Author Archives: Fred Yi

Rev. Lillian Daniel on “Spiritual But Not Religious”

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Read an excerpt from “When ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’ Is Not Enough” by Lillian Daniel

BOB ABERNETHY, correspondent: As we have reported, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that nearly one in five—20 percent of Americans—say they have no religious affiliation. Many of them are people who say they are “spiritual but not religious.” They may believe in God, but they do not want anything to do with organized religion. Meanwhile, books by prominent atheists have condemned religion in general and Christianity in particular. These criticisms have offended many religion leaders, among them the Reverend Lillian Daniel, who has a book out this month called “When ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’ Is Not Enough.” Full disclosure: I wrote a blurb for the cover.

At the First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, an upscale suburb of Chicago, Lillian Daniel is the senior minister. She says she has had enough of outsiders who bash the church, and of church people who don’t protest. So she is pushing back herself—in a new book, in articles, and in sermons she preaches as a guest minister around the country.

At Howard University in Washington, DC recently, Daniel railed at writers and others who, she says, have blamed the church for many of the world’s biggest problems.

post01-lillian-danielREV LILLIAN DANIEL: What church community are you describing? Because it is not mine. And how dare you presume to paint me with that broad and offensive brush? So why is it that when the ‘spiritual but not religious’ complain about Christianity, why don’t we get mad? Why don’t we tell them a different story, of a progressive church where your questions are welcomed, where we worship a God who invented us and not the other way around.

ABERNETHY: Daniel’s audience included the dean of the Howard chapel and Howard’s president and his wife. She referred to them when she acknowledged her own part in what she calls America’s culture of narcissism.

DANIEL: …in which it is so easy to think, “It’s all about me.” So much so that when the dean told me quietly that the president and first lady were here today you know where my mind went. I’m from Chicago. I said, “Barack and Michelle? Here?”

ABERNETHY: But Daniel’s humor is not always so gentle. She ridicules people she says try to make up their own God and their own forms of worship.

DANIEL: Often some shallow combination of exercise and caffeine, coffee shops as spiritual community, hikes as pilgrimages, The New York Times as sacred text, and sunsets—don’t ever forget the sunsets. These people are always informing you that they find God in the sunsets. Well, excuse me, as if people who go to church didn’t see God in a sunset. You know, my take is that any idiot can find God in the sunset. What is remarkable is finding God in the context of flawed human community, and a tradition bigger than you are with people who may not reflect God back to you in your own image.

Part of the nature of religion, so much beat up on in our society, part of the nature of religion is that it delivers a message that is like sandpaper against the culture of narcissism. It is not all about you and, no, you cannot make it up. The beauty of a long tradition is that it is bigger than anything we can do by ourselves.

ABERNETHY: Another favorite target for Daniel are Christians who seem to her confused about how God works.

DANIEL: About a year ago, perhaps you remember this from the news, a man who was alleged to be Tim Tebow’s pastor announced to the world that he knew why the Denver Broncos were seven-to-one since installing Tebow as quarterback. He said it’s not luck. Luck is not winning six games in a row. It’s favor, God’s favor. Sorry, but that pastor seems to have skipped his theology class. Because saying that all those touchdowns were a sign of God’s favor is what I like to call touchdown theology, and in my book it gets a grade of F. Surely there are other Christians praying just as hard on other football teams. And what other players who follow other religions? That was personally embarrassing to me as a person of faith. But I also could not help but notice the glee with which the media glommed onto this touchdown theology. Remember that? They were writing about it right and left. It was something to mock in the Christian family, another reason to see Christians as stupid and simpleminded.

post03-lillian-danielABERNETHY: Along with Daniel’s complaints about the church’s critics, she also has great sympathy for those some churches have hurt.

DANIEL: Some people don’t like it because they really have been wounded by a church at some point. Or they have been a part of organized religion where they’ve been damaged and hurt in profound ways. All you can do is respond compassionately and just be so sad that that happened.

ABERNETHY: Still, she insists, most of the attacks on the church are unfair.

DANIEL: Where I get frustrated with some of the writing that’s being done by atheists now is they present a very denigrating and insulting vision of the church. I mean, they take, you know, the stupidest example you could find, and they say that’s Christianity. So, you know, the idiotic minister who wants to burn the Qur’an, you know. They say that’s Christianity looks like. These are intelligent writers who should know better. Other people get angry because they’re sort of like, how dare you make a positive case for what you’re doing? And that’s the sloppy thinking, where you are “shoving it down my throat.” You can make an intelligent argument why religious community matters without saying that the other person’s going to burn in hell.

ABERNETHY: Daniel wishes every critic would learn more about the church they’re criticizing.

DANIEL: It’s like we have this amnesia, like really, nobody in past generations studied this stuff and put some thought into it and it might be worth reading? Oh no, it’s just I can kind of get it on my own. And there’s this sort of almost worship of our own feelings and not much respect for traditions and experience and wisdom from outside ourselves.

ABERNETHY: Daniel says it’s normal for some people, especially the young, to turn their backs on religion for a while.

DANIEL: What I think is sad is when people kind of get stuck there, and they know they’re missing something, but they’ve got this picture of religious life, that it’s judgmental and shaming and homophobic and sexist, all these things, and I just want to say look around you. There’s so many beautiful options in the religious landscape. You don’t have to be out there on your own.

ABERNETHY: Which was the message at the close of her sermon.

DANIEL: Life is not a picnic, and the people who finally dig in and put down roots in one tradition bigger than themselves figure that out. There is a middle ground between the rigidity of touchdown theology and the superficiality of make-it-up-yourself spirituality. It is called a mature faith, practiced in community over time, reasonable, rigorous, real, grounded in tradition, centered in worship, called to serve and free to dream. Amen.

Choir: “This is my story, this is my song…”

SELF-MADE RELIGION

Excerpt from “When ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’ Is Not Enough” by Lillian Daniel

bookcover-spiritualnotreligious

I can see being proud that your kid watches the news. I can see being a little proud that he understands himself to have privileges in this country that other people do not. I can see being a little relieved that he knows not everyone goes to bed with a full stomach, that he can at least imagine the fact that war causes unimaginable pain. But then what? The punch line from the religion of gratitude: “We’re so lucky that we live here instead of there.” Really? That’s it? Never been prouder?

What’s missing from that worldview—and this is no fault of the teenager—but what is missing from that worldview is the perspective that you might get in a Christian community that would take you from lucky to actually doing something about it. But this kid didn’t get there. Or if he did get there, his dad didn’t care enough to make it part of the story.

His dad was happy to stop with the self-made religion of gratitude, like a person who fills up on the deep-fried appetizers and doesn’t order anything else from the menu. He may not feel hungry for dinner now, but that snack will not sustain him for anything like real exertion. It tastes good, but it’s just not enough…When you witness pain and declare yourself lucky, you have fallen way short of what Jesus would do.

When you witness suffering and declare yourself to have achieved salvation in the religion of gratitude, you have fallen way short of what God would have you do, no matter what religion you are called to.

And by the way, while I think God does want us to feel gratitude, I do not think God particularly wants us to feel lucky. I think God wants us to witness pain and suffering and, rather than feeling lucky, God wants us to get angry and want to do something about it.

The civil rights movement didn’t happen because people felt lucky. The hungry don’t get fed, the homeless don’t get sheltered, and the world doesn’t change because people who are doing okay feel lucky. We need more.

As the scripture today tells us, “In accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” We can’t sit back and simply feel gratitude, or feel lucky. No, as Christians we expect more, way more, like a new heaven and a new earth, and because we follow Jesus, we better expect to be involved in making it happen, alongside other people.

Gratitude is a biblically commended attitude. Feeling lucky is another religion altogether, one that says the gods pick one teenager to live in the suburbs of the richest nation on earth and another teenager to starve. In a worldview of luck, righteousness is really not a home.

But at some point the worldview of luck just doesn’t pan out. At some point you realize that this isn’t enough, and you long for something as outrageous as a new heaven and a new earth. At some point, if you think about it at all, that person with the self-made religion will use his God-given brain and the wisdom of hard experiences and start to ask angry and provocative questions about this spirituality of status quo.

“Who are you, God of sunsets and rainbows and bunnies and chain e-mails about sweet friends? Who are you, cheap God of self-satisfaction and isolation? Who are you, God of the beautiful and the physically fit? Who are you, God of the spiritual but not religious? Who are you, God of the lucky, chief priest of the religion of gratitude? Who are you, and are you even worth knowing? Who are you, God whom I invent? Is there, could there be, a more interesting God who invented me?”

I’m not against gratitude, any more than I am against finding God in a sunset or a child’s eyes. Those are all good tings, along with puppies, rainbows, great vacations, and birthdays. But here’s the thing—none of that constitutes a religion, and I actually believe, contrary to popular wisdom, that in an age of spiritual people who are not religious, we need religion, and its dearest expression to this particular religious Christian person, the church.

I remember a family new to our church, whose grade-school-age kids had only a year of Sunday school under their belts. In the middle of what was his second Christmas pageant rehearsal ever, the little boy cried out in total exasperation, “Do you mean to tell me that we are doing exactly the same story we did last year?”

Today that youngster is grown up and has been blessed by the repetition that gives his chaotic days meaning. In a world that demands that everything be a one-time-only original production, the church remains a place to remember that there is a someone much better than we are at original creations.

From “When ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’ Is Not Enough” by Lillian Daniel (Jericho Books, 2013)

Inauguration Perspectives of People of Faith

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: This weekend of inauguration celebrations, we want to explore the mood of the country and perspectives on the next four years with three distinguished people of faith. They are the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC; John Garvey, a lawyer and the president of the Catholic University of America in Washington; and Harold Dean Trulear, a professor of theology at the Howard University Divinity School. He joins us from Philadelphia, where he is active in ministry to prisoners. Welcome to you all. Professor Trulear, four years ago for many people there was an extraordinary mood of excitement and hope. What happened?

PROFESSOR HAROLD DEAN TRULEAR (Howard University Divinity School): Well, I think that what we were witnessing four years ago was sort of like a revival service. There was a real sense of expectancy, a real sense of hope, and like all revival services, at the end of the service you’ve got to go out and get the work done. And some of the energy begins to dissipate, some of the hope begins to dissipate as you come up against the harsh realities in the society, and I think it’s just natural that the second time around you don’t have the same type of expectancy. I see the first time as a revival service, and now it is communion and renewal, healing. That’s the kind of service mood I see this time.

ABERNETHY: Bishop?

Bishop Mariann Edgar BuddeBISHOP MARIANN EDGAR BUDDE (Episcopal Diocese of Washington): Well, what I—my sense was that the president really saw himself, and we saw him, as the one who would bring us together as a country. There wouldn’t be red America, there wouldn’t be blue America. We would be one country together, and what we learned in the first administration is that we were not yet ready to be that country, that we are far more isolated and polarized as a country than we knew ourselves to be, and what we wanted ourselves to be at that time. So my sense is that the task now isn’t so much to speak to the middle but to, in fact, help create a middle where there it’s so much easier for us to stay in our isolated areas with people who think like us, and the president’s task and the tasks of communities of faith is, in fact, to create that common ground where we can find the compromises that we need to make to go forward.

ABERNETHY: Let’s come back to that. President?

PRESIDENT JOHN GARVEY (Catholic University of America): There’s a temptation in talking about these things to look to the president and the government as the leaders in all of these matters, and that’s maybe a mistake in matters of religion. You know, we live in a country where the president is not the head of the national church. It’s people like the bishop who are religious leaders. I think it might be, for many of the issues we’re dealing with in the country, more forceful and outspoken religious leadership from religious leaders would be helpful. I think about immigration as a good example and gun control as another. On the other hand, there are some matters, just to finish the thought, where the conflicts that we’ve had are between the government and private actors, the fight we’re having over health control, health care.

ABERNETHY: When you talk to students at Catholic University, and wherever, do they seem to you kind of disillusioned?

John GarveyGARVEY: Maybe with the possibilities of political solutions for our problems, but young people are much more hopeful than the rest of us, so I think there’s always a much more optimistic spirit on college campuses than there is out in the world.

BUDDE: Well, I would even say, I take it further, and I have two young adult sons, so I watch through, I often watch the work of the country through their eyes and through the young people that I serve, and my sense is in this election, the most recent election, that the future of our country kind of showed up and voted in a way that no one was really expecting that they would, given what you surmised, which was a sense of, perhaps, disillusionment or, in the professor’s words, the revival being over. But, in fact, I think they came back more seasoned, more realistic, more determined to do the hard work to bring about the kind of political consensus that we need, and particularly in the state of Maryland, if you look at the two issues that were passed on referendum, the religious communities, the immigrant communities, people of color—they all came together in ways that totally surprised the expectations, given what was perceived to be such a mood of pessimism, even just months before.

ABERNETHY: What about you, Professor Trulear? Do you sense any little glimmer of hope anywhere that things can be better?

Harold Dean TrulearTRULEAR: Oh, I think there’s a lot of hope. I think that it’s just more grounded in reality, which is, I think, the gist of the bishop’s comments—that there is a sense that there were things that were accomplished during the first administration. I think she’s absolutely right. We have surfaced some of our unreadiness, but then that gives us a more clear agenda for the next four years. I think that also we’ve got glimmers of hope in some of the things that, some of the ways in which people came together around Hurricane Sandy. We’ve seen that in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area. Ways in which this country is now ready for a conversation on violence and gun control based on what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, and of course when the president made his remarks about Newtown he not only included Newtown, but he also included the streets of Chicago, and so there is, there are these different packets of hope, even in the midst of difficulty, that a number of our students at Howard University and other people that I work with are latching onto at this time.

BUDDE: I would also say that one of the things that we are learning is what we would need to do as a country in the face of natural societal resistance to change, and that there is—there are hard lessons to be learned about how to lead in times of polarization which are different than in times when we, when the country is more naturally coming together, and so those require different leadership skills, different spiritual skills, different levels of truth-telling.

ABERNETHY: I wanted to pick up on something that you said, Professor Trulear. When we were talking earlier you spoke about not just gun control, but violence control. Talk about that a little bit.

TRULEAR: Well, gun control is a piece of violence control. We’re a very violent nation. I often talk with my students about the fact that Thanksgiving is the big holiday in the United States because we get to eat as much as we can, which is our consumerism. Then we get to watch football which is a celebration of violence. That’s who we are, and the violence that we see on our streets, the violence that we see in the mass killings is a reflection of a lack of civility all the way around in our country. One of the things that I know a number of faith leaders are doing, and we saw it in the Washington Post this past Thursday, is calling on a more civil tone of political discourse, because there’s violence in words and the ways in which candidates attacked each other during the campaign and the ways in which the bipartisan divide is being reflected in vehement speech and violent speech towards one another. So it seems to me that there’s an opportunity for people of faith to deal with violence at a variety of levels, from mass killings to street violence to the way we talk to each other, and our leaders need to model that. That’s one thing that I think our president has been very good at.

ABERNETHY: John?

GARVEY: You know, one of the hopeful signs that I saw coming out of the last election was an increased attention to the problem of immigration reform on both sides. I think the role that the Hispanic and Latino community played in the election outcomes themselves brought the Republican Party, or the parts of the Republican Party that have been hard to move on immigration reform, back into the center on this issue. That’s an area where I think we’re going to see, we’re going to see real results, both Marco Rubio on one side and President Obama on the other side.

BUDDE: It’s also instructive, I think, in terms of how the political landscape is influenced by what’s happening on the level where people live. The reason the politics shifted is because the country is shifting, and when the country shifts in such a dramatic way there’s really no choice but for the political realities to shift in response to those.

ABERNETHY: This is what I was trying to get at, whether we can look to churches and to denominations and different religions for some kind of coming together that will be a model as well as an encouragement for people, for elected officials.

BUDDE: There’s a model, but there’s also a, yes, coming together, but also having—learning how to have conversations on very difficult topics. Yes, without insulting and demeaning each other, but also trying to present one’s perspective from our personhood, who we are as children of God, so we can’t so easily demonize one another or dismiss one another as unworthy of our consideration.

GARVEY: But this is what I mean by tending to see everything through a political lens. So you’re talking about our job ought to be that we model behaviors so our politicians behave better, but in fact this is a religious issue in a much more important sense. The Christian churches and the Jewish congregations, the Muslim congregations believe that taking care of the poor, the orphans, the aliens is a religious obligation because we’re all children of God, and so in the first instance we want to do it because it’s good for the people who are here and need care among us, and the politicians ought to be listening to that.

ABERNETHY: Well, our time is up I’m sorry to say. Thank you very much, Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, President John Garvey, and Professor Harold Dean Trulear. Many thanks to each of you for an interesting conversation.

Extended Inauguration Perspectives

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The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington; John Garvey, a lawyer and the president of Catholic University; and Harold Dean Trulear, professor of theology at the Howard University Divinity School, continue their conversation about the mood of the country and perspectives on the next four years by weighing the crisis of gun violence and the debate over health care, two social issues that will continue to dominate the domestic scene as President Obama’s second administration begins.

 

Inauguration Look Ahead

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: One of the big events of the new year will be the inauguration of Barack Obama to a second term, so we asked a wide variety of religion leaders what they hope for during the president’s next term.

REV. SAMUEL RODRIGUEZ, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference: If President Obama would revert back to the—that young, powerful, fiery spokesperson in the 2004 Democratic National Convention who talked about reconciling the blue and the red state, about the God of the blue state and the God of the red state, then I believe that he has a chance to really emerge as a transformative, catalytic president reconciling our nation. We are more polarized today than ever before.

REV. JOIQUIM BARNES, New Hope CME Church, South Carolina: I’m hoping that he would be able to work well, that Congress would be able to work with him to come up with a real budget that’s going to help the least of these, and because when you help those who are in the most vulnerable situation, you end up helping the whole country.

Sister Mary Ann WalshSISTER MARY ANN WALSH, US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Foreign aid is 1 percent of the budget, and we talk about cutting that, and that’s a frightening thought while some of us are eating at banquets while people are starving outside our door. That’s not right.

REV. RICHARD LAND, Southern Baptist Convention: To pass a comprehensive tax reform that would get rid of most of the deductions. Not charitable deductions, however. Charitable deductions are critical to civil society, but to eliminate a lot of loop holes and to bring about a bipartisan effort to get the government on a sound footing.

REV. JIM WALLIS, Sojourners: The principle is you’ve got to protect poor and vulnerable people as you find a path to fiscal sustainability. Both are moral issues.

BISHOP GENE ROBINSON, Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire: It’s hard to overestimate the importance of getting healthcare to 40 or 50 million people who did not have access to it before. That’s just huge, and as the wealthiest nation in the world, not to have healthcare for all was just a profound embarrassment.

BISHOP JAIME SOTO, Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento: As bishops we’ve been working on healthcare reform for years. Now there are issues about the healthcare reform that’s been passed, the Affordable Healthcare Act, that we have concerns about, one, some of the conscience issues.

Rev. Samuel RodriguezRODRIGUEZ: I hope he protects religious liberty. I hope he defends the right and protects the right and advocates for religious pluralism.

RABBI SHIRA STUTMAN, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue: The issue of marriage equality, because I think he’s already started to take that on in his first administration, and I just feel like we’re so close we can taste it as we saw, as evidenced in the past election with more and more states, thank God, passing legislation about marriage equality

REV. LUIS CORTES, Esperanza: We have a coalition of people of faith who are actually trying to get both the Republicans and the Democrats to have a conversation on immigration. The president did promise that he wanted to address it. We’re hoping that Congress can work together and this year we can come to an agreement on a more comprehensive immigration reform package.

ARCHBISHOP GEORGE CAREY, Former Archbishop of Canterbury: If we can solve the problem of Israel and make sure that Israel has a proper, proper nation with safe borders and so on and yet at the same time allow the Palestinians to have their own state. If we can solve that one, then many of the world’s problems in terms of interfaith dialogue will be resolved.

Sayyid Syeed, Islamic Society of North AmericaSAYYID SYEED, Islamic Society of North America: It’s very critical for America to have good reputation, to have good liaison, with the Muslim world.

HODA ELSHISHTAWY, Muslim Public Affairs Council: We do hope that the president could maybe visit a mosque or attend an American Muslim institution and really show that direct engagement, that hey, listen, you are part of the American framework and part of the building of this country.

RAJDEEP SINGH, Sikh Coalition: We’re cautiously optimistic that the Obama administration will finally allow Sikhs to service in the U.S armed forces with their articles of faith intact. It would be a very important and historic step.

LAUREN ANDERSON YOUNGBLOOD, Secular Coalition for America: We’d like to see the Obama administration take the lead in acknowledging and including nontheistic Americans in the decision-making process.

WALSH: Pro-life issues are always a concern. Someone has to protect the innocent life, and certainly we think our government ought to be able to do that.

Rabbi Shira Stutman, Sixth & I Historic SynagogueSTUTMAN: I also really hope and pray that in the second administration he takes on the issue of climate change. I think that unfortunately it’s become a politicized, highly contentious issue and that it’s not, and it’s becoming more clear to us as the days go on that it’s something that we need to take on.

RABBI DAVID SAPERSTEIN, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism: Whatever can be done to make our children safer, including stopping availability of assault weapons and these magazines that can kill people, and having people able to get weapons without adequate background checks. It’s really time to put an end to that, and I hope every parent in America calls for it, and when political leaders move, the religious community will be there to give it both moral sanction and political support.

SOTO: As a religious leader, we always have religious hope, and we expect the best of our political leaders, and that’s important for us to do now. I think it’s important for us to pray for our political leaders and to ask that they do the right thing.

Lynching and Forgiveness

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BOB FAW, correspondent: In one of America’s most shameful chapters, thousands of African Americans—no one will ever know how many—were lynched. For two sisters who witnessed a lynching, memories still haunt. Ninety-four-year-old Katherine Fletcher will never forget how her one-time classmate was murdered in St. Joseph, Missouri eight decades ago.

KATHERINE FLETCHER: They chained him to the back of a car and dragged him up and down the main street in the black neighborhood, screamin, you know, “This will happen to you so and so.” Then they hanged him to a tree and set afire to him and burned his body.

FAW: Throughout the country, from the Civil War era well into the 20th century, African-American men, women—even some whites—were lynched, their bodies often shot, mutilated, and burned. Katherine Fletcher’s 92-year-old sister, Korea Strowder, remembers what a mob in Maryville, Missouri did to a black man accused of killing a white woman.

KOREA STROWDER: They decided to put him, chain him on the roof of the school and then set the school on fire.

FLETCHER: There was no evidence that this man was involved with her at all. But they had to pick up somebody.

FAW: Katherine Fletcher is one of over 70 elderly African Americans interviewed by Reverend Angela Sims for her Remembering Lynching project housed at Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History.

Rev. Angela SimsREV. ANGELA SIMS (St. Paul School of Theology): If we don’t capture the narratives now, they will be lost to history forever.

FAW: Angela Sims, who teaches ethics and black church studies at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, spent two years interviewing African Americans who grew up in what theologian James Cone calls “the shadow of the lynching tree.” They either witnessed a lynching, lived in fear of one, or in the case of 92-year-old Willie Matthew Thomas, narrowly escaped being lynched.

WILLIE THOMAS: One of them said, “Well look, are we gonna hang him? Guess we’re not.” Another one said, “Sure, we gonna hang him.” And so he made up the noose, and they put it round my neck. I remembered in the Bible it speak about how they treated Jesus, and they said, “They led him away to be crucified.” They led me away to be crucified, to be hung.

FAW: Thomas was saved when a white man, who knew his family, showed up with a shotgun and intervened.

Dr. Sims got the idea for her project when she heard a speech about lynching by retired minister the Reverend Wallace Hartsfield Sr. Now 83, he was only eight or nine living in Georgia when he peered from behind a curtain and saw a mob.

Rev. Wallace HartsfieldREV. WALLACE HARTSFIELD(Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, Atlanta): They had taken the man out, and they had used his body for gun practice, and then they had hanged him, and then cut him down and dragged him through the street and this was supposed to be a warning to, you know, “uppity niggers.”

FAW: Photographs were made of lynchings, then turned into postcards.

SIMS: When we think about lynching, particularly lynching as mob spectacle, it was very much a spectator sport. And so children were even dismissed from school in order to participate in the spectacle that was hanging, burning, maiming, dismembering.

STROWDER: I had to take the bus home, and I had to ride a bus through the mob and to see the joy on their faces, as if they were coming to a picnic.

SIMS: These postcards are just a graphic depiction of the way in which a culture of terror is almost endemic to what it means to be a citizen of this republic. Lynching was always more than the death act. It was really designed as a way to control human behavior.

FAW: Sims found that those who witnessed lynchings were left initially with fear and bitterness—then lifelong scars.

Katherine FletcherHARTSFIELD: It just haunts you, it just stays with you. You don’t, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t forget it.

FLETCHER: It made me hate with a kind of hate I had never experienced. And I hated all white people. It was a hate that was really beginning to make me ill after awhile.

FAW: Raised a Baptist, Fletcher’s faith was shaken by what she had seen.

FLETCHER: If the Lord that I hear about is the Lord of mercy and love, why would something like this happen?

FAW: What is remarkable—what nearly all those who encountered lynchings told Sims—is that despite the evil and the terror, they were not only able to carry on, the were also able to forgive.

FLETCHER: I had to. I realized that it was a burden on me, it was such a burden carrying around this weight of hate. I guess my answer was Jesus was hated and treated so badly but he could, could, could forgive. If he could forgive, I should be able to forgive also.

HARTSFIELD: Those things hurt, but I cannot allow the past to smother me, to make me so angry that I can’t get over it. Because if you get angry, mad and evil, you look to do evil. But I have been freed from that kind of thing. My faith continues. I refuse to hate them. I refuse to hate them.

THOMAS: What that white man did to me—come and rescued me and took a chance on his life—that gives me a sense of forgiveness. I forgive those people. You have to do that.

FAW: Sims calls their faith “the theology of liberation.”

(to Sims) You at one point said, “I’m listening for what salvation and redemption might look like.”

SIMS: I marvel at people’s ability to not only live through what they experienced but not to become consumed by hatred. For some it was arriving at a point where they recognized that even in the midst of evil, God was still with them.

FAW: Their lives, their testimony, an affirmation that lives once scarred can transcend evil.

HARTSFIELD: I think my faith must dictate to me what I say, what I do, how I act, how I live my life. And my faith teaches me that I am to forgive.

FAW: Even as the lynching tree continues to cast its shadow, this is a tale of remembrance and redemption which shows that it is possible to move into the light.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Kansas City.

Hindu Kumbh Mela Festival

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Finally, the world’s largest religious festival got underway in India this week. Kim Lawton has more.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: For the next two months, as many as 100 million Hindu pilgrims are expected to converge in northern India for the Maha Kumba Mela or Big Pitcher festival. It happens only once every 12 years. The pilgrims believe their sins will be washed away by bathing at the point where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet a third mystical river. The festival has been taking place for more than 2,000 years, and officials say this may be the biggest celebration yet.

The event commemorates a Hindu story that describes the god Vishnu fight with demons to gain possession of a golden pitcher containing the nectar of immortality. During the battle, some drops fell to the earth. Smaller Kumbh Mela festivals are held more often at the spots where tradition says those drops fell. But this Big Pitcher Festival is considered the holiest. Hindu sages and hermits come out of their seclusion, and the event has also become a meeting point for yoga practitioners from around the world.

Authorities have constructed makeshift tents and medical facilities in the small town where the pilgrims are gathering, but security is a huge challenge. Another problem: dealing with the already-severe pollution in the Ganges River. The government has banned pilgrims from using plastic bags and asked them not to use soap. Industries in the area have been put under new pollution restrictions. Despite the problems and the massive crowds, many pilgrims who make the trek say this will be the spiritual journey of their lifetime. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

Religion and Downton Abbey

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As Season 3 of Downton Abbey unfolds on PBS, we asked Rev. Ian Markham, dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary, to ponder religious and spiritual themes in the series, from the invisibility of God to the relationship between faith and a rapidly changing social order.

 

REV. IAN MARKHAM (Dean and President, Virginia Theological Seminary): Downton Abbey is a remarkable series. It’s both a costume drama and an imaginative soap opera. It’s got a superb script, the dialogue is riveting, and it captures the complexity of human life in all its richness. There are many shadow-sides to many of the characters that enables a viewer to empathize and be moved with the narrative and with the stories that develops and grows.

We see how organization of form of a society can be eroded or undermined by the complexity and predicaments that individuals get into, and the truth about being human is we’re all like that. There’s that lovely phrase Lord Grantham uses in talking to Carson, and he says there are chapters of all our lives we’d rather not be read by others. What’s interesting about that moment is it captures a sub-theme of the entire series, that what’s true of most lives is there are complexities in our past, there are ambiguities, there are moments of pain that we live with that affects the present, but we don’t want to share with everybody.

LADY MARY CRAWLEY: Papa? What’s the matter?

ROBERT, EARL OF GRANTHAM: Nothing’s the matter. What should be the matter?

REV. MARKHAM: Religion plays a very interesting role in the series. On one level, it’s relatively invisible. But you would expect religion to be more present in their lives. You do see the connection between religion and cosmic events in this respect: It’s a social commentary in many ways. It’s a social history. So you get the Titanic, you get World War I, you get the emancipation of Ireland, you get the vote of women, you have all these significant social events which actually reflects on a sort breaking down of the semi-feudal structure, aristocratic control and elitism being slowly undermined.

VIOLET, DOWAGER COUNTESS OF GRANTHAM: Are you really that tall?

WILLIAM: Yes, my lady.

VIOLET: I thought you might be walking on stilts.

REV. MARKHAM: And there is a sort of interesting question about whether or not the sort of disequilibrium that makes up the present in Season 3 is a spiritual failing. There are practices, faith practices which come out repeatedly, so there’s quite a lot of praying that goes on. Lady Mary prays for Matthew when he’s injured in the war with real passion and sincerity. So prayer is actually an important sub-theme, and there is a sense in which it is a classic form of English Anglicanism, which in many ways is very supportive of traditional structures, and as those traditional structures break down the English Anglicanism is undermined and eroded as well.

One way in which the series is actually very illuminating is to think about faith and change, to think about social order and faith, to think about the ways in which we’ve got to adapt to a plural society. I mean, what’s very interesting about Season 3 is the whole issue of Catholicism. You’re talking English anti-Catholicism is deeply entrenched. How does an established form of religion adapt to an increasingly complex world with intrinsic pluralism of faith perspectives and a social order which doesn’t just enjoy the habit of Anglicanism?

VIOLET: I’m so looking forward to seeing your mother again. When I’m with her I’m reminded of the virtues of the English.

MATTHEW CRAWLEY: But isn’t she American?

VIOLET: Exactly.

REV. MARKHAM: Those one-liners from Maggie Smith are just sublime. Sometimes wicked, sometimes insightful, sometimes wrapped in prejudice, and she utters the lines we all wish we could utter. And there’s a deep biblical strand which celebrates and reflects on the power of conversation.

ROBERT (to Cora): Thank God she missed tonight’s drama, or we’d never hear the end of it.

CORA, COUNTESS OF GRANTHAM: Don’t worry. She’ll bring enough drama of her own.

ROBERT (to banker): Are you really telling me that all the money is gone?

BANKER: I’m afraid so.

REV. MARKHAM: This series, partly because of its powerful dialogue, captures that facet of human reality very nicely, indeed.

ROBERT: I won’t give in, Murray. I’ve sacrificed too much to Downton to give in now. I refuse to be the failure. The earl who dropped the torch and let the flame go out.

REV. MARKHAM: In many ways it’s a secular introduction to what the crisis of faith might look like. In other words, the crisis of faith is not explicitly grounded or framed in God-talk. There’s very little explicit reference to God in the television series. Grace does not take place at meals, even though there’s a lot of eating. They rarely go to church, except for a wedding, and even then you don’t see much of the wedding service. So faith is strangely non-explicit, and yet simultaneously faith is very present. And what I think the series is doing is inviting us to think of faith in a new and different way. Faith is interpreting how we relate to each other. Faith is coping with the complexity of our past. Faith is carrying the baggage that shapes us all into the present and doing so in ways that are ameliorated and less damaging. Faith is hope even when you are in a predicament of hopelessness. All these themes bubble through countlessly.

JOHN BATES: Do you never doubt? For just one minute? I wouldn’t blame you.

ANNIE: No. I don’t doubt that the sun will rise in the east either.

REV. MARKHAM: Annie’s faithfulness to her husband, Bates, who’s now in prison, is a lovely illustration of trust and hope and commitment—that somewhere and somehow and through all this there will be a different future for them both. So the series plays around with faith as the strategy and device that enables us to cope with the complexity of being human. It’s perfect material for people who want to reflect on faith and the connection of faith and life. It’s perfect because of the ways in which it lifts up the complexity of human lives and the narratives and stories that make us all who we are.

Roman Catholic Women Priests

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SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: At a Los Angeles ceremony, a group of Catholic women is about to commit an act of religious faith, but because they are women it’s an act the Vatican has condemned as a grave crime against the Roman Catholic Church and what the church sees as its divine laws.

“Bishop Olivia and members of the community, I am honored to testify on behalf of Jennifer’s readiness to be ordained to the priesthood.”

GONZALEZ: In a faith that prohibits females from becoming priests, these women are rebels, gathering here this afternoon to ordain this woman, Jennifer O’Malley, as a Catholic priest.

(to Jennifer O’Malley): Do you love the Catholic Church?

JENNIFER O’MALLEY: I do. It’s who I am, so I can’t leave. You know, I’ve gone to other churches and they’re beautiful, but I’m Catholic, and I can’t separate myself from that.

GONZALEZ: O’Malley is a member of a group called Roman Catholic Women Priests. It was started in 2002 when seven women, in an act of defiance against the Vatican, were ordained as priests by a male bishop in Europe. Ever since, the group’s been fighting for full acceptance of women into the priesthood. In the last decade, Roman Catholic Women Priests has ordained more than 100 women in ceremonies similar to this one for Jennifer O’Malley.

“We choose you our sister Jennifer for the order of priesthood. Thanks be to God.”

GONZALEZ: The ordinations are held in non-Catholic churches and definitely without the sanction or recognition of the Catholic Church. In fact, under Vatican policy O’Malley’s ordination, like the women who have done this before her, brings automatic excommunication. That means she’s barred from receiving the church’s sacraments or participating in the liturgy, unless she repents.

O’MALLEY: You know, in a sense it’s hurtful, and the fact that I’m being excommunicated by people who don’t even know me. But on the other hand, again, it is a consequence of doing what God has called me to do.

GONZALEZ: And your response to those who think at worst this is heresy, out and out, and at best some sort of a stunt, really. What do you say to them?

Jennifer O'MalleyO’MALLEY: You know, it’s a call from God, and I believe it to be a true call, so those other things have to be put aside. And if that means breaking a law within the church, I know within myself, within my intellect and emotionally, that it is the right thing to do.

GONZALEZ: Catholic leaders, of course, see the ordination of women very differently.

REV. THOMAS RAUSCH (Professor of Catholic Theology, Loyola Marymount University): The Catholic Church is not ready for the ordination of women right now.

GONZALEZ: Father Thomas Rausch is a priest and professor of Catholic theology at L.A.’s Loyola Marymount University.

RAUSCH: As far as the church is concerned, these are not valid ordinations. Ordination is an act of the whole church, and this is not an act of the whole church. In a sense, this is an act against the communion of the whole church. It is very difficult to call yourself a Roman Catholic if you are not living in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and communion means you are recognized by the bishop and you have this network of relationships, which is…It’s the kind of glue that holds the Catholic Church together

Father Thomas RauschGONZALEZ: The theological justification most often cited for barring women from the Catholic priesthood goes back to Jesus’ choice of men only to be his disciples. That was followed by centuries of male-dominated customs developed within the church.

RAUSCH: I think that, you know, the culture was patriarchal. It was very much male-centered. Males were educated. They took roles of leadership. They played leading roles in the churches. So I think those cultural reasons really have to be taken into account in order to understand the exclusion of women from ordained ministry in the life of the church.

GONZALEZ: Although there was talk about the possible ordination of women in the wake of Vatican II 50 years ago, in re cent decades the church has taken a tougher stand against the idea of women in the priesthood. In 2008, the Vatican formally declared its policy of excommunication of women who completed ordination. That was followed two years later by the listing of the ordination of women as a “grave crime” against Catholic sacramental law. The church says it’s taken these steps to maintain theological purity and centuries of Catholic tradition and unity. Many who favor the ordination of women, though, say sexism and chauvinism are the real reasons women are barred from the Catholic priesthood.

JANE VIA: When I chose to get ordained, it was because I feel that intelligent, articulate women must act to try to change the church.

GONZALEZ: Jane Via is a Catholic woman priest in San Diego.

VIA: I realized there are no clergymen who are going to stand up to this authoritarian, totalitarian, patriarchal, sexist system, because they have too much invested.

Jane ViaGONZALEZ: Via is one the most prominent figures in the women Catholic priests movement; partly that’s because of her unusual background. Along with having a PhD in theology, Via was also an assistant district attorney in San Diego for over 25 years. That courtroom experience, she says, has helped her in her present conflict with the leaders of the Catholic Church. Via says the evidence she’s gathered shows women had a prominent role in the early church.

VIA: There no are no scriptural barriers to the ordination of women, and the first 300-400 years of the early church I believe the evidence shows clearly included the ordination of women as deacons, the ordination of women as priests, and the ordination of women as bishops.

“Let us pray.”

GONZALEZ: Via leads a congregation in San Diego, with masses held in a borrowed Lutheran church.

Via blessing child: “Giles, God bless you and keep you…”

GONZALEZ: Although worship services here aren’t recognized by the local Catholic archdiocese, Via carries out all of the typical duties of a male priest. The people who attend mass here say that despite this congregation’s outsider status within the Catholic Church, they’re secure in their own religious identities.

(to congregants) How do you identify yourself? What’s your faith?

Group of congregants: Roman Catholic.

(to congregant): What would you say to your fellow Catholics watching this who look at this and see a woman as priest and say that just isn’t real, and the mass you’ve gone to has no legitimacy.

Congregant: For me it is real. It’s as real as a male priest standing there. What’s the difference? Just because one is a woman and one is a man? I don’t think God distinguishes.

GONZALEZ: But Via acknowledges that her battle with the Catholic Church has cost her, from broken friendships to the pain of excommunication.

VIA: I remember being really grieved about not being able to be buried in a Catholic cemetery. That was sort of the ultimate exclusion. You can’t take the sacraments. I knew I would be excommunicated so I knew I could not accept the sacraments in a canonical Catholic church anymore, unless I was unknown to the population there, which is hard for me to be in San Diego.

GONZALEZ: What do you say to those who would say join another community of faith, join another faith, become something else, but don’t stay in the Catholic Church with your views. You would say what?

VIA: For me to just turn my back on this institution and say, “You’re all a bunch of worthless idiots, and I’m not participating anymore. I’m going to do my own thing. I’m going to go be Episcopalian and I can be a priest there” is completely irresponsible. This is my community. If everyone who is progressive-minded, progressive thinking, and willing to stand up to the Vatican leaves the church, the church will never change.

O’MALLEY (at altar): “…and for this we always thank and praise you.”

Ceremony: “We join with the saints of all times and places as they sing forever to your glory.”

GONZALEZ: Yet despite the hardening position of the church against their movement and its ordinations, the women Catholic priests say they aren’t retreating. They say they believe that although they might not see it in their own lifetimes, women will one day be allowed to become Roman Catholic priests—and with the support and blessings of the Vatican.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.