The bishop is a talented church builder and has a wonderful group of people working at the cathedral. He absolutely rocked today, and fortunately, it is online....
...Therefore, though the rocks that I see lining up are frequently the actions of our government, it would be a mistake to see these actions as separate from, part from, the prevailing views of society. Make no mistake the underlying danger is always a society complacent with its certainties: a society that is, on the one hand, quick to blame, and on the other, equally quick to ignore.
One very worrisome rock in our line is that we have become a remarkably anti-intellectual nation. Education funding is routinely cut. Our own New York State leadership has fought for years to resist court ordered support for New York City schools. We, as a people, seem capable of denying everything from evolution, to global warming, to mistakes in foreign policy. And we, in the Church, seem all too ready to dismiss the importance of a well educated priesthood.
Another development, another rock in the line, that indicates to me tough times to come is, first and foremost, the remarkably passive national response to the discovery that our government has been eavesdropping on American citizens without court authorization, jailing American citizens without providing recourse to the judicial system, to say nothing of the torture of prisoners. These outrages are routinely defended in the most sober terms, by senior administration officials. And just as routinely those defenses are accepted by the majority of our leaders, as well as a majority of the American people, with little more than a shrug of our collective shoulders.
Looking more specifically at the life of religion, things are just as disturbing. I think for example of the IRS investigation of All Saints, Pasadena with its threat of removing their tax exempt status, based upon one sermon by a former rector. And though there may have been similar investigations of conservative Churches, as the IRS claims, we have yet to hear about them. This has, in and of itself, cast a pall on the spirit of free expression from the pulpit.
Personally, I was surprised to find myself complimented on my courageous preaching after I had made a sharp but passing comment critical of our government. This compliment led me to wonder, just what have we come to as a nation if it is imagined that it takes courage for a preacher to make even a generic criticism of their government?
Another rock in the line is my perception that there is subtle discrimination against more liberal minded clerics, and the communities that they lead.
Recently the Bishop of Delaware told me that all his requests to visit the morgue at Dover Air Force Base, located in his Diocese, where the bodies of those killed in Iraq are first brought, on their return journey home, had been ignored. At the same time conservative Protestant leaders regularly are authorized to make such visits. In this same vein I was interested to read of the hour long meeting that some of the most conservative bishops in the Episcopal Church had with our President, while liberal bishops have yet to have such an audience.
All of this to say nothing of the attempt to criminalize the offering of a cup of cold water to the little ones, as members of Congress have attempted to do, in their remarkably ill conceived Immigration bill.
Finally, and to my mind, complementing it all, is the President's faith based initiatives program. What better way for churches to be rendered quiescent than for them to become dependent on the flow of government funds. What better way to make them docile then to threaten with the loss of tax exempt status on the one hand, and, with the other, offer the reward of fodder in the food trough.
You've all heard of the modern Golden Rule: "He who has the gold rules." To which the corollary might well be: "The one who rules does so by rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies."
This is the era in which we find ourselves exercising our ministry. It is a complex and dangerous world that I do not believe we are negotiating very well. It may be that I am over-reacting. But I don't think so.
What I hope I have made clear is that what troubles me far more than any specific governmental act (governments are always given to doing outrageous things), is the response of the people. The failure of public out rage is nothing less than frightening.
Read it all...
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