Is atheism increasing?

Is atheism on the increase? Some statistical and anecdotal evidence certainly supports answering that question affirmatively (e.g., cf. Laurie Goodstein, “More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops,” New York Times, April 27, 2009; 2009 Pew Survey, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”.)

However, accurately determining whether atheism is actually increasing constitutes a far more difficult problem. Although no survey data on the number of atheists in colonial America exists, the number of eighteenth century worship attendees in America was perhaps a quarter of current attendance. Even if only a relatively small proportion of non-attendees were atheists, they might still out number atheists today.

Furthermore, nobody knows with assurance the proportion of atheists in the population fifty years ago because of a “halo” effect, an unwillingness to stand up against social pressure to confirm to the prevalent belief system. Current data clearly seems to show, if nothing else, that social pressure against openly acknowledging one’s atheism has waned.

That change seems triply beneficial. First, hypocrisy about one’s beliefs – of almost any kind – works to the detriment of all. The notable exception to that generalization is if the hypocrisy is integral to a prescribed program of behavioral therapy in which one avows ideas, and acts in accordance with those avowed ideas, intended to change deeply help negative or limiting beliefs. For example, if a person believes that he or she is worthless, a series of self-affirmations coupled with a program of behaviors associated with a healthy sense of self-esteem can actually help a person to develop a healthier self-image.

Pretending to believe in God has no benefit for the person or larger society. False statements of belief will not convince the hypocrite of God’s existence, will not help the person to experience God, and can actually dilute the credence of those who seek to believe because purported belief lacks transformative power.

Second, hypocrisy about one’s beliefs often discourages the social conformist from grappling with hard questions about God’s existence and harder questions associated with believing that God does not exist. Nobody can logically prove a negative. Thus believing that God does not exist – atheism – represents a far more demanding task than believing that God does exist, a challenge that can lead putative atheists to adopt some form of belief or at least agnosticism.

Finally, many people worship an idol. They direct their worship, no matter how well-intentioned, to a god of their own making, often a god in the image of their dominant parent (cf. Ana Maria Rizzuto, The Living God). Promoting conversation about the divine from all perspectives – believers of all varieties, agnostics, and atheists – often provides a helpful catalyst encouraging and enabling people to move beyond their current idol to a closer, less clouded image of the one true, living God, a God whom no words or images can fully or accurately describe.

Instead of a dichotomous choice between belief and non-belief, I find describing faith as the trajectory of one’s life much more helpful. Faith thus becomes living in the direction of God, i.e., in the direction of life abundant (also described in terms of liberation, salvation, health, etc.) and loving self, others, and the world. According to this approach, those whose trajectory moves in the direction of life abundant form a spectrum of beliefs and practices rather than simply two poles, belief and non-belief.

Human life expectancy

What is the life expectancy of humans?

That beguilingly simple question has two very different answers. First, the question asks, what is the life expectancy of a particular human? Except for those very close to death, nobody knows the life expectancy of a particular individual. Actuarial tables predict, based on the life span of those who have preceded us, the probable lifespan of groups of people depending upon factors such as current age, gender, nationality, health, etc.

United States life expectancy ranks 50th among world nations. Small nations (Andorra, Liechtenstein, for example), the European Union as a whole, and Jordan all rank higher than the United States with respect to life expectancy. Notably, in both Canada and the United Kingdom, whose nationalized healthcare systems U.S. opponents of national healthcare proposals love to lampoon, people have longer life expectancies than do United States citizens. (For a chart listing life expectancy by country, cf. either the CIA Factbook or Infoplease.com.)

The United States, with the highest per capita expenditures for healthcare on the globe, obviously does not obtain cost effective results for the nation as a whole. Those who bewail the quality or availability of healthcare in other nations would do well to ponder the disparity between healthcare expenditures and outcomes in the United States.

For all but nine years of my life, I have been the beneficiary of socialized medicine, i.e., the military healthcare system. Although I have certainly known people who had legitimate complaints, the system works very well. Talented professionals, all on fixed incomes, care for patients who pay nothing. The true value of this system is evident in the superb care that young men and women in uniform receive in combat zones. Perhaps the military healthcare system offers a model that the rest of the nation must adopt.

Second, inquiring about human life expectancy raises the question of how much longer humans will inhabit the earth. To date, the human population, in total, has had a built-in protection against robust, rampant disease killing everyone en masse. That protection – the relative geographic separation of various segments of the population – has now largely vanished as we increasingly become a single global community. A virus, more easily transmitted that HIV and more quickly lethal, represents a potential threat to the continuing survival of the human race. Ian Tattersall in his book, Becoming Human, traces the emergence of humans through evolution and notes the new possibility of mass extinction from disease. Of course, humans for approximately fifty years have lived with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust that would make earth uninhabitable.

The appearance of a new strain of swine flu in the United States and Mexico has prompted health officials to declare a health emergency. (Jack Healy and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu,” New York Times, April 26, 2009.)

Swine flu should not panic people. Only one death has yet been reported (although that is likely to change). Viruses can mutate quickly; people have different levels of resistances to viruses; past epidemics have always had survivors. Presuming that swine flu will end human life unnecessarily degrades the quality of life for those now alive by spreading unwarranted fear and concern.

Each new virus should not prompt a panic response. Instead, humans need to remember, with an appropriate humility, that we have no valid reason to believe that we are at the apex of the evolutionary tree of life.

However, the fragility of life should caution us to respect the earth lest the evils of global warming, diminishing biodiversity, and increasing population/consumption bode ill for the future. Similarly, humans should impose strict controls and limits on genetic experimentation involving humans lest the inadvertent consequence of the well-intentioned or the evil consequence of the malevolent result in completely destroying the human race. Finally, the affluent should recognize that they have a stake in the health of all people. A virulent, lethal disease may initially kill those in impoverished nations or those without access to healthcare but is in fact equally fatal to all regardless of socio-economic status, nationality, etc.

Happiness and the meaning of life

What is it that might best fulfill human needs? Science? Spirituality? Money? Power? Fame? Pleasure? No one can answer such questions without asking themselves what mankind aspires to most deeply, and what the very purpose of life might be. Buddhism’s answer to that question is to point out that, finally, what we all seek in life is happiness. But it is important not to misunderstand the apparent simplicity of that observation. Happiness, here, is not just some agreeable sensation but the fulfillment of living in a way that wholly matches the deepest nature of our being. Happiness is knowing we have been able to spend our lives actualizing the potential that we all have within us and have understood the true and ultimate nature of the mind. For someone who knows how to give meaning to life, every instant is like an arrow flying toward its target. Not to know how to give meaning to life leads to discouragement and a sense of futility that may even lead to despair and the ultimate – suicide.

- Mathieu Ricard, “On the Relevance of a Contemplative Science,” Buddhism and Science, B. Alan Wallace, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 261.

Ricard is a geneticist and Tibetan Buddhist monk. His thoughts about happiness and the meaning of life echo those of Aristotle (eudaimonia, a Greek word often translated as happiness but more accurately meaning the fullness of life) and Jesus (life abundant).

The Dalai Lama has written: “I regard all the major world religions, especially Buddhism, as instruments, or methods, for training the mind, for overcoming problems, primarily of the mind, specifically negative forces in our emotions that create mental unrest, unhappiness, fear, and frustration.” (His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, “Understanding and Transforming the Mind,” Buddhism and Science, B. Alan Wallace, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 97.)

This perceived overlap in purpose and method among the world’s great religions should surprise few. The idea that God would speak only to a few who belonged to a relatively obscure tribe in the Middle East, ignoring the remainder of the world’s population makes little sense. The truth of the world’s religions lies in their common mystery rather than in their differences. The paths they teach, while couched in particulars and varying in specifics, is in fact one path: developing a life-giving relationship with God and living in love with the world.

That said, choosing to follow the discipline of a particular religious path, even one illuminated by insights or practices borrowed from other paths, avoids an unhealthy idiosyncratic egocentricity. Sometimes that elements of a path that makes one most uncomfortable, that one most resists adopting, are the very elements that one most needs to practice in order to become truly happy.

Controversy has recently swirled around two Episcopal priests who adopted elements of other religious paths to complement their journey along the Christian path. In the case of former priest Ann Holmes Redding, her bishop deposed her for being both Muslim and Christian, the bishop believing that the two were incompatible. (“Holmes Redding Deposed,” Episcopal Café, April 1, 2009.) My sympathies in this case lie with the bishop. The rhetoric, the narrative in which Islam and Christianity cloak their individual paths, appears prima facie to conflict. While identifying with conflicting narratives certainly emphasizes that both are narratives, religious myths, and not sets of propositional truths, the dual identification places a much heavier burden on one to construct his or her own interpretative narrative so that the larger community can understand how the individual reconciles and integrates the competing narratives. This is a difficult task, and an even more challenging task to complete in a manner comprehensible by those who strongly identify with only one of the two narratives.

In the case of the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, Episcopal bishop elect of the diocese of Northern Michigan, the controversy erupted over his practice of a form of Buddhist meditation. (“Church Politics Gone Viral,” Episcopal Café, April 17, 2009.) This seems to me to be a tempest in a teapot, an example of a person who has chosen to follow a particular path (in this case, Christianity) and supplemented that path with a technique the individual finds helpful borrowed from another path (Buddhism).

The Christian path includes a several different forms of meditation. None of those meditation practices claims a particular uniqueness or is in any way constitutive of Christian identity. Using a different form of meditation – adopted from a different path – seems to present no prima facie challenge to following the Christian path with integrity. I have met other Christians, including some Episcopal priests, who regularly practiced a form of Buddhist meditation without compromising their Christian identity. In Forrester’s case, objections to his practice of Buddhist meditation seem an effort by opponents of his election to find as many reasons as possible why the Church should not consent to his election. This complaint, at least, is simply straw in the wind lacking substance.

Immigration and the price of citizenship

United States citizens are increasingly unwilling to pay the price of freedom. Sadly, that perhaps best explains a recent development in military recruiting. For the first time since the Vietnam War, temporary immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least two years are now eligible to enlist in the military. Enlisting puts such recruits on a fast track for citizenship, becoming eligible for citizenship after only six months of military service. Although the program will begin small, with only one thousand recruits in the first year, the program may grow to include one in six recruits. (“U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship,” Julia Preston, New York Times, February 14, 2009)

With an all volunteer force, one way citizens can pay the price of freedom is by paying enough tax to fund military salaries and bonuses at a sufficiently high level to attract all of the personnel required. The current recession illustrates this principle, having bolstered recruiting efforts as individuals unable to secure employment elsewhere enlist. The lack of recruits is especially acute in fields that offer higher pay and better working conditions in the civilian sector, e.g., healthcare. John Kenneth Galbraith in his book, The Culture of Contentment observed that the contented (i.e., the affluent) ceased to feel obligated to serve in the military after they successfully campaigned to end the draft in 1973 (p. 129).

Another way in which citizens can pay the price of freedom is by creating a system of national service. Reinstating the draft in any form remains highly unpopular and is a political non-starter. National service has several problems but has the advantage of spreading the burdens and opportunities of serving one’s country more equitably across the population.

Unwilling to accept either of those options, U.S. military leaders have opted to “sell” citizenship as a means of paying the price of freedom. I strongly support immigration. My family, like most in this nation, descended from immigrants. Immigrants infuse the nation with fresh energy and ensure an expanding gene pool. Past debates about this issue tended to focus unhelpfully on the tangential issue of immigration. Those past debates also unhelpfully bogged down over issues of security screening and reliability of immigrants, an important issue but one that ignores the far more fundamental issue of who should bear the burden and privilege of serving the nation.

“Selling” citizenship in exchange for national service immorally shifts the burden of citizenship to non-citizens, signaling an unhealthy decline in patriotism and further indicating the emergence of an entitlement attitude among Americans. The latter attitude is evident in the political disengagement that has led to the military’s new policy. If broad public support for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan existed, recruiting offices would overflow with applicants. If broad and active public dissent regarding those military operations existed, then a large and highly vocal coalition of movements would visibly campaign for prompt withdrawal. Instead, polls show a majority of Americans opposed to continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. But that opposition is weak, passive, uninvolved.

Tragically, U.S. citizens no longer claim the federal government as their government, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Permitting the military to barter citizenship for military service communicates that Americans no longer internalize the American narrative that this is a nation worth defending because of its efforts to embody principles freedom, equality, and justice.

Military working as civil servants - an oxymoron?

U.S. civilians are voting, de facto, against nation building efforts in Afghanistan. The U.S. State Department cannot recruit the desired numbers of accountants, agronomists, and other experts to aid Afghanistan’s struggling government. So the State Department wants to utilize military reservists, wearing civilian clothes and reporting to a civilian chain of command, to fill those positions. (Karen DeYoung, “Reservists Might Be Used in Afghanistan To Fill Civilian Jobs,” Washington Post, April 23, 2009)

The dearth of volunteers suggests that popular support among U.S. citizens for the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan remains low, if not ebbing. The work is unsafe and appears unlikely to produce substantive results.

Perhaps more importantly, the proposal raises questions about the status of those military personnel. Working out of uniform yet in a military capacity as an activated reservist paid by the Department of Defense, what is the status of such a person under the Geneva Conventions? Has such an individual acquired a status similar to that the Bush administration assigned to Taliban fighters – illegal combatants? Is the person a spy?

Military personnel should serve in uniform, with all the rights, duties, and hazards incumbent upon that status. Civilian employees should serve as civilian employees. Pretending that one is the other creates a disservice to the loyal military and civil servants involved, to the United States, and to international relations.

Taliban to rule Pakistan?

Pakistan’s internal problems are increasingly evident. The Taliban has grabbed control of towns within sixty-five miles of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. (Zahid Hussain, “Pakistan Taleban take over towns as they move closer to Islamabad,” Times Online, April 23, 2009)

This development underscores the failure of current policies and the desperate straight in which the Pakistani government finds itself. That government’s ceding of authority to the Taliban is eerily reminiscent of European nation’s attempting to pacify Hitler by conceding first and then another piece of territory to the Nazis. Each concession strengthened the Nazis and further emboldened them.

However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarking that deterioration of Pakistan’s internal security poses a moral threat to the United States and to the world constitutes an unhelpful hyperbole. Pakistan lacks missiles with which to launch a nuclear attack against the United States. The more immediate threat would be to U.S. forces in the Middle East, Israel, and India.

One of the first lessons a good counselor learns is that the counselor cannot solve the client’s problems; the client must also decide which problems he or she owns. Pakistan owns the problem of the Taliban operating in that country. Decades ago Pakistan formed an “unholy” alliance with the Taliban, seeing the alliance as doubly beneficial, first against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan and second against Hindu India. The alliance has produced more problems than benefits. At times, the U.S. was complicit in aiding Pakistani support of the Taliban, e.g., in providing funding for the guerilla war against Soviets in Afghanistan.

The Taliban operating in Pakistan are not a problem the United States owns. Aiding the Pakistani government provides propaganda capital for the Taliban worth far more than any assistance the U.S. can provide to Pakistan. This is a problem that Pakistan must solve.

The U.S. should prepare contingency plans for removing or otherwise safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in case the Taliban actually take over the country. But that should represent the limit of U.S. involvement. Backing corrupt governments has repeatedly produced foreign policy fiascos, and Pakistan appears headed to be the next nation added to that list. The United States needs the humility to recognize that it cannot solve every problem in the world, and certainly not solve problems that it does not own.

Regaining our moral bearings

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized President Obama for releasing memoranda that reveal interrogation techniques employed against terrorists, techniques that U.S. and international law define as torture. (Jenny Booth, “Dick Cheney demands Barack Obama reveals torture 'success' memos,” Times Online, April 21, 2009.)

Other Bush administration leaders, notably former Central Intelligence Agency Directory Michael Hayden, have announced that release of the memoranda puts the U.S. at risk, compromising national security by allowing enemies to prepare for the interrogation techniques they may face. Publicizing those techniques may also prompt terrorists to use the techniques against U.S. agents. (Tim Reid, “Torture memo has put US in danger, CIA tells Barack Obama,” Times Online, April 20, 2009.)

Meanwhile, President Obama insists that the U.S. had lost its “moral bearings” when it employed those techniques. Acknowledging those mistakes, he believes, is an important step toward regaining those moral bearings. Similarly, most of the techniques were already within the public realm. (“Obama Open to Prosecution, Probe of Interrogations,” New York Times, April 21, 2009.)

Cheney’s and Hayden’s comments remind me of adages most children hear, “Might makes right” and “If it works, it must be good.” Those adages, like Cheney’s and Hayden’s comments, deeply trouble me.

Might does not make right. The fundamental premise of ethics is that something other than power defines right and wrong. Similarly, just because something achieves allegedly desirable results does not make it right. The Nazi campaign to exterminate people with mental and physical handicaps would have produced a society in which nobody faced exceptional mental or physical challenges. Their method for achieving that result was horrendously immoral, i.e., kill everybody who does not conform to the Nazi definition of perfection. Each person the Nazis killed was an individual human being whose humanity was in no way diminished by his or her handicap(s). The egregious evil of this approach led to the equally horrendous campaign to exterminate other groups that did not satisfy the Nazi definition of human perfection, e.g., people of color, Jews, and gypsies.

Furthermore, I believe our planet is better off because for the unique gift to us that each person with a physical or mental handicap is. Noted physicist Stephen Hawking obviously exemplifies this principle. I like to think that I do, with my abysmal eyesight, as well. I know that severely handicapped are gifts to their parents and others who love them.

The United States is at its best when it acts out of strong moral conviction, e.g., a nation founded upon the principles of liberty, justice, and freedom for all. When written those words really referred to white, male, property owners. In the last two centuries, I thank God that we have taken huge strides toward ensuring that all U.S. citizens, regardless of race, gender, nationality, or economic status enjoy the same rights to liberty, justice, and freedom.

To the extent that U.S. represents a beacon of hope for a better life in the world, it depends upon actualizing the dream of liberty, justice, and freedom for all. To employ immoral methods against Islamicist terrorists or other enemies, justifying our actions on the basis of “success” erodes the nation’s moral foundation and represents succumbing to the worst form of utilitarianism, justifying immorality on the basis that it benefits the majority.

Strong protection for human rights prevents both a tyranny of the minority by the majority and the form of unprincipled utilitarian reasoning by which Hayden and Cheney attempt to justify illegal, immoral actions that eventually become self-defeating. For in the end, if the U.S. adopts unprincipled tactics and strategies then it emulates the tactics and strategies of its worst enemies, and has become the evil entity those enemies describe.

The United States is better than a nation of torturers and advocates of torture.

Earth Day

Wednesday, April 22, is Earth Day. Began in 1969, its founders intended Earth Day to call attention to the global environmental crisis. In the intervening thirty years, awareness has grown. Embarrassingly, much of the Church has remained indifferent while environmental problems have worsened, often taking a back seat to other, purportedly more urgent issues.

Today, the economic crisis cries for center stage. However, the economic crisis and environmental crisis intertwine inseparably with one another, as theologian Sallie McFague emphasized in her 2001 book, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. McFague describes two worldviews, the neo-classical economic and the ecological economic, first explaining the connection and then suggesting theologically responsible responses.

The neo-classical economic worldview emerged from market-based capitalism guided by the invisible hand of self-interest, which Adam Smith first outlined in the eighteenth century. Theoretically, independent, acquisitive individuals eventually work out, albeit unintentionally, a society’s optimal production and consumption solutions to the benefit of all. McFague helpfully observes that this worldview focuses on monetary gains as its sole aim, excluding the values of the fair distribution of profits from the earth’s resources and global sustainability.

For the world’s entire population to enjoy a Western, middle class standard of living, we would require the resources of four more earth-type, earth-size planets. We in the West – about one in six people globally – typically see ourselves as consumers. More is better. Newer is better. The most and the newest is best. McFague reports that 93% of U.S. teenagers say shopping is their favorite pastime and that the U.S. has an amazing sixteen square feet of shopping space per resident. All of this consumption aims to create personal happiness.

Yet, consumption does not translate into personal happiness. Certainly, some amount of consumption and wealth are essential for human well-being and happiness. Humans have obvious needs for water, food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare. Humans have less obvious but equally real needs for education, social structure, and enrichment, including art and spirituality. Some modest level of personal wealth generally enables one to obtain most of those goods, goods that the poor live without or only have in insufficient quantities. However, surveys indicate that U.S. personal happiness peaked in 1957, even though consumption has more than doubled since then. People with six figure incomes sometimes feel poor. One root of the current economic crisis was excessive consumption by the avaricious, those whose greed far exceeded their needs as they sought happiness racing along a pathway named “More is better.”

I do not think it coincidental that the unhappiest parish, as measured by personal attitudes and social problems (alcoholism, broken marriages, troubled children, etc.), that I have known was also the wealthiest. People were so busy pursuing material goals that they had little time for self or others. Consumption had become their ideology, even the de facto religion of many.

The emergence of market-based economies signaled the emancipation of the individual and a developing, healthy emphasis on human rights. However, the neo-classical economic worldview myopically emphasizes individuality, birthing planetary problems. The top three of those are diminishing biodiversity, rapid population/consumption growth, and global warming. Continued, unbridled exploitation of natural resources, including other life forms, to maximize consumption driven economies will only exacerbate those problems.

The ecological worldview that McFague sketches sharply contrasts with the neo-classical economic worldview. She defines ecological economics as the allocation of scarce resources to keep the planet working indefinitely. She characterizes the planet as God's house, a household that must support all of its members over the long run. God intends humankind to serve the planet (the house) as stewards.

Ecological economic presumptions differ starkly from those of neo-classical economics. Neo-classical economics begins with unconstrained distribution of resources to competing individuals, confident that over time, if all compete, issues of fair distribution and sustainability will work themselves out. Ecological economics begins with community, focusing on sustainability and distributive justice, believing individuals of all species, including humans, can only thrive as part of the planetary community. Ecological economics entails balancing community and individual, not subordinating one to the other, avoiding the consequences of exalting the individual at the cost of the community and the futility of attempting to exalt the community at the cost of the individual. In other words, healthy mutual interdependence replaces radical individuality.

Ecological economics does not discard market-based capitalism; instead, ecological economics views market-based capitalism as one of many tools in the economic toolkit. Like any good craftsperson, the steward of God's house will choose the tool that best fits a particular job. Not every job requires a hammer.

Humans who view themselves not primarily as consumers but as members of a planetary household will perceive a circle of life and aim for a spiral of sustainability rather than the linear progress associated with increased consumption and production. Sustainability embraces all life and thus requires distributive justice. Furthermore, sustainability emphasizes the indispensability of all types of capital (financial, physical resources, knowledge, relationships, etc.). Poverty, the lack of financial and other forms of physical capital, like the consumption that neo-classic economics promotes, destroys sustainability. For example, poor people often use environmentally destructive slash and burn agriculture in a desperate struggle to survive. Poverty, contrary to neo-classical economic theory, is increasing. The income gap between the world’s richest and poorest fifths has exploded from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997.

By the standards of neo-classical economics, i.e., measuring gross domestic product per capita, the United States ranks 10th in the world; the top nine nations, except for Norway, are small countries, such as Liechtenstein and Qatar. Canada ranks 21st. (CIA - The World Factbook -- Country Comparisons - GDP - per capita (PPP)) However, compared using the United Nations Human Development Index, Canada ranks 3rd and the United States 15th. (Human Development Reports (HDR) – United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)) The Human Development Index better gauges ecological economics, including not only per capita income but also education and life expectancy. Admittedly, Canada has its share of problems and challenges. Nevertheless, the reversal in rankings between Canada and the U.S. with respect to per capita gross domestic production and the Human Development Index highlights an inherent weakness of neo-classical economics. Maximizing consumption does not maximize quality of life, let alone sustainability.

Faith communities are rightly addressing the concerns of those whose livelihood, dwelling, or well-being the current economic crisis imperils. More importantly, faith communities should attempt to use the economic crisis as a catalyst to shift worldviews from neo-classical economics to ecological economics. Ecological economics affirms the importance of both community and individual. Ecological economics replaces an ethic of human dominance with an ethic of human stewardship that values all life and all creation. Ecological economics enriches life for all, in a sustainable manner. Finally, ecological economics, unlike neo-classical economics, emerges out of a profoundly Christian understanding of creation.

McFague enumerates three simple rules of ecological economics that if adopted by everyone as part of his or her spiritual discipline would transform them and the planet: (1) take only your share; (2) clean up after yourself; (3) keep the house in good shape for future occupants.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

On April 20 of this year, Adolf Hitler would have celebrated his 120th birthday; Israel celebrated Holocaust Remembrance Day in honor of the six millions Jews the Nazis killed; the second United Nations conference on civil rights convened in Switzerland. The ironic synchronicity of the first two events is intentional. The third is not.

The Nazis under Hitler’s leadership engaged in the most extensive, systematic effort to eliminate a group of people in the world’s history. Other leaders have caused more deaths, e.g., historians attribute as many as fifty million deaths to Stalin’s reign. Other brutal dictators have been more capricious (e.g., Idi Amin) or equally malevolent (e.g., Pol Pot). But never before or since has the world witnessed such an extensive, systemic effort to kill an entire group of people.

The world should claim Holocaust Remembrance Day as an international day of commemoration and hope, remembering all peoples victimized by genocide and collectively promising, “Never again. Never again will the world permit genocide.”

Genocide denotes the deliberate killing of a very large number of people from an ethnic group or nation. The worst contemporary genocide occurred in Burundi. Over one hundred thousand Hutus died in a series of brutal clashes between the Hutus and Tutsis while the rest of the world did nothing. Burundi’s lack of natural resources and strategic importance gave no nation an incentive to intervene. We have yet to learn one of the basic lessons of the Holocaust: genocide diminishes the humanity of all.

The first United Nations conference on racism met in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. That conference adjourned after producing only a draft declaration, which, among other things, singles out Israel as racist and condemns it for committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Not all immoral killing constitutes genocide. Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has become increasingly immoral; Israel’s military tactics in responding to the Palestinian terrorist threat employs excessive force, kills and injures too many non-terrorists, and escalates the level of conflict rather than enabling progress toward peace.

The United States, Israel, France, Germany, Finland, and other nations refused to attend the 2009 conference because of the 2001 debacle and convinced that this conference would become an even worse nightmare.

The President of Iran’s speech on the conference’s first day suggests that the early negative assessment was fully justified. President Ahmadinejad berated Israel for using the Holocaust as a pretext to persecute Palestinians. On the hand, this charge represents some progress – at least Ahmadinejad, a former Holocaust denier, tacitly abandoned that blatant defamation. (Frank Jordan, “Iran's leader sparks Western walkout at UN meeting,” Washington Post, April 20, 2009.) On the other hand, Ahmadinejad’s partisan position conveniently ignores the truth that the Palestinians share equal responsible with the Israelis for their ongoing conflict and mutual immoral acts that fuel the spiral of escalating violence.

End slavery now

Slavery continues to flourish in India, with perhaps 15 million children living enslaved, most of them working long hours under abysmal conditions in factories. Impoverished parents sell an unwanted child, receiving as little as $250 dollars, to feed the rest of the family. Nepalese children sometimes cost less than $20. Purchases of some children and women slaves employ their slaves in the sex trade. (Rhys Blakely, “India's brisk trade in child slaves,” Times Online, April 20, 2009)

Slavery is wrong. God gives each person dignity and worth, endowing each as an individual agent in the human community. No human should own another human.

Two hundred years ago, Christians in the United States based their arguments in support of abolishing slavery in such claims rather than more explicit scriptural arguments because they, like the Christian proponents of slavery, believed that the Bible endorsed, or at least permitted, slavery. (Mark Noll, America’s God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 386-401)

Today, I know of no Christian ethicist, theologian, or biblical scholar who believes that the Bible permits, much less endorses, slavery. Additional research, reflection, and prayer in the intervening two hundred years have led scholars and the Church at a large to a substantial revision of normative interpretations and ethical principles. This process illustrates the healthy, progressive development of religious ideas. This story of women in the Church repeats this progressive development. I predict that the story of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people will echo the save progressive developmental process in years to come.

In the meantime, the Church vociferously and unrelentingly must oppose slavery wherever it continues to exist. The presence of slavery in a nation like India, a democratic nation briskly striding toward economic development, is especially egregious. Resources spent in futile battles to persuade people to remain in the Anglican Communion who have already decided to depart should instead fund efforts to end slavery, an achievable goal, a life changing goal for those now enslaved.

Torture and Iranian nuclear weapons

This entry supplements two previous entries, one on accountability for legalized torture, and the other on foreign policy options with respect to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. (Of course, a wag might comment that Iran obtaining nuclear weapons constitutes torture for Israel, the U.S., and others!)

First, new information indicates that only two persons had access to detainees at Guantánamo, the CIA interrogator and a psychologist. The psychologists apparently played a leading role in determining what techniques would and would not inflict severe pain or suffering on those interrogated. Psychologist approved techniques included waterboarding and the use of insects to induce fear. (Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, “Interrogation Memos Detail Psychologists' Involvement; Ethicists Outraged,” Washington Post, April 18, 2009)

The Defense Department employs some of the approved, psychologist monitored techniques in its Survival, Escape, and Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training intended to prepare aviators to resist enemy torture. By definition, many of those techniques when conducted by the enemy (as opposed to a training environment) constitute torture. The Defense Department employs those techniques precisely because the techniques are torture, in an effort to prepare potential POWs for harsh interrogations that contravene international law.

Medical ethicists find the psychologists’ cooperating in the harsh interrogations unethical, violating the medical standards of their profession to do no harm. I find that assessment an easy and certain conclusion to affirm. As is the case with lawyers who may have violated their professional obligation to provide advice consonant with the law, the nation should hold psychologists who violated the ethical standards of their profession accountable for any ethical violations and legal offenses.

Second, Sheera Frenkel reports in the Times Online that Israel is preparing to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities (“Israel stands ready to bomb Iran's nuclear sites,” April 18, 2009). Preparations include purchase of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) from the United States, practice missions, and civil defense drills. Frenkel writes that Israel would probably not strike Iran without prior approval from the United States. Israel’s actions, for better or worse, directly affect world perceptions of the U.S. and the U.S.’s ability to achieve its foreign policy goals.

A preemptive Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facility that fails will boost Iran’s standing in the Muslim world, provide additional propaganda material for Israel’s enemies, reinforce Iran’s belief that it requires nuclear weapons to ensure its own safety, generate internal political unrest in Israel, and most likely derail chances for any near term progress toward peacefully settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A failed strike benefits nobody.

A preemptive Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facility that succeeds will significantly slow Iran’s progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons, provide additional propaganda material for the U.S. and Israel’s enemies, reinforce Iran’s belief that it requires nuclear weapons to ensure its own safety, and most likely derail chances for any near term progress toward peacefully settling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In sum, a successful strike benefits only Israel and the U.S. to the extent that those two nations legitimately fear Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

The better option is for Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facility. The world needs to accept that Iran is well on its way to becoming a nuclear power and that peaceful coexistence requires new approaches, new policies, and improved relationships. Iran’s national interest lies in having, but not using or proliferating, nuclear weapons.

Legalized torture and accountability

President Obama’s decision not to prosecute CIA operatives for torturing suspected terrorists is the right moral choice.

The best available information indicates that the CIA operatives based their actions on the legal advice they received from Bush administration lawyers. Compliance with that guidance and administration guidance represents a good faith effort on the part of the CIA to obey what they believed to be legal orders. (For more information on the decision and what happened, cf. Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate, “New Interrogation Details Emerge as Administration Releases Justice Department Memos,” Washington Post, April 17, 2009.)

If serious flaws skewed the legal guidance, then the culpable individuals are the lawyers who prepared the guidance. Many government leaders for decades have hesitated to take decisive action without first consulting their staff legal advisor. This hesitancy has given lawyers unprecedented power in the corridors of power, on ship bridges, and on the battlefield.

The U.S. legal system operates on an adversarial basis, with lawyers advocating a client’s interest. However, in-house counsel providing ex ante guidance to a decision maker on what the law allows and prohibits have a moral obligation to honestly interpret, without breaking, the law.

The Bush administration obviously wanted to permit interrogation tactics widely perceived to fall within the international definition of torture, an opinion around which legal opinion has subsequently coalesced. Government lawyers appear to have accepted the necessity for torture, then sought to find a legal rationale that justified that conclusion.

Independent peer review of the legal memoranda authorizing water boarding and other interrogation techniques that fall under the legal definition of torture should determine whether the lawyers who prepared the memoranda failed to fulfill their professional obligation to uphold the law. If so, then the government should initiate legal or disciplinary proceedings, as appropriate, against the lawyers involved. Those lawyers, not the CIA operatives acting in good faith, are culpable for the government’s egregious behavior torturing terrorist suspects. Similarly, the nation should hold any personnel conducting interrogations who went beyond the limits established in these legal memoranda accountable.

Moral leadership in defense planning

The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has publicly complained that senior officers and the Pentagon bureaucracy are not on a war footing, in spite of young servicemembers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, Gates believes that the leadership and bureaucracy have overly focused on fighting the next war. (Peter Spiegel, “Gates Takes on Pentagon,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2009)

Secretary Gates’ complain raises an important ethical question: what is the duty of senior leadership and the Pentagon, to focus on current or future operations? Assuredly, that represents a false dichotomy; the responsibility is to conduct current operations while preparing for future contingencies. However, fiscal realities impose a severe constraint on doing both concurrently. What is the best balance? For what future existential threats must the U.S. military prepare? What force structure, procurement, and personnel programs are essential for minimizing casualties from the U.S. and other nations in current operations while ensuring as rapid as possible progress in successfully ending those operations?

These questions represent the nexus of the ethical and practical: military leaders, civilian and in uniform, have a constitutional duty to defend the nation. A responsibility to exercise good stewardship of the nation’s resources, expending as few lives and dollars as necessary, is inherent in that duty. What criteria, moral and otherwise, are particularly relevant as leaders make those decisions?

Contrary lessons in living well

A new singing sensation has taken Great Britain by storm. The audience snickered and judges looked openly skeptical when Susan Boyle walked on to the stage of “Britain’s Got Talent,” the United Kingdom’s version of “American Idol,” for her initial performance. The reactions by the audience and judges reflect a culture accustomed to judging people by their physical appearance. Worse yet, the reactions typify a growing rudeness, a gratuitous unkindness, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Then they heard Susan Boyle sing. Her performance, well worth hearing, is available on You Tube (Susan Boyle - Singer - Britains Got Talent 2009). Wow! Here is a woman with talent who seems comfortable with herself, yet still striving for a better life, an example for all of us.

In the United States, meanwhile, sales of guns and ammunition for the first quarter of 2009 are up 27% over 2008 according to the FBI. Some buy guns as an investment, others for protection in case of further deterioration in the ability of the criminal justice system to protect people. (Alex Roth and Betsy McKay, “Fear and Greed Have Sales of Guns and Ammo Shooting Up,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2009)

Once again, appearances are deceptive. Guns give an illusion of safety. In fact, people are safer without a gun in the house than with one, gun related injuries and fatalities from accidents and domestic violence exceeding injuries and fatalities caused by intruders. Ready access to weapons and trusting in armaments to keep one safe do not improve one’s quality of life.

Guns are useful. Hunting, done safely and following judicious rules on seasons and limits, fills a void created by humans having pushed natural predators out of many areas. Police provide protection from, and an appropriate response to, the small number of miscreants and mentally ill bent on harming others. Collections can have historical value. A nation’s armed forces attempt to ensure national defense.

However, guns answer few of life’s really important questions. Rather than relying upon armaments, people (and perhaps nations!) would do well to cultivate a web of positive relationships, striving to build a community in which they can feel safe without guns.

Tax day burdens

April 15th is tax day, the deadline by which the law requires individuals to file their previous year tax return (unless the person requests an extension) and to have paid any tax due. In 2006, the top 20% of earners paid 69.3% of all taxes paid in the United States; the middle 60% paid 29.7%; the bottom 20% paid 0.8%. To put those numbers in perspective, in 2006 the top 20% of earners made approximately 56% of pre-tax income, paying 86% of all federal income taxes collected.

A progressive tax structure imposes a progressively higher tax rate as income increases. Like most ethicists, and especially Christian ethicists, I believe that a progressive tax structure is the most fair. People with low incomes spend a far greater percentage of their income on life’s necessities, often having little or no discretionary income to spend as desired.

The more difficult question is the degree to which the structure should be progressive. No good heuristic exists for shaping that decision. One survey reports that 56% of Americans feel they pay too much in taxes, with that dissatisfaction concentrated among those earning thirty-five to fifty thousand dollars per year.

Those numbers are remarkable, first, because a startling 44% of Americans feel their tax burden is reasonable. That percentage is startling because of the rabid anti-tax rhetoric that dominates so much of the media and right wing political rhetoric. Americans know that they get good value for money for most of their tax dollars. Second, the survey data is surprising because of the income bracket of those most dissatisfied. In spite of public images and rhetoric, apparently many in the top 20% of all earners believe that they shoulder a reasonable tax burden.

Perhaps one good indicator of an appropriately progressive tax structure is when all income brackets are equally satisfied/dissatisfied with their share of the tax burden.

Paying taxes is not fun. Yet humans are social animals who live in community. Roads, criminal justice, education, defense, social safety net, and a wide variety of other programs make for a better quality of life, a safer life, and a more just and compassionate community. By paying taxes, individuals contribute to the common good, trusting their neighbors who are employed by the government or who serve in an elective capacity to be good stewards of those funds.

(Tax data, income data, and other statistics are from Jeanne Sahadi, Who pays taxes - and how much? A tax day perennial,” CNNMoney.com, April 15, 2009.)

Discouraging Middle East developments

Women in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, march to protest a law restricting the rights of Shiite women and legalizing marital rape (Dexter Filkins, Afghan Women Protest New Restrictive Law, New York Times, April 15, 2009).

Iraq struggles to gain international recognition. Doubts linger, however, about the government’s viability and the extent of Iranian influence over the Iraqi government. (Alissa J. Rubin, Iraq Tries to Prove Autonomy, and Makes Inroads,” New York Times, April 15, 2009)

The United States, hoping to emulate in Afghanistan the local militia (the Awakening Movement) that it created in Iraq, struggles to find Pashtuns (the majority tribe) willing to join. The few who have dared to join have suffered Taliban reprisals: execution of the person who joined and several of his family members. (Dexter Filkins, “In Recruiting an Afghan Militia, U.S. Faces a Test,” New York Times, April 15, 2009)

The first two stories represent a classic mixture of good news and bad news. The good news is that women have begun to express themselves and the Iraqi government is gaining international credibility. The bad news is that the Afghan women protesters met a hostile reception from men who assaulted the marchers with stones, literally and verbally. The bad news is that after six years the Iraqi government is only now beginning to establish its international credibility. A colleague when I taught in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, Vali Nasr, in his book, The Shia Revival, predicted that the U.S. invasion of Iraq would inevitably strengthen Iran and its influence in the Middle East, a prediction time has proven correct. This makes the U.S. establishing relations of mutual respect with Iran even more vital while raising fears of festering dissent and instability among Sunni Arab nations.

The third story is just bad news. The local militias brought only temporary stability to Iraq and failed to address the underlying problems. Afghanistan’s internal dynamics are different. Attempting to apply a model that at best was only marginally successfully in Iraq bodes ill.

What is next for Pakistan?

Radical Islamist groups threaten Pakistan’s stability, its viability as a nation.

The U.S. and allied invasion and occupation of Afghanistan intended to defeat the Taliban, establish democracy in Afghanistan, and bring stability to that entire region has miserably backfired. Instead of defeating the Taliban, the Taliban retreated to their Afghan mountain strongholds and to northwester Pakistan. Afghanistan has a corrupt government whose rule does not extend far beyond Kabul. In Pakistan, they are forming alliances not only with Afghan refugees but also with local dissidents.

The influence of these radical Islamists manifested itself in Pakistan’s recent decision to authorize a Shiite version of Islamic law in some areas of the nation. That decision contravenes Pakistan’s commitment to human rights, e.g., Pakistan signed the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Over half of that area’s population (women) is chattel instead of persons.

Islamist organizations, the Taliban, some affiliates, and some independent groups, now govern, de facto, substantial portions of northwestern Pakistan. Pakistani police and army are afraid to operate in much of the area.

Now, the Islamists are openly beginning to move into the Punjab, home to half of Pakistan’s population and the heart of the nation. Islamists find allies among that portion of the populace disgusted and/or disenchanted by the lifestyles of Pakistani elites, those disenfranchised by a corrupt, non-responsive government. (For example, cf. Sabrina Tavernise, Richard A. Oppel, and Eric Schmitt, “United Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart,” New York Times, April 14, 2009.)

What can the U.S. do to help Pakistan?

First, the U.S. needs to recognize and keep in constant focus that previous U.S. actions caused or greatly exacerbated many of Pakistan’s problems. The Bush administration repeatedly pushing General Musharref, then Pakistan’s president, to cooperate in squelching the Taliban skewered Musharref on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, the Pakistani government had supported the Taliban for years. Some government officials aided the Taliban from ideological sympathy. More aided the Taliban believing them a resource in Pakistan’s never-ending conflict with India. Government cooperation with the U.S. cost the Pakistani government credibility with its own people (e.g., Musharref was seen as an American stooge), thereby enhancing Islamist credibility and traction. On the other hand, the U.S. contributed badly needed, substantial aid to Pakistan, especially military assistance that helped to keep the regime in power.

Second, U.S. policymakers must never forget that Muslims have historically used Islam as a vehicle for expressing and organizing political opposition to unjust, corrupt regimes – like Pakistan’s government. This confronts the nominally Islamic government of Pakistan with an impossible choice. Suppressing dissent cloaked in Islamic rhetoric further proves the government’s apostasy, injustice, and corruption. Permitting the dissent to remain unchecked ensures that dissenters will grow in number and influence. Resolution of the problem requires establishment of decent government, something that Pakistanis must do. The U.S. aligning itself with one or another faction diminishes that faction’s internal credibility, lessening the likelihood of a reasonable outcome.

Third, the U.S. needs to disentangle itself, as rapidly as feasible, from internal Afghanistan and Pakistan affairs. Pakistan needs to sort out its internal problems on its own. Counterterrorism operations should focus exclusively on terrorism. The measured, coordinated response to the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama typifies the appropriate use of force in responding to criminal behavior, including terrorism. No nation, including the U.S., can build a democratic government in Afghanistan.

Fourth, Pakistan poses additional risk because it is a nuclear power. The U.S. can constructively attempt to pressure India to diminish border tensions with Pakistan. For example, India could declare a moratorium on efforts to resolve its border conflicts with Pakistan until Pakistan achieves internal stability. Nuclear war on the Asian subcontinent is in neither nation’s best interest. The U.S. can similarly prepare rapid response plans to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in case the government collapses and radical Islamists grab power.

Fifth, the U.S. should strive to build bridges with Pakistan. Bridge building between nations is perhaps the single most effective strategy for promoting stability and peace. The Obama administration demonstrated an ability to act in this way by opening the door with Cuba, however slightly, when it eased some travel and financial transfer restrictions. (Michael D. Shear and Cecilia Kang, “Obama Lifts Broad Set Of Sanctions Against Cuba,” Washington Post, April 14, 2009.)

Foreign policy options

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has concluded that it is too late to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear power. I reached the same conclusion in a prior Ethical Musings blog entry. Consequently, he proposes a “normalization scenario” that offers advantages to Iran, Israel, and the United States:

“Iran ceases military support for Hamas and Hezbollah; adopts a “Malaysian” approach to Israel (nonrecognition and noninterference); agrees to work for stability in Iraq and Afghanistan; accepts intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency verification of a limited nuclear program for peaceful ends only; promises to fight Qaeda terrorism; commits to improving its human rights record.

“The United States commits itself to the Islamic Republic’s security and endorses its pivotal regional role; accepts Iran’s right to operate a limited enrichment facility with several hundred centrifuges for research purposes; agrees to Iran’s acquiring a new nuclear power reactor from the French; promises to back Iran’s entry into the World Trade Organization; returns seized Iranian assets; lifts all sanctions; and notes past Iranian statements that it will endorse a two-state solution acceptable to the Palestinians.” (Roger Cohen, “Realpolitik for Iran,” New York Times, April 13, 2009)

The advantages to Israel are one less nation openly committed to its destruction and because the plan eliminates any rational for launching a preemptive strike against Iran, a far more difficult task than its previous preemptive strikes against Syria, Iraq, and Sudanese smugglers.

Creative engagement, exploring the full range of viable options and based on mutual respect, is foundational for effective diplomacy. Cohen cites the example of President Nixon establishing diplomatic relations with China as what is possible through diplomacy. Foreign policy based on narrowly conceived, coercive economic sanctions and military actions has proven disastrous in the Middle East. The current administration stands to lose nothing by returning to policies of creative engagement and may gain much. Such options, unlike the hubris of policies intended to promote one’s own self interest through coercion, cohere well with the Christian vision of the good life.

Easter

Newsweek’s Easter week cover features the story, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” That story, for those of us old enough to remember, may evoke recollections of the provocative Time magazine 1966 Easter week that queried, “Is God Dead?”[1]

Is God dead? Yes, if one spells God with a lower case g. Church of England bishop and theologian John A.T. Robinson argued in his 1960s classic, Honest to God, the idea of a supernatural god, spelt with a lower case g, a god who interrupts the natural order and its physical laws to work occasional miracles, is beyond belief, even unintelligible, to modernity.[2] Episcopal Bishop Jack Spong has further popularized that assessment in his numerous books.[3] The supernatural god's failure to intervene to end the Holocaust sounded its death knell for many people. Yet bestselling atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett continue to debunk this god, a god we agree never existed.[4]

Is God dead? No, if one spells god with a capital G. The God of the Bible, who exists in and throughout the cosmos, composed the natural laws as part of the creative process and has no need to suspend those laws in order to act. Prayers for healing and help in receiving life abundant and loving others, prayers consistent with the highest religious ideals, yet prayers that frequently receive no affirmative reply say more about how God works in the cosmos than about God's lack of compassion or health. This God, the living God, about whom we speak only with difficulty and in metaphor, knowing that to literalize any metaphor is to create an idol, is the God whom we proclaim, seek, and worship.

Has Christian America declined and fallen? Yes, or at least is declining, if Christian America connotes the religious right and Christianity’s cultural influence as measured by public opinion and average Sunday attendance. Citing the 2008 elections and survey data as evidence, Newsweek reports that we now live in a post-Christian America.[5]

Has Christian America declined and fallen? No, if Christian America connotes individuals recognizable by the quality of their spiritual lives and love for others. These are people in whom others easily recognize the powerful presence of God, spelt with a capital G. Some of these individuals are known to us only through history, including saints named in the liturgical calendar like Julian of Norwich, William Wilberforce, and Martin Luther King, Jr. A parent, grandparent, sibling, or friend may also be among the persons in whom we easily recognize God's powerful presence.

Scripture is full of stories about people in whom others readily recognized God's powerful presence. Consider John’s account of the resurrection (20:1-18). Jesus was crucified, died and buried on a Friday. The Sabbath, which had begun Friday at sunset with its prohibitions against travel, work, and touching the dead, was ended. Mary Magdalene went to the tomb the next morning, Sunday. I suspect she went to mourn and again to feel close to Jesus, or at least his body, even as we visit the tomb of a recently deceased beloved for similar reasons. To her great consternation, Mary discovered an empty tomb. Stunned and bewildered, she raced to tell Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” – an oblique reference to John, the gospel’s nominal author – that Jesus’ body was missing. The two men understandably didn’t believe her. She was a woman; first century Palestinian Jewish men thanked God daily for not being a woman. Furthermore, who would want to steal Jesus’ body? So the two men rushed to the cemetery to verify Mary’s tale. They also saw the empty tomb. Only then did they believe Jesus’ body is missing – this is the correct meaning of the often misinterpreted verse that reports John believed after looking in. Dispirited, confused, and frightened, none of the three had any inkling of a resurrected Christ.

Almost two thousand years later, hundreds of millions gather on Easter to worship the risen Christ. Church attendance soars everywhere. Certainly, some come out of habit. Others only come out of respect for a beloved family member who appreciates their presence. Some are drawn by the wonderful music. Still others, especially in centuries past, came to celebrate the ending of winter and arrival of spring, a practice we preserve by associating flowers with resurrection. Children have told me that Easter is the best Sunday of the year because of the associated Easter egg hunts and free candy.

None of those reasons – and they all represent good, positive aspects of life, unless perhaps you are a parent struggling to cope with a child who seems on a permanent sugar high – none of those reasons explains Christianity’s continuing existence. What transformed a dispirited threesome into a global community of billions spanning two millennia who have identified with the Christ?

Confusing, multiple paradoxes confound those who study the Bible’s accounts of the resurrected Christ while clinging to a supernatural god image and seeking propositional truths. Mary Magdalene in this morning’s gospel, Celopas, and others converse with the risen Christ without recognizing him. Others recognize the Christ immediately. How can this be? Thomas touches the risen Christ and the Christ eats, both indicative of a physical presence. Conversely, the Christ seems to transcend space and time, mysteriously appearing in a locked room and geographic locations too far distant from one another to permit normal travel. This suggests a spiritual, not physical presence.

However, when we let go of the dead god, spelt with a lower case g, these multiple paradoxes point to a powerful reality not reducible to our finite, human language. That reality is God, with a capital G, manifested in the risen Christ. Scripture is not propositional truths but the result of human efforts to record the narrative, the experiences, and the insights of those who have encountered the energy, the life-giving power of God. Remember our dispirited threesome. Mary Magdalene went on to become a saint beloved by artists and the marginalized. Peter became a rock solid leader among the small band of Jews and Gentiles who perpetuated Jesus’ story because it mediated God's powerful presence for them. Symbolically, his tomb and not Jesus’ tomb, lies under the main altar at the heart of the world’s largest Christian organization. The “disciple whom Jesus loved” rose above persecution and exile to proclaim that God is love and we are to love one another.

The powerful, living presence of God that Mary, Peter, and John experienced in the risen Christ as they and succeeding generations told and retold the stories of Jesus in the course of two thousand years transformed a dispirited threesome into today’s global community of one billion.[6] People worship on Easter, at least in part, seeking that presence, that energy. That energy empowers and guides us toward the abundant life that Jesus promised. We encounter that power in the loving others. We encounter that power in our shared lives, joy, music, and Holy Communion.
[1] John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “God Still Isn’t Dead,” Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2009.
[2] John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963).
[3] For example, The Easter Moment (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980); Why Christianity Must Change or Die (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998); Jesus for the Non-religious (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007).
[4] For example, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); Richard Dawkins, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
[5] Jon Meacham, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” Newsweek, April 14, 2009 edition accessed at http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583. Baylor Institute for the Study of Religion, American Piety in the 21st Century (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2006). Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” (Washington, DC: Pew, 2008), accessed at http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf.
[6] Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (NY: Viking, 2001), p. 208.

Future of warfare

What type of war should the United States military prepare to fight? Are future threats most likely confrontations with insurgents and guerillas, as in Iraq and Afghanistan? Alternatively, are future threats most likely more traditional in nature, pitting one modern military against another? The U.S. military, stretched thin by current Middle Eastern operations and facing budget constraints in view of the domestic economic crisis and mounting deficits, seems unlikely able to prepare equally for both types of conflict. Many military personnel now have only twelve months at home between Middle Eastern deployments, a schedule that prevents training the same personnel for both types of conflict (experts divide over the achievability of that goal, even without current operational constraints).

Senior U.S. military officers hotly debate the nature of future conflicts, the current version of turf and budgetary battles in the Pentagon. Much of the debate centers on the brief 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern war. Hezbollah fighters effectively engaged modern, mechanized Israeli forces in battles that lasted as long as twelve hours. Proponents of strong conventional forces point to the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war as evidence that conventional tactics and weapons are not obsolete. Advocates of the other position cite Iraq, Afghanistan, and a dozen other, ongoing conflicts as evidence that counterinsurgency operations are most likely. (Greg Jaffe, “2006 Israel-Lebanon War Looms Large in Pentagon Debate on Future,” Washington Post, April 6, 2009)

What seems lost in the debate is that war is politics carried on by another means (Clausewitz). General Omar Bradley, reflecting on WWII in the 1950s, observed that U.S. military leaders too often ignored the war’s political dimensions and aims (Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier (New York: Free Press, 1960), p. 13).

Israel eventually defeated the Hezbollah fighters. However, Israel arguably lost that war. Hezbollah is today more popular and deeply entrenched in southern Lebanon than ever. Similarly, the U.S. may militarily defeat insurgents and other opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan but has lost both wars because the U.S. has increasingly alienated the local populations while unintentionally increasing tacit support for terrorists among disaffected Muslims elsewhere.

Debates about the future wars the U.S. may have to fight are important in deciding the type and size of the force to equip and train. The U.S. lacks the resources to prepare for every contingency, adding urgency to the debate. However, ignoring the political aims of those potential wars ensures ultimate defeat, regardless of pen-ultimate military outcomes.

A war that fails to achieve a more just global community, that does not move the world in the direction of peace, is an unjust, immoral war and a war that no nation should fight. The United States should end its romance with high-tech weaponry and instead focus on the more important though less glamorous task of building good friendships with other nations.

Rethinking the crucifixion

Historically, Christian theologies of the cross have relied upon some form of a juridical model for understanding Jesus’ death. Human sin, from the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eve, violated God's law. God requires sacrifice or punishment to reconcile God's perfect justice with God's mercy. So God sacrifices God's son, Jesus, the sinless lamb, to settle accounts. Various theologians explain this in terms of propitiation, expiation, etc. This summary intentionally ignores a plethora of theological subtleties and distinctions; the underlying essence of a necessary sacrifice remains constant across the wide variety of proposed models for understanding the crucifixion.

Regarding the fully human and fully divine Jesus as the sinless Lamb of God puts God in the position of self-sacrifice. That makes God a masochist. God wrote the rules, devising a system in which human sin was certain; atoning for that sin would necessitate God suffering on the cross. Only in the last few decades have Christians begun to acknowledge the horror they feel at the thought of Abraham intending to sacrifice his son, Isaac. That horror should pale in comparison to the horror one feels at the thought of God insisting on sacrificing God's son. This is not a God that I can begin to comprehend, let alone a God whom I want to worship.

Jesus’ death on the cross must have another meaning. Perhaps Jesus lived and died to demonstrate, to communicate, the life-giving power of God's unconditional and unlimited love. Perhaps Jesus died because his message threatened the powers of this world. Perhaps …

A wide variety of possible explanations exists. None requires Jesus’ death. Many do not necessitate belief in a divine Jesus. Rethinking the fall completely eliminates any need for a juridical paradigm. The God revealed in Christianity, in the other major religions, in the lives of people, and in the cosmos is not a sycophant who finds joy as a masochist or sadist.

Rethinking the fall

Jews and Christians often read the first three chapters of Genesis as depicting a time of utopian innocence followed by humans sinning against God rebelliously disobeying to assert their independence, and God punishing them by expelling them from the Garden of Eden. St. Augustine of Hippo clear affirmation of this doctrine resulted in its acceptance as the orthodox position.

The scientific theory of evolution is prima facie incompatible with that reading of Genesis. The evolutionary process precludes existence of an idyllic utopian age of innocence.

Reconciling evolutionary theory with Genesis does not pose a major theological problem. Origen, a second century Christian writer, was perhaps the first to propose reading Genesis in terms of human development rather than as the loss of innocence. He interpreted Adam and Eve’s behavior as humans becoming more like God by acquiring an element of autonomy. Rabbi Harold Kushner has similarly developed that theme in his book, How Good Do We Have to Be?

The Genesis narrative, like any good story, incorporates both timeless and time-determined elements. The creation narrative exhibits a striking parallelism with the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh. Not surprisingly, the biblical authors constructed the narrative relying on the science contemporaneously available to them, i.e., Babylonian science. The Hebrew word transliterated into English as Adam actually means man and the word transliterated as Eve means woman. Ancient Hebrew had no capital letters; personifying the text by reading the generic nouns as proper names sacrifices accuracy to make a better story. Recognizing what translators and exegetes have done helps to restore the narrative to its historical and de-conflict it with evolutionary theory.

In other words, elements that have often become the locus of theological attention are in fact time-determined elements of the story (proper names, Babylonian science, etc.). The timeless elements of the story are that God created the cosmos and an affirmation of the cosmos’ fundamental goodness. Eliminating an unfounded belief in a primitive era of human innocence places humans on a developmental trajectory, affirms the belief that humans in some manner incarnate God's image, and eliminates any need for a masochistic theology of the cross.

Pondering Christology

Words worth pondering from theologian Sallie McFague’s book, Life Abundant (Fortress Press, 2001, pp. 65-66):
1. Theology has no absolute foundations, experiences, essence, book, basis, or authority. Theology is not God's Word; it is our words. This is what Paul Tillich meant with his notion of the Protestant Principle: a protest against all attempts to be God, to let anything be absolute except God, to pretend that our words correspond to God's being, that we know the truth.
2. Theology is a risky business; it is composed of metaphors and models; it is a limited, partial, passing enterprise. All theologies should be and will be replaced.
Theology is, then, contextual – always and inevitably. These contexts are of many different kinds and levels, from worldviews and personal experience to gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical capabilities, age, etc. Theology, then, is always theologies, many different understandings of God's relation to the world from varying contexts.
3. Nonetheless, given a common text, Scripture, which functions as both a classic and a constitution for Christianity, as well as a tradition with a number of historical continuities with regard to how God, world, Christ, and human life are understood, we can speak of a Christian paradigm. To be a Christian theologian, not anything goes. There are guidelines.
4. It is not enough, however, to merely translate scriptural or traditional understandings of God and the world into contemporary terms, making merely ‘cosmetic’ changes to doctrines. They must be reworked, reconstructed, in light of the novel situation of one’s own time. The world as we know it and live in it must be the context within which Christian doctrine is reconceived.
5. The goal of such theology is not theology as such; that is, it is not refinements on the doctrines of God or Christology. The goal is the well-being of the planet and justice to its people, especially the oppressed. The goal is understanding what salvation – the liberation of the oppressed – means in our time, and , as disciples, following in that way.

Those words provide a helpful context for viewing the controversies surrounding the election of Kevin Thew Forrester to become the bishop for the Episcopal diocese of Western Michigan. Some of the controversy centers on Forrester’s practice of Zen meditation. Another issue is that Forrester has written and used unauthorized liturgies for Holy Baptism. Yet a third issue is that Forrester holds what many deem to be incorrect Christological views. (For more, cf. “Further conversation about the bishop-elect of Northern Michigan's liturgies” at the Episcopal Café and Greg Jones’ comments, “Bishop Paul V. Marshall: No on Forrester” at The Anglican Centrist.

Christians have always practiced a wide variety of spiritual disciplines. Alan Watts garnered considered public attention in the 1960s and 1970s because of his attraction to Zen. He served for a number of years as an Episcopal priest before leaving the Church for Buddhism. Episcopalian openness to diverse spiritual practice was one factor that attracted me to the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church does have a fixed liturgy, found in the Book of Common Prayer and other documents, especially the Book of Occasional Services and Lesser Feasts and Fasts. General Convention has authorized a number of experimental liturgies and is responsible for establishing and maintaining the Church’s liturgical standards and forms. Bishops also have latitude within certain parameters to authorize experimental liturgies. In general, priests lack that latitude. In general priests and deacons should adhere to the Book of Common Prayer and other established rites. The Episcopal Church, for good and bad, does have an established liturgy and fixed polity. Widespread departures from that liturgy and polity would signal serious deterioration in the Church’s structure and unity. However, a priest devising and using his or her own rite for Holy Baptism hardly seems the stuff of which to build church controversy. Rather, this seems like an issue for resolution between bishop (the ecclesiastical authority with jurisdiction) and the priest.

I suspect that real source of controversy is the third issue, taken broadly, i.e., doubts about Kevin Forrester’s theological orthodoxy. The Episcopal Church prays together (hence the important of common liturgy) but does not believe together. Arguments that Forrester’s interpretation of the Creeds varies widely from more historic readings of the Creeds neither surprises nor disturbs me. As McFague’s comments make clear, theology is always contextual. Metaphors and models that once communicated well necessarily become outdated as worldviews and contexts change.

We do not live in an age in which many believe that gods walk on earth in human form, a notion that was a common element in first century Mediterranean Greco-Roman worldviews. Christians believe that God manifested god's self and love in Jesus. The paradoxical formulation of fully human and fully divine indicates the mystery behind that manifestation. Forrester’s Christology may not resonate well with those who find solace in holding onto a literal interpretation of that formulation. At the heart of the Christian faith is the mysterious otherness (transcendence) of God revealed in the particularity of the world, people, and especially Jesus (immanence and incarnation).

To the extent that these controversies mire the Church in hopeless swamps of dead ends, diverting energy from the Church’s real business of incarnating God's radically inclusive love, the controversies represent the worse form of heresy, a betrayal of our identity and role manifesting God's love for people and the world.

Civil discourse - an example

Civil public discourse demands courage, wisdom, and a respectful appreciation of one’s audience. President Obama’s comments before Turkey’s Parliament provide an example of all three:
We seek broad engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect….The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam….[that the United States had been] enriched by Muslim-Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them. (Helene Cooper, “In Turkey, Obama Says U.S. ‘Never’ at War With Islam,” New York Times, April 7, 2009)

The tone and language clearly manifest respect for Islam and Muslims. Identifying with his audience by highlighting his own Muslim roots and experience living in Malaysia reflects great political wisdom. The statement shows true courage in his willingness to raise a subject that sparked untrue allegations about Obama’s own religious faith during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Few people have the opportunity to speak on an international stage. Yet the multiple stages on which each of us acts and speaks afford the opportunity to exercise our own courage, wisdom, and respect for others. Those virtues are essential for becoming the individuals and the society God intends.

Good people, even when they share a common vision of the future, frequently disagree about the best path by which to achieve that vision. Good people sometimes heatedly disagree about the preferred vision of the future. Yet good people, by definition, truly respect one another, courageously speak their opinion as a way to honor those with whom they disagree, and wisely seek ways to live in an ever expanding community.

Affirmative action

The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted a contentious case challenging the federal Voting Rights Act. The key question is whether racism has diminished to the point such that states, municipalities, and other non-federal entities that conduct public elections and that have a history of racial discrimination no longer require prior federal approval before making any change to election procedures. (Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court to Weigh Relevance of Voting Rights Act in Obama Era,” Washington Post, April 1, 2009)

Without attempting to address the legal nuances of the particular case, the basic question represents a question about which people need to exercise careful, prudential judgment. When should the U.S. eliminate or redirect the affirmative action and civil rights programs and policies created to end racial discrimination?

On the one hand, the U.S. has made substantial strides toward achieving racial justice. We have not yet reached that goal, but paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, we can see it from here. Affirmative action, voting rights legislation, school integration, and a host of other programs and policies have but critical in making that progress.

We as a nation have made great progress. The United States would never have elected Barack Obama as president in 1968, had he been old enough to run, simply because of his race. No one event, no matter how momentous, signals a complete “sea change,” the end of all discrimination.

On the other hand, the U.S. clearly has a long history of racial discrimination, i.e., people in positions of power with racial prejudices adversely affecting the quality of life and civil rights of minorities. The harm of that racial discrimination was evident in every area of our common life, including, education, business, the legal system, governance, culture, etc. A wholesale dismantling of civil rights legislation, policies, and programs would probably result in backsliding, if not an eventual return to some forms of institutionalized discrimination. In any case, constant vigilance is required.

Nevertheless, programs and policies probably reach the end of their useful life at different times. At what point does a program or policy outlive its usefulness and start to create new racial animosities? What new approaches to treating people as equals could benefit U.S. society? For example, should socio-economics constitute the new axis for equal opportunity initiatives? Alternatively, should the new standard for racial equal opportunity give preference to diversity only when rough parity exists on other criteria?

Like children before they acquire prejudices, we should aim to look at each other and see another human being who happens to be of a particular race (or gender, nationality, etc.). The Church must unfailingly emphasize this perspective’s importance and attainability, a view rooted in the very essence of God's love manifest in Jesus.

The shibboleth that affirmative action policies and programs discriminate unfairly against those in the majority should carry no weight. I write as one who once had an employment application rejected because I was Caucasian and the employer sought to increase the diversity of its workforce. That rejection – openly explained at the time – never caused resentment or anger. Instead, I saw my rejection as the employer enabling me to contribute in a positive way to forming a more just society, a community that more fully incarnated my ideals. I knew with confidence that my future well-being was in no way contingent upon a single opportunity, no matter how much I desired that opportunity at that time.

Public discourse about the future of programs and policies created to end racial discrimination will accelerate in the coming years. Political, legal, business, educational, and religious leaders and thinkers hold deeply divided opinions. Informed, respectful, and civil discourse on this highly emotional subject will, in itself, signal significant progress toward achieving racial justice. Conversely, ad hominem attacks will point to the distance that we have yet to travel before racial justice becomes reality.

Healthcare coverage for all

An interesting article in the New York Times Magazine suggests that healthcare reform centers around two issues: how to cover everyone and how to control costs. Massachusetts prioritized those issues in 2006 when it enacted a law requiring everybody to obtain healthcare coverage and assisting those unable to afford coverage. The Massachusetts planned has worked: almost everyone in Massachusetts now has healthcare coverage. However, the economic crisis is now confronting Massachusetts with difficult fiscal choices about how to pay for the plan.

Fiscal realities mean that Washington in considering President Obama’s push to provide healthcare coverage for all must control costs from the beginning. One important element of the administration’s plan is to increase taxes on those earning more than a quarter of a million dollars to pay half of the costs of expansion. Cost savings squeezed from the healthcare system would cover the remaining half of the plan’s costs. (Kevin Sack, “A Lesson on Health Care From Massachusetts,” New York Times Magazine, March 28, 2009)

From a Christian perspective, this seems like an eminently reasonable plan. Surely, anyone – regardless of number of dependents – can sustain a decent quality of life in the United States on a quarter of a million dollars annual income. Similarly, with administration of healthcare benefits consuming upwards of fifteen cents of every healthcare dollar, substantial savings are possible within the system. Furthermore, all of the other developed nations achieve better healthcare outcomes (e.g., lower infant mortality rates and greater longevity) for less cost, demonstrating that substantial cost savings are possible without sacrificing quality of care.

Of course, the devil is in the details, i.e., negotiating the political compromises that will make healthcare coverage for all a reality. Yet if the United States fails to move boldly, willing to make mistakes, open to the necessity of future revision and improvements, U.S. citizens, en masse, will continue to pay more and receive less with respect to healthcare.

Recession stress and benefits

An article in April 3rd’s Wall Street Journal paints a dismal picture of the current recession:
- 741,000 jobs lost in January, the third largest decline in history (the two larger declines, in 1945 and 1949, resulted from one time events, the end of WWII and a steel strike);
- The rate of unemployed or underemployed (e.g., part-time workers) has reached 15.6%, more than 6% higher than a year ago, effecting about 2 in 13 workers;
- The average workweek is now 33.2 hours, in spite of the long hours that many salaried employees work.
Prognostications are for the recession to worsen before reaching its nadir, in spite of recent stock market advances. (Brian Blackstone, “Recession Jobs Losses Top 5 Million,” Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2009)

Not surprisingly, a recent poll reported that 60% of U.S. residents experience emotional pain or stress they attribute to the recession. People doubt their ability to pay their debts, the security of their jobs, their ability to fund major purchases (cars, college education, and medical expenses), etc. They reduce their standard of living, especially cancelling family vacations and cutting discretionary spending. (Jennifer Agiesta, “Recession Taking Emotional Toll, New Poll Finds,” Washington Post, April 2, 2009, p. A16.)

Conversely, that poll means that 40% of U.S. residents are not experiencing emotional pain or stress attributable to the recession. Some of these people are certainly cheerful optimists, for whom that orientation is so deeply ingrained that nothing really disturbs them. Others are people with sufficient financial resources to weather the storm, either because of their prudent and frugal fiscal management or their abundant wealth. These people probably dislike watching the steeply eroding value of their investment portfolio but understand that markets have downs as well as ups.

However, the people for whom I have the greatest respect are those who recognize how little is truly essential for life: food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and people whom one loves. Food is sufficient when it provides good nutrition; shelter may consist of a small room with adequate sanitation and cooking facilities; clothing is adequate if it keeps one warm and modestly attired. In other words, apart from healthcare the vast majority of poor U.S. residents have a super-abundance of life’s material necessities. The monastic calling provides an important countervailing witness to the dominant American ethos that, with intending only a small degree of parody, worships the dollar.

Some of the reports about people reducing discretionary spending or coping with the loss of a job, reports intended to highlight the sadness and bleakness of these recession engendered cuts, have sounded like good news to me. For example, some couples, when one partner lost a job, have eliminated daycare for the children and a stay at home parent now is their caregiver. I believe that the greatest gift most parents can give to a child is the parent’s love, incarnated by consistently spending great amounts of time with the child. Of course, that is difficult for a single parent. Couples, on the other hand, can choose one partner as primary earner and the other as primary caregiver for the children.

Similarly, reports of people eating at home more, driving less, buying smaller houses, and reducing the number of after school activities per child all sound to me like good news. Eating at home, especially in contrast to fast food eaten on the go, tends to be healthier and to promote human interaction. Driving less benefits the environment. Smaller houses also benefit the environment by requiring fewer materials to build, maintain, and operate. Smaller homes have smaller mortgages, making the house more affordable and reducing a potential source of financial strain. Parents often over-program their children, scheduling one or two organized activities per child per day. This deprives the child of the free time conducive to a boredom that develops creativity and independent interests.

Lists of what one regards as the beneficial values of a lifestyle less focused on wealth and more focused on becoming genuinely human will vary depending upon one’s philosophy or theology. Yet to the extent that the recession pushes people toward self-examination and rethinking of lifestyle, encouraging an intentionality about developing healthy human relationships, increasing creativity, decreasing greed, deemphasizing possessions and materialism, and enhancing personal fulfillment the recession will benefit us.