Celebrating the 4th

I grew up in an evangelical church in a small town. One Sunday when I was home for summer vacation during seminary, a member of the church choir sang "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood as the offertory selection. As the accompanment track started up, I slumped down in my seat and started squirming.

Ever since that moment, I have thought about how Christians should celebrate patriotic holidays. Diversity abounds. Growing up in my home church, active duty military wore their uniforms on patriotic Sundays like the Fourth and Memorial Day and were recognized from the pulpit. This, thankfully, is not a practice that all churches follow. (Personally, I see this as a direct affront to the gospel. Have these Christians not read the Sermon on the Mount?)

Not to be left out in patriotic displays, the PCUSA has several patriotic songs in the "National Songs" section of the blue hymnal. Both "My Country, Tis of Thee" (561) and "O Beautiful for Spacious Skies" (564) are available for incorporation into your lituries for July 6.

"America! America! God mend thy every flaw." One reason diversity exists in the celebration of patriotic holidays in this country is because of what the flag represents to different people. Is America primarily a city on a hill, a defender of human rights, and a land of the free? Or is it a nation that often fails to live up to these ideals in its foreign policy, is governed by its own interests rather than the common good of the human family, and a nation that wages war for oil? Do we acknowledge our corporate sins as a nation? Or do see only the victories and sacrifices that have built this vibrant democratic society?

A deeper reason is that many compartmentalize their religion. For most of us, religion is a private matter. While we affirm our beliefs together in the form of the Creed every Sunday morning, things get fuzzy when we read passages of scripture than relate our personal life to the lives of others. Reinhold Niebuhr was right. Human beings are sinners. Too often our public morality is governed by what favors our interests rather than what the life and teachings of Jesus would have us do. Glossing over our own pride and selfishness can give us a blindspot to those behaviors in our nation.

How should we celebrate? Should we sit out all celebrations and look down on those that do? Should we arrange a display of red, white, and blue flowers in front of our houses and plant mini-American flags among them? Should we give up on what America stands for (or used to stand for)? Or should we call the nation to repent and fight for equality and dignity for all people?

One thing we all should do is take the day off, have a cookout, and discuss these issues with our family and friends.

(I recommend reading Ted A. Smith's essay on celebrating the 4th in the current Christian Century.)

Religious Tolerance: What Does It Mean?

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released some interesting survey results this week. One question asked by pollsters was whether many different religions can lead to eternal life. To this question, 79% of Catholics, 72% of Orthodox, and 66% of Protestants agreed that religions different from one's own could lead to eternal life.

In reference to this question, I can imagine someone from my home church (from the Baptist tradition) replying that such a tolerant view of other faiths directly contradicts Jesus' words in the the gospel of John that state "no one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) To someone from this perspective, this means that only Christians (those who confess Christ) will inherit eternal life. Yet the article states that 57% of evangelical Christians accept that other religions can lead to eternal life.

Catholics since Vatican 2 affirm this verse from John, but at the same time acknowledge that salvation can be achieved outside the church for those faithfully practicing other faiths. How? Because Christ is at work in the other faith. This is partly what is meant by the concept of the "anonymous Christian."

Though the survey does not report a figure for mainline Protestants specifically, the number that affirm the statement must be higher than 66%. What does it mean that more than two thirds of us do not believe that salvation is only for Christians?

Perhaps it means that many of us are interpreting scripture in light of its historical context. For instance, Marcus Borg theorizes that the words attributed to Jesus in John 14 reflect a concern among early Christians in the Johannine community that Jewish Christians will drift back to the synagogue.

Or perhaps the tolerance of other faiths is an example of an eclectic approach to religious life seen most readily in the "spiritual but not religious" crowd. Perhaps we mainliners are more secular than we realize. Perhaps the increasingly diverse makeup of our communities, the easy availability of information from all parts of the world, and growing acceptance of otherness of all kinds has made us less dogmatic. Perhaps we are interpreting scripture through this lens. The question is, should we? And, at the same time, how can we not?

New Merton Documentary

There's a new Merton documentary! Morgan Atkinson's film, entitled Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton, was released on DVD in 2007. Because Merton's life is so rich, this is welcome news. The first Merton documentary, Paul Wilkes' Merton: A Film Biography (1984), was true to its title. Beginning with his early life in France and England, it traces Merton's life from Cambridge, to Columbia, to Gethsemani, to his interests in peace and civil rights, to his interest in Asian religions, and finally to his tragic death in Bangkok while attending an interfaith monastic conference. Along the way, it interviews various people close to Merton to give the viewer a sense of Merton's significance and greatness.

Soul Searching attempts to tell the same story with very similar methods (and even some of the same talking heads). The first obvious improvement is the quality of the picture and visual imagery. In a scene in A Film Biography displaying undergraduates partying in Cambridge that is supposed to give the viewer a sense of Merton's wild days, what really comes through is how bad women's haircuts were in the 80s. Soul Searching does not suffer from this problem. One of the best parts about Soul Searching is the manner in which it uses footage of different settings in which Merton lived (including footage of New York in the 1930s, the inside of Gethsemani as well as its rural grounds, photos of the novices he taught as Novice Master, and the hermitage where he lived in the 60s) to give the viewer a sense of the world in which he lived.

One of the problems with Soul Searching is the scant attention it gives to several important aspects of his life. It does not pick up his story until he reaches Columbia University. One of the important issues in his life is his constant search for home. (This yearning for home was manifest later in his life in his search to find his true vocation.) Leaving out how he got to Columbia does not the give the viewer a sense of how important this quest was in his life. In addition, it spends too little time on his interests in Christian mysticism, peace, civil rights, and especially the Asian contemplative traditions.

One theme Soul Searching develops that A Film Biography leaves out is Merton's romantic feelings for a young nurse who cared for him in a Louisville hospital while recovering from back surgery. I guess this means that I have not read his journals from this period, but this section of the DVD was a part of Merton's story that was new to me. It helped to humanize Merton the mystic, prophet, and saint.

Overall, Soul Searching is very much worth seeing. I wish there was a way to make a documentary about someone like Merton other than splicing together (sometimes without enough attention paid to transitions) the comments of an uneven assortment of talking heads, but I guess most viewers would not be able to sit through a narrator reading from his books for an hour. It's not perfect, but it is another very good introduction to one of the most important Christian voices of the 20th century, one that still speaks very much to our time.

Climate Change Resoures

One of the biggest issues facing the human family these days is climate change. Here are a few resources to help your church address this complex issue.

1.) A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming by Michael Northcott. In his review of this book in the Christian Century, Sam Wells called this book "the outstanding book in the field."

2.) "Global Climate Change: Facts and Resources" from The Thoughtful Christian. This study can be downloaded for $10 here.

3.) Serve God Save the Planet by J. Matthew Sleeth.

4.) The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life. This book is a collection of essays from one of America's leading voices on the environment.

5.) An Inconvenient Truth. Love him or hate him, this documentary featuring Al Gore is entertaining and extremely educational.

A Creative Idea

Our newest educator is taking a creative approach to Sunday School curriculum this summer. Cheryl Goode at Pine Street is using The Gospel According to the Simpsons curriculum to teach the youth class. You go Cheryl!

Your Favorite New Prayer Book

This book of prayers is in the tradition of Walter Rauschenbusch's For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening. The editors have assembled a fine collection of prayers from a wide variety of Christian authors that address concrete social concerns. I plan on using Stanley Hauerwas' prayer "For America" in the service I will be leading on July 6.

Does God Care about the Poor?

Bono, frontman of the Irish rock band U2, thinks so. Check out this short sermon he preached in a decidedly non-church setting. (If you are in a hurry, fast forward to the 3 minute mark.)

Study Bible Showdown

A friend asked me recently which study Bible I recommend. There are newer options available than my red Oxford NRSV Study Bible, so I thought I would solicit the wisdom of my learned readers to help me advise my friend. I will even narrow it down for you. Do you prefer the Harper Collins Study Bible or the New Interpreter's Study Bible? (Please vote by leaving a comment.)