In the Katrina disaster, who abandoned whom?

O. Benjamin Sparks, interim editor of The Presbyterian Outlook, posted an interesting defense of the role of government in the Katrina disaster. His editorial, Abandoned people, principles suggested the disaster should cause us to put an end to "the anti-government rhetoric in which our culture has been awash in recent decades."

He writes, "We are responsible for one another, and government -- not the voluntary sector -- is our first defense against anarchy." This is interesting, since it was government, not the voluntary sector, that left dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of buses idle on the parking lot when they could have been used to evacuate the needy. And it was government, not the voluntary sector, that scaled back levee maintenance, diverting millions into pork barrel projects to benefit well-connected interest groups. And it was officials in the government, not the voluntary sector, that passed the buck at most every opportunity, inventing tragic tales of nursing home suffering to make sure people knew just whom (else) to blame.

Government dumped people in the Superdome without first making sure there were adequate stocks of food and water, leaving people to fend for themselves. The voluntary sector mobilised to make sure people were warmly and humanely welcomed to the Astrodome.

It is true, "To respond to such devastation, we do not rely alone upon the good and kind hearts of the American people." Yes, we rely upon police and armed forces to preserve order. Yes, we rely upon firefighters and EMS workers in the disaster scene. But kindness and mercy and compassion and walking humbly and faithfully before God are not job descriptions for civil service positions. It is a voluntary response when a person sees needs and hears the call of God. It's not the job of the government. It's the job of the citizens.

A Church that gives us what we want isn't what we want

In last Saturday's Toronto Star, David Haskell, assistant professor of journalism at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier University, contemplated the precipitous decline in the United Church of Canada's membership.

In many ways the decline of the United Church flies in the face of common sense. How can their numbers be dropping when they seem to be the only major Christian denomination in lockstep with the attitudes and ideals of Canadians?...
This decade the United Church has remained synchronized to society's evolution. Among religious groups it has been the loudest voice in support of same-sex marriage.
We know from the world of business and economics that a product will be successful if it meets the needs of consumers. Why isn't the new and improved United Church achieving market penetration?

Or maybe the problem is people want a church to be about more than giving them what they want. Pope Benedict made that point when he addressed the bishops at World Youth Day Sunday. He called for the bishops to be sure they led

...a Church open to the future, and therefore one full of promise for coming generations. Young people, in fact, are not looking for a Church which panders to youth but one which is truly young in spirit; a Church completely open to Christ, the new Man.

Many Protestant churches have followed the United Church's model of letting the culture set their agenda. They have worked to be churches that meet people where they are. They have tried to be relevant in the terms of modern society. And those churches have all seen steep membership drops.

Which is not to say the Roman Catholic church has not faced its own membership challenges. In the west -- particularly western Europe -- the Roman Catholic participation decline has been as steep as that of the Protestants.

And yet, to see the multitudes who gather for World Youth Day is to see this is a church with a future, and an energy to meet that future. That energy may largely come from congregations in the two-thirds world, what the Anglicans call the Global South, but at least that energy is there.

Perhaps the United Church of Canada would find that same energy if it had the kind of ties to global congregations the Roman Catholic church enjoys. Their own global network is the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, an organization of Presbyterian and Reformed communions, 218 churches in 107 countries with a membership of about 75 million. But somehow, I rather suspect a WARC World Youth Day would not have nearly the level of energy on display at the gathering in Cologne, Germany, last Sunday.

A new place for chidren in the family

Marriage used to be about family, about creating a place where children could grow and thrive. Children used to be, if not actually the centre, at least part of what was central to the meaning of family. Not that every family had children, any more than every vehicle is pulled by a horse. But, just as "horsepower" is the standard by which we measure vehicles, so "good for children" was how we measured family structure.

That is changing. A recent Town Hall article by
Kathleen Parker, "Parent A and Parent B -- and baby makes C?" highlights the next step in those changes.

The form for birth certificates presumes children have a mother and father. This hasn't been particularly controversial, since the biological fact is children have a mother and a father. In Massachusetts, the only US state that fully endorses same-sex marriage, this has begun to be controversial -- as it no doubt will be in Canada, and as in other countries as the recognition of same-sex marriage spreads. While biology hasn't changed, legalities have changed. Children may have a mother and a father, or they may have two fathers or two mothers. The legal reality and the biological reality are different.

In order to fully normalize their families, homosexual couples have asked Massachusetts to revise the birth certificate forms to name, not "mother" and "father," but "parent A" and "parent B." But this change in name does not change reality. While it may be comforting for the same-sex couple involved, it leaves out information the child may one day need.

As Parker writes, "What we know but the courts apparently choose to ignore is that identity and selfhood are rooted, in part, in our biological origins. Adopted children seek out biological parents in their quest for identity. Genealogical organizations do a brisk business as families try to reconstruct their lineage."

Of course, sorting out that heritage today can be an increasingly difficult task. "Now with technology, sperm donors and 'uterobots' -- women willing to sell or give away the flesh of their flesh -- any random collection of human beings can 'parent.'" A child's birth heritage is getting increasingly confused and complicated.

Parker notes,

Throughout our culture, children have become objectified, "thingified," created or acquired for the fulfillment of our selves - decor options, accessories, cute little bundles for our entertainment and amusement....

As long as children are viewed as mere extensions of our selves, put here to satisfy some narcissistic need for self-actualization, it is easy to suppose that our needs and their needs are complementary. If same-sex marriage is what "I" need, then two same-sex parents are what "my" child needs.

For years, people have debated the relative roles of nature and nurture in the development of personality. For most people, this is a relatively academic debate. For people raised in their birth families, the source of their nature and nurture are the same. It's tough to understand why the issue of birth certificates matters. But for those in other kinds of families, the importance of knowing both the source of one's nature and nurture is a more pressing reality.

Consider, for example, the push by adopted children for access to their original birth records. This is sometimes unfortunately called a search for their "real" parents. Most adoptees don't deny the reality of their adoptive families or the importance of the people who nurtured them as "real" parents. Still, there's a gnawing sense that something's missing without access to information about their "birth" parents.

There's the practical matter of medical history and the genetic and biological roots we now know lie behind many illnesses. But more, we also know at least part of our personality, part of "who we are" comes from how we were born. Anyone who has wondered how two such different children can come from the same family has noticed this.

One of the great ironies of this is the push for legal recognition of same-sex couples comes from just this insight. Sexual orientation, they have argued, is a fact of birth not nurture. It's not something one becomes through nurture, but something one was born to be. It comes, they say, not from one's nurturing parents, but from one's birth parents.

Someday children may want or need to know the birth heritage that has helped make them who they are. And they will need some way to know, not just their legal parents, but also their birth parents.

Parker concludes, "What's really behind the push for biology-neutral birth certificates isn't fairness, or equal rights, but the elimination of any biological/procreative connection to parenthood."

What really threatens marriage?

As social conservatives work to "defend marriage," perhaps it's time to consider whether the biggest threat isn't direct challenges to traditional marriage. Perhaps the biggest threat is the slow erosion of what marriage means. Last Monday, Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings posted a link to a Fox news report that highlighted that erosion.

The Fox news article by Jennifer D'Angelo carried the headline ''Til Death Do Us Part' Is Dying Out." She reported,

In some weddings, "'til death do us part" is going the way of "to honor and obey" --— that is, out the window.
Vows like ... "For as long as our love shall last" and "Until our time together is over" are increasingly replacing the traditional to-the-grave vow...

And D'Angelo's article shows why this is a problem

Psychologist Diana Kirschner, author of "Opening Love's Door: The Seven Lessons," agreed ... promising forever lets the other person know that you're in it for life --— good times and bad --— and that promising just for awhile can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Over time your mate brings out the best in you, but also the worst in you. You have to have a contract that you'll work together to help each other grow. A contract that is this kind of thing -- —as long as we feel good --— there's a guarantee that you'll feel bad, hit a rocky point, where you don't love anyone, you don't love yourself --— that's where the rubber meets the road. That's where active love comes through."

Ironically, a defender of these new vows sees clearly the problem they cause. D'Angelo quotes

The Rev. Bonnie Nixon, a non-denominational minister in Torrance, Calif., who presides over approximately 1,000 weddings a year...

"...At least half of the couples we marry come from blended families --— some say vows to the other person's children. This generation (the one now marrying for the first time) grew up with a lot of divorce in the '70s and '80s. They have two dads, two moms, eight grandparents...."

What a confusing and uncertain environment in which children grow up today!

Marriage for "as long as we both shall live" or "until death us do part" (pick your tradition) was and is not primarily about the husband and wife. It's about family and children. The stable network of relationships in the family -- immediate and extended -- provides a secure place for children to begin to develop a healthy identity.

In Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson wrote a child's ego development begins with a basic sense of trust, what others called a sense of confidence.

The infant's first social achievement, then, is his willingness to to let the mother out of sight without undue anxiety or rage, because she has become an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability. Such consistency, continuity, and sameness of experience provide a rudimentary sense of ego identity which depends, I think, on the recognition that there is an inner population of remembered and anticipated sensations and images which are firmly correlated with the outer population of familiar and predictable things and people.

These days, though, those familiar people are increasingly unpredictable. Parents devoted and focused on the care of a few children are being replaced by an ever changing network of care givers responsible for much larger numbers of children. And we're now beginning to understand just what negative consequences this is having as those children develop.

Jeff Miller at The Curt Jester puts it this way:

Being the product of a divorced family I know from personal experience the tragedy of this view of marriage on children. I wonder what children of couples that take such phony vows must think? Each day they might wake up wondering if there parents had still "continue to love each other" or whether their parents might be moving on. They must also reason that if their parents can stop loving each other than they also can stop loving them.