Government or God?

The headline caught my eyes, as it undoubtedly intended. After all, it came from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, often ranked the best business school for marketing in the United States. Marketing knows about catching our eyes.

One of the key principles of Baptist polity is the idea, now firmly imbedded in American ideology and constitution, of separation of church and state, which is to say that the government can't tell you how or when to worship God, and conversely, the church can't tell the government how to rule. Massachusetts Baptist Isaac Backus, a victim of persecution and discrimination by the Congregationalists in Massachusetts where church membership did carry citizenship rights, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist, and they came up with the language that frames those rights and responsibilities. The underlying assumption of the founders, though, was that a belief in God was a given for good citizens. So, what choices do business school researchers think we are making now between government and God?

The research behind the Kellogg Insight headline is about how people seek stability in times of uncertainty, and that elections are just such times. Having waited with some trepidation on the outcome of this past week's election, most particularly the ballot questions in Massachusetts, I would agree that elections, even in places where our right to vote is firmly upheld, are periods of uncertainty. Yet I also take as a given that most people don't like change, and most of the impetus around our recent "throw the bums out" voting mentality is really a rejection of the changes that have occurred without our "permission." We blame the politicians for all of the changes in jobs, technology, the economy, our dreams and hopes, without acknowledging our own greed and gullibility. Yes, those mortgages really were too good to be true, and no, we really didn't have the money to pay for that big house, big car, and all of those gadgets. We vote for new politicians, believing in promises of a return to the good old days, and yet really cause more changes, because the good old days are gone.

Voting may feel like a regular part of the political landscape in many nations, but elections are also periods of uncertainty. Events like elections can shake people’s fundamental need to believe in an orderly structured world. To counter this apprehension, new research suggests people’s faith in a higher power becomes stronger. Surprisingly, the research also finds that when faith in the stability of God or the government is shaken, people turn to the other entity to restore a sense of control. (Kellogg Insight, November 2010)

Was this why we had so many guests in church last Sunday before the election? I had thought that Celtic folklore might have the explanation, that people are aware of the thinness of the boundaries between the mortal plane and the spiritual plane on Halloween and came to church for protection. In either case, there were definitely people who were in need, and seeking some sort of security or stability, a lot more than usual.

Researchers examined whether changing political climates can drive religious belief, especially faith in a controlling or interventionist deity. They found that beliefs toward God and the government can help satiate the same psychological need for structure and order and are interchangeable with one another.

“This research holds important implications for our understanding of the formation and strengthening of religious belief,” says Adam Galinsky, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management and one of the study’s authors.

So, if we don't believe in a controlling God, what does this research imply that we want government to look like? People need structure and order, and whatever provides that structure will be what people will turn toward. But, is it the institution itself or the belief that provides the stability? One of the research studies compared "people’s sense of governmental stability and faith in a controlling God both before and after an election." This compares perceptions and intangibles, not institutions.

Results from college campuses in Malaysia and Canada … found that perceptions of decreased government stability, such as immediately before an election, led to increased beliefs in a controlling God. Conversely, increased perceptions of political stability led to weaker beliefs in an interventionist God.

Higher levels of religious belief, commitment, and possibly extremism might be more likely in those countries that have the least stable governments and other secular institutions.

It seems to me that fundamentalists of all religions are those people who want more certainty, and want someone/some Power to be in control. This abdication of control and, often, of responsibility means that someone else, either government or God, is expected to take care of us and take care of our problems. It would follow then in those situations that we don't have much mutual responsibility for one another.

If, however, we believe in a loving God, rather than a controlling God, and we believe that we are called to love God and our neighbors, then we must take care of one another, and find ways in community to provide stability and safety. In the alternate stream of ancient traditions, the village, the tribe, the community was the safety net. As Christians today turn again to the teachings of Jesus and to what the community of the first followers of Jesus looked like, we find that our roots are in taking action to aid one another and to share with one another. We share those roots with faithful Muslims and Jews. We are not to worship the idols of wealth and power, nor to depend on Caesar. "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God, that which is God's." We are God's children, created in God's image. In giving ourselves to the love of God and of our neighbors, we find security and safety that endures and that does not depend on making a choice between government and God.

Surely what elections teach us is that we cannot rely on the powers that be for security. For an in-depth look at how we need to be confronting The Powers that Be, read Walter Wink's book of that title, or get an excerpt here. We, that means each of us and our neighbors, are the security and stability that we need to cultivate through the power of Love. That probably means giving up control and temporal power. Ah, and will people vote for that?

The Value of Community and of Friendships

I've been missing from the blogosphere for a while. The past few months my energy has been absorbed mostly by my job and in some travel. I did preach a number of times during the summer, so did write some sermons, but somehow in the midst of all of that busy-ness (someone illustrated for me the other night that the Chinese symbols for busyness = kill/heart), I could not find words or energy to write.

I am in the search and call process, and have had some hopeful "nibbles," but the search process is long these days, and waiting has been very hard, particularly while juggling an extra full plate at work, and this has not been conducive to my reflective writing while in the midst of uncertainty.

Instead I have turned to writing music while waiting. Two of the recent pieces of music I've written are appropriate for Advent, that period in the Christian church year that is about waiting for the coming. I've adapted biblical texts, rather than write my own, and so it's the music that carries the emotional load of my uncertainty, restlessness, waiting or yearning, I've arranged the pieces for choir as well as in solo versions—who knows, maybe I'll have enough music to put out a CD sometime soon. I'll keep you posted.

But this inwardness and frankly, feeling stuck, has been a bit stifling. So when I got an invitation to attend an evening conference on Feminist Practical Theology Thursday night at Boston University, I decided to make that a priority in my week. The invitation was from someone who is now a PhD student at BU who is a good friend of the woman who was my fellow student pastor and with whom I had taken a class once. God knew I needed something and this nebulous link led me to it. There is a God, and God does speak in nudges. What a blessing to be in a community for the evening of feminist and womanist pastors and theologians, mostly women and some men.

The topic of the evening was "Practicing New Ways of Being in the Academy and the Church: Conversations with Emerging Feminist Practical Theologians." This evening was convened by Dr. Susan Abraham of Harvard University and Dr. Shelly Rambo of Boston University (who has a new book out that I am planning to buy and read: Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining) as a follow-up to a similar conversation last year, and coordinated by Ph.D. students Danielle Tumminio, Elizabeth Siw0-Okundi, and Xochitl Alvizo. My thanks to all of them!

Presenters addressed these questions:

How do we move in institutions where women's presence and authority is still challenged?

Rev. Jennifer Wegter-McNelly spoke of the little stones and pebbles that come our way in churches as women in leadership, and sometimes as rocks to the head and how that wears on us. She finds intentional ways of coping through feminist practical theology, by dealing with the systemic sin and through communal grace, looking to love people as God calls us to love, and overlooking the individual stones that they throw. There is no reward, she said, for being self-muting. Bring your whole self to the ministry. The most subversive and radical act you can do as a minister who is a woman is in being incarnational.

Dr. Courtney Goto spoke to our need to give intentional mentoring to other women, and mourned that she has now aged out of being mentored as a young woman of color, and is no longer invited to the international conferences where she so admirably met all of those diversity requirements. So now the institutions do not provide a way for her experience and confidence to be passed on in those settings. We must seek ways to pass along our learning and experience.

During the question period, I asked these two women how they were mentored now. Rev. Wegter-McNelly spoke of three groups of intentional colleagues in ministry that provide both fellowship and mentoring: a group of pastors in her denomination, a group of friends from seminary, and a group of women pastors from nearby churches of several denominations. Dr. Goto said that she gets mentoring from Asian-American religion academics in other places, not from other practical theologians, acknowledging the competition that sometimes exists in the same field or institution.

How do we build and maintain our church and academic friendships with other women?

Rev. Dr. Brita Gill-Austern and Rev. Dr. Sharon Thornton from Andover Newton Theological School celebrated their own friendship in their remarks. They asked us to consider the questions: why is friendship important and why embodied friendships nourish our spirituality? Friendship is an often neglected and under-emphasized spiritual practice. Spirituality requires that we strengthen the ways to give and receive love, and our capacity to love self and creation. Friendship gives us the opportunity to do that.

Brita Gill-Austern spoke of 6 practices of friendship:

1) Attentive presence to the other—if the translation of "I am that I am" might be "I am present", then God is present when and as we are present to one another.

2) Taking time—to stop to see takes time like having a friend takes time. Besides the necessity of spending time together to nourish friendship, this time might include a quick email, flowers, picking up lunch for someone, or holding your friends in thought and prayer. She showed a Chinese calligraphy hanging—the Chinese characters for busyness are "kill" "heart". If we are too busy for friends, our hearts shrivel.

3) Mirroring—friends help us form accurate reflections of ourselves.

4) Mutuality—mutual generosity and equality.

5) Forgiveness—in spite of not because of. Friendships are not perfect, so we must forgive one another to maintain them.

6) Being & doing justice in the world—we are drawn to their goodness and it enlivens and nourishes ours.

Sharon Thornton quoted Mary Hunt: "Women's friendships are the ultimate political act." She spoke of three friendships with women who have given her courage to be, competence to lead, and hope to continue. Friends provide a place to be vulnerable and vulnerability requires strength to open up. Friends give us at least three gifts: laughter as a thread to subvert, vision and space to be, and gratitude that counters cynicism.

Recommended reading on friendship: Fierce Tenderness by Mary Hunt and The Friendship of Women by Joan Chittister.

How do we write for diverse audiences in both academic writing and congregational sermons?

Rev. LaTrelle Easterling reminded us that in sermon preparation you are the instrument, and so you need to prepare yourself just like the flute or trumpet player would prepare her instrument: clean, oil, polish. First, be in prayer—hear God and the Spirit. Next, bring the gospel to the issues, not my issues to the gospel. Third, notice the everyday. Nothing is lost in the economy of God—all that you notice can work its way into a sermon. Your sermons should be portable and adaptable in their examples to different audiences, because the main points speak to the text.

Learnings from this gathered community:

Rev. Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean of Boston University School of Theology listened throughout the evening and offered and asked for a summary of the practices that feminist practical theology offer.

She offered this metaphor. Practices are streams. Sometimes they rush joyfully, sometimes they slow and spread and go deeper, sometimes they take a while to find their way around obstacles, and sometimes they polish the pebbles and rocks that hit us and carry them downstream to become someone's treasures. We have heard about streams of tough vulnerability, beauty, laughter.

Loving the ordinary and unexpected.

Honoring the everyday sacred.

Loving and being loved by another so as to love all of God's creation.

Imagining what's not there yet!

Be intentional and create the friends and support you need.

Practice chins up defiance.

Being self-be who you are.

Uncertainty is okay as part of the process.

Toughening our beauty, beautify our toughness.

Telling vulnerable truth in full voice.

Nourish one another.

Speak your gratitude.

Recognize that writing is a lonely and communal process.

Celebrate community, especially across generations with the wisdom that each generation brings.

I celebrate the nourishment and blessing that this evening in community brought to me. Besides the presentations, I had the opportunity to spend some time and catch up with friends there and that was a great joy. I invite each of you in the coming week to spend some time holding your friends in thought and in deed and taking time for your friends as an intentional spiritual practice. The rewards will be self-evident.