Confronting the Not-so-Great Divide

Can we remember that this is a motto of our country?

I have been trying very hard to reflect on the events of the last week. One of the worst things that has happened in this country is that we do not listen to each other, even when-- especially when-- we do not agree. I just had a friend unfriend me on Facebook because she thought I wasn't listening to her regarding our political differences, and I am very sad about that right now.

We MUST listen to each other. There is too much "talking past each other," and we have been encouraged to do just that as we isolate ourselves more and more in the echo chambers we live in, where all we hear is a constant drumbeat from information sources whose only purpose is to reinforce our disdain and hatred of "the other side." One of the things I think that too few of us realize is that there is more pain and uncertainty about where our lives are going on both the left and the right (meaningless terms, really) than we realize. And we are MEANT to not be able to see that in each other. That's what really dismays me.

One thing I think many of us on both ends of the spectrum can agree upon is that the whole damn system IS guilty as hell. We can never rebuild this country, though-- and it seriously needs rebuilding; that's another thing most of us agree upon, I think--if we play into turning on each other, which is exactly how the system has been allowed to be set up so that the needs of the many, the common good upon which our country has been founded, can be ignored so that a few people can remain in power.

Look at the Constitution. The genius of the Constitution is that it has remained flexible enough to survive and even grow during the 227 years it has been in existence. It has been able to remain functional because it is subject to interpretation based upon the changing needs of the times (same thing with scripture, by the way). But its basic vision is laid out in six guiding principles laid out in the Preamble, which starts out with these very important words: WE, THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES. We. People. United.

These principles are: 
1- to form a more perfect union (and look at what we had before the Constitution- it was chaos!) 
2- establish justice 
3- ensure domestic tranquility 
4- provide for the common defense 
5- promote the general welfare 
6- secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity 

 (Who's singing the School House Rock song now? C'mon- admit it.) 

Notice that ALL of those things talk about the fact that we live together IN COMMUNITY. All of those things are about living TOGETHER. That's the only way good government can work-- to start with the undertsanding that government is generated from community. Anything else is not freedom but anarchy, which serves no one and leads to everyone's doom (think about South Sudan, and Iraq, and Somalia, and the Philippines right now. We Americans better never forget that we REALLY don't have anarchy in the streets, and that most of our protests are actually signs of that). 

We formed and continue to form this government SPECIFICALLY so that ALL may live in peace and security. Now, over the years, the "we" part has expanded. To be honest, at first it just included white men of property. For a LONG time. And we have to be careful that we do not fall back into that default, because when that has happened in other countries, anarchy and warfare has ensued (at the time the Constitution and Bill of Rights were being written, a terrifying example was happening in France, for instance). But over the decades, the hopefulness of those six promises have been seized upon and rightfully demanded by more groups as they have gotten the right (and I would say the responsibility, former US history teacher that I am) to vote. Universal white male suffrage (regardless of property qualifications) didn't really get introduced until the 1820s. African Americans in 1865. Women in 1919. Native Americans in 1923. Asian Americans, Hispanics, and other people of color in 1965. So, not that long ago, actually, and certainly the rights of these groups are still not in any way universally secure, to put it mildly.

BUT. Here's where I am perhaps to be criticised as an optimist. And I will plead guilty to that. As one of my favorite hymns goes, "Through many dangers, toils, and snares, we have already come, 'tis grace that brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home." Yes, US. Not just "me." 

So, yes, BUT. There is more that unites the majority of us in this country than any political party wants us to know, since political parties are themselves a sign of the tendency we all must fight against to division. So we are urged into a frenzy against each other that not only harms the political and social unity which is required for our political life, but our spiritual life as well. At the heart of the gospel is a message of community and caring for each other that I too often do NOT see reflected in the actions of those who use religion in this country as a political tool to instead turn on others, to exclude, rather than include. That is bad enough when we are talking about hurting others. It is worse when it used to deny people basic dignity and justice, not to mention compassion and mercy. 

Real peace and justice cannot be built on a foundation that deliberately deprives others of their basic dignity and worth. Not in the name of politics. Not in the name of religion. 

And that, I fear, is exactly how some people use religion in this country: to draw boundaries that fly in the face of the plain teaching of Jesus. If we were to take very seriously the very real pain that many of us endure and protest on both the LEFT and the RIGHT, we could begin to work for REAL peace and justice in this country. Whenever the idea of "freedom of religion" has been perverted to mean the freedom to divide us and to impose our own will upon others, then it is wrong. True religion is not tyrrany. True religion is founded on hope and faith, not fear. For Christians, that means hope and faith in God, AND hope and faith in EACH OTHER (the Great Commandment, Matthew 22:36-40). I believe that if someone tries to tell you that you, as a Christian, can have faith and love for God without having faith and love for each other, they are merely using the guise of religion. They are one of those false prophets many of us were warned about in the gospel (Luke 21:5-19) this past Sunday. And that includes having faith and hope in those with whom we disagree. ESPECIALLY then. 

We HAVE to understand that there are a lot of hurting people on both sides of this political divide. It's the DIVIDE that is the problem. It is the DIVIDE that is the threat to democracy. 

A political divide that keeps the vast majority of us in chains. 
A political divide that keeps us from considering each other's perspective and pain, by creating an artifical "us" versus "them" that serves to prevent us from working together for real change, especially at the economic level. 

For regular folks like us, for workaday America, economic questions are not about having "more"-- it's about having enough, about having peace of mind. About feeling at home-- that's the Greek root of the word "economy." And when we have that peace of mind, we are a greater country, because we are not prone to respond to the exaggerated fears from theoretical directions. Our economy right now does not serve the most important needs of a vast majority of the peope of this country, but we are distracted from that by arguments about other things like guns or abortion that have nothing to do with making sure we REALLY feel secure and at peace. Because democracy, like religion, only works if we have faith in each other. 

I hope and pray that we can come to see that the real threat to our well-being is mistrust and hatred because we were created by nature itself (whether you believe that is through God or not), to live in community with each other. Mistrust and hatred of liberals, of conservatives, of immigrants, of refugees, of blacks, of whites, of gay people, of atheists, of Christians, of Muslims, of poor people, and so on and so on. It all serves to wound us, not help us. "US' is better when "US" includes everybody, and we get RID of the idea that we should be comfortable with calling some "THEM."

One of the worst things that the current political leaders have done is to attempt to divide us in order for them to keep a grasp on power and take of themselves rather than the common good. And we must resist their use religion as one of the best tools to help them do that.

Of Pantsuits and Other "P" words: Thoughts on leadership, elections, and misogyny

I listened with horror, and yes, righteous anger as activist Van Jones talked about the election of Donald Trump being a "white-lash" again the resurgent movement for full civil rights for people of color. Tears welled up in my eyes as he spoke. He was so right. The coded calls for the "good old days" by Donald Trump as black protestors at this rallies were assaulted and ejected are just the tip of the iceberg, as they say-- an iceberg that also is composed of Trump's endorsement, never denounced, by the Ku Klux Klan.

But there's more, here, I fear.

It is white-lash, and more. It is also continuing proof of the fear of female leadership in our country, and that "leadership" is defined by appearance and gender norms, consciously or subconsciously, even among women.

The fact that "college educated" men overwhelmingly voted for Trump is part of this, and not surprising if you have worked in a white-collar workplace, including businesses, engineering firms, and schools/universities, and paid any sort of attention. College educated women are seen as competition and as threats by many college-educated men, not equal co-workers, even as women begin to make up a majority of college students. Maybe even especially so.

Many men in college tend to study in areas that are still male-dominated (engineering, business). Business and engineering colleges' curricula also do not expose them to different ideas or cultures (humanities) the way that other colleges in the arts and sciences do. These fields tend to be more vocational-education in intent than providing a broad-based education in the classical sense. Even among men in education (assumed to be a female-dominated field) or academia (NOT considered to be a female-dominated field by a long shot), you see a marked difference in the number of male principals and female principals, deans, provosts, and superintendents, since administrative leadership models are still strongly tilted toward hierarchical, masculine models of authority.

Business and engineering (and even education) are still fields in which women have made little headway in leadership positions (witness the recent controversies, semi-humorously addressed by women on twitter, about mansplaining in the workplace, the women-in-science-being-more-emotional-or-looking-for-love storm a few months back, the deliberate adoption of a strategy used within the Obama WH of women amplifying what women said in meetings so that their ideas would not be claimed by men, etc. How many of President Obama's most trusted official advisors were women?

Add in the strong evangelical Christian turn-out, and the adherence of most evangelical Christians (male and female) to the proof-texted prohibitions in 1 Timothy (written after Paul's death) against women exercizing authority over men, and the fact that this spills over into civic life, and the problem is right there, staring us in the face. The Catholic Church also prohibits women from positions of ordained leadership, and its male leadership insists that will never change, continuing with the current (supposedly more progressive) pontiff. Even within Christian denominations that do ordain women, women tend to not be selected for leadership of powerful congregations or even have automatic default consideration toward full-time positions.

Yes, there are outliers, but when women DO rise to positions of leadership (and that's pronounced "power"), we more often hear about their failures than their successes, and one woman's "failure" is often used against all women in the way we never apply such reasoning against men. Often, the "failures" of women in leadership, even in the church, result from them adopting a masculine, hierarchical, authoritarian model that is not only aggressive in a way that neither men nor women employees really appreciate, but also guarantees resistance, especially because it is being exercised by a woman. So, women are "damned if you do, and damned if you don't." Women who DO adopt hierarchical, "rationalist" models of leadership are ar best "unlike-able" (as we heard repeatedly the last 18 months), "cold," "over-cautious," or other, more derogatory terms which for some reason are almost always associated with both male and female anatomy (yes, I am being a little sarcastic here). And then there's the issue of how female appearance (clothes, make-up or no make-up, hairstyle, age, body type) ends up figuring into women's identities in that same "DIYD, DIYD" calculus.

The very rhetoric employed in our society as a matter of course and amplified during this political season betrays an acceptance of anti-woman prejudice by both men and and some women, consciously or unconsciously. Never forget how almost-gleefully Trump's remarks about being able to grab women by a deeply insulting slang term were repeated over and over, thereby normalizing the use of that word, and reducing a woman's entire physical presence to that word. That same word is used by men toward other men to denote weakness. That same word was thrown around on network television tens of thousands of times, while scatalogical terms related to human waste are ruthlessly bleeped out as being too shocking. Think about that. Words that equate women to female dogs or body parts are fine, but for God's sake, let's ruthlessly censor words about poop. And women use these words against each other as much as men do against women.

The consequences of these various kinds of backlash, both racial and gender-based, are going to affect us for years to come, and have bracketed my entire life-time.

Clerical Celibacy and... the Episcopal Church

I just got finished reading the Rev. Alberto Cutie's memoir, Dilemma. It was a very interesting book for presenting an insider's look at the difficulty faced by many Roman Catholics on their Church positions regarding human sexuality.

Of, course, being an Episcopalian and a woman, maybe I am just dense when it comes to the fact that I have always found it... um, odd... that officially celibate males have a real sense of perspective on issues of human sexuality, family planning, and married relationships. There is a lot of talk today, for instance, about Cardinal George's apology for comparing a gay pride parade to a Klan rally. He claims that he was speaking out of fear, and apologizes for hurting the feelings of others by his remarks.

This is interesting after reading "Padre Alberto's" book describing his move to the Episcopal Church after his relationship with a woman was revealed in the press in 2009. He details in his book about how he struggled against his intense feeling of love at first sight, his eventual decision to attempt friendship with his beloved, which then developed into forbidden intimacy according to his vows of celibacy, and finally the exposure of his relationship and the aftermath. The exposure of his affair (his term used in the book) no doubt was also fomented by the fact that the Rev. Cutie was a Latino media celebrity as well as a very telegenic spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami through his Spanish language talk shows and his nickname for these activities as "Father Oprah." Nothing sells more than outsiders' enjoyment of catching a Catholic priest (who has been giving relationship advice to the faithful) on a public beach with his hand on the derriere of a woman in a bikini, after all.

He rightfully protests against those who place Catholic clergy on a pedestal of superhuman saintliness. Of course, if you read the book carefully, you will see that he engaged in the same kind of objectifying of priests and of the priesthood itself throughout his career in the Church. Catholics are taught that their priests are completely set apart from the daily experience of the laity. That's how the whole thing works. And by requiring their clergy to hold themselves apart from normal everyday human intimacy, I believe that the Roman Catholic clergy DO end up with a lack of understanding of their parishioners' lives and troubles, just as the laity gets a skewed view of their priests' and bishops lives. The system is set up to create misunderstanding and division between laity and ordained. Further, this is not healthy for the care of the lay members of the Roman Church nor for its clergy.

Interestingly, today I came across this piece in the Huffington Post by Father Alberto about the revelation that an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles is the father of two teenaged children. Apparently, Father Cutie's situation was mentioned in some of the news reports regarding Bishop Zavala's secret family, and he therefore felt compelled to comment publicly. He ends his piece with some very wise words:

Leaving your familiar ministerial environment, daily life and work to follow your heart takes time and courage. Church reform also takes time. Hopefully, one day soon, all good men and women will be able to serve God in peace and freedom, without unnecessary non-biblical burdens. But in the meantime, wouldn't it be great if devout people would learn the value of greater compassion and forgiveness, especially to those who absolved them of their sins so many times? In situations like these, the words of Jesus are more relevant than ever: "Whoever has no sin, cast the first stone" (John 8:7).

 But what, you ask, does this have to do with the Episcopal Church? Well, that's simple. Father Cutie refused to abandon his relationship with his beloved, and thus was received into the Episcopal Church, where he now continues his ministry at Church of the Resurrection in Miami as a married father of two children (a son from his wife's first marriage, the other a daughter that he and his wife had together once they married after he left the Roman Church). There have been dozens if not hundreds of Roman Catholic priests who have also followed this path.

And there have been some Episcopal priests who have followed the opposite route into the Roman Church, as we were reminded this week with news that the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has been established here in the US for former Episcopalians who wish to continue their unique manner of worship within the Roman Church. Supposedly, according to the article linked above, there are over a hundred Episcopal clergy who have applied to be accepted into this special diocese-like ...thingy. And the leader of this ordinariate? The married former Episcopal bishop of the Rio Grande, the Rev. Jeffrey Steenson. Note the lack of "Rt." before his title. That's because the Roman church accepts married Anglican priests into the Church-- although they have to be re-ordained, which Steenson has done-- but it does not allow those converts to become bishops. So the Rev. Steenson will be an ersatz bishop of an ersatz diocese of ersatz Catholics who will also be Anglican-ish. And let's remember, these Episcopalians asking to be received into the Roman Church are there because they disagree on matters of human sexuality and gender when it comes to ordination-- the same basic issue that goes back to Father Cutie's reception into the Episcopal Church.

Clerical celibacy in the Roman Church has impacted the Episcopal Church for years. The Episcopal Church's evolving stance on matters of human sexuality and ordination of women and homosexuals likewise impacts the dialogue between not only the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion, but the dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, recall that a planned meeting over a "common statement of faith" between Anglican and Roman Catholic representatives was placed on hold in 2003 after the selection of the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop, and that the presence of ordained women within the Anglican communion has caused open criticism from Rome. Father Cutie himself noted in his book the perceived unfairness that he could have been a married Roman Catholic priest if he had come originally from the Anglican position-- not that I find that a very persuasive argument that he should have been allowed to get married while remaining a Roman priest. I hope he did not become an Episcopalian simply to be able to be married while retaining his priestly ministry, but it DOES appear that way in certain parts of his book.

The Catholic Church's policies seem to view human sexuality solely as a gift for the creation of children-- children who will then replenish the ranks of the faithful in the pews, providing money for the maintenance of the celibate Church hierarchy who has no understanding of the creation, sustenance, and maintenance of families due to their own vows and policies of self-abnegation. Therefore, the Roman Church teaches that homosexuals are "disordered," since their sexuality is not tied to procreation at its most obvious level. Women in the Catholic Church are glorified by celibate clergy as wives and mothers of others, but denied any role in Church governance, nor are their experiences as women understood, much less honored. This all returns to the fundamental disconnect between those who make policy in the Roman Church-- who have created numerous barriers between their way of life and the laity's way of life-- and the life experiences of the vast majority of their adherents in the pews.

People who deny their own sexuality really shouldn't be looked upon as authorities on anyone else's. And it seems to me to be a sad situation all around.

UPDATE: and the New York Times asks, "Will more married priests change the Roman Catholic Church?"
And here's an item from The Lead about the attitudes of the Roman Catholic laity toward our gay brethren and sisters.