Pilgrimage, leap of faith or walk in the wilderness? Lutherans and gay ministers

elca James Nipper has his work cut out for him.

As senior pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Johnson City, Tenn., he must lead the congregation in a kind of figurative pilgrimage regarding sex and sexuality.

The church is traveling on a long and winding road with its denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCA decided during last month’s Church Wide Assembly to permit people in same-sex relationships to enter its ordained ministry.

“Up until this time, it was accepted that these pastors could serve in the ELCA as long as these remained celibate,” Nipper explained in an e-mail this week. “This document now allows for pastors who are in committed relationships with people of the same gender to be reinstated to the clergy roster and/or allowed to receive a call to serve in the ELCA.”

“Pastor Jim” regards this new policy as “more of a process, a procedure, by which a congregation can choose to call a gay pastor.” No such process existed before.

About 60 members of the Our Saviour congregation attended an open forum on Sunday afternoon. The congregation has about 500 confirmed members and an average worship attendance of about 215.

“We had a lively discussion,” Nipper said. “We did not come to a consensus but we did have a like mind that we should stay together as a congregation.”

He could have said the same thing about the national body: there’s little consensus about blessing same-sex relationships or ordaining gays and lesbians for ministry, but hope to stay together. Last month’s convention, made up of clergy and laypeople who represent churches and regional synods, approved the main document by a vote of 676-338, exactly the minimum two-thirds majority required for passage.

To its credit, the ELCA has not taken the easy path. If the denomination’s utmost concern was keeping membership up or maintaining some kind of superficial peace, it could have settled matters years ago. (The ELCA is by far the largest of several Lutheran bodies in the U.S., but like other mainline Protestant denominations, it has been shrinking for decades. The denomination reported 4.6 million baptized members in 2008, down from 5.25 million in 1988.)

As it is, the social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” resulted from eight years of discussions, meetings, debates and votes. The ELCA has produced social statements on several issues, and they are considered teaching documents as well as policy statements.

This one is a broad, thoughtful statement of church teaching about sexuality and related issues, from abuse to economics to pornography, as well as marriage and, of course, same-sex relationships. As the title suggests, it emphasizes sexuality in its God-given nature as both a gift and matter of trust.

What grabbed headlines, of course, were the resolutions permitting people “in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships” to enter any of the church’s four formal levels of church ministry.

The resolutions are careful to provide for “structured flexibility,” allowing individuals and congregations to live by their “bound conscience.” In short, while the ELCA won’t forbid people in same-sex relationships to enter ministry, it won’t force the issue either.

But as serious as issues about homosexuality are, even more is at stake. By all accounts, these decisions raise questions about core beliefs, from biblical interpretation to the meaning of marriage to the validity of two millennia of Christian teaching.

Critics note all this, and more.

“The ELCA has formally left the Great Tradition (of confessing Christian churches) for liberal Protestantism,” Robert Benne wrote in a commentary on the Christianity Today Web site. Benne is the director of the Roanoke (Va.) College Center for Religion and Society and was a voting member at last month’s assembly. “A tectonic shift has taken place, and it wasn’t primarily about sex.”

Benne predicts “a profusion of different responses by congregations and individuals.” Besides those who approve the new policy, many will leave the denomination, he wrote. Some will wait to see how an organized renewal movement responds. Others will pull away from their involvement in the ELCA to live at the local level. Still others “will try to live on as if nothing has happened.”

The way ahead for Our Saviour Lutheran Church, according to Pastor Nipper, will include Bible-oriented studies, small group discussions and an effort to “help our people look positively to the future.”

Yes, he has his work cut out.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 5 Sept 2009.

Kennedy: Perhaps another ‘man after God’s own heart’

Thinking about Sen. Edward Kennedy this week, I found my mind oddly drifting toward King David, that renowned ruler of old Israel.

Sunday school lessons highlight David’s heroics – his life as a simple shepherd, his showdown with Goliath, his psalms. But his political career and family intrigues actually resemble scenes from “The Godfather.”

As a warrior, David earned such a blood-soaked reputation that God refused to let him build a temple. His worst moment combined dereliction of duty, adultery, deception and murder, starting a chain of events that spiraled down to open rebellion by his oldest and favorite son and generations of trouble.

Even near the end of his long life, when he was feeble and perhaps senile, David gave more than the throne to his son Solomon. He also passed along a hit list. David spectacularly broke almost all of the Ten Commandments.

And yet God kept David in his pocket. He was, according to the Bible, “a man after God’s own heart.”

Perhaps that was because David ultimately threw himself before God, whether it was challenging giants or dancing nearly naked in the streets during a worship procession.

He composed psalms that questioned and railed at God in fear and frustration, cried to him for vengeance against enemies and gloated over their downfall. But knowing his sins, he invariably came pleading for mercy and forgiveness. He always praised God in the end, seeking him wherever he might find him – under the stars, below the mountains, in the temple, in his bedroom, through the valley of the shadow of death. Despite everything, this womanizing, scandalized, troubled chieftain could still write, “My help comes from the Lord.”

Maybe it was that relentless if imperfect pursuit that warmed God’s heart.

Culture and circumstance – not to mention 3,000 years – put a lot of distance between King David and Sen. Kennedy. Even so, elements in Kennedy’s life and career sound familiar.

Bobby, Jack and Teddy: The Kennedy brothers in 1957.

The senator for years lived a kind of high-wire act, often played out in public, that tried to balance great personal gifts, high ambitions, deep flaws, terrible tragedies and a durable faith.

As one of the most effective legislators in American history, he likely made a more profound impact on the nation than his celebrated brothers. Along the way, he showed graciousness in an ungracious town, whether dealing with political allies or foes, junior staffers or people on the street.

The best-known and perhaps most powerful Roman Catholic politician in the country, Kennedy cited his faith as one of his central motivations in his commitment to helping ordinary people through education, higher wages and, above all, health care. In what was for him typical bipartisan fashion, he worked with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, an effort to relieve governmental burdens on the exercise of religion.

But Kennedy didn’t walk lockstep with his church, and he put himself at odds with Roman Catholic teaching most severely with his support of abortion rights, an inconsistency that not even the famous Kennedy mystique could overcome. And despite the personal peace that his second marriage brought him, divorce and remarriage offended many fellow believers.

Kennedy was a flawed person, and he knew it. In a 1991 speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Kennedy openly addressed “the faults in the conduct” of his private life.

“I realize that I alone am responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them,” he said.

Despite this – or possibly because of this – by all accounts he found strength and comfort in his faith, especially during his last years. The Cape Cod parish priest regularly visited the Kennedy home and held a private family Mass there every Sunday. Kennedy led his family in prayer after the death of his sister Eunice three weeks ago, and he spent his own last hours in prayer.

“He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable,” wrote John Broder in The New York Times obituary this week. “He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly.”

Something about Edward Kennedy makes me hope that, like King David, he was finally a man after God’s own heart.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 29 Aug 2009.

American Ramadan

happy ramadan The discipline of Ramadan is daunting: While the sun is up each day during Islam’s holiest month, Muslims will fast from food and water and sex and be extra careful about what they say and hear. It’s a time to purify the body, an avenue for purifying the soul.

It sounds stringent enough in a place with a temperate climate, like East Tennessee. But consider that most Muslims live in southern Asia, Indonesia and Africa, and that the lunar calendar nudges Ramadan into high summer every few years. Long days of triple-digit temperatures and not even a sip of water – it sounds like a recipe for misery.

On the contrary, Muslims say, Ramadan is the most wonderful time of the year.

I sat down with six members of the Muslim community at their masjid, or mosque, on Antioch Road this week, to talk about the holiday, which celebrates the revealing of the Koran, which Muslims regard as God’s word, to the prophet Muhammad.

Ramadan, the ninth month in the Arabic calendar, begins this weekend, the moment when the slightest sliver of the new crescent moon becomes visible. It will conclude at the end of the four-week lunar cycle, marked by Eid-al-Fitr, the feast of the breaking of the fast.

The group was full of anticipation. Although most of them have lived in the U.S. for decades and are American citizens, they recalled memories from their homelands.

“You feel different, and there is a liveliness during Ramadan,” said Ahmed Atyia, a pharmacist originally from Egypt. “Fasting is good for your body, to cleanse it and give it a rest. You feel sad after the month ends.”

It is a month not only to change habits, said Taneem Aziz, an engineer and the Muslim Community’s president, but also a month of extra blessing. The effect of good deeds is literally multiplied 10 times, the Koran says.

“All the senses are focused on worship,” said Aziz, who was born in Bangladesh. “With the discipline, it is God making it easy for us to feel good and celebrate.”

People are friendlier and try to be more patient during the month. Crime goes down. Homes open up to family, friends and strangers like no other time of the year.

“The community is one of the reasons we are excited,” said Aziz’s daughter, Imani, a 19-year-old student at East Tennessee State University and the only American-born Muslim in this conversation. “Every night, we worship together.”

Life slows down during the day in Muslim countries. Families rise long before dawn to eat together. People who go to work feel unhurried, but many businesses just shut down. The normal daily prayers continue, perhaps with greater attention and attendance at the mosques.

But when prayers are finished at sundown, communities spring to life in a different way. The Koran commands Muslims to break the fast as soon as they can each night, and they do it with gusto.

Food comes out from almost every house, spread on tables lining the streets or served under colorful, open-air tents. Festive tin lanterns with colored glass glow in windows. As people pass by, whether or not they are strangers or Muslims, they are likely to be invited to stop for food – and conversations and games and songs and prayers and extended readings from the Koran. The nightly celebrations can last almost until the early morning meal begins the daily round again.

“It’s like having Christmas for a month,” Natalia Suit, a Christian friend who lived in Cairo, told me later. “Ramadan really is the best time of the year there.”

The holiday, of course, takes on a different cast in the U.S., where Muslims are a minority in the same way Christians are a minority in Pakistan or Egypt. No one expressed any resentment or regret. They accept the differences.

“We don’t feel conflicted, living in America,” said Yusuf Gangat, a pharmacist originally from Pakistan. “The purpose is to worship God in everything. It’s a very easy life, once you accept it.”

Besides, they agreed, the times are changing, and non-Muslim Americans are growing more aware of Ramadan. They notice in ways both small and significant, from seeing their holidays printed on calendars to having employers provide time off.

Imani Aziz was smiling broadly during the entire conversation. She simply enjoyed thinking about the month to come, she explained.

“I’m just excited it’s almost here,” she said.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 22 Aug 2009.

Critical condition: The health-care debate isn’t too healthy right now

Anyone paying attention to the news this week knows that Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania got shouted down in a town-hall meeting about health care, as did some citizens who just wanted to ask a few questions.

When President Barack Obama spoke in New Hampshire, protesters outside compared him to Adolf Hitler, repeating the stupidity of left-wingers who compared George W. Bush to Hitler a few years ago. (Note to activists: The fastest way to get reasonable people to stop listening to you is to compare someone to Hitler.)

All this followed a few weeks when national leaders, including former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, repeated scary lies about what was being proposed in the health-care plans.

Several weeks earlier, Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, was a little too frank for his own good when he approached health care more as a political weapon than a problem for his constituents. “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo,” he said. “It will break him.”

Watching these videos and listening to these reports, I thought, “This isn’t good for the nation’s soul.”

I usually don’t think of the nation literally having a “soul.” I take it as a metaphor, a poetic way of talking about our society’s values. But however we think about it, something corrosive and discouraging and damaging is going on.

It’s not the issue itself. Health care and insurance is perhaps the most important domestic question of our generation and we need to have a good, open debate about it.

But that’s the problem: Right now, the debate, or at least the part that is getting the most attention, is neither good nor open. Not when political leaders are blatantly more interested in making partisan gains than in addressing national problems. Not when a fellow citizen can’t ask an honest question in a public meeting without getting screamed at. Not when talk-show hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh joke about killing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Not when people carry concealed weapons to town-hall meetings, as happened in Arizona last week.

Angry reactions are predictable. Log in to a left-wing blog or the comments section of any big news organization, and you’ll find plenty of broad-brushed insults labeling conservatives as kooks, idiots and threats to the nation.

Even some conservatives are getting concerned.

“The guns are coming out. The risks are real,” wrote David Frum this week in his New Majority blog. “It’s not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric. If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.

“But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too over-reaching and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.”

Some people in the self-styled “mob” who disrupt town-hall meetings claim the American Revolution as their inspiration. They should remember that the revolution was framed by appeals to reason and defended with lengthy argument, and that a declaration of independence – which didn’t pass with a unanimous vote – emerged from the Continental Congress, where formal rules of order allowed representatives to debate passionately, speak honestly and produce something of value.

The health-care issue calls for our best efforts, our best thinking and our best examples of citizenship. Lives are literally at stake.

Today we’re not at our best. The strident and sometimes threatening town-hall rants, the lies and the distortions – all tactics closer to “fascism” than anything Obama has ever suggested – are distracting us from actual issues and getting in the way of potential solutions.

Since I’m not even sure we can talk about the nation having a soul, it might be a stretch to think that some simple scriptural words might help carry on an emotional debate: Do to others what you would have them do to you.

Maybe the Golden Rule even sounds naïve. But it’s a start.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 15 August 2009.

We do believe in spooks. We do. We do. We do.

Ghost poster

Spooky.

That’s the word in pop culture. It’s hard to keep up with the revolving doors of TV programming, but the primetime schedule is well populated with psychics (“Medium”), ghosts (“Ghost Whisperer”), vampires (“True Blood”), demons (“Supernatural”) and other paranormal wonders (“Heroes,” “Lost,” etc.). That’s not even counting the movies, the books and the blogs.

Some observers wonder if this fascination with things that go bump in the night indicates a rising interest in so-called alternative realities.

A rising interest? It’s already high. Gallup polls consistently find that about 75 percent of Americans hold some form of belief in the paranormal, including extrasensory perception, ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation or channeling.

This is old news in East Tennessee, which has long offered fertile ground for supernatural stories – and little wonder, with its hills and hollers, its spiritual fervor and its long heritage of early Native American and Scots-Irish settlers (who brought tales from the old countries).

It’s all familiar territory for Nancy Hamblen Acuff, a well-known researcher into alternative realities for three decades, about as long as she taught developmental psychology at ETSU before retiring in 1993. As the official historian for her native Sullivan County, she dug into local folklore – and that led her to ghost hunting.

“I started to collect these stories and began to realize there’s more to this than folklore,” she explained in a phone interview. “With my background in psychology, I had to say this is not just someone’s fantasy or mental illness. This is something else.”

She started to research what that something else might be, including investigating reports of unexplainable events.

“When someone calls me about a problem, I follow it almost as a detective would,” Acuff said. “What kind of occurrence is this? How often does it occur? What was the person’s religious and ethnic background? There are hundreds of questions.”

She recalled a sighting in Johnson City, where a woman who bought an old home kept seeing a man in a World War I army uniform carrying an umbrella. She also heard children’s voices and a barking dog.

Acuff discovered that a minister lived there around 1920, and he was so proud of his wartime service as a chaplain that he often wore his uniform around the property. His family owned a dog.

“I think he was simply captured in time, a true ghost,” Acuff said. “Sounds and images are frozen in time … like a shadow or part of a photograph left in a place. It may diffuse over time. But you’re hearing that puppy from 1920.”

Acuff, who earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University, also believes in what she calls spirits, “the essence of the person, an entity that can move even in places where they didn’t live in their lifetime.”

The 1990 hit movie Ghost was “one of the more sensitively and accurately done” portrayals of that phenomenon, she said. She thinks the movie may have been a turning point in American acceptance of supernatural phenomena.

Acuff, who was reared as a Christian and now considers herself a “real unitarian, who believes Jesus is the messiah,” believes that acceptance is a good thing.

“We do not handle death well in this society,” she said. “We are just now moving into a state when we’re beginning to recognize our mortality.”

Acuff suspects more traditional societies, such as those of Native Americans, held a better grasp on death than more complex ones.

“They accepted death as an integral part of the life cycle,” she said. “More complex societies run into so much denial.”

In other words, people in a more modern society find it easier to believe we’re able to keep death at bay with technology, whether it’s chemotherapy or cryogenics or cloning.

But Acuff thinks American views about life, death and afterlife – including how they think about ghosts and spirits – are growing up.

“I think we’re coming into a time of great spiritual maturity,” she said.

That maturity, according to Acuff, understands that life exists in different dimensions, even though we live in only one of them. The mysterious events that stretch the limits of belief – those are strange and rare openings into alternative dimensions.

“And that’s all right,” she said. “Maybe we’re not supposed to know about the other dimensions. Maybe it’s only by accident that we do know.”

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 8 Aug. 2009. (Parts of this column were first published on 29 Oct. 2005.)

So a church cancels its worship services to go serve, and then calls it worship. Confused yet?

work worship A lot of organizations, from scouting troops to sororities, help their communities with service projects.

Congregations do so as well, but there’s a difference. Virtually every act carries some kind of theological meaning. It goes with the territory. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and religious bodies gotta make religious statements.

So last Sunday, when Grace Fellowship Church canceled its worship services so members could spend the morning painting, mowing, cooking, repairing and otherwise serving at 32 local nonprofit organizations and homes, it wasn’t just a work day. It was also a theological declaration.

“Most people think that Sunday mornings are about ‘going to a service,’” Lead Pastor Tom Oyler wrote to the congregation earlier this year. “But on this day, we remind ourselves that we exist to serve others as well.… For many people, seeing a sermon in action is more effective than hearing one.”

The community service, he wrote, would be “a sort of good demonstration of how the body of Christ is designed to work.” The results would extend beyond Sunday: “Bridges will be built. Seeds will be planted.…. Grace will happen. God will be pleased. That’s about as good as it gets!”

By all accounts, the day was a success and, as Sue Guinn Legg reported in the Johnson City Press on Monday, a real benefit to the organizations. When the event’s main organizer, Connections Coordinator Malia Grant, reviewed the sign-up sheets this week, she found 1,065 people had participated. The church typically draws about 1,200 people during the summer. The day went so well that church leaders are already thinking of turning it into an annual event.

“Though it was different from a typical Sunday, we got great response,” Grant said. “We wanted to make sure as many people could participate as possible, of every age. It was just as important as any worship service they would attend.”

Even preschool children got involved at “Echo Village,” a display area at the church building where they could help with some task, such as filling small bags with laundry detergent for families at Interfaith Hospitality Network, a ministry for homeless people.

The idea for Echo Sunday came up early this year, when church leaders realized the construction on their new building might leave the congregation without a meeting place for one Sunday. Someone suggested going into the community to serve that Sunday, and the idea stuck, even when it later became clear the construction wouldn’t interfere with the schedule.

So if every action of a church makes some kind of theological statement, what did “Echo Sunday” say?

Christian teaching has always emphasized the need for believers to gather to praise and pray to God, to observe communion and other sacraments, and to hear from Scripture in some fashion. In short, “ministry of word and sacrament” has always been central to Christian worship.

That didn’t exactly happen at Grace Fellowship last Sunday.

“I’d have a problem if we did this consistently,” Oyler said in a phone interview this week. “Gathering for worship is important, a priority of the church. But by doing this on Sunday, people could focus on service. Reaching into the community is not a side thing. We take this seriously.”

Their service was another form of worship, according to Oyler, saying it squared with Jesus’ words to strict Jewish teachers who criticized him for healing people on the Sabbath.

“In our theology, we would feel free to do this again,” Oyler said.

Besides, he noted, the church did gather on Sunday when members returned to the church building to share pizza, pray and talk about their experiences.

“Gathering was an important part of the day,” Oyler said. “For example, a group of 15 teenagers went to the Children’s Hospital. They took donuts to the nurses and talked with the children. (The teens) were blown away by the experience. The nurses called on Monday, to say how much the visit meant to them.”

Oyler and Grant were quick to point out other churches serve the community too. Grace isn’t unique, they said. Just this day was different.

“We’re trying to imbed this idea of servanthood and being engaged in the community,” Oyler said. “A lot of people expect Christians to gather away from them, but they’re encouraged by Christians going to them. And our people felt the impact of going into the community. Our church will remember this for a long time.”

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 1 August 2009.

Science, religion and the NIH

Francis Collins: MD, PhD, Christian, guitar player, NIH director designate

It should come as no surprise that applause mostly greeted President Obama’s nomination of Dr. Francis Collins as the new director of the National Institutes of Health last week.

Collins, almost certain to be confirmed in the post, cemented his reputation as a first-rate scientist when he led the NIH-based effort to map the human genetic code, an achievement that’s been compared to the Apollo space program. Collins’ lab also found the genetic keys for several diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, providing essential breakthroughs to develop cures.

He also happens to be a Christian – famously so as the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, a 2006 bestseller in which he described his conversion from atheism as a graduate student and his belief in a “wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith.”

Language book cover “I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views,” he summarized for a commentary on CNN.com. “As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God’s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God’s plan.”

Some scientists have a problem with that kind of thinking. “You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs,” wrote Peter Atkins, a high-profile chemist at Oxford University. “But I don’t think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they (religion and science) are such alien categories of knowledge.”

Dr. Gene Rudd, executive vice president of the Bristol-based Christian Medical and Dental Associations, thinks such views are “biased” and “shameful.”

“A generation or so ago, a scientist’s faith would have been an asset,” he said. “Historically, science has prospered in cultures that understood there was a god who created an order of things, and people tried to understand that order. You will find some anti-science thinking among a minority of people in the Christian faith, but science historically flourished among Christianity and Islam.”

On the other hand, not all Christians are thrilled with Collins. His views on hot-button science issues – evolution, abortion, stem-cell research – run counter to typical conservative Christian positions. For example, he accepts Darwinian evolution as fact, and while he opposes abortion in most cases, he doesn’t explicitly rule it out.

Also, while he opposes producing embryos for research, he believes it is morally defensible to use embryos that had been created for fertilization but would otherwise remain unused.

“In the process of in vitro fertilization, you almost invariably end up with more embryos than you can reimplant safely,” he explained in a 2006 interview with Salon. “Is it more ethical to leave them in those freezers forever or throw them away? Or is it more ethical to come up with some sort of use for those embryos that could help people?”

Rudd realizes that Collins’ positions will “irritate” many Christians, and his organization “will have discussions” with Collins about embryonic stem-cell research. Still, he sounded optimistic about Collins.

“He is routinely accepted as an exceptional scientist, and he’s proven to be an exceptional administrator, which can be a rare combination,” Rudd said.

Dr. William Duncan, vice provost of research at East Tennessee State University, agrees with that assessment. Collins, he said, is a “world-class scientist,” and his faith is a non-issue for Duncan.

“Religious beliefs are very private, personal decisions for all individuals,” said Duncan, an immunologist who worked at the NIH from 1987 to 2004. “I’ve known many scientists who were religious, and religion never prevented any of them from pursuing their research. Each scientist needs to balance their religious beliefs and moral values with their career objectives and daily choices.”

The stakes are high: The NIH, the world’s most significant source of research money, will distribute about $37 billion in research grants over the next 14 months. The priority is to gain good data, according to Duncan, and he thinks the institutes’ review and decision-making process is “very transparent.”

“The NIH and the funding agencies in this country are primarily based on not on what your belief is but what is your proposal, the data, your plans,” Duncan said. “Scientists pursue knowledge, and the best science is done in an unbiased fashion. It’s really evidence-based data that drives the good science.”

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 25 July 2009.

Christian retailing: Buyer beware

Xn retail Thousands of Christians gathered out West this week, making decisions that could affect millions of believers, with the potential both to strengthen their faith and to ruin it.

I’m not talking about the triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which met in Anaheim, Calif.

Instead I’m referring to the International Christian Retail Show, which drew thousands of religious retailers to Denver for a kind of commercial pilgrimage. The convention is “the largest annual gathering in the world of anyone and everyone involved in the creation and distribution of Christian products,” according to CBA, the world’s foremost trade association for Christian stores and the event organizer.

Every year retailers roam among displays of more than 235 publishers, music producers, church-supply distributors, jewelry designers, clothing manufacturers and game makers, looking for new merchandise to feed their customers’ faith. Last year’s convention in Orlando, Fla., attracted almost 7,500 people, representing more than 1,700 stores, from small, independent shops to large chains owned by denominations or multinational corporations.

shoes_focusedslipon_200 — These shoes are made for walkin' with Jesus: A "witness wear" sample

Christian retail is big business. Sales of Christian products by CBA suppliers totaled $4.63 billion in 2006, and one-third of all Americans made at least one purchase in a Christian bookstore during 2005, according to a Baylor University survey.

But I have never met anyone who works in a Christian store mainly for the money. People who work at local stores say they want to help customers find a book, a CD or something that might provide fresh insight or offer personal help. They use words like “ministry” and talk about “making a difference.” Years ago an independent store owner told me his business was “just another wrench in God’s toolbox.”

Like any human endeavor that holds heavenly ambitions, however, Christian retailing comes with its own special, sometimes subtle dangers, besides the temptations that usually follow the money. Selling a Bible is not like selling a novel, much less a hot dog. Advertising slogans become theological statements, for better or worse.

Jim Street, pastor of North River Church, a small congregation in the Atlanta suburbs, and a former psychology professor at Milligan College, is sensitive to the issue of marketing among Christians. A dozen years ago, he and Milligan theology professor Phil Kenneson co-wrote a book with the self-explanatory title of Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing. Their target was not marketing per se but the problems that come when the church, the mystical body of Christ, is treated like a commodity.

This isn’t an abstract concern to Street. More than 100 other congregations are located within five miles of his church building, he told me in a phone conversation this week, and he’s watched several families depart for churches that offer more goods and services.

“The issue … is not our commitment to one another and to Christ, but ‘what are my needs and desires and which of these buildings can I go to have them met?’” he explained. “I understand the pressures. As the economy gets worse, the temptation to marketing will increase.”

He thinks selling religious merchandise to Christians carries similar risks.

“The fundamental problem with marketing the church and the business surrounding the church is the elevation of the consumer,” he said. “Selling Christian products puts the consumer at the center of attention. We try to understand him and then shape products to meet his needs. There has to be some amount of consumption to be production, but we’ve elevated the consumer to be a kind of idol in and of himself. The consumer is very much in the driver’s seat.”

That may not be a problem when selling cars, but it can be if someone is trying to walk with God. It’s always been easy enough to let social trends, politics, economics, or just the passing “vanity fair” distort Christian messages (and not just Christian ones). Add the power of modern retail marketing and we can end up with merchandise that creates a house of mirrors more than a window into heaven.

“The story of God is about God, and the Bible is about the works of God,” Street said. “We’re participants in the story of God. But marketing looks at consumers and says we have to shape this to fit what we think they need. Marketing wants to make the consumer into a god. That turns the whole biblical narrative on its head.”

Let the buyer beware. Amen.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 18 July 2009.

George and Martha and Adam and Eve … and other problems with a patriotic Bible

Thanks to a marketing video that compares George and Martha Washington to Adam and Eve, I’m trying not to think about the nation’s first First Lady walking around a garden without her petticoats.

But what really sets my teeth on edge is how the advertisement equates Jesus and his disciples with the Continental Congress as “founding fathers,” with its closing line: “Sometimes history does repeat itself.”

The ad is for the American Patriot’s Bible, released last month by Thomas Nelson, with Atlanta megachurch pastor Richard G. Lee serving as general editor. Nelson won’t disclose sales figures, but it is already preparing for a second printing of the hefty, colorful book.

AmericanPatriots_Bible8
“You will find a great volume of both information and inspiration revealing the ‘strong cord’ of the Bible’s influence that runs through the colorful fabric of our nation’s past and present,” Lee wrote in the introduction. “Joining with the sacred text are stories of American heroes, quotations from many of America’s greatest thinkers, and beautiful illustrations that present the rich heritage and tremendous future of our nation. If you love America and the Scriptures, you will treasure this Bible.”

Maybe so, but I mostly just felt annoyed. It’s not the emphasis on the role of religion in the American story, particularly a certain strain of Christianity. That’s old news.

It’s true, after all, that the majority of revolutionary leaders were Christians of some kind and many were motivated by their religious convictions, often arguing from the Bible against tyranny. There’s no question that the nation’s founders, not to mention later leaders, were shaped by their beliefs, which of course influenced their ideas and actions.

Even unorthodox deists like John Adams, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson (who literally cut the miracles out of his Bible) used religious rhetoric and biblical imagery.

But then there’s the matter of what is often called civil religion, a kind of ecumenical devotion to the ideal of the United States. The nation itself becomes the object of veneration and Uncle Sam is dressed in priestly garments.

It’s a common impulse. People throughout history have considered their kingdoms on earth to be special outposts of heaven: Italy, Poland, Spain, England, France, Japan – the list goes on.

Many Americans can keep their belief in their country distinct from their religious faith. We can love the U.S., they say, and we can love God and remember the two are different.

But others forget the distinction, entwining American ideals so tightly with a Christian identity that they become confused, usually with bad results. That is the trap where the American Patriot’s Bible falls.

John Quincy Adams thought Christmas and American Independence were "indissolubly linked."

A full-page sidebar uses a story from Abraham’s life to illustrate … the right to bear arms? That seems like a stretch. John Quincy Adams is quoted saying that “in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior” – and that notion isn’t challenged?

Then there’s the irritating historical revisionism that comes from leaving out uncomfortable details. Adams, Jefferson and Paine are all favorably quoted, for instance, but the details of their beliefs – or lack of beliefs – are glossed over. It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking they were Christians.

Likewise, the book frequently presents wartime sacrifice as supreme examples of Christlikeness, but ignores the significant tradition of Christian pacifism.

Then there is the two-page essay that rightly discusses how Christians led in the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements, but does not explain how other Christians opposed those rights, quoting Scripture to justify sexism, segregation and slavery.

"Declaration of Independence," by John Trumbull, 1817

Such myopia isn’t only annoying. It’s unnecessary. Honest historians know that biblical ideas (along with Greek philosophy, rationalism and other worldviews circulating in the 18^th century) helped the founders craft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It’s no secret that men and women of faith are among this nation’s chief architects.

We can admire leaders like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln without confusing them with Adam, Moses or Jesus (much less imagining Martha Washington as a new Eve). I can believe the U.S. fills a distinct role in the world without casting it as God’s singular chosen nation.

And today I can certainly celebrate what the nation’s founders did without believing their sacrifices repeated the history of Christ’s sacrifice. Believing that wouldn’t make me a patriot. It might only make me a heretic.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 4 July 2009.

Leaping from tall poles in a single bound and other tales of Christian camp

superman-shield This week in a cove near Elizabethton, Tenn., some kid is going to jump off a 30-foot utility pole and live to tell about it.

No need to be alarmed. It’s a safety-harnessed gut check for youngsters (and the occasional adult). They put on a safety helmet, tie on a harness with an assistant holding the other end of the rope, and climb to the top of the pole. As they stand there, teetering, a trapeze bar hangs about six feet away.

The goal is simple: To launch themselves into the air and grab the bar. The hard part, the first time, comes just before jumping. Will the rope hold? Will the guy holding the rope do his job? Will I look stupid if I miss the bar? The answer to all is yes.

LeapOfFaithWeb — The leap of faith (but this one isn't at Doe River Gorge)

But why do it? The name of the activity offers a clue: the Leap of Faith. It’s one of the outdoorsy and out-of-the-ordinary activities featured at Doe River Gorge, a Christian ministry center.

“Our goal is to bring young people to maturity in their character, in their skills, in their understanding of God,” according to Director Terry Maughon. “We get kids who come for fun and adventure, but we want to expose them to Christ in a positive way, and we gear our programming to that.”

That kind of mission is shared by at least 10 Christian camping and conference centers within a 50-mile radius of Johnson City and hundreds more nationwide. The Christian Camp and Conference Association claims about 1,000 member facilities. (There are also about 300 Jewish camps, a dozen Muslim camps and a handful of other religious camps nationwide.)

Camps have changed from their heyday in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, when they were rustic and simple in every respect, from sleeping quarters (bunk beds in barracks-like dorms) to food (hot dogs and Tater Tots were typical) to programming (Bible classes, chapel, swimming and softball). These days, a camper is likely to find air-conditioned housing, salad bars, and options like high ropes challenge courses and wilderness expeditions.

“People want the experience of the woods, but require more stuff for that to happen,” said Jason Onks, executive director of Buffalo Mountain Camp and Retreat Center. It’s a challenge, he said, “to balance meeting those needs but not take away the experience of being outside. It’s partly the result of changes in expectations from campers, but mostly from parents.”

Faced with a different culture and shifting expectations, camps and conference centers need to be more creative than ever, said Mike Staires, director of communications and marketing services at the Christian Camp and Conference Association. While some facilities are thriving, average nationwide attendance is shrinking. CCCA members report about 6.5 million participants every year, down from 8 million earlier this decade.

Ramsey5 — Ramsey Falls, at Buffalo Mountain Camp. Photo by Mark Peacock.

The campers themselves are changing too. More kids than ever grow up around cities, live with electronics and participate in organized activities, and so fewer feel at ease living close to nature. (“Our staff jokes about kids having ‘nature deficit disorder,’” Onks said.) Camp leaders see more spiritual diversity too.

“Most kids who came 20 or 30 years ago didn’t question the Bible,” according to Brett Forney, promotions and development director at Appalachian Christian Camp in Unicoi. “But for the generation now, that’s not the thing. We’re not assuming they believe. A good number don’t go to church. Their parents just want them out of the house, and Christian camp is a safe, relatively economical option. So we’re getting back to basics, including more evangelistic aspects with some of them.”

Even so, she and other camp leaders say the constants of the camp setting make a unique impact on children and teens. It’s not about air conditioning or water slides.

“Kids may come the first time because of the toys,” Staires said, “but when they leave they say the most important part was talking with their counselors, meeting friends – those relational kinds of things.”

Camp provides a kind of “greenhouse environment,” he said. “Kids are in the Bible, having some quiet time, playing hard, spending the day together, not distracted by TV. But through the heat and exhaustion they are pushed together, faced with how to figure out how God fits in all this. They’re able to stop and think. It’s like someone pushes a pause button.”

Except when they jump off a very tall pole.

Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 27 June 2009.

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