Debating Religion & the Presidency
At last week’s Republican Presidential Debate hosted by CNN in Jacksonville, Florida, a wonderful question was asked of the candidates: if elected, how would their religious beliefs affect their decisions as president.
I don’t mean to Monday morning quarterback — actually, yes I do, because this question is the sort of thing I think about a lot (from the discipleship angle, not the presidential one). So, with the benefit of plenty of time to think, I thought I’d take a stab at my own response.
First, though, I’ll note that of the candidates’ answers, Newt Gingrich’s was closest to my perspective. His brief assertion that religion isn’t something that just happens on Sundays and, in that sense, is inextricable from daily life, was by far the most compelling point.
Even now, I still have no idea how Ron Paul’s argument makes any sense: that religion affects his character, and the way he lives, but wouldn’t affect his presidency because his oath of office would take precedence. Paul seemed to indicate he could set aside his faith at times, which I find confusing and problematic.
Santorum and Romney made safe claims about Judeo-Christian values and the Declaration of Independence, sticking to general faith fluff and an embellished religious history of America.
That’s all fine. No candidate said anything particularly compelling, but no candidate had an “oops moment” either.
I’ll never run for president. I don’t analyze polling data or focus groups. My answer, I have no doubt, would not be popular with much of America. But, here it is:
Every day, before I check my email and my to-do lists, I pray. Prayer centers me, reminding me that each day is a gift from God. Prayer reminds me I didn’t make this world. I didn’t found our great nation. I don’t live a perfect life. Every day, after that morning prayer, I’m called to respond to God’s grace and love.
Faith, religion, and service are inextricable aspects of my life. They are at my core. I try to live my life not primarily for personal gain, but to serve God and others. So it turns out that faith is actually a large part of why I’m running. After all: why would I put my family, myself, my friends through the gauntlet of a campaign if it were not for a larger purpose beyond self? We don’t need a president — or anyone in public office — thinking the world revolves around any one person. Public service, for many of us, is an act of discipleship.
Now, before anyone gets any ideas, I would not use public office to compel or advocate my particular faith tradition. My values come from my faith tradition, but they’re also certainly influenced by my family, education, and community. In this most religiously diverse country on God’s earth, we must seek to advocate for policy in ways that speaks to those of all faiths, and those of no faith. For me, my love of neighbor comes from Jesus’ teachings, rooted in the Bible, and is sustained by a community of faith. For others, their love and service is influenced by the teachings of Muhammad, or in the way of Buddha. For still others (some dear friends of mine) who don’t believe in God, life’s goals come from influences beyond faith. But atheists and agnostics can and do still seek to contribute to society, to support their community, and to live justly.
So, I hope, I pray, that faith would affect every aspect of my time in office, that it would demand from me humility, honesty, courage, love, care for the earth, respect, that faith would drive me to seek liberty and justice for all. Faith then, wouldn’t hinder me in office — it’s not something I can just set aside — rather, faith would help me as I humbly sought to serve both God and country.
What do you think? What would you answer? What struck you about the candidates’ responses?
Sex on campus, the campaign trail, & in the classroom
Megan and I recently gave away four boxes of books and sold two others to secondhand book dealers. Taking old beloved books off our shelves was a painstaking process. Most of the books we ended up giving away were from college and seminary (if you were wondering: science books resell for a whole lot more than religion books). One book I did not give away — maybe will never give away — is Our Sexuality, assigned for a college course on human sexuality.
Human Sexuality, taught by a UCC pastor turned sociologist, was one of the most personally affecting courses I took at St. Olaf College. It’s been seven years now since I soaked up lectures on everything from sexual physiology to the economics of the pornography industry, but an oft-spoken line of the professor remains with me: “Understanding your sexuality is the foremost component to understanding yourself.”
Many words come to mind to describe that wonderful course and the atmosphere created by the professor’s thoughtful pedagogy — non-judgmental, liberating, embodied, reflective, hilarious, sacred — but it’s that last one that sticks with me.
Looking back, I’m not sure how he did it. Somehow, though, without his even talking about faith much at all, I was convinced that the professor’s deep respect for his students as sexual beings came from his Christian convictions. Despite that fact that he gave several lectures bemoaning the sexist history of the church, I also got the distinct impression that when our professor enjoyed sexual intimacy with his wife (which he was open to discussing), he understood sex as a holy gift from God and within God’s love.
Pivot now to two sets of recent articles. First, Saturday’s NY Times has eight commentators discussing “The Gingrich Question: Cheating vs. Open Marriage.” As I flipped through the short essays weighing-in on open marriage, divorce, sexual intimacy, etc. I was struck that the Times had failed to ask any clergy for their perspective. Which got me thinking: was the snub an oversight by the Times, or did it simply reflect the fact that clergy are not skilled (equipped?, open?) to speak publicly about sex.
Mind you it’d be a cinch to find a preacher who’d use the Times’ bully pulpit to argue in loud monotone for marriage between one man and one woman. Many of the Times’ writers, however, demonstrate much more careful words and thoughtful consideration than that, and I wondered what pastors might say publicly beyond, “marriage is good.” (I’m not saying it isn’t, by the way, just that I long for a deeper, richer, more theological conversation than most pastors react with, or at least those covered by the mainstream media.)
Thankfully, then, I later caught up on my Christian Century reading to find just that: several campus pastors reflecting on the complicated culture of dating, sex, drinking, and hook-ups at their colleges (including, my alma mater).
I recommend the series of articles, “Sex on Campus: College chaplains on the hookup culture” at The Christian Century’s website (may require subscription). It’s all just tidbits from a larger conversation we need to have, but I’m heartened that it’s out there. I long for more holy places like my college human sexuality course to discuss sexuality, sexual ethics, culture, and faith.
I’ll close with the hopeful words of Tara Woodard-Lehman, Executive Director of the Westminster Foundation at Princeton University. Words of which, my former human sexuality professor, would be proud:
I attempt to help students cultivate a prophetic, holy imagination—one that helps them imagine a self and life that is integrated. I invite them to affirm what Rowan Williams calls “the body’s grace,” a vision of sex as an identification of one’s own body with another’s body as mutually given sources of joy and desire. I invite them to see their bodies through the sacred lens of their Creator, who names them as good, very good. Even if they can’t quite believe that it’s true, I hope that they want it to be true. And I trust that over time, by God’s grace, they will live more fully and faithfully into that new reality.
image by Matthew Bowden
Review: “On Our Way” edited by Dorothy Bass & Susan Briehl
The new book, On Our Way: Christian Practices for Living a Whole Life sums up my best hopes for how young adults might live well in today’s world. Because of that, I found the book both delightful and tragic at the same time since it calls us to think deeply about how we are living today. Often, I found myself underlining a sentence and saying under my breath, “Yes…YES!…but that’s so hard.”
Edited by Dorothy Bass and Susan Briehl, On Our Way is a collection of essays responding to the deep hunger of a rising generation. The writers, 12 pastors, activists, professors, and other thoughtful-types clearly write from their hearts as they plumb the depths of scripture and tradition for good words on our contemporary world. The following summary statement provides the framework for the book:
To embrace a way of life abundant requires us to be attentive. No one can live this way in isolation from others: life abundant depends upon and arises within life together. It does not lead into a fantasy future or purely spiritual realm but into the real world. There, Christian practice these practices not for our own sake but for the good of all, and not by our own power or vision but in response to God, whose own grace and call provide this way of life.
Chapters include essays on Living as Community, Care for Creation, Singing Our Lives to God, Peacemaking and Nonviolence, Knowing and Loving Our Neighbors of Other Faiths, and more. My favorite was a chapter entitled “Making a Good Living” by Douglas Hicks in which he deals with materialism, money, and intentional living. He ends by cautioning, “Do not let anyone tell you that living a relatively simple lifestyle is an easy practice of faith. it is one of the most difficult.”
I began reading On Our Way because I thought it might help me in my work with young adults. It will. Greatly. But, a few chapters into it I realized I wasn’t reading only for work anymore. The book had begun speaking to me personally as well, helping me reflect on my own way of living in the world.
The one regret I have concerning On Our Way regards its cover not its contents. The understated cover doesn’t shout “Read me: I’m an awesome young adult ministry book!” nor are hip words like “missional,” “emergent,” “curate,” or even “vocation” splashed across the cover. Without a blurb from Brian McLaren on the back, I fear it might take its time getting into the hands of church leaders. And that’d be a shame.
That said, I have a high regard for the folks at Practicing Our Faith, and I trust their judgement. And, heck, the book’s quality should speak for itself. I highly recommend it for young adult groups, pastors, educators, and all who ask questions how to live well and live faithfully in our world today.
For video conversations with Dorothy Bass, the authors, and links to a corresponding DVD resources go here. They’re great too!
Secular Sabbath vs. Christian Traditions
Next week the Project F-M will be hosting a Theology Pub (Monday night, 7:30 p.m.) on the topic: Sabbath 2.0: Should We Ever Fully Unplug? These events draw a pretty diverse crowd of 20/30-somethings from those who regularly attend church to atheists, from pastors to the spiritual but not religious. As the convener of these gatherings, next week I’ll be particularly interested in considering how the theological notion of sabbath relates to the 24/7 nature of secular digital life.
In this vein, two recent popular press articles on sabbath (though they didn’t call it that) are well worth reading.
In the NY Times, Pico Iyer 
writes on “The Joy of Quiet,” discussing exclusive resorts that offer the allure of NO Internet or cell phone service. Particularly striking was Iyer’s visit to a Benedictine monastery where he met a MTV employee who brought his son on trips there to get away from it all.
In Slate, Katie Roiphe reflects in “Can We Really Unplug: The illusion of Internet freedom” on the popular Freedom software that locks you off the Internet for the length of your choosing.
(I’ve written on sabbath and technology in previous posts including Sabbath 2.0 and Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-Out?”)
Interestingly, in the church circles I observe, teaching and preaching about sabbath-keeping has gone out of style. The positive read of this is a healthy response to an over-zealous piety that can come with too much emphasis on keeping sabbath. The negative possibility, however, is that in a society where culture is about more-and-more-faster-and-faster, the church has neglected its task of preaching about the joy and benefits of practicing sabbath (and its task to acknowledge the struggles related to it as well).
So does the reflection Iyer and Roiphe’s piece (and Mark Bittman’s [here] before it) mark a cultural shift in which today’s main advocates of sabbath (or “quiet,” “rest,” “time away” whatever you call it) approach it from a spiritual but not religious perspective?
How can Christians — pastors and others alike — add their voice to the conversation in ways that welcome others? Off the top of my head, this process of dialogue comes to mind:
- for Christians, and all, to acknowledge the challenge of today’s fast-paced uber-connected life and with it a desire by many to find periods of shelter from the hubbub
- for Christians to listen to those who seek and find this sabbath rest from non-Christian perspectives including those that are totally secular, and those from other religious traditions
- for Christians to plumb the depths of their own tradition and find a clarity as to what sabbath is all about (from the commandment to Jesus’ nuanced disregard for it)
- for Christians to claim — in humility and while admitting the challenges — how living out their notions of sabbath is both faithful and life-giving for them
My instinct is that, when it comes to finding breaks from digital life — time to realign our lives towards what is good and right — the church has a lot to learn from those who practice “sabbath” without much notion of religion. I hope the conversation starts soon.
image by ivanmarn
IS: Religious Communication and Digital Life
Since I have so much time on my hands, I’m taking an Independent Study this semester: Religious Communication & Digital Life. This will count as credit towards a MA in Communication at the Univ. of North Dakota, but mainly help deepen my understanding of the field of religious comm, particularly as it concerns cyberculture studies, new media, and digital life. (Actually, I have very little time on my hands, but I love studying this stuff so much it’d be silly not to make it official.)
I’m pretty pumped about the course which is supervised by both a communication and religion professor at UND. In independent study fashion, however, I’ll be working a lot on my own. In blogger fashion, one of the course requirements is that I post thoughts here from time to time including reviews of each of the books I’ll be reading. These include:
- Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader eds. Gordon Lynch and Jolyon Mitchell, Routledge, pp. 296, ISBN: 0415549558
- Morgan, David. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice, Univ. of California Press, ISBN: 0520243064, pp. 333.
- Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games with God, Craig Detweiler, ed., Westminster John Knox, pp. 222, ISBN: 0664232779
- Campbell, Heidi. When Religion Meets New Media, Routledge, 2010, pp. 232. ISBN:0415349575
- Wilkie, Rob. The Digital Condition: Class and Culture in the Information Network, Fordham University Press, 2011, pp. 272. ISBN: 0823234231
- Miller, Vincent. Understanding Digital Culture, Sage Publications, 2011, pp. 264. ISBN: 1847874975
Of course, that’s just a smattering of what’s out there, and I’m aware the core literature in the field is shifting/still being discovered/not yet written. So, I’d love to hear what you’re reading, and take suggestions as to what I should add to the list.
In related news: next week I’ll be attending the Digital Religion Conference hosted by University of Colorado at Boulder’s Center for Media, Religion, and Culture. I’m eager to make new connections, have some great conversations, and drink some delicious Boulder-area beer. If you’re reading this, and would be there and up for that, let’s connect. (Tweet @ajc123 email adamjcopeland at gmail)
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