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
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)
Review: Metaxas’ “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”
I read many books, but seldom biography. Perhaps that’s due to negative experiences with book report assignments growing up. Who knows? Upon a social media acquaintance’s recommendation, however, I picked up a Kindle copy of Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Quickly, I found myself looking forward to evenings in which I could read the thick biography. It’s an absolute triumph of a book.
Many aspects of Bonhoeffer’s remarkable life compelled me. First and foremost, I enjoyed learning about the man whose theology I had only really encountered in snapshots — quotes from Cost of Discipleship, snippets of his Advent and Christmas sermons, prayers, etc. I had a taste of Bonhoeffer’s strong words and generous spirit, but not the context in which to view them. For example, though I constructed an Advent worship service last year around Bonhoeffer’s Advent/Christmas sermons, I didn’t understand that they were written during the Nazi party buildup in Germany, while Bonhoeffer was already plotting with the opposition and organizing the Confessing Church.
Second, I was very intrigued with the window into the holocaust that Metaxas’ gives the reader. I have studied a bit of the history of WWII, but mainly from American perspectives. Certainly I’ve run into many moral components of the holocaust in philosophy, ethics, and religion courses, but it is so difficult to get the full context of what was happening in Germany at the time. Bonhoeffer allows a window into the slow rise of Hitler and the Nazi party that I didn’t previously know much about.
Finally, Bonhoeffer the man is wonderful to read about because he is so damn well-rounded and, well, extraordinary. A skillful pianist, poet, theologian (but even better pastor), preacher, philosopher, historian, son of a brilliant scientist, speaker of many languages, singer, humorist, family man, prophetic Christian, and more, the sheer breadth and depth of Bonhoeffer’s knowledge and skill astounds me. I’m left wondering: do we simply not make women and men that way any more, or was Bonhoeffer truly set apart?
I wholeheartedly recommend Bonhoeffer. At 624 pages, it takes a bit to read, but I always found myself looking forward to picking it up again. (Oh, and by the way, I think Bonhoeffer, were he living today, would definitely be a prodigious blogger. He was constantly writing to hundreds of friends, family members, and colleagues, both individually and in circular letters.)
I’ll close with a quote from the pastor himself:
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.
Metaxas, Eric; Timothy J. Keller (2010-04-20). Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (p. 241). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Occupy Wall Street & Christian Theology, a Conversation
Last night at Theology Pub we hosted a conversation consider the Occupy Wall Street movement and Christian theology. In truth, when I scheduled the topic, I was a bit nervous about how it would go. After all, the Christian church these days sometimes feels more like a corporate conglomerate than a fringe movement taking to the streets. The conversation, however, went beautifully and I left contemplating the many cross-over notions of Christianity and the #Occupy movement (OWS).
In last week’s news roundup on NPR, NY Times columnist David Brooks said, “I think the Tea Party is like, 11 percent of the country. My estimate is that Occupy Wall Street is 2 or 3 percent of the country in what they actually want to do.” I’m not sure what Brooks thinks “they actually want to do,” but last night a fairly mixed group of young adults — Christians, atheists, seekers, seminarians, pastors — was definitely more than appreciative of the movement. Here’s why.
First, we considered how OWS might connect to Jesus’ notion of the “kingdom of God.” (See Brian McLaren’s piece here.) Conversation hinged on what a new version of the world might look like, one in which there is less income inequality, everyone has a voice, and diminished injustice. We considered, also, how the Kingdom of God is something that is not only coming in the future, but something that we can glimpse here and now. Perhaps OWS can remind and inspire Christians to live out that kingdom mentality.
Second, since the OWS folks seem to be living out certain intentional practices such as offering hospitality, food, prayer, tearing down of golden calves, and so on, we wondered with Elizabeth Drescher how OWS might be seen as a spiritual practice. Folks were less open to this notion, as they didn’t see religious identity as a determinative aspect to most folks’ participation in the protests. Certainly there are exceptions (such as the Protest Chaplains), but I was personally intrigued how folks seemed to be willing to make a distinction like, “People do this not because they’re Christian, but because they’re fed up with injustice.” I don’t like that distinction one bit, but it seemed to drive several persons’ thinking and went over without much debate.
Third, the move of OWS to “kill the Buddhas of power and hierarchy in our society,” as Nathan Schneider considers here, was quite compelling to folks. Our young adults needed almost no time to point out different idols of wealth, power, prestige, celebrity, nationality, even unquestioned democracy that needed to be called to account. (Of course, it’s always easier to point out the false idols of others than it is to claim your own hangups.)
Finally, we ended with a brief consideration of how sin (both personal and societal) might be way to put Christian language to the brokenness OWS folks are protesting.
At the end of the night, my uneasiness about the OWS topic has subsided, only to be replaced by another troublesome reality. Our conversation went so well, tapping into much of Christian theology and the Bible, that I mourned the fact such polite, wide-ranging, political conversation would be difficult to host in many mainline churches. But then again, according to the young adults gathered last night, it’s not Christians who push this justice stuff anyway.
image by Rob Sheridan
Young adults are amoral heathens, but what’s new?
This week’s Theology Pub, a gathering of 20/30-somethings The Project FM hosts at a local bar to talk about God and life, tackled the topic “Is my truth better than yours?” Though it came out a few days too late, David Brooks’ NY Times Op-Ed yesterday, “If it feels right” would have been great pre-reading.
Brooks builds his column on the work of Christian Smith and colleagues. Smith’s previous book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults has been on my wish list for some time. Now I’ll have to add his latest as well, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood.
In his column Brooks opines that young adults these days apparently lack the wherewithal to speak about moral issues. As someone who hosts conversations for young adults to speak about moral issues, two responses immediately come to mind. One: young adults who attend Theology Pub absolutely love speaking about moral issues. Two: we are not particularly well versed in how to speak about them.
I could blame this all on standardized testing in grade schools. I could complain about colleges requiring too few philosophy and ethics courses (grad schools too, for that matter). I could lambast parents for not passing along resources for taking on moral subjects. But I won’t.
What I will do, however, is refuse to blame young adults themselves for not having been given the resources to take on moral questions — it’s not their fault that faith communities, schools, and parents failed them. Let me repeat that: it doesn’t do us any good to blame 20 year-olds for not having the moral sensibilities we wish they had. (And Brooks, by the way, does well to refuse to do so — mostly.)
I look forward to reading Smith’s book, but I’ll do so uneasily. When I somehow find the time to pick it up, I’ll do so with this question at the forefront of my mind: Is it that young adults truly have fewer moral resources with which to deal with moral questions than previous generations, or is it that today’s questions are so much more complex that young adults need more skills and understanding to just tread water in our consumeristic pluralized technologically-advanced globalized world?
After all, it’s much easier to teach and theologize that “murder is wrong” than it is to discuss unmanned drone strikes in remote border areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan during an unfunded “war on terror” lasting over ten years.
image by Linden Laserna
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