Traveling in Place

Embracing Everybody

Whatever else you may think of the political paroxysms jolting American culture right now, you cannot deny that we’re all getting a national civics lesson. I don’t think I have ever heard as much conversation about checks and balances, the Electoral College, or even the independence of the Department of Justice, as I have in the last six months.

I’ve also noticed a subtle but certain shift in the public perception of the Christian faith. I have lamented for most of my adult life how the term “Christian” has been captured by the hard right-wing American version of the faith. The term “Christian voter” has been associated with a political agenda mostly concerned with regulating sexuality and women’s bodies while devaluing people who do not fit within prescribed parameters of acceptability.

This version of Christianity increasingly became identified with one political party, and reached its high-water mark in the election of 2004, when Republican voter turnout was driven to record levels by ballot initiatives in several swing states that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

But over the next decade, the electorate became younger (as the largest generation in American history reached voting age) and Americans generally became more open to diversity in general and same-sex marriage in particular. States began passing laws making marriage more inclusive, and in 2015, the Supreme Court declared that recognition of gay marriage was the law of the land. Except in the staunchest regions of the Bible belt, the decision was greeted with either celebration or quiet resignation. Most of the country had already made the shift that the high court was codifying.

This last Friday evening, Susan Arbetter, host of “The Capital Pressroom” on New York public radio, interviewed New York Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, the first openly gay women to serve in the state legislature. She was invited onto the

A Threat to Religious Freedom

(See update at the end of this post. - JML)

While attention is focused on the Senate healthcare debate and Don Jr.’s e-mails with Russians, a largely unnoticed bill is wending its way through the legislative process that needs some serious public vetting. It is scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives next Friday. Authored by Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, it authorizes the federal government to identify “Islamic concepts, doctrines, or schools of thought” that might lead to terrorist activity. It also tasks the Pentagon with determining which Islamic clerics preach peaceful beliefs and which ones espouse extremist views.

The unconstitutionality of such a proposal ought to be obvious, first because it targets only one religion for government scrutiny, and second because it subjects religion of any kind to a government test. But it is also based on a faulty (and dangerous) assumption expressed by Congressman Franks: “There is a certain spectrum within the Islamist world that is at the root of the ideological impulse for terrorism” (emphasis mine). He is expressing the completely uninformed but widely held belief that terrorism is somehow intrinsically linked to Islam.

How, then, do we explain terrorist elements in other religious traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity? Supporters of the bill might protest that none of these other extreme elements have reeked near the havoc as terrorists who claim to represent pure Islam. But I don’t know how that could even be determined. How many hundreds of thousands have been killed by Christians committing violence in the name of their religion? You’d have to account for all of it over the last 2,000 years of Christian history to make a fair comparison. And had the Internet and today’s weapons technology been available to, say, factions fighting the Wars of Religion in Europe, the Irish Republican Army, or Timothy McVeigh’s right-wing militia, how much more destruction would they have achieved than they did? Franks’ assumption also ignores the fact that most of the radicalized American Muslims who have sought to align themselves with terrorist groups have not been life-long practitioners of Islam, but secular Muslims or nominal Protestant Christians who converted to religious extremism. This suggests that non-religious factors such as cultural isolation, economic despair, and even mental illness lie at the root of radicalization.

A Wet, Cloudy Holiday Weekend

The long Independence Day weekend has begun – with more rain. While the weather forecast is for a bright, sunny July 4, the cloudy, wet conditions seem more appropriate. As I’ve listened to parishioners talk about the state of the nation, I’ve noticed one emotion overtaking all others. Earlier in the year, sharp anger clashed with a smug triumphalism, and a lot of folks just seemed to be holding their breath and expressing measured hope that “things will work out – they always do.” But now, people on all sides in this very purple part of a mostly red and blue country are just...well...sad.

“What has become of us?” one woman asked rhetorically with tears stinging the back of her eyes. Another said to me, “It just seems like we’ve lost our way. We are so divided.” People who have been cheered by progress toward greater social acceptance now feel a mixture of fear and disappointment. At Thursday night’s summer worship service, during which we sang, “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies,” I didn’t sense a lot of energy for a patriotic celebration. Exhaustion seemed much more in evidence.

As we enter the holiday weekend, the most prominent news stories do not inspire pride. A crude, personally demeaning tweet from the President has drawn bi-partisan outrage. In any other era, such an irresponsible outburst might well have prompted a swift Congressional censure for undermining the dignity of the office. But today, it will likely blow over as another painful example of the new normal. A commission appointed by the president to look for evidence of voter fraud has requested from the states personal information on every voter in the country. The effort has been met with bi-partisan refusal, perhaps best summed up by the Mississippi Secretary of State, who said the commission could “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.” A hapless Congress limps home for the holiday break after revealing divisions within the majority party that, at least for now, put significant policy legislation beyond anyone’s political grasp.

And with sickening frequency, scenes of violence remind us of how the cloth of the country is tearing apart. Lately, it hasn’t been suicide attacks plotted in faraway places, but shooting sprees by disgruntled Americans fed up with Washington politics, their work environment, or just the presence of people they don’t understand, that have taken the lives of innocents and terrorized survivors.

In truth, we’ve been spiraling downward for at least a half-century. I think an