Friday, May 31, 2013

Doing More Than Thinking

The following was written for the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ.


I grew up in a religious tradition that was light on social justice and heavy on strict individual morality.  As my journey towards a progressive form of Christianity began, however, I had high hopes that if I could just be around a bunch of liberal Christians then together we would change the world.  I was disappointed to discover that liberal Christians are really good at being cerebral but not so good at moving from thinking about doing something to actually doing something.  Having come from a more evangelical background in which doing often occurred before or even without thinking, I discovered the other extreme was usually the case among liberal Christians.  Liberal Christians like to talk about things and pass resolutions amongst themselves, and once they have done so, they feel they have accomplished something. 
            I was reminded of the gaps between thinking and doing when I read an op-ed in the NY Times this week by T.M. Luhrmann.  She wrote a book called When God TalksBack: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God.  In it Luhrmann, a Stanford professor and a non-Christian spiritual-but-not religious sort, took the role of anthropologist and spent time in an evangelical church outside Chicago and became a regular attendee of a prayer group.  She started her “field work” after being fascinated by a woman she met who spoke of “having coffee with God.”
            In her op-ed, Luhrmann mentions speaking about her book at a church near her university that was ecumenical, educated and more liberal than not.  During the Q&A time, she writes, the questions “circled around the puzzle of belief. Why do people believe in God? What is our evidence that there is an invisible agent who has a real impact on our lives? How can those people be so confident?”  She describes the questions of this mainline church as “the questions that university-educated liberals ask about faith. They are deep questions. But they are also abstract and intellectual. They are philosophical questions.”    In contrast, she heard different questions at the evangelical church she studied and participated in, “In an evangelical church, the questions would probably have circled around how to feel God’s love and how to be more aware of God’s presence. Those are fundamentally practical questions.”  In other words, one set of questions were about thinking and the other set of questions were about doing.
            Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve done both types of Christianity—the overly cerebral and the overly emotional/experiential.  If I’m forced to choose between the two, I would rather pick a religious system that loved God with the mind over one that did not.  Yet, I’m glad I’m not forced to choose between the two, because such a choice is a false dichotomy—there are more than just the two choices.  Jesus taught us to love God with “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” after all.  Isn’t it possible that there is such a thing as a religious faith that involves both the intellect and emotion?  Can’t we think deeply about such things as the nature of God and faith, while at the same time seek to experience God and faith?  Must we divorce thinking from doing?  Why not combine the two?
            In an interview on NPR, Luhrmann described the practices of prayer in the evangelical church she studied—frankly, few of them seemed attractive to me.  Yet, Luhrmann made the point that prayer in which communication with God happened could be learned.  Newcomers to the group would try techniques and then begin to hear the voice of God.  When pressed by the interviewer about whether or not God really spoke to these people, Luhrmann demurred and stated that she was taking the role of anthropologist.  She took the perspective that IF God does speak to people it happens in the minds of people.  So, it stands to reason that people who have attuned their minds in certain ways would be more receptive to God--IF God speaks to people.  What seems important to me about Luhrmann’s comments is not the particular practices of the evangelical church she studied (I’m not interested in God being my buddy.) but rather the idea of being intentional about attuning one’s mind to the divine.  Thinking is not enough; dong matters too.
            In 2006, Diana Butler Bass wrote a book called Christianity for the Rest of Us, which gave liberal Christians like me hope.  After decades of reporting on the decline of liberal churches, Bass went out and found liberal churches that were growing.  One of the common threads of these churches was an emphasis upon spiritual practices—not your Rick Warren sort of spirituality, but rather a thoughtful spirituality that made use of both contemporary and ancient prayers and mystical practices.  These churches found ways to allow for doubts, to cherish questions, to view pluralism as a blessing rather than a curse AND to do more than just talk.  Their spiritual practices were a necessary counterpart to their intellectual exercises, rather than choosing one over the other.  I think that’s the kind of Christianity I want to be a part of.
            I came to Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ thinking that in this community of believers I would find thoughtful people of faith who do more than talk about what should be done in their lives and in the world.  Eight months in I still think I was right, but it is early yet in our relationship, I could still be proven wrong.  I hope you will prove me right.
Grace and Peace,
Chase

Friday, May 24, 2013

Meeting with CEO of Research Medical Center

The following was written for the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ.



            Hopefully you remember the case of Roger Gorley and his partner Allen Mansell from about a month ago.  Gorley was visiting his partner Mansell who was in Research Medical Center when he and Mansell’s brother got into an argument.  According to Gorley, hospital staff asked him to leave and he refused.  The situation escalated until Gorley was forcibly removed from his partner’s bedside by hospital security staff.  The story made national news and went viral in social media as an example of discrimination against same sex couples.  (The editorial in this month’s issue of The Advocate mentions this story.)
            When this case went national, I had friends across the country asking me about it since it happened in Kansas City.  I was shocked, because this happened at Research Medical Center, the hospital closest to our church.  I wrote a letter to RMC expressing my concern about this situation and asking for a response.  I was pleasantly surprised to get a personal phone call from RMC CEO Kevin Hicks.  We had a good conversation and he tasked a vice president at the hospital to arrange a meeting.
            Not surprisingly, the hospitaldisputes the accusation of discrimination and believes it followed proper procedure for when there is a disruption in a patient room.  Furthermore, because of HIPAA and the possibility of pending litigation, there is only so much the hospital can or will say on the matter.  Because of these limitations, I realized that arguing over what happened in the case of Mr. Gorley and Mr. Mansell would accomplish little—it comes down to a “he said/they said” situation.  Therefore, I let the folks from RMC know that my interest was in finding out what the hospital was willing to do to regain the trust of the LGBT community in light of this incident.
            I am grateful to Paul Osgood and Larry Chester for going with me to meet with the folks from RMC this week.  Several other church members desired to go but had conflicts.  We met with Kevin Hicks, the RMC CEO, a vice president and the director of the hospital’s council on diversity.  The meeting was cordial and we walked away from it feeling that Mr. Hicks and his folks really listened to what we had to say.
            The first thing we communicated with them about was that the hospital has a real problem with the LGBT community’s perception of it.  I believe that the RMC folks really did not understand that any LGBT person who was aware of the story would decide not to go to RMC.  Furthermore, I think their eyes were opened when Paul and Larry described how they and their partners had experienced discrimination elsewhere in the past.  Their history of experiencing discrimination led them to immediately believe the media accounts of the event and to think the worst of the hospital.  By the end of the meeting, I think the RMC folks realized that if they truly are a hospital that does not discriminate, then they will have to prove it to LGBT people.
            Secondly, we presented them with something called the Healthcare Equality Index which is operated by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.  The HEI is a certification process that focuses on 4 areas of a hospital: 1. non-discrimination policies towards LGBT patients, 2. non-discrimination policies towards LGBT employees, 3. visitation policies for LGBT patients and their partners, and 4. sensitivity training towards care of LGBT people.  Out of the 400+ hospitals in the country which have been certified by the HEI, only one of them is in Missouri and it is in St. Louis.  We offered the possibility that Research Medical Center can go from being incredibly negative in the eyes of LGBT people to having the stamp of approval of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s most visible organization promoting LGBT rights.  We also offered our willingness—if they went through such a certification—to help them to reach out to the LGBT-welcoming faith community and to LGBT organizations our church members participate in.
            The response we received was positive but non-committal at this time.  Mr. Hicks the CEO assured me that they would look over the information about the Healthcare Equality Index and would get back to us about their decision.  He also seemed to genuinely get, if he had not before, the reality that the hospital must actively reach out to the LGBT community.  It was a good first meeting.  We will wait and see if anything else develops.
            In my opinion, this is the sort of advocacy a church like ours should be doing.  God calls us to work for justice in our community and world.  God’s justice includes equal care for all of God’s children and an active response to discrimination.  Furthermore, Jesus calls us to be peacemakers.  Peace in the biblical sense does not mean the absence of conflict but rather the presence of wholeness (Shalom) for all parties.  My prayer is that Research Medical Center (and all medical care providers) can learn of ways it can care for all people with dignity, including LGBT people.  If the hospital can demonstrate its willingness to dialogue with and listen to the particular concerns of LGBT people, then my hope is that LGBT people would respond favorably to the hospital’s demonstration of progress.  I will continue to pray that such a movement of God’s justice and peace can happen in this situation.  I hope you will pray for it too.

Grace and Peace,
Chase
 

Friday, May 17, 2013

Must We Be Either/Or?

The following was written for the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ.


            During one of the times in my life that I have been in therapy, my counselor at the time pointed out to me that I have a tendency to be an extreme thinker.  I tend to frame my choices in life in terms of an “either/or” proposition.  “Either I choose this or I choose that.”  Somewhere along the line I learned to only give myself two distinct choices rather than to look for some kind of middle ground or compromise.  Life is at times clear cut, but more often life is messy and choices can be found that integrate disparate options.  In my experience finding a “both/and” often is a liberating experience, because limiting my worldview to the “either/or” paralyzes me with indecision.
            I’m not sure where I learned to frame the world as “either/or,” but I’ve decided that it’s Plato’s fault; that’s right, Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher.  I’m no expert on Plato, and I suspect my knowledge of his writings is based upon other people’s faulty interpretation of him, but nonetheless I have to blame somebody, and blaming an ancient Greek philosopher is easier than taking responsibility for my own thoughts.  I read Plato’s Dialogues in grad school and studied how Platonic philosophy influenced early Christianity, so I know something about Plato—probably just enough to be dangerous.
            Last week, Michael Smith, our CCCUCC moderator, invited me to speak to one of his political science classes at Emporia State University.  I’m not sure what this invitation says about Michael’s judgment, but I agreed to do it.  The class had read some of Plato’s political stuff, as well as some of what Augustine had to say about politics.  I was supposed to talk about how platonic ideas had influenced Christianity in general and western understandings of how religion and government mix. 
I didn’t have time to make the drive out to Emporia, so we decided I would speak to the class via Skype over the internet.  I had never Skyped before, and although when we practiced beforehand everything seemed fine, when it came time for class I couldn’t get it to work right.  The class could see my giant melon talking to them in real time projected on a screen in the classroom, but I couldn’t see them on my computer.  So, in the end I couldn’t tell if there were college students present or if it was just Michael changing up his voice to sound like half a dozen co-eds.  For all I know they were shooting spit wads at the screen while I blathered on about how Augustine misread the Apostle Paul.
            What struck me most about returning to Plato and then Augustine’s use of Neoplatonism centuries later was the dualism.  Reality according to Plato is split between the material world we live in and the world of forms or ideas, the spiritual world where all is perfect.  Everything in the material world is a mere shadow of its perfect analogue in the realm of spirit.  (Think about Plato’s story of the cave where people inside sat staring at the shadows cast on the wall instead of turning around and looking at the things that cast the shadows.  We live merely looking at shadows and never seeing what is real.)  This dualism between the spiritual (i.e. the perfect, changeless and superior) and the material (i.e. the imperfect, changing and inferior) pervades ancient Greco-Roman thought.  Forms of it are deeply woven in the New Testament and early Christianity, as well as Judaism and other religious thinking around the first century C.E. (the Letter to the Hebrews is probably the best Christian example of this worldview).
            When you play out the logic of spiritual/material dualism—which Augustine does in terms of violence, sexuality, government, etc.—you end up in some very dangerous territory.  If our world is by its nature imperfect, impermanent, deteriorating and inferior, it is not too far a stretch to describe our world in negative moral terms.  What is mortal is equated with what is sinful.  Augustine takes the Apostle Paul’s description of sin entering the world through Adam and having power over humanity and develops the idea that since humans are of the material world they are utterly depraved.  Humans are born in sin, live in sin and die in sin.  Only that which is spiritual can be moral. 
            Augustine developed the idea of what would later be called “Just War,” and he felt free to preach that warfare against heretics was not only justified but to oppose destroying the opposition was to side with the sinners.  Better to destroy the sin of heresy than to let it infect the spiritual purity of the church.  In addition to unorthodox belief, Sexuality was inherently sinful.  If only the whole world would end up celibate, so then this corrupt world would come to an end through lack of reproduction!
            This either/or dichotomy between the spiritual and the material plays out still today in American Christianity, usually mixed with an apocalyptic furor.  Why bother being concerned about climate change?  This sinful world will be destroyed by God anyway.  Why be concerned for those we go to war with?  They are on the side of evil?  Why try to prevent extreme poverty or disease?  Saving souls is what really matters.  When this kind of either/or thinking dominates a person’s or community’s worldview, a sort of fatalism or nihilism ultimately results.
            As my counselor reminded me, sometimes we can have “both/and” options.  Is it not possible to believe there is more than what we experience of the universe and at the same time recognize the sacred beauty present in the universe?  Why can’t we admit that sometimes aging sucks and the deterioration of our bodies is worth grieving over while at the same time acknowledge that our own mortality can lead us to cherish the sacred in each day of our finite lives?  Can we acknowledge that the same forces of nature that can cause suffering are just as likely, if not more likely, to inspire awe?  Must we only see the flaws of humanity without also seeing its capacity for goodness?  Why can’t the spiritual exist within the material?  Is there not something of the image of God in each of us and in all of creation?
            Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in The Quest for God about our efforts to find the sacred here in this material world.  He wrote, “To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live....Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers wiser than all alphabets--clouds that die constantly for the sake of God's glory--we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature.” 

Grace and Peace,
Chase

The Messiness of Church Membership

The following was written for the weekly newsletter of the church where I serve, Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ.


When I came to CCCUCC, I committed to meet with every church member; there aren’t that many of us after all.  I wanted to hear people’s stories.  I realized that in my previous ministry settings I had done a lot of work with church members, but I had not spent enough time simply listening to them.  One of the benefits of starting over in a new church is the chance to try something new—here at CCCUCC one of my new things is being intentional about hearing your  stories.
            Once I began meeting with CCCUCC folks, however, I had some surprises.  Some of the people I had assumed were church members—a reasonable assumption since they attend worship faithfully, volunteer for church ministries and support the church financially—have never chosen to officially become members.  This is pretty interesting considering that these “unofficial” members are more faithful to the church than some who are officially on the roll  What should I make of these folks who look and act like members but who have never “joined” the church?
            In a denomination like ours that does not have strict rules of membership—each church is autonomous and makes its own decisions even as it exists in relationship with the rest of the denomination—it’s usually informative (if not always helpful) to check the church bylaws.  According to CCCUCC’s bylaws, which were rewritten in 2011, we accept as members “people who have heard and responded to Christ’s call” by “baptism and either confirmation or profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, reaffirmation of faith, or letter of transfer or certification from another Christian Church.”  Those words may seem self-explanatory, but I suspect we could talk for a long time without reaching total agreement on exactly what is “Christ’s call“ and  how does one “hear and respond” to it?  What is “faith?”  What does it mean to call Jesus Christ “Lord” and what exactly has he saved us from anyway?  What constitutes a “Christian Church?”  I point out the room for different interpretations not to be critical of the committee who put together this draft of the bylaws but rather to point out that any and every set of church bylaws leaves a lot of room for diversity and even disagreement when there is no higher ecclesiastical authority to declare what terms like these mean.  When we speak of things like “faith,” “Jesus Christ,” and “God” we struggle against the limitations of language.  (Christians have been fighting over these things since the beginning.)  In a denomination like ours and a congregation like ours—both of which cherish the freedom of the individual believer, we like leaving room for differing interpretations of such things, because we know none of us has a monopoly on what these loaded words mean.
            In the 2011 revision of our bylaws, the category of “Associate Membership” was added which in essence gives all the rights and responsibilities of membership to people who have never joined but who nonetheless participate in and support the ministry of the church.  The only requirements are a person must agree to be an associate member, the minister and Evangelism Committee must recommend them and the General Council must approve them.  None of these are very high hurdles to get over.  Basically, you get to be a member without having to become a member!  I guess the church can’t make it much easier than that—folks should get the idea that we really want them as a part of the church.
            Yet there are still folks who support the church financially, attend worship and volunteer for its ministry who have chosen neither to become members nor associate members.  When I’ve asked (gently and without judgment) why not, usually I’ve gotten one of two answers: 1. If I’m not a member then I don’t have to serve on a committee, and 2. I don’t believe all that stuff about God.  The first answer always strikes me as funny, because we don’t have a requirement that members serve on committees; there are plenty of members who refuse to do so for one reason or another.  It is the second answer that is more complicated.
            I’m always a little shocked when I’m told someone doesn’t want to become a church member because they don’t believe one thing or another.  I’m shocked, because this is the U.C.C. (nick-named Unitarians Considering Christ) and there are all kinds of UCC people that don’t believe in traditional Christian things and who do believe in all kinds of traditionally heretical things.  I know UCC laity and clergy who believe all kinds of far out things about God, Jesus and everything else.  Most of the time they ended up in the UCC, because they were considered heretics in whatever denomination they came from. 
            The UCC is a bit messy, because on the one hand it has the trappings of traditional Christianity, but on the other hand it allows freedom for all sorts of non-traditional beliefs about God.  In the official UCC Book of Worship, the section on Reception of New Members has a place for questioning new members about if they believe in God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and if they profess “Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior” and so on, but nowhere are these terms defined.  Yes, there is probably a common understanding of these ideas, but if we press hard on any of them, we easily find there is room for a lot of different understandings of who God is, who Jesus is, who and what the Holy Spirit is and so on.  Furthermore, nowhere in any UCC documents does it say that a congregation must use this language from the Book of Worship or that in order to be a member a person must give certain answers in order to be a member.  In fact, it states quite clearly in a bunch of UCC documents that congregations are free to make up their own rituals of welcoming new members. 
            I believe the questions and answers of the UCC Book of Worship have been used at CCCUCC to welcome new members at various times in the past, and I suspect this has left the impression that people who become members must subscribe to these very traditional sounding statements of faith.  It may not appear like there is any wiggle room in such faith statements, but there is and always has been in the UCC. 
Since coming to CCCUCC, I have used the following questions and answers in the two times we have welcomed new members:

MINISTER:                ­­­­­­­­­­­__________, as it is your intention to join Country Club Congregational United Church of Christ, please read together your commitment to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

NEW MEMBERS:   I commit to follow the way of Jesus Christ and seek to the best of my ability to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as I love myself.

MINISTER:                Please read together your commitment to this community of faith.

NEW MEMBERS:   I promise to participate in the life and mission of this family of God’s people, sharing regularly in the worship of God and sharing in the work of this local church as it serves the community and the world.

It’s not perfect, but I believe it makes more explicit the freedom that we cherish in our church.  No, it doesn’t define who and what God and Jesus Christ is, but it stresses what seems most important to me: following the teachings of Jesus Christ, loving God and neighbor and committing to this particular community of faith.
            For many people, the lack of specific definition is a turn-off.  Many folks desire strict descriptions of God and doctrine that allow no room for interpretation; the UCC is not for them—neither is CCCUCC.  When I read the bylaws of our church and their description of members and associate members as well as when I experience the life of this church as it is lived among the people who take part in it, I believe it is the kind of community we are together that matters most rather than a common understanding of doctrine.
            When I meet with people and hear their stories, I always ask, “What brought you to CCCUCC and what has kept you coming back?”  The answers are almost uniformly, “I came because of the ___________ (music, minister, building, Open and Affirming, etc.), but I have stayed because of the people.”  It is the community of people that make this church who and what it is not a common set of doctrine.  Yes, it is messy sometimes when people hold different religious beliefs in a religious organization, but we believe those differences are a strength rather than a weakness.  Our differences of belief create accountability and challenge us to expand our limited understandings of God.  This is why I am comfortable having members of the church where I serve who range from traditional Christians to Unitarians to agnostics, because we are searching for answers together rather than as individuals.  We experience God in our life together rather than just in our statements of belief.  It’s messy, but it’s worth it.    

Grace and Peace,
Chase