Traveling in Place

Legislating Intolerance

It’s all up to the governor now – the governor of Arizona, that is. The state legislature there passed a bill that has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and Republicans; from the ACLU and the state Chamber of Commerce; from religious leaders and private business owners (such as the Tucson Pizzeria owner who has declared that he “reserves the right to refuse to serve Arizona legislators”). The hastily passed SB 1062 ostensibly guarantees the right of businesses to deny service to gay and lesbian customers on the grounds of religious conviction. Proponents say it protects religious liberty. The Center for Arizona Policy says the law “protects your right to live and work according to your religious faith” in a time when “we witness hostility toward religious faith like never before.”

Please.

The law is so broadly stated that it allows businesses to refuse anybody for any reason as long as they claim to do so on religious grounds. So I wonder how most Arizonans would feel about a fundamentalist Muslim car mechanic refusing to fix a flat tire for a Christian on the grounds that he will not serve infidels? Does this mean a grocery store owned by a fundamentalist Christian can refuse to sell food to an unwed mother? Or better yet, suppose the “Lambs of God,” a notorious white supremacist group, owns a restaurant and refuses to serve people of color? Hey, that’s just their religion. Didn’t a Christian-based movement back in the 50’s and 60’s already deal with that?

There is no need to provide legal protection for the free exercise of religion. It’s already covered by the Constitution. Besides, if you are a genuine Christian evangelical business owner, you welcome the opportunity to hire or serve someone who doesn’t share your beliefs, because you then have a greater opportunity to influence and perhaps convert that person to your faith. (And nothing in the law would hinder your right to proselytize.) This law is a ruse. It is a cheap, cynical effort to use religion to justify outright discrimination. It is an attempt to write bigotry into the law.

Ranking the "Bible-Mindedness" of American Cities

When I first read about this, I decided not to address it unless somebody asked me to.

Somebody did. So here goes.

The American Bible Society has ranked 100 cities (metro areas, really) in America according to how “Bible-minded” they are. This list was generated by a survey of some 43,000 randomly selected Americans. Two questions were asked by interviewers: 1) In the past seven days, have you read the Bible outside of church or synagogue? 2) Do you strongly agree in the accuracy of the Bible? If your answer to both questions is “yes,” the ABS considers you to be “Bible-minded.”

Not surprisingly, the most “Bible-minded” cities are located in the South, and the least “Bible-minded” cities are in the Northeast. Syracuse comes in at 86 out of 100. So the local newspaper ran a story saying that our fair city is among the 15 least Bible-minded cities in the nation.

I don’t actually know what that means. It seems to me that this survey is seriously flawed, and its value is severely limited, for several reasons.

First, we already know that church attendance and participation is far lower in the Northeast than in the South and Midwest. Why should we be surprised, then, that more Southerners and Midwesterners read the Bible than Northeasterners? Does this really provide us with new information?

Second, there is no way to know how honestly respondents would answer the first question. Research has already shown conclusively that when the Gallup organization asks, “Did you attend church last week?” about half of those who

A Winter Day Up North

All that stuff I wrote in the last post about bright winter mornings – make it “ditto” times ten for the Adirondack mountains.

On Wednesday, a clear cold day following heavy snowfall, I headed north with my snowshoes. The temperature there was well below zero but climbed into the teens over the course of the day. I hiked up Goodnow Mountain near Newcomb. This is one of my favorite peaks. It stands less than 3,000 feet in elevation, but a climb up the fire tower provides one of the best views in the whole park. Twenty-three of the high peaks are visible to the north, with Rich Lake spreading out in the foreground. On a clear day in winter, when all those open peaks are covered in snow, the view is too magnificent for words. The walk itself is pretty wonderful as well, especially when passing between the tall, heavily flocked conifer trees near the top.

Bright Winter Mornings

The best thing about a heavy snowfall is the next morning. The sky is clear and the low winter sun has yet to melt the snow from the trees, but it’s bright enough to cast long shadows across the unblemished, sparkling white canvas. We’ve had several mornings like this recently. Once, when I was outside shoveling the snow from the roof of my car, I spotted a bright red cardinal perched on a limb just over the fence. Highlighted by the sunlight, he couldn’t have been any redder. I was mesmerized. He remained at his perch for several minutes before taking flight. I hardly moved as long as he was there.

For me, the beauty of winter is the sharp contrast between the white snow and the few colors that remain in the landscape – mostly deep blue (when the sky is clear) and tiny spots of cardinal or berry red. Of course, there are many more winter days when low clouds drain the color away, leaving only a few shades of gray, but those clouds often bring a fresh coating of snow. The magnificent simplicity of bright winter mornings is absolutely worth all the cloudy days necessary to make them possible.

I suppose that’s a metaphor for life. An author friend of mine once observed that

Income Inequality vs. Biblical Economics

How bad is income inequality in the United States?

The worst it has been since 1928.

The worst of all developed countries in the world.

Bad enough to worry about the future of our democracy.

Currently, the top 1% of earners in America receives roughly 23% of all income. Even more alarming, the top one tenth of one percent controls 40% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 80% controls about 7%. Since 1998, paychecks for most Americans – adjusted for inflation – have been flat, while the wealthiest 1% have seen their incomes skyrocket. Today, half of all Americans are considered poor or low-income.

Income inequality is one of those areas where economists and elected officials across the political spectrum agree that something needs to be done, but there is no political will in Washington to do anything for fear of the repercussions in the next election. So, like the broken immigration system, which everybody agrees needs fixing, income inequality is one of those issues that generate lots of chatter but no change.

Like every other industrialized nation, we have a plethora of options available to us. We can pursue government solutions (like raising the minimum wage, funding job training for the new economy, and strengthening the social safety net), market-based solutions (such as incentivizing companies to raise wages and hire new workers), or a combination of both. But we’ll never come close to what God commanded the nation Israel to do in order to prevent long-term income inequality. The economic policy laid out in Leviticus 25 is so ambitious that Israel’s leaders rarely enforced it, leading the nation’s poor to conclude that it would have to wait until the coming of the Messiah.