When I Was a Scholar

[Originally posted in May 2017 on the Pacific Coast league 1930-1960 Facebook group, responding to this photo of the original editions of Richard E. Beverage's books on the Hollywood Stars and Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. spt+]

The Stars book I bought in the early '80s directly from Richard Beverage through the mail, but when I inquired about the Angels book, it was long out-of-print and he had none available. Occasionally I'd inquire at used book stores in the San Fernando Valley, but no luck. In 1988 I headed up to the Lutheran seminary, which has graduate student privileges at Cal.

So in a University library one day on a lark I looked up "The Angels" and, sure enough, they had one copy -- at the Bancroft Library. That's a non-circulating, research library. No checking out books. You can't even go in the stacks to see it. One of the librarians gets it for you. You aren't allowed pens or pencils, even to make notes (they will make copies for a fee), and you don't leave until you return it. And they don't do this for just anybody, even a graduate student, holding a Cal library card. No you have to first register as a researcher, completing a form that remains on file declaring to the Bancroft who you are and your field of study! Gee, I just want to read something about the team my dad fell in love with when he was a boy.

Then it hit me -- I'm a divinity student at the Graduate Theological Union. And so I put down that I was researching angels. And I got to read the book.

Advertising Algorithms: Still Not Ready

Inspired to action by Bishop Barron's comments on Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion, I added the book to my Amazon Wish List a few moments ago. The Rev. Rutledge is a retired Episcopal priest who has long had a reputation as an excellent preacher and orthodox theologian. I had heard her speak at the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology's conference "Who Do You Say That I Am? Following and Proclaiming Jesus Today" a few years ago and was suitably impressed. She is both an engaging speaker and serious Christian theologian.

Seeing my interest in this book, as a matter of course Amazon wants me to sell me similar merchandise. The question is, what might be "similar" to 700 page book that was the Academy of Parish Clergy's "Reference Book of the Year" for 2015 and is highly recommended by theologians like Robert Jenson and Stanley Hauerwas. Why, a pick from... Oprah!

I'm guessing the algorithm's categories are "female" and "spirituality." Which takes me back to a saying I learned in my 8th grade computer programming class, GIGO -- "garbage in, garbage out."

- - - - - -

P.S. Turns out today is the anniversary of the senseless shooting death of the young Angels outfielder (and fellow CSUN alum) Lyman Bostock in 1978. The first of the "promoted stories" at the bottom of that page is a photo of a lovely young woman and the headline "37 Shocking Celebrity Cup Sizes You Couldn't Have Guessed." Ahh, those algorithms...

How's This for an Opening Sentence?

"The following essay is—whatever its errors or other faults—at least timely."

Thus begins Robert W. Jenson in "Can Ethical Disagreement Divide the Church?" the lead paper in The Morally Divided Body: Ethical Disagreement and the Disunity of the Church, the just published book from the 2010 Conference of that same title sponsored by Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

FWIW, the essay is more than
just timely.

California: From Another Age

The following concludes Literature Reader: Sixth Year, edited by Leroy E. Armstrong, a sixth-grade reader from 1916 used in California at least through the mid-1920s. This weblog post is inspired today in part because I read the news from my home state, in part because I posted a new "cover" for my Facebook page featuring a postcard of downtown Los Angeles from the early '60s, and in part because I was thinking of essential things I learned in (California's public) schools that simply aren't taught any longer. Those were the days, my friends, and they seem long gone...

California

(Poets, dramatists, and historians are quite as useful and helpful to society as are wonder-workers in plants. John Steven McGroarty has served the people of California well by writing the Mission Play—a highly interesting portrayal of the days when California was owned by Spain. Mr. McGroarty has also written a pleasing book entitled California: Its History and Romance. The introduction to this book is a poem that is a worthy tribute to California. The author’s love for our beautiful State is felt in every line.)

’Twixt the seas and the deserts,
    ’Twixt the wastes and the waves,
Between the sands of buried lands
    And ocean’s coral caves,
It lies not East nor West,
    But like a scroll unfurled,
Where the hand of God hath hung it,
    Down the middle of the world.

It lies where God hath spread it,
    In the gladness of His eyes,
Like a flame of jeweled tapestry
    Beneath His shining skies;
With the green of woven meadows,
    And the hills in golden chains,
The light of leaping rivers,
    And the flash of poppied plains.

Days rise that gleam in glory,
    Days die with sunset’s breeze,
While from Cathay that was of old
    Sail countless argosies;
Morns break again in splendor
    O’er the giant, new-born West,
But of all the lands God fashioned,
    ’Tis this land is the best.

Sun and dews that kiss it,
    Balmy winds that blow,
The stars in clustered diadems
    Upon its peaks of snow;
The mighty mountains o’er it,
    Below, the white seas swirled—
Just California stretching down
    The middle of the world.

—John Steven McGroarty

Hat tip to Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor.

Today

It happened to me again recently. I handed my business card to someone from Europe, he looked at my name, and immediately commented on it being like the country. You know: Tibbetts; Tibet.

Mom was a member of the Book of the Month Club for most of our youth and, while she didn't buy lots of books that way -- she was a housewife and we lived on Dad's teacher's salary in those days before strong teachers' unions -- the books we had at home covered a rather eclectic subject matter. I started to devour them when I was in junior high.

One was Lowell Thomas' book on the Dalai Lama, and I remember being fascinated by this story of a strange land (Tibet), how their leader was discovered and raised, and his dramatic escape over the Himalayas to India. But it would be years later before I made the Tibbetts-Tibet connection I like best.

Tenzin Gyatso fled Lhasa on March 17, 1959, arriving in India 15 days later.

And early on the evening on March 17, 1959, at the Kaiser Hospital on Sunset and Vermont in east Hollywood, California, I was born.

Tibbetts. Tibet. 51 years ago today.

Conference Re-scheduled

The Conference on The 50th Anniversary of The Hammer of God that I posted last month has been rescheduled. It will now be held on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 -- one week later than previously announced. All other details are the same. Click here for the corrected announcement.

Conference: The Hammer of God

The International Giertz Society
(English Language Section)
& the Pittsburgh Pastoral Conference honor…

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF
THE HAMMER OF GOD

with two lectures on Bo Giertz’s beloved and influential novel, which appeared in English for the first time in 1960

 
The Rev. Hans O. Andræ on “Tyranny and the Gospel: Freedom from Temporal and Spiritual Bondage in The Hammer of God”
Pastor H. Andræ translated the final chapter of The Hammer of God for the 2005 edition, for which he also provided a historical and biographical introduction. While a pastor in Sweden, Andræ worked with Bishop Giertz in Kyrklig Samling. He was a parish pastor in the U.S.A. 1979-2007. His translation of Giertz’s first book, Christ’s Church (Kristi Kyrka, 1939), is expected to be published in 2010.

The Rev. Eric R. Andræ on “‘The best treatment of the proper distinction of law and gospel in the history of Lutheran theology:’ A Historical and Systematic Overview”
Pastor E. Andræ completed his S.T.M. thesis on Giertz’s use of the ordo salutis in 2003 (Concordia, St. Louis). He has had several essays on Giertz published in journals and books in the U.S. and in his native Sweden, and has translated numerous short pieces, as well as a booklet: Life by Drowning: Enlightenment through Law and Gospel (2008, from Kyrkofromhet). He is the founder and president of the International Giertz Society.

Tuesday, 14 September 2010
9:00 a.m. — Noon Continental Breakfast, Matins (9:30), Lectures (10:00)
Noon — 1:30 p.m. Lunch Break (lunch is not provided)
1:30 — 3:30 Screening of The Hammer of God — the brand-new feature length FILM based on the entire first novella

First Trinity Lutheran Church
535 N. Neville St.
Pittsburgh, Penn. 15213 U.S.A.
There is no cost, but you must register:
412-683-4121 x2     EricAndrae@gmail.com

Note: Life By Drowning is available in pdf format here.

Oh, This Is So Cool!!

A few minutes ago I discovered that Zion has been cited in a book! Yes, a real book published by Church Publishing (which is affiliated with the Episcopal Church) earlier this year. The book is Cohabiting Couples & Cold Feet: A Practical Marriage-Preparation Guide for Clergy by Robert W. Pritchard, professor of church history and pastoral theology at Virginia Theological Seminary.

I have no idea how good the book actually is, but it is one that will actually be bought and read by seminarians, priests, and others in the Episcopal and other mainline churches. Okay, that's a shrinking market that's not nearly as significant as it would have been 40 years ago. But still...

Granted, the author is just using a line from our wedding policy that he found via on the web for an example. And actually the example is pretty much boiler-plate wedding policy for a church with a member of the American Guild of Organists (I'm the chaplain for the local chapter).

Still, I typed it up and put it on our web site. And now it's in a book!

Wow!

Bo Harald Giertz, Bishop and Confessor, 1998

12 July, Commemoration of Bo H. Giertz, Bishop and Confessor, 1998

Born August 31, 1905 in an atheistic family, Bo Harald Giertz embraced the faith while studying medicine at the University of Uppsala and switched to theology. Ordained a priest in 1934, Giertz first served in youth work, then as an Associate Pastor (komminister) at Torpa (1938-1949). Largely due to his popular writings, such as The Hammer of God (in Swedish, Stengrunden), Giertz became the Bishop of the Göteborg (Gothenburg) Diocese in the Church of Sweden (1949-1970). This was a shock, due both to his young age (44) and position in the rural Torpa parish, as Swedish Bishops were routinely selected from among Cathedral Deans and University Chairmen of Theology. He was leader of the Confessional movement in Sweden (Kyrklig Samling Kring Bibeln och Bekännelsen [The Church Coalition for Bible and Confession]) and served as vice president of the Lutheran World Federation (1957-1963).

In retirement Giertz translated the entire New Testament and provided commentaries on all its books. He was named the most influential Swedish churchman of the 20th century in a nationwide survey at the close of 1999. In influence and style, and as a Christian apologist, he has been compared favorably to Walter Wangerin, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and C.S. Lewis. During 2005 symposia were held in the United States, Canada, and Sweden to mark the centennial of his birth. This year marks the 11th anniversary of his death. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Clifford Ansgar Nelson's English translation of The Hammer of God.

"The Church is and exists, first and foremost, in that moment when the bishop as a heavenly instrument stands in his congregation's midst and celebrates the liturgical mysteries, full of joy and light and life. In this way the Church is for these people the shining city on a hill, whose walls are always brilliant with light... Here I understood better than ever the very nature of the Church: she is not an institution for grievances, not a protest organization, nor a device for social improvements or any other "goal"; she is the heavenly joy's sanctuary, in which we enter, filled with overwhelming joy [P. Hendrix]. ...

"[A] truly active church life [consists of] prayer and participation in the Lord's Supper. ...

"To be a Christian [is to be] a person who lives in the Church of Christ with all her overwhelming riches." (Bo Giertz, Kyrkofromhet [Church Piety], 128, 100, 151, translation by Eric R. Andrae; Giertz' quote of Hendrix is from Bilder aus der orhodoxen Kirche im heutigen Russland, Eine Heilige Kirche, 1-3, 1937).

Collect:
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Bishop of our souls and bodies, shepherd of your people, we thank you for your servant Bo, who was faithful in the care and nurture of your flock; and we pray that, following his example and the teaching of his holy life, we may by your grace grow into your full stature and your name in which we pray. Amen.

Psalm 84
Ezekiel 34:11-16
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 21:15-17

Tip of the biretta to Pastor Eric R. Andrae, who will gladly tell you about the International Giertz Society. The most detailed English-language source on Bishop Bo Giertz is here. See especially the up-to-date Giertz English-language bibliography.

Among Giertz' books currently available in English translation are The Hammer of God (published by Augsburg Fortress) and To Live with Christ (Att leva med Kristus), Giertz' classic devotions for each day of the Church Year published last year by Concordia Publishing House. Fortunately for us, translators are working on several of his other writings.

Works available on the web include his classic Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, which was originally part of a longer pastoral letter at the beginning of his episcopacy, and the recently published (by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England and the Lutheran Heritage Foundation) pamphlet Life by Drowning: Enlightenment through Law and Gospel.

The Church's Bible

Robert Louis Wilken, author of one of my favorite books, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, is the General Editor of The Church's Bible, a new series of Bible commentaries that I was turned on to last month by R. R. Reno's article on First Things' On the Square.

Three volumes have been released thus far: The Song of Songs, 1 Corinthians, and Isaiah. Prof. Wilken's "Series Preface" helps us understand why this new series is so important for the Church today:

The volumes in The Church's Bible are designed to present the Holy scriptures as understood and interpreted during the first millennium of Christian history. The Christian Church has a long tradition of commentary on the Bible. In the early church all discussion of theological topics, of moral issues, and of Christian practice took the biblical text as the starting point. The recitation of the psalms and meditation on books of the Bible, particularly in the context of the liturgy or of private prayer, nurtured the spiritual life. For most of the Church's history theology and scriptural interpretation were one. Theology was called sacra pagina (the sacred page), and the task of interpreting the Bible was a spiritual enterprise.

During the first two centuries interpretation of the Bible took the form of exposition of select passages on particular issues. For example, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, discussed many passages from the Old and New Testaments in his defense of the apostolic faith against the Gnostics. By the beginning of the third century Christian bishops and scholars had begun to preach regular series of sermons that followed the biblical books verse by verse. Some wrote more scholarly commentaries that examined in greater detail grammatical, literary, and historical questions as well as theological ideas and spiritual teachings found in the texts. From Origen of Alexandria, the first great biblical commentator in the Church's history, we have, among others, a large verse-by-verse commentary on the Gospel of John, a series of homilies on Genesis and Exodus, and a large part of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. In the course of the first eight hundred years of Christian history Christian teachers produced a library of biblical commentaries and homilies on the Bible.

Today this ancient tradition of biblical interpretation is known only in bits and pieces, and even where it still shapes our understanding of the Bible, for example, in the selection of readings for Christian worship (e.g., Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 9 read at Christmas), or the interpretation of the Psalms in daily prayer, the spiritual world that gave it birth remains shadowy and indistinct. It is the purpose of this series to make available the richness of the Church's classical traditional of interpretation for clergy, Sunday school and Bible class teachers, men and women living in religious communities, and serious readers of the Bible.

Anyone who reads the ancient commentaries realizes at once that they are deeply spiritual, insightful, edifying, and, shall we say, "biblical." early Christian thinkers moved in the world of the Bible, understood its idiom, loved its teaching, and were filled with awe before its mysteries. The believed in the maxim, "Scripture interprets Scripture." They knew something that has largely been forgotten by biblical scholars, and their commentaries are an untapped resource for understanding the Bible as a book about Christ.

The distinctive mark of The Church's Bible is that it draws extensively on the ancient commentaries, not only on random comments drawn from theological treatises, sermons, or devotional works. Its volumes will, in the main, offer fairly lengthy excerpts from the ancient commentaries and from series of sermons on specific books. For example, in the first volume on the Song of Songs, there are long passages from Origen of Alexandria's Commentary on the Song of Songs, from Gregory of Nyssa's Homilies on the Song, and from Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons of the Song. Some passages willa be as brief as a paragraph, but many will be seeral pages in length, and some longer. We believe that it is only through a deeper immersion in the ancient sources that contemporary readers can enter into the inexhaustible spiritual and theological world of the early Church and hence of the Bible.

It is also hoped that longer passages will be suitable for private devotional reading and for spiritual reading in religious communities, in Bible study groups, and in prayer circles.

Using this sort of commentary fits completely in line with what Dr. Gold taught me about biblical exegesis my first semester of seminary. Curiously, it doesn't fit the practice of the exegetes published most often in today's ELCA for the use of parish pastors, which focusses almost exclusively on the historical-critical method through a progressive/liberationist perspective — the main reason why I've stopped using the "latest" ELCA exegetical resources in recent years.

The volume on the Song was first published in 2003, 1 Corinthians (a 2006 Touchstone review had intrigued me to the series), with the third volume (Isaiah) published in 2007. Hopefully, Eerdmanns will be publishing upcoming volumes more quickly.

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening

Having recently been given a copy of the old booklet published by the Augustana Book Concern by a brother pastor from the Society of the Holy Trinity (thank you, again, Phil), yesterday I read Bo Giertz' Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening. I had read it before, having downloaded its text from the LCMS website several years ago, but holding the actual booklet (autographed by Bishop Giertz!) in my hands makes for a more satisfying reading experience.

The booklet itself is actually only section of Giertz' first pastoral letter (herdabrev) written soon after his 1949 election as Bishop of Gothenburg. Clifford Ansgar Nelson's translator's introduction tells us,

It is an ancient and treasured custom in the Church of Sweden that when a new bishop is elected in any diocese of the country, he writes a pastoral letter intended in the first place for the ministers of the diocese. This "Herdabrev" is usually a very personal word of encouragement and pastoral counseling which serves to introduce the new bishop to his pastors and people. Sometimes the letter is brief and can be contained in a few printed pages but frequently the letter is long enough so that it becomes a book of considerable size.

Pastor Nelson concludes his introduction with a word that, at least from an American Lutheran perspective, is as amazing today in 2009 as when he wrote it 60 years ago:

It deals with a religious question that is perennial in the church. And it is because the bishop reveals such a profound appreciation of the values of religious awakening and evangelical piety on the one hand, and of the time-honored values of liturgical worship on the other, that this section has been lifted out for translation. We in the American churches will do well to ponder the problem that the bishop discusses in these pages. It is toward an understanding both of liturgy and spiritual awakening that this document is herewith published.

Here we see an attitude towards worship unlike what we've experienced in the "worship wars" between "high church" and "low church" proponents. Interestingly, it is an attitude one finds clearly expressed in Giertz' The Hammer of God and one I experienced when with the Society of St. Birgitta in Vadstena.

Perhaps the following will whet your appetite for Bishop Giertz' important message to the priests of the Diocese of Gothenburg in 1949 and to Christians today:

It is important for us that both awakening and liturgy be given their proper and pristine Christian place in the life of the congregation. Awakening is always needed, not only because the church must always be a missionary church and reach out after those that are on the outside, but also because there is always the need for awakening even among the most faithful members of the church. The church has exactly as many sinners as she has members. The old Adam in each one of us is prone to fall asleep, to make the Christian life a dead routine, to use liturgical form to cloak his self-complacency and impenitence. It is not difficult to fashion a form of religion that suits the ego and allows the old Adam within to become sovereign again. One may go regularly to church and Holy Communion. One may cherish beautiful church music and lovely sanctuaries. One may be honestly convinced that one possesses the correct doctrine and loves the pure preaching of the Word. And at the same time one may be thoroughly obsessed by self-love, complacent with one's self, satisfied with one's own pious accomplishments and totally indifferent to the troubles and burdens of one's fellow men, which are so apparent before one's very eyes. The Holy Spirit always needs to awaken slumbering souls, stir up the dust, push the old Adam against the wall, and blow a new breath of life into the dead bones. Awakening is never superfluous, as long as we are in the flesh.

Liturgy is just as needful. There can be no normal church life without liturgy. Sacraments need form, the order of worship must have some definite pattern. It is possible to live for a short time on improvisations and on forms that are constantly changing and being made over. One may use only free prayers and yet create a new ritual for every worship situation. But the possibilities at soon exhausted. One will have to repeat, and with that the making of rituals is in full swing. I circles where people seek to live without any forms new forms are nevertheless constantly take shape. Favorite songs are used again and again with monotonous regularity, certain prayer expressions are constantly repeated, traditions take form and traditional yearly ceremonies are served. But it would not be wrong to say that the new forms that grow up in this way are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy. They contain less of God's Word, they pray and speak without Scriptural direction, they are not so much concerned about expressing the whole content of Scripture, but are satisfied with one thing or another that seems to be especially attractive or popular. The new liturgy that grows in this manner is poorer, less Biblical, and less nourishing to the soul than the discarded ancient order.

Go ahead, read it all here or download it here as a pdf document.

Links updated 21 July 2011

Another Concordia Treasure: Visitation

While at the Concordia Publishing House store in St. Louis a couple weeks back, I picked up from the pastoral helps shelves a nice looking large pocket-sized, black leather-covered book entitled (in a nice gold script) Visitation. I think I was expecting a generic, protestant "minister's manual" type book -- you will find those in most any "Christian" bookstore, even the denominational ones like Augsburg Fortress and CPH -- but it was an unfamiliar title and, what the hay.

I immediately knew I was in for a treat, though; the subtitle is "Resources for the Care of Souls" and the editors are Arthur A Just, Jr., and Scot A. Kinnaman. I first met Art Just when he addressed the Society of the Holy Trinity for our 5th anniversary and have gotten to know him better since then through events at Concordia Seminary in Fort Wayne, where he is Professor of Exegetical Theology and former Dean of the Chapel. I wish I'd had a professor like him at PLTS.

It's another brand new pastoral resource that can be used by pastors or lay visitors but, while it certainly draws on the Missouri Synod's fine, new Lutheran Service Book resources, it is clearly something different from LSB's excellent Pastoral Care Companion. Prof. Just writes in his preface, "More than thirteen years ago, I made a comment in class that someday I would like to put together a book of lessons and prayers to assist pastors, deaconesses, and caring Christians in their visitations to the sick and the suffering." Pastor Kinnaman was a seminarian in that class and that book was published only a few months ago.

At $28, it ain't cheap (though CPH's discount for pastors helps). I'm already glad I bought it. And in an upcoming post, I'll show you an example of why.

Gen. Petraeus and the Chaplain's Book

Gen. David Petraeus is under fire for the blurb a military chaplain has been using since last year to promote a book about Christianity in the military.

On the back cover of Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, the incoming Centcom commander is quoted saying that Army chaplain William McCoy's paperback "should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy." (The version on Amazon has been modified, but you can still see the original back cover via Barnes & Noble.)

Thus begins a story in USA Today which has picked up the story from Military.com. Here's how that story begins:

Petraeus Book 'Endorsement' Draws Fire
August 20, 2008
Military.com|by Bryant Jordan

Gen. David Petraeus is used to controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but his publicized thoughts on an Army chaplain's book for Soldiers put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict over religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.

The book is "Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel," by Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William McCoy, and according to Petraeus' published endorsement of the work, "it should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy."

But the endorsement - which has spurred a demand by a watchdog group for Petraeus' dismissal and court martial on the grounds of establishing a religious requirement on troops - was a personal view never intended for publication, the book's author now says.

"In the process of securing … comments for recommending the book I believe there was a basic misunderstanding on my part that the comments were publishable," McCoy said in an Aug. 19 email to Military.com. "This was my mistake."

In addition to Petraeus, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling also is quoted plugging the book in press releases and advertisements and on the jacket.

McCoy, writing in response to Military.com's Aug. 18 inquiry to Petraeus' office for comment, said the two generals' endorsements "were intended for me personally rather than for the general public."

Turns out the the book was first published in 2005, that edition including a cover blurb quoting Gen. Hertling. General Petraeus' jacket blurb appears in a later edition published last year.

Making the complaint is Mikey Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Says the Military.com article,

Weinstein is a former Air Force judge advocate general and White House counsel during the Reagan administration. His group has been fighting in the courts to keep improper proselytizing out of the military. Now, he said, he intends to incorprate the Petraeus and Hertling endorsements into an ongoing lawsuit against the Pentagon for an alleged pervasive and permicious "pattern and practice" of religious liberties violations in the military.

Then the article gets really interesting:

With his plug for "Under Orders," Weinstein said in a statement to Military.com, Petraeus - one of the most widely recognized officers in the American military - is endorsing religion as something all Soldiers should have and, specifically, the Christian religion.

"General Petraeus has, by his own hand, become a quintessential poster child of this fundamentalist Christian religious predation, via his unadulterated and shocking public endorsement of a book touting both Christian supremacy and exceptionalism," Weinstein told Military.com Aug. 16.

And by endorsing a book that argues only those who believe in God can fully contribute to the military mission or unit, Weinstein contends that Petraeus insults ""the integrity, character and veracity of approximately 21 percent of our armed forces members who choose not to follow any particular religious faith."

He said that even if Petraeus offered his comments personally, that's a distinction without a difference. "Privately he's denigrating 21 percent of troops," Weinstein said. Suppose he privately denigrated women, African-Americans or Jews? Weinstein asked.

"He should still be relieved of duty and court martialed," he said.

Read it all here.

Pretty serious stuff, no? And given some of the controversies a few years ago with Evangelicals at the Air Force Academy (see here and here ) something worth looking into -- even though Gen. Petraeus has a fine reputation.

But then, at the end of the article we learn something else: Chaplain McCoy is an ELCA pastor.

"Fundamentalist Christian religious predation" from an ELCA Chaplain? Methinks Mr. Weinstein and Military.com don't know anything about Lutherans.

"It's a documentary, not a musical."

You have probably seen the Twilight Zone episode or, if you are like me, you caught it first via the original short story by Damon Knight. The blurb on my edition of The Best of Damon Knight describes it like this:

The aliens looked something like pigs and something like people—not a very attractive combination. Maybe that's why Earthmen were still so horrified when the Kanamit, as they called themselves, landed in their great spaceships and offered lasting prosperity. It wasn't easy to willingly accept gifts from monsters, but in time the human race adjusted and began to live opulently thanks to the Kanamit credo—"To Serve Man." An admirable motto to be sure . . . or was it?

You know the punch line: "It's a cookbook."

Near the end of yesterday's Chaos Manor Mail comes this line from one of Jerry Pournelle's correspondents:

Suggestion: Watch "Cabaret!" (It's a documentary, not a musical; a portrait of the end-game of a decadent culture.)

Granted, I've not seen the Academy Award winning film since I was 13. (Thirteen?) I've only seen clips on PBS specials since. But that sounds right to me.

And, perhaps, not just about 1931 Berlin, either.

Happy 2008!

Ministry: A Call from God to become Holy

Thanks to Professor (and ELCA Pastor) Karl Donfried (he's the guy who came in second in the last election for ELCA Presiding Bishop) for calling attention to this from Luke Timothy Johnson:

Particularly for those called to a life of ministry within the church, 2 Timothy poses some powerful challenges. It proposes that ministry is not a career choice, but a call from God to become holy. Neither is ministry a body of lore to communicate or a set of skills to exercise, but a matter of living in a certain manner that expresses one's deepest convictions in consistent patterns of behavior. Transformation of character or, if one prefers, continuing conversion is the very essence of ministry, as it is of discipleship. Carrying out acts of ministry without the corresponding affections is a form of counterfeiting, to "have the form of piety while denying its power" (3:5). Ministry, furthermore, is not measured by success, but by fidelity. Ministry demands witnessing to uncomfortable and unpopular truths in the face of indifference and disagreement. Ministry inevitably involves suffering if the gospel is truly lived and rightly proclaimed. The minister labors in a hope not of reward or recognition in this life, but in a hope of sharing in the resurrection life. Not one of these truths is supported by present-day culture. Few of them are supported by the church. The voice of 2 Timothy is not a voice that lulls Christians into a comfortable security, but one that speaks with the urgency of prophecy, calling for witnesses to truth in an age that prefers teachers who cater to its desires (4:3).

From The First and Second Letters to Timothy: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Luke Timothy Johnson, Anchor Bible, Vol. 35A, New York, Doubleday, 2001, p. 330.

Is it that obvious?

Coming home this afternoon from the Lutheran CORE gathering (of which I'll say more later), I stopped off to visit one of the Chicagoland's Catholic / Christian supply stores. They've been sending their catalog to Zion for years and I figured this was a good chance to check out another such store (we have a fine Catholic / Christian supply store here in Peoria, too) to see what they had. I was traveling mufti (contrary to popular opinion, I both own and wear "normal" clothing), attired just as I am in the photo here, with black trousers and dark-brown Top-Siders.

And so, standing in an aisle looking at some books, the proprietess walks by and asks, "You finding everything fine, Father?"

"Gee," I responded, "you could tell that easily, eh?" (Maybe it was the black trousers.)

Anyway, had a very nice conversation with her, she made sure I made a visit to the second level to see the vestments and other ecclesial goods, and the third floor (not usually opened on Saturdays) for the gallery.

Naturally, I came home with a few more books. And copy of the Rublev icon of the Holy Trinity.

Ex-gay?

One sure way to fan the fires of the homosexuality debates in the ELCA and other, uh, "mainline" churches is to start talking about repentance or healing for gay men and lesbians. Yet here's a rather sympathetic book review reprinted from The Christian Century, which is about as "mainline Protestant" a periodical as there is.

The books reviewed are Be Not Deceived: The Sacred and Sexual Struggles of Gay and Ex-Gay Christian Men (Rutgers University Press, 225 pp., $23.95, by Michelle Wolkomir) and Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement (University of California Press, 293 pp., $19.95 paperback, by Tanya Erzen).

The review is timely not only in the midst of the debates in which we have been engaged since the ELCA's formation, but in the light of last March's Related Leaders Conference, "Homosexuality & the Church," which I attended (the Bishop of Quincy, 4 Quincy priests, and I were the only ones dressed in "clerical" attire) as one of some 250 Central Illinois church leaders. The Conference was offered to help us "understand how we should respond to those dealing with homosexuality and minister with the love and compassion that Jesus would" and is well-described on local Pastor charlieDEAN’S Blog.

Oh, you can find the review here, too, but thanks to The Christian Century's generous Electronic Reproduction policy, I'm putting the entire review here.

Copyright 2007 CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Reproduced by permission from the May 15, 2007, issue of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Subscriptions: $49/year from P.O. Box 378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054. 1-800-208-4097

Formerly gay?
by Amy Johnson Frykholm

In the aftermath of New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard's fall from grace amid allegations of gay sex and drug use, a subtle controversy emerged among conservative Christians.

Three weeks after the Colorado Springs pastor left for an undisclosed treatment center to grapple with his sexuality, pastor Tim Ralph announced that Haggard had emerged from those meetings "completely heterosexual." Among those who questioned this pronouncement was Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, an umbrella organization for what is called the ex-gay movement. Chambers politely contended that Ralph had possibly misunderstood the dynamics of sexuality involved in the Haggard case. He was quick to caution that Haggard's story is not typical of people involved in ex-gay therapy and that "recovery" from homosexuality is a long process.

The ex-gay movement is controversial and misunderstood. Essentially, ex-gay leaders argue that homosexuality is caused by a particular kind of home environment and that homosexuals can change their behavior with the help of therapy and through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Two recent books help make sense of the ex-gay movement and its complexities through careful research. Tanya Erzen wrote Straight to Jesus after spending a year at New Hope Ministry in California, a residential treatment program for men who hope to change their homosexual behavior. Erzen interviewed both participants and leaders, attended group meetings, worked in New Hope's office and helped design the ministry's Web site. Her book draws on a wealth of personal relationships.

At the heart of Erzen's analysis is a point about ex-gay ministries that the media often miss: most ex-gay ministries are skeptical about their ability to "cure" homosexuality. While many people involved in these ministries have heterosexual marriage and biological children as their ultimate goal, and while they idealize heterosexual relationships, most ex-gay people find themselves part of a third category.

Ex-gay people believe that they will still experience homosexual desire and maybe even occasionally "fall," but that through gradual religious conversion, sexual conversion can happen as well. "Sexual identity is malleable and changeable," Erzen writes, "because it is completely entwined with religious conversion." Religious conversion and sexual conversion are so linked that participants don't change their sexual orientation so much as commit to a life of "following Jesus." As one ex-gay woman put it, "First I considered myself a lesbian, then a woman who struggles with lesbianism; now I consider myself a woman of God."

Erzen offers some of the nuances that we miss when we are focused on the black-and-white politics and the pronouncements of organizational spokespeople. One such nuance is that while heterosexual marriage and biological children are touted as the ideal by many in conservative Christian politics, ex-gay communities actually provide alternative family structures. Ex-gay people build networks of relationships within the ex-gay community, and these relationships provide the friendship, encouragement and spiritual support that many ex-gay people long for.

Another important nuance is that a repeated pattern of "fall" and "redemption" is considered a normal part of the recovery process. People involved in ex-gay ministries accept accountability for such private parts of their lives as sexual fantasy, crushes and fleeting sexual feelings. While the media seem scandalized by the failings of ex-gay people, publishing reports of members being discovered in gay bars or returning to "the gay lifestyle," many ex-gay people take such happenings as part of the reality of their attempt at "recovery." Within the social and religious system to which they are committed, homosexuality is just one sin among others. They expect failings, confession and return as part of a lifelong process.

Erzen not only makes possible a better understanding of the ideas that motivate the ex-gay movement, she also offers important portraits of ex-gay individuals. We meet a young man for whom New Hope provides an opportunity to explore his identity and eventually to choose to live as a gay man. "New Hope taught me how to think, how to look inside myself," he says. We meet a much older man, "Paul," who lived with the house leader "Hank" as his lover for many years. Paul calls New Hope his refuge and tells Erzen that he will die outside of the program. During the year that Erzen spends at New Hope, Paul goes to Ohio on a business trip, and news reaches the house of his death. These portraits give a compassionate picture of ex-gay people that could perhaps be attained in no other way than through engagement with their stories. Disagreements with New Hope's methods, ideology, theology and practice are complicated by an encounter with ex-gay people's experiences.

The richness of Erzen's research is not matched in Michelle Wolkomir's Be Not Deceived, but the latter has a significant story to tell as well. Wolkomir documents the theological and practical methods of two men's Bible study groups. One group is a part of the Metropolitan Community Church and helps men to live as gay Christians. The other is an Exodus International group that tries to lead men out of homosexuality. Wolkomir is primarily focused on these more limited contexts, and she does not bring individual men's stories to life in the same way as Erzen.

Her important contribution is to take us beyond the two groups' oppositional political positions. She underscores their common religious heritage, a version of Christianity that emphasizes personal salvation and the centrality of testimony. Both groups retrain men in their understanding of what it means to be a good Christian, and they direct participants' emotional lives in very focused directions—one toward openness and acceptance, the other toward a particular understanding of morality that includes falls and redemption. Moving between these two different perspectives helps to overcome the simplistic and divisive language that we often use to discuss homosexuality.

Wolkomir also includes a fascinating chapter on the experiences of women whose husbands are involved in ex-gay ministries. She attempts to understand how these women make sense of their marriage, their religious commitment, and their husband's attraction to other men. Wolkomir's approach and her subsequent account are both compassionate and dispassionate, providing much vital material for challenging stereotypical assumptions.

Books like Erzen's and Wolkomir's are increasingly important as Christians struggle with questions of sexual identity. They should be widely read by people who want to understand the political positions not only in the light of theological pronouncements, but also through the textures of individual lives and experiences.

Amy Johnson Frykholm, author of Rapture Culture, teaches at Colorado Mountain College.

Home, Sweet, Home

Several years ago a friend looked at my home page and observed that I really must love Los Angeles. I've not lived there since 1988, and must confess that image of home in my mind is more from the '60s than the early 21st century. Nevertheless, I do.

I was deeply touched last week when reading Ray Bradbury's 1974 introduction to Dandelion Wine. He was writing about Waukegan, but while reading it I was thinking of places I've lived: Canoga Park; that part of Van Nuys at Sepulveda and Roscoe near the Busch Brewery; Helena, Montana; the South Side of Peoria. Nearly 30 years ago, a woman in my home church said I had been "born 40." And while I wouldn't deny the compliment she was offering me, I'm glad I've never lost touch with little boy inside of me.

Here's Bradbury:

I was amused and somewhat astonished at a critic a few years a few years back who wrote an article analyzing Dandelion Wine plus the more realistic works of Sinclair Lewis, wondering how I could have been born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Green Town for my novel, and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards down below the town.

But, of course, I had noticed them and, genetic enchanter that I was, was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about. Counting boxcars is a prime activity of boys. Their elders fret and fume and jeer at the train that holds them up, but boys happily count and cry the names of the cars as they pass from far places.

And again, that supposedly ugly railyard was where carnivals and circuses arrived with elephants who washed the brick pavements with mighty steaming acid waters at five in the dark morning.

As for the coal from the docks, I went down in my basement every autumn to await the arrival of the truck and its metal chute, which clanged down and released a ton of beauteous meteors that fell out of far space into my cellar and threatened to bury me beneath dark treasures.

In other words, if your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him; which is, of course, what horse manure has always been about.

Perhaps a new poem of mine will explain more than this introduction about the germination of all the summers of my life into one book.

Here's the start of the poem:

Byzantium, I come not from,
But from another time and place
Whose race was simple, tried and true;
As boy
I dropped me forth in Illinois.
A name with neither love nor grace
Was Waukegan, there I came from
And not, good friends, Byzantium

The poem continues, describing my lifelong relationship to my birthplace:

And yet in looking back I see
From topmost part of farthest tree
A land as bright, beloved and blue
As any Yeats found to be true.

Waukegan, visited by me often since, is neither homelier nor more beautiful than any other small midwestern town. Much of it is green. The trees do touch in the middle of streets. The street in front of my old home is still paved with red bricks. In what way then was the town special? Why, I was born there. It was my life. I had to write of it as I saw fit:

So we grew up with mythic dead
To spoon upon midwestern bread
And spread old gods' bright marmalade
To slake in peanut-butter shade,
Pretending there beneath our sky
That it was Aprodite's thigh . . .
While by the porch-rail calm and bold
His words pure wisdom, stare pure gold
My grandfather, a myth indeed,
Did all of Plato supersede
While Grandmama in rockingchair
Sewed up the raveled sleeve of card
Crocheted cool snowflakes rare and bright
To winter us on summer night.
And uncles, gathered with their smokes
Emitted wisdoms masked as jokes,
And aunts as wise as Delphic maids
Dispensed prophetic lemonades
To boys knelt there as acolytes
To Grecian porch on summer nights;
Then went to bed, there to repent
The evils of the innocent;
The gnat-sins sizzling in their ears
Said, through the nights and through the years
Not Illinois nor Waukegan
But blither sky and blither sun.
Though mediocre all our Fates
And Mayor not as bright as Yeats
Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum?
Byzantium.
Byzantium.

Waukegan/Green Town/Byzantium.

Green Town did exist, then?

Yes, and again, yes.

from "Just This Side of Byzantium," pages ix-xii of Dandelion Wine.

I hear the voice of Ray Bradbury -- yes, I've heard it on the radio and TV -- while reading this.

And, just to make this entry's title more appropo, while I'm typing this up I'm Iistening on XM Radio to my Los Angeles Angels play the Dodgers, as Spring Training is winding down, in the annual Freeway Series. Since the game is at Chavez Ravine (Dodger Stadium), it's the home team's announcer: Vin Scully. (Alas, the score is 6-1 Dodgers, bottom of the 3rd.) Maybe I am a little boy again!

"You really live on the South Side of Peoria?" I get asked. Yup, right next to the church. Wouldn't have it any other way. I wonder what the kids playing outside going to remember of this coming summer 2007?

Home, Sweet, Home.

The Towns Never Really Won...

By the time I was in Junior High, Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite authors. It started with stories that I read (or heard on rebroadcasts of X Minus One) that made up the book The Martian Chronicles. But more, growing up in Los Angeles I would get to hear him being interviewed on radio talk shows (in the days when hosts like Michael Jackson or Hilly Rose hosted, rather than monopolized, conversations between guests and listeners. So I got to hear Bradbury talk about writing, monorails, Walt Disney, Moby Dick, libraries, growing up (and living) in Los Angeles, motion pictures, Proposition 13, etc. The Ray Bradbury who enthralls me can be found, among other places, in his 2005 book Bradbury Speaks, about which you can read in this spot-on review or at Amazon.com. Right now I am reading Dandelion Wine, his "semi-autobiographical recollection" of growing up in Waukegan (the town that also gave the world Jack Benny) in the summer of 1928.

Last summer I went to Sweden and visited rural Kristdala parish in Småland, the place from which my great-grandmother, Emma Sophia Bring, emigrated in 1870, the first in the family to follow her brother Lars August Peterson to America. The photo here is of the last house in which she lived in Fagerhult. Don't worry, the house isn't there anymore--just the foundation. After being in the family for a couple of hundred years (or more), people stopped living in the house in the the mid-1930s. And in the intervening 70 years it has been reclaimed by the forest. The gray in the middle is part of the house's brick foundation, one of which sits on my fireplace mantel next to a photo of Emma's daughter-in-law, my Grandma.

Bradbury writes in Dandelion Wine:

Douglas turned. This path led in a great dusty snake to the ice house where winter lived on the yellow days. This path raced for the blast-furnace sands of the lake shore in July. This to trees where boys might grow like sour and still-green crab apples, hid among leaves. This to peach orchard, grape arbor, watermelons lying like tortoise-shell cats slumbered by sun. That path, abandoned, but wildly swiveling, to school! This, straight as an arrow, to Saturday cowboy matinees. And this, by the creek waters, to wilderness beyond town. . . .

Douglas squinted.

Who could say where town or wilderness began? Who could say which owned what and what owned which? There was always and forever that indefinable place where the two struggled and one of them won for a season to possess a certain avenue, a dell, a glen, a tree, a bush. The thin lapping of the great continental sea of grass and flower, starting far out in lonely farm country, moved inward with the thrust of seasons. Each night the wilderness, the meadows, the far country flowed down-creek through ravine and welled up in town with a smell of grass and water, and the town was disinhabited and dead and gone back to earth. And each morning a little more of the ravine edged up into town, threatening to swamp garages like leaking rowboats, devour ancient cars which had been left to the flaking mercies of rain and therefore rust.

"Hey! Hey!" John Huff and Charlie Woodman ran through the mystery of ravine and town and time. "Hey!"

Douglas moved slowly down the path. The ravine was indeed the place where you came to look at the two things of life, the ways of man and the ways of the natural world. The town was, after all, only a large ship filled with constantly moving survivors, bailing out the grass, chipping away the rust. Now and again a lifeboat, a shanty, kin to the mother ship, lost out to the quiet storm of seasons, sank down in silent waves of termite and ant into swallowing ravine to feel the flicker of grasshoppers rattling like dry paper in hot weeds, become soundproofed with spider dust and finally, in avalanche of shingle and tar, collapse like kindling shrines into a bonfire, which thunderstorms ignited with blue lightning, while flash-photographing the triumph of the wilderness.

It was this then, the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won, they merely existed in calm peril, fully accoutered with lawn mower, bug spray and hedge shears, swimming steadily as long as civilization said to swim, but each house ready to sink in green tides, buried forever, when the last man ceased and his trowels and mowers shattered to cereal flakes of rust.

The town. The wilderness. The houses. The ravine. Douglas blinked back and forth. But how to relate the two, make sense of the interchange when . . .

His eyes moved down to the ground.

The first rite of summer, the dandelion picking, the starting of the wine, was over. Now the second rite waited for him to make the motions, but he stood very still.

Dandelion Wine, pp. 17-19 (in the pictured edition).

Fagerhult 1870/1936/2006, Canoga Park 1960s/70s, Peoria today outside my window. Ah, to be a boy of summer. Thank you, Ray. Thank you!

The Morning After the Election

or Pastoral Care and Public Church?

Tuesday was Election Day. I was not at home, but in Fort Wayne on a Society of the Holy Trinity multi-chapter Retreat (I had voted in Peoria the previous week). We watched some of the election returns on the TV, then went to bed with control of the Senate still up in the air and unaware of most of the Illinois results.

Wednesday morning there was "free time" as the Retreat was winding down. I had brought a couple of the books I'm currently in the middle of reading, hoping I'd have some time to spend with at least one of them. And finally, with this particular period of "free time," I took one of the books, opened to my book mark and -- seeing that I'd not marked anything for a couple of pages -- I went back a few paragraphs to remind myself of the context. And I began reading...

Now, gold is dimmed when a holy life is corrupted by earthly deeds. The finest colour is changed when the former esteem of those who were credited with living religiously is diminished. For when anyone resigns himself to earthly activities after a life of constant holiness, reverence for him is ignored and grows dim, as though his lustre had faded in the eyes of men.

Further, the stones of the sanctuary are scattered in the streets when those who should have occupied themselves in the interior mysteries for the adornment of the Church, as it were in the secrets of the Tabernacle, wander outside in the broad ways of secular affairs. Evidently, they were made the stones of the sanctuary, that they might appear in the vesture of the High Priest within the Holy of Holies. But when the ministers of religion do not demand the Redeemer's honour from their subjects by their meritorious way of living, the stones of the sanctuary are not in the vesture of the High Priest. Indeed, the stones of the sanctuary lie scattered through the streets, when persons in Sacred Orders, given over to the laxity of their pleasures, cling to earthly affairs.

We should observe, too, that these are said to be scattered, not merely through the streets, but at the top of the streets; that is, to say, even when they are engaged in earthly matters, they wish to appear at the top, so as to both occupy the broad ways in the enjoyment of their delights, and yet to be at the top of the street in the external repute of holiness.

Furthermore, we are not prevented from understanding these stones to be the stones from which the sanctuary had been constructed. They lie scattered at the top of the streets, when men in Sacred Orders, in whose office of holiness the glory of sanctity was previously seen to exist, devote themselves to the preference of earthly affairs. Secular employments, then, are sometimes to be sympathetically put up with, but never sought after out of affection for them. Otherwise, when they oppress the mind of him who is attached to them, he becomes submerged by the weight and sinks down from the concerns of Heaven even to the very depths.

Some, on the contrary, undertake the charge of the flock, but wish to be so free for spiritual occupations, as not to give any time at all to external matters. Now, when such people wholly neglect to attend to what pertains to the body, they afford no help to their subjects. It is no wonder that their preaching is disregarded for the most part, for while chiding the deeds of sinners, and not giving them the necessities of the present life, their words certainly do not find sympathetic listeners. Doctrine taught does not penetrate the minds of the needy, if a compassionate heart does not commend it to the hearts of hearers; but the seed of the word does germinate promptly, when the kindness of a preacher waters it in the hearer's heart. Therefore, that the ruler may be able to plant within, he may be able to plant within, he must also, with irreproachable intention, make provision for what is external. Let pastors, then, give their entire devotion to the inner life of their subjects, yet not neglect to provide for the exterior life also.

-- Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, Part II, Chapter 7