I sit at my desk this morning wondering what is was like for the residents of New Orleans last year at this time. Many of them were probably drinking their morning coffee and watching the news, wondering what was about to go down as Hurricane Katrina roared ashore. If they had been listening to the radio or watching local TV, they would have heard then Mayor Ray Nagin announce a mandatory evacuation of the city…as in it was now illegal to live in New Orleans.

Of course we know how that story ends, or rather doesn’t end since it is still going on. While the levee system has been invested in to the tune of $15 billion, many experts still don’t think that it will protect from another Katrina-level storm. As it stands right now, New Orleans actually has more homeless people than before Katrina – a staggering estimation of 12,000 – twice what the estimation was before Katrina. And, of course, there are the houses themselves. The latest figures show 50,000 homes either abandoned or in some state of destruction. All of this as a result of lack of planning, poor response and the neglect of an entire class of people by a country which certainly displays a hierarchical understanding of aid.

Meanwhile, on this same morning over 7000 miles away, one-fifth of Pakistan remains underwater after the worst floods seen in decades affect 17 million in the latest accounts. Levees are being breached, water continues to deliver its relentless and driving toll and the residents of this country we have been so entangled with over the past 10 years suffer. So, here is my question. What do we do about this one? We saw the response in our own country to massive flooding – one that certainly did not merit a “You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Brownie” comment. What about now?

If I were President – and thank God I’m not for many reasons – here’s what I would do tomorrow. I’d call the Prime Minister of Pakistan and I would say, “We agree with you. You are facing the worst crisis that you may ever have faced. Let us help. I stand ready to call the Armed Forces of the United States into an active rescue and recovery force the likes of which have never been seen. I will order them into active duty in Pakistan to rescue stranded citizens, carry food and supplies wherever needed and to provide medical care to thousands, if not millions. Give me the OK of Pakistan’s government and we’re there.”

What better use of the military than to engage in the kind of work that only they can do? You have a fifth of the country that cannot be reached except by air? Well, we have a whole fleet of helicopters that can reach anywhere. You need food and supplies and medical equipment? We have them by the tons.

There is a vacuum of care right now and into that vacuum someone will step. In the rural areas of Pakistan – you know, the very places that Bin Laden is hiding – the Taliban will be happy to use this to their advantage. They will be happy to win the hearts and minds of the villagers in need. So, if we were to win that race, it might be worth a thousand drone strikes, a hundred military “victories” and a dozen Taliban leader assassinations.

Let’s do for Pakistan what we failed to do for the Gulf Coast after Katrina. Let’s replace the flooding waters damage with a flood of compassion. That kind of levee would shore up our future in ways that we cannot imagine.

The latest move to strike down the 14^th amendment has struck me also – first as a pretty balanced blend of stupid and offensive and then as an interesting commentary on how we view so-called “original intent”. It comes up in Supreme Court cases, in the vetting process for a new justice, in our elections and, here’s where I come in, in the Church’s distinct ways of reading the Bible.

Here’s the similarity. Some Christians read the Bible as the absolute “Word of God” handed down from the clouds in King James’ English and not to be trifled with. It is to be taken literally and without question. Others in the Christian camp view that differently. We see the Bible as a collection of human beings’ attempts to sometimes rationalize their own behavior, to make sense of their own story and to bring meaning to their lives as they encounter, struggle with and relate to the “ground of being” that we call “God”. Both sides, of course, end up doing a lot of interpretation (some more honestly and openly than others) because the words written thousands of years ago in a foreign culture with an often completely different set of values and “norms” end up being (unsurprisingly) hard to apply evenly and directly. So, we ( on both sides) end up emphasizing the parts that support our already existing beliefs.

Take for instance the laws of Leviticus. Many want to hold to Leviticus’ prohibition of “same sex” relations found in 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (NRSV) They don’t, however, emphasize with a fraction of the same intensity other things which Leviticus lists as an “abomination”. Things like “cursing your father or mother”, “approaching or even speaking to a woman while she is in her menstrual uncleanness”, not to mention what we eat. There is much more depth to our reading of scripture than the simple “The Bible says it and that settles it” argument. The context matters, as does the language. For a great example of this (specifically how it relates to the issue of the supposed condemnation of homosexuality in the Hebrew Bible) see this article.

So, we selectively choose to single out the “sin” of homosexuality while softly condemning, or ignoring altogether, the obvious and very public examples of multiple marriages and extramarital affairs (I’m talking to you, Newt Gingrich). In other words, we praise and condemn selectively depending on our own already established preconceptions. No one is reading the Bible literally – and thank God for that. I don’t want to stone my children to death for back-talking me…though that would contend in a very perverse way with our population problem because there’s no way that 99% of kids would make it through their teen years unscathed.

The same policy is true of the Constitution. There are many who claim the title of “Constitutionalists” or the extremely popular label during the elections of “Constitutional Conservative”. I have yet to see “Constitutional Liberal”, but maybe that’s because I live where I do. No one would ever dare use that word around here to define themselves…liberal, I mean.

As the recent stink over “anchor babies” has reared its ugly head, there has been (in my opinion) a major example of the hypocrisy concerning “original intent”. Recently Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) reported that he didn’t think the founders could have ever envisioned a world in which people were flying into the US just to have children and be granted dual-citizenship. That statement alone violates the argument made by Sessions and all the other “Constitutionalists” about the 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms and the supposed “fixed meaning” of the Constitutional text. That 2nd amendment right, it is argued, is a literal fact. Its right there in black and white and any attempts to reason that there is no way that the founders could have envisioned a world in where people could own semi-automatic assault rifles with armor-piercing ammunition falls on deaf ears.  But you can’t have it both ways.  Either the “founders” (who had nothing to do with the 14th amendment, by the way) could see every possible outcome and context or they couldn’t.  Otherwise all that is happening is a selective literal and interpretive reading depending on what fits your own preconceived ideas.

The fact is that we do interpret these documents. It is the reason that God created us with brains…so that we might use them. If I slip into the completely religious realm, it is also the reason that God interacts with us still through the Spirit, so that we might continue to relate to God, to interpret the ways that we are asked to be faithful and so that we might live out a covenant with God in the everyday.

I, obviously, lean on the interpretive side because I believe that the Bible and the Constitution are living, breathing documents – or they should be treated as such. I no more want to be captured by what the 18^th century mind could imagine than I want to be captured by what the 1^st century mind could envision.  We have to use the guidelines put before us to make judgments relative to new situations, new data, new scenarios and a changing world.  That is the only way that we stay engaged, not locked into a system of rules but alive to the action of the Spirit (from the religious side of the tracks) or the motion of democracy (from the political side of the tracks).  It is how we have ever moved closer to a world where the original statement “ALL men are created equal” has been broadened from its “original meaning” of “all white, land-owning, educated men are created equal” to a more expansive dream of all people being equal, all colors, genders, religions, creeds and orientations.  That is democracy (and the Spirit, in my opinion) in action.

Now, with all that being said I have one more thing. If we’re still going to drive on the “Founded as a Christian Nation” road that this same crowd wants to pave for us, then here’s a parting piece of scripture for you to interpret as we contend with the latest attack on immigrants in our “immigrant nation”:

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

- Leviticus 19:33-34

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)

The general demeanor in Washington DC these days is one of partisan rancor. That’s no secret. And much of the battle is waged over economic differences – the shift between how the democrats and republicans view economics.

I’m not sure that I buy the argument that policies drive economics. After all, we have experienced growth and stability economically speaking in the administrations of both republican and democratic presidents. And contrary to popular opinion, it is actually democrats who fare better economically speaking, but I don’t think that has anything to do with policies. I think that it has to do with fear.

Fear has been, and certainly is now, the primary weapon of the GOP. Without any discernable options and living off of the clear memory for most of us that we just wrenched the power from their hands, the GOP seems hell-bent on promoting a rampant panic of “socialism” or some other irrational fear-based accusations. The common theme in politics (from both sides) seems to be, if you can’t beat ‘em then demonize, slander or discredit ‘em.

Now that might work as a political strategy, but it is hugely damaging to our national spirit and the cost of that method of doing business is very high indeed. We are now running an enormous deficit of character on top of our financial debt. See, I don’t think that it matters as much whether we cut taxes or invest in “bailouts” or stimulus. I think that the real effect on the economy comes from the climate we foster.

For instance, we are now residing in an almost entirely consumer-based economy. That means that if we aren’t spending, we don’t create new jobs and the economy stagnates. Meanwhile most media outlets and quite a few candidate looking for short term gain over any sense of “common good” paint such a bleak and terrifying picture that it is no doubt people wish to conserve any resources they may have. That fear mongering may play well on election day, but it leaves a wake of paralyzing stasis that keeps us all looking over our shoulder mired in mistrust.

The Bible uses the phrase “do not fear”, or some derivative of that, 365 times…once for every day of the year. That kind of frequency probably indicates that fear is something that stands counter to a spiritual life. It interferes with our connection to God. Fear negates trust. It kills hope and it deadens love and compassion. When it is used to further short term political goals, its effect is even greater. It poisons the well and what we get is an end to all of our capacity to quench our thirst.

Certainly the democratic strategy plays off of fear at times too, though it usually looks like threats of an end to social programs or the often blatant cries of racism or sexism. Still, the tone has risen to new highs (or sunk to new lows more accurately) and I am worried about what the cost of this escalation will be for our democracy. As we become less and less able to simply converse or to even be seen with the “other side”, I wonder how anything at all can be accomplished in Congress.

FDR once famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. He was trying to inspire people out of an economic collapse – a depression that we came perilously close to again. He knew that we would never recover until we were able to foster a sense of trust again…trust in our own future as individuals, trust in one another and trust in a sense of common good.

See my economic theory isn’t based on financial models or strategies. It is based on the notion that stability (economic, social or otherwise) comes from community. It comes from us knowing one another and knowing that while we may have individual lives, those lives are interdependent and we exist because of one another, not despite. So save the stimulus packages and the tax cuts…neither will really matter until we learn that while fear might make for a great campaign slogan, it erodes the very thing we need, namely trust, and ultimately hurts us all.

And when I call for peace as our economic strategy, I’m talking about much more than the Pentagon’s definition of peace : a permanent state of pre-hostility. Of course an end to war in general is a good thing, but I’m talking about the peace of common good. The end to competition as the national pastime and a dedication to being our brother’s and sister’s keeper.When we pit ourselves one against the other, the end result is division.  Since we now run on the politics of division, we have found ourselves mired in the quicksand of inaction, the sticky web of uncooperative stall and delay tactics all in the name of media-driven gamesmanship.  Meanwhile the citizenship suffers and big money continues to rake it in.  But I think that the fear mongering has an unintended consequence.

While companies are reporting much higher than expected earnings in the past couple of quarters, the unemployment rate still sits at around 9-10%.  Why?  Could it be that the very fear that is being generated for political purposes has made its way into the bloodstream?  Has it saturated the environment enough that people actually believe that President Obama seeks to turn us into a “European-style socialist system”, whatever that means?  Could it be that in trying to score points for their “party”, the net effect is a loss of confidence inthe system as a whole?  And where does that fear-based plan lead us?  In the short term it might turn Congress this November.  But in the long run in our world of “tit-for-tat” politics, that means that the party that loses power begins the fear mongering all over again.  And pretty soon the fear will build up and it will have no place left to hide.

Fear not, Jesus tells his disciples often.  It doesn’t get you anywhere.  In fact, it keeps you from getting anywhere.  That’s always been my problem with a conservative ethos – its based on the fear of losing what is viewed as “yours”.  So you conserve it.  But then you have to contend with the disparity that presents us as followers of Jesus who told his disciples this: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36) For this is the path of God, my friends, the way to building the kingdom of God, which is infused with God’s love that comes without exceptions, and generosity without fear. We are called to that kind of love and generosity. It has been said that hate is the opposite of love, and even that indifference is the opposite of love…but I think that it is fear.

Thanks to my friend Susan for showing me this article…

Volunteers help transform neighborhood

by: BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer – Tulsa World

Wednesday, August 04, 2010
8/4/2010 3:23:06 AM

A network of churches, agencies and volunteers is making a difference in one of Tulsa’s poorest neighborhoods.

The west Tulsa neighborhood around Eugene Field Elementary School, bounded by the Arkansas River, oil refineries and railroad tracks, has a poverty rate of some 95 percent, said Cindi Hemm, school principal.

Nearly all of her students come from three large low-income apartment complexes in the neighborhood. Three-fourths of them have a family member in prison, and 95 percent of their parents have not graduated from high school.

But Hemm said a flood of volunteers is transforming the school and the neighborhood.

“When I came here eight years ago, we only had 170 students,” she said. “The neighborhood was in decline.”

Since then, she said, the student population has more than doubled to 430 students as word has spread about the good things going on in the neighborhood, and requests for transfers into the school have gone up.

“The kids are happy, well-behaved and clean,” she said. “We have wonderful programs.”

Eugene Field’s standardized test scores were abysmal when Hemm arrived. They now score well above Tulsa Public Schools and Oklahoma averages in math, science, reading and social studies.

Leading the way have been members of First United Methodist Church in downtown Tulsa.

Other churches have pitched in, Hemm said, but members of First United Methodist “have just wrapped us up. They’re having a huge influence here.”

It started with a mentoring program developed 15 years ago by Don and Emily Renberg. Now, more than 250 mentors, 150 of them from First Methodist, meet one-on-one with students every week, she said.

When the school initiated a uniform policy four years ago, church members raised $12,000 and bought three uniforms for every student. Each year since then, they have bought every student one uniform.

Church members prepare and serve a free dinner to 300 to 500 people at the school, 2249 S. Phoenix Ave., on the last Friday of the month, when monthly food stamp rations are running low.

Each student is invited to one of four annual birthday parties at the church during the quarter in which they were born.

First Methodist member Clark Milspaugh sold his oil business several years ago and committed himself to helping the neighborhood.

His heart was broken, he said, when he saw a kindergarten girl in Hemm’s office for stealing food.

“I cried,” he said.

Hemm talked to him about the need for a grocery store in a neighborhood where few people have cars.

Through what Milspaugh calls a series of divine encounters, he and a group of investors from First Methodist Church bought and renovated two buildings next to the school.

Those buildings now house the Westside Harvest Market and a variety of ministries and programs.

The market is the only source of healthy, inexpensive food within walking distance of the apartment complexes.

Prices at the nonprofit market are kept down by selling some donated food and using all volunteer staffing.

The market has a teaching kitchen with classes on how to feed a family healthier food for less.

“We have a generation that doesn’t know how to grow and cook their own food,” Hemm said.

The market sells fresh produce from a student garden at the school managed by Global Gardens, an after-school teaching program that meets in the building.

Students are not the only ones selling fresh produce at the market.

Last Thursday, Scott Van Compernolle’s cucumbers were going for 60 cents each.

Van Compernolle lives in LaFortune Towers, a residential facility for low-income elderly and disabled people. He has a garden at West Tulsa United Methodist Church, which also has adopted the school. The Hurricane Katrina refugee spent $2 on seeds for the garden.

“I grow things and give them away to people who can’t get out,” he said. “You make their day, and that makes my day.”

On Thursdays, a First Methodist bus takes a group from LaFortune Towers to the market.

“I love it. The people are so nice. … And the prices are good,” said Charlene Chase, 68.

Other ministries in the buildings are the Color Me True Workshop for single mothers; a 24/7 prayer room; Abba’s Family, a counseling program that places needy people with a prayer family; Certified Nursing Assistant classes that have enabled 18 people to get training for good jobs; and a Young Life youth program.

In the next few weeks, The Burgh, a new church, will begin holding services there; The Good Samaritan mobile health clinic will offer free medical service; and an Alpha program will begin, teaching the basics of Christianity.

“God brings the people, we give them the space and let God move,” Millspaugh said.

“We’re here to see God transform lives.”

Hemm sees her school’s community emphasis as a way to fight poverty.

“Education is the key to getting out of generational poverty,” she said.

“That’s the whole point of a community school. It’s a public building. My goal is to keep it open six days a week, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“Sometimes this building is the safest place for these kids to be. We go into lockdown eight or 10 times a year because of violence in the neighborhood.”

And she sees a spiritual element to the war on poverty.

“I’m a woman of faith. You can separate church and state, but you can’t stop me from praying for each kid.”

In a recent Facebook post  Anne Rice, the author most famously of Interview with the Vampire, stated that she was leaving Christianity.  Here is a link to her interview with NPR. She had sort of rejoined Christianity only a few years ago and celebrated her return to the Catholic church of her youth by publishing a couple of books on Christ and being vocal on a few social issues.

But, as she posted a few days ago, “Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Why now?  Well, here is her further response: “In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

That’s what I want to say all the time, and I’m a minister in the Church of Jesus Christ!  And I’m also troubled by the gap between what I see portrayed as Christians and those people who I know to be followers of the Nazarene sage. I hear Anne Rice’s words and I think about what Michael Dowd refers to as “new atheists” who have also rejected the more mainstream Christianity and who seems to have no other reference point for Christianity other than the dogmatic, narrow-minded, legalistic forms that do admittedly dominate the landscape.  Still, I want to scream sometimes – “LOOK OVER HERE!!!”  We are doing something different at Mayflower and within the United Church of Christ, as well as movements within our sister denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and other denominations like the Methodists and Presbyterians.  Even the Catholic  and Episcopal Churches are struggling to address many of these issues.  There is something in Christianity beyond Pat Robertson and “Left Behind” theology.

Still, I know that her criticism is accurate.  Even though we have contentious issues, the manner in which the Church addresses them is so far from Christian as to be offensive.  We are called to be love, first and foremost, and we can’t even live that out with one another.  We have become the same Pharisaic authorities that Jesus himself chastised.  The term “Christian” is no longer even comfortable for me to use because of how it has been co-opted by people for whom love seems a distant cousin of judgment and fear.  It is no wonder that people are fleeing the Church of the sage who taught opposition to that legalistic morality because they see the hypocrisy.  They bear witness to the church’s appalling stances on issues like LGBT rights, our environmental responsibilities, immigration and the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.  Christianity, at least the mainstream more vocal type, has been abysmally unfaithful on these issues, in my opinion.  I then find myself hoping that people don’t confuse God with religion – they are quite different.

What the church is failing to do – and failing miserably often – is to infuse people with hope and give them an optimistic sense of their lives, the world around them and the actions of a loving God.  I, for one, applaud Ms. Rice’s decision to leave the church as she described it.  I want her to know that it’s not the only version out there and I am pleased to hear her also say this: ”

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.”

Anne Rice has done the most Christian thing I can think of by leaving Christianity.  She has done what Jesus himself did by beginning to operate outside the boundaries established by fear-based and exclusionary religion.  So amen to her.  And God help us all.