions” that can rise to total war.

Clausewitz, argues Girard, glimpsed the horror of total annihilation, but only as a theoretical possibility. He believed in the rational pursuit by political leaders of national interests, famously stating that “War is merely a prolongation of policy/politics (Politik) by other means.” Furthermore, he thought that total war was impossible due to the logistics of “friction”. But weapons technology has come a very long way since the Napoleonic wars that nurtured Clausewitz’s vision, and nation-states have declined in the face of globalization. Total annihilation is now a real threat.

Is that what the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ wants? Does Allah require us to destroy our planet, and ourselves with it? This is of course unthinkable, and yet we both have found ways to think lesser versions of it in the past. Christians and Muslims need to jaw-jaw a lot more, a lot more deeply, and more sincerely, if we are to be people on the road to peace. There are certainly risks in seeking the truth together. However, the alternative is so horrible that the risks are nothing in comparison.

* [My review of Achever Clausewitz can be found here.]

Morality, murder, and David Kato

Fri, 4 Feb 2011 12:30:59 +0100

On the murder of David Kato Kisuule

A statement by the Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon
Bishop in charge, Episcopal Churches in Europe
February 3, 2011

David Kato paid the ultimate price for being gay in Uganda. A leader of Sexual Minorities Uganda, which seeks to change fellow citizens’ minds about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, he was murdered in his home in Mukono, Uganda, on January 26. He had been targeted as a “top homosexual” in a national newspaper last October. People around the world have been protesting, including today at the United Nations.

The fear and hatred that inspired David’s killers are not confined to the uneducated. Recently, a lawmaker proposed legislation that would make homosexual sex a capital crime in certain cases. The churches in Uganda have been slow to act. In fact, reports from David Kato’s funeral affirm that an Anglican priest loudly interrupted the service to condemn “ungodliness,” which led to the villagers refusing to bury his body. His friends had to haul his body to the grave and inter him themselves.

It would be easy to point fingers at “those Ugandans” but we cannot exempt ourselves. Gay people continue to be targets of violence across Europe and Asia, as well as the Americas. It is not enough to insist on the rights of people to live free from fear and harassment, though that is necessary. We Christians need to go further.

Followers of Jesus are to work at living a new kind of life that allows us, among other things, to conquer our fear and hatred of “the Other” — whatever that Other is like. This must happen in order to honor the God who became one of us that we might become like God (2 Peter 1: 3-9). Jesus, the supreme Other, came so that we would reject him in fear and loathing, and kill him. In his death and resurrection, Jesus overcame fear with joy, dissolved hatred with love, and conquered death with everlasting life, for you and me. Through the power of his Spirit, given in baptism, we can and we must give the Other not only justice but also love.

God does not fear, nor does God hate, people. Those who would call themselves Christian cannot do so, either, and still be “children of God” (I John 4: 20-21) If we Christians cannot first live out this gospel imperative, then trying to address any questions about holiness of life or morality is foolishness, chasing after wind.

Atheism lite vs. Christianity lite

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:44:30 +0100

Today opens the Octave (“week”) of Christian Unity. This week has the confession or testimony of faith of Peter for openers and closes with the conversion of Paul. In previous years I have had occasion to comment on the breakdown of the relationship between the two men, in the context of Christian unity. It just goes to show that being one in Christ cannot and should not mean that we are all nice to each other.

Kenda Dean has written a provocative book, Almost Christian, describing the faith of American teens and young people, a faith which they imbibe from their parents that she calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. This term, borrowed from sociology, describes a religious attitude that cherishes niceness as a basic value, emphasizes religion as means to heaven for “good” people, and whose deity is a pop psychologist, interfering little and demanding almost nothing.

MTD has been around a long time. It used to be called Liberal Protestantism, which H. Richard Niebuhr famously described as “A God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” He blamed a church that is captive of the age:

"The captive church is the church which has become entangled with this system or these systems of worldliness. It is a church which seeks to prove its usefulness to civilization, in terms of civilization's own demands. It is a church which has lost the distinctive note and the earnestness of a Christian discipline of life and has become what every religious institution tends to become -- the teacher of the prevailing code of morals and the pantheon of the social gods. It is a church, moreover, which has become entangled with the world in its desire for the increase of its power and prestige and which shares the worldly fear of insecurity." (The Church Against the World)

I certainly accept this indictment of Christianity — call it “Christianity Lite”. At the same time, it is also clear that popular atheism has a “lite” flavor. Denys Turner recently wrote an essay in which he points out the superficiality of recent atheist bestsellers like The God Delusion. By negating the kind of god they find in popular religion (which they encountered as children, for the most part), these authors offer only a mirror image. "… much atheism, as one knows it today, is but the negation of the limited features of a particular idolatry," Turner writes (19).

If you want to read an atheist manifesto that attacks the Christian God, instead of MTD, see Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les mots. Even Sartre cannot help himself and stoops to mock popular forms of piety, but he at least has a grasp of the fullness of the Christian claim. God cannot be known, cannot be understood, is completely outside the creation, of which God has no part and from which God is perfectly free. Atheists who wish to avoid the laziness of the lite varieties of their religion need to be more atheistic. Meanwhile, Christians who hear and obey Jesus’ command to take up their own cross and follow him must not shy away from the abyss of No-God and Nonbeing. We stand simultaneously in the shadow of Christ’s Cross — the absurdity of a violent utterly indifferent world that is our common life — and the sunlight of Easter, on which we base our hope that the future, mine, ours, the whole creation’s, does in fact belong to the God Who is Love, the Holy Trinity.

It seems to me that young people would rather have a deep perspective than the facile idolatries of their elders, atheists and theists alike. In any event, as Steve Martin points out above, we Christians have better songs.

The New Year, part deux

Sun, 2 Jan 2011 11:55:17 +0100

We do not get Christmas II very often... Nor do we celebrate the Eighth Sunday after Epiphany much at all. But in 2011, thanks to Easter being so late (April 24), we get the full panoply of the Liturgical Year. The next time we will have Easter on that date is 2095.

I do not plan to be around then (I’d be 142 on that Easter!), at least, not in the Old Creation. But I imagine something will be left of my Old Being, like these bones from the Catacombes of Paris. I visited it again a few days ago, with some friends from America, and our daughter, who took the picture above. 6 million Parisians are there, their bones very neatly stacked up in old quarries turned into ossuaries.

My daughter found that it “creeped her out.” Personally, I always feel oddly comforted, surrounded by those dead. It is so peaceful there, even though hundreds of the living file through. There are plenty of pithy inscriptions, doggerel about the inevitability of death, and Bible citations. The latter are far more optimistic than the poetry, e.g., “Tuba canet enim et mortui resurgent incorrupti.” (I Cor. 15:52) There are some in Greek and Swedish, as well as Latin and French. And you are surrounded by ancestors, who have gone before, and they lie in peace.

Starting the year by contemplating one’s mortality is a good thing, methinks. Our ancestors were routinely enjoined to think on it, for death was a lot more common and banal then than it is now.

I shall be buried in the churchyard at St. George’s, Indian River Hundred, Delaware, where I have been a summer priest since 1991. Next to the door of the church is a tombstone of a certain mariner, who died in the 1850s. His epitaph is a fairly common one of that time, enjoining a contemplation of the shortness and uncertainty of life:

“All you who are passing by
As you are now so once was I
As I now so you will be
Therefore prepare to follow me.”

Yeah, yeah … But there is also that rarely-heard collect for the 8th Sunday:

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Now that is how to contemplate death. And there is this citation by Alfred de Musset, from his play On ne badine pas avec l’amour (Don’t jest with Love):

On est souvent trompé en amour, souvent blessé et souvent malheureux; mais on aime, et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arrière et on se dit : j'ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompé quelquefois, mais j'ai aimé.

One is often mistaken in love, often wounded and often unhappy; but we do love, and when you are on the edge of your tomb, you can look at your life past and say to yourself: I have often suffered, I’ve been wrong sometimes, but I have loved.

I am more than ever convinced that the meaning of life is found in the sum of who loves you and whom you love.