MyQuest | my thoughts on life's journey

Is religious freedom under attack?

A variety of perspectives are offered on the Texas Faith blog.

Ravel/Unravel: Religious and Spiritual Identities

Omaha's Project Interfaith has launched a new web project entitled "Ravel/Unravel" that you might just enjoy.  Here is the opening blurb:

With RavelUnravel, we're exploring the tapestry of religious and spiritual identities that make up our communities and the complexities of how we construct and deconstruct identity.  We invite you to view the stories that make up RavelUnravel and add to the movement by sharing your own.

You can watch a number of videos of ordinary Omahans discussing their faith, from a variety of perspectives.

The Rain Bow

A powerful re-telling of the Noah story.

1 Samuel (Berit Olam Series)

1 Samuel by David Jobling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first picked up this volume six years ago when I was preaching on I Samuel and needed more commentaries on it. At the time I read portions of it and was deeply impressed. It ended up restructuring many of the sermons I had planned for that series.

The lections on early Israel return this summer, and I'm taking another, and more comprehensive, stab at preaching from these stories. This time I wanted to read all the way through this commentary ahead of the series.

And what a rewarding read it was. Jobling engages in "against the grain" interpretations that bring out the issues of class, race, and gender in the stories. The book contains insightful comments on the stories, reflections on the shape of the book and the canon, and exploration of the meta-questions of hermeneutics and how we engage in biblical scholarship. It is brilliant.

Among the interesting insights is his interpretation of the David and Jonathan relationship. He accepts that this is a homoerotic relationship, but points out that the Bible only ever indicates that Jonathan loved David, never the reverse. David, Jobling believes, used the relationship with Jonathan to get ahead, in the same way that David used his relationships with women. Jobling writes that Jonathan fills a similar role in the plot to David's women, and places his interpretation of Jonathan within that rubric.

Jobling also finds the Medium (or commonly "Witch") of Endor to play a key role in interpreting the book. She provides an alternative to the establishment history attempting to be narrated in the book. She is a woman, she lives along the disputed Philistine boundary, and she practices forbidden rituals. But she is able to successfully connect with the idealized past (in the person of Samuel's ghost) and bringing healing to Saul. I have not planned a sermon on her, but I think I'll have to restructure my series to do that.

View all my reviews

What is religious? More on the bishops lawsuits

First, E. J. Dionne writes about disagreements within the conference of bishops.  He reminds us that the vast majority of bishops have not entered into these lawsuits and that many feel they are politically motivated, participating in Republican attacks on the president.

Cardinal Wuerl writes an op-ed explaining his position in suing the administration.  The essence of the argument is that the government is definining what is and isn't religious and that that should be left to religious bodies.

This seems like a red herring to me.  Let me explain.

The United States has long (for one hundred years) been debating how to improve health care access.  It was a major part of the discussion and debate in the 2008 presidential election.  This led to the Affordable Care Act, passed by the elected representatives of the American people (even if many of us find the final bill flawed and lacking in the broad scope and radical change we had sought).

As part of that decision, we collectively chose that women had a right to access to contraception.  Since our current (still deeply flawed) system is for health care to be provided by employers rather than a single socially supported system, that meant employer-based health insurance systems would have to provide for this right.

This raises issues for religious-based employers, so it was left to the Department of Health and Human Services to decide where to draw the line in what is clearly a gray area.  And that is what the Department did.  You can disagree with how the line was drawn and advocate for a change, that makes sense, but the cardinal's language is overwrought.

The "government" (he sounds like Grover Norquist when he uses the word) is not deciding what is and is not religious.  The Dept. of HHS was making a policy decision of how to apply the religious exemption.  The department is not saying that schools and hospitals and social service agencies are not "religious," only that they do not qualify for the religious exemption from providing this right to their employees.  Government agencies and courts do make these sorts of decisions all the time, and it is not anything radically new.  There are also clearly established constitutional and legal guidelines for adjudicating these things (for example, if there is a "compelling interest," we can do something that violates religious conscience or practice).

And one more point, which I've made before, all of us end up participating in systems and contributing funds to things that violate our consciences.  I believe in non-violence.  My taxes support wars that I believe are immoral.  I cannot seek to opt out of this, nor should I.  And, interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church holds similar positions on war and violence, but you don't hear them making these objections anywhere nearly as big an issue as being told that they must provide what the larger society feels is a right of women's health.

Contraception and the Constitution

With the filing of all these lawsuits, we will get a definitive ruling on the meaning of constitutionally protected religious liberty.  Here is a good article in the Daily Beast outlining the issues and how Scalia's own precedent should mean a ruling in favour of the Obama administration, but you never know what this SCOTUS will do.

Cardinal supports equality for same-sex relationships

The Cardinal for Berlin called for such and joins what this article reveals is a growing chorus of prominent leaders in the Roman Catholic Church calling for a re-examination of church teaching on same-sex relationships.

Dodging the Mormon Bullet

This week Jeremiah Wright was back in the news, as we learned that conservative operators were considering using him against the President.  The story annoyed me because once again Wright and black liberation theology were not being treated properly.  This is one of the major and most influential schools of theology of the 20th century, and the New York Times article put the words black liberation theology in quotes!  

Our culture needs to hear these voices if they have not heard them before, and it is sad that they don't.  For me in 2008, I quit supporting Obama when he distanced himself from Wright and liberation theology and, instead, embraced the Christian realism of Reinhold Neibuhr.

My friend Greg Horton wrote about the new story this week and took an angle I have not seen in the press.  Of course Romney didn't want to bring up religion -- he doesn't want the doctrines of Mormonism to become part of the political debate.

McCain avoided all of this because he's a decent person, but McCain also had his own religion issue that only was reported in the religious press.  McCain was not a church member and never had been.  He's never been baptized.  Though he grew up in an Episcopal Church (and somehow wasn't baptized as an infant), he now attends a Southern Baptist Church (though most didn't know that), but he has never been baptized, never made a public profession of faith, never joined the church.  In most ecclessiologies right and left that means he isn't actually a professing Christian.

How do religious groups change their minds?

On the occassion of President Obama's support for marriage equality, the Texas Faith blog engaged its wide array of faith leaders to answer the question of how religious groups change their minds.  

Religion not the monopoly of the political right

The Washington Post relates how religious language and argument are now not only used by the American political right.  Progressive politicians have begun to increasingly site their faith and values.  And politicians on the right are having to defend their religious claims, not just site them.  This is good for religion and for politics.