Funny AND faithy

Via dotCommonweal, Parade magazine--that's right, Parade--has a very interesting interview with Stephen Colbert, in which he discusses his faith at some length.

Dozens of papers want to know--what exactly happened at the New Orleans meeting?

Lots of coverage today of the statement coming out of the Episcopal bishops' meeting in New Orleans. The language is careful and complicated, leading to widely varying angles in the dailies. (Over at dotCommonweal, Robert Imbelli points out the significant distance between the Times and Globe pieces.) The AP story also portrays this as mostly a conservative victory. The Times-Picayune has one of the better, more balanced pieces.

A summary, from the statement itself:

• We reconfirm that resolution B033 of General Convention 2006 (The Election Of Bishops) calls upon bishops with jurisdiction and Standing Committees "to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion."
• We pledge as a body not to authorize public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.
• We commend our Presiding Bishop's plan for episcopal visitors.
• We deplore incursions into our jurisdictions by uninvited bishops and call for them to end.
• We support the Presiding Bishop in seeking communion-wide consultation in a manner that is in accord with our Constitution and Canons.
• We call for increasing implementation of the listening process across the Communion and for a report on its progress to Lambeth 2008.
• We support the Archbishop of Canterbury in his expressed desire to explore ways for the Bishop of New Hampshire to participate in the Lambeth Conference.
• We call for unequivocal and active commitment to the civil rights, safety, and dignity of gay and lesbian persons.

This is presented as a consensus statement, not that of a narrow majority. (Only one "nay" vote was audible, though several conservatives were absent at the time of the vote.) Given this, I'm particularly interested in the strong language about "incursions into our jurisdictions,"as it seems to echo my own sentiment that the practice of U.S. congregations forming relationships with overseas bishops is at least as troubling as the actual differences regarding the authority/interpretation of scripture or regarding homosexuality itself.

Actually, I think it's far more troubling, for two reasons. First, I believe that if a hierarchical polity is good for anything, it's for functioning as a church of churches, with bishops beings pastors of pastors and so on. This implies several things--the value of community for its own sake, not as a reflection of like-mindedness; the importance of working out conflict within the context of a commitment to ongoing fellowship; and especially the importance of a sense of place, of literal/geographical closeness. While I'm well aware that neither side has behaved consistently well in this conflict, I feel especially distant from the conservatives who have left TEC--because their vision of the purpose of a church structure seems to be quite different from mine.

Second, this sort of globalized, post-local affiliation can also lead to troubling situations, conflicts that motivate church leaders to say things like, "I've never been to Rwanda, but we're Rwandans now." It may be a well-intentioned and deferential statement, but it's also complete nonsense: No, you're not. Rwanda is a place, and place matters.

Big screens at church?!

Abram notes in the comments to an earlier post that the Washington Post is the best newspaper in the country, and I happen to agree. (I agree with him about some, though not all, of the more important things he said in his comment as well, but that's for another time.)

Anyway, WaPo just discovered megachurches! I had to double check to make sure the article wasn't from, you know, sometime when I was a kid...very strange. The piece's hook is specifically about the use of technology, but its breathless ignorance of how completely established this sort of thing is in the evangelical church is pretty funny.

Though I'm certainly not done with the megachurch debates myself. This quote provoked me to laugh derisively, like a good small-church mainliner:

During a recent sermon at St. Paul's Collegiate Church in Storrs, Conn., worshipers sent text messages to the cellphone of the lead pastor, Benjamin Dubow, the substance of which he then integrated into his sermon.

"Prayer is supposed to be a conversation," Dubow said. "We did this to help people engage in the conversation live during the service."

Wow. I can't imagine how we ever could have done that in my small ELCA church in Chicago...oh wait, we did. The pastor just asked for input, and people gave it, with their mouths.

Automatic Bob

I'm embarrassed to say I missed this when it was posted more than a year ago, no doubt due in part to the fact that I'm a far bigger fan of Bob Herbert than I am of Evan Coyne Maloney. Still, I'm an even bigger fan of writing, and this is pretty funny.

Link from Alan Jacobs.

"There is no 'ultimatum' involved"

This is interesting--the Archbishop of Canterbury is downplaying the September 30 deadline the Anglican Primates gave for a TEC response.

Not so fast, Dobson

Gary Bauer has criticized James Dobson for trashing Fred Thompson, and Richard Land has defended Thompson directly.

What the hell's going on over in religious right land? These guys need to get their ducks in a row so they can start mobilizing voters in a marginally legal fashion!

Actually, to be fair, Land and even Bauer have often been far more reasonable and less reactionary public figures than Dobson. Moderates, however, they are not.

Thanks to my friend John for sending me the Land story.

Peter Steinfels on "hiring for mission"

Peter Steinfels is eloquent (though verbose) as usual in this post on the question of Catholic universities trying to "hire Catholic."

(I particularly appreciate his correctly referring to Chaucer's poetry as being written in Middle English. If I have to hear one more NPR story referring to it as OLD English, the English grad student of my past and the finicky fact checker and editor of my present might have to get together and march over there--it's not far--and say some things. Some very serious things. [This lengthy aside is not the reason I'm posting this. Steinfels' piece really is worth a read.])

Akinola at Wheaton

The controversial Nigerian archbishop preached at a conservative Anglican gathering at Wheaton College (my alma mater) this past weekend. It's a reasonable enough location for such a gathering; in the last several years it seems you can't throw a Bible at a Wheaton-area homosexual without hitting a new non-Episcopal Anglican church. Still, I found it very strange to watch video of the event happening in the chapel in which I worshiped with the campus community, performed with several ensembles, received my diploma, and sat through countless chapel speakers (some, admittedly, more offensive to me than Akinola is, though also much lower profile).

The protest outside the chapel was scantly attended, and if it included people from the college community, that wasn't clear in the Tribune article and video. Back in my day, I'd like to think a lot of my friends would have been out there. But other friends would have been inside. That's the way this thing has gone...

Which brings me back to what I think is one of the more important questions about this whole mess, and indeed about all schismatic moments in the wider church: what does it look like for individual clergy, laypeople, or even congregations to be in communion with people with whom they are no longer in Communion?

Mystery solved

I was disappointed to learn that the legal filing in response to Neb. state Sen. Ernie Chambers lawsuit was not, in fact, from God Godself.

This is maybe the silliest thing I've ever seen. It did, however, give us the chance to see various papers publish this AP photo, depicting Sen. Chambers' face framed by an electric-fan halo.

Bernard Holland on church music

The NYT music critic has few useful things to say about worship itself, as he's concerned largely with the church's potential role as patron of/inspiration for the arts. Among his variously predictable and bizarre points:

• In the good old days, music was an advertisement for heaven, which is good.
  
• In the bad new days, using "ethnic" music is just an advertisement for diversity, which is bad (the advertisement, not the diversity itself).
  
• The most legitimate argument against high-art church music is that really good music might distract churchgoers from more important things. The same is true of great liturgical poetry--which is why Anglicans are a bunch of godless aesthetes.
  
• The best church music is black gospel, followed by the Verdi requiem.
• High-church music is essentially Catholic, as it emphasizes the distance between the clergy and laity rather than their essential community/unity.

I understand that this is from the arts section, that it's intended to be about composers more than about church itself. But it's just so staggeringly out of touch--for instance, is it possible that Holland is unaware that, back in the real world of actual music happening in actual churches, the overwhelming majority of great classical church music since the Reformation has come out of the Protestant tradition, and the bulk of influential folk/popular liturgical music since Vatican II has come out of the Catholic church?

Whatever--the MSM wouldn't be itself w/o the ocassional cultural piece that is both brazenly elitist and hilariously out of touch, and I spend every Sunday afternoon w/ the NYT I have, not the NYT I wish I had. And if you're interested, you could always check out this church music piece from a very churchy guy writing for the independent press.

Thompson unfazed by Dobson

The presidential candidate is downplaying the e-mail in which James Dobson harshly criticized him. Thompson also makes this crucial point: "I have a lot of friends who I think are friends of his."

No real reason to believe that Thompson is as unconcerned as he'd have us believe. Of course, this is the guy who didn't know there was oil in the Everglades, so I suppose anything's possible.

Jena and Obama

I wish that Obama was marching in Jena today--as I wish that the other candidates were, along w/ many more white people than actually showed up (one of Diane Rehm's guests this morning said it was about 98 percent black), and, for that matter, me. It's terrible that the political calculus motivates the candidates to maintain a bit of distance and/or prioritize other things, and it's frustrating that they don't just insist on going down there anyway.

Still, I think Jesse Jackson's being a bit hard on Obama. While ideally Obama--and the others--would do more than release statements, his comments themselves are spot on. And it's hard to imagine Jackson's criticism having much effect on the way Obama positions himself as a candidate, as he's already doing an impressive job balancing the different things he represents to different people.

"Not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

James Dobson has anti-endorsed another candidate (speaking only as a private citizen, of course). Second time he's done that this cycle (though this time is was in an ostensibly private e-mail, which Dobson never intended to have leaked, etc.).

This could be real trouble for Thompson, though it will be hard to gauge its effect with any certainty. But I am among those who insist that Dobson remains probably the most influential religious leader in the country, despite the weekly-or-so MSM reports that "many" or "some" or "young" evangelicals are now more likely to listen to, say, Wendell Berry.

Oh, that it were so. In the meantime, the candidate trying to position himself as the only GOP heavyweight w/ social conservative bona fides just got trashed by the guy most able to motivate the religious right to spank their kids, fear the gays, ignore the environmentalists, call their representatives, or vote in a particular way (or at all).

Federal judge confirms that the U.S. is a Judeo-Christian nation!

Another entirely symbolic victory for the religious conservatives.

My whole life I've been close to the evangelical world in one way or another, and I've never for a moment understood why this matters.

The Edgiest Display of Editorial Independence award

From the Onion:

Several models said they were initially drawn in by American Apparel's progressive environmental policies, sweatshop-free manufacturing, and youthful corporate identity. But their dreams of success were soon shattered.

"Before I knew it, I was squatting on the floor in this humid room with a camera pointed at my crotch," said model Gabrielle, whose image can be found on the back page of this newspaper.

Taxation without representation

A big defeat for D.C. voting rights.

This is the closest we've gotten, but now it looks as though it'll be awhile.

Gore in 1992

Remember when much of the left voted for a third party or stayed home because this guy was deemed inadequately liberal or independent or pure or whatever to deserve a vote for president?

Actually, probably not--why should we remember 2000 now if we couldn't remember 1992 then?

Exceptionalism and fundamentalism

This conversation between James Carroll and Tom Engelhardt is worth a read.

I've had Constantine's Sword sitting on my shelf for a few years now and keep not getting to it. Here, Carroll meanders a bit but makes some very interesting observations about U.S. religion, foreign policy, and military culture.

Also: I learned something I didn't know, though perhaps you did--according to Carroll, it was Roger Williams, not Jefferson, who first talked explicitly about the concept of separation.

(Yet) another example that the ACLU is not, in fact, just a bunch of God-hating killjoys

T. Jeremy Gunn has a thoughtful piece on the foot-bath controversy.

He actually voted to be adult baptized before he was infant baptized

The latest John McCain flip-flopping story finds him distancing himself from the Episcopal church. (And wouldn't you, if you were trying to establish your social conservative bona fides right now? Which reminds me--while I disagree with McCain on any number of issues, I think it's unfair the way religious conservatives won't give him the time of day. Apparently McCain-Feingold--which was intended to restrict all sorts of "issue ads," not just the anti-abortion ones--and a years-old shot at Falwell and Robertson are enough to make people ignore the fact that the senator's actual voting record on abortion is mighty similar to Sam Brownback's.)

Anyway--McCain claimed yesterday to be Baptist, despite his Episcopal heritage and the fact that he's never joined the Baptist church at which he worships. This actually makes a certain amount of sense to me, as I suspect it does to many (though certainly not all) Protestants. I was dedicated as an infant in a Baptist church and raised and baptized in a nondenominational church with no formal membership rolls (and a relatively low view of baptism). At present I work at an Episcopal church at which I'm also deeply invested as a parishioner, but I remain a member of a Lutheran church halfway across the country--though I was never formally received into the denomination.

When people ask me about my denominational affiliation, my answer varies with the context of the question. Still, that's a bit different from an answer that varies based on what a given group of people want to hear. Backpedaling today, McCain said that "the most important thing is that I am a Christian." I don't know John, that sounds pretty broadly inclusive, pretty un-culture-war-ish, pretty Episcopalian...