694. 071226
THE STAR’S HEADLINE:
Kwanzaa strives for unity
I ask, “Habari gani?” You respond, “Umoja.” This is first day of
Kwanzaa.
Translated, the greeting is “What news?” and the response
today is “Unity,” the first of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, one for
each day of the festival. Tomorrow you say “Kujichagulia,” self-determination.
Try pronouncing the Swahili term—it’s fun!
Kwanzaa may be an unprecedented eruption in religious
history. Unlike any other widespread holiday I can think of, its creator
is known and its creation is dated and heavily documented.
Before he had become White House press secretary, Tony
Snow wrote, “There is no part of
Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent,” and columnist Ann Coulter has identified
the Kwanzaa seven principles with those of the violent Symbionese Liberation
Army of the 1960s.
Yes, to use Coulter’s phrase, Kwanzaa is a “made-up holiday,”
and Snow is right insofar is it does not import a previous authentic cultural
tradition from Africa but rather draws on many sources.
For example, one of the symbols of the holiday is corn,
but corn is not native to Africa.
Karenga might also be accused of stealing the idea of
the 7-candle kinara from the Hanukkah menorah symbolizing the eight days
of the Jewish festival.
And the correct Swahili term is Kwanza—with six letters,
one final “a,” not two.
But seven children at the first Kwanzaa program all wanted
a part representing and explaining a letter. So an extra “a” was
added to accommodate all of them.
The charm of bending to the seventh child’s desire for
inclusion perhaps matches the spiritual intent of Kwanzaa. The respect
given to that child embodies its transcendent principles.
So I’m not upset that a new holiday has been patched together
because it has become intensely meaningful to many people. It has moved
far beyond the originator’s circle in the Los Angeles of 1966.
Many calendars nowadays, including the Boy Scouts 2007
calendar, identify Kwanzaa as an “interfaith” holiday.
Karenga first wanted to include Christians, Muslims, Jews
and others in a unifying observance for African Americans, so he claimed
it was not “religious,” just “cultural.”
So is it religious? No, not in the sense of being identified
with just one faith, but even Karenga has written about Kwanzaa ideals
and values as “spiritual.”
The shattering events of our time have called forth a
creative response, developing and celebrating a new holiday ritual for
deep contemplation and community.
Umoja!
693. 071219 THE STAR’S HEADLINE:
Keep it real at Christmas
I’ve heard it said that I write a “spiritual advice” column. I don’t
think of myself so much advising as informing.
Nonetheless, in these last few days before Christmas,
I offer three exhortations to Christians. Others are welcome to eavesdrop.
*First, be honest with your kids about Santa Claus. You
can encourage them to leave cookies by the fireplace for his Christmas
Eve visit, but be sure you tell them that “Mommy and Daddy play Santa in
this house.”
When my wife and I took our young son to a department
store Santa, we said, “A wonderful person has dressed up as Santa over
there. Let’s go say Hello.”
Make it clear by the language you use that Santa is a
role, not a person, and that many people can play that role. While a very
young child may not get the distinction, repeated and consistent use of
the language not only avoids lying, it also embraces the world of play-acting
which is natural for children.
*Second, consider giving home-made gifts. If you can’t
carve a sportscar from wood or knit a scarf or write a song or make a candle,
then pick out a meaningful passage from a book and present it as a live
reading. Maybe the store-bought gifts will wait for another occasion—Boxing
Day will do.
I know this is a hard exhortation, but think how much
more personal the holy day becomes if you avoid its commercialization.
If you can’t think of anything else, make a contribution
to a charity or cause in honor of the person to whom you wish to give a
present. A note informing the honoree of your contribution is worthy under
the tree.
If you must give something you bought, please exalt the
Prince of Peace and avoid violent video games, movies and guns. If you
are tempted to buy a rifle for sport as a gift, consider Saint Francis
talking with the birds and his love of animals.
But in receiving any gift, think of the good intent of
the giver.
*Third, accept holiday salutations from non-Christian
friends with good cheer. Some may exchange work shifts so Christians can
be with their families Christmas eve.
You may feel embarrassed about much of what Christmas
has become in our day, but this is probably not the time to engage in cultural
analysis. Your friends simply mean to recognize you and what is sacred
to you.
You might worry about how to return their greetings and
wonder if you are neglecting holidays important to them.
One possible response is, “Thank you for your warm greeting.
Please know my wish is to grow in appreciation for your own tradition,
which you so generously represent.”
692. 071212 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Scriptures a landscape all scholars can explore
From a thoughtful reader, this inquiry: “I am all for interfaith communication,
sharing ideas, etc. However, in (your recent column mentioning upcoming
holidays, you state that) December brings . . . the Muslim’s Eid al-Adha
commemorating Abraham’s offering of Ishmael to God.
“I have read our Old Testament several times thoroughly
and have never found that Abraham offered Ishmael. Abraham was asked by
God to offer his son Isaac. Where is this offering of Ishmael coming from?”
It comes from the Qur’an, Sura 37, and the Muslim tradition
identifies the son as Ishmael.
Different religions sometimes have different versions
of the same stories. For example, both Christian and Buddhist scripture
tell the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
A seasonal example is the verse in Hebrew scripture (Isaiah
7:14), “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name
Immanuel.” The literary form and context suggest that the son is to be
a sign to Ahaz.
However, a Christian reading of Matthew 1:23 radically
reinterprets the Isaiah passage as a prophesy of Jesus, who could have
been no sign to Ahaz seven centuries earlier.
Scholars also point out that Matthew, written in Greek,
uses the Septuagint Greek rendering of the Hebrew scriptures. The
Septuagint mistranslates a Hebrew word into parthenos, virgin, which does
not appear in the original text.
So Jews and Christians have different interpretations
of a verse that appears in both of their scriptures.
And Mary’s virginity is accepted by Muslims who cite the
Qur’an, Sura 3.
Furthermore, usage provides an additional overlay to stories,
as for example, the tradition that three kings brought gifts to the baby
Jesus, as in the Christmas carol, “We Three Kings.”
Since the Muslim story of Abraham’s sacrifice involves
Ishmael, it makes sense to use their version of the story in describing
their holiday. To apply the Christian version of the story to a Muslim
holiday would be misleading.
Just as Christians are fortunate to have several gospels
with differences as well as similarities, so the faiths of the world now
in our own community offer several roads to travel through the mystery
of existence.
The tradition, the time and the culture into which we were born,
usually determines our path.
But isn’t it wonderful when our path, even for a moment,
joins another, and we can learn how other travelers navigate the mystery?
In the scriptures we can find stories of such journeys in a holy landscape
all explore.
691. 071205 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
We scale the arts for stories
Preachers fresh out of school quickly learn that congregations do not
want term papers for sermons; effective sermons grow out of stories.
That’s because stories, even non-religious stories, can
show us what is important. They can point us toward the sacred, the source
of life’s deepest meaning.
With classroom instruction and “field trips,” I’m currently
teaching ten ministerial students about art and spirituality. It’s easy
to find spirituality in figural painting, in ballet, in opera and drama
because they tell or imply stories.
But what about music with no story, what about abstract
painting or sculpture or architecture? Without a person, how can there
be a story?
Independent scholar Ellen Dissanayake speculates that
art originates in the visual, gestural, and vocal cues between parent and
infant, with repetitions, variations and responses.
These patterns of connection and reassurance are awesome
— think this sacred season of the love of parents for their children, and
of the Christian image of the mother Mary and the child Jesus.
A parent’s cooing may not be a complete narrative, but
it implies a story about a sacred relationship between an utterly committed
parent and the completely dependent infant.
The parent-child exchange of vocalizations precedes real
words. Our need for such wordless patterns is rooted in our biology. Without
such patterns, we perish.
A transparent example in art is the Beethoven Piano Sonata
No. 13, to be performed Friday in a Friends of Chamber music program, our
next “field trip.”
The work begins with three child-like notes, two B-flats and a G, and a
soothing response. Then that pattern is elaborated.
Musically, we journey as a child ventures from the parent;
and after an exploration, the pattern is fulfilled by returning home to
that familiar sound, but we are enlarged by having seen more of the cosmos.
The delight we have in discovering and penetrating sophisticated
patterns, whether in the movement of the stars or in twists and turns and
fenestration of a strange building, may resonate in the soul’s need to
affirm that the universe has a structure on which we can depend, even when
we are surprised.
The Friends program also presents two pieces of extraordinary
difficulty, one written to outdo the other in technical challenge.
This leads to a different kind of esthetic thrill, the
marvel of execution. The pianist, Yefim Bronfman, may not be a mythic hero,
but our gratitude for skillful guidance in the musical journey, as the
pattern is articulated and revealed, becomes awe.
690. 071128 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Interfaith spirit brightens holidays
Kansas City’s first “Festival of Faiths,” a 12-day series of events
celebrating religious diversity, concluded Nov. 18.
The festival opened with a multi-faith luncheon and concluded
with a dinner with many faiths speaking about gratitude.
In between were a live play based on the lives of folks
of many faiths here, two provocative films, a choral concert with excepts
from the Lyric Opera’s forthcoming production of “John Brown.”
Teens spent two days and an overnight discussing issues
in understanding their own and each other’s faiths. Two scholars, one Jewish,
one Muslim, modeled interfaith dialogue in an adult evening program. Folks
used a Festival brochure for a self-guided tour of the Nelson-Atkins Museum
of Art.
Janet Burton, Festival co-chair, said, “We wanted to widen
the circle of dialogue and to reassure those who feared that learning about
other faiths would weaken their own or lead to some composite faith.”
Some of the programs would have occurred without the Festival,
but by weaving them together, “the Festival showed that through dialogue,
people do not feel threatened but rather enlightened, engaged and grateful.”
Burton noted that new partnerships among area faith organizations
were created and new friendships formed.
But Burton is critical of the lack of media attention,
particularly to guest Akbar Ahmed, former Pakistani ambassador to the UK,
called “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” by the BBC,
who spoke here the day after martial law was declared in Pakistan. “The
media lost a great opportunity to help the community to understand why
events there affect our own lives” she said.
“Our goal was dialogue. We didn’t expect such timeliness
in relation to world events. I’m sobered by the size and potential impact
of conflicts occurring between people of different faiths, but encouraged
that our mission is valid: to listen, learn, understand and practice the
exercise of acceptance.”
The Festival is over, but awaiting us are holidays through
which the Festival spirit can continue.
December brings the minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah,
the beginning of Advent for Christians with Christmas especially important
in Western churches, the Muslim’s Eid al-Adha commemorating Abraham’s offering
of Ishmael to God, the pagan Yule at the solstice, the Zoroastrian’s commemoration
of the death of their founder and Kwanzaa, a new holiday of spiritual values
with African roots.
Answering the season’s cold is the warmth of interfaith
friendship.
689. 071121 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Lowering the ‘temperature’ of conflict
Last Wednesday a thousand people listened intently at Village Presbyterian
Church to a Jew and a Muslim talk with each other, part of this year’s
metro 12-day Festival of Faiths.
One member of the audience, Dallas Ziegenhorn, said
afterwards, “The evening gave me a new way of talking with friends about
‘radical’ Islam and the increasing animosity of many countries toward the
West.
“It is imperative that we have a deeper understanding
of Islam in order to lower the ‘temperature’ of conflict. Since there are
1.4 billion Muslims today and two billion Christians, we must find a way
to prevent a global confrontation.”
(World Jewish population is about 25 million.)
Hussain Haideri, president of the Crescent Peace Society
here, called the evening “nothing less than scintillating.”
The speakers were two grandfathers who spoke with the
wisdom and compassion of experience. Judea Pearl is the father of slain
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and a professor of computer
science at UCLA. Akbar Ahmed is professor of Islamic studies at the American
University in Washington, D.C.
In Haideri’s personal opinion, the evening “was
an honest attempt to do some soul searching and scratching beneath the
surface of complicated, aggravating and sensitive issues that transcend
religious, political and social borders.”
Haideri said the dialogue “explored the root causes of
hatred that fans extremist actions on both sides and perpetuates the mistrust
between Judaism and Islam, two of the Ibrahimic (Abrahamic) faiths with
more in common than often realized.
“Repercussions directly affect the world’s largest religion,
Christianity.
“Therefore, what could be more appropriate than sitting
face to face in God’s house, as Professor Ahmed pointed out, and sifting
through the causes of this dilemma?”
While other areas of the world were discussed, “Professor
Pearl laid out a utopian view of Jewish and Palestinian states, adjacent,
in harmony. Ahmed agreed, but pointed out that mistrust on both sides is
high, and work needs to be done to bring down ‘temperatures.’
“They each reflected on the positives within each other’s
faiths. Pearl called Islam ‘a universal religion’ and Ahmed appreciated
the ‘value of learning’ in Judaism.
Haideri concluded, “I am eager for the (evening’s) excitement
to spill over to the masses locally, and then snowball into an effort that
spreads across the nation and hopefully, someday, across the globe, restoring
the true image of America as a leader of nations.”
688. 071114 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Pakistan is attracting attention
Pakistan is in the news. And a TV sitcom this fall, “Aliens in America,”
features a high school exchange student, a Muslim from Pakistan.
A few weeks ago the Crescent Peace Society’s annual Eid
dinner featured Pakistan Daily Times columnist, Prof. Saleem H. Ali, an
environmental expert and dean of graduate education at the University of
Vermont. He has an astounding list of international credits.
In his remarks here he said that the US would do better
to allocate money to improve inferior Pakistani public schools rather
than for so much military aid because parents who want their children well
trained sometimes resort to radicalized madrassahs despite their poisonous
interpretations of Islam.
But since he knows both American and Pakistani education
systems well, I complained to him that American schools also often fail
to develop an informed and participatory citizenry.
Concerning Islam specifically, I expressed dismay at how
few Americans have any inkling of the debt the West owes Islam in art,
science, medicine, navigation, and countless other fields. Say artichoke,
banana, coffee . . .all the way to zero. Imagine doing income tax with
Roman, rather than Arabic numerals.
Without understanding this heritage, we are not equipped
to deal with our own colonial sins, I said.
He responded:
“The main problem we face in schools in Muslim and non-Muslim
countries is a lack of ‘peace education’ or conflict resolution skills
at the earliest level. This could include resolving disagreements
within peers as well as understanding how to deal with cross-cultural and
religious differences.
“We also need to have greater global studies education
to familiarize students about other traditions and historical narratives.
“However, Western schools have the advantage in many cases
of at least encouraging critical reasoning among their students, which
is frequently lacking in Islamic schools.
“Hence even if the content is not up-to-date in the Western
schools and lacks nuance, the students can still question assumptions in
class and challenge the teacher if needed about these assumptions.
“Unfortunately, in most madrassahs, the lack of critical
reasoning prevents such introspection.
“Therefore, I would say that it would be far easier to
reform some of the content-related issues here than it would be for madrassahs.
“Nevertheless, there are now some scholars who are willing
to undertake critical reasoning reforms in Islamic education as well such
as the new Zaytuna Academy in California.”
Last Sunday, I spent time with high school students drawn
from all over the metro in Harmony’s “Interfaith Our Town” program. Admittedly
they selected themselves to learn about faiths other than their own. Still,
I was impressed with their “critical introspection” skills applied to themselves
and their new friends. No threats here. Lots of hope.
687. 071107 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
3 Views of Stem Cell Research
Missouri voters may have amended the state constitution regarding stem
cell research, but religious communities in the area are still trying to
understand the science, the ethical questions and the religious dimensions
of the debate.
So Steve Jeffers, Director of the Institute for Spirituality
in Health at the Shawnee Mission Medical Center, worked with a committee
of physicians, clergy and community representatives to arrange a three-hour
program on the controversy last week.
The room was packed, some folks standing, to hear the
presentations.
From Jeffers, readers of this column can obtain a free
copy of the 45-page book each member of the audience received. It compiles
background material from the scientific, ethics and religious presentations
and includes statements about stem cell research from 19 world faiths.
Moderated by KCPT’s Nick Haines, the religion panel offered
three distinct positions.
Fr. Steven Beseau, director of the St. Lawrence Catholic
Campus Center in Lawrence, said that the Roman Catholic position opposes
the destruction of embryos from which stem cells can be derived but supports
research on stem cells from other sources. A fertilized egg deserves the
same respect as other individuals.
Rabbi Alan Cohen, senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom,
said there is near unanimity in Judaism to support stem cell research.
Until the “crowning of the head” appears at birth, Jewish authorities consider
a fetus as the potential, not actual, life of a person.
The Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor at the United Methodist
Church of the Resurrection, focused on how embryonic stem cells are obtained.
He distinguished between an egg fertilized by sperm, each with half the
complete set of genetic instructions, and an egg whose nucleus is replaced
by a donor nucleus containing a complete genetic set from, say, a skin
cell. The latter case is known as SCNT, somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Fr Beseau said the question is when life is created. “It
is a scientific fact that life begins at conception.” Destroying innocent
life is immoral.
Still he said the destruction of a living skin cell, with
the potential to form an embryo through SCNT, was of no concern.
After their presentations, neurologist Gordon Kelley,
M.D., said, “All life is a continuum; human life is not ‘created’ by the
union of a sperm and an egg. The sperm is already alive; the egg is already
alive. Life (as we know it) does not have a beginning; it is transmitted.
But it has an ending when the individual dies.”
686. 071031 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
La Raza's Leaving Raises questions
Can religion shed any light on what it means for the National Council
of La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy group, to decide not to hold its 2009
convention here because Kansas City’s mayor had appointed to the parks
board a
supporter of armed civilian patrols of the U.S.-Mexico border?
Various faiths have explored human and divine rewards
and punishments to groups and individuals, as just or as capricious.
Religious traditions also counsel human efforts to mitigate
disasters and share one another’s burdens.
Let’s explore the Biblical concept of collective punishment.
One could see La Raza’s withdrawal as an attempt to make
the metro area pay for one individual’s views.
This is complicated because La Raza is holding its
convention next year in San Diego where a state lawmaker supporting the
objectionable Minutemen organization was elected by the people, while La
Raza has withdrawn its 2009 convention here because of a mayoral appointment,
not an election.
Some might wonder why a population that directly voted
for someone La Raza finds distasteful should be rewarded with its convention
while a population with no direct control over an appointment should be
punished.
But collective punishment has its precedents, as the “Ten
Commandments” passage of Exodus 20 illustrates. God threatens to punish
the children of the wicked “unto the third and fourth generation.”
But in Ezekiel 18, God details his renunciation of the
proverb, “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth
are set on edge.”
For many Christians, the first Biblical example of collective
punishment is the sin of Adam whose guilt is transmitted to the human race.
As the New England Primer put it, “In Adam’s fall/ We sinned all.”
But the chief example of injustice is murder of the innocent
Jesus for the sins of others, by which they might be saved.
Yet some have held that God elects only some, and even
the worthy deeds of others cannot change God’s sovereign decision.
The Bible also observes that justice is not assured for
“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet
bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor
to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.” (Ecclesiastes
9:11)
Such observations led to doctrines of virtue rewarded
and evil punished in a future life. And commercial insurance and social
programs developed with the theology of sharing one another’s burdens in
this life.
Is Kansas City guilty? Should we understand La Raza’s
decision as just or as caprice unanswered in this world? And are we sharing
one another’s burdens?
685. 071024 THE STAR'S HEADLINE
Spiritual Art Sizes Us Up
The Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council “Table of Faiths” luncheon
this year, Nov 7, has chosen “Sacredness in the Arts” as its theme, and
I was asked to comment for its video presentation. The luncheon is part
of a “Festival of Faiths” embracing many multi-faith programs through Nov.
18, including a brochure for a self-tour of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art, which I was asked to write.
And co-incidentally, I’m currently teaching a course to
ministerial candidates called “Religion and the Arts.”
My approach is rather different from Johann Bernoulli,
who once described paintings by the Old Masters simply by noting their
physical dimensions.
I want to know the spiritual size of works of art.
Great art, whether tragic or comic, seems to originate
in a movement of the spirit. Religion begins with ineffable experiences
of awe and wonder; and art imitates, creates, recalls, participates in,
or directs us to such experiences employing words, sounds, actions, light,
rhythm, shapes, colors, and textures, structuring space and time within
a frame which points beyond itself.
The label at the beginning of the current “Rising Dragon:
Ancient Treasures from China” exhibition at the Nelson indicates that specific
religious concerns may underlie entire artistic traditions:
The show’s “objects echo, each in their own way, common
concerns fundamental to humankind past and present: 1. the mystery of existence,
2. fear of oblivion at death, and 3. the nature of a society beneficial
to its members.
“We have evolved mythologies, religions, philosophies,
governments, customs and practices and all manner of technologies to address
these fundamental issues. They have motivated the creation of much of what
we today call art.”
Whether it is an image of the mother and child developed
by ancient Egyptians and borrowed by Christians in paintings of the Madonna
and the baby Jesus, or the frenzied dance of flamenco with shouts of
Olé — an inflection of the Arabic word for God, Allah, or the transcendent
third movement of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata, or the dialogue with
nature of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” home, or the elegance of
Euclid’s proofs, or the perfect form and humanity of Shakespeare’s Sonnet
73, or . . .
As nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote, “Today,
in a secular world, it is almost wholly through the arts that we have a
living reminder of the terror and nobility of what we are.”
By its spiritual size, art exercises our abilities
to feel awe and wonder and find our place in the cosmos.
684. 071017 THE STAR"S HEADLINE:
True Change is Born of Fire
“WaterFire,” the installation on Brush Creek Sept. 9, was described
by its creator, Barnaby Evans, as “a meditative celebration of community.”
That was at least part of my experience. I greeted and
visited with friends who also showed up at the Brush Creek event.
I also remembered when I was about 5, a house a block
away from mine went up in a blaze. The neighbors gathered together to watch
as the firemen sought to salvage something.
I felt guilty for enjoying the spectacle — fire is fascinating
— because I understood something of the destruction. And I appreciated
anew my parents’ warnings about my playing with fire.
Of course civilization depends on controlled fires, whether
it is cooking our food, warming our houses, or the explosions inside the
engines that provide transport.
Civilization, one might say, began with the “domestication”
of fire, perhaps about a million years ago. Fire warded off wild creatures.
It made raw meats more edible and safe. With it one could see at night
and in caves. It provided warmth. Later it was the magic by which ores
in earth could be worked into metallic tools and objects of beauty.
Fire was a god, a sign of the gods or a gift of the gods.
In some traditions, including the American Indian, fire was stolen from
the gods. In a Greek myth, the thief Prometheus gave fire to the human
race and was punished endlessly for it because fire gave humans unprecedented
power.
Because fire changes things, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus
spoke of fire as a way of saying the world is flux. The title of a famous
poem by Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins begins “That Nature is a Heraclitean
Fire.” And the Buddha spoke of unending change in his “Fire Sermon.”
The Hindu god of fire is Agni, a word with the same Indo-European
root as the English word “ignite.” In Vedic times, Agni was the chaplain
to the sky gods, communicating food offerings to them by ascending smoke.
For Zoroastrians, fire represents the energy of the Creator.
Last week I presided at a wedding and spoke these words:
“From earliest times, the lighting of torches, lamps,
and candles has been auspicious, a signal of the divine, a sign of sacred
festivity. Now in celebration of their distinct and wondrous traditions,
(bride and groom) join together two flames, lit by their two families,
to ignite a third flame, blessing us all with their united light.”
The mystery and power of fire is part of the religious
story of humankind as it continues to unfold.
683. 071010 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Interfaith Dialogue Growing Stronger
About 40 groups in metro Kansas City are involved in interfaith relations.
One is the Kansas City Chapter of the Houston-based Institute of Interfaith
Dialogue, which last week held its fourth annual iftar, dinner after sunset
during Ramadan, with about 200 guests at the hotel.
The group is inspired by the work of Turkish writer Fethullah
Gulen, and has arranged for about 60 folks from the Kansas City area to
spend two weeks in Turkey learning about Islam.
At the dinner, Leawood Mayor Peggy Dunn noted that she
had already attended an iftar this Ramadan, sponsored by the Crescent Peace
Society, founded here over a decade ago by Muslims to promote interfaith
understanding. She also mentioned other Kansas City interfaith activities,
including the Salaam Shalom Dinners and the Interfaith Council luncheons.
Another speaker, the Rev. Jarrett McLaughlin, pastor of
mission and young adult ministry at Village Presbyterian Church, recalled
his disappointment in college when “a Jew, a Muslim, an evangelical Protestant
and a Catholic . . . each gave a brief explanation of their understandings
of God as unique to each one of them,” with follow-up questions revealing
that they were less interested in understanding each other than in justifying
their own faiths.
“The Protestant on the panel adamantly declared there
is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Somebody in the crowd asked the
Muslim to speculate why Islam was so violent.” And so forth.
“When such well-intentioned forums (degenerate) into ripping
holes in the faith traditions of one another, we have wandered far from
. . . dialogue.
“None of these questions are bad questions, and there’s
nothing wrong with asking tough questions. Christianity does need to be
challenged on its often exclusive claims to salvation, and Islam and Christianity
both ought to address the ways that their teachings are . . . bent towards
violence.”
But in Turkey, McLaughlin found genuine dialogue. “We
talked about the tough questions . . . . You come face to face with the
vast differences between your faith and another faith, but you do so with
an eye towards finding strength in the faith of another.
“Tough questions are great. We wrestle with them and we
grow from that struggle.
“And after the struggle is over, you clasp one another
around the neck with the word kardesche, brothers!”
Finding kinship abroad is essential to world peace, and
the genuine interfaith dialogue in our own town, growing for more than
two decades, is building a stronger community.
682. 071003 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
draft.
Words may be inadequate to capture spiritual experiences. Reduced to
fit within the confines of language, such experiences may sound absurd.
T. S. Eliot, the 20th Century poet, born in St. Louis,
whose Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was adapted for the musical “Cats,”
struggled in writing about religious themes. In his “Four Quartets,” he
reports that “Words strain,/ Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,/
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,/ Decay with imprecision, will not
stay in place,/ Will not stay still. . . .”
But we should not be surprised. Words often point to fragments
of reality; finding words to talk about what its ultimately spiritual is
no easy task.
Sometimes what comes out is paradox. For example, Jesus
said, “He who finds his life shall lose it: and he who loses his life for
my sake shall find it.” This Christian insight is genuine, but the words
are pointing to something beyond their literal meaning.
A parallel exists in Buddhist thought. Since the cause
of suffering is craving, one’s desire for enlightenment, itself a craving,
only perpetuates one’s suffering. But when one abandons one’s selfish attachments,
even attachment to one’s own spiritual advancement, then one’s self-centeredness
ends and one can offer compassion to others, which paradoxically enables
enlightenment.
And in the Islamic tradition, consider al-Bistami’s claim
about the mystical experience:
“This thing that we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only
seekers find it.”
Of the ultimate, the Taoist sage Laotzu says, “He who
knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.”
Kitaro Nishida, a 20th Century Buddhist philosopher influenced
by both Eastern and Western traditions, avoided facile synthesis by writing,
“the world is one, namely many.” This statement has a logical form similar
to the quip, “You are unique, like everyone else.”
Several early 20th Century scientists were intensely interested
in religious questions. Physicist Niels Bohr, for example, wrote, “The
opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth
may very well be another profound truth.”
And an American insurance company executive and poet Wallace
Stevens writes of faith this way: “The final belief is to believe in a
fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The
exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction, and that you believe it
willingly.”
Perhaps paradox can invite us past tidy spiritual thoughts
to the ineffable spiritual experience itself.
681. 070926 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Kansas City museum
You’ve seen images of the Pope blessing a crowd in St Peter’s Square.
Perhaps you’ve brought your pet to one of Kansas City’s annual St Francis
of Assisi animal blessing ceremonies. Maybe even you yourself have received
a blessing.
But have you ever seen a museum blessed? On Sept 30 at
2 pm, you’ll have that chance at the Kansas City Museum’s Corinthian Hall,
3218 Gladstone Blvd, originally the home of lumber baron Robert A. Long.
The Rev Bruce Rahtjen, pastor of Melrose Methodist Church
and a member of the KC Landmarks Commission, is the honorary chair for
the interfaith ceremony with, he hopes, “priests, rabbis, imams” and other
religious leaders and the public, offering affirmations, walking around
the property and enjoying a free reception in the Grand Hall.
The Longs, a Southern Baptist husband and Quaker wife,
built the Beaux-Art mansion in 1910 employing a Scandinavian Lutheran household
staff.
But why bless the place, especially as the neighborhood
has undergone many changes in the 67 years since it was bequeathed to the
city?
Rahtjen says it is auspicious for the community “to honor
our legacy and to forgive missteps of the past, to join together in compassionate
solidarity and to stimulate courage to meet the challenges of the future.”
Rahtjen calls the location “the most historic quarter
of the city” and cites evidence for the Hopewellian culture from a thousand
years ago. And “the later Osage and Kansaa Indians lived and practiced
ceremonies here even after the appearance of Europeans.
“The area diversified quickly with the influx of more
immigrants. Kansas City’s first synagogue, Temple B’nai Jehudah, was consecrated
on St. John Ave. just after the Civil War, and KC’s oldest Jewish burial
ground was later incorporated into Historic Elmwood Cemetery at Truman
and Van Brunt.
“The Roman Catholic presence has anchored many cultural
groups. Italian workers in the early-20th century settled in enclaves around
churches and schools of their faith here.
“Over the course of the century the Church then resettled
refugees from many countries in areas traditionally Italian, so that there
are now Polish and Eastern European, Cambodian, Lao, Vietnamese, Guatemalan,
Honduran and Mexican Catholics who call the Northeast home.
“The past ten years have seen introductions of vibrant
communities of East African (Somali, Sudanese, Ethiopian) Muslims and Christians,
Southeast Asian Buddhists and Central American Protestants and Catholics
into the Northeast, and they are thriving,” Rahtjen says.
While the blessing ceremony may focus on the museum, it
is really the metro area that is blessed by the added spiritual diversity
centered around the museum.
680. 070919 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Questions of church and state
Meeting with area clergy for lunch today is one of the nation’s leading
liberal preachers, Forrest Church, and tonight at 7 he gives a free public
lecture about his latest book, So Help Me God, at Community Christian
Church, 4601 Main.
The son of the late Idaho Senator Frank Church, Forrest
received his doctorate in early church history from Harvard in 1978. Almost
immediately he became senior minister at All Souls Church in New York.
He now is minister of public theology there.
Appointed by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to chair New
York’s Council on the Environment, Church has thought deeply about public
issues. His 2004 book Freedom from Fear may be the best book produced
by a cleric in response to the events of 9/11 which still shape our public
and private concerns.
That book remains remarkable for its counsel about how
to live with the five species of fear he analyses: fright (a bodily fear),
worry (a mental fear), guilt (the fearing conscience), insecurity (emotional
fear) and dread (the fear that afflicts the soul).
Our fears are often out of proportion to any reality that
might justify them, and his sane words on 9/11, for example, provide a
perspective that has yet to be absorbed by the body politic.
In his 2002 book, The American Creed: A Spiritual and
Patriotic Primer, he considers the term “creed,” not as a sectarian
statement but as the pluralistic spirit of the nation with a vision of
freedom and justice:
“Though the American Creed as fashioned by Thomas Jefferson
and perfected by the Continental Congress rests upon a clear separation
between church and state, the body politic does have a soul,” he writes.
Of his 23 books, the one I most frequently pull from my
shelves is The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental
Freedom by America’s Founders.
In it, Church has gathered and introduced documents that
provide historical context for understanding the intent of our nation’s
founders as they thought about how the threads of religion and government
can be woven with liberty.
The writers include Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George
Washington and James Madison. The book also includes a treaty which states
“the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded
on the Christian religion,” ratified by the Senate in 1797.
But is God the source of liberty or is the Constitution’s
invocation of “We the people” sufficient?
I expect Church’s new book and his talk will illumine
such questions.
679. 070912 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Zen and the art of peace
Jesuit Father Robert Kennedy was sent to Japan some 40 years ago. “I
was told to learn all I could. And I was told not to come back singing
the same song: they expected me to learn something new.”
Indeed, Father Kennedy’s keen study of Zen Buddhism there
led to his becoming, without his intention, a Zen teacher, or roshi. So
he can be addressed not only as Father Kennedy but also as Kennedy Roshi.
He says it was an act of “tremendous generosity of the
Zen community” to entrust a non-Buddhist, a Roman Catholic, with the transmission
of Zen. He compares it to Catholics making a rabbi a bishop of the Church.
Unheard of.
So what did Father Kennedy Roshi learn?
“We Jesuits try to bring gifts of what we learn to the
Church, and I thought bringing Zen was a great gift.”
Zen meditation, “which stays away from theories and philosophies
and theologies, grounds a person in present reality. This can help a person
in everything.”
While Kennedy recognizes that some people are not disposed
to meditation, from the overwhelming response he sees when meditation is
introduced, he thinks that many can benefit.
“I’m not trying to sell it or convince anyone, just make
it available.
“I believe that Zen Buddhists and Catholic communities
can come together. The two faiths are quite different, but the other is
not an enemy. We can appreciate each other. The other is a God-given gift
to us in all its particularities.”
Kennedy now practices psychotherapy in New York. He was
ordained a priest in 1965, installed as a Zen teacher in 1991 and
designated roshi in 1997.
He is also a professor of theology at St. Peter’s College
in New Jersey. His two books are Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit and Zen Gifts
to Christians.
He speaks here Sept. 29 from 9:30 to noon at St Francis
Xavier Catholic Church. Admission is free.
His talk is part of a series at the church on peace and
non-violence.
An additional role for Kennedy is as a representative
of the Institute for Spiritual Consciousness in Politics at the United
Nations, where he “stresses the need for dialogue among religious people.
This is a necessity today. We must understand one another and become friends.
It sounds so simple, but we have a terrible past.”
Kennedy says that meditation can improve both personal
affairs and social action. His talk here will address how Christians practicing
Zen can promote peace in everyday living.
678. 070905 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Sufis' dancing leads to oneness
Thursday night a group of Sufis gathered for sacred dance, as they have
for over 25 years here in Kansas City.
After exchanging greetings, they recited an invocation
which expressed their intention: “Toward the One, the perfection of love,
harmony and beauty, the only being, united with all the illuminated souls
who form the embodiment of the Master, the spirit of guidance.”
Sufi dancing as practiced here is indebted in spirit to
the “whirling dervishes” of Turkey, but is more like an America circle
dance, through far more meditative, with bowing and other gestures of respect.
And if, like me, you have two left feet, the instructions and your forgiving
partners erase all embarrassment and welcome you into a soulful energy.
Throughout the evening, Fattah Kriner led the group in
dances based on sacred phrases chanted in English, Arabic, Tibetan, Sanskrit
and Hebrew.
The chant for the last dance of the evening, for
example, in Arabic, can be translated as “The love of God brought us here
to the earth to be lovers, and now we wish to return to the Beloved.”
Sometimes called Universal Sufism, this approach to spiritual
practice can be traced to Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) who brought wisdom
from India to the West. It is indebted to Islamic mysticism but is not
a part of mainstream Islam. Some scholars consider it syncretistic because
it embraces materials from many faiths.
But the practice is aimed to lead one to the realization
that there is only one Source, one Reality, according to Connie “Rahimah”
Sweeney, a past president of the group.
In Portland 30 years ago, Sweeney discovered Sufi dancing
to be “heart-expanding,” something she had missed in her earlier religious
background.
Sweeney says that as American Sufism matures, traditional
Sufi teachings gain more attention. A psychologist, she cited the teaching
of fana, “effacement,” the emptying of the personality, with the practice
of remembering there is only One. Not needing to defend oneself or to react
to every little thing leads to a sense of divine “union, pure joy. The
loss of self, which is so scary for Westerners, is what we’re after.”
Emptying oneself to see God in one’s dance partner becomes
a key practice.
Kevin Wehner, a newer member, says that never before has
he had such spiritual experiences, “hard to describe in words — the
music and the movement — it’s a sacred feeling.”
The group’s web site, which lists its activities and locations,
is www.shiningheartcommunity.org.
677. 070829 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Lay people give strength to interfaith effort in KC
Saying that the discussions at Central United Methodist Church’s God
Talk group often involves this column, a member asked me to visit some
Thursday. I was interested in what questions they might ask, so last week
I went.
They were keenly interested in interfaith activities in
our area.
One of the members has been reading The Faith Club, an
account of how three women, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, came to
understand each other’s faiths deeply. I was able to tell the God Talk
group that the women will be at Park University Sept. 25.
I also mentioned the upcoming Festival of Faiths, a series
of events created by different groups to enhance our own friendship across
faith lines.
The Festival begins Nov. 7 with the Interfaith Council’s
luncheon. The Festival includes a presentation by Judea Pearl, father of
slain Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, with Muslim Akbar Ahmed, author of
Islam Under Siege, at Village Presbyterian Church Nov. 13. It concludes
with my own organization’s 23d annual Thanksgiving Sunday Ritual Meal Nov.
18.
But the group was not just interested in programs. How
did interfaith work develop here?
The Pluralism Project at Harvard University studies the
increasing religious diversity in our country and the ways through which
people of different faiths organize local interfaith efforts.
Ellie Pierce, chief researcher there, speaking here at
the nation’s first Interfaith Academies, said, “At the Pluralism Project,
we consider Kansas City to be truly at the forefront of interfaith relations.”
But Kansas City does not have an area-wide association
of clergy or congregations. Without such a structure, how did Kansas City
gain its national reputation?
Lay people is how, I told the God Talk group.
Interfaith efforts in other cities are often structured
to represent constituent religious organizations. They run into “political”
problems.
Clergy are busy, and their first responsibility is to
their congregations. No matter how devoted they may be to interfaith work,
their participation is often shaped by institutional issues.
Here in Kansas City, the Interfaith Council is composed
mainly of lay people of various traditions. They are not bound by ecclesiastic
duties to represent their institutions. They come, like The Faith Club
women, simply as people of faith.
Institutions are essential. But Kansas City’s growing
success, I told the God Talk group, arises from folks with loyalty to their
faiths beyond institutional constraints.
676. 070822 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Opera raises questions of violence
Is violence ever justified? Does beneficial social and political progress
ever originate from murder? Do religious and moral conviction transform
a terrorist into a martyr?
The ancient Indian faith, Jainism, with about 4 million
adherents world-wide and over 40 Kansas City area families, may be the
most consistent in saying no. Its teaching of ahimsa, non-violence, influenced
modern teachers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
But for most faiths, including Judaism and Christianity
referenced below, the answer is more difficult. Consider the subject of
the work which will conclude the Lyric Opera’s 50th Anniversary season,
abolitionist John Brown. Some consider him a terrorist, some a martyr after
his execution for 1858 raid on Harper’s Ferry on the Potomac River.
He was a troublesome figure in these parts, too, and his
ferocity is depicted in a mural in the Kansas State Capitol.
In 1856 Brown and his gang killed five pro-slavery settlers
in what is called the “Pottawatomie Massacre.” Brown had come to Kansas
after the sacking of Lawrence by those wanting Kansas to be admitted to
the Union as a slave state.
In one of the most electrifying arias of the opera, Brown,
who as a child, “too small to help,” had witnessed another boy, his friend,
a slave, beaten ferociously by his master, tells of reading in the Bible
about “Moses who had seen a brutal beating of a slave — and Moses killed
a man! Moses! Moses himself took a human life to defend a helpless slave.”
Were Moses — and Brown — right to answer violence
with violence? Was the Civil War fought among Christians the correct way
to achieve the liberation of the slaves?
Was our War of Independence justified to escape “taxation
without representation”?
Are those today who claim inhuman subjugation or political
or economic enslavement or exploitation justified in reacting with violence?
Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson give their
views in “John Brown.”
The opera, a world premiere, was composed by Kirke Mechem
who was raised in Topeka and may be best known for a previous opera, “Tartuffe.”
The other operas this season also contain religious elements.
In Verdi’s “Aida” and Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers,” priests and priestesses
play roles. Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” is a parable of virtue, and the
Queen of the Night’s selfish aria threatening to disown her daughter unless
she kills the priest Sarastro contrasts sharply with John Brown’s belief
that violent means is justified by worthy ends.
675. 070815 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Build sense of sacred with the right
A certain religious “liberal” who writes “a popular column for a mainstream
daily newspaper” was “no . . .match” on a local public TV station against
a “right-wing minister of a suburban mega-church (who) had grabbed the
(local and national) spotlight by pushing a successful amendment to his
state’s constitution to ban marriage equality for gay citizens,” writes
Robert N. Minor, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas,
in his new book, When Religion is an Addiction.
Minor says the columnist had his facts straight, his arguments
were cogent and his preparation included Biblical material.
The columnist “was polite, reasoned and inoffensive to
everyone. And, as a progressive friend of mine commented, the right-winger
ate him alive,” Minor reports.
I’m not sure I have the objectivity to judge whether what
Minor calls the “arrogant and condescending,” authoritarian, tone of the
“right-winger” was more appealing to the viewers than the “nice” tone of
the columnist.
What I do know is that Minor raises questions that
trouble many people of many faiths. How can a tolerant person accept intolerance?
How does one respond to those who want to use government to enforce their
own religious views on everyone else?
In beginning his answer, Minor quotes Robert Frost: “A
liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
Minor says that liberals eschew the sound-bite type of
communication he associates with “right-wingers,” and doubts that liberal
attempts at nuance often succeed in such contests.
Minor intensifies his criticism of liberals by calling
them “enablers” of those addicted to the high that comes from thinking
one is absolutely right in matters of faith.
He draws a parallel with family and friends of alcoholics
who cover-up or excuse the problem, enabling the alcoholic to deny the
addiction.
A liberal who declines to point out religious addition
because of respect for all religious perspectives is an “enabler.”
Minor’s work continues an important examination of addictive
believers in such earlier books as Leo Booth and John Bradshaw’s When God
Becomes a Drug: Breaking the Chain of Religious Abuse and Addiction, Matthew,
Sheila and Dennis Linn’s Healing Spiritual Abuse and Religious Addiction
and Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton’s Toxic Faith.
As for that columnist, well, would it be too liberal for
him to write that while he respects Minor’s viewpoint, the columnist thinks
it is possible to build upon a sense of the sacred even with “right-wingers”?
Part of me says Yes, part of me says No.
674. 070808 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
It is not for us to choose sides
Can you speak the ultimate spiritual truth? Will it fit inside the words
and syntax of language? Is there a point to the verbal disputes about God
or the Absolute within and among various faiths? Is one religious organization
the receptacle of full and final revelation?
Or should different perspectives be welcomed even if we
favor the viewpoint most helpful to us, within our own particular background
and experience?
Swami Tyagananda, head of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society
in Boston, and a chaplain to students at Harvard and M.I.T., was in town
recently to address the Kansas City Vedanta Society. He is active
in interfaith work, so I raised such questions with him.
He told the story of two Indians, one who said that
Vishnu was the supreme god and other who argued that Shiva was greater.
They went to a sage for help.
The sage said “Not I, nor my father, nor my grandfather
— none of us has met them, so I am not in a position to decide. Each of
you continue your own practice. Each practice can bring you toward experience
of the truth.”
Tyagananda said religion can begin with faith, and
that can lead you to experience of God, but once you have experience, you
don’t need faith anymore because you experience directly.
“Most people who quarrel have not had such an experience.
But those with experience don’t fight about who is right. They just smile.”
I had asked him about two views among the very different
philosophies in Indian thought. Advaita, Non-Duality, taught by Shankara
(788-820), holds that there is no self separate from ultimate reality.
A contrary view, Dvaita, Dualism, was expounded by Madhva (1199-1278) who
taught that there is an everlasting distinction between the self and the
absolute.
Like other Hindu teachers to whom I’ve put this question,
Tyagananda smiled and said that it is unnecessary to decide between them.
“Who is to decide whose view is lower or higher?” Each had his own experience,
and what is important to us is the experience we have.
Tyagananda questioned the idea that one view is right
and therefore all other views must be wrong.
“All can be right. All of the philosophies and all of
the religions — including Vedanta — are only partial readings of the Infinite.
If the truth is infinite, which philosophy, which tradition can say,
‘I have got it fully!’?
“The moment you say that, then you are limiting what is
unlimitable. How can anyone have the audacity to say ‘We have the truth
entirely”? All are just snap-shots from different directions.”
SUN
PUBLICATIONS
Thursday, August 2, 2007 10:09
AM CDT
Kansas bishops says pope's comments
about Christian salvation misinterpreted
BY: Sheri Baker-Rickman, Staff
Writer
Comments that Pope Benedict XVI
made regarding the Catholic Church being the sole spiritual path to salvation
July 10 have been misinterpreted, Joseph F. Naumann, archbishop with the
Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, said.
Pope Benedict XVI said the “Church
of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church.”
Naumann said the statement means
that Jesus founded only one church, not many. He said Jesus' church and
the Catholic Church have the same elements.
Protestant churches cannot be described
as churches under Catholic doctrine because they lack sacramental priesthood
and the Eucharist, Naumann said.
“For a Catholic, who understands
the unique presence of Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist, to abandon
the church is wrong,” he said. “For those who have come to understand and
experience Jesus through other ecclesial communities, we respect their
faith and would say nothing to diminish its authenticity.”
Kansas City Interfaith Council founder
the Rev. Vern Barnet described the pope's comments as “unnecessarily provocative.'
“The statement damages interfaith
relations because it attempts to place the (Catholic) Church in a position
of superiority rather than as an equal among world faiths, all of which
are groping in human ways with the finite powers and limited backgrounds
and experiences that we all have, to understand an infinite mystery,” Barnet
said.
Respecting each others' traditions
is essential to interfaith dialogue, Barnet said.
“It is clear from this and previous
statements that the pope has never really understood other faiths, as his
notoriously unfortunate lecture at Regensberg last Sept. 12 demonstrated
in a number of ways, despite his reputed great intellect,” Barnet said.
“Presuming that non-Catholic faiths
are defective or incomplete suggests the pope is a captive of one tradition,
rather than a wise exponent of it,” he said.
Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime
Buddhist Center echoed Barnet's concerns.
“These very inflammatory comments
sadly are consistent with the more recent statement issued with the pope's
approval about the superiority of the Catholic Church,” Stanford said.
“His comments damage interfaith relations and interfaith dialogue at a
time when these are critically needed.”
Stanford said that in 1999, Benedict,
then a cardinal, criticized Buddhism as an “autoerotic spirituality” that
seeks “transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations.”
Stanford said global tensions exist
within and between religions and fundamentalism is on the rise in many
faiths, which threatens religious freedoms.
He said different faiths should
work for common solutions to social ills.
“It is my sincere hope that religious
leaders worldwide will work to foster respect of all faiths and work to
encourage interfaith dialogue,” Stanford said. “His holiness the Dalai
Lama has personified these ideals of respect for all religions and encourages
and has personally engaged in many interfaith dialogues.”
Barnet said the pope's comments
are detrimental to encouraging dialogue among faiths.
Carroll Macke, representing the
Archdiocese of Kansas City, agreed with Naumann and said news reports have
been misinterpreted.
“Media reports, especially the AP
wire story, were misleading and basically false about Pope Benedict releasing
a document declaring the only way to salvation was through the Catholic
Church,” Macke said “Nowhere in the document is the statement or any similar
wording that the only way to salvation is through the Catholic Church.
“The document does not in any way
attempt to denigrate other Christian denominations. The document is clarifying
what the Catholic Church teaches that the Catholic Church believes to be
the Church of Christ. In terms of the incorrect statement that 'salvation
is only through the Catholic Church,' the document basically says that
because of the elements of truth that are present in these churches they
are indeed used by Christ as instruments of salvation for their members.”
673. 070801 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Be careful when cherry-picking Bible passages
Last week’s column noted that “The Hebrew scriptures present God as
a healer.” I could have cited passages such as Gen. 20:17, Ex. 15:26, 2
Kings 20:5 and Ps. 30:2 to support my point.
But reader Neil Harris responded, “I read your column
today with some interest: ‘The Hebrew Scriptures present God as a healer.’
“I had just emerged from one of my periodic attempts to
get through the dismal parts of the Old Testament and New Testament, and
2 Samuel 24 was on my mind: ‘The Lord sent a pestilence throughout Israel
from morning till the hour of dinner, and from Dan to Beersheba seventy
thousand of the people died.’ (NEB)
“The pestilence was one of three nasty choices God gave
David for the latter’s conducting a census—though it seems God made him
do it. Some healer! (The version of the story in 1 Chron. 21 has Satan
inciting David to do the census. Were they interchangeable?)
“And the people of Jericho, as well as the beasts, might
have died saying, ‘Healer?’ Yeah, right.
“Now you, Vern, are the expert in scriptures. Am I cherry-picking?
Are you? Perhaps God would have been a greater healer if we could have
gotten him into an anger management class.”
Well, Prof. Harris, you are right. I did cherry-pick.
That’s what people do when they use the Bible. It’s what people do in quoting
Shakespeare or Emerson or Dante as well. We select what is helpful to make
our point.
But the problem of cherry-picking is acute if a text is
authoritative in the sense of being divinely inspired, internally consistent
and literally true.
The idea that God is unchanging may come from Aristotle,
but I’m not sure it is in the Bible, except for Christians in Heb. 13:8.
The scriptures present God in many moods. In Deut. 32:39 we read, “I kill,
and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.”
In the Bible God changes his mind and repents (Gen. 6:6,
Ex. 32:14, 1 Sam 15:35, Jer. 26:3), creates evil (Isa.45:7), rewards the
wicked (Prov. 26:10), commands killing the “old and young, both maids,
and little children, and women” (Ezek. 9:6), is jealous (Ex. 20:5), gets
angry (Ex. 22:24), protects a murderer (Gen. 4:15) and so forth.
We are not likely to select such passages for inspiration.
And I never recommend that people simply open the Bible and read whatever
their eyes find.
We can cherry-pick what we like from literature composed
thousands of years ago in different cultures in antique languages, and
ignore the rest—unless our faith requires us to struggle with the whole
of it.
672. 070725 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Duty says prepare for pandemic
Do people of faith need to think about a possible avian flu pandemic?
To approach this question, let’s review some religious
history.
Many of our hospitals were formed by religious groups.
The Hebrew scriptures present God as a healer. Jesus often
treated the diseased, and he commanded his followers to “heal the sick.”
(Matt. 10:8.)
In Islam, the Qur’an itself becomes a “cure,” and great
medical advances were made in Islam that later benefited the West.
The medicine Buddha is a frequent imagine prescribing
therapies for the world. The Hindu Ayurveda medical tradition is said to
have been revealed by the god Brahma.
The seventh Sikh guru, Har Rai, established a hospital*
and cured the son of the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan. Today many Sikhs are
involved in health care.
Chinese acupuncture involves the spiritual forces
of yin and yang.
In primal traditions like American Indian and tribal African
ways, the “medicine man” plays an essentially spiritual role. The Navajo
healer, for example, may create a sand painting, an image through which
spirits restore the patient to primordial health.
Our English word “salvation” is related to the Latin for
“health.”
In most religions, healing the sick is an obligation.
But what if so many people are sick or contagious that
schools are closed, the hospitals are overwhelmed and places of worship
must be used, not for regular services, but rather to quarantine and house
the sick? When so many bodies are piled up that the few well undertakers
are able to bury them?
Such questions were on the agenda last Friday at “a preparedness
summit for faith leaders” held at the Nazarene Theological Seminary.
Arranged by the Kansas City Health Department, the conference,
“Mission Possible: spiritual response and survival during a public health
crises,” gathered clergy, religious volunteers, health care professionals
and disaster relief experts to considered the poor response by Philadelphia
in the 1918 flu pandemic, contrasted with the much better St. Louis response,
and provided worksheets for participants to plan for their groups as part
of metro preparedness.
Faith leaders can find a checklist for their preparation
at www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community or call the Kansas City line at (816)
513-6152. The primary focus of the checklist is to help religious professionals
take care of themselves and their staff so they will be able to help the
ill.
Kansas City health director Dr. Rex Archer, who recently
served as president of the National Association of County and City Health
Officials, cited the watchman in Ezek. 3 and had the gathering recite together
what could be a spiritual mantra: “The only thing harder than preparing
for a disaster is explaining why you didn’t.”
____________________
*still functioning, my friend Karta Purkh Singh Khalsa
writes, and the eigthth Sikh Guru, Guru Har Krishan, a young boy of 7 years,
healed many of a small pox plague in the Punjab.
671. 070718 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Are '60s values splittting hairs?
Last week I wrote about the “summer of love” forty years ago and the
theological study of the hippies of that time that became part of my doctoral
dissertation.
I asked whether what happened then has meaning for us
now. Were the values uplifted by the hippies absorbed, ignored or corrupted
by the larger culture? Did the hippies do much more than liberate our hairstyles?
The play that seemed to capture that era’s “alternate
culture” challenge to the “dominant culture” was the first rock musical,
“Hair.”
I saw one of the 45 performances of “Hair” in 1967 at
The Cheetah in New York before the show moved to Broadway. I was shaken
to the depths by its honesty. It portrayed a spiritual power in epic
struggle against oppression. In it I saw a model for what the church could
be.
H. Richard Niebuhr’s 1951 book, Christ and Culture, presented
five ways Christ can be related to the culture of the time.
The first two are polar opposites. The Christ-against-culture
position maintains that Christ and culture are irreconcilable and that
Christians must give complete allegiance to Christ.
The Christ-of-culture perspective says Jesus fulfills
and illumines what is best in one’s culture and one must align oneself
with it.
The remaining three are medial positions, Christ-above-culture,
Christ-and-culture-in-paradox, and Christ-the-transformer-of-culture.
Since the hippie movement, in word, in song, in deed,
rejected a culture bent on economic gain to the neglect of spiritual concerns,
chastised a nation more enchanted with technology than personhood, eschewed
a society too scheduled to enjoy the moment, and pursued war instead of
peace, the hippie perspective generally paralleled the Christ-against-culture
position Niebuhr identified.
Hippies did not talk a lot about the church, but they
did talk about “the tribe.” And the tribe was to live in this world without
adopting the secular values the world cherishes, just as some have envisioned
the church as the body of Christ, bringing witness and redemption to the
sinful.
When I saw the Broadway production of “Hair,” I was shocked
and angry. The pure tribal message of spiritual duty was commercialized
into selfish indulgence.
A simple example. The original had no nude scene, but
the Broadway version used the tribe to titillate.
So I repeat and rephrase last week’s question. Can anything
sacred be popularized in our secularistic culture without its corruption?
Can the church, the tribe, resist the world’s seduction?
670. 070711 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
The summer of love has lessons
Forty years ago this summer I heard a song advising, “If you’re going
to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” It was “the
Summer of Love” and the flowering of hippies.
That spring was also when Martin Luther King Jr and many
others protested the Vietnam War.
I was in divinity school and decided I needed to understand
what theological perspectives were undergirding the hippies in order to
complete the chapter on spiritual communities in my doctoral dissertation.
I went to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. I read everything I could find.
A 45-page excerpt of my dissertation was published in
a professional journal in 1969 as “God Is Doing His Thing: The Hippie Heresy
and Liberalism.”
In it I argued that the hippie phenomenon was far more
complicated than popularly portrayed, and that liberals should consider
hippie remonstration against their assumptions.
Liberal assumptions, for example, were packed into Harvey
Cox’s 1965 widely noted book, Secular City. Hippies challenged the
value religious liberals then placed on the secular and liberal neglect
of the sacred. Liberals focused on problems rather than on ultimate
mystery. Liberals were consumed with politics rather than practicing worship.
But the pre-commercial hippies joined politics and worship
and saw problems as doors that opened transcendent mystery.
This tweaks what theologians call “realized eschatology.”
The ultimate end we seek is already present if we are awake to it. The
righteousness we are seeking is available now by doing our duty, and in
such duty is ultimate bliss.
For me, in the midst of a war, it meant placing my draft
card on the altar at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel during
Sunday worship and the consequent FBI investigation and reclassification
by my draft board.
In “Hair,” the musical that came to characterize hippies,
burning a draft card became a sacred act of liturgy.
It is 40 years later. This is not a summer of love answering
war. The hippie faith that living right will make things right is shaken.
Did the hippies change much more than hair styles? Let
me answer with a question.
I saw one of the 45 performances of “Hair” in 1967 at
The Cheetah in New York before the show moved to Broadway, where, in my
opinion, its pure and profoundly moving message of spiritual duty was commercialized
into selfish indulgence.
And so the question. Can anything sacred be popularized
in our secularistic culture without its corruption?
669. 070704 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Water, rock powerful symbols
In many world religions, water is a transforming agent. And when people
from many faiths gather, water can symbolize both the distinctive rivers
of faith and the ocean of mystery into which those rivers ultimately flow.
So when, from Canada, Connecticut, California and places
between, 45 religious professionals and students assembled here at the
Saint Paul School of Theology to learn about doing interfaith work, they
brought water. And each also brought a rock.
Ceremonially, one by one, they poured their water into
a 3-gallon clear glass jar, dropped their rocks into it and voiced their
hopes as the Interfaith Academies began last month.
Faithful readers of this column over the years may recall
that waters have been collected and dispersed on several interfaith occasions.
To a collection of waters from the Ganges, Nile, Tiber,
Thames, Yangtze, Jordan, Euphrates, Missouri, Kaw and elsewhere, in 2001
water was added from 14 area fountains by members of 14 faith groups at
the interfaith “Gifts of Pluralism” conference to celebrate the fact that
faiths from all over the planet now flow into our own community.
The meaning of this collection of waters was deepened
at the 2002 anniversary observance of 9/11 when these waters were poured
into the pool at Ilus Davis Park, and then retrieved to signify our tears
washing away our self-righteousness.
After Academy participants added their waters to the collection,
the two-week schedule began, including:
* visits to six exceptionally hospitable religious sites
* classroom study of various faiths with an international
faculty
* related films in the evening
* case studies of perplexing interfaith situations such
as community opposing the sale of a church building to Muslims wishing
to use it as a mosque
* exercises such as interpreting problematic sacred texts
* a panel of media experts
* library study time
* time out for a Royals game and a visit to the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art
* exploring the resources of such as Harvard’s Pluralism
Project
* devotional experiences from many faiths
* discussions of participants’ interfaith efforts in their
own locales
* a performance of scenes from the Kansas City play, “The
Hindu and the Cowboy”
At the end of the two weeks, the participants retrieved
a rock someone else had brought, washed but undiluted by the mingled waters,
and celebrated the gifts of learning from one another and from the spiritual
richness of Kansas City and this nation, to take home.
668. 070627 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
We all need one another
Yehezkel Landau is one of the international scholars leading the two-week
Interfaith Academies ending here today.
A dual American-Israeli citizen, he spent 13 years working
in Kansas City’s sister city, Ramle, Israel, where he met then Kansas City
Mayor, now Congressman, Emanuel Cleaver. He also met Kathleen Sebelius,
now Kansas Governor, who was part of an interfaith group he addressed at
a hotel in Jerusalem one sabbath evening.
About this, his first visit to Kansas City, he says, “I’m
very impressed with the cooperation among the different faith groups. It
is a model to see diversity as a blessing and not a threat.”
I asked why he went to Israel. “My Judaism brought me
to Israel as a religious Zionist who believes that the spiritual integrity
of Judaism requires in our time a sovereign state that is faithful to the
teachings of Judaism which include justice and peace as central imperatives,”
he said.
“That means putting life and justice, human rights, peace
above control over the whole of the Holy Land. We have to share and
create two states so that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs can express themselves,
not just politically but also spiritually, in the fullest possible way.”
There Landau was co-director of Open House Center for
Jewish-Arab Coexistence. Now he teaches at Hartford seminary where
one-third of the students are Muslim.
Since his main interest is in Jewish-Christian-Muslim
relations, I asked why he agreed to be involved in a program with many
other faiths.
“I think we need each other,” he said. Each faith has
“something special, if not unique to teach the others.
“We in the Academies just came back from a Buddhist center,
and the notion of detachment is a healthy corrective to excessive attachment
to material things including territory. Holy lands should be seen as means
and not ends.
“God says that ‘All the land is Mine, and you should be
unto Me a kingdom of priests and holy people,’ so we have to do sacrificial
service, which at the present time means sacrificing some territory in
order to create a just peace in Israel and Palestine.
“A Buddhist perspective can help Jews and Arabs find a
higher meeting ground and share material resources like land and water
in the Holy Land, which I understand belongs to God, and we both belong
to it.
“Buddhist teachers like the Dalai Lama and Thich
Nhat Hanh have visited Israel and Palestine to share their commitment to
universal, unconditional compassion, which we definitely need.”
667. 070620 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Do not open mouth and insert foot
As I walked past Nichols Fountain near the Plaza last week,
I heard two men verbally bullying two darker-skinned boys about religion.
The older men, Christians, were condemning the younger
ones, Muslims in high school I learned later, to hell. I decided to intervene
and backtracked.
At the point in the assault at which I entered, one of
the Christians was insisting that the bible has always been the same.
I asked, how could that be? There is no original text
extant. The sacred writings have been gathered over millennia. For the
first four centuries of the Christian area, which texts were inspired were
in dispute, and as late as the Council of Trent (1545-1563), decisions
about what should be included in the canon were being made.
I was more sympathetic to the other Christian’s approach.
Instead of simply condemning the boys, he related that his becoming a Christian
saved him from a life on drugs.
One can appreciate the faith that provides such important,
even life-saving, benefits.
But drugs were not problems for these boys, and stories
about being saved from perils by one’s faith can be found in every religion.
I don’t see how that gives one bragging rights about one’s own faith being
superior to other faiths for all other people.
So he tried another tack. Allah, he said, came after Jesus.
This statement astonished the boys, as it did me.
Allah is the Arabic word for God. Translations of the
New Testament into Arabic use the word wherever it appears as God in English,
just as the French use Dieu, the Spanish Dios and so forth.
The Christian did not know enough about the faith he was
condemning to know that Muhammad, who did live some 600 years after Jesus,
is not Allah. Muslims believe that Muhammad was a great man, but not divine.
“We are young,” said the boys thanking me, naturally respectful
of older folk, even those who were attacking them.
Sharing one’s faith can be a beautiful thing. But have
I learned about the faith of the persons with whom I am speaking?
Have I allowed them to share their faith journeys before I heap on my condemnations
and insist my faith is superior?
What if I fully understood the conditions that make another
person’s faith precious to him or her? Might I also see how my own faith
has developed from my own life circumstances? Recognizing where I was born,
when in history, who my parents were, the experiences I’ve had, the friends
I’ve known, might lead to a modesty about claiming my way must be the way
for all others.
666. 070613 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Bloch building enhances spiritual experience
My daily 3-mile walks usually take me by the south lawn of the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art and I’ve watched as the Bloch Building was dug and planted
and now blooms.
Last week, I was finally inside.
Religion has generated art since prehistoric times, and
even today spiritual issues are raised in, for example, David Salle’s “Diabolic
Life Restoring Machines,” Kerry James Marshall’s “Memento #5,” or my favorite,
Robert Rauschenberg’s “Tracer,” all on display in the new building’s contemporary
gallery.
I like to give my students tours. In the 1933 building,
I often start with the Assyrian relief of the genie fertilizing the date
plant, to show the spiritual intimacy between humans and nature, as also
revealed in Egyptian theriomorphic deities, interesting to contrast with
Greek anthropomorphic gods.
Or contrast Christian Renaissance painting with Chinese
Song Dynasty scrolls. In Girolamo da Santacroce’s “Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence”
we see God atop the painting, but in Xia Gui’s “Twelve Views of Landscape”
the Tao, the Way, appears everywhere, presenting two very different visions
of sacred power, one external to the world acting upon it, with humans
the focus, the other power infused everywhere within the world, with human
activity a footnote.
The Christian painting, like the creeds, seeks to be explicit
in what it depicts, while the landscape’s effect is heightened by what
is implicit, framed not in the geometry of the Christian painting but rather
in a field that can only be suggested.
Moving right along, we see the glorious “Shiva Nataraja,”
a Hindu dance of cosmic destruction and creation, suggesting the personal
capacity for transformation.
The “Stele with Scenes from the Lotus Sutra” marks the
eruption of a new form of Buddhism, not just for monks but for all humankind.
The “Luohan” is an image of individual enlightenment,
but the bodhisattva “Seated Guanyin” says there is something about the
universe that draws us all toward enlightenment.
And the Block building? What is its spiritual message?
It is more than a superb container.
The new building is respectful of the 1933 structure in
such a way that its own dignity is enhanced, just as we humans are ennobled
by joining respect for others with self-respect.
And the building’s doors and windows welcome the
outside—from the contiguous lawn to the sun 93,000,000 miles away, whose
energy rebounds at night through the building’s “lenses.”
Thus the building says, “Behold!”
665. 070606 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
When faith becomes partisan
Two items from the mail bag.
The first is from a Christian minister who did not like
last week’s column about valuing the worship practices of many faiths when
only one way is correct. Of my joining with Muslims for prayer he wrote,
“Your Muslim kin will probably reach out and kill you one day.”
If I knew no Christians, I would not find his faith very
attractive.
The second letter was generous, supportive and thoughtful
throughout its two single-spaced pages. The writer deeply believes in the
importance of “bringing the religions of the area together for fellowship
and dialogue.”
But the letter was motivated by “loving concern” about
statements I’ve made which were interpreted as partisan.
Citing scripture, the writer believes that we must support
“our duly elected leaders” even when “we may strongly disagree with their
policies” and “support our government.” The time to express ourselves is
through voting, not afterwards.
Conceiving of me as a religious leader, the writer says
my words should be about cooperation and love, not words of criticism.
I understand the writer’s perplexity about the mixing
of faith and politics. But I have three quick responses.
*Supporting the policies of elected leaders is just as
partisan as disagreeing with them. Our Constitution explicitly provides
for dissent between elections. I don’t see how support is inherently more
spiritual than disagreement.
*Inspiring leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr
and Archbishop Desmond Tutu protested the evils of their governments as
part of their spiritual leadership.
In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet Nathan scolded King
David. On meeting King Ahab, instead of showing respect, the prophet Elijah
called him the “ruin of Israel” to his face. Jeremiah’s oracles of condemnation
were presented to King Jehoiakim in writing.
Many other examples from many traditions could be given
to suggest that justice is a higher spiritual value than submission to
worldly authority. Had I been in Hitler’s Germany, how could I have submitted
to his authority?
*Interfaith work is not just singing Kumbaya. With insights
from the primal faiths, it must address our environmental crisis. With
the methods of Asian traditions, it must develop deeper understanding of
personhood. With the wisdom of the monotheistic religions, society must
be made just and peaceful.
Religion is not a lazy trance. It is giving ourselves
utterly to the Holy, not to political powers that would rather control
us.
664. 070530 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
We can see the holy in many faces
The men form several lines, shoulder to shoulder. Now they bow, now
prostrate themselves, now sit on their legs and raise one finger, signifying
there is but one God.
I am with my Muslim kin at Friday prayer. This may not
be my own faith tradition, but I have faith in my Muslim sisters and brothers
here.
I think of other places of worship I have visited, some
of which I have unintentionally violated because of my ignorance, but where
the grace of the other worshippers made me nonetheless welcome.
Such varied customs!
* The Christian Eucharist, with the wafer and wine called the
body and blood of the Savior.
* Arti in the Hindu temple, a flame offered to a deity,
then as it is passed around, the worshippers cupping their hands over the
flame and raising palms to forehead as a purification.
* Folks sitting in meditation in silence announced and
ended with the striking of a bell in the shape of a huge bowl producing
the most gorgeous, lush sound at the Buddhist temple.
* The joy of the Jewish congregation as the Torah scroll
is taken from the ark, read from, paraded through the synagogue and kissed
as it is returned to the ark.
* The warm conversation as folks eating together in the
langar, the Guru’s kitchen in the Sikh gurdwara, preserving the intention
of universal service with the elimination of class distinctions.
* The sweating of nearly naked bodies in a hut of branches
covered with animal hide in darkness punctuated with the opening of a flap
so hot stones can be added to the pit in the center, in the Lakota inipi
ceremony, or sweat lodge.
* Shouting a Japanese chant standing under a powerful
waterfall after consuming a little sake and salt in a loincloth and headband
in a Shinto misogi ritual.
A visitor from another planet might find nothing in common
to these religious ceremonies emerging from different times and cultures,
and be puzzled why I find them all so stirring.
Should such a visitor suddenly join me as the Muslims
around me offer salaams, greetings of peace, to one another, I would say:
We human beings have encountered the holy, the infinite,
and wish to govern ourselves thereby.
But we are finite. The wars, oppressions, and other cruelty
you find on planet earth sometimes arise when people confuse a finite idea
of the holy with the holy itself.
Still, I am moved whenever I see people recognizing our
limitations as we reach to honor what is beyond our knowing.
663. 070523 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Hindu temple fosters values
You are a Hindu priest in Kansas City. What brought you here? What do
you do? And can you help me sort out various terms for religious leaders?
I put such questions to the two priests at the Hindu Temple
and Cultural Center of Kansas City in Shawnee.
The Temple began in 1991 and its growth now requires plans
to expand the building.
Shastri Rajendra Pandya and Seshasai Rompicharla both
come from priestly families in India.
Pandya, born near Gandhi’s home town of Porbandar, saw
the spreading of his faith and culture to the West and recognized the need
Hindus here have for priestly services. Before coming to the US, he served
in Canada.
Rompicharla has several family members also serving in
the West. He comes to Kansas City from Dallas.
A Hindu priest offers puja, rituals of divine homage,
on behalf of individuals and families as they come to the temple throughout
the week, for which his exacting knowledge of Sanskrit is required.
He may also perform such services for the sick, to dedicate
a new house, and to preside at weddings and funerals.
Rompicharla says “God is one but takes many different
forms,” just as we may dress differently for different occasions.
Thus a priest may offer puja for one family who favor
the god Vishnu or another family who favor Shiva.
A priest does not give sermons. And Hindus do not seek
to convert others to their faith.
Still, Pandya values his the wisdom of his ancient culture,
that we are to help one other.
Rompicharla associates five values with the English
name for his faith: H-honesty, I-integrity, N-nobility, D-devotion, and
U-unity.
Now for some terms, alphabetically.
An acarya is a professor, especially one learned in the
tradition of the Vedas (the most authoritative sacred scripture).
In olden days, Brahmins were members of the priestly caste.
Highly educated and ritually pure, their scope was great, from practicing
law to cooking for others. Nowadays, anyone may do such things except be
a temple priest.
A guru is a teacher and often specifically means a personal
spiritual guide.
A pandit is a master or a scholar who conserves classical
Sanskrit traditions of ritual, philosophy and literature. The term may
also be applied to any learned person. The meaning has been corrupted in
its popular American use as “pundit.”
The rishis are the ancient seers.
Swami literally means owner or master and is a title offered
out of respect for a teacher or holy person.
662. 070516 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Share your faith like a bowl of soup
The story this column relates is not particularly dramatic or even unusual.
It is not especially theological.
But it is a story of faith.
I like it because it is typical of the kindness I myself
have encountered from Muslim friends, here and around the world.
I offer it in response to readers who almost every week
tell me that Muslims want to take over this country and that I have an
obligation to condemn Islam.
It is told by one of my students at the Saint Paul School
of Theology, Kitty Shield. Here are her words:
There is a small Italian restaurant close to where Chuck,
my husband, and I live in Wichita. It is one of three restaurants owned
by three brothers from Lebanon.
Over the years Chuck and I have become friends with Ali
Issa. We have spent evenings just sitting and talking with him after the
restaurant has closed.
Ali is a Shi’i Muslin and it has been wonderful to talk
to him and to learn about his faith.
We have also shared our faith with him, but since Ali
was educated in Roman Catholic schools in Lebanon, I think we have learned
much more than he has.
Four years ago, when our parish, St James, was looking
at starting to feed people prior to our new Wednesday evening classes,
I approached Ali about the possibility of our getting soup from him.
We had gotten several estimates from other restaurants
and it was looking bleak as to whether we would be able to stay within
our proposed budget.
Ali said that if we would pick up the soup, he could give
us 10 gallons for $25.00 per week. We would get whatever soup was
the soup of the day unless they were having fish soup. (We had staff members
who were worried about mercury in the fish when we had pregnant mothers
eating the soup.)
After about six months our youth minister, Teresa Rogers,
asked for Ali’s phone number because we had not received a bill for the
soup. Teresa had left several messages and Ali told her he was having problems
with his computer system taking St James’ name into it and he would
get back to her.
I was in the restaurant with Teresa having lunch and we
asked Ali if the problem had been fixed.
He got a huge grin on his face and he told us: “I prayed
about this matter and my computer will never be able to take St James’
name into it. My cost to St James is that all the members pray for peace.”
He wanted us to do what was really needed to be done:
pray with him for peace. The members of St James do pray for peace and
Ali, too.
661. 070509 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
What is your faith quotient?
A couple Saturdays ago The Star ran a general religious literacy test.
Today you have a chance to see how much you know about religion in the
Kansas City area.
Circle true statements and cross out false ones.
1. Three denominations have their world headquarters here.
2. Kansas City, Mo, has never had a Jewish mayor.
3. Except for the New Reform Temple, most Jewish groups
now are located in Johnson County.
4. Pilgrim Chapel on Gillham is opposed to interfaith
efforts.
5. Both Kansas and Missouri have Sikh sites.
6. None of Kansas City’s black churches has a white minister.
7. Holy Trinity Orthodox Church on Pflumm used to be located
on Russian Hill in Kansas City, Kan.
8. An annual Dec. 31 “world peace” meditation began in
2000.
9. A liberal Roman Catholic national weekly paper
is published here.
10. All Roman Catholic parishes in the metro area are
part of a single diocese.
11. The Country Club Plaza includes an architectural feature
modeled from a minaret, the Muslim tower from which the call to prayer
is made.
12. Almost every American city our size has had an exhibit
of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
13. Both American and Southern Baptists have seminaries
here.
14. The area has only one mosque.
15. Don and Adele Hall recently receive an interfaith
award.
16. The Hindu Temple in Shawnee includes images only of
Hindu gods.
17. A park here contains a statue of St Martin of Tours
with a wristwatch.
18. No Jains live here.
19. The Jewish Community Relations Bureau was one of the
first organizations to foster interfaith work here.
20. The Kansas City Interfaith Council is two years older
than its Wichita counterpart.
21. Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist group, has operated in
the area since the 1960s.
22. The North American Interfaith Network will have its
convention here in 2008.
23. The Star publishes a verse from a non-Christian faith
on its editorial page each Saturday.
24. As part of the covenant between the Roman Catholic
and Episcopal cathedrals down town, once again this year a joint Easter
vigil was observed.
25. Folks at the Village Presbyterian Church have joined
with others to plan a Festival of Faiths for Nov 10-18 this year.
ANSWERS: All odd numbered statements are true, all others
are false. Half correct is a good score. You know the town.
660. 070502 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Heartland good choice for meeting of faiths
Book learning is one thing. Real life may be another. A faith you read
about may seem very different from encountering it in those who faithfully
practice it. In even the best text, some things remain opaque, but an interfaith
friendship may reveal them.
For most of my career I’ve combined parish or community
work with adjunct teaching. I think this mix has helped keep my teaching
real and my ministry challenged by the ferment of ideas in the academy.
So when Kansas City was selected as the first site
in the nation for religious practitioners and students in a fully-funded
program to train them for working in our religiously plural nation, the
learning strategy of combining guest scholars with local faith leaders
at their sites made perfect sense to me.
Cooperating in two concurrent “interfaith academies” June
13-27 and June 13-20, free to students, are Harvard University’s Pluralism
Project, Religions for Peace at the United Nations Plaza, our own Saint
Paul School of Theology and our local Interfaith Council.
Last week I took the Rev Bud Heckman, project director,
and his assistant, Zack Shaeffer, from New York, around town to meet folks
from some of the sites that will be part of the Academy program. I had
only a little more than a day, and part of that time was spent at Saint
Paul arranging facility space, but we visited friends at the Rime Buddhist
Center, the Sikh Gurdwara and the Hindu Temple. We worshipped Friday evening
at B’nai Jehudah.
The program also includes Orthodox Christian and Muslim
sites.
And just before they left on Saturday, we went to the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, where Academy participants will visit its
collections of religious art from many traditions.
We also firmed up arrangements with the Tivoli Cinemas
for a special showing of a religious film June 18 to which the community
will be invited, with a panel discussion following the film.
Before he left, Heckman said, “People on the coasts don’t
realize the religious diversity in the middle of America. Kansas City offers
a positive example” of faiths encountering each other respectfully.
Pamala Couture, Saint Paul’s academic dean, said that
Kansas City is “a safe place for dialogue.”
Al Brooks, formerly Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem, met with
Academy planners and said that “As 911 has showed us, we need to learn
about Islam and other religions” in order to build genuine community.
Visit http://www.rfpusa.org/interfaithacademy for
information and an application form.
659. 070425 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Let's think about US empire
Cornell University’s Barry Strauss, author of the much-praised book
The Trojan War: A New History, will explore whether America is an
empire and if that could be a good thing, in a lecture at 7 pm at the downtown
library tomorrow. He’ll use 911 as a reference point.
Ancient themes can lead to deeper understanding of today’s
issues, so I asked him to compare the role of religion in antiquity with
today.
He said that while ancient Greeks and Romans might not
at first appear religious to us, they in fact were.
“No important public or private decisions were taken without
first obtaining divine approval.
“But priests had relatively little power in those societies
because politicians and other secular figures could interpret the will
of the gods. There was no separation of church and state.
“In modern America, where church and state are separated,
it has always been assumed that people will get many of their most important
values from religion—but that they do so privately.
“In recent years, however, with the decline of organized
religion, Americans have tended to rely on secular institutions for their
values. This hasn’t worked very well, in my opinion, and many of us are
at sea and have lost our moorings. That may help explain why, in America,
religion is making a comeback of late.”
Since some people in other nations interpret the US role
in Iraq as a Christian imperial enterprise, I asked Strauss if there are
spiritual aspects to the idea of empire beyond military and political dimensions.
“Yes,” he said, “including both good and bad,” destructive
spirituality.
“Imperial power always corrupts some, and perhaps most,
people who wield it. And yet, to govern an empire can also inspire a sense
of duty and even of mission.
“In my judgment, to govern an empire is, on balance, a
burden. It is better not to be an imperial power as long as a state can
maintain its freedom. But that isn’t always possible, because freedom needs
to be defended, and that sometimes means projecting power abroad.”
Some in Arab lands object to permanent US military bases
as a violation of their sacred territory.
Some readers who write me insist that Islam is at war with Christian
America. Two days after 911 controversial columnist Ann Coulter wrote,
“ We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them
to Christianity.”
Strauss says that thinking about empire may reveal the
complexities of our situation, without easy answers.
658. 070418 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
A question of pay to pray
Should I accept tax money for the five invocations I provided as guest
chaplain for Kansas City City Council sessions last month?
I was still thinking this through when, as my tenure began,
I designated the non-profit organization I lead to receive the city’s stipend,
and before and after that, I’ve sought advice from a lot of people. Perhaps
writing about my perplexity will be useful to others.
Here are some arguments in favor of taking the money:
Any professional providing services to the city deserves
compensation. If the city engages an architect, a janitor or a lawyer,
the time and expertise is recognized with remuneration. As Luke 10:7 says,
“the laborer deserves his wages (Luke 10:7).”
In my case, I adjusted my schedule to add about 15 hours
including travel time to honor the Council’s request. A one-minute prayer
takes a lot longer to write than a five-minute prayer.
The interfaith prayers embraced all citizens regardless
of their belief or unbelief, so disqualification of my work as sectarian
would be unlikely.
Tax monies are regularly pay chaplains in the armed
forces and in prisons, though the justification for them recognizes that
military personnel and prisoners may not otherwise have the access
to religious services. And a full-time chaplaincy job is requires a greater
commitment than saying a few prayers.
Since the early days of the Republic, chaplains for the
Congress have been paid.*
No government official tried to guide me in how I prayed,
so there is no question of political influence or corruption.
If I didn’t want the money, I could donate it to charity.
Still, without questioning the judgment of my colleagues
or the practice of prayer at official governmental meetings, my personal
decision in this case is to decline the stipend.
I just can’t shake the feeling that it is embarrassing,
even a little sleazy, for me to take government money for praying.
Even donating the money to a worthy cause gives me control
of tax money. I do not want that power in exchange for praying.
I accept pay from non-government groups for my services,
but I would not want a single citizen to feel that he or she was paying
taxes for a prayer that did not suit him or her.
Lawyers do pro bono work, physicians offer their skills
to those who cannot pay, and business executives bring their acumen to
non-profit boards without collecting salary.
Citizens volunteer in the life of the city in many ways.
I’d prefer to provide my services as a gift rather than a gig.
*Justice Burger, Marsh v Chambers, 463 US (1983).
657. 070411 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Learn why religion thrives in US
Many scholars of religion in America believe that one key reason religion
flourishes here in comparison with Europe is our tradition, enshrined in
the Constitution, of keeping government out of religious affairs.
But Derek Davis, an expert in church-state matters who
visits the KU Apr 16, sees recent changes to this tradition in the way
the Supreme Court is interpreting the First Amendment.
Davis was the director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of
Church-State Studies at Baylor University until last year. He began his
career as a lawyer. He currently is dean of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor’s
graduate school and college of humanities.
He says that “an increasingly conservative Court in the
last twenty years or so has been concerned that past decisions were too
harsh in separating church and state, the consequence being a discrimination
against religion.”
As an example, he cites the Court’s approval of
“voucher strategies for funding religious schools as well as legislation
that provides monetary supplements to religious schools.”
While Davis tends toward objective presentations, I asked
him for his personal view. He responded:
“I believe that government aid to religion compromises
religion, cheapens it, and makes
religion merely the newest in a long list of government programs” with
attendant supervision and monitoring.
“A total separation is impossible, but keeping the institutions
of religion and government separate has been, in my view, the primary reason
for the success of religion in our history.
“Merging religion and government tends to water down religious
truth and make it a mere tool of government policy. If you survey the world,
the countries that make religion the engine of government policy are riddled
with dissension and discrimination and tend to be far less economically
developed.
“Diversity is a problem for them whereas it is a strength
in our country.
“Separation of church and state has been good for religion,
not bad, contrary to what many today seem to believe.”
His talk at 7:30 pm Monday in the Kansas Union in Lawrence
is entitled, “Religion and Politics in the U.S.: Conflicts and Anomalies.”
He says he will address the many conflicts and inconsistencies
we have, such as our official national motto “In God We Trust” while also
adhering to the separation of church and state.
He will also discuss the advantages and merits of mixing
religion and politics as well as the disadvantages and dangers to both
church and state.
656. 070404 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Electing the right prayer
Praying on another’s behalf is a sacred trust. Last month my duty as
chaplain to the Kansas City City Council was to offer the invocation as
each Thursday’s legislative session began.
I made many mistakes, and not just mispronouncing the
name of a Council honoree.
While I noticed Councilman Eddy not at his place at one
session, I did not know he was in the hospital until later and so failed
to name him in the pastoral section of my prayer.
My first prayer was addressed to “Spirit of Generations,”
and a Council member asked afterwards where God was in the prayer. I think
I remedied that by the second week, but I should have anticipated the concern.
I am not certain that my plan was entirely successful
for five distinctive prayers, each identifying a different theme,
focusing one week on recent local achievements, another week on Kansas
City’s world-wide relationships through our sister cities, and so forth.
But the chief challenge came from the fact that the first
session occurred right after the primary election, and the last session
right after the general election.
How could I pray in a pastoral way that recognized individual
joy and pain of winning and losing? How could I articulate the dynamic
of the citizens as the results of the election were being assessed at that
moment? How could I view the situation impartially while I have personal
relationships with some involved in the contests? And do this briefly?
I tried balanced and ambiguous phrasing. I tried reporting
a common evaluation without my own judgment; I tried using a unifying tone
of voice into the mic.
Here is how that final prayer began:
“O Spirit of Justice, you who work throughout history
and community through fallible people, we gather acknowledging your sway
in the aftermath of the city’s election.
“It was often said there were two good mayoral candidates,
to vote for one, not against the other. Yet it is also said the voting
pattern, and the closeness of the vote, might suggest a division — which
can be healed with the grace of the one who did not win, who has given
the community so much for so long so well, with wisdom to be found and
outreach to be manifested by the winner.”
The complete prayer can be found at www.cres.org/city.
Praying on behalf of the Council, with the members’ own
attention to infinite detail embraced in a larger vision, humbled me with
their gracious permission for me to try to find words blessing their work.
655. 070328 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
Season of lent a time for long reflection
Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, is the most
important festival of the Christian year, always in the spring. Christians
ready themselves for Easter in the preceding weeks, called “Lent,”
from “lengthening” days.
I asked the Rev. R. Glen Miles, senior minister of
the Country Club Christian Church, to explain what Lent means to Christians.
Just before he left for a mission trip to South Africa, he sent this response:
Many Christians across the world are observing the
season of Lent, a 40-day period of prayerful reflection as we prepare to
celebrate Easter.
During this time of year we examine our lives, our actions
and behaviors to see if we are following the will of God.
The phrase, “will of God” is often misunderstood. Some
folks think that it is an exact blueprint for every decision that lies
before them. I suppose the will of God is something like that but I think
that it is much more open-ended.
When we study of the will of God, we revisit ancient questions
from old prophets like Micah who asked, “What does the Lord require of
you?” His answer gives us a huge clue about how we are to live, to “do
justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.”
I am convinced that I have been called by God into the
ministry, but I have said many times that I could be selling sodas at Royals
games (a worthy profession!) and still be in the will of God as long as
I were seeking justice, doing kindness and humbly acknowledging my
place in the universe.
Another question to consider during Lent was asked of
Jesus: “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus fudged on his answer
by noting two commandments, “Love God and love your neighbor.” He was probably
not the first to say something like this, but for Christian folks his answer
gets our attention. We Christians can easily be distracted by arguments
over theological concepts like salvation, but in the long run what we are
truly called to do, during every season of the year, is love God and neighbor.
When Christians carefully review their lives and wrestle
with old prophets like Micah and thoughtfully deliberate with our Lord,
we become better citizens of the world.
There are some folks in our faith who are hoping for an
escape from all of this. They think we are going to be taken up while almost
everyone else is going to be left behind.
That may be well and good for some but in the meantime
a life lived for justice, a day given to kindness and a moment spent loving
God and neighbor will go a long way toward bringing peace on earth.
654. 070321 THE STAR'S HEADLINE:
A mayor should be open to all
Both Kansas City Mayoral candidates support interfaith understanding.
Mark Funkhouser says although he has not been involved
in interfaith efforts here or before he came to Kansas City, he respects
the “huge variety” of beliefs and would probably respond to invitations
for him to participate.
In an interview, Funkhouser said he recognizes a deep
spirituality that moves people, whether that spirituality “is in the context
of formal religion or not.”
When I mentioned K
