The Great Unraveling

In April 2016 I wrote a post that said “We live in a strange, disordered time.”

Little did I imagine how much more strange and disordered our world would become.

 

In that post I described a youth conference session led by religion editor Phyllis Tickle. 

She talked about the accusations and disruption that have accompanied times of change: inquisitions, beheadings, violence and horror from challenged religious powers. 

 

Whenever there is so cataclysmic a break as is the rupture between modernity and postmodernity… there is inevitably a backlash.  Dramatic change is perceived as a threat to the status quo, primarily because it is. 

 

She ended with a warning so sharply stated I’ve remembered it almost word for word: “If you leave here and you don’t do ministry on your knees, in constant prayer, you haven’t heard a word I’m saying.”  

I wrote then: 

I’ve been rethinking one of her metaphors: chords woven of many strands that slowly come unraveled, and the period of danger and uncertainty as new strands are woven together.

 

The strands around us are frayed and loose: our understanding of gender and sexuality. Our experience of race and nationality, privilege and belonging. Economic models of work and wages. Ideas about democracy, justice, faith and family.

 

We fortify the past, desperately struggle to hold the strands together. 

 

We look around for someone to blame, grab for stones, throw without thinking.

 

People I know who have always valued honesty, kindness and respect enthusiastically support a presidential candidate who can’t speak without lying, demeans everyone who disagrees with him, believes winning justifies any dishonorable behavior.

 

People whose parents and grandparents were immigrants and refugees not very long ago talk of building walls, closing borders, shutting off aid to the greatest wave of refugees since the days of World War II.

 

More people struggle with poverty and inequity than at any time since the Great Depression.

 

More people of color are incarcerated in the US than were held in slavery, many for failure to pay exorbitant fines which by any measure of justice would be illegal. Many others are held, pretrial, because they can’t afford bail.

 

This week, hundreds have taken to the streets: in Philadelphia to demand economic justice and a living wage; in DC, to demand fair elections and an end to campaigns sold to wealthy donors and dark money industries. Black Lives Matter protests have been gathering in Minneapolis, Phoenix, Chicago, Philadelphia. Campaign stops in New York and Pennsylvania have been marked by growing protests, dozens of arrests, threats of violence. 

That was written in 2016. Take it all and multiply it. Deeper divisions. Deeper dysfunction. The chaos of a politically-driven Covid-19 response. Staggering unemployment. Federal agents tear-gassing protesters in the streets of Portland. A presidential election far more contentious and important than any in recent memory, all to be held in the shadow of devastating disease and growing distrust in our electoral systems.
 

Will 2020 be remembered as the great unraveling? 

 

Andy Crouch, former editor of Christianity Today, suggests organizational leaders approach this Covid-19 season “as an economic and cultural blizzard, winter, and beginning of a 'little ice age' – a once-in-a-lifetime change that is likely to affect our lives and organizations for years.”

He points to an earlier time of great upheaval, “the first centuries of the common era, [when] Rome was beset by war, by plague, by famine.” 

[T]he paganism of Rome had no solution for these things, and had no plan for them. Rome was built on war; the only way they knew how to govern was war. When plague came, the pagan priests fled. And when famine came, Rome only fed its citizens. Eventually the grain shipments did not even suffice to feed their own citizens. Non-citizens were left to starve.

 

In the midst of that culture, the first Christians created an alternative. They did not participate in violence—they did not participate in the empire’s wars. When plagues came, they served and nursed the sick, often back to health. When famine came they fed anyone they could, all the hungry, whether you were a member of their community or not. They created a different culture in the midst of Rome’s worst case. 

Our current political system seems ill-equipped to handle the complexities of Covid response. Is testing availability driven by public good, or our president's concern about public perception? Is guidance evidence driven, or designed to please a partisan base?

Our profit-driven economy, focused on share-holders rather than workers, has furthered the harm: pushing regions to reopen when workers have inadequate health care and personal protections, inadequate child-care, housing, transportation. 

 

How will followers of Christ respond in all of this?

Argue about masks?

Fight to reopen churches?

Advocate for release of non-violent accused awaiting trial in crowded jails?

Plead the cause of peace with a president intent on using force against 1^st amendment protest?
 

Pray for non-partisan solutions in an increasingly partisan landscape?

Polls show a majority of white evangelical Christians still holding fast to a divisive president while other conservatives step away. 

Polls also show younger Americans turning their back on a politicized faith.

The gracious witness of early Christians hastened the spread of the Christian faith.

Will the current response in this great unraveling produce the opposite effect? 

Crouch asks: 

Why are we here? Are we here for cultural preservation? Preserving a way of life, preserving a certain standard of living? If so, we should be terrified at this moment.

 

Or are we here for cultural transformation? To bring a deep change in the world? If so, we should be energized, because we have everything that we need.

 

 

 

Followers of the Way

Four years ago I wrote a series of posts about our political landscape and probed my own platform on a mix of issues and concerns.

I was still a novice in the political arena. I had spent just a year as Vice President of Government and Social Policy for the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. It was a new role, not fully defined, and I was learning as I went. I had also just recently helped start a fledgling coalition, Fair Districts PA.

In the summer of 2016 I was studying prison gerrymandering and nervously preparing for a first appearance in a legislative hearing. I remember meeting for a northern PA breakfast with Representative David Carter, prime sponsor of a bill we supported. We prayed together, over pancakes and eggs.

I wrote a blogpost that summer asking “which Way am I called to follow? Whose priorities should I pursue?” The following is from that post. It seems even more relevant now.

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Before Christians were called Christians, they were called Followers of the Way. The Way was Jesus: simultaneously the path itself, guide and example, companion on the journey. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

But he also said “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

The way to relationship with God, to the full life Jesus promised, is through Jesus himself, but also through following the path he shows us, walking with him the road of sacrifice and self-denial.

I’ve been listening to Christian leaders tie themselves in knots trying to explain why followers of Christ would also follow Donald Trump, who knows less than any potential leader I've seen about sacrifice and self-denial.  I’ve read carefully the explanation that while Donald Trump may not be as pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith as Christian leaders might want, the fact that he’s the Republican nominee makes him “the only hope.”

That sounds a little blasphemous to me.

Following the Way of Christ starts with a willingness to set our habits and loyalties aside.

Jesus said again and again: "leave your nets, your fields, your money, your life, and come, follow me."

The early believers understood that the first step of the Christian journey was a step away from all prior allegiance, including allegiance to self, to comfort, safety, the right to be right, the mistaken idea that somehow we, on our own, are good people, better than those others.

Allegiance to party platform.

Even national pride.

The followers of Christ proclaimed a new loyalty, a contradiction of the Roman good news. The Christian gospel was not about the political rule of a forceful human leader, but the unexpected narrative of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection and the announcement of a risen savior who would bring peace for all, not just the Romans favored by Caesar.

Jesus said, “Peace I bring to you, but not as the world (Rome) brings.” New life in Christ was by definition in stark opposition to empire, power and violence.

Several centuries later, Athanasius of Alexandria  (ca. 296-298 – 373) described the visible influence of the Way of Christ  on the surrounding culture:

While they were yet idolaters, the Greeks and Barbarians were always at war with each other, and were even cruel to their own kith and kin. Nobody could travel by land or sea at all unless he was armed with swords, because of their irreconcilable quarrels with each other. Indeed, the whole course of their life was carried on with weapons. But since they came over to the school of Christ, as men moved with real compunction they have laid aside their murderous cruelty and are war-minded no more. On the contrary, all is peace among them and nothing remains save desire for friendship.  (from On the Incarnation)

Come Inherit the Kingdom, Meinrad Craighead,
Stanbrook Abbey, England, 1970s

As followers of the Way in the 21st century, we face a challenge not known to those new Christians of an earlier world. We carry the heritage not only of those whose lives mirrored the example of Christ, but also of those who in the name of Christ went on with their war-minded ways, killing and conquering, justifying slavery and sexism, suppressing scientific study, shouting down opponents, carrying signs saying “God hates.”

The Way of Christ leads us away from the longing for an earthly savior, away from allegiance to a political gospel of physical power or personal prosperity or the need to "win" at the cost of integrity and witness.

It leads us away from slogans, mockery, hostility toward the opposition, nostalgia for comfort and ease at the expense of others unlike ourselves.

It leads us deeper into humility, deeper into the longing for wisdom, the repentant awareness of our own lack of love, our own inadequacy in the face of complex, overwhelming need.

And along that Way, as we read the words of Jesus, as we pray to hear and know his voice, as we ask to see with his eyes, to love what he loves, we find our hearts changing.

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This weekend, July 2020, I find myself praying for a last chance effort in our state legislature. Bills we supported in this legislative session never received a vote. Two constitutional amendments will be given a final vote this week. Prime sponsors of our bills will be introducing amendments to those amendments in an attempt to force a vote on the measures we support.

Confusing, right? Yesterday, a July Saturday, I fielded a call from a state representative and from a chief of staff of a state senator. They have amendments filed. My job is to ask our list of 60,000 contacts to call their legislators and ask their support.

I sometimes marvel at the path God has led me on: deeper and deeper into the complex world of legislation, political intrigue, partisan manipulation. I have seen professed Christians act with great meanness and deceit, and have watched and given thanks for faithful followers of Christ on both sides of the aisle.  

I have learned much about God’s great love for this broken, grieving world.

I have learned much about my own inadequacy and God’s amazing provision in times of need.

I’ll be writing about this in the weeks ahead as I revisit my 2016 series in preparation for the 2020 election.

And I’ll be holding these words close:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; 
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice and to love kindness
And to walk humbly with your God.

A Declaration of Obligation

Independence Day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its assertion of human rights:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. 

Our history in the centuries since has been a long discussion of those human rights: how far do they extend?

Women, immigrants, slaves, indigenous peoples: do THEY have those same inalienable rights?

Do those rights extend to unborn children?

Do we all have the right to carry guns in the public square? To say what we like, when and how we wish? Do I have the right to endanger your health? Do you have the right to threaten my safety?

The Declaration of Independence states that the source of our rights is our Creator, who endows them on “all men.” Yet I see very little in scripture about rights and what I do see instructs us to hold those rights lightly.

The most extended discussion of rights I can find is in 1 Corinthians, where Paul consistently encourages and models a willingness to set rights aside on behalf of others:

• 1 Corinthians 9:12: If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.
  
• I Corinthians 6:12-20 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.… Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price.
  
• I Corinthians 7:9-13 Be careful . . . that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. If what I eat causes my brother or sister to faall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
  
• 1 Corinthians 9:4-18  Don’t we have the right to food and drink?  Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? . . . But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. 

My friend Rabbi Michael Pollack first introduced me to the idea of obligation rather than rights. I invited him to speak on this at a Fair Districts. PA conference last year. You can hear that here. He suggests that while rights separate and put the focus on “ME”, an understanding of obligation can draw us back together: 

• You don’t have a right to life in the Bible. You have an obligation to not kill.
• You don’t have a right to shelter in the Bible. You have an obligation to house the homeless.
• You don’t have an obligation to be accepted in as a refugee. You have an obligation to take in the stranger. 

The current controversy surrounding face masks has become, for me, an immediate example of rights and obligation. Many of us are doing all we can to learn about the spread of coronavirus, to sort through the latest research and follow the most current advice to help keep ourselves and others safe. Many are depending on directives from leaders, and quickly complying with whatever they’re asked to do. Some are scornful of every caution, insisting on the right to assemble in large numbers without the use of masks, or accusing leaders of tyranny when precautions are put in place.

 

If we think of it in terms of rights: sure. We have the right to go where we like without a mask.

But if a mask protects those around us, don't we have an obligation to wear one?

If not wearing a mask adds to the anxiety of others in an already anxious time, why not make that sacrifice, even if we’re not completely sure a mask is helpful?

A friend’s church has decided to gather for services, socially distanced and wearing masks. But some members of the congregation insist they don’t need masks and can sit as close to each other as they like. The church has accommodated this, creating a section for those who won’t wear masks.

As a result, there are other congregants who simply won’t attend.

Some may never attend that church again.

I can imagine Apostle Paul: Don't we have a right to refuse to wear masks, to sit where we  like? But we do not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ

In political discourse shaped by assertion of rights, the trajectory seems to be ever increasing division, as you assert your rights in opposition to mine and every faction fights for expanded rights that diminish and dismantle the rights of others.

What if we start instead from a place of obligation? 

What if we start from love of neighbor, the obligation to see that all are safe, cared for, welcome, heard?

The prophet Micah says:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.And what does the Lord require of you?To act justly and to love mercyand to walk humbly with your God.  

There is obligation there: obligation to neighbor, to God, to a deeper understanding of our role for good in creation and community.

As I celebrate this Independence Day Weekend, I pray we set aside our rights and independence and focus instead on obligation and community.

May that shape our politics, our priorities, our prayers.