A Dangerous Apology

We have just seen more proof, if any were needed, that nothing will get you in trouble faster in this country than speaking the truth.  It is probably true that nothing will get you in trouble faster than speaking the truth in any empire, but it is undeniably true in the American empire.  The latest public figure to have to walk back from a profoundly truthful and important statement is Chris Hayes.  Hayes is the host of the Sunday morning talk show “Up” on msnbc, the cable news channel.  In his show of May 27, 2012, Hayes spoke the truth.  He said that he was “uncomfortable” calling every American who has died in combat a hero.  Here’s the text of the statement that got Hayes in trouble:

I think it's interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words "heroes." Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word "hero"? I feel comfortable -- uncomfortable -- about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that.[1]

I have written elsewhere in this blog about exactly the point that Hayes made, except that I wasn’t referring only to those killed in action but to the way we have taken to calling everyone who wears an American military uniform a hero.  See the post “A Veteran’s Day Meditation on American Heroes,” posted on November 11, 2011.  Hayes spoke what to me is undeniable truth when he said that he is uncomfortable with applying the word hero to all Americans who have died in combat “because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.”  I read that and shout “Amen brother!”  Hayes spoke  the truth, a very profound truth that points to the galloping militarization of American culture and American politics.  The indiscriminate way in which we call people in the military, including but not limited those who have died in combat, heroes does indeed make it harder to criticize the policies and decisions that got us into the way to begin with, harder to condemn the continuation of the war, harder to demand an end to the war, and harder to oppose new wars.  After all, our wars are being fought by heroes so they must be just, righteous even.  Heroes don’t fight in unjust, illegal wars of aggression, so our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, to name only the most relevant current examples, must not  (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) be unjust, illegal wars of aggression.  The mime of calling all American military personnel heroes quite apart from anything actually heroic that they may have done has become a major tool of the empire to silence dissent and procure unquestioning allegiance to the empire’s militaristic policies.

Speaking that truth got Hayes into so much trouble that the next day he had to back down.  He apologized for speaking the truth.  Prophetic voices who speak the truth and who wish to continue to have a public platform from which to speak it very often have to apologize for speaking the truth.  But beyond apologizing for speaking the truth, Hayes’ apology raises another profound and troubling issue.  Here’s the text of that apology:

On Sunday, in discussing the uses of the word "hero" to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don't think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I've set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.

As many have rightly pointed out, it's very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday's show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.

But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.[2]

This is a very dangerous apology.  Hayes’ apology at least implies that only those who have fought in war are entitled to criticize war, that only those who have served in the military are entitled to judge the legality, morality, and appropriateness of any particular war.  If that is true, if the voices of prophets are silenced simply because they have not fought in a war, all is lost.  As Hayes points out in his apology, most Americans have not fought in war.  I have not fought in war.  Does that mean I have no right to criticize war?  Does that mean I have no right to expose the ways in which the empire manipulates the public to assure support for its militaristic policies?  This current incident with Hayes’ apology for speaking the truth suggests that we are headed for that catastrophic circumstance.  It certainly is a circumstance that the powers among us would dearly love to create. 

It is, however, a circumstance that we simply cannot allow them to create if there is to be any hope of America becoming a more just and peaceful nation.  Being informed on issues of public importance is the duty of every citizen in a free country.  It is one at which most Americans badly fail, but it is their duty.  Criticizing the government’s policies and actions is the right of every citizen in a free country, but among us today doing so will get you in trouble.  It will bring down on you criticism that you are un-American, un-patriotic, at least if the policy or actions that you criticize relate to the use of the military.  Hayes is simply the latest public commentator to be caught in that trap, a trap that so obviously serves the purposes of empire. 

Hayes spoke the truth, and he should not have apologized.  If he was going to apologize he shouldn’t have done it the way he did.  I understand that he wants to keep his job at msnbc.  I understand the NBC, of which msnbc is a part, is partly owned by General Electric, a giant corporation that benefits from American imperialism and majority owned by Comcast, a media conglomerate that depends on advertising dollars from corporations like GE.  I can understand if Hayes’ bosses told him he had to apologize for speaking the truth, something I don’t know that they did but which I would be surprised if they didn’t.  Hayes’ initial statement was the truth.  His second statement was a dangerous apology.  His initial statement, the reaction to it, and his apology all point to truths about the American empire.  We would do well to learn those truths and do everything we can to undo them.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/28/chris-hayes-uncomfortable-soldiers-heroes_n_1550643.html

[2] Id.

Living in the And

I recently got some very positive feedback on this sermon, so I'll go ahead and post it here where perhaps a few more people will find it.

Living in the And

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

March 25, 2011

Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We’ve all heard it. A great many people who will have nothing to do with any organized religion say “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I always wonder what they mean by that claim. Whatever they mean when they say I’m spiritual but not religious, the claim certainly makes some major assumptions, namely, that spirituality and religion are not the same thing, that they are two separate things, and that it is possible to separate them. The claim implies that it is possible to be spiritual without being religious and that it is also possible to be religious without being spiritual. People do indeed separate religion and spirituality all the time, and the most common form of that separation is for people to claim spirituality and to reject religion.

All of which of course raises the questions: What do those terms mean, and just what is the relationship between spirituality and religion? Those questions came up for me recently in a new way when I started reading a new book by Diana Butler Bass with the provocative title: Christianity After Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. Bass’ book helps us address those questions in a couple of helpful ways. First of all she helps us understand what the terms spiritual and religious mean. Or rather, she helps us understand what most people today take them to mean, whatever their technical definitions might be. One way she does is that is by telling about a word association exercise she often does with groups she is addressing. She asks people what words come to mind when they hear the term spiritual and when they hear the term religious. She says that the many different groups with which she has done this exercise tend to come up with quite similar lists of words. Here are some of the words her groups often come up with:

For spiritual: Experience, connection, transcendence, seeking, prayer, wisdom, inner life, inclusive.

For religious: Institution, rules, order, dogma, authority, beliefs, hierarchy, boundaries, certainty.

While not all of the associations people have with the term “spiritual” are positive—some see spirituality as self-indulgent for example—and not all the associations with religion are negative—order and boundaries are necessary and beneficial in many aspects of life—on the whole people associate things they see as positive with spirituality and things they see as negative with religion. Clearly, those of us who value religion and have devoted our lives to it have a public relations problem to say the least.

Bass’ thesis is actually that we are entering into a time when fewer and fewer people are identifying themselves as spiritual but not religious and more and more people are identifying themselves as spiritual and religious. I don’t know if she’s right about that or not. She certainly cites a lot of public opinion research to support that thesis. Whether Bass is right about that or not, her thesis is both provocative and, for me at least, hopeful. It suggests that there is value both to what people identify as spirituality and to what people identify as religion. Let’s take a closer look at the “and” of Butler’s thesis and see what we find.

It certainly seems clear that spirituality is primarily an inner thing with us humans. It is about our inner life, the life of our psyches, the life of our souls. Spirituality speaks to us at the depth of our being, in those deep, hidden places where our longing for connection with God first arises. Spirituality is a response to a yearning of our spirits to be reunited with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. Spirituality is about prayer, meditation, silence, yearning, listening. Our two scripture readings this morning point in the direction of spirituality rather than religion in their words about God’s law being written on our hearts and the Psalmist’s prayer for a clean heart and a new spirit.

And it is pretty clear that religion is primarily an external thing, or at least it has become that over the centuries. Religion, as most people today understand it, is about correct beliefs, dogmas, and doctrines, rules of behavior, institutions, buildings, committees, denominational loyalties. Looked at that way, spirituality certainly seems to be a good thing and religion certainly seems to be a bad thing.

But you know, it really isn’t that simple. You see, nothing in life, or at least not much in life, is either entirely good or entirely bad. Good things have their shadow side, and bad things can nonetheless contain a kernel of the good, can have things about them that in themselves are actually good not bad. So it is with spirituality and religion. I take it for granted that on the whole spirituality is a very good thing, but what might some of the bad things about spirituality be? Spirituality, when it is done as a purely personal matter, which is how most people who claim to be spiritual but not religious do it, can be mere self-indulgence. That gets taken as true and good which merely makes us feel good. Because it is inner directed, spirituality can easily become self-centered. Because it is so individualistic it can wander off in directions that actually are spiritually harmful and disordered rather than helpful and healthy. There is a danger in unguided spirituality that, I suspect, most of the people who say they are spiritual but not religious don’t recognize.

I take it for granted that most of the bad things people say about religion are true of most organized religion today and that they are indeed bad, but what might some of the good things about religion be? Religion provides structure that can guide spirituality in helpful, healthy directions. Religion provides a grounding tradition for spirituality, a tradition that has learned over the course of many centuries what is healthy spirituality and what is not. Religion provides community, a community in which we can share the spiritual journey, a community that can hold us when we struggle and that can correct us when we stray off course. When I hear someone say that they are spiritual but not religious and that they find their connection to God in nature I always want to say: So, are the deer going to visit you when you’re in the hospital? Religion gives us time-tested symbols and myths that have worked at the level of the human spirit to connect countless generations of seekers with God. Yes, religion can be hidebound, rigid, exclusionary, improperly judgmental, and all the bad things people associate with it, but let us not forget that religion also has its virtues. Religion also has gifts to give us that we miss when we reject religion in favor of an ungrounded, individualistic spirituality.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us living in the “and.” It leaves us living in the “and” of spiritual and religious. For me, the only legitimate purpose of any religion is to connect people with God. All religions are true to the extent that they do that, and all religions, our own included, are false to the extent that they connect people to something other than God. If, as I have maintained for quite some time now, the legitimate purpose of religion is to connect people to God, then religion is precisely a spirituality. A religion is a human construct that, when it is at its best, when it is functioning the way it should, when it is authentic and legitimate, holds together the virtues of spirituality and the virtues of religion while protecting against the vices of both. Religion properly understood, as opposed to religion the way it mostly is in the world, is the “and” that Bass says we are moving into.

Or at least it can be. Holding together the virtues of spirituality and the virtues of religion is not an easy thing to do. Churches, which are the primary institutional expression of religion, are human organizations; and all human organizations are constantly tempted to make themselves their primary concern rather than the purpose for which they were founded. Thus denominations and even individual churches become more concerned with their own survival than with the work God calls them to do in the world. They become conservative in the technical sense of the word, resisting all change even when change is necessary if they are to fulfill their divine calling. Religion can suffocate spirituality. On the other hand, spirituality can undermine religion. Spirituality can be so individualistic that it draws people out of community rather than into it. Spirituality can lead to spiritual arrogance that results in conflict and undermines the church.

No, holding spirituality and religion together, living in the “and,” isn’t easy. Bass says that “and” of spirituality and religion is where we are heading. I don’t know if she is right about that or not, but I am convinced that it is where we need to be. We humans need the deep movings of the Spirit in our spirits that spirituality can provide. We humans also need the structure, the order, the grounding that religion can provide. I like to think that here at Monroe Congregational UCC is do a better than average job of holding spirituality and religion together, of living in the and, or at least avoiding most of the shadow side of religion; but I also know we can do better. Today we begin our second decade together. As we enter that decade, I pray that we will grow together in living in the and. May it be so. Amen.

Democrats Must Move Convention

On May 8, 2012, the voters of North Carolina overwhelmingly approved the latest discriminatory amendment to a state constitution to deny to God's gay and lesbian children the legal rights of marriage. This measure was even more draconian than most because it bans not only marriage between same gender couples but also denies them the separate but supposedly equal legal rights commonly granted under so-called domestic partnership laws. This vote puts North Carolina squarely on the side of bigotry against equal respect and dignity, discrimination against justice, reaction against the tide of history, the wrong against the right. All people, people of faith most of all, who are committed to Jesus' values of inclusion and justice and who understand that the Bible can never legitimately be used to turn ancient cultural norms and anthropological ignorance into God's law must reject the decision by the voters of North Carolina.

We must reject that decision, but we must do much more than that. The measure North Carolina has adopted is to extreme, so unjust, so oppressive that we must take action. There is one obvious action that absolutely must be taken and must be take now. The 2012 Democratic National Convention is currently scheduled for September 3 through 6 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Democrats simply must move their convention out of North Carolina. They must do it immediately, and they must make it clear that the vote by the people of North Carolina to deny all legal rights to same gender couples is the reason they are doing it. Nothing else will make an adequate statement against the North Carolina vote. Nothing else will show the people of North Carolina that bigotry has consequences. Nothing else will say to North Carolina with sufficient force you're wrong, you're out of step with the advance of justice, and decent people who believe in equality and common human decency will not accept your decision.

I know that the logistics of moving the convention at this time will be a nightmare. It might not even be possible, but it would be better for the Democrats to have their delegates meet for one day in a hotel somewhere outside North Carolina simply to re-nominate President Obama than for them to hold a traditional nominating convention in North Carolina. If the Democrats will not move their convention, either because they don't want to or because they claim it cannot be done at this late date, delegates and people who would otherwise attend the convention should boycott it. The state Democratic parties can nominate candidates without a national convention, and it would be better for them to do so than for the Democrats to have a convention in North Carolina.

Consider this. What if North Carolina had voted to re-institute Jim Crow racial segregation? Yes, that vote would be invalid under federal law; but suppose North Carolina did it anyway. Would the Democrats still hold their convention in North Carolina? Wouldn't they move heaven and earth to find a way to have the convention, even a truncated convention that did no more than renominate President Obama, somewhere else? Of course they would. Denying same gender couples the legal rights of marriage is today's version of Jim Crow. Gays are the target du jour of American bigotry. (There are other targets, like “illegal” aliens; but that isn't our subject at the moment.) The bigots will lose this battle just as they lost the battle to preserve Jim Crow, but for now that battle continues. The forces of reaction and prejudice still win battles like the one they just won in North Carolina; but they are on the wrong side of history, and the Democrats simply must take a stand for justice.

The Democrats may well pass a resolution at the convention condemning the North Carolina vote, passing resolutions isn't enough.  Holding the convention in North Carolina will still pump millions of dollars into that state. Resolutions do nothing but make the people passing them feel good. Money talks. The Democrats simply must vote with their money and move this year's nominating convention out of North Carolina.

What Then Are We to Say?

This sermon was quite well received by at least some of the people of my church.  I think it says something important, so I'm posting it here.

What Then Are We to Say?

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

April 22, 2012

Scripture: Romans 6:1-4; 1 John 2:6, 3:1-7

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Most of you have heard me say it before. I've been preaching it here for ten years now. God's grace is free. God's grace is universal. Everyone is saved. No exceptions. Not one. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. There is nothing we need to do to save ourselves. As far as God is concerned it's already done. It's already done because God has done it. We know that God has done it because we know Jesus Christ. If grace is truly grace and not something else, it is free; and it is for everyone. Thanks be to God! Amen.

So should I just introduce the next hymn now and move on? After all, there really isn't anything more that needs to be said, is there? God's free and universal grace is the bottom line of faith. It is the Good News of Jesus Christ. Proclaiming it ought to be enough; but, as I said, I've been proclaiming it here for the last ten years, and all that experience with proclaiming it makes it very clear to me that just proclaiming it is not in fact enough. All that experience with proclaiming God's universal grace has taught me that there is a lot more that needs to be said. There is a lot more that needs to be said because of this objection that some have to the notion that God's grace is free and universal, that it is for everyone. It is an understandable objection. I mean no disrespect here to those who make it. I am convinced, however, that the objection reflects a misunderstanding of universal grace that can be cleared up with a little deeper probing of the meaning of universal grace. That's what I want to do this morning.

The common objection to universal grace that I'm talking about is the objection that if grace, that is, if salvation, is truly free and universal, then we don't have to do anything at all to be in God's grace. Nothing we do can remove us from God's grace. So at best we can just go on living as we have, with no change in our lives in response to God's grace, and at worst we are free to sin anyway we want because nothing we can do negates God's grace, nothing we do can revoke our salvation. This objection says that if God's grace is free and universal, then all motivation for us to live moral lives is taken away. On a superficial level this objection is true, but on a deeper level I believe they miss the mark.

We see how they miss the mark in our Epistle readings this morning. Paul was the first great prophet of free and universal grace, and he had to deal with this same objection when he proclaimed free and universal grace nearly two thousand years ago. We see him doing it in our reading from Romans. He says: “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!” Then he says: How can we who died to sin go on living in it? In our baptism we died with Christ to an old way of living and rose with him in newness of life, into a new way of being, a way in which we seek at the very least not to sin. Paul is saying that if don't get that, we don't understand the grace in which we stand.

The author of the First Letter of John, writing decades after Paul, said essentially the same thing. He said to his audience “Let no one deceive you.” Deceive them how? Apparently by telling them that now it is OK to sin because in Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven. This author gives the same answer to that claim that Paul did. Referring to Christ and people who claim to be his followers he says: “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” I hear him saying with Paul: If you keep on sinning after you know God's grace in Christ Jesus you don't really get it about God's grace in Jesus Christ. If you truly get it about that grace, you will not sin. You will lead a sinless life not as a means of obtaining God's grace but in response to God's grace. You will avoid sin precisely because you know that you already stand in God's grace.

What Paul and the author of 1 John are telling us is that moral living, to the extent that we sinners are capable of it, isn't a condition of God's grace, it is a response to God's grace. When we truly know God's grace we respond by striving to live as much as we are able as we know God desires that we live. We don't do it to earn grace. After all, what sense does it make to try to earn something that you know you already have? We do it as a response to grace. We stand in God's love, so we respond to love with love for the One who loved us first.

OK, but just how then are to to live? Not sinning, yes; but how do we know what that means? In another of the verses we heard from 1 John this morning we see an answer to that question. This author says: Whoever abides in Christ ought to walk as Christ walked, that is, ought to live as Christ lived. That's how a Christian is to respond to God's grace, by living in imitation of Christ.

Again OK, but what does that mean? It means avoiding sin as much as possible, of course; and we know what sin is, don't we? The question of what sin is isn't as simple as may appear on the surface to be, but I think it means at least this: Sin is anything hat harms another of God's people, or that harms ourselves, or that harms God's creation. So imitate Jesus by serving others and loving God, and you will probably pretty much avoid sin.

But here's the thing about living as Jesus did. Not sinning isn't nearly all there is to living as Jesus lived. He did a lot more than just not sin, and he did a lot more than serve others, although that, of course, was a major focus of his ministry. More than serving the people he met, Jesus laid out for us a radically new vision of life. It is a vision that he called the Kingdom of God. God's grace is free, but it comes with an expectation. It comes with the expectation that we will indeed do what we can to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, the expectation that we will do what we can to realize Jesus' alternative vision of life.

What is that vision? It is a vision of a world radically different from the one in which we live. It is a vision of a world free from violence in all its forms. Freedom from war to be sure, but also freedom from all forms of physical violence of one person against another and freedom from the emotional and spiritual violence that we sometimes inflict on each other, often without even realizing it. It is vision of a world of justice, a world in which, as the great prophet Micah says, each person shall sit under his or her own vine and her or his own fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. That is a vision in which everyone has enough because no one has too much. It is a vision of a world free from all oppression, be that oppression on the basis of gender, race, class, nationality, religion, or sexual identity or orientation. It is a vision of a world that is pretty much the direct opposite of the world the way it is, a world of violence, a world of oppression, a world in which the privileged few prosper at the expense of the many. God's free and universal grace is there even if we do nothing to help make that alternative world a reality, but God's grace comes with the expectation that we will at least do something, that we will respond to God's grace by working to make God's vision of human life a reality.

And you may still be asking: Why take on that impossibly difficult work of striving to live like Jesus? Why take on that seemingly hopeless work of making the Kingdom of God real in the world? What do I get out of it? After all, I'm supposed to love myself too, aren't I? Well, yes you are; and that really is the reason to take on the impossibly difficult work of striving to live like Jesus. God's free and universal grace is always there, but we can live in and into that grace or not. God doesn't force it upon us. But here's the thing: Unless we appropriate God's grace for our lives, unless we seek to incorporate God's grace into our living, God's grace remains an abstract concept. It doesn't become a living reality in our lives.

If we do strive to respond to God's grace by living like Jesus, if we do respond to God's love by striving to embody that love in our lives and in God's world, we will reap all of the benefits in this life that can come with God's free gift of grace. We will find meaning for our lives. We will find peace for our souls. We will find hope and the courage to face whatever comes our way in life. We will have the satisfaction of knowing that we have done something to respond to the immeasurable gift that God has given us and not merely been passive recipients of that which we have not earned. God's grace is always there. It's up to us to make its benefits real in our lives and in God's world. That's why bother. The rewards are more than worth it.

What then are we to say? Should we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means. God's grace is free, but it isn't cheap. It isn't cheap, as the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, because we know it through the death of a man, Jesus Christ. It isn't free because it comes with expectations, demands even. And so we seek to live moral lives not to earn grace but to respond to grace. We seek to live the life of the Kingdom of God amidst the kingdoms of the world not to earn God's grace but to respond to it and to make God's grace real in our lives. That, then, is what we are to say. God's grace is free and universal. Let us respond with lives worthy of that grace. Amen.