Good Work?

President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was a relentlessly upbeat hymn to American ingenuity and creativity. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he produced cheerleaders shaking pompoms and shouting “We’re number one!” Evidently this kind of thing goes down well with the American populace. According to a poll right after the speech 65% of us loved it. This giddy celebration of American ingenuity was, of course, in service of “getting the economy moving again” and enabling American workers to compete in the “global marketplace.” While the economy does seem to be growing again, job creation is lagging and many of the long term unemployed are growing understandably desperate. A job—any job that pays reasonably well and has at least minimal benefits—must look good to them. And Obama, like President Clinton before him, knows that, in the latter’s immortal words: “It’s the economy stupid.” Of course, this is perfectly clear to Republican politicians as well—perhaps even more so. For most of our political leaders, nothing should be permitted to restrict the growth of the economy. The next election depends on it!

Good work is a gift from God. To be without work that sustains one’s imagination as well as one’s family and community is a great sorrow. Georgetown College’s Norman Wirzba argues in his recent book Living the Sabbath that “human work finds its inspiration and fulfillment in God’s own work of healing, restoring, strengthening, and maintaining the life of creation.” From the beginning human beings were created to work alongside God, to continue God’s work of creation. When there was “no one to till the ground” (Gen. 2:5), God created human beings. Adam was given the task of naming the animals God had created (Gen. 2:19, 20). From the beginning human beings were stewards of God’s creation. Work itself was not the result of the first couple’s disobedience, but fruitless and painful work (Gen. 3:16-19). Even good and necessary work would be at times frustrating and difficult. All around us, to this day, we see and experience degrading, destructive, and even useless work. Wendell Berry calls such work “blasphemy”, making “shoddy work of the work of God.”

I have profound sympathy with the jobless and underemployed. I grieve with those who have worked diligently all their lives only to see their life savings evaporate and their homes suffer foreclosure. We certainly do need good work, good jobs. We need jobs that produce delight as well as useful products and services. We need work that, with Wirzba, “finds its inspiration and fulfillment in God’s own work.” One of the great tragedies of this recent near economic collapse is that as a people and a culture we did not step back and ask what a better, healthier, more sustainable economy would look like. We have assumed along with our leaders that  only more of the same will sustain us. I fear that approach is not simply foolish but suicidal. I am not sure what an economy that joined our work to God’s would look like. But I am quite certain we need to ask our leaders and ourselves more probing questions about our current set of assumptions and practices. I fear we are only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.



John E. Phelan, Jr.

Seeking Moral High Ground

For the last week we have been subjected to a rather distressing game of moral one-upmanship. In the wake of the tragic shooting in Tucson people, understandably, sought explanations and then, unfortunately, rushed to assign blame.


“It’s your side’s fault,” some said.


“Well, your side does the same thing,” was the response.


“Your side is worse.”


“Is not!”


“Is so!”


Ad nauseam.


Both sides sought to wrap themselves in righteousness and victimhood while the real victims lay bleeding in front of the Safeway.


I understand the anger. I was angry myself. Here were Americans engaged in an activity most fundamental to our democracy—speaking to representatives and listening to constituents--and they were killed or wounded by a spray of bullets from a semi-automatic handgun. I had not heard of Gabrielle Giffords. For the first hour or so I did not know whether she was a Democrat or a Republican. In fact, given the area she represented I assumed she was a Republican. And for most of us, Republican or Democrat, it didn’t matter. I was moved by the evident emotion of Speaker of the House John Boehner in the immediate wake of the tragedy and even more moved by the speech of President Obama at the memorial service. When Americans suffer such a tragedy there is no room for partisanship. But we can’t seem to help it.


Incivility, I suppose, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder. We know it when we see it—or hear it. But we might begin by acknowledging a few fundamental facts if we wish to improve our fractious civil discourse.


1. No one has cornered the market of civility, or for that matter, incivility. The right gets bashed a good deal for incivility. But if you don’t believe the left can be just a vicious and uncivil read a conservative blogger and look at the responses. Read the scornful, profanity-laced tirades in the responses from the left. Could you find the same thing on a liberal blog from the right? Of course. And that is the point. There are angry, hateful, and dangerous people on both the far left and far right. Seeking moral high ground by saying the other side is worse is an act of self-deception.


2. It is not uncivil to disagree and disagree sharply. Our democracy is advanced by such disagreements. But to be productive the disagreements must entail listening to the other, respecting the other, not caricaturing or abusing the other. We need to listen to understand the nature of our disagreements. We also need to listen to learn from the other. Because whether we are on the right or on the left we are bound to be wrong about something! After all, we are fragile, sinful human beings.


3. We must recognize the humanity of the other. It is all too easy to dismiss the other as “a right wing nut” or “a liberal loony.” But behind the opinions we find uninformed or even offensive is a human being made in the image of God. Everyone has a story. Our opinions are part of our personal narrative and some of that narrative may be quite painful. We will never find common ground if we do not first acknowledge a common humanity.


I have not always been civil myself. Certainly in the privacy of my thoughts I have been uncharitable and worse. But in my writings and on Facebook I have recorded thoughts I later regretted—thoughts that were intended to wound, not to enhance our discourse or engage our common humanity. But I need the love of my critics to grow in grace—even if I still in the end think they are wrong. And whether or not they know it or want it, they need my love as well—even when they remain unconvinced by my arguments. For a follower of Jesus the call to love is still preeminent. St. Paul, no stranger to conflict himself, makes this clear in I Corinthians 13. Seeking moral high ground in order to rain down fire on the enemy is, in these days, a particularly inapt metaphor and I trust we will reject both the image and the action.

The Aryan Jesus

I am in the midst of reading Susannah Heschel’s book The Aryan Jesus. It is a study of “The Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life.” Founded in 1939 the institute sponsored conferences, produced books and pamphlets, and worked with university students and pastors in an effort to purge German Christianity of Judaism. Many important German biblical scholars and theologians were prominent members of the institute and participants in its activities. After the war they understandably ignored, suppressed, or minimized their participation in such anti-Semitic activities. Nevertheless, Heschel makes it clear that the impact of the institute and its scholarship survived the war in the scholars and their students. Their research into the nature of first century Judaism and its conflicts with early Christianity shaped European New Testament studies especially, given the prominence of German biblical scholarship. This was seen, for example, in the effort to differentiate Galilee from Jerusalem: to make the former more “Gentile” and the latter more “Jewish”. Recent archeological evidence makes it clear that in the first century even the cities of Galilee were overwhelmingly Jewish. But especially during the pre-war period this was a way to distance Jesus from Judaism and even make him “Aryan.” Heschel makes it clear that this scholarly activity had its roots deep in 19th century anti-Semitic fantasies about race. The “white” Europeans surely had to find different theological and cultural ancestors than the despised Jews. So they constructed a Jesus in their own image—a Jesus who as not only not Jewish, but anti-Semitic—a white Jesus.


Recent generations of New Testament scholarship have rejected the non-Jewish Jesus. But anti-Semitism still hangs over biblical studies and Christianity like a pall. Although I have questions at points about her methods and conclusions, I commend to you Amy-Jill Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. Dr. Levine is quite right to point out that our off handed comments about Judaism in comparison to Christianity are often not only offensive, but wrong. There are certainly differences to discuss! There are certainly areas of serious disagreement between Jews and Christians. But these differences can be engaged respectfully, carefully and thoughtfully only when Christians do not caricature and distort Judaism and Jews. These days anti-Semitism is alive and well. It even flies under the flag of liberalism in the blanket critiques of the state of Israel. Israel at times deserves criticism—as done the United States or any nation state. Not all who critique Israel are anti-Semitic. But the popular abhorrence of Israel that characterizes liberal critics in Europe and the US provides cover for anti-Semites to be respectable.

Onward Christian Soldiers?

I have been away from blogging for some time. I am working on a book on eschatology and needed to get some material to my editor. I am returning with a commitment to write more frequently and less lengthily! Writing for me is a way to get my thoughts in some order. I trust others will find my thoughts helpful and perhaps even interesting. In the end, however, I write to make sense of my own struggle to understand and communicate what God is doing within me and within the world. I will also use the blog to describe what I am reading. I am frequently asked about my reading, so here is my chance to let you know and to make some recommendations.


Recently I have been working my way through Peter Gomes’ book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He is widely regarded one of the country’s great preachers. I purchased his latest book (ironically at a bookstore right across the street from Harvard yard) last spring. I have been reading a chapter each morning as part of my time of prayer. I was particularly struck by the chapter “The Gospel and Conflict.” Many of these pieces were written during the run up to and the immediate aftermath of the beginning of the war in Iraq. In “The Gospel and Conflict” Gomes explores Christian squeamishness over images of and engagement in conflict.


He begins by citing the Christian tradition of militant hymnody. Many of us were raised with rousing hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “Stand Up, Stand Up, for Jesus”, and “Am I a Soldier of the Cross.” Most of these hymns have been eliminated from mainline hymnals because of their militant images and triumphalist rhetoric. But Gomes wonders if we really read these hymns well. The Bible and the evidence of our own lives would suggest it is a struggle to follow Jesus and live faithfully in a world filled with many enemies. It is, in fact, naive to pretend otherwise. The Apostle Paul certainly understood the nature of the conflict. He encouraged us to put on God’s armor, to fight the good fight, to face down the spiritual forces ranged against us.


There is no question that our culture is engaged in deadly conflict. This conflict is not chiefly military or even political. The real conflict is over what sort of people we will be—both individually and corporately. The real conflict is, for Gomes, seen in Gandhi’s seven social sins. I would suggest Western culture is deeply entrapped in these sins and that the church must accept the role of struggle and conflict to address them:


• Politics without principle


• Wealth without work


• Commerce without morality


• Pleasure without conscience


• Education without character


• Science without humanity


• Worship without sacrifice


The first in each pair is a good thing distorted and ruined by human weakness and sin. God has called the church to the inevitable conflict engendered when Christians faithfully call for and live out the virtues that balance and ameliorate the dangers of a “good” that can become evil. If we surrender the fight, we are doomed as a culture and a people.  Without the conflict, we are lost.

Culture of Voyeurs

The country is professing shock today at the suicide of Tyler Clementi. The Rutgers freshman killed himself by jumping from the George Washington bridge after his roommate Dharun Ravi recorded Clementi having sex with a man. Ravi then invited others to join him in watching another recorded encounter between Clementi and the man. This is only one of a number of recent teen suicides brought on by bullying, brutality and humiliation. Rene Girard would call this a form of scapegoating. Clementi was sacrificed to preserve the power and group identity of his tormenters. In uncertain times scapegoating produces unanimity and an ersatz, strictly temporary “peace”. When that “peace” is frazzled, it is time to find another scapegoat, another victim to sacrifice. What happens on a small scale in classrooms, dorm rooms, playgrounds and corporate offices happens on a larger scale in parliaments, palaces, and capital cities. Whether it is Islamic radicals rallying their followers against America, the “great Satan” or fundamentalist preachers threatening to burn the Koran the outcome is the same. In other words, what happened to Tyler Clementi was, so far as humanity is concerned, business as usual.


While many in the media are professing shock at what happened I am yet to hear anyone wonder if the climate nurtured by our media contributed to the suicide of Clementi. It is not that our media are any nastier than, say, the reporters and political cartoonists of the 19th century. Reporting, particularly political reporting, has always been a vicious game. It is rather that our current media people have more powerful tools to humiliate and denigrate their opponents. We have become used to “gotcha” journalism—reporters waiting around for a politician or other public figure to say something incautious. Reporters complain about political figures who speak in a careful and scripted manner. But when every offhand and thoughtless remark can be rebroadcast and distorted throughout the 24 hour news cycle, it is little wonder our politicians say as little as possible. “Gotcha” journalism is particularly evident during this political season. The suggestion that Social Security may need to be overhauled, for example, is distorted into a charge that this candidate wants to take away the social safety net and let seniors starve to death!


Savage mockery and brutal distortions for the sake of political gains or ratings growth is as American as apple pie. We see it every day on CNN and Fox. Its very popularity is a damning indictment of our culture. We evidently long to see the “other” humiliated. We long to see “our side” vindicated even if it as at the expense of the truth and common decency. Yes, sometimes the actions of our leaders need to be exposed and challenged. Yes, questions should be raised about going to war or raising taxes or bailing out banks. But if we accept the cruelties and venalities of junk journalism, if we put endure without protest the lies and distortions of pundits and politicians, we make ourselves complicit in a culture of corruption—the kind of culture that leads a young man to kill himself because someone thought it a hoot to expose and ridicule him.


John E. Phelan, Jr.

The Internet and Civil Discourse

I was a child during the McCarthy hearings, a teenager during the key years of the civil rights struggle, and a young adult during the escalation of the Vietnam War. I have lived through protests and riots, murders and assassinations. I remember James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi in 1964. I remember vividly the assassinations of John Kennedy in 1963 and of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968. In many ways the latter year, the year I graduated from high school, was one of the worst in American history. For me the 50s were no “golden era” in American history, but a time of brutality and conflict over the very soul of the country. I grew up in the American south, in Tennessee and saw and heard the racism and xenophobia that held my home state and region in thrall.


You would think that having lived through all this I would take our current conflicts in stride. As far as we know there are no bodies buried in Mississippi dams. Protests have been rather mild. No major political figure has been assassinated—yet. And yet, I find myself more concerned, more fearful of the state of the country than I ever have been. I fear we are standing at the brink of an era of bigotry and bloodshed that will make the 50s and 60s seem tame in comparison. I say this because we are living in an era of dehumanization fostered by the anonymity of the internet and the outrageous behavior of media personalities who mock, sneer, and demean their opponents with evident impunity. And the first step to brutality and murder is dehumanization.


Throughout the 20th century, perhaps the most murderous century in human history, the first step to genocide was dehumanization. Whether the hated minorities were capitalists or communists, Jews or Serbs, Hutus or Tutsis, the strategy was the same. They were vermin, cockroaches or leeches. There were infections or cancers on the body politic. They were diminished with crude epithets and mocked via cartoonish depictions. They were less than human. As a result they could be killed with impunity. Who worries over much about the fate of a rat? Whether they were locked up in camps, lined up and shot, imprisoned and starved to death, or sunk in misery at the margins of society, dehumanization was an aid to their demise.


Whether we are given the language of demonization by Glenn Back or Keith Olbermann, whether it comes from the Tea Party or Moveon.org, the result is the same. Human beings are reduced at best to intellectual stick figures and at worst to insects or viruses to be eliminated at all costs. Although the media and our politicians are to blame for fanning the flames of bigotry and fear, we are to blame for listening and responding. We no longer hear genuine concerns. We scoff at honest objections. As a result, truth is a victim of ideology. I have my views and convictions like everyone else. But I want to listen—because I could be wrong. And perhaps more important, I know people whose views are very different than mine who are generous, loving, good-hearted people—many in my own family.


It is tempting in such a brutal time to fall into despair. And I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge that there are days I want to find that cabin in the woods. I am genuinely concerned about the world I am bequeathing to the grandchild that is on the way. But I am a Christian. And that means I live in hope. Not the “hope” or “change” offered every four years by politicians, but the hope of the new heavens and the new earth--the hope of resurrection. And I believe that the job of the church is to bring the light and life of the coming kingdom into the darkness and death of the present. Years ago Stanley Hauerwas argued that the failure of a Christian couple to desire children is a failure of hope and faith. Having children, he suggested, was a way of declaring our confidence in God in spite of the circumstances. So I look forward to welcoming a granddaughter and live in faith, hope, and love. But I also hope for a world in which she will be able to state her views without being diminished and scorned.


John E. Phelan, Jr.

Why are Christians So Afraid of Muslims?

I can perhaps understand why secular or anti-religious people would fear Islam. It can appear to be fearsome, monolithic and intransigent. Strong, single-minded faith is always perplexing to people who have none. But I am stunned that so many Christians seem to be swept away by the anti-Muslim tide. I am particularly perplexed that Evangelical Christians are frequently in the forefront of opposing mosques or (shudder) burning the Koran. From an Evangelical standpoint this amounts to, if nothing else, attacking one’s own mission field—at the very least a foolish and destructive thing to do. But there is more to it than that. I wonder—why should Christians be as afraid of Muslims as Muslims evidently are afraid of them?


Sociologist Rodney Stark has argued in his numerous books that the Christian Church has always been strongest when it has faced a challenge. It grew amidst the hostility of the Roman Empire and entrenched paganism. It flourished when it was forced to clearly define itself and live out of its unique and powerful convictions about the nature and purposes of the God of Israel and Jesus Christ, Messiah and Lord. Stark suggests that when the church lacked the challenge of opposition and the necessity of clear self-definition it became flaccid, colorless, and empty. The challenge of the Reformation made the Catholic Church clearly define itself and clean up accumulated abuses. The challenge of varied denominations and traditions made the smaller Protestant churches more effective in mission. It was religious competition, Stark argues, that made the church in the United States strong when the state churches of Europe were shrinking. The challenge of the other made the church pay closer attention to its identity and mission.


The presence of Muslims or Hindus or any other religious tradition in a given area is no threat to the churches of Jesus Christ. These varied traditions can bring out the best in the church by forcing it to identify differences and challenges and pursue new ways of witness and welcome. I would suggest that the fact that most Muslim countries marginalize the Christian Church it or keep it out entirely is a sign that Muslims fear Christian witness and lack confidence in their own tradition and own people. Does the Christian Church in the United States really want to follow the same path? I think not. We have nothing to fear from the “competition” of Muslims. Rather than protesting the mosques, we should welcome them with open arms, with the compassion and generosity of Christ, and with genuine love. I find anti-Mulsim sentiments among Christians extraordinarily repugnant and terribly sad.


John E. Phelan , Jr.