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Table of Contents - August 2001
Listen to the Angels
On a dark, cold winter night above Shepherd’s Field just north of Bethlehem, a chorus of angels sang the first Christmas cantata: “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace among those with whom God is pleased” (Luke 2:14). Every Christmas we too sing the message. We too pray for peace, work for peace, and believe that “peace on earth” is possible. We are not naïve. Evil is ever present—we know that! Yes,
there will always be “wars and rumors of wars”—Jesus warned of that (Mt. 24:6).
Yet we still believe the ancient chorus of the angels, that peace on earth—not in
heaven, but on earth—is
possible. The shepherds hurried to see the Messiah, the One Isaiah had foretold
to be the “Prince of Peace” (9:6). They believed the angels. Do we? Hope for Peace in Northern Ireland
It
is easy to become discouraged over the prospects of peace in Northern Ireland
in light of the recent resignation of David Trimble, the Nobel Prize winner and
voice for moderation in the peace talks. He resigned as Premier of the
government at the Storemont, the seat of indigenous government in Northern
Ireland, because of the failure of Sinn Fein to get the IRA to keep its promise
to disarm. This was one of the conditions that was written into the Good Friday
Peace Accord drawn up between the warring parties under the guiding hand of
President Bill Clinton. Just prior to Trimble’s resignation an election in the
United Kingdom increased the representation both in Westminster and at Storemont
of those who represented the political right who are opposed to the Peace
Accord. Collectively, these events have created a sense of gloom for those who
want peace in that troubled part of the world.
Religion And The World Crisis
In recent years we have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of freedom in our world. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down and with it the collapse of Soviet Communism. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, breaking the iron grip of apartheid in South Africa. With a couple of symbolic handshakes, first by Begin and Sadat, then by Rabin and Arafat, it seemed that intractable hostilities between Jews and Arabs might finally abate. As the half-century Cold War began to thaw, America relished the prospect of a "peace dividend" that would usher in a new era of unrivaled prosperity. But
before these millennial expectations could be fulfilled, an ominous new threat
arose which foreshadows a civilizational clash of global proportions.[1]
Each of its three defining moments launched a decade: First was the 1979-80
hostage crisis in Iran which all of our diplomatic and military might proved
impotent to solve. Then came the 1990-91 Gulf War which, despite the success of
Operation Desert Storm, left Saddam Hussein as entrenched as ever in Iraq. And
now we reel from the terrorist attack of 2001 upon our own citadels of commerce
and government, which we seemed helpless to anticipate or prevent. In all three
instances, a fanatic fringe of Islam with roots in the Middle East has been able
to hold hostage our long-deferred dream of universal peace After September
11© In the terrible terrorist attacks of September 11, thousands of our fellow citizens were buried under the rubble. The rest of us have been buried under the rubble of words that followed. It is hard to criticize such words; all of us utter trivial platitudes in moments when events simply exceed our capacity for reflection and insight. Some words are always appropriate—prayers, for example, for those who have suffered most directly from the attacks. But I confess that, apart from such prayers, I have not been much helped by most of the Christian talk I have heard. Much of it, indeed, has seemed strangely irrelevant, as if we have lost the capacity to bring our theological talk into any serious relation with the world we inhabit. This seeming irrelevance may—as I hope—reflect nothing more than my own narrow range of experience, but there are things Christians ought to say that I myself have not much heard. Each of these points is complicated and arguable. I do not attempt to sort out all their complications here, and I may not have articulated them in the best possible way, but I would be helped by hearing them discussed.
First,
Christians should care about justice. In our eagerness to understand what might
have motivated Islamic terrorists, in our quite proper desire to remind
ourselves that vengeance has been taken out of our private hands (because
reserved for God!), we dare not lose the language of justice. What we have
experienced is not a tragedy; it is different from the devastation brought by
earthquake or flood. When innocent people are killed—and killed deliberately, as
is the point of terrorism—those who are guilty ought to be punished. And civil
authorities exist by God’s providential ordering both to protect their citizens
against such attacks in the future and to serve as the agent of God’s punitive
justice. Quarreling With
God God so barely is taken seriously on television that it came as a shock when President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing orders his Secret Service detail to block all entrances to the National Cathedral so that he might have a little one-on-one with the Lord. The president wants to talk about divine justice following the funeral of his longtime friend and personal assistant. Mrs. Landingham, killed when her car was hit by a drunken driver. The day has not gone well for Bartlet. The American embassy in Haiti is under siege. The country is about to learn that their president has multiple sclerosis, a fact he kept from voters at election time; his party doesn’t want him to run for reelection; and his enemies are calling for a special prosecutor to see if he violated any laws by keeping his illness from the public. Then, just when he needs her the most, Mrs. Landingham is taken from him. In a flashback to 1960, we
see the emerging relationship between Bartlet, the prep school student, and
Landingham, the school’s administrative assistant. She recognizes his promise
and sees through his defensive shield and his effort to avoid confrontation with
his father, the headmaster, who, as she later tells him, “is a prick.”
The
Christian Tradition on War and Peace:
The shocking and horrifying terrorist attacks of September 11, and current US mobilization for what appears to be an imminent military response, raise the perennial issue of the Christian stance on issues of war and peace. This is not only a fascinating historical moment, and a tragic human moment, but an instructive ethical moment—an opportunity to think deeply, to think christianly, about the most pressing issue of our day.
We need
to think deeply, and christianly, about two things: the shape of Christian moral
convictions about war-fighting and peace-making, and the methodological issue of
how we decide what those convictions will be. So this article is an exercise not
just in articulating Christian moral norms, but also being self-conscious in
reflecting on the methodology by which we arrive at such norms. Updated Sunday, February 06, 2005 |
Miss Lillian Sees Leprosy for the First Time
Starting Over
Judy decided early in life that God was calling her to be a pastor’s wife. This, among other things, qualified me to be her husband and we were married in 1956. She loved her role as pastor’s wife because it gave her an opportunity to listen to people and help them with their problems. She was the kind of person people were drawn to and felt safe with. When I left the ministry ten years later, this created a vacuum for Judy. It was not filled until, at age 40, she entered graduate school at the University of Texas. Judy was so excited about her new career it effected the whole family. We were all proud of her determination to develop a career of her own. In a “tongue and cheek” ceremony she asked me and the three children to come into the kitchen. “You see that big white
thing? It’s called a refrigerator. For the next three years I’m going back to
school. If you want something to eat during that time, look in the refrigerator.
If you find something to eat, you can have it. If you don’t, figure out how to
do without it.” Shame and Guilt In Religious
Fundamentalism There have been various fundamentalist movements in American Protestantism in the 20th century. Baptists north and south, Presbyterians, and Lutherans have all been stung by fundamentalist controversies. In some cases, the conflict appeared to begin with the issue of biblical infallibility or inerrancy. It then became apparent to the leaders of the fundamentalist parties that seminaries would have to be brought in line with a more conservative fundamentalist orthodoxy. While the purging of academic institutions and denominational agencies happened with varying intensity, it was apparent to the leadership that a rigid purification of perceived liberalism was necessary. What drives the need for rule-bound rigidity, purification, and the all-sufficiency of a perceived source of orthodox authority (in these cases an inerrant application of the Holy Bible)? Is it possible that at least a part of the answer lay in the shame-bound behavior of fundamentalist believers and leaders? .... For our purposes,
fundamentalism may be defined as a
religious movement that seeks to militantly defend orthodoxy against the
incursions of modernity. These intrusions may be about shifting interpretations
of holy writings, changing ethical values in the native culture, or the
complicated anxiety that accompanies intense and rapid social change. Those
defining both orthodoxy and what is considered modern threats are almost always
males. Fundamentalist leaders work to be in positions of leadership in large
influential churches, denominational agencies, and publishing arms. In effect,
these leaders position themselves so that they can determine orthodoxy by
governing information flow. These same leaders then defend these accepted
beliefs by attacking those outside the doctrinal box they construct. This is
contemporary patriarchal fundamentalism.
Book Review by Jeph Holloway,
A
Kinder, Gentler Hauerwas A fruitful way of reading Stanley Hauerwas’ latest rendering, A Better Hope,[1] is to read it as a statement concerning the present state of the discipline of Christian Ethics—as an analysis of the discipline’s dominant character and an account of what it would mean if it embraced its genuinely theological dimensions. In other words, A Better Hope gives clear indication of what Hauerwas thinks is wrong with how Christian Ethics is usually “done,” and what it would take for it to be done rightly. To be fair, Hauerwas
would want the “what it would take for it to be done rightly” aspect to bear the
emphasis. He confesses himself, though, that the reader will not find here a
“kinder, gentler Hauerwas . . . . A Better
Hope is not without polemics” (10). Hauerwas is still “mad as hell,”
particularly with Christians (including himself) who, for the sake of a voice in
the public arena, make common cause with those features of our present context
that are actually enemies of the faith: capitalism, democracy, and postmodernity.
But his overarching concern is to provide for both the church and the world a
better hope, by once again reminding the church of its distinctive calling.
Embracing this distinctive calling requires reliance on the truth that
Christians have available “resources for resisting the powers that threaten ours
lives as Christians” (10). Book Review by Darold H. Morgan The Last Days
Charles Marsh is a professor of religion at the University of Virginia. He is also the only child of a well-known Baptist preacher who pastored the largest and most influential church in Laurel, Mississippi, when the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties hit that part of the nation with an intensity of unparalleled proportions. Marsh writes with keen insight and perception. His account turns out to be a volume of rare value, which documents the struggles and conflicts of many people who are caught up in a drama of profound paradox between “Old South” racism and a basic Christian resolve somehow to “do the right thing.” It is an intensely
personal account, which does not descend into a maudlin self-sympathy. The
result is a genuinely moving account from an extraordinary perspective of a
pastor’s effort to practice genuine Christian ethics in an area and time when
racism was so deeply engrained that the biblical issues were all but muted and
misunderstood. A product of his times and culture, Marsh’s father grappled
honestly but inadequately with these incredible pressures. And obviously, he was
far from being alone in that quandary.
Sounds of the Season The sounds of Christmas started early this year. Bent on evoking the warm fuzzies of the Christmas season, advertisers have sought to ensnare us with snatches of “White Christmas,” “Rudolph,” “Sleigh Bells,” “Joy to the World,” and “Silent Night” and then lead us, like lambs to the slaughter, to buy their pricey baubles. This clever ploy, however, has led me not to succumb to their blandishements but to conjure up a flood of happy recollections of the sounds of the season. I have been remembering
the crackling and gently hissing sounds of the burning Yule logs, the fine
kitchen sounds of my Mother’s busy activity in preparing the feasts of the
holiday season, the lowing of the cattle coming in from the pasture for the
night and the barn’s welcome protection from the whistling “Blue Northers,” the
chunking sound of a wheelbarrow full of firewood being piled on the porch to
keep the fire going through the long winter nights, the welcome noisiness of
visiting kinfolks and exuberant children and good neighbors dropping by to share
a mess of fresh pork ribs or a jar of homemade preserves or just to sit a spell
and rock and visit, and, of course, the old Christmas songs sung together in
church, the same year after year in a truly authentic liturgy. Memories of these
sounds of the season are special. Very special.
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