To heal the national soul

David Fisher at the Reformed Pastor has a quote from Jim Wallis that is worth some reflection. Wallis says the soul of the country is sick and fixing the health care system “would be the moral achievement that could repair, and even heal, our damaged national soul.”

Why do people keep treating the Bible as if it were a political platform document? There is a biblical imperative to take care of our brothers and sisters. But why do people keep equating biblical imperatives with political platform planks?

Doctors’ groups have been lobbying for more political spending on health care because the poor can’t afford care — and especially the cost effective preventative care that would reduce the need for expensive emergency care. The doctors act as if this means congress needs to pass a law, but it doesn’t. The doctors can take a giant step toward fixing this problem right now.

How much health care could be provided for the poor if every doctor took one day a week and provided pro bono care to people who could not afford to pay? It would be simple, personal, and wouldn’t require a big bureaucratic structure to administrate. It wouldn’t get all tied up in legislative trade offs and debates about who’s going to pay for the darned thing. What could be wrong with this?

And what would happen if the preachers berating people for not getting behind government care instead challenged the doctors in their congregations to step up and care for the less fortunate? Quit trying to wait for someone else pay for it: just do it.

People like Wallis like to point out we are our brother’s keepers. There is something true in that. But being our brother’s keeper doesn’t mean handing off our brother to some government agency. It means we care for our brother. It means people caring for people. It doesn’t mean people pursuing their own self-interest while handing off compassion and care to an impersonal government agency.

Which is a healthier national soul? One where people care for each other? Or one where people focus on their own interests while trusting government to care for the less fortunate? Which path is more likely to meet Wallis’s challenge to heal the national soul?

Protests planned for PC(USA) General Assembly

A new round in the ongoing homosexuality debate

For a generation, the Presbyterian Church (USA), like many groups in society, has been locked in an increasingly bitter debate about homosexuality. Last week, Reformed Pastor blogger David Fischler reported the PCUSA group “That All May Freely Serve” (TAMFS) is done with lobbying and pleading. In his March 24 post “Funny, San Jose Doesn’t Look Like Chicago,” he reports they’re moving to more dramatic forms of protest.

And they don’t want to be alone. Fischler links to a TAMFS brochure inviting “allies” who are “Presbyterian or concerned about the future of the mainline Protestant church” to join them to “descend on the General Assembly in San Jose.”

As Fischler writes,

So presumably ACT-UP and the Human Rights Campaign and the Lambda Fund and all the rest of the gay-advocacy apparatus will be free to send traveling bands of atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, Mormon, and maybe even Episcopalian gay-friendly shock troops to the PCUSA General Assembly to engage in “street theater, intentional conversation, parades, poster art,” and who knows what other kinds of mayhem.

Why bother? Why invest so much energy in changing the PC(USA)? People say the new generation is post-Christian, certainly post-denominational. The TAMFS publicity claims “the next generation has already decided for the full equality of all people.” If they’ve already made up their minds on their own, why do they need to bother with the PC(USA)? Why enforce conformity on what is so obviously a debatable issue? (This applies with equal force to the troubles in the Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion, or to any of the NCCC-related communions struggling with this.)

Perhaps it has to do with validation.

In the 70s, the activists fought with professional Psychologists, who had ruled homosexuality a mental disorder. They managed to change the diagnosis manual, and now they could say homosexuals were not sick. But that turned out to be insufficient.

In the 80s and 90s and into the new millennium, the activists fought court battles to give legal status to homosexual partnerships. For the most part, they have won those battles, but somehow just being “legal” is still insufficient.

Maybe it goes back to hearts being restless until they find their rest in God. They need the benediction that affirms them as a blessed part of the diversity of Creation. And nothing the doctors or lawyers have said really sounds like that benediction.

And so TAMFS will gather its allied, descent upon the Presbyterians in San Jose, and try to force the church to offer that benediction. And they may succeed. But will they find a benediction delivered under such duress truly satisfactory?

Reaction to Obama speech shows decline of political discourse

‘Best political speech’ praise shows how ‘grievances’ have replaced reality as the basis for discussion

“Barack Obama this week gave the best political speech since John Kennedy talked about his Catholicism in Houston in 1960,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in the March 20 New York Times. He praised the way it acknowledged “complexity, nuance and legitimate grievances on many sides.”

The nuance part is indeed commendable. The ability to disagree firmly with extreme views while maintaining a cordial – even affectionate – personal relationship with people who hold those views might help restore some civility to public discourse.

On the other hand, I wonder about Kristof’s “legitimate grievances” comment. For instance, he notes “it has been shocking to hear [Obama’s pastor] suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people.” He goes on to note “Many African-Americans even believe that the crack cocaine epidemic was a deliberate conspiracy by the United States government to destroy black neighborhoods.”

Kristoff quotes a political scientist who says these are “real standard” beliefs, “pretty common beliefs.” They may be. But are these “legitimate grievances”? Are they the kinds of items that the political conversation needs to take seriously?

A generation ago, political opinions needed to be grounded in “reality” to be taken seriously. Some people once believed fluoridation was a Communist plot to pollute the water supply. No matter how widespread that belief was in certain segments of society, it was never seen as a “legitimate grievance” that deserved a place on the national agenda. People (rightly) saw it as a paranoid delusion that deserved neglect

Once, western society focused on truths that were validated by correspondence with reality. Now we seem to be willing to settle for various perspectives that are validated by how many people believe them and how intensely they hold them.

The Roman governor once asked, “What is truth?” Many today want to answer “truth is an oppressive construct; what’s more important is what people firmly believe.” It’s different, but it’s not an improvement.

Who is here to serve whom?

A different perspective on church property conflicts

Higher judicatories in the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches have been locked in conflict – and sometimes in court – over the property and other assets of congregations trying to leave their authority. Judicatory officials explain this as protecting the interest of the larger church in the property of particular congregations. But this shows an unsettling attitude about the relationship between the congregations and the larger church.

It’s an attitude I saw many years ago, when an associate Presbytery executive explained the presbytery was only going to fund new church developments that were likely to grow quickly to 100 people attending services. It wasn’t practical for the presbytery to fund smaller congregations because they wouldn’t produce enough mission giving for the presbytery to get its money back.

This guideline has a kind of managerial wisdom to it. It’s important to invest money in enterprises that will produce a good return. That’s clear at an individual level: if I invest money in a CD or money market fund, it’s important to invest in one that will produce an adequate return.

But there are other expenses that aren’t measured by the income they produce. Buying a pair of pants or a dozen apples is not like buying a Certificate of Deposit. I expect the CD to produce an income stream, or at least to produce a satisfactory profit on the initial expense when I cash it in. But for the pair of pants, just having something to wear is enough. For the apples, just having something to eat is enough. I don’t expect to make a profit on selling them some day.

Further, the expenses are primary; the investments are secondary. Investments do not exist for themselves, they exist to provide income to fund expenses. Investments are the means to the end of providing for expenses. In terms of the examples, I buy CDs so I’ll have money for apples, but I don’t buy apples so I’ll have strength to buy CDs.

Church governing bodies have investment and expense items as well. There are things they legitimately need to show some kind of profit or return. Pension fund and endowment assets, for example. But there are other things they don’t expect to produce a return. For example, when a North American Presbytery sends mission support to Ekwendeni Hospital in Malawi, there’s no expectation of ongoing income. Just knowing it’s a place where people are finding healing and care is enough.

Presently, the Ekwendeni Hospital is a ministry of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian. But if circumstances change and, say, the Roman Catholic church would have to take over running the hospital, the North American Presbyteries that supported the hospital wouldn’t require a payment or other settlement as a return on their investment in the mission. The years of faithful ministry there would be return enough.

Which is the proper relation between the Diocese of the Presbytery and the congregation? Is the congregation like the endowment funds, useful so long as it produces an income stream for the judicatory? Or is it like the mission projects, sufficiently useful because people find opportunities for worship and praise there?

Are congregations a means to an end, useful for the mission giving they send to higher judicatories? Or are these worshipping communities ends in themselves, the purpose for which the higher judicatories exist?

When a congregation leaves the sphere of a judicatory, the response is usually to seek some kind of payment or other property settlement. The rationale is usually something like to protect the interests of the larger denomination and the future work of the church. But what if the judicatory were to respond “the interests of the denomination were well served in the years this has been a vibrant worshipping community”?

To me, the latter sounds like a more fruitful attitude.