From A First-Born: A Mother’s Day Tribute
Joe E. Trull

First-born she was from a clan of twelve,
    emerging from a Bowl of Dust
    on rural Indian plains
once trod by proud nations now dispersed.

Second-mother she was to the
    brood of chicks her mother bore.
Yet from that furrowed farm she gazed beyond
    the fields of grain toward a better land.

And in that fearsome world of lights and sounds,
a world where milk-maids seldom trod,
    she built a life,
    and met a man,
and soon her own first-born was cradled in her arms.
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Democracy at the Crossroads: We Have Work To Do
By Bill Moyers, Public Affairs Television, Inc.

....Harry understood early on that history is always an unsatisfied search for the truth, but that its frequent course corrections—it’s interim reports—could be instructive if the keepers of the record are credible. You have shown us, Harry, that by respecting the textured layers of experience—the restless kaleidoscope of reality—a man can serve not two but three masters—the past, present, and future. We thank you for making this library an institution that can be trusted.

Now that legacy passes to another, and the powers that be have chosen well. Judith and I are fortunate to have had Betty Sue Flowers as a colleague on some of our most successful projects. She advised on Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, and in collaboration with Jackie Kennedy Onassis, edited our best-selling book based on that series. She edited two of our later books—World of Ideas, also a best seller, and the companion book to our series on Genesis. Her long association with the university—as student, professor, and administrator—fostered a far-ranging intellect that joins the perceptions of poetry to questions of justice and power, in ways that I believe would have intrigued and impressed even LBJ. What Harry nurtured over the past generation here will flourish in the next with Dr. Flowers.
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Base Economics
By Al Staggs

A lot of talk bout God these days
on the television
and from the groups who want to put prayer
in the school and the commandments in the
courthouse.
So much loud talk comin’
from these well-dressed ‘profits’ in the
glamour of their well-endowed sanctuaries
and greatly subsidized ministries.
I hear what you say, ‘profit’ and
yet I can't seem to take my eyes off the
accoutrements of your success
that do so impress me.
My, how God has blessed you!
It's good of you, dear ‘profit’ to
stand up for all that is right and true
and to help us know that our once Christian nation
is being destroyed by the promiscuity of all the sexual
marketing of Hollywood and the morality of our former
President.
And we do know
and we do all feel the tug of our culture's
infatuation with all that is not pure.
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What On Earth Are You Doing Practicing Law?
By Hal Haralson

We were in a Family Law Seminar discussing cases we were currently working on. I’m considered an “old-timer” in this group because of having handled family law cases for thirty years.

 One of the attorneys who had been around almost that long turned to me and said, “Hal, I haven’t seen you in court lately. In fact, I rarely see you in court. How do you manage that?”

 I responded. “I’ll share something with you that I discovered many years ago. Lawyers are very protective of their turf. They rarely go to another attorney’s office. They consider themselves in the position of strength when they are behind their desk and the other attorney is in the client’s seat.”

 “We like to communicate by letter. Our words present a superior and aggressive attitude on our client’s behalf. Of course, we send a copy of the letter to our clients. The other attorney responds in an equally combative tone and the matter escalates.”

 I continued. “We do this because we have been taught to ‘win’ for our client. That means the other side ‘looses’. I’ll tell you how I’ve settled hundreds of cases and been in court (trial) only four times in thirty years.”
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ON SERVANT LEADERSHIP AND GRACIOUS SUBMISSIVENESS
By James W. Wray

Introduction: An Old Deacon (OD) and Old Lawyer (OL) are old friends who meet occasionally to discuss current events over coffee. They have learned to disagree without being disagreeable, which is fortunate because sometimes it seems they would rather argue on credit than agree for cash. Today the subject is a newspaper clipping the Old Deacon puts on the table:

TEXAS BAPTISTS: WIVES DON’T HAVE TO SUBMIT

El Paso—Texas Southern Baptists on Tuesday repudiated the denomination’s call for women to “submit graciously” to their husbands. . . “The Bible doesn’t teach that the husband is the general and the wife is a private, but yet that’s how it gets interpreted,” said the Rev. Charles Wade, the executive director of the Texas Group.

OD: Why are Texas Baptists being so contrary? All that the Southern Baptists did in 1998 when they added Section Eighteen on “The Family” to the Baptist Faith and Message is to quote from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.

OL: I see you came prepared. Is that Section Eighteen sticking out of your Bible and does it happen to be marking the fifth chapter of Ephesians?

OD: Right. And here is the meat of it: “Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church . . .
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Updated Monday, January 03, 2005

EthixBytes

(A Collection of Quotes, Comments, Statistics, and News Items)
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Church And State: “Once More Unto The Breach”
By Paul J. Piccard, Mary Piccard Vance, Ann M. Piccard

• The “Wall” Is a Membrane.
• Allowing “Free Exercise” and Prohibiting “Establishment” Conflict
• The First Amendment Now Limits State and Local Governments
• Where Does This Leave Us
• Endnotes

We do not know how old the problem of church and state is. Perhaps primitive societies had to reconcile the authority of shamans and chiefs. In its contemporary form the problem dates at least from late medieval or early modern times. Dante has the Lombard spirit Marco say:

Rome, which produced the good world, used to have
Two suns, which made people see one road and the
Other—the world’s road and the road of God.
One has stifled the other, for sword
And shepherd’s crook are one now, and they go
Badly with each other, as by force they must—
Because, thus joined, neither fears the other.
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Missing Answering The Call To Community Ministry by Ben MacConnell

The Red Mass
By John M. Swomley

 The Red Mass, a colorful religious ceremony of the Catholic Church, is celebrated in the United States before members of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and other high government officials. It also occurs at state capitals and other metropolitan centers. It is not only the occasion of the sectarian cultural event involving the legal profession, but has become the only institution in which one church has an exclusive opportunity to influence judges and other government officials.

 The term “Red Mass” traditionally refers to the color of the vestments worn by the bishops who speak at the event, but also to the robes of the judges who attend. The origin of the Red Mass is not precisely dated, but it first occurred in France during the Inquisition, probably during the reign of Pope Gregory IX or one of his successors, Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). It was a religious ceremony of the state when the Inquisition was in full swing and when the state customarily used torture. Innocent IV subsequently permitted some forms of torture not as brutal or deadly as those of the courts.
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Book Review 
By Darold H. Morgan

A Fine Balance
Robinton Mistry

At the request of the editor here is a review of a novel, spotlighted on the Oprah TV show, a first for the Christian Ethics Journal. A good place to begin is to compliment Oprah Winfrey and her phenomenally successful Book Club, an outgrowth of her television program. Any encouragement to read in this age is welcomed when much of television has all but eliminated reading for many. Then comes this extraordinary list of books which are recommended by Oprah’s Book Club. Great numbers of folks all around the country are responding and reading. By no means are all of these recommendations suitable for church libraries, but most of them are and some merit serious consideration by serious readers.

Mistry’s novel of life in India is one such book. It is an intriguing story, primarily of four diverse characters caught up in the churning events in India in the 1970s when colonialism was ending and the internecine religious wars were producing repercussions felt far and wide. News headlines today constantly call attention to events involving India and Pakistan. India is heralded as the world’s largest democracy, but in the shadows of this part of the world are reconfiguring influences which mandate serious understanding.
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Book Review
By Larry L. McSwain

A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Now Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation
Diana L. Eck,

The publication of the most definitive book on religious pluralism in America just before the violence of September 11, 2001, could hardly be more timely. In this exceptional work by Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University and Director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard, the demographic and religious changes brought about by the increased immigration since changes in Federal laws in 1965 are traced with clarity and impact.

The first chapter is an overview of the religious impact of explosive immigration from previously limited ethnic and cultural groups in the American context. The result is an Asian population growth of 43 percent and Hispanic growth of 38.8 percent in the decade of the nineties bringing a multi-ethnic diversity unknown in any previous history of the country. The emergence of new religious practices have sprung up both within the traditional Christian denominational milieu and externally in the forms of new communities of Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and Indian practitioners. The conclusion is that “The United States has become the most religiously diverse nation on earth” (p. 4). Thus, one no longer can speak of Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic and Jew of the 1950’s, but rather of “Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh” as well as vibrant Native American religiosity.
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Turtles Do
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor

A certain reptilian somnolence engulfs me, body and soul, in the warm sunshine of a mid-winter afternoon. My study is on the west side of our house; and a wall of glass, twelve feet by eight feet, provides the greatest possible exposure to the output of the sun, the smallish nuclear furnace which sustains all the life there is on this third rock out from the fire. Delicious. Simply delicious.

Turtles, which crave this very same warmth, will crowd themselves onto a floating log and there, side by side, soak up this wonderful sunshine. They are responding to the same prurient yearning for warmth and light that compels me to keep returning to this marvelous place in my study. For all the tea in China, however, I wouldn’t tump myself off into the cold water like the turtles do when startled. I just want to be left alone on my special log, soaking up the sunshine.
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