The Land of the House of Omri--Part 1
Psalm 146
I Kings 16

In the official inscriptions of the ancient kingdom of Assyria, archaeologists have discovered a phrase that names a character from the Old Testament. That phrase refers to a kingdom, and it calls that kingdom “the house of Omri.” Who was Omri—O-M-R-I--Omri? Did Omri have a famous family?

Well, fame is a relative thing. About 3000 years ago in the hills of Samaria, Omri was pretty well known. He was the sixth king of the northern kingdom of Israel. He moved the capital of the kingdom from Tirzah to a new city he built called Samaria. He reigned for about twelve years and seems to have built some buildings. He was mediocre in his ability to maintain good relationships with neighboring kingdoms. He seems to have solidified one relationship with a strategic marriage for his son. Elsewhere he lost some cities to Syria and took some cities from Moab. And he got his name into the records of Assyria, a kingdom on the rise toward a becoming a great empire. His successors as King of Israel would ultimately have to face a reckoning with Assyria, and it would be their downfall.

But what I’ve just told you is much more than the book of 1 Kings bothers to tell us about Omri. Omri is one more in a series of rulers who are most memorable in the Bible for the way they went wrong. Of course, that is the overall story line of the entire period of kings in Israel and Judah. Some people began to demand a king. Samuel tried to stop them, and he warned them it would not be good for them. Against God’s true purpose for Israel, God let them have a king, and what follows is one sad example after another of why we need to understand what Psalm 146 is saying: “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans will perish.”

Let’s think back across that history. God selected Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, as the first king. He had the look of a leader. He showed an inclination toward godliness as was manifested when he joined up with the traveling prophets. He took up the task of leadership with confidence. Pretty soon he was fighting wars. The longer he stayed in office, the more he worried about who might be trying to take over his place as king. This concern seems to have pushed him toward depression and maybe even mental illness. He could not figure out that the best thing he had going for him was a friendship with young David. Instead, he let the waves of public opinion rock him back and forth. It’s a tragic story, but not an isolated incident of failure on the throne.

Saul was replaced by David after his death. Sometimes the Bible makes it seem that under David everything was great. But closer attention to the story shows us it was not. David’s leadership was tied up with his effective use of violence. God did not want him to build the temple because of his violent ways. Moreover, while he seems to have started out with the blessing of the people and of God, David quickly dissipated his political capital and his divine favor. He decided that being king put him above the law. He stole a man’s wife and killed the man. He did not maintain a harmonious household. The household disagreements poured over into political factions, and the land became divided and went into civil war. Although we see David repenting of sin and seeking to reconcile the divisions, even on his deathbed he plotted revenge.

His successor Solomon is praised for his wisdom, but where is the wisdom in having so many wives and concubines? He sounds more like a rich, powerful man out of control. Some of his marriages were for political alliances, and these brought the powerful influences of other kingdoms and other faiths into the land. Although Solomon is revered for building a temple to the God of Israel, he also built temples to the gods of the neighboring kingdoms. And the way he built so many fine buildings was by drafting the people to do forced labor for the kingdom. It was hard to raise your crops and keep your animals if you had to spend months away from home building fancy buildings for the king’s wives to live in or for the priests of foreign gods to practice their religion. People were angry by the time Solomon died.

One of the popular critics of Solomon’s policies, Jereboam, helped to split the kingdom into north and south, and he became king of the northern tribes. He went back to the wilderness precedent of erecting a golden calf as a symbol of the throne of god. He mixed up the gods of the land with the worship of the God of Israel. His was the first of many disastrous kingships in the northern kingdom. His son and successor, Nadab, was murdered on the battlefied by another northerner, Baasha, and then the whole family was rounded up and slaughtered. Baasha did not know how to stay out of fights, and he had plenty of trouble with his neighbors. When he died, his son Elah succeeded him. That’s where 1 Kings chapter 16 picks up.

I would hate to be Elah in the history books. The Bible gives us one fact about his life. While a war was going on somewhere else, he was back at home with half the army in the capital. And he was drinking himself stupid with his buddies. In that state of inebriation, he probably never knew what hit him. The commander of the troops in the capital came to the place where he was drunk and assassinated him. The kingdom went into chaos. Zimri, his assassin, proclaimed himself the new king. Then he did just like Elah’s father had done. He rounded up the whole family of Elah and executed them.

After this assassination and usurping of the throne, the people began to rally around popular leaders. The part of the army that had been off at war chose Omri to be the new king. Omri took the army off the battlefield and marched back to the capital. When Zimri, the assassin who was claiming to be king, saw the troops arrayed against him, he gave up hope. After being king for only seven days, he set fire to the palace and burned it and himself in it. So Omri claimed to be the new king.

But he could not fully claim it yet. Even though the army was backing him, about half the people of the northern kingdom were backing another fellow, Tibni, for king. Putting the dates from 1 Kings 16 together, it seems that for four years, two people claiming to be king were locked in a struggle for power. Finally, Omri’s party overcame Tibni’s party, and Tibni’s death let Omri reign unchallenged for the next eight years until his death. What inheritance did he leave the kingdom of Israel? He left them his successor, his son Ahab, who led the people down many wrong paths.

Omri came to power in the midst of war, in the wake of assassinations, and when the country was divided. I Kings says that half the people backed Omri and the other half backed Tibni. Omri and Tibni battled it out in an intractable struggle for four years. Then Omri got the undisputed title, and Tibni went to the grave.

This does not sound so unfamiliar to me. Half the country was for one leader, the other half for another. The controversy went on for four years, and finally one of them emerged the victor over the other. It sounds like the last six years of U. S. politics. This country’s voting populace is so evenly divided between two parties that every election ends up with a dispute over who won. And with the margin of victory so narrow, who knows what people are willing to do to sway a few votes. Some try to intimidate voters to keep them from going out to vote. Others use mailings or phone calls to lie about where and when the vote is taking place. Some throw out perfectly good ballots that could hurt their party’s cause. Others take election results to court. Many of us wonder whether the coming use of electronic voting machines will bring an end to having our vote count if the machines can be programmed to ignore our decisions and mark ballots for whomever pays the programmers the best price. We face uncertainty, conflict, and division. So did the people who ended up with Omri as their king.

It was that chaotic reign that the Assyrians recorded as their name for the northern kingdom of Israel. Even after Omri’s descendents lost the throne, the Assyrians called this kingdom “the house of Omri.” They did not call it the house of Jereboam. They did not call it the house of Baasha. They did not call it the house of Jehu, even though Jehu was the one who unseated and executed the family of Ahab, son of Omri. So forever in the archives of Assyrian history, the northern kingdom has been known for a king whose reign was built on chaos and civil conflict.

The Psalmist’s words are an important reminder for those of us who find ourselves living in the house of Omri today. Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. As Samuel warned, and Jeremiah reminded, depending on armies and violence and putting one person in charge over everyone is a bad plan that is bound to fail. One person is not capable of exercising that much power. Armies and violence produce more armies and violence. Autocratic leaders become self-centered and self-serving. They help their friends while everyone else pays the price. They talk as if they are for the people when behind the scenes they are robbing them of their prosperity and their dignity.

In our day leaders are promoting the use of torture, putting the energy companies in charge of the energy policy, taking away the right of habeus corpus, allowing unlimited imprisonment without charges, imprisonment without the right to communicate with a lawyer, allowing wiretapping of citizens without probable cause or a warrant, spending billions on a war of aggression while leaving hundreds of thousands of hurricane victims to fend for themselves, creating education policies designed to shift billions of dollars to private companies. In these times of chaos and division, leaders can manipulate the system to the great disadvantage of the common people.

This is the world we have been living in. We have been living in the house of Omri. And do not be fooled. It has not changed overnight. One day of voting did not transform a troubled and broken system into the Kingdom of God. When Saul died and David took his place, the problems did not go away. Solomon may have tried to be a uniter and not a divider, but when his son took power, the country split and civil war ensued. One election did not remove the dangers and turn the U. S. into the land of eternal happiness. For generations after Omri’s reign, people still called the northern kingdom of Israel “the house of Omri.” And when they stopped calling it that, it was because the kingdom had been defeated, destroyed, and deported.

To be continued . . .

Writing a final report on my sabbatical grant project was a challenge and a learning experience. I spent four days hammering away at my keyboard, looking back at notes taken here and there, recently and not so recently. I reviewed comments from other professors. I gained some insights. I hope there will be much more that I can say about it than my formal report. The opening section of my report follows. I hope my colleagues and I can somehow grasp from this research some pieces of an appropriate pedagogical response. That would be one more reason to be thankful to God.

The “Teaching Political Engagement” project has provided excellent opportunities for learning about political engagement on the level of everyday practices of churches and church-related organizations. The fall political season in the United States presents exaggerated images of partisan conflict, overstuffed with fear-mongering and mudslinging, funded by mountains of wealth. But that is only one angle by which to look at political life. In communities all over the United States, neighborhood organizations, civic clubs, ad hoc committees, coalitions, political associations, and churches engage one another in transforming their communities and in affecting the decisions of businesses, large corporations, school boards, city and county governments. Their local work may ultimately reshape state and federal policies.

Of course, this kind of neighborhood-based political engagement is often the exception rather than the rule of life in the United States, as noted by Marcia Riggs, Cornel West, Mark R. Warren, and Robert Putnam,(1) who have examined the breakdown of community and neighborly structures and the possibilities for rebuilding them. Churches are often either oblivious to this loss or helpless and ineffective in their efforts to swim against this stream. The culture of individualism provides few tools for analyzing the structural problems of society, nor does it encourage sympathy for other people’s problems. For churches who do not recognize their calling to be rooted in the inaugural public statement of Jesus’ mission to the world, recorded in Luke 4:16-21, the initial task will be to undergo what James B. Nickoloff calls “conversion to the neighbor” in his comments on Gustavo Gutierrez’s theology of neighbor love: “that love of God is inseparable from [and] . . . unavoidably expressed through love of one’s neighbor.”(2)

There are many churches and church leaders who have a basic theological understanding of their duty to love the neighbor through offering grace in relational and tangible form. Providing food, clothes, and other assistance in times of crisis is not an uncommon practice by churches who may create organizational structures or may respond as cases arise. Sometimes these sorts of actions receive the name “mercy ministries,” a term derived in part from Micah 6:8, which summarizes the prophetic message with a threefold calling to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Mercy ministries address the immediate crisis needs that people may face, but on their own they do little to confront structures which may be perpetuating the sort of crises that people in the neighborhood keep having. Justice ministries address structural injustices and seek to create structures of justice in the neighborhood, sometimes through the effort of the church and its neighborhood partners and sometimes through addressing governmental and non-governmental systems which affect the situation of injustice.

In my conversations with students about their churches and their responses to drug abuse, gangs, poverty, drop-outs, and crime, they usually tell stories of mercy ministries and efforts to help this family deal with its immediate need. Seldom are they able to articulate strategies or plans for addressing structural or systemic change. If the conversation shifts to systemic change, then often the focus becomes national political issues and elected federal officials. In contrast, Cornel West has insisted it is local grassroots community action, not neglecting state and federal influence, which will be able to bring about transformation.(3)

Many of the student ministers in my theology and ethics classes have an inclination toward grassroots action for community change, but their ecclesial training has seldom prepared them to innovate in ministry, to develop a workable ministry plan, or to use good organizational practices. Thus, a range of needs emerges for “Teaching Political Engagement.”

• A theologically grounded understanding of the relation of churches to their neighborhoods, communities, and other political and social organizations should effectively communicate the calling of the church to embrace the mission Jesus proclaimed as the Reign of God, sometimes contextualized in recent U. S. history as “the beloved community.”(4)

• A critical analysis of structures and systems in relation to the problems and needs of particular people should enable teaching the communal or corporate mission of he church, the church’s ways of using power, and models of social and political engagement with structures and systems.

• Studying and participating in good organizing practices and intentional community-building should support the development of habits that are flexible and foster the building of effective and sustainable organizations that are needed for longer-term personal and community transformation.

• Educational processes must accommodate formation in theological vision, communal identity, analytical insight, organizational tools, and vocational commitment.

(1) Marcia Riggs, Awake, Arise, and Act (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1994) 87, 93ff; Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994) 29-30; Mark R. Warren, Dry Bones Rattling (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001) 16-18; Robert Putman, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000) 42, 56ff, 73-74.

(2) Gustavo Gutierrez, Essential Writings, ed. by James B. Nickoloff (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996) 149, 154.

(3) West, Ibid.

(4) Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope, ed. by James M. Washington (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986) 140; Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community (New York: Basic Books, 2005) 49-50, 207-210.

"Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity" began to circulate roughly a decade ago. It received its greatest attention in the next couple of years among Former Southern Baptists, being published and debated in a news magazine called Baptists Today, and a scholarly journal of the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion called Perspectives in Religious Studies. Discussions were held at academic conferences and with student and faculty groups at several universities and divinity schools. I will now make some rambling remarks that may not in all cases be even-handed.

Pastors and leaders among the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship were divided. Some resisted its criticism of individualism, while others thought the criticism was misguided. Some feared it presented a spectre of authoritarian church polity with official interpretations coming from people holding official positions. Some thought it sounded too Anabaptist for the mainstream. Some thought it accommodated itself too much to Roman Catholicism. Some said it undermined separation of church and state, even at times saying its views would lead to the neo-conservative renegotiation of the disestablishment of the church. A good deal of the controversy had to do with interpretations of key persons and historical periods and themes of Baptists.

Most of the original signers of the document were from among Former Southern Baptists. Some Baptists from the North and West, along with Black Baptists, resisted signing it because it seemed to be about concerns that were not the most central in their communities of Baptists. Still, some of them appreciated aspects of the document and agreed to sign in order to help foster a conversation. The issue of requesting signatures itself became controversial. Some thought that it made the document take on a kind of "creedal" status, which they saw as a serious offense against Baptist tradition. Most who signed it did so in the spirit of John Leland's description of the negotiated confession of the Union of Separate Baptists and Regular Baptists in Virginia--not to indicate complete agreement with every detail by every person.

The document had many weaknesses--for example, an overabundance of academic language, occasional bold use of language which left too many possibilities for diverse interpretations or misinterpretations, the cloud of ideas which was an effect of having been written by committee, and references to specific ideas and historical figures which were received as personal attacks by some scholars and pastors. It was too brief to cover all that might be important to say. But it was too long to be read and discussed in many ecclesial settings. It was written by academics who for the most part come from the context and background of Former Southern Baptists, and therefore it lacked a kind of consciousness of race, class, region, and variant traditions that would make it a more comprehensive statement. Few Canadian Baptists or Puerto Rican Baptists took an interest in it.

It's strengths, on the other hand, included its boldness, its willingness to raise criticisms of sacred cows, its reflection of scholarly work that reassessed officially orthodox interpretations of Baptist history, and its attention to certain reforming movements in contemporary theology and culture. In defense of its limitations, every theological statement reflects a certain history and context. This Manifesto did not attempt to speak for everyone nor to address every context. It especially aimed to address the English-speaking North American context. Even so, it was not a document to summarize the Baptist Moment of the turn of the millennium. Even some participants in the process of writing parted ways over the document. It was one statement, I hope an important one, to address a period of crisis among Baptists and across the culture of the U.S. Surprisingly, groups among English Baptists, Australian Baptists, and New Zealand Baptists found the document invigorating for discussions their churches were dealing with.

Some of the more vocal critics have claimed that the Manifesto attempted to address Baptists in language and categories from academic discourse and not in the language of the tradition. Bruce Prescott, who expressed some sympathy with the statement but had too many disagreements with it to sign it, wrote a briefer, more linguistically familiar alternative statement. Some prominent scholars have responded that the interpretations of Baptist history are incorrect. Another scholar has expressed that the revisions to Baptist identity should take a different trajectory than the directions charted by the Manifesto. Others from various circles have insisted that the genius of the Baptist movement IS the idea of religious individualism.

One writer has spent a good deal of time and ink fighting a surrogate battle from the 1980s. His latest essay calls the authors "Dixieland Postliberals," a caricature or straw enemy which becomes a foil to promote a version of Baptists-Come-Of-Age-To-Be-Power-Brokers-In-The-Real-World. The surrogate battle is between two academic camps identified with two sides of a disagreement between James Gustafson and Stanley Hauerwas.

I am a student of Stanley Hauerwas, and I admire his contributions to Christian theology. My work shows the mark of my teacher. I have admired James Gustafson's work as well, and his writing shaped my earliest studies in theology and ethics. I parted ways with his theological work at the point of his denial of the Trinity, of the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus is not God, then there is a whole different vision of theology and of the church in the world. I'm not hiding that by any means, so I don't need to fight a surrogate battle. I do need to serve God in such a way that the church is faithful to following Jesus.

It is the scandal of Jesus that makes Gustafson cringe about Christian theology. It is an old problem, going back to the battle between the Arians and the Trinitarians. It is at the heart of the Constantinian highjacking of the church. His god who bears up and bears down is available to us more in nature, reason, and culture than in the narrative of God in Israel, Jesus, and the church. Gustafson concludes that the European-style established church described by Troeltsch is the church we've got and the church we are stuck with, so we had better get on board with that kind of Culture Church if we want to have any influence. I don't believe that is our only option for influence. I don't think that is anything like the tradition of Baptist thought.

The disagreements of teacher and student between James Gustafson and Stanley Hauerwas grew over the years after they were both at Yale, and Gustafson sought to explain those differences by clarifying the charge that Hauerwas can be positionized through the label "sectarian." (James Gustafson, "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church, and the University," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 40 (1985): 83-94.) Many articles and books have been written to debate this question ever since. This writer, as a self-appointed surrogate for Gustafson, has treated the Manifesto and its authors as surrogates for Stanley Hauerwas in an effort to convince Baptists that they need to adopt the methodologies and perspectives of James Gustafson. I hope Baptists do not ever choose one theologian from whom they will learn. I also hope we never accept the pejorative label "sectarian" as an accurate description of disestablished, post-european-style churches, calling them dangerous, and ultimately unfaithful to God. If that is what it means to be a come-of-age, responsible Baptist, we had better pack our bags and get evangelized by African indigenous churches. That is probably a good idea anyway.

Fundamentalist Baptists, or Baptists of the Conservative Resurgence, as some prefer to be called, have mostly been uninterested in the Manifesto. Usually it gets classified as another sign of liberalism. Some have seen it as an inadequate critique of liberalism. Recently, I found it on blog that calls it an interesting example of internal critique among moderate Baptists, yet still bearing the taint of moderate theology.

I sometimes thought that the Baptifesto, as it has sometimes been called, would fade away and be forgotten. But periodically it seems to resurface. That is still happening. So to the extent that it can further conversation about what Baptists have been, are, and should be, I say long may it live. That would be enough. The point of writing this is to make note of the ongoing small conversations about this document. Below are a few links. If you know of others, important or trivial, I would appreciate your adding them to the comments.

A Recent Southern Baptist posting

Another recent Southern Baptist posting disinviting the authors of the Manifesto to be Southern Baptists

A recent compliment from Timothy George

Another recent posting

An essay by Walter Shurden

Bruce Prescott's links, first and second

A Southern Baptist essay on Baptist Identity which says the Manifesto departs from recognizable Baptist thought

A recent statement responding to charges that the Manifesto is "unbaptistic"

A recent comment related to the previous post on the Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank site

"The Unintended Consequences of Dixieland Postliberalism"

Confessions of a Dixieland Postliberal

A Baptist World Alliance discussion that footnotes the statement

A comment and question from a Presbyterian at a Catholic University

An odd argument that says the Manifesto's criticism of soul competency is unbaptistic and thereby should not be used to undermine the author's contention that Baptists should not teach abstinence toward alcohol

An essay from SBTS assessing E. Y. Mullins and the Manifesto's interpretation of him

What's wrong with this headline from a Duke press release? "Women's Golf Advances to Finals of Hooters Collegiate Match Play." Many people have worked hard, across decades, to establish the dignity of women in athletic events. How much money does it take for universities to agree to sponsorship by a business named and organized around leering at women? When Duke is trying to polish up its image from student parties with hired strippers, isn't anyone paying attention to the event sponsors? It's not really an issue of PR, but of respecting people for their hard work. These athletes deserve better.

I don't often keep up with the news on various Baptist groups, but now and then I get connected to some stories and try to follow them. Once again, Mainstream Baptist has brought my attention to a matter that started me thinking. It has to do with a former employer of mine, the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It relates to church starting, which is an important topic for many of my students to learn about.

Let me say first of all that I admire the BGCT as one of the best examples of leadership, organization, and stewardship to which we can turn. I admire its leaders and its programs. As a former employee, I have found the organization to be compassionate, visionary, and accountable. Even so, in every organization, problems can arise. The test is in whether the organization deals honestly with them and learns from them. I have faith that the BGCT will do that.

The math on the supposed 258 church starts raises a red flag itself. I realize that a church can start in a home by word of mouth, and that little in the way of additional cash is required. But an organized effort to plant churches through training and supervision of leaders, with hundreds of starts as a goal in a short time, would clearly take some funds. Maybe there were other sources of funds for this effort from the Piper program, and here I am ignorant.

The BGCT's contribution, according to a little mathematical analysis of the article, was about $5,000 per church start. I wonder how many of the readers' households operate on that amount for even two months.

Like so many church leaders who have high expectations for attendance and growth and make promises of numbers, this looks like a case of wishful thinking. Building relationships takes time. Building organizations and institutions takes people and money. I don't know how many churches could be expected to start on about $5,000. If there were a movement of the Spirit, what Jonathan Edwards called a "surprising work of God," maybe dozens or hundreds would start with very little expenditure. If the process is based on good planning and organizational efforts yet do not coincide with an "irruption of the Spirit," a term from Gustavo Gutierrez, then I think more people, time, and money might be required.

I'm not saying that churches can't be started using tried and true methodologies. Where the gospel is preached and lived, people will be drawn to it. But if what is desired is measurable, structured, lasting institutional existence, then the work of the gospel can't be undergirded by being tempted by a bargain and talking a lot of wishful thinking.

By comparison, I observe academics who get grant funds and promise to have big conferences to change the way people think and reach hundreds of people with their important message, even seminaries trying to attract large numbers of ministers to a conference.

What they so often fail to do is build the relationships and do the hard ground-level work to get the public or the ministers aware of and interested in what their conference is about. So they promise even larger numbers than before, only to struggle to reach the same small number they had at their last conference. Doing the hard work of organizing takes time, effort, and money. It does not amount to a few phone calls, a mailout, a list of speakers, and a printed program.

No amount of money will start a church when the "seed falls on the road." And money may make little difference when the "seed falls among thorns" or "on rocky soil." And when the "seed falls on good soil," little or no money may do the job.

I'm just saying that anyone who claims to be able to start 258 churches in a short time using about $5,000 per church sounds like a "low-ball" bidder. Usually low-ball bidders are cutting corners and using processes that are not according to Hoyle. Sometimes we hide behind "having faith and trusting God" as a way to spend less than it takes to do a good job.

Phil Reed of Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, MS, says that one of their key biblical texts is Philippians 1:9,

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God (NRSV).

In it he says that they are reminded that the church's calling is both to spread abroad the love of God and to have that love show knowledge and insight to let that love be demonstrated by doing things in the very best way. In common parlance today, that would mean that our love should learn from best practices financially, structurally, and relationally.

I know that is the way that the BGCT tries to carry out its work. The best practices must not close the door to the overflowing of love, and the wisdom of love must ever seek to do its work better.

Peace Pumpkin time--Naomi, Lydia, and I carved pumpkins on Tuesday evening. We had a great time talking, carving, and setting up candles so they would glow. Then we gave out candy to the few kids who came by our house. And we ate candy while we enjoyed the cool air of the evening. Here are a couple of pumpkin pictures. If you can't make out the symbols in the peace pumpkin, it reads, "Heart Stop Gun," which being translated means something like, "Love, not War."

Bruce Prescott got me thinking some more about why he and I are writing different kinds of warnings about what churches need to be concerned about in the current day and age in the U.S. I agree wholeheartedly with his critique of the Christian America crowd and their more extreme cousins, the Reconstructionists. So it is a bit puzzling, as his comment on my previous post indicated, that we are talking about such different problems for the church. He wrote:

We must not be living in the same country.

I saw the culture-warrior Christians in the Religious Right rallying the troops for war with Iraq.

You write as if it were the ACLU, Americans United and progressive Christians.

So here are my musings, posted as a comment on Mainstream Baptist.

Bruce says that I seem to be living in a different country. You may be on to something, so I want to experiment with that idea.

Your earlier remarks had highlighted the prominence of Reconstructionist ideas in Oklahoma. You also encounter them on the web, a place where everyone can become a published author with a little time and access.

I know these people meet and write and organize. I've taught about them in my classes. I have a colleague who researches them. But they are speaking a language that has not made much sense to my undergraduate students (a few years back) nor to my divinity students now.

Moreover, when I deal with public high school teachers and students and with college or divinity students or professors from the other universities in our area, this kind of Reconstructionist idea is the farthest thing from their view of the US. If it is true that about 40% of the people in the US go to college, as I recall (the figure I found was 35% of people at the age to start college in 2002, see http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i27/27b05001.htm, which would not include those who go later in life) then one could assume that many of these people find themselves in a milieu similar to mine. Of course, prominent Reconstructionists include many college graduates, so I am not trying to claim that going to college is an absolute indicator of whether someone would be attracted either to Reconstructionist or to Secular supremacist ideas.

A second angle to take on living in different countries could be affected by the generally progressive politics of my county and city. Maybe a better argument would be that in Durham, NC, there are not many Reconstructionists to be found (even though one prominent Baptist pastor may be in sympathy with them). Your experience in Oklahoma may be different, and no doubt Idaho has attracted such people.

One might construe the two countries according to different kinds of churches and their agendas. As for the threat of conservative so-called Christians believing in a renewed crusade, in a war to bring on Armageddon, or in a revived Imperialism of the US as the supercession of Israel, I am with you fully that this is the current great threat to peace in the US and the world. Many of these people have so many doctrines wrong about the nature of the church and the nature of the state, sadly built upon certain versions of Puritan heritage of the Reformed tradition. That is part of what I was trying to address in my earlier post about non-violence.

On the other hand, churches who are engaging in grassroots democracy and community transformation, whether conservative evangelical or progressive evangelical or mainstream protestant or Roman catholic, are recognizing the failure of conservative or liberal politics-as-usual to help the poor or deal with white supremacy. Christian Community Development, IAF/DART/Gamaliel/PICO, Leadership Foundations of America, and a variety of local churches are making changes through their own efforts and by joining efforts with others to leverage social change. That is happening all over the country, and it is something I have focused my attention on. But nowhere that I have looked have these efforts managed to eliminate poverty or racism completely.

When I look at church-state issues from the point of view of what churches must do to faithfully be the presence of Christ here and now, in this country, under this government, then part of what I want churches to know is that they don't have to accept the hemmed-in, domesticated role assigned them in the doctrine of the spheres. On pilgrimage in the world, such churches and their people engage the thrones and dominions through participatory democracy and representative government, and also by building their own structures for social change. This latter is their calling regardless of what political order they are living in--one where the secularism of eastern universities shapes the thought of many, or one where Reconstructionists can get the ear of a regional newspaper.

When I look at church-state relations from the point of view of how government policies can maintain a proper relationship toward churches and "religions," then I still find 1st amendment jurisprudence which promotes benevolent neutrality a good place to hang my hat. Neutrality will never quite be neutral, so the effort has to be asymptotic. Practical reasoning of the highest care is required. I still tell my friends they are better off not taking the "faith-based" money from the government to do their ministries. I work to stop the attack on schools that "No Child Left Behind" legislation has put in place to redirect government funds to for-profit corporations and private religious groups wanting to get in on the government purse through vouchers. But this is a defensive effort, a way to maintain detente. It is not a constructive ecclesiology. It helps keep the civil society from going too far off the path of the common good. But it does not put the church on the path of Kingdom building.

Finally, when national elections are falling out 50-50 and opinion polls are falling out 40-40, then that might be one more reason to feel that we are talking about different countries.

A few of my friends got an exchange going, in robust graduate school style, about how to talk about church and state in relation to a pluralistic vision of the good society. It took place on Bruce Prescott's blog, so if you want to know the context, here is where I posted first posted my comments. It all started on October 25.

I spent enough time writing it that I decided I ought to post it here as well. Most of what comes after the opening paragraphs could make pretty good sense on its own. But the backgroud is all available on the previous links.

Dr. Prescott and Dr. Freeman are actually both giving important insights true to the writings of Roger Williams. Williams does provide much fodder for political thought, and his political thought is especially concerned with the protection of a free church.

This particular aspect of the debate about church and state in recent decades has battled around an impasse. Part of the reason for the impasse is the broad reassessment among Baptists, the Reformed Tradition, Anabaptists, and Roman Catholics about the shortcomings of their own traditions and about the way they characterize one another's doctrine.

I find that there are still haters of the Roman Catholic Church among Baptists. Neither of these scholars is numbered among them. On the other hand, neither of them is ready to bend the knee to the supremacy of Rome or its bishop. Those are not the only two possibilities.

Nor are the only two possibilities in church-state relations (1) to accept the supremacy of pluralist visions of the good society as a necessary corollary of faithful ecclesiology and separation of church and state or (2) militaristic, theocratic absolutism. It is not either (1) nation-state as divinely appointed umpire of the limits of religion, or (2) Muenster. One can doubt the competence of the nation-state to be a fair arbiter of faith without throwing out the valuable traditions of church-state separation which Baptists rightly treasure. One can even doubt that the pluralistic telos of U.S. culture is aligned with proclaiming the Reign of God without wanting the Reign of God to be enforced through Reconstructionist or other heretical models of coercive Christianity.

What was said in only muted terms in the original remarks by Dr. Newman was that a church which affirms the Lordship of Jesus as its political order can do so faithfully only in an authentic commitment to follow Jesus' path of non-violence. To claim, "Jesus is Lord," can only have integrity if the church disavows violence. Seventeen centuries of willingness to bear arms against the enemies we love has produced enough Muensters and Auschwitzes that we ought to be able to get it through our thick skulls that separation of church and state must mean separation of church and violence. I admit that this is a minority position in Baptist theology. But it is a minority position for the very reason that most Baptists accepted the Reformed Tradition's doctrine of the Divinely Sanctioned State as holding hegemony over bodies, leaving the inward life of the mind to be ruled by the church. Yet the New Testament says to present our bodies a living sacrifice, not only our minds.

Setting aside violence does not mean that churches have to leave the social realm to governments and corporations to rule as they will. In the Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, Lawndale Community Church has reshaped life by transgressing the imposed distinctions between politics and religion. Getting housing up to code, providing health care, educating children, creating jobs, can't merely be left to the powers and authorities which are dominated by the rich who seek their own self-interest. The church steps out and joins God in making a way where there is no way.

The result often is, as Yoder says, a kind of spiritual osmosis, by which the government, the corporations, the world's social structures get on the bandwagon and do their part to build a better community. This is a fully political model of ecclesiology, but not one that is built on a theocratic absolutism. It is a teleological understanding of God's Reign as already and not yet. It is the irruption of the Spirit, to transform the social existence, the political order, in which people live. It is what John and Vera Mae Perkins did in Mississippi. It is what the Latino Pastoral Action Center is doing in the Bronx, New York, and what St. Paul Community Baptist Church is doing in Brooklyn, New York, what Mission Waco is doing in Waco, Texas, and what Friendship West Baptist Church is doing in Dallas, Texas.

It is not Christian Reconstructionism. It is compatible with strict separation of church and state as an institutional arrangement by which churches do not depend on government to do their work nor does government select one or some churches or religions to be its agents. Such an ecclesiology recognizes that governments and churches both make all-encompassing claims on human lives, but can agree that the church has no intention or permission or birthright to make those claims under threat of violence. It does not judge worldly government as competent to make the expansive claims that it makes, for the kingdoms of this world are passing away.

Such a church can agree with Dr. Newman that church-state separation is a good worth protecting as well as that "Jesus is Lord" is our confession without reservation.

The high level of rhetoric in this exchange reminds me a bit of why I am a former Southern Baptist and also a former Southern Baptist Exile. I don't mean that the Baptists with whom I share regular fellowship are not equally capable of harsh exchanges.

Associating now with National Baptists, Progressive National Baptists, and Lott Carey Baptists, I also remember that my Southern Baptist upbringing led me to believe Black Baptists were a deficient form of Baptist life. I don't think anyone in this discussion believes that now. But I do believe that the differences between Black Baptists, English Baptists, American Baptists, Southern Baptists, and Moderate Baptists, among many others, are often ignored and belittled by the claim that one stream of Baptist thought represents true Baptists.

Helwys and Smyth, as two candidates for the founders of the Baptist Movement, should make plain to us that the debate over the willingness of Baptists to kill, when commanded by the ruler of their geographical location, has been and remains a lively issue among Baptists. Strong claims for non-violence remain prominent in the past half-century of Baptist life in the U.S. And on the acceptance or rejection of cooperating in state violence hinges much of how we interpret the Lordship of Jesus Christ while we observe the strict separation of church and state.

I visited John and Vera Mae Perkins in Jackson, MS, this week. It is hard for me to express the extent to which my understanding of the church, its relation to the world, and its approach to living out the Reign of God, have been challenged and changed since coming to know these people. By God's grace I read an essay by Dr. Tammy Williams, written when she was still a graduate student at Fuller Theological Seminary. The book was Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition, edited by Nancey Murphy, et al. In it, Tammy wrote about virtue ethics in relation to race relations, and her essay focused around the story of Voice of Calvary Ministries and the work of John and Vera Mae Perkins.

It was an awakening to me. I had studied academic theology, plowed through many books, and processed the traditions of church-state relations in theological writings. I had latched onto certain approaches to ecclesiology as crucial for a critique and construction of the church amidst the context of the modern nation-state. But I had only begun to scratch the surface of what the form of such an ecclesiology would be in the setting of the United States. And then I read Tammy's essay.

I remain convinced after seven years of further study that there is not more faithful witness to the calling of the church to follow Jesus than the movement with which the Perkins's are so intricately associated--Christian Community Development. It is a movement which appeared by the coming together of many churches and ministry leaders who had come to understand the church's mission as bringing the whole gospel to the whole person and the whole community, or as Latino leaders said, an integral approach to ministry.

This Tuesday, John Perkins talked to me about the gospel as God's loving way of coming to meet us at the deepest level of our need. For him, it was a need to know he was significant to someone, having lost his mother to death and having his father leave him to live with relatives. He grew up thinking he was not as "special" as other kids with mothers or fathers to live with. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he was not as good as other kids, causing his dad to leave him. But the good news came to him that God loves him and wants to live life with him. Learning this to be God's way, Perkins realized that he was to be the bearer of this good news to others. If they were having health problems, he was to demonstrate God's live by taking them to a clinic, or even convincing a doctor to come set up a clinic to serve the poor. If they had no place to live, he could be God's love by getting them a place to stay, and even building or renovating housing that can be affordable for the poor. The gospel reaches the deep needs of people and changes them into its agents.

He has written elsewhere that he also came to see that the gospel was not about a solitary life with God. It was about community. The gift God has offered us as the very purpose of our existence is community, a shared life, a life of growth through mutual accountability, a life of love and care for one another. There is no higher end. God calls us together to be brothers and sisters, to have power to bring change by being a united people serving a God of love and justice.

Perkins formulated his understanding of ministry around three Rs. The three Rs are part of the eight principles of Christian Community Development. They are Relocation, an incarnational ministry of living among the poor; Redistribution, a sharing of gifts and talents in communities where leadership and professional services are absent; and Reconciliation, briding the divisions across racial and class divisions. The three Rs are a challenge to every church to re-examine its mission and practices.

I thank God for another chance to learn from John and Vera Mae Perkins.

Today was the unveiling of a new historical marker in Raleigh, NC, in front of the building where I teach. It commemorates the Leonard School of Medicine which began at Shaw University in 1882, then eventually closed in 1918, having trained over 400 African American physicians to serve all over the South and beyond.

We heard stories from family members of Leonard Medical School graduates. They were the kinds of stories that make one feel honored to be in the presence of goodness, to follow in the footsteps of greatness. Shaw University Divinity School now operates in the historic Leonard Hall. Next door is the Leonard Hospital, now called Tyler Hall, where much of the university administration is housed.

More information on school homicides is available with a little digging around. I had heard a commentator make a vague statement about 100 school shootings since Columbine, and later I started wondering what it meant. I tried to locate an audio recording of the original statement, but I can't figure out when or where I heard it.

But I did find out some other things. I found out something that confirmed my undocumented impressions--school violence is not something new. The worst recorded incident of school violence in the US, the homicide of 45 people, occurred in Michigan in 1927 when a man blew up a school building. I have read and heard stories of rural schools in which teachers were threatened or harmed by unruly students as far back as the 1800s. The US has been a violent place for a long time.

Moreover, the current period, notwithstanding the last couple of weeks, has shown a significant decline in school violence and homicides. In both 1992-93 and 1993-94, there were 42 homicides on school grounds. Even 1999-99, the Columbine year, was much lower than that with 25 homicides. Recent years have mostly had 10 or fewer homicides at schools. I am still disturbed by any homicide, at school or away from school. But some things, probably including better safety policies, have improved the situation of violence in schools.

Are there trends which contradict these homicide figures? I certainly read anecdotal accounts from teachers and principals of a greater level of fear of student violence toward them, but I don't have data to agree or disagree. One graph, on the same page as linked above for homicides, claims that students have become less afraid at school over recent years.

None of this changes my concerns about a violent society, disturbed conceptions of manhood, and violence against women. But it does show that our awareness of school violence has changed dramatically in recent years.

The growth of news as entertainment, voyeuristic news, and live and no longer live videotapes running over and over, round the clock, has changed our understanding of violence in schools. Dramatic televised reports of school violence have raised our perception of the frequency of school violence even though the actual incidents have declined.

The spate of school shootings in the past week has left me reeling. I have two teen-aged daughters who attend public schools, and this week's events make me shake and weep for them and the world they live in.

I previously had categorized school shootings in a certain way in my mind. I saw them as reflecting the society's promotion of aggression as the essence of manliness, combined with the rage of young people, especially young men, who find themselves in a world of shifting sands and uncertain identity. All that was connected to a militarized, warmaking society both in the official government policies and in the self-centered nihilism of corporate boardrooms and street gangs.

Always vaguely tied to that framing of the issue was the degradation of women in popular culture and media. I also knew that the violence against women and children in homes was one aspect of what I heard Ched Myers call "a nation addicted to violence." But this gendered aspect of the problem had remained somewhat in the background for me until recently.

A few weeks ago I read Martha Mendoza's study of the prevalence of sexual assault on young women and men by military recruiters who have legally mandated access to public schools. The schools are forced to allow these outsiders, many of whom have been protected by the continued lack of concern in the military ranks about mistreatment of women. This angers me no end and has raised my level of anxiety about my daughter's safety.

Now these killings in Colorado and Pennsylvania have shaken me up again. In Colorado, a man walked into a school armed, and freely made his way into a classroom where he selected six girls as his victims, sending out the boys, some other girls, and the teacher. The news stories quote one girl as saying he seemed to be preferring primarily smaller girls with blonde hair, although a girl with brown hair was also in the group. Objectifying these girls by their age, body type, and hair color, he proceded to molest them.

What does this man's story tell us about the malformation of men in our society? What drove this man to act? Was it some sort of hatred of young women? Fear or resentment of the power of women? Desire for power over the weak? Sexual desire distorted and perverted toward violence? The news stories report that he designed and ran "haunted houses" for Halloween, another artifact of a society addicted to violence. He reportedly encouraged workers to make their scenes and acts as disturbingly scary as possible. Maybe his actions at the school were his way of taking one last overdose on an addiction to causing people to be terrified. When a human being becomes habituated to horror for thrills, then the whole complex of emotion, reason, and brain chemistry becomes intertwined in it.

Under pressure from the SWAT team's attack, he shot and killed one of the girls. Why he shot only one, we don't know. Maybe he felt the horror of what he had done, and therefore turned the gun on himself. Or more likely, he ran out of time and wanted to control his own death.

The Pennsylvania story is equally horrifying and even harder to interpret from the news accounts. At the heart of it is a similar story. The man entered the school with guns. He sent out the boys, the adult women, and the very young girls. Eleven girls between first grade and eighth grade, perhaps including an older teen who served as a teacher's aide, were bound hand and foot and lined up by the chalkboard. When the police showed up, the man decided to finish his plan, shooting all of the girls execution style before killing himself. Three girls died on the site. Seven more went to the hospital, and stories indicate that most if not all were shot in the head. Already at this writing, two more have died. All five others remain in critical condition. Very little information is available, but two who died were as young as seven years old.

The names of the five who have died are as follows: Naomi Rose Edersole, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Marian Fisher, 13; Mary Liz Miller, 8; Lina Miller, 7. The last two are sisters. How terribly tragic that he stole away their young lives and their families' joy in them.

Why kill only girls? Why kill children? Neighbors described the man as a caring father and husband, so obviously something beneath the surface was horribly wrong. News accounts only talk about his expressed need to avenge something from his childhood, twenty years ago. It has something to do with his molesting of young children when he was 12 years old. No one seems to think that the particular neighbors or the particular children were anything but a "target of opportunity," easy to get to and use for his purposes. People also speculate that the death of a child in his family may also be related, but if so, why? He is said to have stated he was angry with life and God. Does this act somehow pay God back?

Did his past create in him a deep-seated hatred for young girls? It is widely observed that some people become sexually fixated on teens or even preteens. Psychoanalytic theorists might offer some explanations that would make sense. Theories of moral and spiritual formation and development can also give some insight. Addiction and recovery models shed some light, but these are not fully explanatory.

Something has gone terribly wrong in the formation of these men and boys who become murderers, and the fact of the prevalence of similar cases means that more than an individual explanation is needed. What conditions produce this kind of explosion of hatred and desperation? The Pennsylvania attack was the 100th school shooting since the Columbine High School tragedy of 1999. One hundred school shootings in seven years can't be called a series of isolated events. The formation of men in this culture has been undermined and overwhelmed by corrupted convictions and practices about manhood, identity, and strength, and over and over young girls and women are paying the price as recipients of violence. Nothing could be more clear after the past week.

God, please protect my precious daughters, and the daughters of all others who must live in a world where evil can rise up and strike in the unlikeliest of places, when we least expect it, against your will for which we pray to be done on earth. And please shield my beloved son, and the sons of all others from a world where being a man seems to necessitate aggression and violence, both of which are against our true nature revealed in the Incarnate One. May my children and the children of others live in peace, with the joy of family and community, in the midst of your love, and may they grow old in gratitude for your provision, among friends and loved ones until that time that they may be raised in a new body to your presence forevermore. Amen

Christian Community Development is one of the most promising movements of faithfulness in the U.S. church, and beyond, in the current time. I have been in Philadelphia at the annual conference of the Christian Community Development Association. It has included inspiration, encouragement, and training for a wide range of concerns for churches.

The opening session's keynote speaker, Rev. Alyn Waller of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia, set a tone of high expectation for what churches should dedicate themselves to do in their communities. The next evening, Tony Campolo spoke on leadership as service rather than titles. He quoted his pastor who said we much choose how we want to be remembered--do we want titles in our obituaries or testimonies from the people whose lives we touched through loving service. He said he would choose the testimonies.

Also on the topic of leadership, Ted Travis of Neighborhood Ministries in Denver, Colorado, said that churches need to give young people opportunities to lead, and that adults need to get out of their way to let them learn to think on their feet, make their mistakes, and grow in confidence.

Ecclesiology came up often in the sessions I attended, and more than one speaker referred to the parable of wine and wineskins. If churches are going to make room for the gospel to speak in any time and place, they will have to be willing to change the wineskins so that the new wine of the gospel can be free to do its work.

Local ministries such as the simple way, Camden House, and Yes! And . . . CAMP, all demonstrated the power of new wineskins for preserving the gospel.

As always, John Perkins was inspiring and powerful in his witness.

On September 11 I posted a letter and some documents about military recruiting. As a follow up, I'm posting the response I received from the Superintendent of the Durham Public Schools. It is a good response which shows that he has made sure the policies are in place for distributing information. He has contacted the school board and the executive leadership of the district to remind or inform them of the same information. And he promises to ask the principals to bring this up with the PTAs of their schools and put it in their student newspapers. It does not, however, make any response to my remarks about sexual assaults by military recruiters.

I don't really expect the school system to become my advocate in opposing military recruiters in schools, and so this prompt, judicious response is what I had hoped for. Other steps, such as counter-recruitment, will have to originate outside the school administration. I'll try to be more alert and prepared when these events come up.

Here is the letter.

September 15, 2006

Dear Dr. Broadway:

Thank you very much for your letter of September 10 regarding the release of student information to military recruiters. I agree with you that it is important that we communicate with parents regarding all of their options for their children, including making sure they are aware of the availability of a form to request that DPS withhold student contact information from military recruiters without prior written consent.

Following are the steps we are taking to ensure that parents know of the option to request we withhold their children's information from recruiters:

• We have made the form available on our district Website, as well as referenced the form in our student/parent handbooks;

• We have provided all high school principals a letter to send to their students' parents reminding them of the option and where they can access the form to complete, return and file at their school; we also will encourage principals to publish this letter and advertisements that we prepared in their student newspapers;

• We included an article reminding parents of this option in our September Parent DirectLink newsletter; and,

• We will ask principals to work with high school PTAs to get this message out to their parents.

Dr. Broadway, it is refreshing and encouraging to hear from parents who are involved and concerned about increasing the awareness of options not only for their own children, but for others. Thank you for your commitment to the students of Durham Public Schools.

Sincerely,

Carl E. Harris, Ed.D.
Superintendent

c: Executive Leadership Team
Board of Education Members

I also had responses from school board members, so I think this action had at least an overall good result. Now for a few more thoughts on the issue.

The language of "opting out" frames this as if it were not a life and death situation or a first amendment issue. A doctrine of non-violence is an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and the command to love the neighbor. It is, therefore, a doctrine central to the confession of many Christians. No doubt, people of other faiths or convictions may also hold this doctrine.

For that reason, government sponsored proselytization of youth with the purpose of converting them to a doctrine of state-sponsored violence is an infringement on the free exercise of religion. Moreover, I would characterize it as an establishment of religion in that it is a moral, even theological, doctrine about how human beings must live in the world. Participating in state-sponsored violence may be a kind of service and sacrifice to a god resembling Ares or Mars from ancient European religions, or perhaps merely the deification of imperial goals or the almighty dollar, "idols" in the language of Christian tradition.

I doubt many people would go along with me on the second claim about establishment because the whole tradition of modern liberal democracy, the nation-state, republicanism, and capitalism claim (again I would call this a theological claim) that the state and the economy are outside the realm or sphere of religion. That is a theological challenge to those who would claim that there is only one Lord in whom, through whom, and by whom are all things.

Pauli Murray's autobiography--I finally finished it yesterday. It was a very interesting, impressive, and insightful account of both a gifted actor in history and a historical period.

I speak for my race and my people--
The human race and just people.

These words appeared in the front pages of her book of poems, Dark Testament. Carolyn Ware offers them in tribute to her in the Epilogue of the book.

I was fascinated by her early life in part because of its constant references to Durham, NC, where I live. The later years of her life become amazing because of the range of activity, leadership, and accomplishments.

She became an authority on laws concerning race across all the states of the U.S. She taught in Ghana at the opening of their first law school and influenced major figures in the interpretation of constitutional law and civil rights. She wrote decisive papers on the application of equal employment laws to women, and influenced the key legislation on this matter in the Civil Rights Act. She helped to initiate the meetings which led to creating the National Organization for Women, and she was a founding member. She helped Benedict College in South Carolina create programs to move their students from marginal to capable in college level work. She was a pioneer in the fields of African American Studies and Legal Studies while teaching at Brandeis University. She helped to press the World Council of Churches and the Episcopal Church toward acceptance of women in ministry. She was one of the many women ordained to Episcopal ministry during the first weeks of 1977 when the church officially allowed ordination.

Ironically, it seems to me that she barely managed financially for most of her life, often searching for employment to support her main work as a writer, activist, and scholar. Certainly some of her opportunities in the last couple of decades of her life were more financially adequate, but even then her jobs were not long term and left her future support uncertain.

With reference to my life, my imagination has been captured by what seems to me to be a necessity of finding a job I can count on to make my way. Perhaps it was not at all by choice for Pauli Murray that she did not live this way. But part of her situation also was her commitment to deal with the work at hand. Her unwillingness to put off the tasks that pressed themselves on her is a compelling witness. I find myself looking at that kind of life and saying with those Greek seekers of Jesus, "Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief."

Today Is a Day for Reflection

While taking care of some business matters this morning, I was listening to live broadcasts of the commemoration ceremonies for the people who died in the planes and buildings on September 11, 2001. It was a solemn occasion, and the voices of people talking about the fears and pain of that day still usually put a lump in my throat and bring tears brimming in my eyes. The pain of people who have lost family members is something that always gets inside of me. In addition, I also am stirred by the pain of remembering the constant cry of those who suffer because of the level of hatred and bloodthirstiness in the powerful Western Nation-states and of the radical anti-Western Middle Eastern movements.

As I listened to the speakers at the site of the crashed airliner in Pennsylvania, I was more than once troubled by the public officials who spoke, giving hollow words of sympathy and representing the solidified machines of violence. I remembered my brief visit to the Spring Hill Community of the Bruderhof in April of 2002, when I learned that the children of this Bruderhof community had become involved in efforts to memorialize those who died in that crash. I knew that there must be members of the Bruderhof present, but I did not spot them when I now and then looked at the pictures on the screen. (For more information on the Bruderhof, go to the end of this post.)

At the end of the speeches and other observances, the speaker announced that the last event would be songs from a combined choir of children from a local school and from the Spring Hill Bruderhof. I was filled with joy in seeing the children gather in the tent to sing, and heard their voices. My heart was troubled by the contrast between certain public officials who wanted to assure the toughness of the U. S. government and people, and this beautiful song which called on all children of the world to gather for peace. The first song they sang was written partly in one of the languages of the Philippines, and partly in English. I am sure I have heard it before, but here are the lyrics of "I Am But a Small Voice." I can't vouch for the spelling of the foreign words.

I Am But a Small Voice
(r. whittaker/d. batnag)

Akoy munting tinig
May munting pangarap
Samyo ng bulaklak
Sa hanging malinis

May ngiti sa araw
At kung umuulan
Makapagtampisaw
Malayang daigdig
Ng kawalang malay

I am but a small voice
I am but a small dream
The fragrance of a flower
In the unpolluted air

I am but a small voice
I am but a small dream
To smile upon the sun
Be free to dance and sing
Be free to sing my song to everyone

Chorus:
Come young citizens of the world
We are one, we are one
Come young citizens of the world
We are one, we are one

We have one hope
We have one dream
And with one voice
We sing...

Coda:
Peace, prosperity
And love for all mankind

Peace, prosperity
And love for all mankind

(instrumental)

I am but a small voice
I am but a small dream
To smile upon the sun
Be free to dance and sing
Be free to sing my song to everyone

Come young citizens of the world
We are one, we are one
Come young citizens of the world
We are one, we are one

We have one hope
We have one dream
And with one voice
We sing, we sing

Peace, prosperity
And love for all mankind

Peace, prosperity
And love for all mankind

This event again reminds the rest of us of the importance of a peace witness, which among many things that make more mainstream Christians uncomfortable, is surely one thing that the Bruderhof continue after a century to have gotten right again and again.

A second matter for commemoration today is the hundredth anniversary of the first act of satyagraha by Mohandes Gandhi and a group of 3000 who protested the institution of the Asiatic Registration Act, part of the structure of apartheid in South Africa. On September 11, 1906, they held a public protest and civil disobedience in Johannesburg, South Africa, the first trickles of what would become a mighty rushing stream of non-violent resistance in the 20th century and beyond.

About the Bruderhof, if you are wondering who I was talking about. The Bruderhof are a community of Christians which originated in Germany about a century ago and advocated a radical form of community life in the tradition of certain Anabaptist groups. They were persecuted by the Nazis and immigrated to the UK, to Paraguay, and ultimately to the US and Australia. They have several thriving communities in Pennsylvania and New York. Their best known public figure is Johann Christoph Arnold. The Bruderhof experimented with a significant internet presence for several years, but have removed most of their links from the web in the past year or so. They became well-known especially for the Daily Dig, an inspirational quotation and discussion board which was very widely cited until it ended last year. They still maintain a welcome page and a collection of online publications, including many excellent books which a person may download free of charge. Many church and school workers know them for their furniture manufacturing called Community Playthings and Rifton Equipment.

Military Recruiting in Schools

I wrote a letter to my public schools superintendent and school board members on Sunday. I don't want my children to be harrassed by military recruiters, even though NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (aka No Public School Left Open; aka No Child Not Recruited) demands that schools release directory information on students or face loss of federal funds. When the rule was first sneaked through in the so-called school reform legislation, there was activism to have schools offer an "opt-in" policy so that the privacy of students was the presumptive approach. After a number of school systems adopted that policy, the Pentagon issued a letter saying that "opt-in" was a misconstrual of the law. Only "opt-out" policies would be allowed. So I had been eagerly waiting for my opt-out form, which I finally have filled out for my daughters 2 weeks into the school year. Here is the letter I wrote, and I've noted a couple of articles which raise concerns about military recruiting and sexual assault.

September 10, 2006

Dr. Carl Harris
Durham Public Schools

Dear Dr. Harris,
I wish you well in your new responsibilities as superintendent of DPS. I know you are working hard, and I especially appreciate your continued efforts to seek community input on the work of the school system.

I am writing about a matter of great concern in my family: military recruitment in our schools. It is first of all a concern because of my deep Christian convictions against participation in war. In respect of the constitution and my family’s convictions, I am strongly opposed to allowing military recruiters to have opportunities to try to influence my children. Speech promoting the training of young people for killing other people transgresses religious doctrine and interferes with freedom of religion for those of us who believe in non-violence.

Secondly, I am also a concerned parent of two high-school daughters, one at Riverside and one at DSA. I have included with this letter two articles about the widespread occurrences of sexual assault by military recruiters and in the military academies. These articles do not include the disturbing statistics reported by the military which show a 25% increase in sexual assaults within the active military from 2003 to 2004, and a further 40% increase in 2005, reaching above 2700 reported sexual assaults. Of course, the immediate concern is the sexual assaults on teen-aged girls by military recruiters. The sexual assaults are not only against females, by the way.

I had become alarmed that I had not been given an opportunity to “opt out” of the directory information for military recruiters until today. After two weeks of school, one of my daughters showed me the Parent/Student Handbook she had just received on Friday. It directed me to find the form on the dpsnc.net web site. I have filled out these forms and will send them with my daughters on Monday morning.

Yet it does not seem that this information is widely known. I urge you to make this a matter of utmost concern for high school principals and leaders at any other schools where recruiters may be doing their work.

I will be sharing this letter and these articles with the school board members whose districts include voting precinct 1, and with my pastor at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, Dr. William C. Turner, Jr.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Mike Broadway

The information about sexual assaults by military recruiters is an AP article by Martha Mendoza that first appeared in newspapers on August 19, 2006. It can be found on many websites, and I'm putting in a couple of links for your convenience. If you can't get to these, you can find it easily with a web search.

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/20/ap2960740.html

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/NEWS/608210337

The other article is from the Durham Herald-Sun. You probably can't access it in the archives, so I am putting the text here for you to read. Remember, this is a copyrighted article.

Ex-cadet: Sexual assault response falls short


Published in: The Herald-Sun
Page: A4

Date: Wednesday, June 28, 2006

BY KATY STAFFORD Herald-Sun Washington bureau news@heraldsun.com; 419-6630
WASHINGTON -- Beth Davis of Durham, a former Air Force cadet allegedly raped by a classmate, criticized a Department of Defense report on sexual assault at a congressional hearing Tuesday, saying its solutions to sexual assault at military academies were inadequate.

Davis told a House government reform committee hearing that the report, issued last year, also did not completely convey the prevalence of sexual assault at the academies.

"The recommendations are devoid of any leadership accountability," Davis said. "Cadets believe that if their leadership isn't held to the standard of academy life, they shouldn't be either."

In emotional testimony, Davis recounted the story of her alleged rape and gave eight recommendations to help prevent and respond to sexual assault incidents. Among them: allowing a victim to consult civilian legal counsel and commissioning an independent, nonmilitary congressional investigation into the problems of sexual assault at the military academies and the military at large.

The House committee was reviewing the 2005 Department of Defense task force report, which made several recommendations including changing the service academy culture toward women, protecting communications made by sexual assault victims and incorporating sexual harassment classes into the curriculum.

There were 2,374 reported cases of sexual assault last year, a 40 percent increase from 2004, according to the Department of Defense. The task force found that "sexual assault has been inadequately addressed at the academies."

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who said Congress needs to hear more stories like that of Davis', organized the hearing to analyze the progress made by the military academies in preventing and responding to sexual assault incidents. Shays said he wants to revise the hearing schedule to include more testimony from alleged victims.

Davis alleged that a cadet in her squadron raped her repeatedly during her freshman year. "In a situation where I was blackmailed, degraded and threatened daily, I found myself utterly distraught."

Davis said older female students warned her not to report incidents of sexual assault.

"Upper-class women cadets informed us that it was very likely we would be raped or sexually assaulted during our time at the academy, and they instructed us that, if we were attacked, to not report it to authorities because it would effectively destroy our career," she said.

Davis eventually went to the Office of Special Investigations. She said her commander closed the case after six months. She was later dismissed from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"As my world and everything I believed in crumbled before me, I realized I was being castigated and thrown out of the academy for reporting the heinous crimes
that had been committed against me," she said.

The Air Force Academy did not immediately return phone calls to discuss Davis' allegations.

But representatives from the Air Force Academy, Naval Academy, Military Academy and the Coast Guard told committee members about changes made at their institutions.

"We have made significant progress, but we know and understand the challenge remains to keep the focus on this national problem of sexual assault and to continue our journey for long-term cultural change," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Susan Desjardins. "We have refocused our efforts on building leaders of character that reach and exceed these higher standards."

COPYRIGHT 2006 by The Durham Herald Company. All rights reserved.

I have been reading the autobiography of Pauli Murray. The fact that she grew up as part of the Fitzgerald family in the Brookstown neighborhood of Durham, not far from where I live, has increased my engagement with her story, especially when she remarks about locations and people in our fair city.

For those of you like me, who did not know her story, Pauli Murray was a writer, a civil rights activist, a lawyer and legal theorist, a poet, a feminist, and in her later years an Episcopal priest. She was instrumental in forging strategies for more than one of the major breakthroughs against segregation and Jim Crow laws. She had famous cases of missing out on opportunities because of her race and gender. Indefatigable, she pressed on to achieve many "firsts" for her race and gender as well. She was one of the most important influences in seeing that Title VII of the Civil Rights laws included prohibitions against gender discrimination in employment practices.

I have been particularly interested in some of her insights about the psychological and ultimately social results of the Jim Crow system. She writes about one incident in her mid-twenties when she was denied entrance to UNC-Chapel Hill graduate school because of the NC Jim Crow laws:

At the time, however, what I felt was the galling disappointment of personal defeat. . . . Much of my life in the South had been overshadowed by a lurking fear. Terrified of the consequences of overt protest against racial segregation, I had sullenly endured its indignities when I could not avoid them. Yet every submission was accompanied by a nagging shame which no amount of personal achievement in other areas could overcome.

She boldly challenged President Roosevelt and many others about the coming reckoning for fighting Fascism and racism in Germany and Italy while tolerating it and practicing it in the U. S. As part of a direct action campaign against Jim Crow in Washington, D. C., she notes posters about the war effort against Naziism which stated, "We Die Together. Why Can't We Eat Together?" and "Are You for HITLER"S Way (Race Supremacy) or the AMERICAN Way (Equality)? Make Up Your Mind!"

She refers to a deep "disgust" and despair that every African American feels at least one out of every few days when dealing with the intransigence of racism in the U. S. Thus it was no surprise to her and other African Americans when riots broke out across the country in 1943.

Murray also comments on the psychological effects of direct action. She writes that she and a large group of Howard University students began a direct action campaign against segregated restaurants in Washington, D. C., in 1944, pioneering a methodology that would pick up again in decades to come. "It is difficult to describe the exhileration of that brief moment of victory," when the restaurant management at one cafeteria began to serve the students a meal. She adds, "The most abiding gain, however, was in our own self-respect." The deep personal effect of direct action in the cause of justice is a primary theme of her autobiography.

I am wary of referring to "psychological" effects because of the danger that readers will think of this as some kind of mind game, mind over matter, or split between the body and mind. On the contrary, what I am trying to make note of is the way that mind and body together are transformed through action for justice. It is not one without the other.

It seems that Pauli Murray's point is that she was driven by her convictions to fight racism in essays, poetry, legal argument, ministry, and direct action. What amazed her was the interrelation between her action and her mental and emotional state. The wholeness of the person is clearly demonstrated through such accounts of personal and communal change.

I'm not sure how plumbing fits into the divine economy.

When I was growing up, I learned a few handy things about yard work, housecleaning (no one would believe this, but I was taught), car engines, and such. But I did not learn much about home repair and maintenance. After having completed a masters degree, I was overjoyed not to be in school. In my first house, a rental, with my own washer and dryer, I started facing what anyone will eventually face--the need for home repair.

I did not want to spend my meager income to wait around for a repair truck to come to the house, only to find out that it would be a few more days of waiting while a part was located. So I decided to put my many years of education to work at the public library. I read about how washing machines work, and I found the problem and solution in a repair manual. I was surprised how simple it was for me to accomplish the repair. I made sure that Everly joined me for an appropriate amount of admiration time, watching the repaired machine do its job.

That was the beginning of my budding confidence for doing home repairs and maintenance. Especially during the leaner years of tight family budgets, I undertook the repair or installation of washers, dryers, electrical outlets and switches, refrigerators, stoves and ovens, doors, broken windows, bunk beds, bookshelves, lofts for beds, and more. I joked often about my home repair average, sort of like a batting average in baseball. If I attempted five repairs, and four were successful, I was "batting" .800 in home repair.

But plumbing always seems to bring my home repair average down. There is very little that is direct or simple with plumbing. Something always comes up, and it takes lots of experiential knowledge to understand how to deal with the variety of possibilities. I don't have that kind of knowledge, so when something unexpected comes up, I have to scratch my head and wonder how to deal with it.

That was the story of Thursday. On Wednesday night we had a toilet breakdown. First the valve in the tank was stuck closed. Flushing required filling a bowl with water and dumping it in the toilet. After I spent some time messing with the valve gadget, I created the opposite problem. The float would no longer shut off the valve, leaving the water in the tank running constantly. I took apart and messed with the contraption, only to find that nothing I could do seemed to make a difference. So I cut off the water supply and we made due.

Thursday morning I went to the big box hardware and bought a replacement valve and float contraption. With very little difficulty, I removed the old one and put in the new one. It worked perfectly. My confidence was up. I started thinking about the shower head. I remembered a couple of kitchen sink items I saw while hunting down my toilet contraption.

Heady with my plumbing success, I returned to the store to buy a new aerator tip for the kitchen faucet and a new nozzle for the shower. Both of these were fairly simple to install, and they produced appropriate "oohs" and "aahs" from the wife and daughters who share my household. Last, I started removing the old and non-functioning kitchen sink sprayer and replacing it with a soap dispensing pump and bottle. I thought that would be the easiest task of all.

Seven and one-half hours later, after a few strategic applications of a power saw with a metal-cutting blade, a few dozen cuts and scrapes on my hands, cutting two washers by hand because I did not have the size I needed, at least forty trips in and out from under the sink on my aching back, and one new thirty-dollar tool, I was able to clean up my mess and admire four jobs well done. But the time required diminished the celebration.

Actually there were five jobs. While working on the sprayer/soap dispenser job, I knocked loose the sink drain and trap, which I then had to put back together, with one of the handcut washers which took about thirty minutes to get right. Someone in my household found that to be very humorous. The kids, on the other hand, were appropriately sympathetic. Seeing and smelling me, my family was hoping to celebrate after I tried out the new shower head.

Plumbing, as a human creation, stands out to me as a clear example of the admixture of good and evil in human accomplishments. I should not pick on plumbing, I guess. But if God had included modern plumbing in the original creation, we might have ended up with an eight or nine day week.

Maybe plumbing is a penance for people like me. It seems so simple, but getting new connections to seal and old connections to unseal is often bewildering. Resorting to brute strength may not move anything, but other times using force leads to disaster when parts break and water flows. The lore of plumbing is far more complex than I have been able to learn through my intermittent dabbling.

I can act so confident in my knowledge at times that I'm sure there are people who take some satisfaction in knowing that I can't seem to get plumbing figured out. So until I decide to take on the seat washers in the bathtub faucet, I'm glad to be leaving that plumbing behind.