Instead, I’ve been too busy reading about the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish.

Well, that and my daughter came down with strep and we’ve been busy making fairies and watching Little House on the Prairie. And we’re moving.

But my delay has mostly been bound up because I’ve been distracted by Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and have been happily geeking out for over a week straight.

(And I am not alone: one friend put me onto the children’s book version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and my husband [kindred geek] said, “Oh, and remember that Star Trek episode when Picard travels to the planet which speaks in metaphor, and he ends up reciting the Epic of Gilgamesh!” Made my heart flutter.  My father, from whom I get most of my geekly tendencies, has several copies of both.  The other day, over at my parents’ home, I realized that I’d forgotten my volumes at my OMG study.  I whispered to my little boy with a traumatic brain injury, “Sweet boy Karl, can you ask Opa whether he has some spare copies of the Enuma Elish?” Which he did, clearly enunciating the title, and giving my father extra cause to pour an extra libation in celebration that geekiness carries more truck in our family than a TBI)

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Warning: this is a long post.  But if you want to hear about a paradise, an ark and flood and doves, a tree of life, firmaments being stretched out and so forth that come from literature far older than the familiar tales from Genesis, it’s worth your time to slog through the below, and even more to read up on the links at the far bottom.

Geeks of the world, unite.

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I began fussing with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish because a group of people with whom I work were curious about Noah.

And I can’t, of course, teach about Noah and the Flood without teaching about the different creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.

And I most assuredly can’t do them any credit if I don’t make a nod to other Ancient Near East literature.

(Utterly unrelated to the task at hand, this little nugget from Gilgamesh [and I love it that my spell-checker knows this word without even being so programmed.  Smart Mac.] caught my little eye.

“Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly, day and night make merry, let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night. And wear fresh clothes, and wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, and let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of men.”

Some say it is the oldest recorded advice in literature.

Just saying’.)

But vis-à-vis Old Testament tales of creation and floods, these two stories shaped the texts we know so well…even though we don’t know these primary texts well.

Or at all.

The Enuma Elish was crafted around the 12 century BCE.

It’s a tale of two divine figures, the fresh-water male god Apsu, and the salt-water female god Mummu-Tiamat (she was called Tiamat for short).  Tiamat is depicted also as a dragon from the sea (think, “Leviathan”).

Their, um, waters mingled, and created more gods.  These ragamuffins made Apsu and Tiamut nuts with their racket.

What is inappropriate may be age-appropriate, I always say, but Apsu and Tiamut didn’t see it that way, and decided the best thing to do to quiet the noise was to kill the kids.

The kids, however, found out about this plot, and figured that doing unto others as they intended to do to you was a good policy, and so they offed Apsu.

Tiamat was displeased, and so according to established family dynamics, she decided to go to war with her children: finish them off, once and for all.

The god-lets realized that they had crossed the line, and like it’s been said, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Desperate to save themselves, they found Marduk, a warrior, who overcame Tiamat’s threat by blowing a wind into her as she gaped her mouth open to devour him.  Into her mouth he flung an arrow; that and the air which filled her belly, distending it, killed her, leaving only a carcass amongst the waters.

And so he split her body like a shell, pressing the top across the skies, and the bottom to become the earth, and insisted that her waters be held back.  He created constellations, and vegetation, and becomes the Man of the Hour.

That is, until the gods realize that he had assigned tasks: one had to be the sun god, one the star god, one the moon god, and so on and so forth.

The gods began to get irritable, and so to appease them, Marduk struck on the idea of creating humankind by mixing up the blood of Tiamat’s general so that the gods would have servants.

The End.

The Epic of Gilgamesh tells a different tale.

It was written around 2000 BCE.

(We’re still working with Epiphany, believe it or not)

King Gilgamesh was unpleasant.  He was a dictator, a rapist, and capricious.  His people cried out to the god Aruru for relief, and Aruru sends Enkidu, a man-beast, who, according to Christine Hayes, was very Adam-esque.  He was to tame Gilgamesh, but before he could, Gilgamesh, who had heard of this Enkidu, sent a woman (perhaps a prostitute?) to tame Enkidu.

The two fell in love, and Enkidu found the inspiration, maturity, and transcendence to address Gilgamesh.

This decision, however, forces him out of paradise: he clothes himself, he loses his relationship and identity with the animals, and can not return.

Long and short of it is that Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight, they become fast friends as a result, and against the better judgment of all, they leave town to fight Humbaba, an evil monster god.

Together they overcome their fears and their disadvantage, and kill Humbaba.  Ishtar, goddess of war and sex (go figure), finds herself attracted to the man behind all of this violence and asks Gilgamesh to marry her.  He, however, doesn’t reciprocate her desire, in part because he’s well aware that she tends to inflict pain on her lovers.

She is displeased.

She vows revenge (trust me, this all has something to do with Epiphany) by way of harnessing the Bull of Heaven, which destroys Gilgamesh’s town Uruk.

But her revenge is short-lived, as Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill the bull and chuck its tail at Ishtar in a spiteful display of victory.

A word to the wise: do not annoy the Ishtars in your life.

In retaliation, she struck Enkidu with a fatal illness, and claimed him.

Gilgamesh was distraught at his death, and set out to discover the gods’ secrets of immortality.  He began a quest, then, and sought Upnapishtim, the legendary immortal human.

Upnapishtim, a very moral man, had been warned in a dream that a tremendous flood was imminent due to the evil of humanity.  He was commanded to build an ark with very specific dimensions, and gather the seeds of all living things to preserve life so that new life could begin after the waters subsided.  Three birds were brought on board and released to see whether land was near.  The dove and the sparrow returned, but the raven disappeared.

The god who caused the flood was reprimanded for the severity of the flood, and as compensation for the destruction, Upnapishtim and his wife were rewarded with eternal life.

This eternal life was not possible to be given to Gilgamesh, who was given yet a parting possibility at youthful living until he died by way of a plant of life at the bottom of the ocean.  He fetched it, only to have it stolen by a serpent.

Crushed by the futility of his quest, Giglamesh returned to Uruk, where he had to face his mortality and die.

Do you see the clear connections between what you’ve read so far and the season of Epiphany?

No, you say? Not at all?  Have I been imbibing of my daughter’s strep medicine, you wonder?

Well, let me help you have an epiphany then.

Clearly, there are overlaps between these two stories and the creation and flood stories in Genesis.  A man and woman in paradise, an ark with dimensions in which righteous creation is saved, firmament spread out keeping the waters above and below at bay, and so on.

Yet while there are similarities between these stories, there are also key differences, both of which reveal (i.e., offer the chance for an epiphany) something of the Jewish/Christian notion of God, and of creation, and of humanity.

Chances are, the ancient Hebrews had heard these stories, not least of all when they were in exile in Babylon.  So the tales were familiar to them.

Christine Hayes, professor at Yale, tells us that the famous first words of Genesis, “In the beginning” would be better translated with the sense of “When from on high,” the beginning words of the Enuma Elish…which are, by the way, “Enuma Elish.”

And she does such marvelous work with the connection between the wind of Marduk, and Tiamat being from the deep, that I’m going to quote her at length here:

Remember the cosmic battle between Marduk and Tiamat: Marduk the storm god, who released his wind against Tiamat, the primeval deep, the primeval water, representing the forces of chaos. And you should immediately hear the great similarities. Our story opens with a temporal clause: “When on high,” “when God began creating”; we have a wind that sweeps over chaotic waters, just like the wind of Marduk released into the face of Tiamat, and the Hebrew term is particularly fascinating. In fact, the text says “and there is darkness on the face of deep.” No definite article. The word “deep” is a proper name, perhaps. The Hebrew word is Tehom. It means “deep” and etymologically it’s exactly the same word as Tiamat: the “at” ending is just feminine. So Tiam, Tehom — it’s the same word, it’s a related word.

THAT’S SO COOL!

But as Christine Hayes points out, these same stories were rejected by adapting them.

Your gods are the moon and the stars and the sun?

Our God made your gods.

Your gods made humans to serve them?

Our God made humans to be in God’s image.  They are in that way sacred.  They are called to tend to creation, not split it, destroy it, and see it as an enemy.

In Genesis, evil need not be seen as inherent in creation.  Instead, God saw it all and called it “good.”  ”Very good,” as a matter of fact.

Instead, evil is a choice that humans have by way of their autonomy.  Hayes notes that although there are all sorts of parallels to the tree of life in Ancient Near Eastern Literature (think of the plant on the bottom of Gilgamesh’s ocean), there is no parallel to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s only that tree that humans are commanded to avoid.  She writes:

It’s one of the things about God: he knows good and evil and has chosen the good. The biblical writer asserts of this god that he is absolutely good. The humans will become like gods, knowing good and evil, not because of some magical property in this fruit…but because of the action of disobedience itself. By choosing to eat of the fruit in defiance of God — this is the one thing God says, “Don’t do this! You can have everything else in this garden,” presumably, even, you can eat of the tree of life, right? It doesn’t say you can’t eat of that. Who’s to say they couldn’t eat of that and just live forever? Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[But] it’s by eating of the fruit in defiance of God, human beings learn that they were able to do that, that they are free moral agents. They find that out. They’re able to choose their actions in conformity with God’s will or in defiance of God’s will. So paradoxically, they learn that they have moral autonomy. Remember, they were made in the image of God and they learn that they have moral autonomy by making the defiant choice, the choice for disobedience…

So the very action that brought them a godlike awareness of their moral autonomy was an action that was taken in opposition to God. So we see then that having knowledge of good and evil is no guarantee that one will choose or incline towards the good. That’s what the serpent omitted in his speech. He said if you eat of that fruit, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you’ll become like God. It’s true in one sense but it’s false in another. He sort of omitted to point out… he implies that it’s the power of moral choice alone that is godlike. But the biblical writer will claim in many places that true godliness isn’t simply power, the power to do what one wishes. True godliness means imitation of God, the exercise of one’s power in a manner that is godlike, good, life-affirming and so on. So, it’s the biblical writer’s contention that the god of Israel is not only all-powerful but is essentially and necessarily good.

Such epiphanic good stuff in there, good stuff that is perhaps best seen in relief to these formative stories.

Your gods are options, the ancient Hebrews seemed to say, but here is what our God is about, and not about:

It’s not that we are to be in servitude to other gods (what sort of gods are out there, offering themselves to your life, or to the lives of those whom you love, or to our culture?).

It’s not that creation is evil, and to be despised.

It’s not that immortality is where it’s at.

And it’s not even that the world was created exactly as this is written down.

It’s (in part) that God calmed the chaos; provided for God’s creatures; established expectations of goodness and reverence toward God, creation, and each other; and that creation is, at root, good.

As I told my daughter last Sunday, an epiphany is an a-ha moment, and Epiphany, then, is the season of a-ha moments.

My preparation for this presentation last week yielded a bunch of a-ha moments:

A reminder that the Jewish-Christian tradition did not begin in a vacuum; an offering of new knowledge about ancient Hebrew; a gift of renewed clarity that God loves creating and creatures, and…

an affirmation that I am unapologetically and irreversibly a geek.

Web resources:

Christine Hayes, Yale Professor.  Her lectures seen here can also be viewed online.

Dennis Bratcher, of the Christian Resource Institute.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/religion-flood.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

http://eawc.evansville.edu/essays/brown.htm

I’d never heard of the things, but wowza.

You don’t want to meet one in a dark alley, or anywhere else for that matter.

Here are several links to give you an idea about why a whole show was dedicated to rogue waves:

Discovery Channel

Another Discovery Channel

Damninteresting.com

Wikipedia

US News

So a ship sails peacefully on the blue, when out of this very same blue, a 70-to-115 foot tall wall of inviable power appears.

One can do nothing but wait for impact.

No escape.

No hiding.

No pleading.

No mercy.

The wave will sink you.

Until 1995, scientists doubted that rogue waves were anything but the inspired legends of captains and sailors who had spent too much time on the open sea.

But that year they changed their minds.

Off the coast of Norway, an oil rigg measured one of these fluid behemoths to be 76 feet high as it hit the structure.

And the legend became the documented phenomenon.

Now, not only was my friend taken aback by the awesome power of these rogue waves.

Not only did it cause her to rethink a tentatively scheduled cruise.

But she pointed out that life provides its own rogue waves.

You’re sailing along, and then you look up and have only a moment to realize that your whole life is about to be overcome.

And there’s nothing you can do.

You will be tossed into the sea.

In Scripture, the sea is a symbol, a metaphor, for chaos.

(Were I to have a natural personal totem, suffice it to say that it would be the sea)

The presence of God’s power shows itself when the sea is controlled and calmed.

There’s an image circulating about on Facebook (I got it on the Nebraskans for Peace page), and it looks like this:

Rogue waves, this confluence of power, this convergence of energy from unrelated directions, this concentration of destructive forces, threaten us all, and are threatening precisely because they are beyond our control or our perception…at least until the moment right before they stare down at us, and announce that we are about to be thrown overboard.

And, true to the metaphor, sometimes the power of the chaos isn’t believed by anybody.

But in point of fact, the chaos is there and, assuming that the wave doesn’t take us down, down, down, we need someone to rescue us, to pull us out of chaos.

Insofar as someone does just that, sending in the Coast Guard, the lifelines, plucking us out of the water and leaving the broken timber and sunken treasures behind, they’re calming the sea, and stewarding God’s presence, extending a hand to someone who is otherwise drowning.

That said, another way of looking at rogue waves is this story from Perth, sent on to me by my husband.

So here’s a guy with the best of intentions to do himself in, and a rogue wave comes in and saves him.

There’s an interesting thought: sometimes rogue waves might be the very thing that rescue us. Southern and Roman Catholic author Flannery O’Connor understood this idea: in fact, she built a literary career on it.  Sometimes it is precisely concentrated chaos that throws us onto shore.

And then yet a third take, also from my husband: perhaps there is something to be said about rogue blessings, a wall of tremendously overwhelming grace and undeserved forgiveness and unmediated love and unexpected reconciliation and awesome, joyful surprise.

Rogue waves.

On reflection, one hopes, I suppose, to be spared from, saved by, and blessed with them.

Though I confess that I prefer to think about the whole thing on the prairie while looking at amber waves of grain.

Anna

So in the spirit of candor, this question really was intended to be a comment on this blog, “Reader Question: God of the OT Really Be God of the New?  Spin it for me.”

But it raises such good questions, that it demands a spin-off blog of its own.

I like that you are wanting a more “practical explanation” of what Christians believe was Jesus’ voluntary death for the sake of others.

Because whatever else you can say about Jesus, his message is not overtly practical.

The thought you have posed above also crossed the mind of the Apostle Paul.  Take a look below at the excerpt from Romans 5.  I know that it’s a large chunk of text.  Best to read through the whole thing, but if you don’t want to, just note the bolded part.

5Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.⁹Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. ¹²Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— ¹³sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. ¹⁴Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. ¹⁵But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. ¹⁶And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. ¹⁷If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. ¹⁸Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. ¹⁹For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

That’s the text I’m going to use as a reference point for your question.

So let’s have at it.

These feminist theologian’s shoulders get a bit tight when you write that you can’t understand “the meaning of giving up your only son to save a bunch of sinners.”

You come by the idea honestly!  It’s everywhere in Christian theology.

I’m just not so sure that it’s accurate, at least insofar as it goes.

Feminist theologians worry–and let me be clear, male theologians are also feminist theologians!–that such language fosters the idea that God is an abusive father, a being who willingly had his son killed, and just passively and apathetically sat aside as Jesus suffered.

These theologians want to quickly point out that God didn’t stick Jesus up on the cross.

People did.

That is, Jesus’ dedication to God’s agenda of commitment to the poor, and hungry, and powerless, and outcasts, and (per your question) sinners, ticked people off, and got him in a mess of trouble.

So the way we tend to handle those who threaten our level of comfort and privilege and power is to get rid of them.

Which is precisely what happened to Jesus.  (Even if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, you can agree that that’s why he got killed.)

He had friends in low places.

Why did he do it? Why did he live in a way that was sure to get him killed?

Well, lots of ways to consider that.

The Old and New Testaments are pretty darn consistent in telling of a God who strives for reconciliation over judgment, and forgiveness over condemnation.

On paper, this makes no sense, as you point out.

But have you ever loved anybody, in spite of yourself?

Have you ever been loved, in spite of yourself?

Love is not reasonable.

The thing about God is this: God covets wholeness; individual and collective wholeness.

God knows that we are not right unless we are all alright.

Part of our difficulty (because you are in good company: we US Americans have an especially hard time wrapping our minds around this) in imagining God “saving a bunch of sinners” is because we are used to people deserving what they get.

(As an aside, again, I think it fascinating that we here in the good old USA seem yet to believe that health insurance is a right tied to being employed rather than a right tied to being human.  That is, our policies implicitly make clear that those who have jobs–and especially well-paying ones at that–deserve to receive cancer treatments, surgeries, ER care more than those who do not have jobs and are not self-sufficient.)

By definition, grace, as I’ve said before, means that which is given precisely to those who don’t deserve it.  If someone deserved it, they’d be getting something, but it wouldn’t be grace.

A reward, perhaps.

Brownie points.

But not grace.

But this commitment to grace, or to wholeness and reconciliation, does not mean that one’s tragic choices, choices that cause pain to others and to one’s self, don’t matter.

They do matter.

Profoundly, they matter.

A loud and clear “NO,” and manifest (sometimes painful) consequences can also be manifest grace.  Saying, “This is not o.k.  And choices on your part lead to choices on the part of others, on the part of me” is difficult, risky, and can place one in positions of grave vulnerability, isolation, and may well lead to the severance of relationships.

The hope is that the NO is not the final word.

The NO is spoken within the bracket of YES, I love you.  YES, we are striving for wholeness.  YES, we know that you are more than these choices.

Sometimes it even works.

You see, grace does not mean that there is no comeuppance.

Forgiveness does not mean that what occurred was acceptable or forgettable.

And while there are several examples in Scripture where forgiveness is given when no repentance is extended, repentance, confession, humble offering of heart in hand, can be very cleansing.

It might not change the breach, but it can acknowledge it.

And that acknowledgement might even be more beneficial to the perpetrator than to the one harmed.

To boot, it is possible that the one harmed might even discover that what had once seemed so black and white, might not be.  Perhaps she or he even contributed to the grey.

(Makes me think of that Jewish observation that even God needs to be forgiven.  That is, what a set-up!  An imperfect world is created in which there is often no correct answer and we are held liable?  What’s up with that?)

I digress, but only a bit.

The point isn’t that the choice doesn’t matter, is inconsequential, is overlookable.

The point is that the choice is not ultimate.

It is not final.

It is not definitive.

So Christians identify themselves primarily by Easter, an event which makes it clear that God’s agenda is life.  Death is powerful, but is not more powerful than God’s promise of bringing life out of it.

It would be interesting to consider whether Easter is God’s confession and repentance.

Hmmm.  Typing out loud, which is generally a bad idea.

Anyway, let’s get back to Paul, who said in verse 18, “Just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”

As my mentor Walt Bouman said in his last sermon, “I take it that when Paul said ‘all‘ he meant all!”

So where there is death, God rolls up the divine sleeves and gets to work to bring about life, and new beginnings.

So just as a physician does not treat the well, so God does not offer life to the alive.

In other words, it might be practical after all.

That is, who needs the grace but the sinner, the one who doesn’t deserve it?

Perhaps that’s why Paul writes that God proves God’s love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died, with the end gain being that although we will still die, we will not be ultimately killed.

And again, as Walt wrote, now that you know that death doesn’t win, there is more to do with your life than preserve it.  This in turn frees us to become something new: not out of fear, not out of a disingenuous desire to keep our kiesters out of hell, but because we are loved into a new way of being.

And that’s got some practical traction.

I had been invited to St. Petersburg, to present a few workshops for Presbyterian pastors involved or interested in New Church Development.

Now about the time that I confirmed that agreement, I stumbled upon an email I received seven years ago, when the only dancing that Karlchen was doing was dancing with death in the German ICU.

It was from his physical therapist, and she said, “When Karl is medically stable [a thought that was simultaneously promising and painful, especially because she said when, and not if] you must take him to Island Dolphin Care in Key Largo, FL.  I was an intern there,” she went on, “and I have seen healing and miracles through these people and these dolphins.”

So suddenly, there I was, off to Florida for one gig and lining up another.

The thing of it is, with all due respect to Floridians, I confess that of all the places I have ever ever yearned to visit, Florida was not on the list.

I could couch it and say, not on the top 3, or 10, but no, really, it just wasn’t on my list.

Anywhere.

And now we were off to Key Largo in the South, ending up in St. Petersburg in the West, and in-bewteen visiting a friend and preaching in Jacksonville, in the North.

Two weeks in Florida.

The experiences were so different, in each place, and so good, in each place.  New and renewed connections, and dolphins and injured whales and geckos and iguanas and more dolphins and all of that was good, and very good at that.

But I confess that the entire time, this adventuresome soul, this well-traveled woman, longed for prairie and temperate temps.

In short, my hunch was right.

I do not like Florida.

I tried, and yet realized that when the entire population of South Dakota comprises 1/6 of Miami, well, we aren’t in SD anymore, Toto.

So here I was, albeit enjoying richly time with my children and acquaintances and friends, and yet I had to finally give in to the fact that I was, in point of fact, homesick.

I wanted a buffalo.

And grass.

Frederick Buechner wrote a book some time ago entitled The Longing for Home: Recollections and Reflections.  I’m culling from it and from my first alert to it in Walter Brueggemann’s piece Cadences of Home. In it, Brueggemann refers to Buechner’s following observations:

We carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons us (110).

Joy is home…(128).

Woe to us indeed if we forget the homeless ones who have no vote, no power, nobody to lobby for them, and who might as well have no faces even, the way we try to avoid the troubling sight of them in the streets of the cities were they roam like stray cats.  And as we listen each night to the news of what happened in our lives that day, woe to us if we forget our own homelessness (104).

To be homeless the way people like you and me are apt to be homeless is to have homes all over the place but not to be really at home in any of them.  To be really at home is to be really at peace, and our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no real peace for any of us until there is peace for all of us.

In another reflection on Buechner’s words, Brueggemann adds this thought:

In times of dislocation the temptation is to become self-preoccupied and self-indulgent…We can see this self-preoccupied individualism in the greed that our society calls ‘opportunity,’ in the demise of public health care because it is ‘too costly,’ and in the decay of public institutions regarded as too expensive to maintain, as though taxation were a penalty rather than a necessary neighborly act.

And then here’s the kicker:

Times of dislocation are particularly apt to foster a permanent underclass. Nervous and anxious people may be tempted to gouge their economically vulnerable neighbors. But the Bible presents dislocation as a motivation for building a more just society. The laws of public life might be very different if all remained aware of their own vulnerability.

My point is that in Florida, by the end of our time there, I realized that my spirit was feeling increasingly dislocated, displaced, and thereby cranky.

In fact, I think a person can be homesick even for themselves, for their center, their home within themselves.

Writ large, I think that Buechner and Brueggemann are on to something.

Our society is anxious, and anxiety is leading to cranky posturing, hostile protectiveness, and a loss of communal connection; in short, manifest symptoms of homesickness.

But then the question becomes, what is our home?  Who owns the home for which we are yearning?  Who is allowed to live in the home?

The word economics comes from the Greek oikos and nomos, namely “rules of the house.”

What are our economics, and who writes those rules, and whom do they benefit most?

And perhaps most critical, why are we not at home?

Truly, when I saw my first cow after getting off that plane on Friday, I wanted to hug it.

If I could have found a way to wrap my arms around those flowing fields of my South Dakota, I would have.

I wanted to roll in its dirt like a pig, I was so happy to be home.

So my mental meanderings come down to this:

I think we are as a society homesick.

Many are in point of fact homeless.

And I think more of us are homeless, figuratively speaking, than we might like to think.

And while we often speak of “going home” to heaven, I’m kind of thinking that there’s a lot of scriptural background for making sure that people have homes here. Now.

So ”Joy is home,” says Buechner.

And I find myself humming:

Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

(For you Floridians out there, feel free to substitute bay, dolphins, and manatee.)

May you find your way home, may you find joy there, and may the door be wide, the rooms many.

May there be food for all, prairie and ocean, kind community, and a rule of the house based on justice and mercy.

May there be no such thing as homelessness, or homesickness.

And on your way, may your vision of home be broad, may it be broadened, and may you find yourself a guest and a host of welcome and peace.

Call me provincial, living under a rock, or clueless, but I had never heard of Terry Eagleton before.  Where have I been?  The guy is fantastic, his prose saturated in wry wit, razory rhetoric, and provocative thinking.

I want to be him when I grow up.

His preface begins this way:

Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs.  For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology.  I therefore have a good deal of sympathy with its rationalist and humanist critics.  But it is also the case, as this book argues, that most such critics buy their rejection on the cheap.  When it comes to the New Testament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing, rooted in a degree of ignorance and prejudice to match religion’s own.  It is as though one were to dismiss feminism on the basis of Clint Eastwood’s opinions of it.

Although it’s not clear whether he’s any particular flavor of Christian now, he was certainly raised as a Roman Catholic.  Some dicey experiences with the tradition helped to offer a healthy skepticism about the Church.

The book itself is essentially a publication of the Terry Lectures delivered at Yale in 2008.  And of the invitation to give them, he wrote:

My delight…was quickly tempered as I read on to discover that the Terry Lectures are traditionally devoted to two subjects I know embarrassingly little about, namely science and religion….[and] I should also confess that since the only theology I don’t know much about is Christian theology, as opposed to those kinds I know nothing at all about, I shall confine my discussion to that alone, on the grounds that it is better to be provincial than presumptuous.

And that’s the cadence of writing that carries the reader throughout the text.

But for the moment, there’s a section near the end of the book that I found myself a-ha-ing (as in a moment of insight, not as in laughter, both scenarios being very possible when reading Eagleton) even more than otherwise, and so naturally I thought “blog it!”  Eagleton reframes faith here in such a way that demonstrates that a) all people have faith in something; and b) faith isn’t an archenemy to reason.

That is, you don’t have to be a non-thinking cheeseball to have faith.

In the indented passage below, the object of his words is Ditchkens, an elided form of the prolific atheist authors Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the former of whom he was once friends, “comrades in the same far-left political outfit.  But he has gone on to higher things, discovering in the process a degree of political maturity as a naturalized citizen of Babylon, whereas I have remained stuck in the same old political groove, a case of arrested development if ever there was one.”

While Eagleton appreciates their writing (writing of Hitchens’ God is Not Great as “stylish, entertaining, splendidly impassioned, and compulsively readable” while offering Dawkins only that his “doctrinal ferocity has begun to eat into his prose style”), he is bothered by their disdain of the notion of ‘faith’ while extolling ‘reason.’  At one point he critiques Hitchens who wrote in God is Not Great that “thanks to the telescope and the microscope, [religion] no longer offers an explanation of anything important” (282).  ”But Christianity,” says Eagleton, “was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place.  It is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

I LOVE THAT!

O.K.  But back to the point at hand.

So Eagleton wants to spend some time examining why the operating assumption is that exclusive reason is laudable anyway, even if one were to grant that it is possible.

A hunger for absolute justification is a neurosis, not a tenacity to be admired.  It is like checking every five minutes that there is not nest of hissing cobras under your bed, or like the man in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations who buys a second copy of the daily newspaper to assure himself that what the first copy said was true.  Justifications must come to an end somewhere; and where they generally come to an end is in some kind of faith.

Christopher Hitchens would appear to disagree about this question of grounding.  ”Our belief is not a belief,” he writes of atheists like himself in God is Not Great.  ”Our principles are not a faith” (5).  So liberal humanism of the Ditchkins variety is not a belief.  It involves, for example, no trust in men and women’s rationality or desire for freedom, no conviction of the evils of tyranny and oppression, no passionate faith that men and women are at their best when not laboring under myth and superstition.  Hitchens is clear that secular liberals like himself (we lay charitably aside here his neo-conservative fellow-traveling) do not rely “solely upon science and reason,” so he is not contrasting belief with scientifically based propositions.  What he is really doing is contrasting his own beliefs with other people’s.  ”We [secular liberals] distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason,” he observes (5).  Most Christians do not in fact hold that their faith contradicts science–though it would be plausible to claim that in some sense science contradicts itself all the time, and that this is known as scientific progress.  Hitchens fails to distinguish between reasonable beliefs and unreasonable ones.  His belief that one should distrust anything that outrages reason is one example of a reasonable belief, while his belief that all belief is blind is an example of an unreasonable one.

Ditchkins does not exactly fall over himself to point out how many major scientific hypotheses confidently cobbled together by our ancestors have crumbled to dust, and how probabl it is that the same fate will befall many of the most cherished scientific doctrines of the present. (124-25).

Just before this passage, Eagleton points out that we have ‘faith’ in many things we’ve never seen before: the unconscious, the expertise of specialists, and even in things that don’t exist, such as a “wholly just society.”  ”The whole question of faith and knowledge,” says Eagleton, “is a good deal more complex than the rationalist suspects.”

Let me be clear: I’m not knocking science, and I’m not knocking reason.  That I feel compelled to write that disclaimer points to Eagleton’s agenda.  Christians have been misunderstood–perhaps most egregiously by themselves!–to disdain science and reason, and therefore be unreasonable, believing in a “mere myth.”

I think that what Eagleton brings to the table is a helpful reminder that life demands acts of faith.  We cannot function without some measure of faith in something, because, in point of fact, not everything is provable.  Not even the laudable and recitable “with liberty and justice for all,” E=Mc2, or “I love you.”

That said, he is also right that Christians are compelled to be able to provide some reasons for their faith claims!  On what basis do we believe what we do?  Is it consistent within its own faith claims?  Does it jibe with our experience of reality?  As I have said before, many reasons can be given for many claims, but not all reasons are equally valid.

In short, Eagleton seems to think that Christians have a responsibility to know why we say we believe what we do, and that secular humanists have a responsibility to not dismiss (or just plain old diss) Christians by tapping into their weakest and most stereotypical expressions.

I have faith that that is a reasonable proposition to make.

What do you think?

I was brought up being told that God is everywhere, and all powerful, that those who seek shall find, and that it is quite possible to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, while fearing no evil.

But this kind of teaching seems incongruous with the idea of holy places, or places that God is close to, his power and presence more tangible; places which are the peaks to those shadowy valleys.

I am confident that these places exist.

But that seems at odds with the idea that God is always there, always dependable.

I suppose there’s no reason to expect that God has an even spread, or an even affection for all places or times… but I still feel like I’m missing something, and have never been able to understand this.

What do you think?

Fantastic question, eloquently written, and stimulating to boot.

I’m going to take it in two directions.

First, I once heard of a parent of many children who was asked, “Do you have a favorite?”

The mother said, “Yes.  The sick one.”

That resonates with this mama.

And I think God might appreciate the story too.  That is, I think that God cares for all of God’s children, but is most concerned about those who are suffering.

There are good reasons to make this case, the cross being one of them.  It’s been said by Robert Farrar Capon that the only prerequisite to being raised from the dead is to be dead.  That is, God is in the business of giving life, and so where there is death, there is God.

Many theologians have talked about God’s predisposition toward the forsaken as it concerns poverty: God demonstrates preferential treatment of the poor–and so too God’s people (should).  For example, not to be lost is Luke’s point that just as the poor should be redeemed from their poverty, so too should the rich be redeemed from their poverty.

The point is, then, not that there are places where God is not, but that there are “pet” concerns of God, places and events that most fully reveal what God intends for the world.

The second way of thinking through is concerns more specifically place.  I know that this is more the gist of your question.  Still, the two themes overlap.  More on that in a moment.

The other day I was asked where I found God most of all in my day-to-day life.  I answered that I experience God most profoundly when I am snuggling with my two children before bed, reading with them and warming their feet with my legs wrapped around and over them.  There is a saturation in the air of love and joy in these moments, and I feel here most blessed.

Secondly, if I may say so, my study at OMG seems to have something of God in it, with the wood and the stone and the light and the books and my knowledge of sacred conversations that have and that will take place between these walls.  Some of those who have been here have said that they too feel that this place has a bit of the holy to it.

But naming these two spots also names that I think God is present more clearly in places unique to people’s experiences and relationships.  While I have fondness for other children, nothing captures my heart and gives me peace and announces blessing and grace than snuggling up to these two particular children.  God’s activity is not generic, but relates to and is evidenced in the relationship between specific places and people.

It’s here that I reached up to grab Walter Brueggemann’s terrific book called The Land.  In this volume Brueggemann (an Old Testament scholar of extraordinary brilliance and prose) writes about God’s relationship with the people of Israel and the land.

It is not a simple relationship.

Brueggemann is fascinated by the repeated cycle of landless people being promised land which then becomes lost because the people fixate on the land rather than on justice.  ”When the people are landless, the promise comes; but when the land is secured, it seduces and the people are turned toward loss.”  (175)  Land equals power which becomes more important than the one who bestowed the land in the first place–and more important than that One’s intention for the stewardship of that very same land.

Promise and land are intertwined in the biblical tradition.  Brueggemann points to Ezekiel 36:28 “You shall dwell in the land…you shall be my people, and I will be your God,” and Ezekiel 36:33 “I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt…I, the Lord, have replanted that which was desolate….”  (141)  One can see similar references in Psalm 69:35 (“For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it,”) and Isaiah 61:4-6 (“They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations,”) and Jeremiah 31:23-24 (“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Once more they shall use these words in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I restore their fortunes: “‘The Lord bless you, O habitation of righteousness, O holy hill!’ And Judah and all its cities shall dwell there together, and the farmers and those who wander with their flocks.”).

God’s promises occur in and are about place, because God’s interaction with Israel must take place somewhere, and that somewhere is land.  Land is where God’s shared history with Israel occurs.  (142).  And with his typical poetry, Brueggemann writes that this promised land “is the restoration of livable turf.  The land is redivided to prisoners and other outcasts.  The land is gift given by the One who has pity (Hos. 2:23), who leads and guides (cf. Ps. 23:1-3).  The outcasts are given places and comforted.” (150).

In this way, land becomes a symbol for sustainability and sufficiency (with, yes, a nod to my ELCA tradition in their statement on economic justice).  As Brueggemann states:

It is clear that the land emphasis, which concerns transmission of the inheritance from generation to generation, places the faithful believer in the flow of the generations.  A focus on “now” decisions of faith is untenable because land must be cared for in sustained ways.  It is equally the case that the land possessed or the land promised is by definition a communal concern.  It will not do to make the individual person the unit of decision-making because in both Testaments the land possessed or promised concerns the whole people.  Radical decisions in obedience are of course the stuff of biblical faith, but now it cannot be radical decisions in a private world without brothers and sisters, without pasts and futures, without turf to be managed and cherished as a partner in the decisions.  The unit of decision-making is the community and that always with reference to the land.

…The central problem is not emancipation but rootage, not meaning but belonging, not separation from community but location within it, not isolation from others but placement deliberately between the generation of promise and fulfillment. (186-187).

Do you see how Brueggemann ties land to community?

Do you see the implications for stewardship of land?

water?

resources?

creatures on it?

people on it?

justice?

And here is a fundamental difference between the Jewish tradition and the Christian.

Jews focus on present justice, not, to be clear, because they have to, but because they live out of their relationship with God which calls them into communal well-being.  So, relevant to your question, land issues concern justice issues: is there justice going on in the land?

Christians have tended to spiritualize land.  ”The promised land” is now heaven.  We have a habit of turning our hearts and minds toward that place, and simultaneously turning our hearts and minds away from the desolation of the land–in all its forms–here and now.  We figure if heaven must be God’s focus, it ought to be ours too…at the expense, all too often, of the land.

That is, land, the earth, has become a stage upon which the human drama is played.  That drama often is fairly individualistic, concerning the interplay of “me and Jesus.”

The Lord’s Prayer is awfully Jewish, and awfully helpful here.  Note that the pronouns are all plural (that is, not “My father in heaven….give me this day my daily bread, forgive me my sins…), and that there is this noteworthy petition: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Land, community, justice, and promise.

So, back to that question of yours:

Both/and.  God does have particular concern for particular places, and God’s presence is everywhere, because God cares about the land and the creatures on it.

That’s my first run-through.  Contributions, anyone?

It is in grey, cream, and charcoal hues.

In large capital letters 5″ tall, a be-shadowed word SHALOM asserts itself on a stripe of black, and nestled between the L and the O flies a dove with a gentle, thin-lined heart drawn in the middle.

Above and below the SHALOM are selected words from my father, passages from a sermon he preached on May 27th, 1984.

My father’s sermons were not for the faint of heart: or rather, not for the faint of intellect and query.  They remind me of how Mark says that after Jesus was baptized, the Spirit “drove him into the wilderness,” in fairly dramatic opposition to Luke who tells that the Spirit “led him there.”

Dad’s pulpit words “drove” people to think.  His adult education classes led them there, but Dad’s sermons drove them there.

He was not exactly reticent about making the case there in that place that the Word of God is, the Gospel declares, that we are called to have solidarity with the oppressed, that power is found not in weapons but in love, and that we are free to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

My delight in theology and my passion for questions and my conviction that faith and life are intertwined and my joy and hope in grace come from my father.

Today is his birthday.

My father’s words from 1984 still reverberate through to today’s tenor of disharmony, of dissonance, of disarray, of disorientation, of distrust, and of disillusionment.

And of yet the possibility that there might just be another way.

And that it might be possible to live out of that other way even now.

As I understand the story, William Benson heard my father preach on that day in May and he was moved to bring some art out of his ear, so to speak.  This lithograph Shalom is what was born.  My father has another copy, as does my sister.

At this very moment, I have the lithograph in my lap to lift some of the particularly fine gems.

And so below, in honor of my father, in gratitude for his wisdom, in thanksgiving that his birth made the world a better place, a few words of proclamation to edify your spirit from the good Rev. Dr. George H.O. Madsen, on his birthday.

Happy Birthday, Dad.  I love you an awful lot.

(And when I told Elsegirl that I planned to write this piece for you, she said, “Well, O.K., but you should probably buy him a bottle of wine too.”  Noted.)

Shalom is a word that is broad in the extreme.  It has to do with wholeness, with fulfillment.

Shalom paints a vision of the way things will one day be with all hands helping.

Shalom knows of a lion lying down with a lamb, of the thirsty having drink, hungry having food, naked being clothed.

Shalom knows of swords being beaten into plowshares, of justice and freedom.

Shalom knows of strangers being welcomed, the sick and imprisoned being visited.

Shalom knows of sorrow and tears disappearing and death being no more.

Shalom has as its agenda liberation and reconciliation.

Shalom has has its agenda love, hope and renewal.

Shalom has as its agenda drought and famine.

Shalom has as its agenda war and hatred.

Shalom has as its agenda prejudice and oppression.

Shalom has as its agenda sickness and suffering.

We are not bound by our own lives, our own deaths, but live within the great parenthesis of Shalom.

Shalom is the shape of the future, the vision of that to which a mysterious power summons us all here and now, in the role of servant, in bringing and establishing justice and freedom, grace and peace.  The servant will be masterfully taught all things.  Shalom is our human legacy, given to us in a state of fearlessness and without a troubled heart.

So let me step up to the plate and state outright that were I to be closer to Madison I’d be in the Rotunda with the protestors, precisely because of my faith, and I’d be booking a trip to Columbus too.

My faith compels me to write in favor of the protests against both the budget proposal by Walker and Senate Bill #5 in Ohio because both of these pieces of legislation favor the wealthy at the expense of those who have less.  I subscribe to the notion that Christians are to extend preferential treatment to those with less, that our policy decisions ought to begin and end with their concerns, and that we must speak out against power being rewarded with power.

While there are a myriad of dimensions to the question, here are the bloggable two….for the moment: Union-Busting and the Art of Red-Herring Budget-Balancing.

For all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, this bill is not about balancing the budget.  It is about busting unions.

Paul Krugman calls it:

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process.  In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others.  Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker).  On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nations; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

In a word, unions represent the threat that the common person (many of whom happen to be registered Democrats) can go up against PACs and Super PACs and Big Business too.

What self-respecting Republican governor would want that?

There are those, clearly, who disagree, such as CNN’s contributor John Avlon.  He writes that “the underlying problem” Walker is trying to address is “collective bargaining and union ‘check-offs’ that create a vicious cycle of taxpayer subsidized partisan politics and labor deals that pass the buck to the next generation.”

Could one not argue that tax-breaks for big business, the wealthy, and defense contracts, are not also “subsidized partisan politics,” not also “recycled money” that gets put back into the coffers of the politicians who vote in favor of these policies?

So there is truth in the critique, but abbreviated truth.

Rachel Maddow would enjoy visiting with Mr. Avlon.  In this piece (video here, excerpts here) she acknowledges that unions help the Democrats.  Here’s a brief commentary on that:

In 2008, the groups that spent the most money on elections that year were the Chamber of Commerce, the giant right-wing pac Freedoms Watch, the National Rifle Association, and, hey, wait, what are all those weird little initials? Oh, yes. Service Employees International Union. And the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the public employees union. In 2010, post Citizens United, 7 of the 10 top spending groups were all right wing. Chamber of Commerce, both the Karl Rove groups, Americans for Job Security. All of these right-wing groups. The only non-conservative groups that cracked the top ten were the public employees union, the SEIU, and the teachers union. That’s it. Unions are the only competition republicans have in electoral politics. Post Citizens United, conservatives look at this and they smell blood. I mean, compare this to ’08. They have knocked the unions down to sixth and seventh place. Without unions, essentially all of the big money and politics would be right-wing money. All of it. That is not hyperbole. All of it. Unions are the only players. They are the only fish of any size on the liberal side. This decides who wins elections and who loses them.

She goes on to make the case that (thanks to this recent Supreme Court decision, the partisan effects of which is illustrated here) Corporate America is in the pocket of the Republicans.

The only financial “heft” that the Democrats have is the Unions.

And the Republicans know it.

So there is a partisan piece to this, to be sure.

But from a faith perspective, the union issue is not about partisan politics, or rather, not fundamentally.

The union issue is about justice and equitable distribution of power.

To that end, it might be surprising to know that a number of Christian denominations have some opinion on, yes, unions.

I am highlighting only five Christian groups with official statements endorsing unions, their right to exist, and their right to collectively bargain.

Take the Roman Catholics.  In a 1986 document entitled Economic Justice for All, the U.S. Bishops wrote:

104. The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions. This is a specific application of the more general right to associate. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “The experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrial societies” [58]. Unions may also legitimately resort to strikes where this is the only available means to the justice owed to workers [59]. No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore, we firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably now seen in this country, to break existing unions and prevent workers from organizing. Migrant agricultural workers today are particularly in need of the protection, including the right to organize and bargain collectively. U.S. labor law reform is needed to meet these problems as well as to provide more timely and effective remedies for unfair labor practices.

Yep.  Bishops like unions.

The points 105-108 explain why, 105 dealing with the “ruthless denial to organize” in “other countries,” although there has been a significant squelching of union organizing in large and proud U.S. companies like Wal-Mart, for example; 106 pointing out that their potential “collective power” could “contribute to the well-being of the whole community” (also noting that unions should therefore “avoid pressing demands whose fulfillment would damage the common good and the rights of more vulnerable members of society”); 107 calling attention to unions’ role in fighting discrimination…and also a word of caution that unions commit to this role more consistently; 108 noting that “the restrictions on the right to organize in many countries abroad make labor costs lower there, threaten American workers and their jobs, and lead to the exploitation of workers in these countries,” so that unions “can also help both their own members and workers in developing countries by increasing their international efforts.”

But Roman Catholics don’t have the Christian corner on union support!

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) states in its statement Economic Life: Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All that “We commit ourselves as a church to:”

honor the right of employees to organize for the sake of better working conditions and for workers to make free and informed decisions; encourage those who engage in collective bargaining to commit themselves to negotiated settlements, especially when participatory attempts at just working conditions fail; and discourage the permanent replacement of striking workers.

The Methodists speak directly to collective bargaining here:

Collective Bargaining—We support the right of all public and private employees and employers to organize for collective bargaining into unions and other groups of their own choosing. Further, we support the right of both parties to protection in so doing and their responsibility to bargain in good faith within the framework of the public interest.

In order that the rights of all members of the society may be maintained and promoted, we support innovative bargaining procedures that include representatives of the public interest in negotiation and settlement of labor-management contracts, including some that may lead to forms of judicial resolution of issues.

We reject the use of violence by either party during collective bargaining or any labor/management disagreement. We likewise reject the permanent replacement of a worker who engages in a lawful strike.

The Episcopal Church-USA agreed in 2006 that:

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention reaffirm the right of workers in the United States to organize and form unions. We especially affirm the right to organize and form unions for seasonal and migrant workers who historically have been deprived of those rights. We support the right to organize and form unions as a means to securing adequate wages, benefits, and safety conditions for all workers. We encourage all levels of the church to be informed about, and act accordingly, when rights of workers to associate is being jeopardized. We commend the work of Interfaith Worker Justice in calling upon our religious values in support of issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for low-wage workers.

The American Baptists concluded in 1966, 1981, and 1990 that:

We reaffirm our position that workers have the right to organize by a free and democratic vote of the workers involved. This right of organization carries the responsibility of union leadership to protect the rights of workers, to guarantee each member an equal voice in the operation of its organization, and to produce just output labors for income received.

Additionally the same link highlights that in 1976 they claimed as their policy base that:

As American Baptists we declare the following rights to be basic human rights, and we will support programs and measures to assure these rights:

12. The right to organize into groups to bargain with structures or powerful persons, to seek redress of grievances or to promote particular concerns

For what it’s worth, Walker touted himself as a “preacher’s son” during his campaign, and he came out of this same American Baptist tradition.

Kasich, by the way, although averse to stating where exactly he lands in the Christian continuum, makes clear his connections to the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics.

So the point is, you see, that we’ve got some denominational union unity.

And all of the words of support come in the context of statements regarding economic justice.

And here is why:

An individual has very little power in the face of a corporation.

But collectively, there is some hope that there is a fairer shot at justice.

And collectively, it makes a difference.  Note this statistic (from an organization receiving funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) regarding states in which collective bargaining is illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina -50th; North Carolina -49th; Georgia -48th; Texas -47th; and Virginia -44th

Wisconsin is currently ranked #2.  (Thanks to good friend and political wonk Tracey Sturgal for that succinct compare/contrast!).

Collective bargaining makes for collective good (a shout-out to the Roman Catholic Bishops and their Point 106 above!).

And Krugman makes the point that this union issue is related to class issues:

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

Unions provide a place of support for those who alone would be powerless, those who alone have little money, those who alone have little training in labor matters, those who alone have no time for the full-time work of advocacy, those who alone can not stand up for themselves in the way that one can when boosted by the collective support of others.

O.K.

But for the sake of argument, for fun, let’s pretend that Walker’s issue is really about the budget, and not about union-busting.

Walker garners support because he asserts that the budget crisis is so big, so desperate ($137 million this year and $3.6 billion through 2013) that the only option is to reduce teachers’ salaries, benefits, and unions.

Naturally, he refuses to negotiate.

It is worth mentioning that the unions will.

There’s no room, says Walker.  No other choices.  No other maneuvers.  Nada. Nichts. Nothing available at all. Hands-tiedness all around.

Except maybe raising taxes on folks who make over $200,000 annually?

According to Sam Pizzigati:

“The state top rate on income over that figure currently sits at 7.75 percent, a rate down substantially from the 11.4 percent Wisconsin top rate in effect throughout the 1970s. A hike in that 7.75 percent top rate to 10.95 percent — on income over $200,000 — would raise about $600 million a year…Walker, since taking office last month, has pandered to the rich. Once sworn in, he pushed into place $140 million in tax breaks that almost exclusively benefit the rich and corporations. The ultimate irony: These tax breaks for Wisconsin’s affluent created the $137 million deficit in this year’s budget that Walker is using to justify his demand for cutbacks in what Wisconsin public workers take home.”

Echoing Pizzigati, Rachel Maddow reiterates his $140 million tax break statistic in the link above, and notes the below:

Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year. I am not kidding. I’m quoting their own version of the congressional budget office, the state’s own nonpartisan assess the state’s finances agency. That agency said the month that the new Republican governor of Wisconsin was sworn in, last month, that the state was on track to have a $120 million budget surplus this year…

So the question that many Christians are raising is, Why offer money in the form of tax breaks to the wealthy and to large corporations while taking it away from the middle class, simultaneously taking away their power for collective bargaining against those in power?

And what is this business of threatening force against those who protest?

God has a habit, illustrated time and again in the Old and the New Testament, of calling people to economic justice.  God is, in short, preoccupied with the poor.  The theme of distributing wealth equitably so that, as the ELCA statement calls for, there be sustainable, sufficient livelihood for all.

Not some.

But all.

And while not everybody in the Rotunda is poor, they are more threatened than those getting Walker’s tax breaks.

And that is not right.

So I have my seatbelt on, and am prepared for the comments.  Have at it.

Peace,

Anna