Category Archives: religion

Notes from a quiet street—New Year’s edition

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It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth.   But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.

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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000.  And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.

We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.

Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.

By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.

When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?

Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)

To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?

When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with?  If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.

When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10.  If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.

So the decade has another year to go.

Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it.   A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.

So what the heck are we arguing about?   Let’s move on.

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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned).  As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.”   Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.

One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing.   Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.

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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth.   A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:

https://theologycorner.net/blog/blogs/idioglossolalia/the-death-of-truth-both-sides-dont-deserve-our-consideration/

The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration

Ruben Rosario Rodriguez   December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia

As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).

 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.

Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:

“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”

One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”

Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”

Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,” “Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.

This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.

In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.

Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.

 

Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:

“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”

—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.

Dr. Crane: The meaning of Christmas

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. This entry is from a later book of essays, Christmas and the Year Round, published the year before his death.)

Christmas means the indestructibility of joy

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing neither time nor force can suppress is instinct.

In days past, religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.

When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes Instinct, and to use the words of Bennett*, blandly remarks:

“Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own convenience and no one but nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”

In the Fourth Century, the Christian World was pretty dismal. This world was considered a dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the girls and boys were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.

Then the church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.

In 342 A.D., the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

This time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Saturnalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysus. In Egypt of this period the population bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus of India sang their songs to Vishnu.

Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.

The wisest things the Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to a child.

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.

It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes, it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.

Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.

It is the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for this orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”

Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail or hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.

The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied by laughter.

*Dr. Crane is referring to English novelist essayist, and journalist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). The quote comes from his book, Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays, published in 1921.

The figure on top

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Ceres was lifted back to the top of the Capitol Tuesday morning. Not everybody was happy about it. The reason why is part of our national faith and national political history.

At a couple of the several pre-Christmas events we attended last weekend people asked if your observer had observed Representative Mike Moon’s letter in the local newspaper objecting to a pagan goddess being put back on top of our Capitol and what our observations were about his position that a statue of Jesus would have been better.

The tones of their voices as they asked those questions was indicative of their feelings that Rep. Moon was—–I guess “mistaken” is a generic way to put it.

My observation was that I disagreed with Rep. Moon, not because I am not a Christian—I shall let a much higher power than public opinion decide if I am and if being so entitles me to some eternal benefit—but because I am an American.

This incident and the attitudes implied in those brief discussion is both a commentary on some of the unfortunate polarization within our national community in which people tend to stake out a position and those who disagree are branded as political heathens, enemies, liberals, conservatives—whatever disparaging brands you can think of with which we brand people today instead of respecting their right to think differently from us.

There is nothing wrong with disagreement. Our nation, or at least the New England version of it that has been part of our school history lessons, was founded on disagreement. Unfortunately, our history tells us that those who disagreed with the Church of England enough to flee England often did not tolerate disagreement on matters of faith within their own ranks once they got here.

The discussion of Ceres vs. Jesus is part of our national faith fabric that we’ll explore a little bit later. But first, allow your faithful servant to explain why he comes down on the side of Ceres in this discussion.

Ceres is a symbol. Jesus is a person of worship. We do not worship Ceres by having her on our capitol. She symbolizes our greatest industry—agriculture—among other things. We do not worship agriculture although without it we could not exist. So her importance is in that quality of Missouri that is essential to all who live here. She might have been a goddess to be worshipped by ancient Romans and Greeks (who called her Demeter), but today she is but a symbol of a bountiful state.

The other day I drove past the Vipassana Buddhist Church, Center for Buddhist Development in Jefferson City, which has been in town since 2001. A few minutes later I drove past Temple Beth-el, the oldest synagogue building still in use west of the Mississippi River, built in 1883. Had I driven a little longer I would have gone past the Islamic Center of Jefferson City. Just outside of town is the Unity Church of Peace. And I have spoken several times at local Unitarian Universalist meetings. There even is a loose-knit organization of Atheists that gets together from time to time in Jefferson City.

Most Sundays you’ll find me at the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), one block from the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal Churches, kind of a mainstream nest in downtown Jefferson City.

All of these mainline and other organizations are free in this nation to worship as they please and who they please or to worship nobody if they please. This nation for centuries has tried to keep church and state apart. The degree to which that has succeeded has been discussed for as long as the effort has been made. But the underlying sentiment behind it has been that this nation is a nation where believers or non-believers of various ilks are equal in the eyes of the law and as such are to be respected as citizens of this country. Refining that concept has produced court rulings by the dozens without eliminating the attitudes by some that they are closer to God than others are. In the end, however, we think as an individual that God will decide who is closest to God and that the human tendency to separate ourselves on that basis is spiritually counterproductive.

Putting Jesus atop our Capitol would not recognize the diversity of faith or non-faith that is a perpetual part of American history, one of the things that sets our nation apart from many others.

Representative Moon sees things differently and he is entitled as a citizen and a man of faith to do so. Those who dismiss him out-of-hand are being dismissive of our heritage. A healthy and respectful discussion of the issues surrounding his feelings is not likely to produce many converts in any direction but the freedom we have to explore competing points of view on subjects such as this is part of who we are as a nation.

I’m reading George M. Marsden’s Religion in American Culture, a broad survey of the role of religion in creating and shaping our country. One of the things he writes about early in the book is the world that produced those we call Pilgrims and Puritans, people who came out of a Europe in which the Catholic Church only a century earlier had split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in which more recently the Roman church had divided through the Protestant Reformation (“Protestant,” as in one who protests), and the further divisions within Protestantism that was free of Catholic doctrine. In England, where King Henry VIII created his own church rather than follow dictates from Rome, a further split occurred between those who believed the Anglican Church could be cleansed from within and those whose disagreements with that church led to persecution and their eventual flight to Holland and ultimately to the New World.

But those who landed here in 1620 and the Puritans who came a few years later had a low tolerance for non-traditional interpretations within their ranks, the foremost result being Roger Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts Bay to found what is now Rhode Island as a refuge for those who felt church and state should not be one.

Williams was a co-founder of the Baptist Church in America with Dr. John Clarke. Marsden says, “Baptists carried the Puritan emphasis on conversion a step further by insisting that baptism of adults symbolizes spiritual separation from the world. Interested above all in the spiritual purity of the church, early Baptists believed in separation from the state Church of England, rather than working for reform from within, as most Puritans believed…Williams thus championed the separation of church and state, but not for the same reason that later Enlightenment thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, did. Jefferson was concerned that the church would corrupt the state. Williams feared that the state would corrupt the church.”

The challenges of survival by settlers who faced another new world beyond the Alleghenies led to new denominations that recognized individual responses to God rather than responses to the structured and creedal churches of the colonies.

We might have oversimplified what Marsden spent many pages explaining, but we remain today a nation of conversion-oriented, structured religions and religions that place greater emphasis on individual responses to faith outside of church-required adherence to doctrines.

One might be more likely to insist Jesus should be atop the Capitol. The other might be more likely to insist a state showing a preference for a particular faith tradition should not be what the country is all about. This discussion about the proper place of religion in American life is an ongoing one. Fortunately, we live in a nation that allows that discussion. We must be vigilant in protecting that right.

So Representative Moon is neither wrong nor right. He’s just being an American citizen and in his advocacy for Jesus being on top of the Capitol, he has reminded us of the differences that have shaped our free country and remain part of the diverse dialogue that is welcome here. We are glad that he can be such a citizen. And glad that those who respectfully disagree with him are Americans, too.

Dr. Crain: What is Democracy?

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. As the time approaches for the return of the Missouri General Assembly, we offer these thoughts.):

FUNDAMENTALS IN DEMOCRACY

These are axioms of democracy. Think on these things.

  1. The whole people is wiser than any group of men in it. Its judgment is sounder, surer. As Lincoln put it, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
  2. Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rules; it is a spirit.
  3. Remember what Mazzzini* said, that some day a man would arise to whom democracy would be a religion. He would be the Great Man (I quote from memory, and may be inexact.)
  4. Democracy is run for the benefit of the people in it; autocracy for the benefit of the people upon it.
  5. Autocracy is most concerned about efficiency; democracy about welfare. Autocracy is eager to build the house; Democracy, that the builders be happy.
  6. Autocracy is a White Passion; Democracy is a Red Passion.
  7. Autocracy thinks of the State; Democracy of the people that compose the State.
  8. Autocracy is abstract; Democracy concrete. The former exults impersonal aims; the latter aims constantly at men.
  9. Autocracy producers Order; Democracy Initiative. Democracy invents; Autocracy applies.
  10. Autocracy’s efficiency is quick, specious, and temporary; Democracy’s efficiency is cumulative; every success means another.
  11. Democracy is natural; Autocracy is artificial.
  12. Democracy is its own remedy. The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It carries within itself its own recuperation. Autocracy prepares its own ruin.
  13. Democracy has in it the seed of evolution; Autocracy has in it the seed of revolution.
  14. The strength of democracy is education; the strength of autocracy is obedience.
  15. The God of democracy is the same God the individual has; the God of autocracy has a different moral code from that of the individual. The Kaiser’s God, for instance, approved of the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania.**
  16. The method of democracy is light; of autocracy, darkness. Democracy created the free press; Autocracy the censor.
  17. It is complained of democracy that it debates too much, but only by free debate can the right be winnowed out.
  18. Democracy “washes its dirty linen in public.” True, but it gets it clean.
  19. Democracy is dangerous. And there is no progress without danger.
  20. Democracy is called vulgar, common, cheap. The real truth is that Autocracy is more so, only its defects are concealed and fester, while democracy’s are open and are healed.
  21. Democracy is capable of a more perfect organization and unity than autocracy.
  22. Autocracy is built upon caste; Democracy upon humanity.
  23. “The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,” is only possible in a world of democratic nations. So long as there are kings, emperors, and dynasties there can be no world unity.
  24. Militarism is a function of autocracy; democracy functions in law.
  25. Art, science, and literature will do better under democracy than under any protection and patronage they may get from autocracy, just as plants and people grow better in the air and sunshine than in a closed room.

*Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was an Italian politician and writer who was influential in the Italian Revolutionary Movement that argued for a unified Italy

**This column appeared during World War I and was published in one of his books in 1919.

Remember the document

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Tomorrow is Independence Day. But in too many places, it will be just a Fourth of July holiday.  Some places have events honoring veterans—although it is likely few, if any, of these events will remember to mention the veterans who should be recognized on Independence Day—the Revolutionary War veterans who might be buried in their community’s oldest cemeteries.

The Woodland Cemetery in Jefferson City, for instance, has the graves of Christopher Casey and John Gordon.  Casey also was a veteran of the War of 1812. They were young men when they likely heard one of the first readings of the Declaration of Independence.  And they fought to make that independence come true.

They are two of more than 350 Revolutionary War figures believed to be buried in Missouri.

Rather than make the ceremonies of this day another day to honor contemporary veterans, this should be the day to celebrate the document that declared our independence and proclaimed that the thirteen British colonies were equal partners in the formation of a new nation deserving equal rank with all other nations, the document that men like Christopher Casey and John Gordon defended in a revolution underway before the Declaration was written.

Princeton University Professor Danielle Allen, to whom we have referred in earlier entries, suggests in her book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, that all of us need to read the Declaration slowly and in detail and think about why it was written, what it meant then, and what it means today.  She maintains it’s far more than a 240-year old statement of reasons for breaking away from England.

We class the Declaration in the same category as the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a lot of church hymns—things we read, sing, or say (often in the wrong way) by rote, without giving any consideration to what we’re really saying.

Allen concludes, “There are no silver bullets for the problem of civility in our political life.  There are no panaceas for educational reform. But if I were to pretend to offer either, it would be this:  all adults should read the Declaration closely; all students should have read the Declaration from start to finish before they leave high school…It would nourish everyone’s capacity for moral reflection.  It would prepare us all for citizenship.  Together we would learn the democratic arts….The time has come to reclaim our patrimony and also to pass it on—to learn how to read this text again—and to bring back to life our national commitment to equality. It is time to let the Declaration once more be ours, as it was always meant to be.”

Allen’s book, in fact, explains line-by-line and sometimes word-for-word why the Declaration says what it says. Reading the document is one thing; understanding it is another.  And Independence Day is a time to do both.

In this era of ego-driven, selfish, and hurtful politics, it is time to seriously ponder the last sentence of the document’s text.  “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

There are those who will see only the words “divine Providence” and start making divisive proclamations about a Christian nation.  But they miss the entire point of the sentence and, indeed, the entire point of the Declaration if that is all that they recognize because, in doing so, they avoid acknowledging the commitments these men made to one another and to us—and a commitment we should be renewing on this day.

Some will see that last sentence in sharp contrast to today’s politics of mutual destruction.  Professor Allen makes it clear in her book that the Declaration was heatedly debated by strong personalities who, in the end, found the powerful words proclaiming the birth of a new nation.  In comparison, the hours of debates we have heard in the legislature and watched in the Congress are insignificant.  And at the end of those modern debates, the participants walk away without a thought to their lives, their fortunes, and whatever honor they might still have.

Those men in Philadelphia knew this nation would not be independent just because they said it would be.  Their final sentence committed each of them to stand with the others to fight for that independence, no matter the cost, no matter their differences.  As Allen puts it, “They are building their new country, their peoplehood, on a notion of shared sacrifice.”

Allen thinks the pledge that united these passionate, disparate, individuals was based on the understanding that each of them was equal to the others. “They all pledged everything to each other.  Since the signers made their pledges as representatives of their states, they were also pledging their states and everything in them.  They staked their claim to independence on the bedrock of equality,” she wrote.

Their pledge to one another of everything of value to them, she says, is an understanding that this diverse group recognized all were equal in creating this new system and, “They do so under conditions of mutual respect and accountability by sharing intelligence, sacrifice, and ownership.  The point of political equality, then, is not merely to secure spaces free from domination but also to engage all members of a community equally in the work of creating and constantly re-creating that community.”

Equality is the foundation of freedom because from a commitment to equality emerges the people itself—we, the people—with the power both to create a shared world in which all can flourish and to defend it from encroachers…Equality & Freedom.  The colonists judged them worth all they had.

Would that we in this era, when the focus is on achieving and defending power over others, could have leaders and candidates with the courage to rally all of us to equally share the sacrifices and the responsibilities of being a whole people.

It is time for us go beyond the Fourth of July and pledge to one another on Independence Day that we are, as they were, bound together equally in constantly re-creating better communities and a better nation, pledging

OUR lives.

OUR fortunes.

OUR sacred honors.

A “terrorist attack” at the Governor’s Mansion

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One of the first questions asked after one of today’s violent episodes that leaves people dead and injured is “Was this a terrorist attack?”   We are not the first generation to ask that question by a long shot.  There always have been terrorists, real and imagined. And sometimes, as is often the case today, a terrorist or suspected terrorist is identified with a faith tradition.

Herewith, we offer a story of a “terrorist attack” at the home of Missouri’s governor, told on behalf of one Phillip Thomas Miller, whose friends called him “P.T.”  He was once the warden of the state penitentiary and is credited with creating a policy that would let convicts have their sentences reduced by one-fourth (in his time) if they behaved themselves in the prison.  He thought it would be good for the discipline inside the walls if inmates have a substantial reason to obey the rules.

But before P.T. Miller was the warden of the penitentiary, he was considered a terrorist.

Miller moved to Jefferson City when he was about sixteen years old.  He died sixty-two years later in the same house in which he had lived since he moved to the capital city.

Charles B. Oldham told of Miller and the “terrorist attack” in one of the 1914 series of articles on prominent early residents of Jefferson City.

A “swell ball” was held in the original Governor’s Mansion in the late 1830s, before the first capitol (it was known as ‘The Governor’s House” originally) burned down in 1837.   As Oldham told the story, referring to Miller:

He was then quite a youngster and clerk for his uncle in the latter’s store.  Mr. Miller and some boys with whom he associated were considered too young to invite to the ball, but his uncle, John Miller, and his aunt were there, as were all the men and women of any prominence in Jefferson City.  Mr. Miller and his companions could look on from a distance, and that was all.  They were chagrined and made.  It was proposed that some trick be played upon the merrymakers and soil their fun.  In looking about for means of carrying out their intentions, Mr. Miller suggested that he could open his uncle’s store and procure some gunpowder and make a big noise near the Mansion and frighten the ladies out of their wits.

One plan after another was devised and abandoned until finally Mr. Miller suggested that some ten or fifteen pounds of gunpowder should be tightly wrapped in twine with a fuse attachment.  This was done, and Mr. Miller and one other boy deposited the layout near one of the windows on the south side of the Mansion, ignited the fuse and scampered.  When the explosion occurred, every window in the south side of the Mansion was broken and it rained pieces of twine over many acres of ground.  The women screamed, fainted and did other things common to the feminine mind in such emergencies to show their fear.  The men, too, were frightened, for this incident occurred at a time when the Mormons were troublesome in this state and threatening.  The men immediately imagined that the Mormons were trying to blow up the Mansion.  The ball came to an end immediately, for the women demanded franticly that they be taken home forthwith.  Mr. Miller’s uncle was sheriff of the county at that time and he made a good thorough investigation of the grounds.  The thousands of pieces of twine string puzzled him for a time, but presently he made up his mind that the whole affair was a badly planned joke and that his nephew was at the bottom of it.

Mr. Miller and his companions were badly frightened when they realized what they had done, and although his uncle accused him that night of being in on the plot, yet he would not admit as much until he was assured that no one had been hurt, as was true. 

The old capitol burned shortly after that. Months later, armed conflict broke out in northwest Missouri between Mormons and non-believers. Governor Boggs issued the order telling the Mormons to get out of Missouri or face extermination.

The Governor’s Mansion became the temporary quarters during the Civil War of Colonel Henry Boernstein after Union troops ran Confederate-sympathizing Governor Claiborne F. Jackson out of town.  It was replaced by the present mansion in 1871.

And P. T. Miller?  He became an upright man in every respect and a good example to the rising generation. He was a good business man, a good official, and a good writer.  Everybody knew him who had any acquaintance to the city and everybody liked him for his many and good qualities and sterling worth.

The boy who set off a bomb at a time when there were fears of terrorism 180 years ago died an honored man in 1895.

(Photo from the Cole County Historical Society)

Half-guilty, fully hypocritical

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Your correspondent has a good friend, the Reverend John Bennett, who speaks and prays with a soft but strong voice, a man stooped by age but standing straight and tall in his passion for social justice.

John has been convicted of trespassing in the public gallery of the Missouri Senate.  He’s one of the Medicaid 23, as they are called, the ministers and private citizens who interrupted a filibuster on May 6, 2014 with songs, slogans and prayers urging senators to forget about playing politics with Medicaid expansion and instead think of 300,000 Missourians living on much less than senators are paid who would gain healthcare coverage under that part of Obamacare.

That’s John, wearing his minister’s stole, on the front row with the group in front of the Cole County Courthouse before their trial.

missouri faith voices

He said at the time of the demonstration, “Missouri lawmakers need a wake-up call. This is not about politics—this is about human life.  Until they do their job and pass Medicaid expansion, 700 Missourians will die each year and hundreds of thousands will live with untreated illness and in financial fear. This is a moral issue.”

Your correspondent was at the Senate press table that day.  Posted video of John and the other demonstrators with the story on the Missourinet web page. We understand the video was played during the trial. The Senate did not seem surprised when John and the-more than 23 others confronted them from the gallery.  Ron Richard, then the Majority Floor Leader, immediately moved for adjournment, interrupting Senator Jamilah Nasheed’s filibuster.  A few members stuck around for a while but the rest decided they didn’t need to hear what some people of faith had to say on behalf of folks without enough money to influence lawmakers.  Prosecutor Mark Richardson tried to portray Nasheed as a victim of the protest.  She strongly dismisses that thought.  She says Richardson never talked to her.  She was never asked to testify.

Senator Richard is now the President pro Tem, the leader of the chamber.

Capitol police, who earlier had been briefed by leaders of the demonstration, asked them to leave.  And most of them did.  But the Medicaid 23, as they had promised the police, stayed until officers tapped them individually on the shoulder and asked them to depart.  And when that happened, each of them peacefully left the chamber.  John was one of the last four to go.

Prosecutor Richardson charged the 23 with trespassing and with obstructing the business of the Senate.  One of the 23 was unable to attend the trial and could be tried separately later.  We’ll see if Richardson has the courage to put him on trial by himself. After all, he has to be as guilty as the rest, doesn’t he?

The case could have been dropped at any time by Richard and the Senate but Richardson spent more than two years on their behalf zealously pursuing his case and the righteous Senate leadership didn’t stop him. From the accounts we have read, his closing arguments displayed some ignorance one would not have expected from someone who had spent two years preparing.  In the end, a jury said they were guilty of trespassing.  But they were not guilty of obstructing the Senate.  An appeal of the conviction is likely.

To add a degree of fairness here—just one degree—there is an issue of public safety involved, and Richardson raised it.  If the Senate had dropped these charges, would it be giving tacit approval for other groups to think it’s permissible to do what the Medicaid 23 and their supporters did?  Would the Senate be inviting disorder in its galleries if it did not pursue this case? We weren’t in the jury room but that might have been the telling point leading to the trespassing conviction.

Prosecutor Richardson told the jury there are other places to hold protests at the Capitol, and it is true that protests are not uncommon in the rotunda or on the south front steps.  It is also true that lawmakers can and do easily ignore them.  Yes, people can testify in committees, and they have.  But when citizens start to feel their lawmakers are stone deaf, some kind of civil disobedience might seem the only alternative.

The jury, perhaps sensing that recommending jail time for these folks and only adding to the list of national embarrassments that Missouri seems to generate too often, has recommended the judge fine them.  Judge Dan Green is deciding how much.

There’s a greater and broader issue that is outside the courtroom.  It is inside the Senate.  And it is this:

What does this prosecution say about a Senate that has spent so much of its time passing a Religious Freedom Restoration bill that lets people use their religion to exclude others from associating with them as a matter of public policy—but prosecutes those who are PRACTICING their religious freedom (among other constitutional rights) to call on the legislature to include people in a matter of public policy?  The Senate seems to prefer as friends those supporting a religion of exclusion while considering those supporting a religion of inclusion as criminals.

It might be good for legislators who meet weekly for Bible Study to become acquainted with Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Matthew because He speaks of them in Chapter 23:

“Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

5 “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

13 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. [14]

15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

16 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ 17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? 18 You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ 19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. 22 And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Had Jesus spoken this truth to power from the gallery of the Missouri Senate on May 6, 2014, He would stand today with the Medicaid 22 as a convicted trespasser.

(Photo from Missouri Faith Voices)

The Politics of Nostalgia

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Robert P. Jones, the former Missouri State University psychology professor who now heads the Public Religious Research Institute, looks at many of the issues that (in your observer’s view) divert the attentions of lawmakers away from solving infrastructure, education, and social problems by trying to preserve the diminishing influence of their religion in his book, The End of White Christian America.

The PRRI has identified attitudinal splits that point to an ongoing diminution in the influence of WCA that for most of this nation’s history was “the prominent cultural force.”  The survey has found 53% of Americans think our culture has gone downhill since the 1950s.  But Jones says there is a “stark cleavage” by race and religion.  Seventy-two percent of evangelicals believe in the cultural slippage.  Fifty-eight percent of mainline white Protestants and white Catholics agree.

However, fifty-nine percent of Hispanic Catholics think our culture has improved. And sixty-three percent of the growing numbers of Americans with no religious affiliation and fifty-five percent of African-American Protestants agree with them.

Jones says the latter groups will more future influence in the shaping of our country than mainline and evangelical Christians.  “For the first time in more than five decades, an appeal to a sentimental version of midcentury heartland America is not a winning political strategy,” he writes, taking a long-term view—but not a VERY long one.  He says that political movements still clinging to the “sentimental” view of midcentury America—including the Tea Party—are engaging in “the politics of nostalgia.”

Jones thinks today’s religion/politics blend began with the Republican Southern Strategy that appealed in sixties to southern Democrats upset with their party’s support of civil rights initiatives.  He recalls Richard Nixon in 1968 made a deal with Senator Strom Thurmond to stall various civil rights efforts and although the plan was short-circuited by Watergate, the alliance caught fire when former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter became president in 1976 and many southerners hoped this born-again southern Christian Baptist Democrat would favor their agenda. But they were disappointed when he did not.  Jones thinks this disappointment on which conservative religious leaders such as Jerry Fallwell capitalized turned a Republican political strategy into a White Christian Strategy in which Republicans saw an advantage to be had.  He says the White Christian Strategy was important in putting Ronald Reagan in the White House and Reagan supported it.

He says that strategy weakened in the first decade of the present century but has found new life in the Tea Party movement.  He points to a PRRI survey that shows the Tea Party is more closely aligned with the Christian Right than it is with the Libertarians, as some of its leaders claim.  In fact, a 2013 survey showed 61% of Libertarians did not consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement and 52% of Tea Party members said they were “part of the Religious Right or Christian conservative movement.”

Jones also notes 55% of Tea Party members agree this country is a Christian nation while only 39% of the general population holds that view.  He calls the Tea Party “a late-stage expression of a White Christian America that is passing from the scene.”

He also points to research showing that seventy-three percent of the electorate in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected, was white and Christian.  That group comprised only fifty-seven percent of the electorate twenty years later and is expected to be down two more points this year and drop to fifty-two percent in 2020. At this rate, he forecasts, 2024 will be the first election in national history in which white Christians do not cast the majority of votes.   That’s bad news for Republicans who (the surveys in the book indicate) rely on voting coalitions that are eighty percent white Christians.  By contrast, only thirty-seven percent of the voters who re-elected President Obama four years ago were white Christians.

In short, he infers, the Republican coalition faces a dim future.  One factor that he has identified facing Republicans is the religiously unaffiliated population—young people who, according to an evangelical poll, have pulled away from “present day Christianity” because they see much of it as being anti-gay, judgmental, and hypocritical.  And they’re pretty firm in those opinions.  Eighty-five to ninety-one percent feel that way.

Jones cites Russel Moore, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who has suggested it is time for Christians, as Jones puts it, “to relinquish their status as defenders of a lost consensus” (on such things as gay marriage) and “rally around a more limited movement to maintain their traditional view of marriage within their own communities.”  Jones says Moore’s position is a beginning of the “religious liberty” movement that “individuals should be able to carry religious objections from their private life into their public roles as service providers, business owners, and even elected officials.”   He refers to the movement as “a desperate attempt to fight the lost war by other means.”

Jones also looks at the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, desegregation of churches and of communities, racial justice (“why is desegregation so difficult?” he asks), and other factors on which WCA is divided and trying to maintain old values in a world that is creating new ones.

So what’s the answer?   He digs into Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ On Death and Dying: What the Dying have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families, published in 1969.  She identifies the five stages of grief that people go through when facing an end: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Jones says those stages are useful in understanding what is happening with White Christian America, both mainliners and evangelicals.  In his forty-page final chapter, he examines how both branches of WCA are dealing with those five stages.

Jones says mainline Christians are moving—although not smoothly—toward “a distinctive theological and ecclesiastical vision, driven by the need to come to terms with the death of White Christian America,” while evangelicals are divided. One branch acknowledges “their vision of a robust white evangelical world will have to be tempered” while still resisting “the full implications of its demise.”  He cites Baptist minister and professor of Christian ethics David Gushee, who appeals to evangelicals to abandon “past conspiracy theories, demagoguery, single-issue voting, partisan seductions, mudslinging, and God-and-country conflations and confusions” and to take part in a fully pluralistic society without being tempted to reach for (as Jones puts it), “domination and sectarianism, each of which is driven by nostalgia for a lost Christian America.”

Jones sees a future for Christianity in shaping the character of our country.  But he says it must recognize its past failings and its new possibilities in a world that will be shaped by today’s younger generation.

As National Catholic Reporter writer Maureen Fiedler put it last month, “Welcoming racial and religious diversity is now a political imperative as well as a religious calling.” (https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/end-white-christian-america)

After reading this book, we think we understand the trends that have led the Missouri legislature’s majority to become embroiled in some of the hot-button issues it spends too much time working on while ignoring greater issues that affect the lives of our population as a whole.  But we also realize it is unrealistic to think that this year’s elections will produce any significant change in the attitudes of our Missouri lawmakers.   Jones’ book suggests there is hope for an eventual realization that resisting the coming changes to our society out of a “nostalgia for a lost Christian America,” rather than focusing on shaping those changes in a positive and inclusive manner, might be politically profitable in the short run but sad and wasted effort in the face of inevitability.

Depending on your faith perspective, you might or might not enjoy reading this book.  But we think it will add a dimension to your understanding of where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, particularly in the proposed laws we’re likely to see in the legislature next year.

Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2016.  309 pages.

This might explain some things we see

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Your traveling correspondent read the obituary when he dropped in at the Between The Covers bookstore in Harbor Springs, a northwest lower Michigan community, a few days ago.  A former college professor from Springfield—a city considered one of the buckles in the Bible Belt—had written it.

“After a long life spanning nearly two hundred and forty years, White Christian America—a prominent cultural force in the nation’s history—has died.  WCA first began to exhibit troubling symptoms in the 1960s when white mainline Protestant denominations began to shrink, but showed signs of rallying with the rise of the Christian Right in the 1980s. Following the 2004 presidential election, however, it became clear that WCA’s powers were failing.  Although examiners have not been able to pinpoint the exact time of death, the best evidence suggests that WCA finally succumbed in the latter part of the first decade of the twenty-first century.  The cause of death was determined to be a combination of environmental and internal factors—complications stemming from major demographic changes in the country, along with religious disaffiliation as many of its younger members began to doubt WCA’s continued relevance in a shifting cultural environment.”

the end of WCA

There was more to it but you’ll have to get Robert P. Jones’ The End of White Christian America and read it yourself.  Jones was a psychology professor for more than a decade at Missouri State University in Springfield before becoming the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.  He has a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate in religion from Emory University.  His bio note on the PRRI website says he specialized in the sociology of religion, politics and religious ethics during his doctoral work.  He does a column online for Atlantic magazine and is often heard on NPR’s Interfaith Voices news magazine program.

Readers of his book might see some explanations for some of the stuff that’s been going on in Missouri’s legislature in recent years.  In short, Jones suggests (although not specifically) such things as the personhood amendment proposal, the proposal this observer called the Wesboro Amendment during the last session, the constant efforts to make a legal medical procedure harder and harder to obtain, and other issues are efforts of a weakening White Christian America to preserve in law what it can no longer control from the pulpit.

Jones says WCA has two branches, “a more liberal mainline Protestant America headquartered in New England and the upper Midwest/Great Lakes region and a more conservative evangelical Protestant America anchored in the South and lower Midwest/Ozark Mountains region.”   But there’s more to the distinction than geography.  He sees the two branches as divided on social class and their perspectives on race relations.  “Their differences are rooted in disagreements over fundamental tenets of theology, approaches to diversity, and accommodations to the modern world and science,” he says. The divide widened in the 1920s as some Christians saw the Bible and evolution as compatible, a position that “horrified” Protestant Fundamentalists who saw the Bible as true in all regards.  He argues that the differences between Modernists and Fundamentalists created a wound that would not heal and created a “fault line” between what is now considered mainline and fundamentalist Christianity and a subsequent fight for control of “the symbolic capital of Christianity.”

It was mainline Protestants, he writes, who led to progressive social change in the last half of the Twentieth Century—the establishment of the United Nations and its declaration for international human rights, and United States civil rights laws among other things.  Mainline Protestants, he writes, by mid-century were leaders in government, education, business, and cultural affairs.

But mainline Protestantism began to weaken and the Evangelical Protestants moved to become “the face of White Christian America,” becoming the “dominant cultural voice” that constituted a “Moral Majority” in the 70s “to protect a distinctly Protestant Christian” nation.”

However, the nation was changing socially, politically, and demographically, leading to the election of the nation’s first non-white president, the creation of a non-Protestant Supreme Court (six Catholics and three Jews), a Census Bureau prediction that this country would no longer be a majority white nation by 2050, and increasing numbers of people who, when asked their religious preference, replied “none.”

Jones cites sociologist Nathan Glazer suggesting White Christian America is facing a future in which it tries to preserve its social values, or a future in which it integrates into “the new American cultural landscape.”

Jones suggests some of the things we are seeing in government and in other parts of our lives is the result of the first choice when, he maintains, the second choice inevitably will have to be made if White Christian America is to be relevant in an age when the nation is no longer majority white and increased numbers of Americans are “nones.”

He cites a 2014 study by his organization, PRRI, showing the proportion of white Christians in this country was already at 47% while the number of Americans with no religious affiliation was up to 22%.  Another 24% were non-white Christians.  A closer look at the numbers shows a generational shift.  About 70% of older Americans are white Christians. But only about thirty percent of young adults (18-29) fall into that category.  The change in the social and religious structure of this country is well underway meaning, “Falling numbers and the marginalization of a once dominant racial and religious identity—one that has been central not just to white Christians themselves but to the national mythos—threatens white Christian understanding of America itself.”

Further studies show Protestants have not been in the majority in this country since 2008.  And the percentage of Catholics and those who are unaffiliated are about the same—22% each. The 2014 study showed those identifying themselves as white Protestants dropped from 51% to 32% in two decades.  Black Protestants stayed at about 10% while Hispanic Protestants increased and reached four percent.  And the decline in the white Protestant category involves both mainliners and evangelicals.  He points to the precipitous decline of the nation’s largest evangelical Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, which operates the seminary where he got his first graduate degree.  The conclusion?  “White Protestant Christians—both mainline and evangelical—are aging and quickly losing ground as a proportion of the population.”

Jones argues these declines have forced the two branches of WCA to seek alliances, often with other groups that had been unwelcome in their brotherhoods previously. The mainline has moved toward ecumenicity with African-American Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians, for example.  White Evangelicals have turned to conservative political movements and unofficial alliances with conservative white Catholics and some Greek Orthodox leaders on certain issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

So now we can begin to understand the roots of some of the things we are seeing in our political campaigns and in the General Assembly of Missouri.

The alliances have shifted.  Mainline White Christians were more likely to dismiss fears that John Kennedy would take orders from the Vatican if he was elected.  Jones notes that mainliners and Catholics marched together in the Civil Rights era while white evangelicals, with stronger southern roots, “stayed largely on the sidelines.”

Jones thinks Bill Clinton’s election led Republican leaders to reconsider political strategies.  White Protestant evangelicals, more closely aligned with Republicans, put aside their reluctance to work with Catholics at the same time white conservative Catholics who had seen their church becoming ethnically transformed and politically divided, moved to increase their social and political power. Republican leaders realized they could move Catholics who had been loyal Democrats since the days of FDR away from the Democratic Party by focusing on abortion, especially since the Democrats had refused to support an anti-abortion amendment.  These formerly unlikely bedfellows drafted a statement in 1994 called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”

Jones writes that this alliance in recent years has produced the Religious Freedom Restoration movement to allow companies to opt out of Obamacare for religious reasons, and to launch a manifesto last year against same-sex marriage.

And what has this alliance produced?  Jones says, “It helped give evangelicals an advantage in their contest to be the face of White Christian America.  And as the overall numbers of white Protestant Christians began to slip in the late 1990s, expanding the tent to include white Catholics helped perpetuate the illusion that White Christian America was still the country’s dominant religious culture.”

Illusion, says Jones, because the Catholic Church is slipping, too.  Twenty-two percent of the American population in 1990 identified itself as Catholic.  By 2014 that number was down to thirteen percent, and an even greater percentage of the population today—FIFTEEN percent—identifies itself as former Catholics.

He asserts the tide is running against the Evangelical-Catholic alliance that is such an influence in American politics, and for the purposes of our discussion here, in the Missouri legislature.

We have highlighted only the first eighty pages or so of Jones’ book to try to present a far less-detailed explanation of the roots of Missouri’s political structure than you will find if you read the book.  We think our understanding of contemporary Missouri politics and governance is much better because he has closely examined the demographic changes that are affecting our social, political, and religious lives.

But Jones does more than detail the movements that have put us where we are today.  At the end, he assesses how WCA can remain a powerful influence on American culture in an increasingly diverse country.

His book’s title speaks of “The End,” but he suggests the future of White Christian America as a social and political force will be shaped by the process we go through when facing death.  That’s a subject for another entry.  This one is long enough.

If you are in Missouri politics, an observer of Missouri politics, a Christian, Catholic, Orthodox, Mormon, Muslim—whatever—we think your understanding of national and state politics can be improved by reading this book.  And, particularly, if you are a candidate or an incumbent office-holder, you might find helpful his call to abandon “The Politics of Nostalgia”—and begin building a more positive and inclusive political system—as you assess what you are and what you are doing, and shaping what you want to be.

Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2016.   309 pages

Sick

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Some of you might think it’s funny.  Some of you will pump your fist in the air in agreement when you see it.  Some of you might honk your horn in support if you pull up behind a vehicle with the bumper sticker on it.

Good God, people!  In this campaign year when nothing seems too low, when there seems to be no limits on appealing to the worst of our narrowest natures, governor candidate Eric Greitens seems to have bored deeper into the darkness of politics based on hate and fear.

isis permit

Make a ten dollar donation to his campaign and he’ll give you an “Isis Hunting Permit” to stick on your bumper.  “No Bragging Limit. No Tagging Limit,” it says.

It’s not an original idea.  Unfortunately, other candidates in other states have decided to go swimming in these sludge-filled waters, too, with variations on this theme.

Political columnist Dave Helling with The Kansas City Star quotes a Greitens campaign news release claiming, “Liberals will go crazy when they see these, but remember, this isn’t an official government issued hunting tag.”

That statement strikes this longtime observer of Missouri politics who has seen a lot of tasteless campaign statements as irresponsible.  Some would find it outrageous.  And a campaign statement that suggests this is just a bit of innocent fund-raising fun might not even rank high enough to be termed contemptible—especially not in a time when we see too many headlines about senseless shootings.

Yes, ISIS is a bunch of bad people.  It’s hard to think of any group right now that deserves to reap the whirlwind.  But—

Given the current appeals throughout our political system that certain segments of the population should be stererotyped and scorned, this unfunny solicitation of ten-dollar bills can be dangerous, especially as a follow-up to a television commercial suggesting the answer to dissatisfaction with the political status quo comes symbolically from the barrel of a gun.

Is the Missouri voting public so far away from intelligent consideration of the issues that determine the quality of our lives that it can be motivated to vote for someone who thinks targeting ISIS—and in the minds of some, those whose faith might be blindly considered somehow related to it—is the most serious issue the next governor will have to deal with?

Are we so lost, so sick, that this kind of thing seems to be just an amusing way to get some attention and some ten-dollar bills?

Let us use the freedom of religion that seems to be such an important element of the campaigns of Greitens and his competitors to pray that we are not.