"The sin of the clergy pay gap" by Kira Schlesinger
Bigstock/Andrew Burdukov
Last week, my fellow clergy sisters and I were hit with a gut punch when the new information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was released. For the first time, clergy income was reported, and, lo and behold, women made seventy-six cents for every dollar that men made, a substantially larger gap than the eighty-three cents to the dollar nationally. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but knowing that there’s a gap is different from seeing those numbers in black and white and seeing them in comparison to other, similar professions.
No one goes into ministry for the money (some televangelists and prosperity gospel preachers, excluded), though we did hope to make enough to pay off the student loans we accrued from attending four years of college and then acquiring a Masters degree and to support ourselves and our families. These numbers encapsulate clergy as a whole, when some denominations do better than others, and many report their own statistics. Some denominations have mandatory minimums and other guidelines for clergy pay, though others do not.
Oftentimes, when statistics like these are released, the blame comes flooding back on women themselves. We should "lean in," asking for raises and promotions when we think we deserve them instead of waiting for someone to offer them to us. We need to learn how to negotiate better, never mind what society thinks about women who aggressively stand their ground and demand to be paid what they are worth. Much of the time, we only learn these lessons by making mistakes and paying the price. In the midst of learning Koine Greek and church history in Divinity School, I never learned how to negotiate a contract or letter of agreement.
The embedded silence around money as a societal and ecclesial norm also does not serve us well in negotiating for fair pay. For many of us, money can be a source of shame, something that we don't talk about, particularly if we are struggling. In my short time in ministry, I've heard several clergy colleagues confess to financial worries, from solo pastors in smaller churches to pastors in very wealthy congregations. The design of churches’ compensation and call systems is from another era — one where their clergy was a married man with a wife whose primary work took place at home. Despite a changing world, this is still the mindset of many congregations. Stories abound of male pastors receiving a raise when a new child is born, whereas women are more likely to have hours and pay cut when they marry and have children.
So if women are going to the same seminaries, coming out with the same amount of debt, going through the same ordination processes, and doing the same work as men, why are we being paid less? It's ridiculous, and it's sinful. Denominations with women clergy: how can we be so forward-thinking and committed to equality but then we pay women a fraction of what we pay men, to the tune of $12,000 a year? Frankly, it’s tempting to leave church ministry when faced with statistics like that. A fellow young clergy woman even responded to this news with the statement, “And that’s why I chose to work outside of the church.”
Rev. Jeremy Smith at Hacking Christianity compiled several reflections from clergy women on these numbers, how contracts get negotiated and how women tend to get called or placed in lower-paying positions in the first place. As a church, we must do better, or we may find ourselves missing out on many of the gifts and talents of women clergy as they flee the church in search of more equal pay.
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"Christianity and the problem of common sense" by Zack Hunt
Bigstock/Flynt
I will never forget that day as long as I live.
There I was, innocently standing in line at the grocery store, bill paid and preparing to make my exit when I looked down and beheld the unspeakable insanity that lay in front of me.
Unlike every other item I had purchased that day, there was my milk, bereft of a bag.
It was just sitting there, naked and exposed to the entire world as if it had committed some morally depraved crime for which the only suitable punishment was public humiliation.
Mind you, this was not a case of an overly entitled customer unjustly annoyed that the store employee had forgotten to bag the milk. No, my friend, this was a willful and intentional act, part of what I would later discover to be a New England-wide conspiracy to rob milk of its proper place in a grocery bag as if that tiny little handle on the jug is good for anything other than taking the milk out of the refrigerator and putting it back in its place.
As if.
Common sense should tell my New England neighbors that if God had wanted us to deprive milk of its own grocery bag, God would have created a handle on the milk jug big enough to accommodate carrying the milk jug along with several other bags of groceries into one’s house so that only a minimal amount of time need be diverted from prayer and reading the Bible. That tiny, almost nonexistent handle is a clear sign from God that milk deserves its own grocery bag.
This is just common sense.
Except in New England, where common sense appears to have died in some brutal winter long ago.
Of course, my New England neighbors would no doubt retort that common sense tells us we should use as few of those non-degradable plastic bags as possible or, preferably, none at all. And maybe they have a point. But either way, the very notion of common sense is something that deserves far more consideration than we give it these days. Not because our dairy products are suffering a grave systematic injustice, but because in the age of globalization, we are quickly learning that a common sense of the world and how we should or should not act in it, is not quite as common as we once assumed.
That’s not to say there aren’t some cross-cultural or globally shared ideas of what is right or wrong, what is dangerous or safe to do, how people should behave in society, or what show someone should binge watch on Netflix should they have idle time on their hands. Everyone knows it’s “Breaking Bad.” No one disagrees about that.
It’s just common sense.
But the more the world shrinks, the more our assumptions about how things are or how they should be are being challenged by radically different cultures with new and different ideas about the world and the people living in it. In the past, common sense thrived because we were largely an isolated people. Free from the shackles of social media and a constantly connected world, we could go about our lives confident in our belief that what we understood as common sense in our corner of the world was common sense around the globe. Unless we intentionally made the effort to travel outside of our cultural bubble — whether physically or intellectually — we had little reason to doubt that what we held to be obviously true was, in fact, obviously true. If it wasn’t, why did everyone around us agree that it was?
To a certain extent, a strong belief in common sense still thrives today in those corners of the world where people have walled themselves off from other cultures and ideas — whether physically or intellectually — in order to avoid the threat of divergent perspectives and maintain ideological purity. Which makes sense because common sense is often little more than cultural sense. It’s a sense of the world that is common because it is universally shared or nearly universally shared by a particular culture, so much so, and so confidently, that we in turn feel confident in assuming that everyone everywhere must think the same way our corner of the world does.
Common sense needs this sort of incubator to thrive, a particular, walled-off tribe to shield it from outside influence and affirm that particular version of common sense as universal truth. This sort of epistemic insulation isn’t necessarily intentional — though sometimes it is — but whenever it does take root, it becomes a powerful force to reckon with become common sense, unquestionably affirmed by our fellow tribesmen, allows us to assert our beliefs with confidence, knowing we’re right without having to actually prove it because our beliefs are self-evident universal truths.
When those beliefs are placed in truly self-evident things like “don’t touch a hot stove or you’ll burn yourself,” our confidence is innocuous. But when the common sense of our culture begins to envelop and transform our faith, our confidence can turn into a dangerous arrogance that threatens to destroy everything that’s particular and peculiar about being a disciple of Christ.
***
Shielded for generations by the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other, American Christianity has been allowed to develop its own particular sense of both the world and our faith. It’s a commonly shared sense of life that is increasingly more American than it is Christian. Not surprisingly, this common sense of the world and how to live in it has also become the hermeneutic through which we read and interpret the Bible. Though using common sense while reading the Bible is certainly not always problematic, too often the interjection of our particular version of common sense leads us to dismiss the rather clear teachings of Jesus because common sense tells us he couldn’t possibly have meant that.
Right?
In a nation torn apart by raging debates over immigration, the plight of refugees, the use of violence, the hoarding of wealth, the treatment of enemies and a whole host of other matters the Bible has a thing or two to say about, common sense is often invoked to explain and justify why Christians can or should act in a particular way even though that way appears explicitly contrary to the life and teaching of Christ.
Which is exactly why common sense can be so problematic for Christianity.
Because Jesus’ sense of the world is anything but common.
Common sense says we should take up arms and prepare to defend ourselves, but Jesus says, “Put away your sword” and “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”
Common sense says we should be wary of strangers coming to our homeland, but Jesus says, “I was a stranger. Did you welcome me in?”
Common sense says if someone hits you, you should hit them back, but Jesus says “Turn the other cheek.”
Common sense says we should make as much money as we can to take care of ourselves today and invest for tomorrow, but Jesus says “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor” and “Do not worry about tomorrow, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Common sense says if you don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. But Jesus says, “I was hungry. Did you feed me? I was thirsty. Did you give me something to drink? I was naked. Did you clothe me? I was sick and in prison. Did you come and care for me?”
***
In order to explain away these sorts of discrepancies, we often turn to a “hermeneutic of common sense.” It’s an incredibly seductive interpretive approach, for it requires no justification for ignoring or outright rejecting the teaching of Jesus because it is its own justification. “Jesus can’t possibly have meant what he said,” we tell ourselves, “because common sense says you should obviously do otherwise.” Thus we free ourselves to continue believing what we already believed and doing what we already wanted to do regardless of what Jesus himself actually said or did.
But as tempting as such an approach might be, as Christians a hermeneutic of common sense is simply not at our disposal, at least not as a primary tool for reading and interpreting scripture. Because as Christians, Jesus is our hermeneutic. Jesus is the lens through which we must read and interpret scripture and there is nothing common about his sense of the world. This doesn't mean we should approach scripture uncritically. We should absolutely have an eye open for things that seem "obviously" wrong, but in doing so we must always stop and ask why it seems this or that thing must be wrong and why it can’t be us who is in the wrong.
Such an approach to scripture in general and discipleship in particular takes a profound sense of humility, a virtue increasingly rare in a world in which there are few greater sins than admitting we are wrong. But humility is what we have been called to and it is with humility that we must read and interpret the Bible.
Now, it may very well be the case that our interpretation and understanding of scripture is already spot on, but until find the humility necessary to admit our common sense may not be particularly Christian, we’ll never know.
"3 hidden leadership skills of Jesus" by Rebekah Simon-PeterThe world wants more of churches: more spirituality, more community, more engagement, more love, more miracles, more demonstration of the kingdom. Not less. Yet, most of us are serving shrinking, declining, even dying churches. If our leadership is to be effective, if we are about manifesting the kingdom here on earth, if we are to make a true difference in the lives of those we lead, and the communities we serve, we need to think big. Then, even bigger.
Of course, thinking big isn’t enough. We have to know what to dowith the ideas. Jesus mastered three hidden leadership skills that we would do well to learn.
To begin with, Jesus boldly crafted and expressed his vision. Even under the most difficult of circumstances.
Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles–
the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
light has dawned.
From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
In the shadow of John’s death, Jesus got to work. He went about the countryside proclaiming a message welcomed by some leaders of the time, and dangerous to other leaders. He didn’t let death or threats of death stop him. In fact, he was intent on being light in that particular time of darkness.
But he didn’t stop there. Or try to do it all himself. He found people who were aligned with his message.
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately, they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets and he called them. Immediately, they left the boat and their father and followed him.
And that’s not all.
Jesus went throughout the Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics, and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan.
Other Jewish teachers, rabbis and miracle workers traveled the land during Jesus’ day. What set him apart was that he was doing it as a sign of the inbreaking of the kingdom. In the process, he was building alignment for his vision. Crowds of people, great crowds, began to follow him. That’s when he taught them more about his vision.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.Unlike some spiritual leaders today, Jesus wasn’t trying to do all the work himself. In fact, he knew that if the message ended with him, it would die when he did. He used the buy-in of the people to execute his vision of the Kingdom.
Watch what he does with his disciples.
Then Jesus summoned his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.
These 12 Jesus sent out with the following instructions, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.Jesus doesn’t stop with this charge. He goes on to give them very specific instructions about how to execute the vision.
James Tissot, c. 1890You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.As specific as he is, he does not fall into micro-managing. He demonstrates trust in their ability to discern the nature of the people they will encounter.
Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.Vision. Alignment. Execution. These are the three hidden leadership skills Jesus practiced.future-vision
But leadership is not a linear process. It’s a spiral that redoubles and comes around again. Watch how Jesus demonstrates that.
Now when Jesus had finished instructing his 12 disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities.He’s just sent off his 12 closest followers, and now he’s off to cast his vision, build alignment and empower execution among brand new people! Powerful visions are like that. They compel you, energize you, and pull you forward. This was not drudgery for Jesus. It was his passion and purpose in life. (Luke 4:43). It was the reason he got out of bed in the morning. He was unstoppable!
If leadership requires vision, alignment and execution, it seems to me that there is one criterion that precedes these three tasks.
The vision has to be worth it. It has to be big enough, bold enough and compelling enough to promise a new state of affairs. Otherwise, you’ll lose interest. And so will everyone else.
Are you leading with a bold vision? That’s where it all starts.
Rebekah Simon-Peter blogs at rebekahsimonpeter.com. She is the author of The Jew Named Jesus and Green Church.
"Respecting other religions" by Jeanne Torrence Finley
A wall sign on a street in Segovia, Spain. Photo: Bigstock/zanskar
A resurgence of fear and hostility
Since the Paris attacks perpetrated by ISIS and the shooting attack at the San Bernardino social service center, fear of and hostility toward Muslims in the United States have increased. Soon after the Paris attacks, mosques in Florida received telephone threats. A Muslim student at the University of Connecticut found the words “killed Paris” written on his dorm room door. Leaders of an Islamic center near Austin, Texas, found a desecrated Quran at the entrance. Some presidential candidates have encouraged tighter restrictions on Muslims, and one even suggested banning their entry into the country.
In the face of such responses, many Muslims live in fear for their families and for themselves. One mother with young children said, “This is one of my biggest fears: being physically attacked in front of my children because I wear the hijab and then having to explain to my children why that happened. How do you explain to a three-year-old that people hate you because of how other people acted?”
In this time of increased misunderstanding and fear of other religions, particularly Islam, how do we foster good relationships with and acceptance of people of other faiths? How do we respect other traditions without compromising our own faith?
Fostering good relationships
Finding ways to connect with and get to know people of other faiths goes a long way toward building respect for them and their religions. For more than 10 years, I was a volunteer with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, a widely diverse, ethically driven organization working to promote public policies that better serve low-income, vulnerable, and underrepresented communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Membership in this nonprofit includes individuals and congregations from a variety of denominations and from Judaism and Islam. Working with the Virginia Interfaith Center allowed me to get to know people from those faith traditions in ways I never had before and to realize how many common concerns we have.
Respecting other traditions
Our United Methodist heritage provides the theological understanding for an attitude of respect and tolerance of other religions. John Wesley taught prevenient grace — that God is active in the world through the Holy Spirit and that God’s grace “goes before” all persons.
This attitude of respect and tolerance is affirmed in the United Methodist Social Principles (¶162.B), which make this statement regarding the rights of religious minorities: “Religious persecution has been common in the history of civilization. We urge policies and practices that ensure the right of every religious group to exercise its faith free from legal, political, or economic restrictions. We condemn all overt and covert forms of religious intolerance, being especially sensitive to their expression in media stereotyping. We assert the right of all religions and their adherents to freedom from legal, economic, and social discrimination.”
Called to be neighbors
Resolution 3141, “Called to Be Neighbors and Witnesses: Guidelines for Interreligious Relationships,” in The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church, 2012, offers extensive guidance on respecting other religions. The resolution points out that global problems of human suffering are such that no single faith group can solve them. However, tensions between groups often thwart efforts at cooperation that are necessary for constructive response. “Can we, of different faith traditions, live together as neighbors, or will diverse religious loyalties result in mutual antagonism and destruction?” (page 270).
The resolution states that neighborliness is required. Being a neighbor to other religious groups “means to meet other persons, to know them, to relate to them, to respect them, and to learn about their ways, which may be quite different from our own” (page 271). It means creating a sense of community in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities, and it means creating social structures that encourage justice for all.
Our participation in the work of the Holy Spirit “suggests that we United Methodist Christians, not individually, but corporately, are called to be neighbors with other faith communities (such as Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Native American), and to work with them to create a human community, a set of relationships between people at once interdependent and free, in which there is love, mutual respect, and justice” (page 272).
Called to be witnesses
In addition to calling United Methodists to be neighbors, Resolution 3141 also calls us to witness to our faith in Jesus Christ. For many people, these two callings are difficult to hold in tension. Some people fear that by respecting another religion and being neighborly to its followers, they’ll lose their faith or will at least fail to be faithful to it. However, it’s possible to be both neighbor and witness simultaneously.
This resolution points out that witnessing means bridging boundaries. “The Gospels tell story after story of Jesus crossing boundaries and reaching to outsiders.” It continues, “We are to proclaim and witness to the God who has bound humanity together in care for one another, regardless of the differences between us.” The resolution acknowledges that too often “our witness has been unneighborly, how much we have talked and how little we have listened, and how our insensitive and unappreciative approaches have alienated sincere truth seekers and persons who already have strong faith commitments. We become aware that we frequently communicate attitudes of superiority regarding our own faith, thereby perpetuating walls and hostilities between us as human beings.” When we build and perpetuate these walls and hostilities, we “restrict Christian witness” (page 272).
Resolution 3141 lifts up dialogue as a way to be both neighbor and witness. Dialogue is “an approach to persons of other faith communities that takes seriously both the call to witness and the command to love and be neighbors. To be engaged in dialogue is to see witnessing and neighborliness as interrelated activities” (page 273). The resolution emphasizes that dialogue is not a betrayal of witness.
People of other faiths may suspect that dialogue is a tool for conversion; however, this isn’t the case if it’s done in a context of learning truth and wisdom from the other as well as sharing our own truth and wisdom. We leave the rest to the Holy Spirit. We can do that because of our Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace. The Holy Spirit is at work in the church and in the world. God’s grace “goes before” all people.
Challenges and opportunities
Being a neighbor and being called to witness are inseparable for United Methodists. In our pluralistic world, we’re faced with challenges and opportunities — learning how the Holy Spirit works among all peoples of the world; reading holy texts of other religions; and opening ourselves to the insights in their images, stories, and rituals.
Resolution 3141 offers these guidelines for interreligious relationships:
- Identify the faith communities in your area and help your congregation learn about them, perhaps through some planned experiences together or through study groups to introduce other faith traditions.
- Enter into dialogues with other faith communities.
- Work together with people from other faith traditions in practical ways, such as soup kitchens, food pantries, Habitat for Humanity, and so forth.
- Plan community celebrations with people of other traditions.
- Develop new models of community building to strengthen relationships between people who live together and to help them honor the integrity of their differences.
The intent of respecting other religions by being neighbors and witnesses isn’t to amalgamate all faiths into one. Interreligious dialogue isn’t about endorsing or denying the faith of other people. Instead, it’s a path to increased understanding and peace in our communities, nation and world.
Be sure to check out FaithLink, a weekly downloadable discussion guide for classes and small groups.
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"Ultimate values"
By Mike SlaughterThe third Monday in January has been labeled by some as “Blue Monday,” considered to be the most depressing day of the year. It turns out that the formula that was used to calculate that “most depressed” date was all pseudo-science. I suspect, however, there may be a kernel of truth. Next week is around the time that many Americans will begin to receive their January credit card statements, revealing in stark black and white print the spending excesses of the Christmas season.
Collectively, Americans owe over $800 billion in credit-card debt. If credit-card interest rates average between 13 to 15 percent, and many are higher, you don’t actually have to do the math to know that the interest charges are astronomical. In fact the average American household with unsecured debt has over $15,000 in credit-card debt alone. So, how did we reach this point?
In part it is because it is so tempting for us to confuse imagined needs with real needs. The prophet Isaiah cautions us,
"Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.”[Isaiah 55:2]
Jesus warned repeatedly, “‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions’” (Luke 12:15). Jesus was prophetic even for the 21st century in his admonition to keep one’s guard up. If I have been “window shopping” online, the next time I open Facebook, the retailer whose site or product I had perused repeatedly shows up as a sponsored ad on my newsfeed, sometimes with a tailored ad featuring the exact product I had been looking at. The next time I perform a search on Google, the search-results page jumps in on the action as well.
We have allowed ourselves to be sucked into the consumerism vortex and can soon convince ourselves that almost all of our wants are needs. We live in a crazy world in interesting times. Americans spend $370 million a year on pet costumes. We spend $5 billion a year on entertaining ringtones. Perhaps ringtones and pet costumes are not your area of weakness. I suspect you could name something that is, something that may very well be considered as foolish in the eyes of others as a dog dressed like a princess for Halloween seems to you.
There is no clearer indicator of our ultimate values than our financial priorities and practices — how we spend, how we live, how we save and how we give reveal the true altar of our hearts. In Jesus’ own words, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also … No one can serve two masters; either you’ll hate the one and love the other; or you’ll be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matt. 6:21, 25).
If you have identified money matters as a challenging area in your life in 2016, I would invite you to read my newest book that I wrote with Karen Perry Smith, The Christian Wallet: Spending, Giving & Living with a Conscience, available later this month. The Christian Wallet asks difficult questions about morality and money, exploring the issues at play while acknowledging there are no easy answers. It is my prayer in this new year that you and I will wrestle with these questions together, making the necessary choices to transform our lifestyles, experiencing true transformation in the process. There is hope! Let’s grasp it.
Mike Slaughter is the author of Renegade Gospel and The Christian Wallet. He blogs at MikeSlaughter.com.
"The prophetic vocation: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on justice and peace"
By Stephen J. Sidorak Jr.Martin Luther King Jr., at the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963.I hope to accomplish three things in this essay.
First, I intend to put the renowned Riverside Church sermon, “A Time to Break Silence,” or, as it is alternatively entitled, “Beyond Vietnam,” into historical context, to recall that turbulent period in American history when this sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and to remind ourselves that it was preached on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated.
Second, I will lift up excerpts from the writings of Dr. King on the themes of justice and peace as well as highlight selected passages from the Riverside sermon in the hope of not only inspiring us with his soaring eloquence, but also energizing us with his call to action. As Vincent Harding averred in his book,Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, “his Riverside speech offers a summons to us ... to create a new reality.” And Harding should know as he had a hand in its authorship.
Third, I will make some comments about the prophetic vocation of Dr. King, about the fate that often awaits messengers who deliver such disturbing messages as that contained in the document under examination. For “…King was waging,” in the words of Adam Wolfson, in his essay “The Martin Luther King We Remember,” “a more fundamental battle … over the meaning of America.” Dr. King was on a “sacred mission to save America,” as the subtitle of Stewart Burns book, To the Mountaintop, aptly puts it, adding that Dr. King, in fact, “wanted to send a message to posterity, a prophecy for the ages.”
TIME, January 3, 1964It is important to remember, however, his message was not always welcome despite the fact that his public ministry was highly honored. We must remember he was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1964, and in the very same year, was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, yet he met the same fate as many prophets before him.
Dr. King spoke frequently of “guns and butter” — peace and justice. But my emphasis will be more on guns and less on butter. Namely, I will be discussing guns — and how we cannot possibly have both — guns and butter. My intention is to set Dr. King’s life and work on behalf of peace and justice in a larger context in order that we might thereby broaden our perspective on and gain a deeper appreciation for the prophetic vocation as it was embodied in the life and work of Dr. King. After all, in his December 11, 1964 Nobel Lecture, Dr. King decried conditions in America where the poor “are perishing on a lonely island of poverty” while “they are surrounded by a vast ocean of material prosperity.” He would concur with the formulation of economic realities in the United States today once offered by William Sloane Coffin, former Senior Minister of Riverside Church and Yale University chaplain, that we live in a nation wherein “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the military grows more powerful.”
Dr. King had the knack for making connections and, as a consequence, he called on us “to see … war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” He could recognize, in ways many of us cannot or will not, the inextricable linkage between justice and peace issues. As the novelist and author Arundhati Roy reminds us, Dr. King “drew some connections that many these days shy away from making.” Dr. King took note of the inevitable budget trade-offs that exist within what President Eisenhower warned, in his January 17, 1961 Farewell Address, was a country rapidly becoming a “military-industrial complex,” now a fait accompli. Moreover, Dr. King would agree with the same former President and genuine war-hero general. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dr. King would have us “connect the dots” in our day as he did in his. He would be appalled by the absence today of any great national debate on the subject matter at hand. And, he would have us not only ethically determine the terms of the debate, but demand such a debate about “guns versus butter” be held.
Let me issue this disclaimer at the outset. We will consider Dr. King not for what he is most known as, namely, as a civil rights leader, but instead for what he deserves to be better known as, that is, a peacemaker, a child of God, thereby blessed.
I also hasten to add that I have made no attempt to change the original language employed by Dr. King for the sake of inclusiveness. Each of us can do our own editing.
Dr. King spoke frequently of “guns and butter” — peace and justice. But my emphasis will be more on guns and less on butter. Namely, I will be discussing guns — and how we cannot possibly have both — guns and butter. My intention is to set Dr. King’s life and work on behalf of peace and justice in a larger context in order that we might thereby broaden our perspective on and gain a deeper appreciation for the prophetic vocation as it was embodied in the life and work of Dr. King. After all, in his December 11, 1964 Nobel Lecture, Dr. King decried conditions in America where the poor “are perishing on a lonely island of poverty” while “they are surrounded by a vast ocean of material prosperity.” He would concur with the formulation of economic realities in the United States today once offered by William Sloane Coffin, former Senior Minister of Riverside Church and Yale University chaplain, that we live in a nation wherein “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the military grows more powerful.”
Dr. King had the knack for making connections and, as a consequence, he called on us “to see … war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” He could recognize, in ways many of us cannot or will not, the inextricable linkage between justice and peace issues. As the novelist and author Arundhati Roy reminds us, Dr. King “drew some connections that many these days shy away from making.” Dr. King took note of the inevitable budget trade-offs that exist within what President Eisenhower warned, in his January 17, 1961 Farewell Address, was a country rapidly becoming a “military-industrial complex,” now a fait accompli. Moreover, Dr. King would agree with the same former President and genuine war-hero general. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dr. King would have us “connect the dots” in our day as he did in his. He would be appalled by the absence today of any great national debate on the subject matter at hand. And, he would have us not only ethically determine the terms of the debate, but demand such a debate about “guns versus butter” be held.
Let me issue this disclaimer at the outset. We will consider Dr. King not for what he is most known as, namely, as a civil rights leader, but instead for what he deserves to be better known as, that is, a peacemaker, a child of God, thereby blessed.
I also hasten to add that I have made no attempt to change the original language employed by Dr. King for the sake of inclusiveness. Each of us can do our own editing.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, presenting the Judaism and World Peace Award to Martin Luther King, Jr., Dec. 7, 1965
It has been reported that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, author of the classic study, The Prophets, introduced Dr. King just 10 days before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, to an assembly of rabbis with these words: “Where in America do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us. His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred, his leadership is of supreme importance to everyone of us… The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.” Why would Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, no less, heap such words of praise on Dr. King? I would suggest, among other reasons, it was because Rabbi Heschel recognized that Dr. King was making the necessary connections between justice and peace, thus articulating a vision of shalom in our warring, unjust world. In short, Rabbi Heschel saw in Dr. King a person possessed with the gifts and graces of a prophet of shalom, a prophetic visionary with the capacity to integrate justice and peace.
It has been reported that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, author of the classic study, The Prophets, introduced Dr. King just 10 days before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, to an assembly of rabbis with these words: “Where in America do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us. His presence is the hope of America. His mission is sacred, his leadership is of supreme importance to everyone of us… The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.” Why would Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, no less, heap such words of praise on Dr. King? I would suggest, among other reasons, it was because Rabbi Heschel recognized that Dr. King was making the necessary connections between justice and peace, thus articulating a vision of shalom in our warring, unjust world. In short, Rabbi Heschel saw in Dr. King a person possessed with the gifts and graces of a prophet of shalom, a prophetic visionary with the capacity to integrate justice and peace.
Martin Luther King Jr. preaching at Riverside Church, New York City on April 4, 1967. Photo: John C. GoodwinNow, the Riverside sermon can probably be best put into historical context by citing Dr. King’s own description of what led up to it being preached, as he did in his autobiography.
“…I began the agonizing measurement of government promising words of peace against the baleful, escalating deeds of war.”
“Some of my friends of both races and others who do not consider themselves my friends expressed disapproval because I had been voicing concern over the war in Vietnam. In newspaper columns and editorials, both in the Negro and general press, it was indicated that Martin King, Jr., is “getting out of his depth.” I was chided, even by fellow civil rights leaders, members of Congress, and brothers of the cloth for “not sticking to the business of civil rights.””
“…(A)fter reading (an) article (on) “The Children of Vietnam,” I said to myself, “Never again will I be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands and thousands of little children in Vietnam.” I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”
“I had for too long allowed myself to be a silent onlooker.”
“So often I had castigated those who by silence or inaction condoned and thereby cooperated with the evils of racial injustice… I had to therefore speak out if I was to erase my name from the bombs which fall over North or South Vietnam, from the canisters of napalm. The time had come — indeed it was past due — when I had to disavow and disassociate myself from those who in the name of peace burn, maim, and kill.”
“…I began the agonizing measurement of government promising words of peace against the baleful, escalating deeds of war.”
“Some of my friends of both races and others who do not consider themselves my friends expressed disapproval because I had been voicing concern over the war in Vietnam. In newspaper columns and editorials, both in the Negro and general press, it was indicated that Martin King, Jr., is “getting out of his depth.” I was chided, even by fellow civil rights leaders, members of Congress, and brothers of the cloth for “not sticking to the business of civil rights.””
“…(A)fter reading (an) article (on) “The Children of Vietnam,” I said to myself, “Never again will I be silent on an issue that is destroying the soul of our nation and destroying thousands and thousands of little children in Vietnam.” I came to the conclusion that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you.”
“I had for too long allowed myself to be a silent onlooker.”
“So often I had castigated those who by silence or inaction condoned and thereby cooperated with the evils of racial injustice… I had to therefore speak out if I was to erase my name from the bombs which fall over North or South Vietnam, from the canisters of napalm. The time had come — indeed it was past due — when I had to disavow and disassociate myself from those who in the name of peace burn, maim, and kill.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.“More than that, I had to go from the pulpits and platforms. I had to return to the streets to mobilize men to assemble and petition…for the immediate end of this bloody, immoral, obscene slaughter—for a cause which cries out for a solution before mankind itself is doomed. I could do no less for the salvation of my soul.”
“As I moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart…many persons questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concern, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. And when I hear them…I…am greatly saddened that such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. They seem to forget that before I was a civil rights leader, I answered a call, and when God speaks, who can but prophesy.”
Again, Vincent Harding, argues: “The speech not only requires us to struggle once more with the meaning of King, but it also presses us to wrestle, as he did, with all the tangled, bloody, and glorious meaning of our nation…its purpose…its direction…its hope.”
I believe Dr. King discerned that one could no longer advocate for justice without also working for peace. Clearly, it was a momentous revelation, for him, and by extension, the nation, because it provoked a level of controversy that far exceeded any he had generated previously and ignited a degree of hostility that outstripped any he had experienced earlier.
So, no sooner had the benediction been pronounced at the Riverside Church than the vicious attacks on Dr. King began in earnest with “a barrage of negative newspaper editorials” following in its wake, as David J. Garrow noted. “Sometimes we forget,” Harding writes, “that by April 1967, King was a beleaguered public figure.”
The Washington Post editorialized in a symptomatic way. “…(M)any who listened to (Dr. King) with respect (in the past) will never again accord him the same confidence. He has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.” What a difference one sermon can make! By contrast, The Christian Century praised the preacher of the “Beyond Vietnam” sermon, describing it as “a magnificent blend of eloquence and raw fact, of searing denunciation and tender wooing, of political sagacity and Christian insight, of tough realism and infinite compassion.” And oh, how differently, any given sermon can be heard.
Let me now simply lift up excerpts from other writings addressing justice and peace.
“As I moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart…many persons questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concern, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. And when I hear them…I…am greatly saddened that such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment, or my calling. They seem to forget that before I was a civil rights leader, I answered a call, and when God speaks, who can but prophesy.”
Again, Vincent Harding, argues: “The speech not only requires us to struggle once more with the meaning of King, but it also presses us to wrestle, as he did, with all the tangled, bloody, and glorious meaning of our nation…its purpose…its direction…its hope.”
I believe Dr. King discerned that one could no longer advocate for justice without also working for peace. Clearly, it was a momentous revelation, for him, and by extension, the nation, because it provoked a level of controversy that far exceeded any he had generated previously and ignited a degree of hostility that outstripped any he had experienced earlier.
So, no sooner had the benediction been pronounced at the Riverside Church than the vicious attacks on Dr. King began in earnest with “a barrage of negative newspaper editorials” following in its wake, as David J. Garrow noted. “Sometimes we forget,” Harding writes, “that by April 1967, King was a beleaguered public figure.”
The Washington Post editorialized in a symptomatic way. “…(M)any who listened to (Dr. King) with respect (in the past) will never again accord him the same confidence. He has diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people.” What a difference one sermon can make! By contrast, The Christian Century praised the preacher of the “Beyond Vietnam” sermon, describing it as “a magnificent blend of eloquence and raw fact, of searing denunciation and tender wooing, of political sagacity and Christian insight, of tough realism and infinite compassion.” And oh, how differently, any given sermon can be heard.
Let me now simply lift up excerpts from other writings addressing justice and peace.
Martin Luther King Jr. sits in a jail cell at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, AlabamaA perspective on Dr. King’s convictions about justice and peace can be discovered in his observations about the religious community in general and the Christian Church in particular. In his celebrated “Letter From Birmingham Jail” of April 16, 1963, Dr. King asks: “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?” He describes the religious community as “largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.” Dr. King declares: “The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before.”
This analysis of the entrenched nature of the religious community in the status quo informs Dr. King’s outlook on the prospects for social change. He realizes: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Although not a very promising assessment, it is not a wholly inaccurate one either. Nevertheless, as he noted in his December 10, 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech: “I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him.” In other words, the religious community especially should be wary of what Dr. King termed in the Riverside sermon, “our proneness to adjust to injustice,” in order to resist it.
The important point to keep in mind regarding Dr. King’s writings on justice and peace is the linkage he consistently draws between them. Perhaps this point is nowhere better expressed than in “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” which Dr. King preached on December 24, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, when he noted that “we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.” In that same sermon, Dr. King enunciated exactly why justice and peace are necessarily construed together: “…(A)ll life is interrelated: We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.” He summarized his basic understanding of this mutuality, this interrelatedness, when he concluded in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail:” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I have tried to get myself out of the way so that Dr. King himself might show through and I hope I have captured something of the spirit of Dr. King in these excerpts from some of his other writings. Now, however, let me turn your attention to the Riverside sermon specifically. I will highlight only a few passages.
Dr. King decried what he called “a society gone mad on war” and indicts his “own government” as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Indeed, this sermon is seasoned with hard-sayings, uttered by one who was as salt of the earth. Again, Dr. King urges us “to see war as the enemy of the poor” and admonishes us “to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.”
He then gets to the heart of the matter with the war in Vietnam. “We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
Dr. King speaking at an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul on April 27, 1967And, against what are we to protest? Testing “our latest weapons on them.” Pouring “every new weapon of death into their land.” Dropping “thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from (our) shores.” Speaking as a self-described “citizen of the world,” Dr. King maintains: “Somehow this madness must cease.” In the chapter entitled “The World House” from his book called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Dr. King wrote these words: “All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors.” Therein, he also wrote of the fact that we now live in a new “world-wide neighborhood.” Consequently, Dr. King would claim we must move “beyond Vietnam,” prescient as one would expect a prophet to be, cognizant of a new global village. Why? Because, as he warns us in the same book: “We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation.”
In his Riverside sermon, Dr. King condemns “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” If you really want to talk about an “axis of evil,” then you must speak of these three: bigotry, poverty and weaponry! This “axis of evil” was encapsulated perfectly by Coffin when he said shortly and inimitably before his death in 2006: “Indeed there is an “axis of evil.” But it is hardly Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. A more likely and far more dangerous trio would be environmental degradation, pandemic poverty, and a world awash with weapons” Of racism, materialism and militarism, “(t)his trio of troubles” (Michael Eric Dyson), Dr. King is clear: “We must see now that (these) evils…are all tied together, and you really can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the others.”
To be sure, we must look “beyond Vietnam,” and see things close to home. For Dr. King saw, as he said at the April 15, 1967 New York City march and rally in Central Park: “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home.”
Dr. King lamented the fact that we were not only waging one war, but preparing for the next, another reason for us to look “Beyond Vietnam.” “A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” It was a damning judgment Dr. King reached. Yet, he still offered us the choice between “nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation,” and reminded us “we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.” As the chief architect of the nonviolent tactics employed by the civil rights movement, the Rev. James Lawson, said recently, we must learn “to stop blessing war.”
In a sermon he later preached back home at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967, Dr. King was as prophetic as he was adamant, denouncing the nation in a most radical manner. “Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as His divine messianic force to be—a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America: “You are too arrogant!”” How absolutely uninhibited was this preacher!
“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before.”
This analysis of the entrenched nature of the religious community in the status quo informs Dr. King’s outlook on the prospects for social change. He realizes: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Although not a very promising assessment, it is not a wholly inaccurate one either. Nevertheless, as he noted in his December 10, 1964 Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech: “I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him.” In other words, the religious community especially should be wary of what Dr. King termed in the Riverside sermon, “our proneness to adjust to injustice,” in order to resist it.
The important point to keep in mind regarding Dr. King’s writings on justice and peace is the linkage he consistently draws between them. Perhaps this point is nowhere better expressed than in “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” which Dr. King preached on December 24, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church, when he noted that “we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.” In that same sermon, Dr. King enunciated exactly why justice and peace are necessarily construed together: “…(A)ll life is interrelated: We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.” He summarized his basic understanding of this mutuality, this interrelatedness, when he concluded in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail:” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I have tried to get myself out of the way so that Dr. King himself might show through and I hope I have captured something of the spirit of Dr. King in these excerpts from some of his other writings. Now, however, let me turn your attention to the Riverside sermon specifically. I will highlight only a few passages.
Dr. King decried what he called “a society gone mad on war” and indicts his “own government” as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Indeed, this sermon is seasoned with hard-sayings, uttered by one who was as salt of the earth. Again, Dr. King urges us “to see war as the enemy of the poor” and admonishes us “to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.”
He then gets to the heart of the matter with the war in Vietnam. “We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
Dr. King speaking at an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul on April 27, 1967And, against what are we to protest? Testing “our latest weapons on them.” Pouring “every new weapon of death into their land.” Dropping “thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from (our) shores.” Speaking as a self-described “citizen of the world,” Dr. King maintains: “Somehow this madness must cease.” In the chapter entitled “The World House” from his book called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Dr. King wrote these words: “All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors.” Therein, he also wrote of the fact that we now live in a new “world-wide neighborhood.” Consequently, Dr. King would claim we must move “beyond Vietnam,” prescient as one would expect a prophet to be, cognizant of a new global village. Why? Because, as he warns us in the same book: “We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation.”
In his Riverside sermon, Dr. King condemns “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” If you really want to talk about an “axis of evil,” then you must speak of these three: bigotry, poverty and weaponry! This “axis of evil” was encapsulated perfectly by Coffin when he said shortly and inimitably before his death in 2006: “Indeed there is an “axis of evil.” But it is hardly Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. A more likely and far more dangerous trio would be environmental degradation, pandemic poverty, and a world awash with weapons” Of racism, materialism and militarism, “(t)his trio of troubles” (Michael Eric Dyson), Dr. King is clear: “We must see now that (these) evils…are all tied together, and you really can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the others.”
To be sure, we must look “beyond Vietnam,” and see things close to home. For Dr. King saw, as he said at the April 15, 1967 New York City march and rally in Central Park: “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. The bombs in Vietnam explode at home.”
Dr. King lamented the fact that we were not only waging one war, but preparing for the next, another reason for us to look “Beyond Vietnam.” “A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” It was a damning judgment Dr. King reached. Yet, he still offered us the choice between “nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation,” and reminded us “we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.” As the chief architect of the nonviolent tactics employed by the civil rights movement, the Rev. James Lawson, said recently, we must learn “to stop blessing war.”
In a sermon he later preached back home at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967, Dr. King was as prophetic as he was adamant, denouncing the nation in a most radical manner. “Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as His divine messianic force to be—a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America: “You are too arrogant!”” How absolutely uninhibited was this preacher!
Let me comment now on the prophetic vocation of Dr. King. Garrow, in his book The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote: “In the last twelve months of his life, King represented a far greater political threat to the reigning American government than he ever had before.” Now, many believe, and I number among them, that by “breaking his silence” on the Vietnam War, Dr. King increased the likelihood of his being silenced by an assassin’s bullet. His words were too heavy; the land could not bear them—or him. The noted biblical scholar, Raymond E. Brown reminded us, “the prophet’s sufferings offer the opportunity for self-examination on what we who consider ourselves God’s people do to our prophets whom God raises up among us.”
We have our relatively new national holiday, with two state exceptions duly noted, and another long weekend trivialized by short getaways and super sales at the nearest mall. Worse than that, many have a view now of Martin Luther King, Jr. far removed from that of the fiery prophet he once was, a domesticated King, if you will, a “rather smoothed-off respectable, national hero…not the King of “Beyond Vietnam,”” as Harding noted. Michael Eric Dyson, author of the controversial book, I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., laments the fact that Dr. King’s birthday celebration has become an occasion for a “sanitized white-washing of his own blood-stained heroism” because, in part, we “want to protect King from the assertion that he was an unpatriotic American.” Indeed: “Aren’t we then ourselves in danger,” asks William Sloane Coffin, “of honoring King as a martyr, while trampling on what he stood for as a prophet…?” We must remember what another of Dr. King’s biographers, Marshall Frady, warned us about: “To hallow a figure is almost always to hollow him.”
The “King Years” chronicler Taylor Branch observed: “Gunfire took Dr. King’s life, but we determine his legacy.” Therefore, it falls to the interreligious community to remember what manner of man Dr. King was and to preserve in the nation’s memory the fact that he was a prophet not without honor except in his own land. He did not try to heal the wounds of his people lightly, prophesying peace, peace, when there is no peace. As Dyson adds, Dr. King’s “prophetic passion was never more righteous than when he took a swing at the false premises of war-mongering that were being pitched to the American public.” And Dr. King refused to prophesy falsely. He had the “moral madness” and the spiritual courage to prophesy only about those things that would be “credible in the presence of burning human flesh,” as one rabbi described it. Dr. King’s ministry was the embodiment of the prophetic vocation and his prophetic vocation provided ample evidence of the moral imperative that we must be constantly “confronted with,” what he called, “the fierce urgency of now.” Dr. “King’s legacy to our country,” in the words of Drew D. Hansen, in his book The Dream, “is the gift of prophecy: a vision of what a redeemed America might look like….”
Thus, the observation of Father Zossima in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov remains altogether timely and tragically still rings true. “Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.” The man who ultimately shed his own blood for the sake of justice and peace said in the last Sunday sermon he delivered in his lifetime, a mere five days before his death, at Washington’s National Cathedral: “(The) challenge…we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed.” But, regrettably, it appears there will be no end to “smart bombs on dumb missions,” in the words of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, President Emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Worse, we seem to live in “an atmosphere devoid of urgency,” as Dr. King described it, “devoid of urgency” about war and peace, justice and its absence.
The first step we could take to keep faith with Dr. King’s legacy is to create within the ecumenical and interreligious community and beyond it a new sense of “the fierce urgency of now,” link the alarming array of justice and peace issues that currently confront us, and start to build a new movement. As his daughter Yolanda said it on King Day 2004, we have to get up “off (our) apathy and do something!” We have our marching orders, issued by Dr. King himself: “I see these two struggles as one struggle. There can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice.”
"Sermons: Writing for the ear, not the eye"
By Talbot Davis
In my just over 36 years of attending church and listening to preachers, I’ve sat through a number of sermons which sounded more like long essays than impassioned proclamation.
And the fatal flaw of those sermons was the fact that they were written (and often then read from the pulpit!) more for the eye than for the ear.
Now, for most of us preachers, that is an easy trap. We’ve been trained from at least middle school, after all, to write papers that our teachers would then read. So we’ve grown up and been educated in an environment where good writing was designed to result in pleasurable reading.
And yet writing a sermon is completely, fundamentally different. A sermon, ultimately, isn’t to be read. It is to be heard.
(Now I know many sermons get published, some even get turned into books (!), but a sermon’s first and primary purpose is its original use as spoken proclamation.)
So here are some general principles I try to employ in my weekly task of writing something that will be heard far more than it will be read:
- Keep your sentences short. No need to impress your professor with you skill with the semi-colon; you need instead to impact your hearers with bold brevity.
- Words that sound similar without rhyming — which sounds trite in preaching — have staying power and resonance. One of the strongest bottom lines I remember came from the 2012 series Royal Pains: “What you tolerate today will dominate you tomorrow.”
- Your strongest points come when you contrast conventional wisdom with biblical truth. From Movementum: “Leaving your mark isn’t about what you accomplish. It’s about who you influence.”
- The passive voice is to be avoided at all costs.
- Please tell me you got the joke in the bulleted point above. Sort of like “avoid cliches like the plague.”
- A little alliteration never hurt. From Courageous: “What you have to hide in order to have will come back to haunt.”
- Writing for the ear involves the liberal use of words that sound like what they actually do. The technical term for these words is onomatopoeia, and some of the best examples are BOOM, THUMP, SPLASH, WHAM and my perennial favorite, SPLAT.
Talbot Davis is pastor of Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and the author of Head Scratchers: When the Words of Jesus Don't Make Sense, The Storm Before the Calm, and The Shadow of a Doubt, all from Abingdon Press.
"Episcopal Church suspended from full participation in Anglican Communion"
By Kimberly Winston / Religion News Service
England’s best-known cathedral and the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. RNS photo by Trevor Grundy
(RNS) The Anglican Communion voted to censure its American branch, the Episcopal Church, during a meeting in Canterbury, England, called to reflect on the future of the communion.
The vote Thursday (Jan. 14) to suspend the Episcopal Church from voting and decision-making for a period of three years was leaked a day ahead of a press conference that had been scheduled for Friday.
Details of the suspension were first reported by Anglican Ink, a Connecticut-based publication that said they came from a leaked communique. The vote passed by a two-thirds margin, the publication said, and included prominent voices among African bishops who have loudly condemned the American church for its liberal stance on gays.
The dramatic demotion follows a string of Episcopal Church decisions stretching back to 2003, when it elected Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as a bishop of New Hampshire. That decision led dozens of U.S. churches to break away from the Episcopal Church and declare their allegiance to a series of rival groups, including the Anglican Church in North America.
In July, the Episcopal Church voted to allow its clergy to perform same-sex marriages, a move not taken by the majority of churches in the Anglican Communion.
“Given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies ... ," a statement issued by the Anglican Communion reads. "They will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity."
"The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the statement also notes. “The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.”
The Anglican Communion consists of 44 member churches from around the world, representing about 85 million Christians.
The Episcopal Church, the predominant church of many of the 13 original Colonies, has had a disproportionate influence on public life in the United States. The majority of U.S. presidents have been Episcopalians and its influence still far surpasses its 1.8 million U.S. members, who now find themselves without a voice in Anglican Communion decisions.
The three-year term of the suspension is the amount of time until the next denomination-wide meeting of the Episcopal Church, when it will vote on a response, though other church groups could respond sooner.
The suspension comes after four days of discussions among church leaders — “primates,” in church parlance — over the Episcopal Church's position on gay marriage in relation to the position of the broader Anglican Communion. The meetings apparently got testy; British Christian media reported that the archbishop of Uganda, among the most conservative of Anglican branches, walked out amid disagreements.
Jeffrey Walton, the Anglican program director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C., said the suspension of the Episcopal Church is significant but does not, at this point, represent a schism, or irreparable rupture, within the Anglican Communion.
"This is not kicking the Episcopal Church out of the Anglican Communion, but it is saying is that by making these decisions for the past 12 or so years the Episcopal Church has created this distance and there will be consequences to those decisions."
Other Anglican experts were mystified at the Anglican Communion's statement, which consisted of eight brief points.
“This is not how Anglicans should behave," said Christina Rees, a member of the General Synod, the governing body of the Church of England. "It’s awful. It’s a terrible outcome to the meeting of the primates in Canterbury. What action will now be taken against all those churches in the Anglican Communion who treat gay men and women as criminals? Will they be suspended for three years, too?”
Jim Naughton, former canon for the Archdiocese of Washington and now a communications consultant specializing in the Episcopal Church, called the sanctions a “weird” attempt by the primates to take power away from elected bodies and claim it for themselves.
But Naughton expects no impact in the life of the Episcopal Church.
“We can accept these actions with grace and humility but the Episcopal Church is not going back," Naughton said. "We can’t repent what is not sin."
Bishop Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut wondered whether the Anglican primates wanted the Episcopal Church to repent for its position on same-sex marriage. “Or were they asking for an apology for how the (church’s governing body) went about opening all the roles and rites of the church, including marriage, to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Episcopalians?”
Kevin Eckstrom, director of communications for Washington National Cathedral, the seat of newly installed Presiding Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, said that while this suspension will be greeted by sadness in the Episcopal Church, it has been on a parallel track with the Anglican Communion for a while.
"It is not unlike a couple who are having marital problems and are sleeping in separate bedrooms," he said. "Maybe now they are going to formalize the separation."
Curry told Episcopal News Service the sanction would be painful for many in the Episcopal Church to receive. “Many of us have committed ourselves and our church to being ‘a house of prayer for all people,’ as the Bible says, when all are truly welcome,” Curry said.
Communion leaders also reportedly wanted to censure the Anglican Church of Canada, but because it has not yet adopted same-sex marriage rites, no action was taken.
The Lambeth Palace press office, home of the archbishop of Canterbury, did not respond to requests for comment about the vote, which was leaked to the media.
RNS Senior National Correspondent Cathy Grossman contributed to this report from Washington, D.C., and reporter Trevor Grundy contributed from Canterbury, England.
"Two Lutheran seminaries to close and reopen as new school"
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald / Religion News Service
An aerial view of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa. Photo courtesy Lutheran Theological Seminary
(RNS) Two Lutheran seminaries in Pennsylvania are planning to close and launch together a new school of theology in 2017 with hopes of slashing costs and reversing years of declining enrollments.
The decision came last week from the governing boards of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. The plan will cut the number of seminaries affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America from eight to seven.
David Lose, president of the Philadelphia seminary, said the move would create opportunities for redesigning everything from faculty and curriculum to calendars and relationships with donors.
The board votes came quickly after a recommendation from a joint task force, which held its first and only meeting last month.
Gettysburg was projecting yearly deficits above $200,000 and could not keep eliminating faculty positions by attrition, according to board chair James Lakso.
“We have too many people and too much physical capacity to be viable and sustainable in the long term,” Lakso said.
Combining into one institution, distributed across two locations at Gettysburg and Philadelphia, could solve the thorny problem of what to do with tenured faculty, whose salaries and benefits weigh heavily on each school’s budget.
The logic: if a school ceases to exist, then it’s no longer obligated to retain faculty members, even if they had tenure. A new school has flexibility to start over.
“Part of that flexibility would be exploring the possibility of having faculty who are both teachers and practitioners,” said Philadelphia board chair John Richter. “Is it possible to have practicing clergy or laity teaching stewardship, church administration or worship? There’s the possibility.”
Reducing the combined faculty size from about 30 to 15 or 18 at the new institution could achieve seven-figure savings. Some building space might be repurposed, and larger decisions about real estate holdings will be considered in years ahead, Lakso said.
The new plan comes as mainline Protestant seminaries take steps to weather financial storms caused by an average drop in enrollments of nearly 24 percent since 2005, according to the Association of Theological Schools. About 80 percent of the nation’s 100 mainline seminaries are likely to feel financial pressure and might consider revamping their models in years ahead, according to ATS Executive Director Daniel Aleshire.
Since 2012, other Lutheran seminaries have found shelter inside universities. Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary merged with Lenoir-Rhyne University in Columbia, S.C., and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary became part of California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Church leaders hope the new school can pass savings along to students and help motivate more to attend seminary.
Bishop Jim Dunlop of the ELCA’s Lower Susquehanna Synod says he needs as many as 15 graduates per year to fill pastorate vacancies, but last year there were only three. If the new school can shrink average student debt from more than $30,000 today to less than $15,000, then more might enroll and become the “first-call,” or first-job, pastors he needs.
“Some of our first-call pastors are under real financial strain,” Dunlop said. “I’m hopeful and excited that we’re open to new possibilities. This is a way forward in that.”
"The right answers to the right questions"
By David Staal
Bigstock/NiroDesign
In recent years, a unique question captured church attention across the nation. Many congregational leaders, popular speakers and passionate pastors sought to startle faith communities into action by asking: “If this church disappeared tomorrow, would anyone miss us?”
A query worth probing, no doubt. The call to action woven into this question has caused renewed vigor to reach a compassionate hand into the local community surrounding every church. While the desire for people to notice their efforts helps a faith family to look—and step—outside its own walls, the challenge then changes.
Keep focusing on questions, but listen for those that come from the people being served. That’s where a church finds the community relevance it seeks. After all, no one misses a stranger.
Let’s dive into specific examples. For twenty years, our organization has partnered churches with schools to set up mentoring programs for at-risk elementary-aged students. After reaching nearly 70,000 kids across those two decades, three questions consistently stand atop the list of what youngsters ask their mentors. Why is this information important to know? Simple; it reminds everyone involved (now over 1,200 church-school programs) what is important to the folks we serve. Overlook this information, regardless of the outreach effort, and program effectiveness disappears faster than pizza at a student ministry event.
Grab hold of what’s important, though, and people will care a lot about a church’s role in its community.
The three most frequently asked questions from a student to his/her mentor:
Question #3: Do you get paid?
Students want to know if the person who they’re paired with is simply another school employee doing his or her job. If that’s the case, no reason exists to feel special. But when a child discovers that a mentor shows up because he or she wants to, not because he has to, then everything changes. In any program, people will perceive a volunteer’s true motivation for serving—and that perception sets the tone for the entire experience.
Here’s how this question sounded when posed by a first-grader to his mentor: “Where do you work?”
The mentor replied, “I work in an office about a half-hour away. The place where I work agreed to give me time off to meet with you.”
So far, so good. But more questions await.
Question #2: Are you coming back?
The students served by a mentoring program typically have experienced life punctuated by many relational disappointments. Skepticism is both justified and necessary as a defense shield to guard against another let-down. Please consider this question carefully—and not just for a mentoring program. Actually, obsess over it. Then ask it every time the urge arrives to serve people. Folks young and old and all ages between long for reliability and relationships, so challenge the value of one-time-only efforts. The community will only notice a church if the church has relational ties—the kind that take time to develop. Kids cleverly sniff out this issue.
“How often did that office say you could come here?”
“They said I can come back here every week to meet with you.”
That exchange sets up the most frequently asked question.
Question #1: Who else do you meet with?
“So how many kids do you see here?”
What a brilliant question! In this child’s mind and heart, the hoped-for answer of “just one” translates to become “They only see me; this is just for me!” When a child discovers that an adult willingly volunteers to spend time meeting with him, reliably, and him alone, feeling special becomes feeling loved. Every community across our nation needs more people feeling loved. Second to no one, local churches are fully equipped to meet this need for love. Willingness to deploy stands as the real issue.
Our team asks many questions about our program as we seek to expand and improve, but the above three questions serve as the constant backdrop for decisions we make. While churches serve themselves well to wonder if their communities would ever miss them, they will serve others even better by knowing the questions people ask so they can pursue the answers that matter most.
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Ministry Matters
2222 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard
Nashville, Tennessee 37228, United States
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