faithasawayoflife

god's politics--jim wallis on the mistake of iraq

so bob carlton invited a group of us religious bloggers to do a rotating review of jim wallis' newish book 'god's politics' jim's been around these questions of religion and politics for many years, mostly at the community he helped found in Washington D.C., Sojourners.

okay, so the book is not the *best* thing i've read on these issues. some of our other chapter reviews have said so, and the new issue of books and culture is almost mean in their skewering. what i'd say generally is the guy has cache and he's using it to make some pretty important points. check his eloquence and humor on the daily show with jon stewart where he makes any justice-oriented christian proud.

i'm supposed to review chapter 8, 'not a just war: the mistake of iraq' and like the rest of the book, it is a mixed bag of new things and things he wrote much earlier, woven in as filling. if he had left out all the old stuff and tried to just write a fresh book it might have been a really focused 150 page essay rather than a wandering 360 page tome it is now.

be that as it may, i'm all about this chapter. it was not a just war. jean bethke elshtain and others like her have not convinced me that christians can embrace a first-strike doctrine as the bush administration has done. it is a shame that wallis did not show more of the nuance of christian debates on these topics, however, for the question of what to do about terror is real and difficult and not at all the same as it was in a cold-war world. we are facing really unsettling times and great fear had caught many in the face of such unsettling. i rather like the ideas of a crazy bunch of norwegian lutherans who argue that unless we embrace vulnerability we're never going to find security. while they didn't draw on my colleague miroslav volf's work, they might have well gained a partner for their arguments in his work exclusion and embrace.

so what did jim do that captured my heart, and what did he do that left my head shaking wishing he'd done more?

he named the terrible misuse of goodwill and trust given to our government after september 11th, 2001. why is it that so quickly after september 11th the rhetoric took up the echoes of iraq, and increasingly people within the bush administration made connections in their speeches between 9/11 and iraq that in fact never did exist? because they had a long-term and, say it Jim, a deceptive plan to invade iraq to displace saddam. we shockingly went ahead without real evidence, without real support from friends and allies, without an overwhelming voice of our electorate, and most importantly, without ever being attacked.

that last point is particular to the just war tradition which jim never details, to the detriment of the chapter. such a meditation would have helped the chapter make the case (made in only 10 pages--one third of the chapter) for why as the title of the chapter says, 'not a just war.' one finishes the chapter still unsure if it was just politically dumb, a waste of lives and money, or a violation of some deeply held and traditioned way of thinking christianly about such things.

counting the costs of war is devastating, especially if the war was not necessary as he claims (i believe him), but *that* it was devastating (1500 US and Coalition soldiers dead, hundreds of thousands of iraqis dead, and many more thousands injured, vast destruction in iraq, and hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars burned up) does not make it immoral on just war terms. many viewed the fight against hitler devastating, but moral and even righteous in some sense as a mission to stop genocide.

one of the most compelling moments in the chapter that, to be truthful, doesn't fit in this chapter since it is not about the justness of the war, is the section 'who will sacrifice?' actually, i pray that we might be successful despite ourselves so that the vast sacrifices on all sides might bear fruit for justice and peace in iraq. tax payers have suffered, that is, except the rich who have benefited from highly preferential tax cuts during this same period. the committed soldiers and especially the national guard have suffered. and most of all, people in iraq have suffered. just today, a recently elected woman, sheikha lamea khaddouri, a member of the iraqi assembly, was shot and killed. the question of how willing the bush administration is to actually admit wrong and ask for forgiveness and attempt restitution seems beyond the pale of their reality.

the chapter ends in a weird way. so jim got to go with other religious leaders to meet with tony blair, and george bush didn't meet with them. tony blair went ahead with the war anyway, even if he was more willing to be publicly more theological in his deliberation and more collegial in doing that deliberation with clergy. stronger still would have been to return to the just war and pacificism traditions--as we are told in the beginning of the chapter, these are the only two traditions we christians have for thinking well about war.

ultimately, a chapter that had moments of flame, but spent lots of time sputtering instead of burning brightly. i'd also turn to oliver o'donovan's recent treatment on this topic.

anon, and +peace

faith, work, and tyson foods inc.

well the faith as a way of life project has works with a group of clergy and lay i playfully call our 'reflection pool.' this group is headed to springdale arkansas to think through issues of faith's traction in the world of work through a case study: the huge multinational protein company tyson foods inc. it is the fourth time we've met together, each time trying to push further this idea that although we're not great at the postmodern reintegration of faith and our whole lives, it is a desperate need, both for the vibrancy of the faith and for the sake of god's work in the world.

john tyson, the grandson of the founder of tyson foods, and the current ceo, is our host. john has decided that despite the company's checkered history in a tough industry, that ONE of his key contributions is to try to place core values of faith and morality at the center of the company. we're trying to learn how that is going. they are innovating on this front in the face of plenty of skeptics because of typical worries about business emphasis on the bottom line and the particular worries about some problems in Tyson's past. we're curious if in this case a really large player can move itself up a couple of notches and influence an entire industry by its changed practices . . .

more when we return after the weekend. keep us and tyson in prayer in this grand experiment in integrating faith and work.

anon, and +peace

new u2 blog: one step closer

so the book title i've agreed to, more or less assigned by my publisher, is "one step closer: why U2 matters for those seeking god.
i'm starting a blog to chronicle the process of finishing writing and moving towards publishing as a sort of reality blog. watch chris struggle through the process of finishing, editing, negotiating with publishers, editors, copyrights, etc. etc.

so i'll post less here on the book, and save you all from the pain of continuously reading about U2.

anon, and +peace

pope benedict, the faith, and faith as a way of life

peter steinfels writes for the new york times, my weekend paper of choice. his column this past saturday was really fascinating because of his juxtaposition of the recollection of john paul II as reaching young people, especially through the world youth day, and christian smith's new study of the religious lives of american teens. turns out that the roman catholic youth smith and his colleagues interviewed were markedly less shaped by their faith tradition that non-Catholic peers in the Christian church. and most interesting of all, to me, is steinfels pointing beyond rules to the power of local faith lived out in community, learned through practices and by exposure to those who live the faith fully and deeply. another voice speaking up for faith as a way of life. here is what mr. steinfels said:

"Those findings have recently been published in "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" (Oxford University Press, 2005), by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. With a mixture of good news and bad news that punctures many stereotypes about adolescent religious beliefs and behavior, this extensive study deserves attention for what it reveals across the full range of American religious groups.

But what leapt out during this papal transition was that the researchers had felt compelled to devote a separate chapter to their discovery that Catholic teenagers "stand out among the U.S. Christian teenagers as consistently scoring lower on most measures of religiosity."

On various questions about beliefs, practices, experiences and commitments, the researchers found Catholic youths "scoring 5 to 25 percentage points lower than their conservative, mainline and black Protestant peers." In-depth interviews showed many of these Catholic adolescents "living far outside of official church norms."

Catholic teenagers were far less apt to affirm belief in a personal God, to report having ever undergone a very moving, powerful worship experience, or to say their faith was extremely important in shaping their daily lives or major life decisions.

There has been a lot of impressionistic talk, often verging on boosterism, about a new "John Paul II generation" of deeply committed, conservative young Catholics. So what should be said about this quite different-looking crop of John Paul II teenagers? How did this happen on the watch of the very pope who undeniably exhibited such magnetism among youth?

The obvious answer is that one individual, no matter how charismatic a communicator of his convictions, cannot do it alone. Even the millions touched by World Youth Days are only a small - and often unrepresentative - fraction of young Catholics, who as a whole can be reached only at the grass roots, through parish worship, religious education, youth ministry and, of course, their parents' example.

If this whole infrastructure of religious socialization is creaky, undermanned, short on skills and resources, fearful of ideas and innovation or unresponsive to important demographic, socioeconomic and cultural forces, then even the most dynamic pontiff can enliven only a minority of young Catholics.

Benedict XVI, by all accounts, lacks his predecessor's personal dynamism, but may very well pay more attention to the condition of that Catholic infrastructure. Unfortunately, when speculation began about the consequences of his election for American Catholics, the news media could only trot out the usual checklist of issues: contraception, abortion, homosexuality, sexual abuse crisis, ordination of women and so on.

The assumption always seems to be that adhering to a religious faith is primarily a matter of obeying rules and that in the case of Catholicism, these are made - and might be remade - by the man at the top. What gets lost is the idea that religious faith entails a more fundamental stance toward reality, one embedded in a community, expressed in its prayers and practices (not just its rules) and learned by exposure, both in person and in story, to exemplary individuals.

full article here

anon, and +peace

offering hospitality to god

i've been struck lately by the icon i have hanging on the wall. i hung it where i can only see it from the 'other' chair in my office, the one guests sit in and the one i switch to for prayer.

it is the famous icon of abraham and sarah serving the three strangers (angels) who have become, over the history of the church have become a symbol of the trinity.

the thing that has been haunting me is the seeming conflict between the sense of god as giver, never receiver, and yet the fact of our offering to god of our lives. while one imagines god as the giver who needs nothing--who is pure gift--then it seems that we could never offer hospitality to god. and it frankly makes god seem distant even if gracious in giving life and all things. yet here is this image of god, the three-in-one, the community of perfect reciprocity, being offered hospitality by abraham and sarah.

then this morning, as i prayed the morning office, this:

"jesus said: 'in all truth, i tell you, whoever welcomes the one i send, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me'."

jesus says this in the context of the profound chapter where jesus washes his disciples feet and commissions them to do this in the world: 'you also should do as i have done.'

so do we offer hospitality to god through offering to conform our lives to the kneeling, foot-washing model of jesus? does gratitude for the gift transfigure the receiver in such a way as to be caught up into the work of giving so that one's giving becomes both gift and offering, thus offering hospitality to the stranger and the needy at the same time as one gives hospitality to god?

and if this is so, why do i lend so little weight to day to day encounters when they are the very means to offer hospitality to god?

anon, and +peace

waiting for a new benedict

alasdair macintyre must be smiling--he's finally got his longed-for return of benedict. perhaps not in the form he was hoping, however.

for those who haven't heard yet, cardinal joseph ratzinger was elected this morning as pope. he took the name benedict xvl.

and for those who didn't get my obscure reference above, it is from the end of macintyre's famous book 'after virtue' where he concludes his long mediation on moral fragmentation in modern society with this: "what matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. . . we are waiting not for a godot, but for another--doutless very different--st. benedict.

well. i'm not sure this benedict is focused on the construction of local forms of community which can sustain the virtues of the faith through the fires of the 21st century. miroslav volf, in his book on the trinity, deeply engaged with ratzinger's views on the church (chapter 1: ratzinger: communion and the whole). now i'll reread that section with a whole new interest in what he thinks church is and ought to be. i worry, as i'm sure many will, that benedict xvl will uphold john paul ll's centralizing tendencies within the church as a whole when for my money a robust recovery of the doctrine of subsidiarity is needed.

anon, and +peace

popapalooza

i got this via ed foley, o.f.m., professor of liturgy at the catholic theological union in chicago.

who says christians don't have a sense of humor about themselves? of course, this doesn't have the imprimi potest of anybody, but somehow it seems to capture the human side of the election process, and our human side as observers of this spectacle.

i think my two favorites are francis arinze of nigeria and oscar andres rodriguez maradiaga, neither of whom are likely to be chosen.

anon, and +peace

hananiah and jeremiah, or what sort of exile is the christian life?

i did a mediation for our advisory board today and in it i tried to ground some of our working convictions about faith and culture. here it is, for your enjoyment (and comment!)

Meditation for the Yale Center for Faith & Culture Board Meeting
April 14-15, 2005
Chris Scharen

Hananiah and Jeremiah are in Jerusalem around the year 594, three years after the Babylonian military occupation and first deportation of the King and leaders of Judah into exile.
Hananiah prophecies that within two years The Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel will defeat Nebuchadnessar, King of Babylon, and return the all the vessels for the Temple, and the King of Judah and his court whom Nebuchadnessar had taken into exile.
This is the voice of the prophet of denial. Hananiah denies the legacy of disobedience, of sin before God. He denies, therefore, that God’s hand is behind the exile, and denies that God’s blessing has left Jerusalem. He offers the people left in Jerusalem the false promise that they are not to blame for the destruction of their city and the exile of their leading citizens. To those in exile he offers the false promise that they must resist and stay apart from their captors, anticipating a speedy rescue and return to Jerusalem. Hananiah says, in effect, we weren’t so bad as to deserve such mistreatment from God; it must be that this exile is not God’s will and so we should look for God’s hand acting to bring us quickly out of this suffering.
Into this situation, Jeremiah speaks a word of honesty that is at once sobering and yet because of such honesty also full of authentic hope.
Read Jeremiah 29:1, 4-11. [These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 4Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the LORD. 10 For thus says the LORD: Only when Babylon's seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.]
When this letter was first read to the gathered people in exile, they must have been left with mouths hanging wide open in disbelief. The exile is God’s will? God himself has sent us into exile? And we are to embrace life here, building homes and planting gardens, marrying and working? We are to seek the welfare—in Hebrew, shalom—of this city that does not know the Lord Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth? And most improbable of all, God’s restoration of Israel will come from such an embrace of life in exile rather than our strong rejection of this worldly city?
David Kelsey, one of Miroslav’s senior colleagues in systematic theology here at the divinity school, preached in chapel this past Monday. For his text he drew on 1 Peter. His theme was the Christian life as a life in exile. Just imagine, he suggested, the Christian life lived between the suffering of Good Friday and the resurrection and joy of Easter. There, in that long Saturday, we live out our Christian lives as aliens, as exiles in this world. We know Jesus, the firstborn from the dead on that first Easter morning. Yet we know a world still wracked by sin and suffering. We experience life as not as perpetual joy, but caught between the twin realities of suffering and joy, between sin and salvation.
What ought to be our position in the world, given the image of the Christian life as a place of exile, or as Jesus put it, the image of the Christian life as “in, but not of, the world?” One prominent answer is that we circle the wagons to preserve our holy calling in the midst of a hostile world. Our true home is in heaven, and our life here in the world is to be endured, resisted even, for the sake of preparing ourselves for eternity with God. This strain within the Christian tradition is a powerful one. One hears in this strain in the prophecy of Hananiah. One hears it in the words of prophets today. And if we believe the testimony of Jeremiah, it is an approach that misses our true calling as God’s people in the world.
Some years ago, Miroslav wrote a paper that is basically a long theological meditation on 1 Peter. He called that paper “Soft Difference,” by which he meant that we are not to become some sort of separatist sect to preserve our holiness as aliens. Rather, he wrote, the Christian community is “to life an alternative way of life in the present social setting, transforming it, as it can, from within.” At the Center, I think, we’ve chosen to face our life in exile, to build houses in the midst of the godless city and live in them, to plant gardens in exile and eat of them. We’ve chosen to take as our mission to seek the welfare of the city, to pray on its behalf, because we believe with Jeremiah that in its welfare we will find our own.
Our founding responded to a sense that rather than serving as a light on the highest hill in New Haven, the divinity school had managed to place a bushel basket over its light. It served to foster the wellbeing of the communities of exiles, that is, the churches. But it had not lived up to the challenge of building houses in the midst of the city, and seeking its own welfare in and through the welfare of the city. Our aim, promoting the practice of faith in all spheres of life, requires that we build dwellings outside the community of exiles, in the midst of the city, and that we seek our welfare there so that we make known God’s promise of shalom for all creation.
We are on the edge of one of the world’s most prominent research university and we are building houses in the midst of Yale so that in seeking its welfare, we make known God’s promise of shalom for all creation.

We are on the edge of one of the world’s most dynamic business hubs, New York City, and we are building houses in the midst of the city so that in seeking its welfare, our witness to God’s promise of shalom shines forth.
As we listen to God’s call to faithfulness, and as we faithfully embrace life in exile, we trust the promise that God has plans for us, plans for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.
Let me now allow you to respond, in whatever ways you are moved, either to the Jeremiah reading, my meditation, or other thoughts that have been sparked as you listened.

miroslav on faith and work

i said a few weeks ago that I would post about the framework of miroslav's comments at the coalition for ministry in daily life meeting that took place here at yale a few weeks ago.

here is the gist of it, and some commentary. miroslav framed his remarks under the title 'god at work' and included on the podium a strip of the yellow 'god at work' tape we have in our offices (like what is used at a construction site, and in fact it came from david's chapliancy work at ground zero during the months after 9/11.

miroslav's talk had as it's frame the trinitarian shape of god's presence in our work. there were four parts:

In our success, we meet the God who blesses.
In our failure, we meet the God who delivers.
In our quandaries, we meet the God who guides.
And through it all, we are meet God who gives meaning even to the most mundane of days.

while this might seem trite to see in our success the god who blesses, i think miroslav is rare in avoiding both the danger of not talking about excellence and success in order to seem egalitarian and the danger of too simply saying god will bless us with success as the prosperity gospel does. he both talked about the danger of sloth, and about the fact that seen properly our success is never ours anyway.

this last point leads to what i find most compelling and most potentially controversial, both in this talk and in the larger book on god who gives and forgives that he is writing currently. that is his clear embrace of an anthropology that is deeply christian and exactly because deeply anti-american in this sense: there is really no independent self that can take credit for the success. it is not me but christ who lives in me, writes paul. that is where miroslav is going, refracted through martin luther. can you stand it? if we are truly christian about success, in our success, we meet the god who blesses because exactly our energy and skill that contribute to the success is god's gift. so rather than feel puffed up, we exhale with gratitude for the grace bestowed.

anon, and +peace

a book about u2 and god

some of you may know i'm writing a book offering an interpretation of the religious voice of u2. yes, the rock and roll hall of fame band that is currently on tour in support of their recent record 'how to dismantle an atomic bomb.' i originally called the book 'icons of the cross' because i think so much of what is important to me about u2's theological voice is their embodiment of the theology of the cross: worldly, doubt-filled, and honest faith seeking love and peace and justice. they don't whack people over the head with an altar call for jesus, but they point, like icons do, the the element of soul in life, and to the cost of discipleship that the cross represents (e.g. bonhoeffer). i've blogged about this before elsewhere (here and here).

i just got an email from my editor at brazos press who wants me to consider this title instead: one step closer: why u2 matters to those seeking god. this obviously comes from the song on HTDAAB, which I like. below is bono's short version of the origin of the song (from Blender magazine). but i don't know how much i want to give up the image of the cross in the title. so--what to you all think? i've got to decide soon--by monday.

9 “One Step Closer to Knowing”
Sparse splinters of sound and a lonesome search for faith
Bono: “I was talking to Noel Gallagher [from Oasis] about my dad, who lost his faith toward the end of his life. And Noel asked, ‘Does he believe in God?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think he knows.’ So Noel went, ‘Well, he’s one step closer to knowing now.’ And I thought, ‘I’m going to write that song…’ ”

anon, and +peace