A Sad Day

The decision of the voters in North Carolina was a sad one. I give thanks for all those religious leaders who took a stand against Amendment One, but it seems that fear won. The fear that somehow allowing people of the same sex to marry one another will destroy the marriages of opposite-sex couples. The fear that children who see healthy same-sex marriages might choose to be gay. The fear that same-sex couples might show us that there is a way to have marriages of equal partners. What is also very sad about this Amendment to North Carolna's Constitution is that, unlike the First Amendment to the US Constitution, it does not protects rights but denies them. Imagine how our First Amendment would read if those who wrote Amendment One had written it - freedom of religion and speech and peaceable assembly for opposite-sex couples only, or only for conservative Christians, or only for property owning white men. A sad day, but in time the people of North Carolina will see the truth about marriage equality and that truth will set them free.

The Elizabeth Warren Controversy?

Driving back home at noon today I heard a Boston journalist say that he would not have checked the minority box that Elizabeth Warren checked even though he is 1/16th Native American. He said it in a way that seemed to me to convey the assurance that his decision was the only reasonable one and that Warren's decision must, therefore, be open to severe criticism. I disagree. The decisions we make about seld-identification should rarely be open to challenge. There is no evidence that Warren's decision to self-identify as having Native ancestors was made with the intention of furthering her career, nor is there any evidence that it did. Absent any evidence of the sort, her decision should go unchallenged. 

The manufactured controversy reflects not only the way in which politics often "majors in the minors" but also a tendency which people have to want to define the Other. Pigeonholing people makes life seem less complicated, although that is a delusion. Pigeonholing people is also a favorite pastime of many privileged folks. Thus Romney, whose privileged status should be obvious, tries to pigeonhole Obama with comments about his having spent too much time at Harvard. (Doesn't Romney have a Harvard degree or two?) Attempts to classify others or to denigrate their decisions about their identities are not as much about understanding as about power. If we can successfully put someone in her place - it's more often her place than his - then we have power to get what we want, often, maybe usually, at the expense of the other person. 

Whether it's a refusal to allow Warren to claim her family's story of a Natve ancestor, or a refusal to refer to groups by the name they choose for themselves - remember the consternation with which some white folks clung to calling Americans of African descent "colored"? - or even the uneasiness many of us feel about using the pronouns that transgendered people claim for themselves, at heart it's about power. At its best it's about our power to have a way to understand the world around. At its worst it's about the power to control others, to make them what we want them to be, rather than who they know themselves to be. 

If Elizabeth Warren isn't elected to the Senate, I hope it's about the issues and about the experience and character of the candidates and not about the non-issue of Warren's self identification. The citizens of the Commonwealth deserve that.

Entanglement

I have been listening to Reading Lolita in Tehran during my drives to Episcopal Divinity School. One of the author's observations about the veil got me thinking about the dangers of establishing an official religion and other less official entanglements of religion in a society. Azar Nafisi's grandmother had always worn the veil in public and had objected to an earlier regime's banning of it and objected to the Islamic Republic of Iran's making its wearing mandatory. For her it was an expression of her faith and not something that government should prohibit or require.

When religious expression or membership in religious organizations becomes mandatory or even socially expected, religious faith is at risk. Both de jure and de facto establishment of religion is dangerous. Even the current political squabbles about candidates' religious faith is dangerous, as it tends to make religious faith, or its semblance, a requirement for political office. I don't care whether a candidate's ethics are based on religious faith or on some other foundation. What I care about is whether or not a candidate has ethics with which I have substantial agreement and whether I agree with a candidate's policy positions. An atheist with whose ethics and policy positions I agree is for me a better candidate than a Christian with whom I have serious disagreements. My faith informs my politics, but it is a candidate's politics that matters to me.

We are living in a time when, with few unfortunate exceptions, most Americans are quite happy with the disestablishment of religion. While the US has never had an officially established religion, Christianity in its various expressions has been our de facto established religion. That is no longer the case and that is a very good thing for religious communities. Religious faith and practice is becoming counter-cultural and faith communities have increasing freedom to be faith communities and not simply defenders and supporters of the status quo. For Christians this means new freedom to be disciple communitites sharing in Christ's mission in and for the world. It means rejecting, as Luther did, an establishment theology of glory and embracing the theology of the Cross. Far from being nostalgic about the good old days when churches were full because going to church was what we did in America, we can rejoice in the freedom that comes with disestablishment and be about the business of being Church.

Poisonous Righteous

Recently I got drawn into a discussion about the Anglican Communion on a conservative blog and found that I was more concerned about scoring points than I was about seeking common ground with others in the discussion. As I stepped away I recalled a phrase from the Moxy Früvous song about the Gulf War - poisonous righteous. Although I was taking some pains to keep my posts irenic and civil, I know that I really thought those with whom I disagreed were idiots and enemies out to destroy all that was good in the Communion. I saw how easy it is to cross the line between committed to my understanding of the truth and poisonous righteous.

Crises of Conscience in a Pluralistic Society

There has been a flurry of comment about the decision of the Obama Administration not to grant to Roman Catholic hospitals and universities an exemption to the requirement that their employee's health insurance cover contraceptive. There has been a lot of misinformation about the decision, just as there has been misinformation about how much of Planned Parenthood's services are for abortions. I suspect the misinformation has something to do with how poor a case there is for cutting funding to Planned Parenthood or for allowing Roman Catholic hospitals and universities the requested exemption. What is true is that Roman Catholic institutions that serve the public are facing a crisis of conscience. How are they to continue to fulfill their missions without violating their consciences by paying for contraceptives which they believe to be immoral?

Crises of conscience are not new, and having lived through my own, I have some sympathy for the boards of these Roman Catholic institutions. During the Vietnam war, and even earlier, some Americans, including my Quaker mother, believed that was wrong for them to support the military with their tax dollars. Some chose to  do what might be called living off the grid, making so little actual income that they did not have to pay taxes. My mother, however, worked as a college librarian and didn't have that option. She did have the option, which others took, of refusing to pay that part of her taxes that went to the military budget. She did that, knowing that the IRS would try to find a way to get the money. IRS tried to get her employer to garnishee her wages, but the college refused. Then the IRS went to her bank and the bank allowed the IRS to take the unpaid taxes out of her account. 

I admire the way my mother dealt with her crisis of conscience. Knowing the power of the government to get what it wanted, she simply refused to make it easy for it to collect her taxes. In the end, her taxes were paid, but under protest. In a pluralistic society with people who have all sorts of strong convictions, including religious convictions, there will frequently be conflicts. We cannot avoid crises of conscience, but we can deal with them graciously, recognizing that our convictions are not the only ones that matter.