If Jesus Read The New York Times

If Jesus read The New York Times, he would not see a world so different from his own, except in externals. He would still see the poor, the hungry, and the marginalized. He would recognize military occupations, tribal warfare (even in Washington), and rulers who acted like gods. He would experience déjà vu as he read about a variety of attempts at world domination, this time not by the Roman Empire, but by corporations, governments, religion, even terrorists. Misogyny, patriarchy, racism, and xenophobia would not surprise him. And misuse of God’s creation has been with us since Eden. 

Religious battles, spiritual abuse, clergy misconduct, religious hierarchy, fundamentalism, exclusivity, scapegoating, judgment, and self-righteousness—he challenged all of these in his own time.  Wealth and greed in its myriad expressions (money, property, possessions, knowledge, ancestry, etc.) he has already testified as  stumbling blocks to entering God’s commonwealth. 

Drones have replaced crosses, weapons of mass destruction have replaced the swords we were to beat into ploughshares, AIDS has displaced leprosy, terrorist acts by individuals and governments alike have more “sophisticated” expressions—but all still intimidate the human spirit. Equally harmful, they may distract us from the life of the spirit. There’s even been a recent slaughter of the innocents. 

Violence comes neatly packaged in celluloid and video and digital formats, but the violent games of the Roman circus might also have been considered “wholesome” fun in their time. The internet provides just the latest opportunity for greedy lust to overrule the better natures of our hearts. Prisons, at least in the West, are more humane, but those in the U.S. house a higher percentage of the population than in Jesus’ time. 

So Jesus’ calling still has relevance, as he quoted Isaiah, “to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of the vision we need, and to let the oppressed go free.” 

And his calling to us still resonates. “Give to the poor.” “Feed the hungry.” “Provide shelter.” “Welcome strangers.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Love your neighbor.” “Love your enemy.” “Do not judge.” “Pray in secret.” “Seek, and you will find.”  “Do not be anxious.” “Blessed are the merciful.” “Avoid anger.” “Do good to those who persecute you.” “Avoid revenge.” “Forgive as you have been forgiven.”  “Don’t shut others out of the temple.” “Woe to religious leaders who tie heavy burdens on others.” “Be compassionate as God in heaven is compassionate.” “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” 

If Jesus read The New York Times, I believe he would lament over the world as he did over Jerusalem, “You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” 

I offered this post on March 6, 2013. 

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Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

We've Got the Whole World in Our Hands

 

As we approach the tenth anniversary of this weekly blog, I thought current readers would appreciate one of my earliest posts, from April 6, 2011.

During recess in the second grade, my friend Mary and I enjoyed swinging as high as we could on the swing set, singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” It’s a great song of comfort, basically affirming that, no matter what, God is holding us. Note the song doesn’t say God is in control, just that God is there for us. And I still believe that.

These days we have a better grip on what it means for God to hold the whole world because we have the internet and a 24/7 news cycle. Now we too have the whole world in our hands every time we log on.

The narrator in my as-yet-unpublished mystery novel so reveres the internet that, just as many of us only visit God on Sunday mornings, he only visits the internet on Saturday mornings. Comparing it to touching the forbidden Mt. Sinai, he drolly writes: 

The internet is such an awesome god—so extensive we can only glimpse a part of it, so powerful that it has crashed many a computer, so desirous that many humans and their marriages have been sacrificed on its local altars. Okay, I’m a little over the top here, but it’s an amusing analogy, don’t you think? 

My point is, like any powerful and overwhelming god, the internet must be approached guardedly, with respect, on appointed days and at appointed times, lest we take it for granted (as if our computers are always up) or believe we can domesticate it (making it entirely user-friendly). 

Just as the ancient monastics limited human intercourse of all kinds, even so, those of us who practice an ascetic lifestyle must limit our intercourse with the internet, lest it lead us into idolatry or distract us from reality. To switch mythological metaphors, the internet is the Medusa’s head of our time, a face whose tresses are cables rather than snakes, but still able to turn men to stone. 

Demonstrating a similar reverence, only recently has my spell-check stopped correcting me when I fail to capitalize the word “internet,” though it never corrects me when I fail to capitalize “god”! 

A retreat leader once scandalized my progressive theology—you know, the theology that tells you to have the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other during your morning prayers—by observing the omnipresent news cycle hooks us in other people’s stories before we know our own story for the day. And, during a retreat I was leading on finding space in our busy lives to rest in God, a woman had the “aha” moment that she was busy even in her prayers, listing the world’s concerns, as if the whole world were not already in God’s hands! 

Now more than ever, we have the whole world in our hands. And more than ever, we need to step back, take a breath, take moments of Sabbath rest, and resist the temptation to use Eden’s apple or the Silicon Valley’s Apple to be like the gods. 

Yet we are not absolved of responsibility. Now, also more than ever, the internet gives what we do and say the power to transform the world for good or for ill. 

We’ve got the whole world in our hands. If we are God’s, then that should be a comfort rather than a concern.

 

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

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When Evangelicals Were Kinder

Qumran, West Bank, 

Palestinian desert, 1981 (CRG)

Christian got tired of hanging out with God in the wilderness and began having temptations to be something more than a mere follower of Jesus.

Turn these stones to “bread,” as in “money,” and with that money enjoy the prosperity you were intended to have! It’s long been believed that those with big houses and expensive cars and material wealth are especially blessed by God. You can’t live by God’s words alone!

See the high steeple of this megachurch: this will be yours—large and influential, popular and spectacular, maybe even global!—as proof of your faith and goodness and success to the world and to other churches. God will surely be tempted to reward you bigtime!

You will have political power if you bow to leaders who join you in abusing and controlling the bodies of others: workers, women, trans people, lesbians and gays, immigrants, people of color, the needy, and anyone who stands in your way. You can have all the power you need to make the world in your image! It will be sweet.

No, Jesus can’t come along. He would never understand. He had a good idea but just doesn’t know how to capitalize on it. You do. You’re better than he is. Remember even he said you’d do greater things than he did.  And such a loser! Got himself crucified!

This parable came to me in the middle of the night, as I thought about how much kinder my evangelical, fundamentalist parents were than the evangelical Christians of today. I realize, in their hunger for power, influence, and control, evangelicals have lost their way.

What got me to thinking of this was an opinion piece written by Liesl Schwabe, “Everything I Know about Feminism I Learned from Nuns.” It reminded me that many of the values I now hold and promote as a progressive Christian I learned from evangelical, fundamentalist Christians. Now, I know that many of you may have had quite a different experience, either of nuns and Catholic school, or of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, but some of us at least have takeaways from those experiences that may never have been imagined or anticipated or desired by those spiritual communities.

“Jesus loves the little children,” we were taught to sing, “all the children of the world: red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” In no way does this support white privilege, let alone white supremacy. There are no boundaries or borders to God’s love; we are all God’s children.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.” The vulnerable, deprived, underprivileged, marginalized, and abused alike belong to those whom Jesus loves. And, as process theologian Daniel Day Williams pointed out, it is more vital (as in life-giving) and needful to belong than to believe.

How many times we were taught that Jesus welcomed lepers, children, women, people with disabilities, those with mental health issues, the poor, the oppressed, while, in the words of his mother Mary, “sending the rich away empty” and in his own words calling upon the wealthy to sell their possessions and distribute the proceeds to the poor! Jesus was an early advocate of health care for all and a challenger of income inequality.

We learned that Jesus praised the faith of a child, the faith of those outside his religious community, the faith of foreigners, the faith of outcasts.

And, as he was himself dying on a cross, he welcomed a convicted criminal into Paradise, surely a subversion of the death penalty.

Jesus witnessed a God of mercy that too many fundamentalist evangelical Christians have abandoned, ignored, or forgotten.

Related Posts:

Beware of the God

Killing God

The Terrible God

“Pride Goeth before a Fall”—and Getting Back Up!

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Godly Boredom

Sun through clouds, Atlanta. -crg

I’m writing this on the afternoon of Superbowl Sunday from frenzied Superbowl host Atlanta which currently looks like, in the words of a city planner neighbor, a city under occupation: roadblocks and street closings, helicopters buzzing the skies, small planes carrying banners, big planes carrying visitors, sirens screaming at all hours, a heavy and active police and security and first responder presence. 

In this context of hyperactivity, Book Review Editor Pamela Paul’s column, “Let Children Get Bored Again,” in this morning’s New York Times speaks all the more loudly and clearly: “Boredom is useful. It’s good for you.” Explaining the potential for constructiveness and resourcefulness in “empty” time, she says, “Perhaps in an incessant, up-the-ante world, we could do with a little less excitement.”

Asserting “Life isn’t meant to be an endless parade of amusements,” she questions “the teacher’s job to entertain as well as educate.”

Christian spirituality author Henri Nouwen critiqued “entertainment” by breaking down the word entertain, which means “to keep between”—in other words, to keep us betwixt and between in constant tension about what happens next.

Ms. Paul reminisces about the days when children were “left unattended with nothing but bookshelves and tree branches, and later, bad afternoon television.” She quotes Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, “There is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom.”

“It’s when you are bored that stories set in,” she declares. “Checking out groceries at the supermarket, I invented narratives around people’s purchases.”

This reminded me of how I filled the empty spaces as a ticket taker and usher at a movie theater when I was in college. I thought one of my first books would be Views from a Ticket Taker.

It also made me think of a digression in my 2010 book, The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me about Life:

Saturday was a mixed blessing growing up. No school, but I loved school, or at least I loved the structure it gave my day. My dad worked on Saturday, unfortunately. My mom would get up very early to fix his breakfast before work, then return to bed for a little while. …

I remember bouncing with my brother and sister and mom on her bed Saturday mornings, before or after breakfast, and we would sit and visit and enjoy a little time together with nothing to do but laugh and talk and dream. A whole empty day stretched out before us, a day of housecleaning and laundry and reading books (never magazines: early it was instilled in me by my mother that if I had time to read, I should be reading a book) and watching television.

My sister and years later, my brother, would drive Mom to the store to do the weekly grocery shopping, if my father had not done so the night before. (Strangely, my mother never learned to drive.) And I would be left alone, a time I also loved, but also a lonely time when I wished my friends from school were closer. Going to a parochial school meant fellow students were dispersed throughout my then-known universe, the 500 square miles of Los Angeles. …

Saturday was my longest day, a day whose structure I had more freedom to shape than any other day of the week, making me feel sorry for those children today whose free time is overly scheduled by ambitious or well-intentioned parents. Small wonder that my life now consists of a succession of “Saturdays,” having chosen to be a writer. It is a life blessed by more freedom than the lives of others, though it is also fraught with fear, having no imposed structure but my own, and having no assured income, especially when writing something like this book, entirely on speculation. Yet it does stretch my days, it does stretch my life. And it offers me sanctuary to “stand under” (as Camus wrote of it), if not to wholly understand. [pp 12-15]

Reflecting on all this today, I think how boredom may become a sacred time and place, a fertile sanctuary for creativity and dreams, a godly opportunity.

Perhaps it was Godly boredom that led to the Big Bang and the evolution of life and to you and to me.

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Hobbes Found Me

Hobbes on the beach in San Francisco

Our beloved dog, Hobbes, passed on last Thursday. This post explains how we met and became friends. Photos were taken by my partner, Wade Jones.

Conceivably, it was the worst year of my life. The relationship that brought me to Atlanta ended (to my complete surprise and utter dismay), my loving mother died, my half-time employment as an editor was threatened, and, given my limited income, it was not a slam dunk that I could assume full responsibility for the mortgage.

Grief and fear alternated as guests in my home, and when I began dating again, I swore I would someday write a book entitled, “Dates from Hell.” A few of them would have made hilarious Seinfeld episodes, and a couple were worthy of Stephen King.

Along with a few select friends, Calvin got me through much of this. Not the theologian and Reformer—my dog, of whom I had demanded custody. That’s how we came to encounter Hobbes on a walk in Grant Park.  Jealous Calvin wouldn’t let me near her, so I drove him home and returned with a leash and a collar, without thinking of bringing a treat to lure her.

I had become accustomed to seeing dogs loose in that park, without realizing that it was a dumping ground for unwanted pets. I had already found one dog and returned it to its owner, but other dogs were skittish or without tags, and I had long before decided to let them find their way home.

What was different about Hobbes was that she was repeatedly crossing an adjacent street, and I could not have borne it to find her body by the side of the road on a subsequent visit.

Upon my return to the park, I did not immediately see her, but some homeless men who had witnessed me approach her earlier waved me in her direction, deeper in the park. It was not lost on me that homeless men were helping find shelter for this homeless dog, and that our sympathies for the homeless are more frequently directed toward pets than people.

Without a snack to entice her, I simply sat on a slope near where she was roaming. She circled me until her circling brought her close enough to say hello and put on a collar. She did not resist, and I drove her home, carefully introducing her to Calvin.

I put up signs in the park’s neighborhood and contacted animal shelters, in case her owners were looking for her. She was never claimed, and by the first week I was already in love with her, dreading her owner might call.

Calvin, of course, had been named for the Reformer, but I gave Hobbes her name because she reminded me of the canny tiger in the comic strip, Calvin & Hobbes. Both were mixes that included golden retriever and Labrador, and though Calvin was larger, they looked like siblings. Initially Calvin was top dog, but Hobbes soon learned how to give him “what-for,” and may have proved to be the alpha dog.

The veterinarian gauged she must be about nine months of age and had not been spayed. I waited weeks, in case her owner appeared, but finally decided to have her “fixed,” as they say. I cried as I drove home after leaving her at the vet’s office for the procedure. Though I realized the necessity of it, I recognized the human hubris of having it done without her ability to make the choice. I was taking away something that might have delighted her: motherhood.

After a year of dating dangerously, even living dangerously, Calvin and Hobbes kept me tethered to home. They were both dating service (“Oh, aren’t they cute! What are their names?”) and editorial board (“No, not that one. Not kind enough. Probably won’t share the bed.”).

Then I met Wade (we joke that Hobbes was born out of wedlock), and though he was a bit overwhelmed by a man with two dogs, their love for him seconded my own. When I took a temporary position at MCC San Francisco, they kept me company in Wade’s absence. And, as Calvin had licked my face when my mother died, Hobbes comforted me when Calvin died.

My L.A. brother visited me in S.F. and told me how moving it was to witness Hobbes longingly watch me walk to the BART station in the distance and then return to that front window periodically to check if I were headed home. And now that I live with Wade, she was always looking for me, either from her ottoman beneath a front window, or by checking my office off our garage before heading upstairs. And, of course, she got loved on more than we do!

She was with us nearly sixteen years, and I can’t imagine what life will be like without her.

Thanks be to God, Hobbes found me!

Click here and scroll through other posts that mention Hobbes.

Hobbes wrote one post herself, “Hounds in Heaven.”

A post about Hobbes’ illness, “Misplaced Devotion?”

Hobbes made it onto the pages of The New York Times.

Hobbes awaiting my return in S.F.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Jeb vs. Francis

My heart and prayers go out to Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Today’s post was first published in The Huffington Post on Monday.

Just when I had concluded that Jeb Bush was the likely Republican nominee for president in 2016, he said something that dumbfounded me: 

I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope. And I’d like to see what [the pope] says as it relates to climate change and how that connects to these broader, deeper issues before I pass judgment. But I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.  (New York Times, June 17, 2015) 

“Religion ought to be about making us better as people” means to me that it makes us better voters, better legislators, better elected officials—all devising better policies as political actors, thus “getting in the political realm.”

“I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope” (and presumably his priest) makes me wonder who Jeb’s spiritual advisors are, then, and if Jesus and his teachings even count in his views on public policy.

I’m not saying this is true of Jeb Bush, but many Christians see Jesus and the church simply as their “Get-out-of-hell-free” card in a game of spiritual Monopoly, and view religion as concerned with personal morals rather than economic realities. That’s why they easily claim their religious values when it comes to opposing women’s reproductive rights and same-sex marriage.

But Jesus and his followers proclaimed a gospel that has as much to do with economic concerns as spiritual realities. In truth, conversion anticipated care for “the least of these.” Jesus admonished the one percent to “sell what you have and give to the poor” and, in the Lord’s Prayer no less, just after being given our daily bread, we are to forgive our debtors as God overlooks our own indebtedness. And in his proclamation of God’s in-breaking government, Jesus fed and healed the multitudes as he offered them spiritual wisdom.

As to Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on the environment and the disproportionate effects of human-caused climate change on the poor—this is not just religion speaking, but mainstream science as well.

In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway “reported that dubious tactics had been used over decades to cast doubt on scientific findings relating to subjects like acid rain, the ozone shield, tobacco smoke and climate change,” according to an article in The New York Times’ Science Times, “And most surprisingly in each case, the tactics were employed by the same group of people.” They followed the playbook of the tobacco industry in planting doubt about the conclusions of accepted scientific studies: 

The central players were serious scientists who had major career triumphs during the Cold War, but in subsequent years apparently came to equate environmentalism with socialism, and government regulation with tyranny. (New York Times, June 16, 2015) 

There may be a parallel in religion. That the encyclical was leaked before its planned release may suggest the work of similar “central players…who had career triumphs” who resent Pope Francis’s attempts at reform and wanted to embarrass him regarding his ability to manage the Vatican.

Political and religious conservatives claim the rights of religion in the marketplace of ideas and the public square. Why not support the same claim when religion and science come together to save the planet and its poor?

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

A few weeks ago I was stunned by a front page New York Times article headlined,
“1.5 Million Black Men, Missing from Daily Life.”

As troubling as the recent deaths of young black men at the hands of law enforcement have been, they serve as tragic examples of a larger trend of our own “disappeared,” reminiscent of “the disappeared” in the recent histories of Argentina and Chile. 

In New York, almost 120,000 black men between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia. Across the South—from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo.—hundreds of thousands are missing.

They are missing largely because of early deaths or because they are behind bars.

And, the article reports, among the cities with a minimum of 10,000 black citizens, Ferguson, Missouri “has the largest proportion of missing black men.”

So there are disproportionately more black women than black men, a gender gap not found in childhood (nor among whites), but one that widens among those in their 20s and 30s, according to the story. 

Though murders and AIDS deaths have diminished among black men since the 1990s, “rising numbers of black men spared an early death have been offset by rising numbers behind bars.” This does not reflect more crime, but rather, changes in law enforcement, prosecutions, and systemic injustices that have increased their incarceration.

“Where is your husband?” Jesus essentially asked the mixed-race woman at the well. Biblical interpreters have been quick to assign sexual shame to the Samaritan woman for having had five husbands and for living with a man who was not her husband, when it’s just as possible her history was the result of economic need, a high mortality rate, abandonment, and the deprivations caused by political subjugation and racial, religious, and gender prejudices.

No wonder she responded so enthusiastically to the good news Jesus offered.

During the ingathering of saints of the Presbyterian LGBT movement that I described a few weeks ago, my friend and colleague, the Rev. Dan Smith, made the observation that many of the men in our movement have also “disappeared” due to AIDS.

Those who once served as gay Christian role models are unknown to subsequent generations, even as they themselves were deprived of role models of earlier generations by a church that required closetedness and a culture which diminished and incarcerated “sodomites.” And, with the Samaritan woman, “the powers that be” assigned their fates to shameful behavior.

Referencing the Samaritan woman reminds me to add that women may be the most “disappeared” of all—not in real numbers, but in real attention.

I mentioned in the earlier post that LGBT achievement in terms of acceptance may be because we are “everywhere,” but women are also everywhere, and it doesn’t necessarily deter sexism or encourage their recognition and advancement. That Jesus would engage a mixed-race woman in one of the most meaningful spiritual conversations in the Gospels is significant.

Prejudice makes many “disappear,” whether from our radar or from our communities. Jesus could be said to have brought us to “mindfulness” of those overlooked or downright oppressed.

Jesus came for all “the disappeared.”

Also see: “Forcing Black Men Out of Society”

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Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers. This year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of 2015.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Wishful Thinking

Surprisingly, Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan has found in a recent study that beliefs about such things as evolution and global warming are not necessarily based on ignorance, but often on a knowledge of the scientific facts that is wilfully resisted because of a person’s political or religious identity and affiliation. In other words, engaging in what the economist Paul Krugman characterizes as “wishful thinking.”

I first found out about the study from New York Times columnist Krugman’s application of the principle to economics in “Belief, Facts, and Money.” Then I read the Times article by political scientist Brendan Nyhan that Krugman references about Kahan’s discoveries, “When Beliefs and Facts Collide.”

People may be current on the science of evolution and global warming, but because of their identities as evangelical Christians or conservative Republicans, they reject the science because it doesn’t fit their faith and values. Surveys indicate the gap between facts and beliefs are wider among those believers familiar with the facts, because, apparently, they know what facts to reject!

This explains so much.

In college, when I spoke out against the Vietnam War, from churches to Rotarian groups and Kiwanis clubs, I believed that if people knew the factual history of Vietnam from French colonialism to American involvement, they too would oppose the war. I produced a page-long summary of that history for distribution, certain that would convert my listeners.

What I found was that the historical facts didn’t matter to most, even when they supposed them to be true. “My country: Love it or Leave It,” was not just a bumper sticker to them, it was a belief system. And the myth of the Domino theory of how communism spread further undergirded support of American intervention.

In churches, when I spoke for the full welcome and inclusion of LGBT people, listeners resisted current biblical scholarship and contemporary scientific studies. John Boswell’s landmark tome Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and his subsequent Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, revealing that historically the church has not been of one mind on homosexual persons and relationships, did not convince those Christians most opposed to homosexuality, nor did it convince those gays and lesbians most opposed to the church. Indeed, Boswell told me that he had anticipated vigorous attacks on his work from the church, but not from the LGBT community!

Long after HIV was identified as the culprit causing AIDS, and long after it was proven that HIV could not be communicated by casual contact, a well-informed evangelical Christian friend of mine insisted that she believed it could be, thus warranting caution and quarantines. Today there are still myths held dearly around HIV/AIDS by those across the political spectrum and around the world in spite of exhaustive medical evidence that contradicts them.

Niehan writes, “One implication of Mr. Kahan’s study and other research in this field is that we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues” such as evolution and climate change.

Progressive Christians know about this process. We identify as Christian, but we don’t feel compelled to express our faith as “old time religion.” It’s vital that we out-evangelize our evangelical brothers and sisters by spreading the good news that Christians can be Christians without taking the Bible literally, without accepting doctrine without question and reason, without losing our minds or our hearts.

We too engage in “wishful thinking”: that all might honor human rights, hunger to know the truth, work agreeably with those with whom they differ, accept responsibility as careful stewards of the earth, and practice a vocation of compassion for all.

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Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

A Priest for the 21st Century

Though priest, sociologist, and novelist Andrew M. Greeley lived most of his life in the 20th century, he was ahead of his time in his vision of what the Roman Catholic Church is and what it could be, especially in the United States.

As a “renegade” Protestant, I valued his protests against hierarchy, elitism, corruption, and cover-ups, such as the one surrounding pedophile priests. I’m not aware of an equally prominent Protestant figure who parallels his brutal directness and public airing of dirty clerical laundry.

I did not always agree with him (who did?), but I often agreed with him, and I greatly appreciated the audacity with which he brought scientific study to religion as well as matters of faith to both academia and popular literature.

Peter Steinfels’ obituary in The New York Times and its subsequent editorial does him justice, but only Greeley’s own writings can offer a full explanation of his life and times. Steinfels correctly summarizes his work: 

If there was anything tying Father Greeley’s torrent of printed words together, it was a respect for what he considered the practical wisdom and religious experience of ordinary believers and an exasperation with elites, whether popes, bishops, church reformers, political radicals, secular academics or literary critics.

 AMEN!

And then: 

Before religion became creed or catechism, he said, it was poetry: images and stories that defy death with glimpses of hope, and with moments of life-renewing experience that were shared and enacted in community rituals.

 For me, too, it all begins with poetry, images, and stories… 

“The theological voice wants doctrines, creeds and moral obligations,” Father Greeley wrote. “I reject none of these, I merely insist that experiences which renew hope are prior to and richer than propositional and ethical religion and provide the raw power for them.”

Preach it, brother! This is not far from my Baptist upbringing that taught me that personal experience is crucial to one’s faith. In my own struggle with the Presbyterian (and broader) church, it was such experience that prompted many Christians to question the church’s attitudes toward LGBT people, while opponents decried and denied personal experience as having moral or spiritual authority. And experience collected, organized, and evaluated, as a sociologist like Greeley did, is science.

Given our own “renegade” status as progressive Christians, our spiritual grounding is strengthened by poetry, images, stories, and experience—the stuff of reflection and contemplation.

Rev. Greeley was careful not to say or do anything that might prompt his silencing by authorities. If he were really free to speak, I wonder what else he might have said.

Posts from this blog that reference Father Greeley:

I Wanted to Be Famous

Paradise Lost and Paradise Found

Put Yourself in the Nativity Story

Et II, Benedict?

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. 

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It's a Small, Small World

“Most of the time we can forget the universe, frankly,” said Stephen Baxter, president of the British Science Fiction Association and the author of books like Space and Last and First Contacts. “But today, there was ‘a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down,’ to quote David Bowie. It reminds us of our true location, so to speak.”

This comes from a New York Times article by John Williams about last week’s meteor explosion over Russia. Referring to the 1908 Tungusta Event in which a passing asteroid flattened a large area of Siberia, fiction writer Tom Bissell was also quoted as saying, “Can you imagine that happening above a major metropolitan area? It would either fill the churches or empty the churches.”

Most of us live in our own little worlds, living and moving and having our being as if not surrounded by and immersed in an ocean, not just of stars, but of galaxies. Earth is the proverbial grain of sand in multiple quadzillions of miles of a metaphorical cosmic shoreline.  And, if the universe is infinite, probability theorists tell us there is another planet not just with life, but specifically with you, [insert your name], and me. The late television series Fringe was not so “fringey” after all.

Location, location, location! The mantra of real estate agents should be our own to gain perspective on our own pet peeves, Washington dysfunction, and Middle East tensions, to name a few examples. Repeatedly the Psalmist got this, as did the writer of Job and the Hebrew prophets, including Jesus. We sometimes get it too when observing the beauty of a clear night sky, enduring suffering or suffering catastrophes, falling in love or giving birth—all opportunities for Bowie’s “crack in the sky” through which we may reach for the hand of God.

When religion no longer opens the sky for us, it is no longer useful in the spiritual quest. Then science or poetry or nature or art or life events may step in to save us from closed hearts, closed minds, and closed church doors.

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.

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New weekly feature! Last week’s “top ten” most visited posts inspired me to highlight two previous posts each week that you may have missed. Click on each title to read:

Dolphins and Sharks

Hang-Gliding and Mudwrestling: The Spiritual Life

A Theory of Everything

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

One night I dreamed I was at a scientific conference explaining a theory of everything. I knew the answer, and on the podium in front of me were three reports that verified the scientific data that, integrated, revealed the theory. What I discovered in my dream was that, though I knew the answer, I could not explain it. Nor could I prove it.

The next morning I read in The New York Times that a scientific test may have revealed though not proven the existence of dark matter, as well as “the first evidence of a new feature of nature” that could bolster visions like string theory that could “unify all of the forces of nature into one mathematical expression”—in other words, a theory of everything! 

Dennis Overbye wrote, “A wide range of astrophysical and cosmological measurements have subsequently converged on an intimidating recipe for the cosmos of 4 percent atoms, 25 percent dark matter and 70 percent a mysterious energy that has been called dark energy and has nothing to do with” dark matter.

What that says to me is that we are only seeing with our eyes the manifestation of 4 percent of what’s here, the 4 percent of the universe that consists of atoms. We can’t see the 25 percent that is dark matter, or the 70 percent that is dark energy holding it all together.

Now this is a vision as wondrous, as amazing, as unbelievable as anything in scripture. Last week I wrote of visionaries, artists, poets, children, and mystics having the ability to see things “as if for the first time.” I wanted to add scientists and engineers as well, but then I began to see that all vocations, when inspired, could be listed. A teacher, for example, improves her ability to teach when discerning fresh ways for children to learn.

Jesus was a teacher like that. He taught Judaism in a fresh way so that even us Gentiles could get it! And his “theory of everything” was love.  

We've Got the Whole World in Our Hands

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

During recess in the second grade, my friend Mary and I enjoyed swinging as high as we could on the swing set, singing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” It’s a great song of comfort, basically affirming that, no matter what, God is holding us. Note the song doesn’t say God is in control, just that God is there for us. And I still believe that.

These days we have a better grip on what it means for God to hold the whole world because we have the internet and a 24/7 news cycle. Now we too have the whole world in our hands every time we log on.

The narrator in my as-yet-unpublished mystery novel so reveres the internet that, just as many of us only visit God on Sunday mornings, he only visits the internet on Saturday mornings. Comparing it to touching the forbidden Mt. Sinai, he drolly writes:

The internet is such an awesome god—so extensive we can only glimpse a part of it, so powerful that it has crashed many a computer, so desirous that many humans and their marriages have been sacrificed on its local altars. Okay, I’m a little over the top here, but it’s an amusing analogy, don’t you think? My point is, like any powerful and overwhelming god, the internet must be approached guardedly, with respect, on appointed days and at appointed times, lest we take it for granted (as if our computers are always up) or believe we can domesticate it (making it entirely user-friendly). Just as the ancient monastics limited human intercourse of all kinds, even so, those of us who practice an ascetic lifestyle must limit our intercourse with the internet, lest it lead us into idolatry or distract us from reality. To switch mythological metaphors, the internet is the Medusa’s head of our time, a face whose tresses are cables rather than snakes, but still able to turn men to stone.

Demonstrating a similar reverence, only recently has my spell-check stopped correcting me when I fail to capitalize the word “internet,” though it never corrects me when I fail to capitalize “god”!

A retreat leader once scandalized my progressive theology—you know, the theology that tells you to have the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other during your morning prayers—by observing that the omnipresent news cycle hooks us in other people’s stories before we know our own story for the day. And, during a retreat I was leading on finding space in our busy lives to rest in God, a woman had the “aha” moment that she was busy even in her prayers, listing the world’s concerns, as if the whole world were not already in God’s hands!

Now more than ever, we have the whole world in our hands. And more than ever, we need to step back, take a breath, take moments of Sabbath rest, and resist the temptation to use Eden’s apple or the Silicon Valley’s Apple to be like the gods.

Yet we are not absolved of responsibility. Now, also more than ever, the internet gives what we do and say the power to transform the world for good or for ill.

We’ve got the whole world in our hands. If we are God’s, then that should be a comfort rather than a concern.