Justa!

“Justa, Justa. Come quickly.”

I was working quietly in my new home office here in Portland this morning when Bishop Ken interrupted, as he has a habit of doing, by calling to me imperiously from the other world. [For those of you who missed last week's post, Bishop Thomas Ken was active in Britain in the 17th century; he has begun to visit me, Deacon Ken, from the beyond, attracted, I believe, by the similarity of our names. A friend wondered if the bishop speaks to me from the radiator. He does not. He speaks to me as all bishops do, out of nowhere and in a loud voice.]

“I’ve told you, my name is Ken,” I said.

“No, no,” he chortled. “Justa. As in, Justa Deacon.” He laughed uproariously. “S'blood, I crack me up.”

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Did I ever tell you about how I refused to allow the King to park his trollop, Nell Gwyn, in my residence? You see, I was Royal Chaplain to King Charles and he thought maybe he could hide his mistress in my apartments and escape notice. Well, I can tell you I wasted no time in sending His Royal Highness a pretty sharp rebuke.”

“I’ve read about it. Very courageous of you.”

“But did you hear what I wrote? ‘The Royal Chaplain shall not double as the Royal Pimp.’ Pretty good, eh what? Anyway, that is how I came to be appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells. The King reportedly declared—I have this on the highest authority—‘None shall have this bishopric save that little man who refused lodging to poor Nellie!’ And when he died, the King that is, it was I he summoned to be with him at the end. Not that I’m actually such a little man, mind you.”

“That’s great,” I said, putting a Charlie Parker disc on the Bose. “But no one cares about King Charles and his mistress anymore. The church has more important matters to attend to than who’s sleeping with whom.”

“Ah,” Bishop Ken sighed. “I could have been executed for my stance. For what are your bishops prepared to die?”

“Church property and pensions.”

There was a knowing silence from the other world.

“Oh, dear, Justa. I’ve run out of tobacco. Be a good lad, will you, and fetch some for me.”

I turned up the volume on “Salt Peanuts.”

Bishop Ken Speaks

It has come to my attention that the author of this blog, whatever that may be, hath written calumnies against the Church, and yet being a deacon hath not attached himself as he should to a Bishop upon whom he may rely for counsel. I, Bishop Ken, have offered myself in Christian Charitie to tutor this wayward deacon in the ways of his calling. I may therefore on occasion intercede for him here and correct his lack of knowledge (but he being but a deacon is not charged to know anything but rather to do as he is told).

First, it is to be acknowledged that my half-brother-in-law, Izaak Walton, angler of some fame, who with my half-sister Anne did rear me from my birth in 1637, has informed me of Deacon Ken’s prowess as a fisherman, a sport of dignity, which alas I never learned from Mr. Walton. I know not what became of my natural parents. Nonetheless, it is a good thing to spend time in the country among rivers and the fishes and I commend the deacon for his attention to God’s creation.

However, and second, the goodly deacon, as I understand his wife Constance is prone to call him, for reasons unclear, has on occasion spoken sharply to bishops, admonishing them in their behavior. I hereby order him, in love and charitie, as his new bishop father in Christ, to desist from such speaking. The bishop is the sole keeper of the Word and it is his office to admonish, not the deacon’s. The deacon's office is to be admonished.

Deacon, I command you to attend upon me in the morning with my tea and toast and prepare to dress me for the Lord’s service, after which you may eat and take communion to the poor and sicke, whilst I attend to higher things.

Hold it, Bishop. I just want to point out that you challenged the king in the matter of the Declaration of Indulgence and were imprisoned in the Tower of London. And then refused to take an oath to William and Mary and were relieved of your office as a result. Like you, I think that there are times when leaders in the church have to speak out against those who abuse their power. For example, we have a regime in this country that tortures prisoners, denies health care to children, murders the innocent citizens of other countries, lies to its citizens, deports and mistreats the strangers in our midst....

Ah, Deacon Ken, it is true that on occasion one must refuse illegitimate power. In telling me, your bishop, of these terrible acts, you are doing your diaconal--and indeed Christian--duty. I commend you for it. What benighted country is this that you speak of? Its leaders are behaving shamefully if what you say is true. Perhaps you could tell me the name of church leaders to whom I could speak about these deplorable conditions. I wonder that they, your bishops, are silent on these matters. They too, by their inaction, abuse their authority.

Cycling to St. Paul

Last Friday, I went cycling with Mark, a new friend here in Portland. He drove us to Champoeg Park (pronounced “shampoo-ee.”) twenty miles or so out of the city. Because I don’t have a car, I bike mostly in and around the city, which has miles of paths and bike lanes. It was good to get out and see some of the Oregon country, which is flat where we were riding. Along the road were fields planted with firs of various sorts, mostly Christmas trees, I think, and a couple of large hickory nut groves (around here, the nuts are called filberts). The nuts turn up in creative restaurant dishes around town. You can buy them fresh in the open air markets. The nuts were lying on the ground along the road we were traveling.

We decided to go to St. Paul, a town that hosts a somewhat famous rodeo on July 4th. The town itself is not much. Not far from the Willamette River, which also flows through Portland, it is a Roman Catholic hot spot. The church is located centrally—and I did not see any other denominations represented there, just the brick RC Church and the high school, also Catholic. Street names like Mission Road, Convent Avenue, Church Avenue gave away its identity. We rode into town by the church and out again into the countryside, noting on the way a couple of coffee shops we might visit. We decided on Banker’s Cup, which had a porch and pretty good coffee. Mark and I sat on the porch, looking across the parking lot at a couple of sheds that stored farm equipment (or something else, I couldn’t tell what). On the side of one of the sheds was an old billboard advertising the rodeo. On the bumper of an SUV in the parking lot was a sign reading: “You can’t be Catholic and pro-choice.”

“I told you it’s a Catholic town,” Mark said.

The sky is wide open in Oregon and out there on the plain you could see its great expanse. There were some puffy clouds behind the sheds. Not much was happening and we were happy to sit there drinking coffee.

Mark told me he had been raised Catholic but by the time he was twelve or thirteen he and his friends had figured out that the religion was essentially bogus, even as they went through the motions. When they skipped religious classes, they spent a lot of their time talking about the “theology” of avoiding the priests and their increasingly doubtful view of reality. They understood, he said, that it all rested on the veracity of the priests, whom they knew to be untrustworthy. Once their authority was in question, the rest of the infrastructure fell with them, all the way up to the Pope. He was talking as much about Christianity in general as Catholicism in particular.

I said that, indicating the expansive sky and clouds in front of us, many people I know in the church would talk about the beauty of God’s creation and describe how their emotions reflected God’s call to them from and as part of that creation. Mark responded that he saw the natural world as it is, and that is good enough.

Knowing that I am ordained in the Episcopal Church, I think Mark was curious to know how I would respond. And basically I had to agree with him. These days, when I look at the world I do not see a deity, nor do I hear a deity’s call to creation. What Mark had abandoned was a belief system—Christianity’s doctrines—that no longer reflected what he saw around him or what he experienced. And the argument for abandoning the system is a strong one.

I think a lot of people feel the same way. The Christian creedal world does not speak to them, except as a framework for control or denial, and they want none of it. Around here, in Portland, I’m told that about ten percent of the population attends church.

“People want meaning,” I said. “The church for the most part doesn’t give them a sense of meaning. It explains nothing. If the church is going to survive, it needs to figure out how to do that again.”

I still have an interest in the church's survival, but it's a hard position to maintain.

For me, the natural world has meaning, but it isn’t Christian meaning. The Buddhist explanation of reality resonates more strongly with me these days, but there is something missing there too. Its explanation of the origins of things makes more sense—all arising in mutual dependency out of the void—and its rejection of a theistic deity also sounds right. But that does not answer the twenty-first century yearning for meaning, which for most people is found more often in the company of another, whether a friend or a family member or a lover, or in a book or in music.

We had a good ride. On the way back we talked about some books we both like, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and the fiction of Haruki Murakami, for example. Sunday morning we plan to ride again, this time along the Columbia River.

New Church, True Church

I understand that the dissident Episcopal Churches meeting in Pittsburgh last week intend to move forward with the formation of an institution reflecting a “more unified orthodox Anglicanism in North America,” now that the House of Bishops has failed to accede to the demands of the Anglican Primates A joint statement from the Anglican Communion Network affirmed: “We, with others gathered in Pittsburgh for the Common Cause Council of Bishops, are committed to remaining within biblical Christianity even as The Episcopal Church once again has chosen to continue on its own tragic course.”

Good idea. I know that the leaders of the Episcopal Church are trying to keep the dissidents from leaving by creating special arrangements for Episcopal visitations and so forth, but I think that the church should encourage those who disagree with the direction the church has taken to leave. This position is contrary to the long-cherished Anglican desire to keep everyone together by following, as a church, the middle road, the way of compromise. The problem is that the differences between those who believe that the Episcopal Church is on the right path and those who disagree reflect completely different religious perspectives.

The dissidents espouse a faith based on the notion of a Sky God who hands down immutable laws, found in the Christian Bible, to priests and bishops who are authorized to speak authoritatively for this God. The myth on which their faith is built describes the sacrifice of this God’s son for the salvation of sinners, who may receive this grace by repenting of their sins (as described in the above-noted immutable laws) and returning to righteous ways (as described by the above-identified priests and bishops).

The Episcopal Church opposed by these dissidents actually believes pretty much the same thing when it comes to official doctrine (see, for example, the Nicene Creed), but is nonetheless struggling with the idea that a church might be born that is about a path of spiritual maturity following the way of Christ as opposed to a set of orthodox beliefs required for admission to heaven. The House of Bishops made statements opposing the war in Iraq and racism (good, good), as well as affirming its support for justice and dignity for gays and lesbians (very good).

These two branches of the Anglican Communion are not speaking the same theological language. Two churches are already in place. Why not allow them to be formally established? Some suggest that this approach does not reflect Christian virtues of love and community. But on the contrary, we Christians have always found our way along the path of Christ by stepping out of the existing institutional structures. The reformation must be ongoing or the church will simply whither and die. I believe that the Episcopal Church that seeks justice for gays and lesbians is going in the right direction, but I do not want to stand in the way of those, like Robert Duncan, who believe otherwise. We should support his and his fellow orthodox believers in finding the way back to their true faith.

Trumping the Gospel

Last week, an estimated 60,000 people descended on Jena, Louisiana, to protest the unequal treatment before the law of whites and blacks in that town. Mykal Bell, a black seventeen-year-old, had been tried as an adult for attempted murder; his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. But Bell remains in jail. Who knows why. Oh, yes, he’s black. Dangerous. More dangerous than the white boys who hung nooses on their tree in the school yard as a warning to blacks who sat under it.

Earlier in the summer, I wrote about this case, at a time when little attention was being paid. Last week, the plight of these young men was all over the news. The media finally woke up to what was happening in Louisiana (not my doing but the work of many others). The church remains asleep, as events in another part of Louisiana demonstrate.

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church happened to begin their semi-annual meeting in New Orleans last week just before the protesters arrived in Jena from all over the country. Before the bishops is the earth-shattering question of how they should respond to an ultimatum from the rest of the Anglican Communion that could result in a split between the Episcopal Church and the others. Readers of this blog know that the issue revolves around whether homosexuals can be bishops and whether they can be sexual as priests and bishops and whether they can be married. Yawn.

A couple of days after the Jena Six protest the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, preached at a Eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans that included the blessing of the hand-built "Elysian Trumpet," dedicated to the memory of all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield played "Amazing Grace" on the it. I do not doubt that this event was moving and appropriate to memorialize the victims of Hurricane Katrina (or, rather, the victims of governmental incompetence, beginning with the inadequate attention given to levees affecting the African-Americans living in the Ninth Ward and continuing with federal mismanagement of the aftermath--but that wasn't mentioned).

So far as I can tell, no bishops joined the Jena protest. They were in church.

The issue before the Episcopal Church is whether it will continue to be a church of hierarchy and privilege. That is what is really at stake in Louisiana. A new church might come into being, one that is wholly inclusive and one that is marked not by meetings of men and women in fancy clothes counting angels on the head of a pin, but rather by men and women who go to places like Jena and put their bodies on the line for justice. (I note that the bishops did put on work clothes and build houses or something like that. There were a lot of photos taken. Praise them in their plaid shirts and blue jeans, praise them for their hammers, the nails....)

Be not afraid, however, the old church is firmly in command, according to dispatches from Louisiana. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who came to listen, rejoices that the bishops are “passionate” about the Anglican Communion. Passionate. Bishop Katharine spoke passionately and eloquently about “trumpeting the Gospel” in her sermon. She imagined an inclusive procession of all God's people (going I'm not sure where). It really was good, beautifully written. Hearts beat faster as she preached. But as usual it was mostly talk--sound and fury, signifying nothing. The church at its best in ceremonial display and eloquence.

The real split the bishops should be concerned about is the one that is already killing the Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the Christian Churches: the split between those who are tired of what one writer called “the narcissism of small differences” and the clueless who are parsing doctrine in Louisiana this week.

The Gospel is being trumped, not trumpeted.

Water in the Desert

Last Friday evening, I was sitting at a bar in the Ramada Plaza Hotel at JFK Airport in New York, eating my fish and chips, as the Lou Dobbs nightly program began. Some of you may know that Lou Dobbs has been especially tenacious about the “problem” of illegal immigrants (especially those pesky Mexicans) in the US. Dobbs himself was away, but his substitute (whose name I missed, but she’s also a regular) continued to read from the same script. She decried the renewed efforts by those pernicious Democrats to resurrect the “amnesty” proposals that have already been twice rejected by congress. “When,” she wanted to know, “will they understand and abide by the will of the people?” The Russian woman behind the bar brought me a glass of Cabernet.

Well, I don’t know about the will of the people. In this administration, and in some media environments, it is hard to separate information from manipulation. But clearly the attempt to demonize immigrants and particularly Hispanics, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is going forward. Migrant workers from Mexico are an easy target, as are “towel heads” and other undesirables. It has been a part of our history since its beginnings, that the foreigners are the cause of our problems. Never mind that we are all foreigners.

I referred in my last blog entry to a migrant workers’ aid program in Arizona supported by my aunt’s congregation, First Christian Church in Tucson. The program is called Humane Borders. Its ministry is to migrant workers crossing the desert from Mexico into the US who do not have food or water for the journey. Many of them die. Humane Borders maintains water stations in the desert, presently over eighty of them, with the help of 8,000 volunteers. The program has been underway since 2000.

Humane Borders also advocates for legislative change. There are six actions the group recommends (see their website, www.humaneborders.org for information on the group and its work): (1) legalize the undocumented now living and working in the US; (2) begin a responsible guest worker program by issuing work visas directly to migrants so that they are not tied to any one employer or sector of the economy and allow workers to be organized; (3) increase the number of visas for Mexican nationals; (4) demilitarize the border; (5) support economic development in Mexico; (6) provide federal aid for local medical service providers, law enforcement and adjudication, land owners and managers.

The program Humane Borders recommends sounds like a reasonable one to me, more so that the Dobbs approach, which is to nail up the doors and windows. This xenophobic reaction is increasingly common in this country. One of the Humane Borders workers, Sr. Elizabeth (a Franciscan, I believe), was in Minnesota for the summer. Speaking to the media while she was there, she described her work as ministering to Jesus in the desert. The group’s newsletter, “Desert Fountain,” remarks: “You’d have thought she was giving guns to terrorists. . . . In a matter of days, over 500 emails were compiled by the St. Cloud newspaper.” The emails did not applaud the analogy or her ministry.

Take a look at what Humane Borders is doing. It is a worthwhile model for faith-based action, prophetic and sustainable.

Next week I will talk about the New Sanctuary Movement, which is aimed at supported immigrants facing deportation. It too is prophetic and essential, but a lot more dangerous. You don't have to ask Lou Dobbs what he thinks of either of these responses to the reality (not the problem) of human need among migrant workers and immigrants.

Meanwhile, I note that the Episcopal Church House of Bishops meeting begins September 20. Apparently the most important question on the agenda has to do with how the church will respond to demands from the "traditionalists" in the Anglican Communion that it become less inclusive and adhere to myth-based doctrines forbidding sexual relations between people, or perhaps even animals, of the same gender. What is there to discuss?

One group of Christians is giving water to people in the desert. Another is consumed with its own existence as an institution. How sad for the Episcopal Church. Perhaps Humane Borders can show the Episcopalians where to find living water before they (we) die of thirst in the desert.

The Big Three

Three issues are occupying my attention right now. Perhaps they are important to you too. One of my goals for the month is to become more engaged in each of them in some way.

The first and most immediately pressing is the war in Iraq. On the weekend we saw a movie I commend to all of you: No End in Sight. It is a documentary that explains clearly (and for me for the first time) how policy decisions in Washington and the Green Zone led to the insurgency and our almost certain defeat in Iraq. It is a compelling and horrifying film. Despite the continuing chaos and government floundering (and I include here the Democrats as well), too many Americans are silent. The churches are virtually comatose. There is a vote coming in Congress about the future of the war that will be based on the success of the so-called “surge”—escalation by any other name—which has clearly not been successful in bringing about political stability. I am joining with PDX Peace, a Portland-based group, to apply pressure on local senators and representatives in a series of Wednesday vigils to collect signatures opposing the continuation of the war. Please be in touch with your own congressional delegations. The lack of pressure from the public is translated by government officials as support for the status quo.

The second is an issue that I have discussed before: sex trafficking, particularly in the United States. There is an article by Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times that talks specifically about the situation in Las Vegas, where the sex trade is booming under the leadership (if that word applies here) of the present mayor, Oscar Goodman. Herbert describes the situation facing teenagers, some as young as fourteen, who engage in prostitution at widely advertised sex clubs. When I was in Vegas three years ago for a meeting of the National Episcopal Council of Clergy Associations, hosted by the bishop of Nevada, Katherine Jefferts-Shori (now the Presiding Bishop of the church), I saw the billboards hauled by pickups through the streets advertising the services of young women who could be delivered to your hotel room. Although prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, the mayor would like to make it so. Meanwhile, the sex trafficking business is alive and well in the city. It is hard to know what to do about this situation since the sex trade is a routine part of our cultural life. We ignore it and the impact it has on young people. I know it must be part of the Portland, Oregon, landscape: we have more strip joints per capita than any other city in the country. And therefore I assume young boys and girls are being trafficked through here. After all, the city is a major international port. I wonder if the Presiding Bishop might like to return to Las Vegas and make a public statement about the sex trafficking business there. I’m sure she knows Mayor Goodman. Maybe a lot of us would be willing to go with her. Meanwhile, I’m sending this blog to Bishop Itty here in Portland asking if he’d like put together a group to tour some sex clubs to see about how many dancers are under age.

Third, the situation for illegal immigrants—and legal immigrants—is growing worse. When some young people were executed in Newark, New Jersey, not too long ago, a couple of the killers turned out to be of Hispanic origin. I thought at the time that some politician would use that information to suggest that Hispanics are dangerous. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. There is a modest sanctuary movement growing in the country among churches that are concerned that the Hispanics will be targeted next as the newest cause of all American ills. It appears that some Republican candidates for President are already talking about the immigration issue in terms previously used by Bush the First when he abducted the image of Willie Horton to race bait the country. My aunt is a minister in the Disciples of Christ Church in Arizona, and her congregation is engaged in a simple ministry, providing water to immigrants as they make their way across the desert. What might other churches do to support the men and women who do so much of the work that supports our social structure as they come increasingly under attack by the government? I don’t have an answer.

I offer these issues as those of primary importance to me right now. Naturally, I hope that some of you are working on them and perhaps have some ideas to pass along about what we might do to end the war, end sex trafficking, and end discrimination against Hispanic immigrants. Perhaps you could also share with us what is of deepest concern to you. The question is what we do to make a difference as individuals and as members of faith or action communities. Prayer is good, of course. Now what?