A love and thirst for justice that will bring you to your death

“ . . . any Christianity that is not on the side of the dispossessed against the arrogance of the powerful and rich is utterly untraditional. Dawkins and Hitchens write about Christianity and never link the words God, justice and love. That is either a sign of their obtuseness or a sign of the massive self-betrayal of the Christian movement. It has got to the point where intelligent people like them don't understand that Christianity is not about how many months you get in purgatory for adultery. It's about a love and a thirst for justice that will bring you to your death. There's nothing lovely about it."

Terry Eagleton, from an interview with Laurie Taylor in the New Humanist

And if intelligent people don’t understand that Christianity is about love and justice, Christians are to blame.

No miracles for you

Martin Luther Chapel
Pennsauken, NJ
July 1, 2007


My method of choosing churches by lottery (picking one of the strips of paper from my original ten choices) was disrupted again this morning. I needed to attend an early service on this Sunday, because I planned to drive to the airport later that morning, so I decided to find a church with an 8:00 service. I wanted to try a Lutheran church of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) flavor, having already attended a Lutheran church in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA).

The LCMS website is fantastic. It has a directory where you can search for churches throughout the country by city, state, district, or zip code. I chose New Jersey, and was then directed to a list, which gave me information about locations, whether or not a church has an associated school, and if the church has its own website.

Pennsauken was the location closest to me. Unfortunately, the LCMS church in that city has no website. [UPDATED: when I checked again, in 2009, I did find a website. Either it's new, or I missed it when I looked in 2007.] When I clicked on the church name in the denominational website, though, I was provided with lots of information, including the number of baptized members (471), confirmed members (374), the enrollment figures for the school, times for worship services (two on Sunday mornings, one on Wednesday evening), times for Sunday School and Bible classes, and weekly worship attendance (255). You can also use this website to find out lots of information about the pastor of each congregation - where they went to school, what they majored in, and how long they have been pastoring, for example.

There’s more. There’s a button labeled “Statistics,” which brings up an Excel spreadsheet with very detailed information for the years 1997 through 2006 in more than 25 categories, such as how many people joined through profession of faith (that means they are not transferring from some other church), how many transferred from another Lutheran church, how many from a non-Lutheran church, how many died, average attendance for each year (not too bad, considering overall church attendance trends in the U.S. – the numbers have risen from 219 to 255 in that 10-year span), and annual giving per confirmed member (also an upward trend -- $1079 to $2666).

This is just a sample of the kind of information you can find for each LCMS church. They also have graphs of trends. The LCMS website is a sociologist’s dream -- perhaps an example of German precision?

At any rate, I had the little bit of information I needed right now (address and church service times). I printed out driving directions from Google, and was ready to hurry on out to the 8:00 service.

The Google directions do indeed take you to the church. Unfortunately, they take you to the side of the church on which you cannot park, and since the church fronts a busy four-lane highway, I have to drive away from the building in order to circle back and try again. I don’t drive far enough on my second loop, and am again unable to find the parking lot. Eventually I find on-street parking a couple blocks away and walk around the side of the church. [UPDATED: again, if driving directions were available in 2007, I missed them. They are on the congregation's website now.]

I still don’t see a front door, but people seem to be entering via a plain brown door with the number twelve on it, so I go in that way, too. I have been really surprised at how often I've entered churches via side doors during this project.

An usher hands me a bulletin. It is only a few minutes past eight, and the preservice music is still playing. (I have missed the announcements, though.) I find a seat in a rear pew and check the bulletin. The pastor is away, serving as pastor-in-residence at a church camp, and a DELTO candidate, Jeremy Shears, will be preaching today. I figure a DELTO candidate is probably a seminarian. (The next day I Google DELTO and learn that it stands for Distance Education Leading to Ordination, and is designed to provide “contextual theological education leading to ordination for men who provide pastoral service to congregations, mission churches, or in situations where a full-time pastor or missionary cannot be supported.” Men in DELTO programs must be at least 30 years of age, and must be paired with a pastor-mentor while they complete the program.)

The other interesting thing in the bulletin is that, in addition to a pastor, the church has an Asian Indian Evangelist. I’m not sure what that means. I don’t see any Asian Indians in the congregation this morning (or else I don’t recognize them), although there are 2-3 African-American worshippers and 2-3 Asian worshippers in the mostly white congregation. It’s an interesting idea, though, and I wish I had followed up on it after the service by asking someone about it. There is also a bulletin insert inviting people to join a short-term mission trip to India or Sri Lanka, so maybe this church has some kind of burden for evangelizing Asian Indians.

One of the inserts is an impressively ambitious daily prayer guide for the week. It includes instructions for prayer and Bible readings for both morning and evening, with twice-daily psalms, brief or extended readings, an exhortation to discuss or meditate on the readings, a prayer for the week to use during each session, additional prayers (remember the sick, shut-ins, mourners, those with personal sadness, your own needs; our country and the nations; peace, the Church’s mission); an excellent, thoughtful Prayer for Our Nation, and concluding prayers. The morning prayer for this week is a selection from the poems of Christina Rossetti (it includes the heartfelt line, “Oh, find a place for me!”). If the members of this church follow this weekly prayer system with any kind of regularity, they are doing well indeed.

The building is modern brick. There is a central altar (composed of an interesting mottled wood or marble or something – I am too far away to tell), with pulpit and lectern on either side. The back wall is stone, in the center of which is a large gold cross. On either side of the cross are statues of Christ, crucified on the left and triumphant on the right. The sanctuary seats about 250-300, and there are about 85 or so people present for this early service.

During the Greeting of Peace, I shake hands with several people. A woman sitting in front of me hands me a page from the attendance register and asks me to sign in. The first reading is from I Kings. Elijah hears the voice of God not in a mighty wind or in an earthquake, or in a fire, but in a “low whisper” – the ESV translation of the much more famous “still, small voice.”

Next, a children’s sermon. Four kids come up front, and a lady asks them to copy her motions. Then she does some quick stepping back and forth, and of course the kids can’t follow her. She asks them why they failed, and they are completely silent, so she begins answering her own questions (as I’ve noted before, a common enough occurrence in children’s sermons). She tells them that they probably have lots of excuses for their failure to follow her steps precisely, just like we have lots of excuses for our failures to follow Jesus. Nevertheless, we should try to walk in His steps and not make excuses, and He will help us. She gives them each a paper footprint with a Scripture verse written on it, to put up in their rooms at home to help them remember to ask Jesus for help.

The sermon is titled “The Quiet Gospel.” Mr. Shears, wearing a plain white chasuble, begins by saying how much we all like big, showy things. We’d love to see God do some great miracles. But even if God did perform a huge outright miracle, it wouldn’t strengthen our faith (I think he might be wrong on this point, but it could certainly be argued). So, even though the age of miracles has passed, that’s not a bad thing.

How do we strengthen our faith? Through the Word and the sacraments. He holds up before us as examples St Augustine and Martin Luther, God’s gifts to the Church, who were strengthened through the Word and the sacraments. He observes that as Christians we can become the still, small voice of God to the noisy world; we can perform the ministry of bringing God to others by the example of our quietly godly lives. (This point in his sermon has a lot in common with the brief homily I heard at Our Lady of the Snows earlier in the week.) Though spectacular signs of God’s power are coming eventually (at the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment), right now all we need to do is keep close to the Word and the sacraments. The sermon is 17 minutes long, and is delivered in a clear, strong voice.

However, as the sermon proceeds I am becoming slightly depressed, thinking that there will be no more miracles. This is odd, considering that I haven’t been hoping for any miracles, and would likely be frightened out of my wits if I were to see one. Even so, to be told so firmly not to expect a miracle proves to be a bit of downer. Perhaps it’s like being told that you can’t have any ice cream. Before hearing this, you didn’t even want ice cream. Now it’s all you can think about. Suddenly I feel like a cranky child, whining about why I can’t have a miracle, too, just like my older brothers and sisters had.

We recite the Apostles’ Creed, and then two men and two women take the offering and collect the attendance registers. More prayers, a blessing, and the closing hymn, “Joyful, Joyful.” I think Lutherans usually have the Lord’s Supper at every service, but they probably can’t do that today because the pastor is out of town.

The lady who had given me the attendance register invites me to join the Bible study after this service, but I can’t go because I have to get home right after the service. This is the first time during my church visiting project that someone has invited me to stay for a group activity after the service (although the Bible Presbyterians invited me to come back again that evening), and I would have said yes on any other day. I stand around in the front lobby for a few minutes, and ask someone for directions to the washroom, but no one else talks to me. Everyone is heading toward either the parking lot or the Bible study. On my way out, I have a chance to see the real entrance to the church. It’s very nice.

A little more research after the visit. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) has about 2.4 million baptized members in the US, about half of them located in the upper Midwestern states. It has an interesting history as another of the country’s immigrant churches. In 1838 a German Lutheran pastor, Martin Stephan, led 1100 Lutherans from Saxony to the United States, seeking to practice their religion freely. They were seeking freedom from oppression from other Lutherans, actually – they didn’t like living under state-sponsored Lutheranism in Prussia.

More than 300 of these pilgrims died on the voyage, when one of their ships was lost at sea. The remaining 750 or so settled in Missouri, around St. Louis. Stephan became embroiled in charges of corruption and sexual misconduct, so he was kicked out and C.F.W. Walther became the leader of the group.

The Missouri group had a lively debate as to whether or not they were still part of the German Lutheran church, and eventually decided that they constituted a new one. So, in 1847, a group met in Chicago, founded a new church body, and made a magnificent contribution to the tradition of clunky denominational names: The German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States.

The group grew quickly over the next fifty years, largely because they worked hard to assist and incorporate the flood of German immigrants who poured into the US during the second half of the 1800s.

The second and third generations of churchgoers were often bilingual or even English-only speakers, in contrast to the first generation of German speakers. However, churches tend to be conservative, and services were usually conducted in German for a long time. (My father’s Lutheran birth certificate and confirmation certificate were printed in Michigan, but are written completely in German - he was born in 1896.) (I know that makes me sound incredibly ancient, but you have to take into account that he was 57 when I was born. Still, it does seem incredible that my father was born in the nineteenth century and my granddaughter may very well live into the twenty-second century. It makes me feel as though I could stretch out my arms and span four centuries, metaphorically speaking.)

The first World War brought strong anti-German sentiment to the US, which revolutionized the LCMS, at least in terms of language. Everything was “Americanized,” and membership doubled over the second fifty years. In 1947 they also shortened their name to the current version, LCMS.

One interesting fact about LCMS is that the denomination is officially creationist – all LCMS schools, kindergarten through university and seminary, are required to “teach creation from a Biblical perspective,” which for them means a non-Darwinian perspective. I was unaware of this; I had somehow assumed creationism came only from nondenominational, Baptist, or fundamentalist Presbyterian perspectives. Never put any Lutherans in amongst that group, but I see now that I wasn’t paying attention.

LCMS women wear the invisible hajib; that is, they are in submission to male authority in the church and home, and cannot hold any pastoral office. In fact, they weren’t allowed to vote in church meetings until 1969.

I once read an interesting point of view on the issue of letting women vote in congregational meetings. I don’t remember which denomination does this, but the policy is to let unmarried women, but not wives, vote in congregational meetings. (Men can vote regardless of marital status.) The reasoning is that giving married women a vote would be, in effect, giving all married men two votes – because of course a married woman would just ask her husband how to vote on any issue, and do whatever he said.

I didn’t receive any mail or calls from this church after the visit, but I always take into consideration the fact that my handwriting may have something to do with that. It can be difficult to get all the address information legibly into the small spaces allotted for them in Visitor’s Logs. And, anyway, I’m truly conflicted about whether or not it’s desirable to pursue visitors with phone calls and letters. It might be good in some cases, but in others it might be just as well to let the people who are interested in coming to your church pursue you.

Pearls before swine

Our Lady of the Snows Church
Woodstock, Vermont
June 26, 2007

One interesting thing I’ve learned about Roman Catholic priests since Neil became Catholic is that they are encouraged to celebrate mass every day. This means that Catholics usually have the opportunity to attend mass every day, and often have a choice of multiple daily services – a big difference from what Protestants are used to. Most devout Protestants attend church once a week, on Sunday mornings, and some have the option of attending an additional Sunday night service, and a mid-week (usually Wednesday night) prayer meeting or Bible study. In addition, lots of Protestants are members of some kind of “small group” – a weekly or monthly meeting, sometimes at a church member’s home, for prayer and Bible study and getting to know each other. But almost no Protestant goes to church every day, and some Catholics do – or at least they have the option.

Since Neil has become a Catholic he tries to go to church every day. Leslie and I attended this service with him. Still on vacation, I didn’t read or do anything to prepare.

Our Lady of the Snows is a very pretty little building with a very pretty name in a town that is billed in the tourist information as “the prettiest small town in Vermont.” So that’s a lot of pretty!

The sanctuary has white walls and lots of wood, stained glass windows, and a lovely barrel ceiling ornamented with gilt. There is a domed ceiling over the altar, and a small painted blue sky and dove within that dome.

The crucifix on the back wall shows a twisted, agonized Christ. To one side is a statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus, and on the other side what looked to me like a golden coffee maker in a niche (I later realized this was where they keep the elements for the Eucharist).

The sanctuary seats about 100 people; today 18 people plus our group of three are present, which seems to me like a very good turnout for a Tuesday morning.

The priest, wearing a white robe with a green garment over it, walks to the altar area, along with a man wearing ordinary street clothes. I assume the priest is Rev. Thomas Mosher, who is listed on the front of the bulletin as the pastor of Our Lady of the Snows.

A woman reads the Old Testament passage, which is about Abram and Lot dividing the land between them, and then leads us in a responsive Psalm.

The priest then reads the New Testament lesson. He is preaching through the instructional sayings of Jesus that week (Sermon on the Mount), and today’s passage is the one about not throwing your pearls before swine. He notes an interesting similarity in the etymology of the words pearl and holy, and makes the point that argument and dialogue are not the best ways to win souls – a better evangelistic technique is simply to lead a good and holy life. We do not evangelize through erudite arguments (casting pearls before swine), but through the witness of our lives. He speaks very well, and packs a surprising number of ideas into an extremely brief (about three minutes long!) sermon.

There is a moment of silence, and then Communion. Then another moment of silence, and the benediction.

It‘s a very nice, short service. Leslie and I discuss later how good it would be if Protestant churches were to make available brief daily services like that for people who want them. I suppose it will never happen, but it certainly seems like a great idea.

Penobscot Bay

Back from a lovely time in Maine -- I would say that everyone should get a chance to go there in the summer, but it seemed that half the country was already there!

Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad

Here. I love the footnote about vegemite.

This may be my last post for a week or so - off to New York and Maine for a week, starting tomorrow. Yay!!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user foodistablog

Little-known benefits of going to church

Most folks could tell you what the well-known benefits are, or are supposed to be. Salvation would be pretty high on the list – not that most Christians think that they are saved by attending church. No, most everyone would say that we are saved through Christ alone, no matter what the denomination or the cut of their theological jib. But regular fellowship with believers strengthens and upholds and increases our faith, and is a very great benefit to our lives as redeemed and saved people.

Cynical people think that church membership bestows some sort of career or financial benefit, by putting people in touch with others who are able to advance them. It’s networking, with a halo. I think this might happen once in a while, but the heyday of that sort of thing seems long past. Nowadays you might be more in danger of putting your job at risk by revealing that you attend church regularly, seeming to be an oddball or perhaps the type of person who tries to convert colleagues on lunch break.

Many churches tout themselves as cures for whatever ails you in the loneliness department. This seems to me a half-truth at best. Yes, if you join a church and take advantage of their programs you will be able to fill quite a few empty spots on your social calendar. Depending on the church and your own taste for getting out of the house, you might be able to get together with groups of other people two, three, or more times per week. These are groups that will not turn you down, so if you want to join the choir, join a Bible study or prayer group, join some sort of committee, take care of children one or more times per week, go on bus trips, and eat potluck suppers, you will have plenty of opportunities to do that sort of thing. Making friends, though, is another matter. That really depends on how good you are at making friends, and whether or not “friend chemistry” happens. I’ve known many people who have been actively involved in their churches for years, but haven’t made friends so much as long-term acquaintances. So I would say that churches definitely offer opportunities for being with people, which is no small thing. But friendship is by no means a certainty.

Now, here are a few benefits you don’t hear about so often:

The opportunity to sing with others in public. Human beings have sung together in public, often and regularly, for as long as we can remember. Not just in church, or during religious rituals, although those are a huge part of the history of public singing. We have work songs, drinking songs, camping songs, patriotic songs. All meant to be sung in groups. Until just the last generation or so, families and friends often sang together for their evening entertainment. I don’t think it’s good for people to suddenly give up something so powerful and mood-altering. Corporate singing (especially if you can do it loudly) makes people feel good -- real good.

Chaste and semi-chaste courtship opportunities. Folks have lots of opportunities to look for romantic partners today – the workplace, school, bars, classified ads, matchmaking ventures online and off-line. The problem is that, except for the workplace, these venues do not allow people even the pretense of wanting to get to know the other person in a safe, friendly way before jumping right to the sexual chase. I put even schools in the category of forcing potential lovers into a too-early sexualized relationship, because schools today are drenched in hormonal intensity. The clothing, the slang, the cultural references – it’s a supercharged atmosphere. This puts lots of shy or socially awkward people at a huge and uncomfortable disadvantage.

Churches are, of course, only semi-chaste, as anyone who has ever had anything to do with a youth group will recognize. But most of them do offer opportunities for people to meet and do things together in a much less sexualized atmosphere, and sometimes romantic sparks are kindled in these circumstances. So, shy people who do not have any opportunities to make romantic connections at work MAY have a chance if they are part of a large, active church. MAY HAVE – romance is no more a given than guaranteed friendship, but at least it’s a possibility.

Special holidays. Everyone, religious or not, celebrates some kind of Christmas (or Hanukah, or Eid) holiday, even if it’s cast as a simple winter vacation, and all religious observance has been stripped away. But only churchgoers get to celebrate Trinity Sunday, Pentecost, Rally Day, the last day of Vacation Bible School, Choir Appreciation Sunday, the first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Women’s Circle Annual Luncheon, Ascension Sunday, and St. Blaise’s Day. Not every churchgoer celebrates every one, but all churchgoers get a much bigger choice of special days and rituals to mark the passing of the years and to provide reasons for reflection, celebration, and special food than non-churchgoers. We like to make fun of these special days, but I’ll bet every one of them has a place in the heart of someone somewhere, and adds a little extra zest to life. Holidays are good, especially the odd ones. Frankly, I’m always looking for more of them.

There are probably quite a few more little-known benefits of going to church.

Photo courtesy Flickeruser Hamed Saber

Littlefoot

Cobalt and undulant rocking of lake swells and waves,
Long runners and smooth slatch of the seas,
Creek hiss and pond sway,
Landfall and landrise
Like Compostela at land’s end.

From Charles Wright’s Littlefoot

I could spend a surprising amount of time thinking about these few lines, part of the book-length poem Littlefoot, described on the dust jacket flap as “an extended meditation on mortality.”

For one thing, the first line quoted above, “Cobalt and undulant rocking of lake swells and waves” is as musically perfect as a line from Milton. Then, the surprise of “smooth slatch of the seas.” I thought at first that Wright might have coined the sword slatch just for this poem, but it turns out that slatch is “a momentary lull between breaking waves, favorable for launching a boat.” So now I envision those long waves and the smooth slatch between them.

I’ll just mention here that the alternation between all the sibilants and the percussives in these lines is very reminiscent of the sounds of waves alternately running smoothly up to the shore and then smacking it sharply.

Next we move inland, to consider the less dramatic movement of creeks and ponds (Creek hiss and pond sway), and back to sea again to consider landfall and landrise. Landfall is a common enough term, meaning the first sighting of land from sea, but I think Wright has coined a complementary term in landrise, and both are compared to “Compostela at land’s end.”

So we have landfall, landrise, and land’s end – a cycle of setting out and coming home? Or, being at home and then setting out past land’s end, for unknown parts?

What is Compostela? It turns out that it is the capital city of Galicia, in western Spain, and has been a city of pilgrimage for hundreds of years. The folk etymology of the name is “field of stars” – this might be incorrect etymology, but it’s very evocative in terms of Wright’s poem, in which he constantly searches the starry skies for meaning as he contemplates death. The likely true etymology of the name is even more apropos – “burial ground.”

Compostela is famous as one of the oldest sites of Christian pilgrimage; for over a thousand years pilgrims have traveled there to visit the supposed bones of St. James. And in Celtic legend, Compostela is the place where the souls of the dead gather to follow the sun across the sea.

Apparently the speaker is thinking about launching into the smooth slatch, following the route of all the souls who have gone before him.

Normally I’m not willing to look up words and references while reading a poem – but I love the poetry of Charles Wright so much, and I know the results will be rewarding. It’s very nice when every word and every syllable work together.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Tony George