On the heels of Thanksgiving, when the United States celebrated a moment of friendship between a band of ragtag Pilgrims and their native American benefactors, another early American denomination offered its sincerest apologies for how it treated American Indians 380 years ago.
The Collegiate Church — known as the Reformed Dutch Church when it set up shop in the New World in 1628 (just eight years after the Pilgrims land) offered its mea culpa to the Lenape Tribe on Nov. 27, Native American Heritage Day. “We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides, according to the Associated Press
"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" by Jennie A. Brownscombe. Not all early interactions between American settlers and Native Americans were as picturesque.
. “With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events.”
The ceremony was held in front of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City — right around where the Reformed Dutch Church planted its flag.
AP tells us that, while the ceremony appeared to be both warm and sincere, there was a certain acknowledgement that an apology centuries in the making might not have the oomph it ordinarily would have.
“After 400 years, when someone says ‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘Really?’ ” said Ronald Holloway, chairman of the San Hill band of the Lenapes. “There was some kind of uneasiness. But then you’ve got to accept someone’s sincere apology; they said, ‘We did it.’ We ran you off, we killed you.’ “
Wrangling over health care reform has been going on for, what, six months now? As many of you predicted, funding over abortion has taken center stage. And, according to Time magazine, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) is standing in the spotlight.
The article begins thus:
The point of the Oct. 21 press briefing was to highlight Senate Democrats’ outreach to faith-based organizations. Illinois’s Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, spoke approvingly about all the policy areas that religious leaders have been working on with Democrats before adding, “And not just on negative issues like abortion.” Across the room, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a pro-life Catholic, listened in silence.
A few minutes later, a reporter asked his opinion on abortion coverage in the Senate version of health reform. “We want to make sure that there is no federal funding of abortion,” began Casey, but Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow quickly cut him off.
“We do not have funding for abortion services in these bills,” she said. “Senator Casey doesn’t need to worry about it. He can vote for health reform.”
Casey smiled patiently but stood his ground. “We need more work done on this,” he said.
I’d imagine being a pro-life Democrat can be pretty thankless at times. But he’s not alone. According to Time, 64 pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives voted with most Republicans to include the so-called Stupak Amendment to its version of the health-care bill — an amendment that keeps fed dollars away from abortion funding.
We’re not done with this debate — not by a long shot. We’ll be talking about health care reform into the new year. Let’s hope we’re no longer talking about abortion by then — that the Stupak Amendment, or a version thereof, wins the day, and we can shift to other points of discussion.
I ran across a pretty interesting article in Esquire magazine written by Shane Claiborne, head of The Simple Way ministry.It was sincere, hip and unflinching in its criticism of “religion gone bad.” I agreed, I think, with everything he wrote. Yet, in a roundabout way, it caused me to again ask a pretty critical question of the faith we share: Is an unpopular faith necessarily a bad faith?
But before we get into all that, here’s a very quick recap of the column.
Claiborne begins by apologizing on behalf of all Christians for “the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.”
At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, “I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ.” A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That’s the ugly stuff. And that’s why I begin by saying that I’m sorry.
And then he comes with the equivalent of a written altar call — pretty gutsy, really:
I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter.
You can’t do justice to Claiborne’s thoughts in a couple of reprinted paragraphs, and I’d love it if you checked out the column yourself. But what the guy said resonated with me.
“The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination,” Claiborne writes. His sentiments, truth be told, aren’t all that new anymore: Don Miller, author of “Blue Like Jazz” and a number of other wonderfully written Christian books, comes from a similar place. Dan Merchant, creator of the entertaining, Michael Moore-esque doc “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers,” does too. All three believe that Christianity has a public relations problem — and that problem is, essentially, us.
I agree. I know lots of Christians who aren’t particularly good ambassadors of faith. Some are so embarrassing that, in my weaker moments, I kinda wish they’d either wise up or move on to a different religion so I — and we — wouldn’t have to keep apologizing for them.
But truth be told, I’m one of the worst examples of how a Christian should behave. I’m selfish, sinful, hypocritical and, as the previous paragraph clearly illustrates, not always that forgiving. For someone who supposedly gave his life to Christ, I have a hard time even giving up a parking space sometimes. I have a lot to apologize for.
But apologizing for the entire Christian faith? Man. It’s a great line, and I think it sparks some respect from those who have been hurt by the Church or Christians … but it still feels a little presumptive.
But my bigger question is this: Isn’t Christianity, in some ways, supposed to be polarizing? Isn’t Christianity’s biggest barrier to worldwide acceptance really … the faith itself?
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!” reads Luke 6:22. The Bible, particularly the New Testament, is filled with references to persecution. The Scriptures tell us that persecution, really, is part of the gig. This doesn’t give Christians license to be jerks: But it is an acknowledgment that Christianity, at its core, is as counter-cultural movement as there is. It’s powerful. It’s dangerous. And some people will find it pretty icky, no matter how much we reflect its beauty.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m completely on board with Miller and Merchant and Claiborne. I think Christians often don’t represent Christ very effectively. We sometimes wield our faith with all the gentleness of a cudgel. But when we read Claiborne, we should keep our eyes on the true faith as represented by Jesus — just as Claiborne says we should. We should not mistake relevance with popularity. We should apologize for what we’ve done wrong — but stand firm for what our faith is, without reservation, without apology.
We should remember Jesus in all things: His kindness and boldness. We should teach, care for the sick, love our enemies, turn the other cheek.
But we should also be willing to turn over a table or two when the circumstances call for it.
According to The New York Times, 145 “evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortion, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.”
The declaration was released last Friday, and the paper said it was an attempt to rejuvenate Christian conservatism — the same force that helped propel and keep George W. Bush in the White House for most of a decade.
Or it could be a group of religious leaders standing up for the issues they believe are important … but perhaps that’s just naive of me.
Back in my high school days, when bubblegum metal and New Wave music dominated the pop charts, I became aware of two musical phenomena: popular Christian music, spearheaded by the likes of Amy Grant and Stryper, and rap.
Both genres have seen incredible success since then. Rap, of course, is a dominant force in the culture these days, and CCM is one of the musical industry’s lone fields of growth. So I guess it makes sense that, twenty-some-odd years after I was listening to Grant and memorizing a rap song or two, those two musical forms have dovetailed into something known as holy hip hop.
The Associated Press profiled the fledgling genre, focusing its energy on Teverius Black — a music mogul wannabe who sold his house to start his Christian entertainment business. It’s now “producing music, a film, a reality television show and a gospel cruise,” all of which Black hopes will help launch gospel rap closer to the mainstream.
“I think holy hip-hop music is starting to make a move,” said Danny Wilson, a former road manager for rapper-actor LL Cool J and the main organizer of the Holy Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta. “Look how long it took regular hip-hop to take. You’re talking about 25 to 30 years for it to really make an impact to the point that it’s a driving culture that’s known all over the world.”
I kinda hope they have the same sort of success. Don’t you? It’d be nice for rap to have a little less bling and a little more King.
That’s what one Swedish motorist in Norway would have you believe, at any rate. The 46-year-old driver, according to The Local, has been stopped four times for driving without a license. “On one occasion,” the paper says (with an admirably straight face), “the man also attempted to hide his expired registration tabs by fashioning false plates out of cardboard, but Norwegian police saw through the ruse.”
The man claimed in court that he was Jesus. And, by virtue of being the son of God, he was not beholden to any earthly traffic laws: Divine diplomatic immunity, as it were. The court fined him about $360 and sentenced him to 30 days in jail.
A look at how the body of Christ is making news and making a difference—around the world, across the country, and on the other side of the street. »ABOUT PAUL ASAY
"The body is...made up of many parts"
1 cor 12:12
