Presbyterians Issue Statement on AZ Immigration Law
Strangely, the immigration issue has floated off my radar after my move to Grand Forks. Whereas I used to encounter immigrants often in my aspects of my daily life, I don’t anymore (well, not counting the 3rd & 4th generation Scandinavian immigrants that makeup 80% of our congregation). Fargo has a growing new immigrant community, and is making a name for itself as a welcoming place for immigrants, especially those (often refugees) from Africa. And even on our side of Kittson County, I am not aware of too many immigrant issues — I think things may be a bit different on the east side of the county, though I confess I don’t know enough on this yet.
Anyways, I thought I’d post the recent statement from PC(USA) leaders in response to the AZ immigration law, SB 1070. I’ll post the text here, though there’s some good discussion (so far, at least) going on at Bruce’s blog here. As always, statements such as these beg two questions: (1) what of the folks in the PC(USA) who disagree with our denominational position statements on immigration and (2) who really cares about a statement from the PC(USA) these days? I’ll be addressing more of these types of questions this summer when I’ll be blogging our General Assembly for The Presbyterian Outlook, but if folks would like to get the discussion going now I’m game. Without further ado, here it is:
April 29, 2010
Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our conviction that you must enact comprehensive immigration reform this year. As people of faith and the leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we are keenly aware of the devastating effects our broken immigration system has on the lives of individuals, immigrant and non-immigrant families, and our communities. The bigotry, trauma, and fear that will result from the recent new law enacted in Arizona, SB 1070, which criminalizes those who are found “with” undocumented persons and requires law enforcement officers to identify and detain such persons, serves to underscore the necessity of action at the federal level.
Churches are on the front lines of caring for families being ripped apart by our broken immigration system. Traumatized citizen children left behind when parents are deported are but one example of the ways the current system destroys the fabric of community life, the integrity of healthy families, and the safety of individual persons. Church workers are also at the forefront of offering relief and services to immigrants, regardless of documentation status. Arizona’s new law will put at risk those workers and others who are called simply to offer the most basic of humanitarian assistance. As Christians, we cannot stand by idly while our brothers and sisters die on our borders from exposure and thirst or languish in poorly equipped detention facilities, nor should we be required to do so by any law.
The new Arizona law also puts in jeopardy the public safety of immigrant communities, already wary of law enforcement for fear of deportation. Instead of new laws that induce fear and distrust, immigrants should be encouraged to participate with law enforcement, reporting crimes when they are victims and offering testimony when they are witnesses. Such trust and participation is impossible if local law enforcement is tasked with enforcement of federal immigration laws. SB 1070 will only foster more fear among immigrant communities, regardless of documentation status. Comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level is essential to override and counteract the damage done in Arizona by this new law.
In the Scriptures of Christians and Jews, we are commanded, “When an immigrant resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the immigrant. The immigrant who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:33-34). The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) therefore supports congressional action in 2010 on comprehensive immigration reform that creates a process for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to earn their legal status; reduces waiting periods and upholds family unity; protects workers from exploitation; and provides efficient channels of entry for new migrant workers.
Sincerely,
Bruce Reyes-Chow
Moderator, 218th General Assembly (2008)Gradye Parsons
Stated Clerk of the General AssemblyLinda Bryant Valentine
Executive Director, General Assembly Mission Council
Chronos Management
I know I excel at some things, like sleeping. At others this, I know I struggle….like remembering names. Managing time, though, is beyond me. It’s not beyond me in that I know I can’t do it. In fact, I very well might be quite good at time management. It’s just hard to tell.
I had an interesting conversation with a pastor friend last week in which he said something like, “Everyone assumes I’m so busy, but I’m not. I have a lot of time to do anything I want. My congregation just runs itself.” I do know, for certain, I am not like this pastor. Yes, our congregation could function perfectly well without me, but I do feel really busy. And I’m pretty certain it’s more than just a feeling. I am busy.
So the question: how, if possible, might I improve my time management? What tips do you have for pastors so that they might use their time to God’s glory?
OK, so here’s the main tension I feel. The culture is all about time as a commodity, time as something to be managed, something to fight, something to beat. But the Christian take on time is different. First of all, time is a gift from God. It shouldn’t be something to wrestle, but something to embrace.
So in the New Testament, there are two words for time. “Chronos” is chronological time, sequential time as we usually think of it. “Kairos” is a more complicated term, a time more qualitative than quantitative. Kairos time is the moment when God deems something appropriate, the right moment almost regardless of the time on the clock.
The go to verse to show kairos is Mark 1:14-15 “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The TIME is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” That’s kairos time — a God moment.
So as a pastor, as a Christian, I am aware of the danger of being sucked into thinking time is something to fight against, something to be freed from. In fact, God might be using time to do God’s business. But, all that being true still doesn’t necessarily mean I feel as if I use my time wisely, or that my time is best spent to serve, or even that the way I spend time is faithful at all.
Here’s a few things I’ve figured out re time and ministry, but I’d love to hear more from you all:
- Emails can wait. When getting to the office, reading for 20-30 minutes is a real handy way of scheduling study time.
- Saying “no” is a gift. Saying “no” is often a good idea.
- No matter how many hours I work in a week, it’ll always feel like there’s something more to do.
- Twitter and Facebook are really valuable ministry tools, but I needn’t use them constantly.
- Thinking of my day in blocks is helpful. If I have meetings at night, cutting afternoon work short is a good idea.
- Schedule time to study, don’t just say “I should read this week.” (Ok, I’m no good at this, but I’m aware at least.)
- Sometimes, often in fact, opportunities for real ministry are unscheduled — the conversation at the post office, the person who pops into the office unscheduled.
- Writing a sermon while at the office just doesn’t work. I need to start scheduling more time away from the office and not feel guilty about it.
- Visits — along with study — tend to be the first thing that get cut from a busy week. Some visits to those ill have to be done, the other visits get pushed off easily.
Ok, I’ll stop there. Often, when thinking about this stuff, I recall Eugene Peterson’s book “Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness.” He gets this stuff, but I also don’t quite think his experience is easily translatable to other contexts.
So this friend of mine who says he’s not busy, says what he primarily does is “Spend my days listening for God, and enabling my congregation to do the same.” Maybe that’s something else to keep in mind. May God’s time allow it.
image by Rich DuBose
Starfish or Spider Church? Part I
Thanks to an idea from folks at Presbymergent, I’ll be putting up a series of posts this week on Brafman and Beckstrom’s The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations moving towards an assessment of the PC(USA) as a starfish or a spider. Part 1 follows…
Book Overview:
A blurb on Starfish’s cover reads, “The Starfish and the Spider is one of those delightful business books that transcends the genre.” I wholeheartedly agree. In a quick 232 pages, Brafman and Beckstrom develop a way of looking at systems that explains both the resilience of the Apache Indian tribe and the 
unparalleled success of Wikipedia. They do so with humor and with clarity, claiming that starfish-shaped organizations will continue to lead our society’s big movements, and predicting dismal straights for spiders.
Why all this talk of pointy-limbed creatures? They serve as the book’s main metaphors for success and failure. Think of a spider. Cut off a leg, it survives but is hindered. Cut off a few more, it will die. Cut off a spider’s head and it will die immediately. The shape and qualities of a spider describe many hierarchical organizations with a top-down approach to leadership, a specialized approach to legs (divisions), and a unified understanding of the organization–we all sink or swim together.
A starfish is another animal entirely. A few years ago, the Great Barrier Reef was suffering an explosion of the starfish population, so much so that they began to destroy the coral. So a group of divers, in an attempt to save the reef, made a series of dives on which they collected starfish and cut them into half, leaving them to die. What these divers did not realize is that starfish do not die when cut into pieces: each piece grows into another healthy starfish! A starfish shaped organization is decentralized. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, or Wikipedia, or the internet, or the Apache tribe, or Skype, or eBay–or even in a hybrid form, like Toyota (not General Motors), or a decentralized organization with an aware and listening leader, starfish organizations have non-centralized characteristics.
Brafman and Beckstrom, analyzing multiple starfish organizations, proceed to describe the characteristics. For example, to become successful, starfish organizations often have a catalyst figure whose “tools” are genuine interest in others, a penchant for networking, and high emotional intelligence. Spider organizations require CEO types who must be bossy, rational, powerful, directive, and ordering. Starfish catalysts, though, use peer relationships, trust, inspiration, collaboration, and enjoy ambiguity.
The book concludes with ruminations on “hybrid organizations” that have leaders, but whose leaders his “the sweet spot” involving listening, openness to change, and enough decentralization that allows for creativity.
Check back in a few days for more on the Starfish and the Spider as it relates to the church universal and the PC(USA) specifically.
Update: Part II of the series examining the PC(USA) and the book’s descriptions is here.
Coming to a state near you?
Proposition 8 in California. Amendment 2 in Florida. Amendment ? in a state near you. All are efforts to define marriage so narrowly that it excludes certain people from full rights of citizenship.
Sadly, religious communities are often at the forefront of advocating for these narrow-minded amendments. I heard a story recently, about the neighbor of a Christian pastor. The pastor had just put up a yard sign against the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in her state. This neighbor, bless her heart, knocked on the door in no time flat sure she was saving the pastor from embarrassment. “I know it’s confusing these ballot measures with ‘yes’ and ‘no’,” she said, “I just wanted you to know you put up the wrong sign. It is simple to get the sides mixed up. As a pastor I couldn’t imagine you mean to have that sign in your yard.” ….a respectfuneighborly conversation ensued.
In this week’s Tallahassee Democrat rabbi Jack Romberg attacks the issue with a bit different slant. The title says it all: “Amendment 2 takes us toward theocracy.”
“I will put this very simply: Amendment 2 is insidious. Proponents will tell you that its purpose is to protect children and families. Amendment 2 will do nothing to protect children and families. Some opponents say Amendment 2 is unnecessary because we already have legislation defining marriage. That misses the point. Any legislation defining marriage is insidious because it moves us toward theocracy.
Marriage is a sacred ritual that takes place within all mainstream religious traditions. However, not all religions agree on what marriages should be sanctified. Even within the Jewish or the Christian world are disagreements. For example, many rabbis will sanctify interfaith weddings, others will not. How would my fellow clergy feel if an amendment were proposed allowing only same-faith weddings to be legally sanctified?
These are decisions that should be left to individual religious communities to decide, guided by their clergy. Religious decisions should not be at the whim of a voting public or by government fiat.”
Rabbi Romberg goes on to exegete Genesis 18 with an eye towards Biblical literalism–as many advocates of the measure profess. After a careful reading he concludes the prohibition of Genesis 20 must not apply to lesbian relationships–as it does not mention them–and, furthermore, the Hebrew “lies with” is a signal of prohibitions within the boundaries of family. So, literally he figures, “Homosexual relationships outside of the family structure outlined in Chapter 20 are permitted.”
You may not agree with his exegesis, but that’s the point. We should not legislate on the basis of a religious claim. That’s moving towards theocracy–forcing a religious conviction on upon many who do not agree with it. That, according to Romberg, “is simply unjust and immoral.”
Funny adverts against California’s Prop 8 after the break: … Continue Reading
(Very theological) Review of a Secular Ecological Work: Brown's "Plan B 3.0"
I’ll be putting a few book reviews up over the next few days. Guess what I’ve been doing recently?
The first is of Lester R. Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. I read Brown for my Creation, New Creation, and Ecology class and to a person the class was really impressed with the book.
As Matt points out here, it is pretty overwhelming at times, and indicting too. I’ll analyze it below with some theological terms, but I’d say that it’s by far the best book I’ve read on the ecological crisis and what we must do to correct it–or die.
Brown structures his book in a simple two-fold manner. In part I, “A Civilization in Trouble,” Brown lays out the harrowing facts of our time. We may hit peak oil production by 2030. And while an oil-based economic system is severely flawed as it is, without ecologically-sensible alternatives in place in the next few decades our way of life–indeed, the very lives of millions of people, let alone animals–will be in grave danger. Brown continues the sobering story with heavy details about rising temperatures and sea-levels–and the creatures they will affect–food shortages, water crises, desertification, extinctions, and population growth. The first half of the book informs, convicts, and horrors in striking ways.
Part II, “The Response–Plan B” paints a prettier picture of what might be done to curb, prevent, and restore such devastation. In “Plan B” Brown gives hope by explaining what progress has already been made. With well-spent funds he instructs how we might avert epidemics, feed more mouths, re-structure our transportation systems, and gain efficiency. The hopeful second half of the book charms and excites while a the brief third section explains how the means to financing these changes are within reach.
Though it was pretty really effective, as a theologian Brown’s two-part structure gave me pause as it reminded me of a misreading of Martin Luther’s law/gospel theology. That misreading, but a common stereotype of Luther, holds Luther’s law/gospel theology uses a stark dichotomy to distinguish between law and gospel. “Law is bad, negative, convicting, sinful” goes this reading, “and gospel is good, positive, affirming, grace-filled–in short, Jesus Christ.”
This law/gospel stereotype builds assumptions onto old pseudo accuracies and ends up barely resembling Luther’s original theology.
… Continue Reading
Stewardship in an Economic Downturn
Several of my pastor friends are in the midst of overseeing their first stewardship campaigns in the midst of the worse economic crisis since the great depression. Darn.
I’ve heard it said, though, that church givings tend not to go down in difficult economic times. If this is true, what might it suggest?
Do people just feel too bad about lowering a pledge to a church so they cut back on other things but not givings?
Certainly, then, people could afford to give more generously to their congregation in good economic times, right?
Does it also suggest that people tend to give not as a percentage of their income (which may be dropping or not rising as quickly as usual) but as a lump sum per month as in a membership fee?
Though congregations particularly affected by the economic crisis remain in my prayers I also remember the fact that Presbyterians give about 2.5% of their income to all charitable causes including their congregation. This statistic remains, in my estimation, a brutal indictment of our lack of generosity.
And don’t get my started on the giving rates in the Church of Scotland… 
For funzies, my first poll with the new wordpress easy poll maker is below. Hope it works!
image by gravityx9
The Green Bible
Today, Oct 7, HarperCollins released “The Green Bible.” According to Time‘s David Van Bierma, the Bible is
a Scripture for the Prius age that calls attention to more than 1,000 verses related to nature by printing them in a pleasant shade of forest green, much as red-letter editions of the Bible encrimson the words of Jesus. The new version’s message, states an introduction by Evangelical eco-activist J. Matthew Sleeth, is that “creation care”–the Christian catchphrase for nature conservancy–”is at the very core of our Christian walk.”
I heard about this idea more than a year ago, and I have to say it’s really grown on me (pun intended 
) I’d love to get my hands on a copy and read the accompanying essays by NT Wright, Desmond Tutu, and JP II.
In my Creation, New Creation, and Ecology class this week, we’re focusing on New Testament passages. Tomorrow we consider the Green sermon on the mount in Matthew, and Monday we looked at three hymns (or early creeds) and considered their creation-care implications.
Colossians 1:15-20 confesses Jesus Christ as the firstborn of all creation, noting that “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created.” That claim is clear, corporate, and enormous. Christians aren’t just individual souls, but part of God’s whole creation created through Christ and for Christ.
1 Timothy 3:16 plays with the notion and mystery of Christ’s revelation affecting all things both spiritual and practical, fleshly and earthly.
And of course, Philippians 2:6-11 sings Jesus is Lord over all the earth, even and especially creation and all that ecological stuff.
I’ll be interested to see what 1,000 verses of the NRSV HarperCollins decided to green. It’d be a really tough choice, actually. The financial/ecological destruction in Revelation may get overlooked. I wonder to what extent baptism and the Lord’s Supper are considered green? And, certainly, many of the plagues are ecologically oriented?
If the earth and all that is in it is the Lord’s, and the Bible is the book for God’s people, seems to me like every jot and tittle has to do with creation and ecology. But what do I know?
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