I’m attending the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis the next couple of days. The conference began four years ago and has evolved into a significant grassroots gathering that helps sustain a movement of media activists. They are concerned about reforming public policy regulating media and taking a proactive role in creating open, accessible media for all people in the future.

It’s a mix of idealism and pragmatism that’s always a wonder to me. Those who lead this movement are gifted, skilled and passionate about the value of media and its influence on our quality of life.

While the event focuses on U.S. media it increasingly identifies the importance of global media and how they connect with poverty, the environment, health and economics, among other things.

The highlight of the first day (so far) was an unexpected meeting with Joe Bageant, the author of “Deer Hunting with Jesus,” which I have referred to in this blog. I’ve also linked to Joe’s website. He’s one of the most perceptive people writing today who understands poor whites and working class folks.

I put him alongside Tex Sample as a clear voice who can help us understand how we have lost touch with a substantial group of people whom we should be communicating with, listening to, advocating for and working with.

I’ve long said mainline churches abandoned these folks and left them to exploitation by the religious right. It’s time to turn that around and Joe and Tex have the insight to help us find the way to do it.

For straightforward critique and sympathetic understanding of the people and the challenges we need to take up to engage with them, you can’t do better than read the works of these two.

Reacting to claims by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan that the President misled us about the Iraq War, CNN veteran Bob Franken writes on Huffington Post that, “We (the media) were pathetically pliant, willing to be timid so as not to offend the White House and be denied the crumbs of access that were granted to those of us who didn’t make waves. When are we going to learn?”

Franken’s assessment is sharper and more  blunt than we’ve seen from those who practice newsgathering in contrast to commentators and pundits who offer opinion.

I was reminded of the words of United Methodist Bishop Mel Talbert in 2003 in a TV message challenging the Bush Administration to not go to war:  “No nation under God has that right. It violates international law. It violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ. War only creates more terrorists and makes a dangerous world for our children.”

His position reveals even greater moral strength and insight after McClellan’s revelations. In an AP report McClellan is quoted: “The Iraq war was not necessary. Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake.”

The AP article also claims McClellan is engaging in an act of contrition in order to be true to his Christian faith. According to the AP, McClellan writes, “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.”

His act of confession and contrition will not be understood by political operatives who hold to different values. His claim that the administration never ceased running in campaign mode reveals the contrasting values.  It was a government of continuing self-serving propaganda which resulted in serving the base at the expense of serving all the people. McClellan’s idealism apparently took a beating.

Values can inform political sensibilities, but politics cannot be an adequate vessel for religious faith.  It’s problematic when sectarian religious precepts are ensconced as public policy. That’s theocracy and while a few have recently have seemed to want it, it was rejected in this country early on and the nation is better for it.

While they were unyielding in attempting to advance their religious views, a few on the religious right were pliant in other ways and were rewarded with access and public affirmation by those in high positions in the administration.

But politics requires compromise, compromise that sometimes undermines the claims of faith. The cost of this identification of evangelical religion with politics is still to be determined.

Bishop Talbert staked his opposition to the war on faith claims as well, but he was appealing to a higher value–the well-being of the human community. And his plea was to refrain from doing harm, not to impose a particular religious precept onto others.

He was roundly criticized by those religious partisans who favored war. Unlike them, those religious leaders who did not support the war did not have access to the Administration. They were shut out. Not only was opposition to the war equated with lack of patriotism, it was also equated with unfaithfulness.

Faith got highjacked. I suspect Bishop Talbert understood this from the start. And I also suspect he knew the cost for his stand wasn’t mere criticism, it carried a much deeper risk—compromised integrity and the betrayal of faithfulness to higher values. And that’s what Scott McClellan is discovering now and what some, even after all this time, still don’t understand.

Politically compromised faith is pathetically pliant.

When we were attempting to get coverage of the General Conference of The United Methodist Church three weeks ago one reporter for a major, mainstream publication bluntly told us why his editor wouldn’t assign him to cover it even as a religion reporter.

“My editor doesn’t understand why people go to church. He will only assign reporters to cover controversy. If you see conflict coming out of this conference I have a better chance,” he said.

The bipolar template of conflict that is applied to many stories from politics to religion and much in-between, creates its own filter and outcome. I believe it manufactures the news in a way that is detrimental to those who are covered.

In this instance the fact that a 13-million member religious community pledged to join a global partnership to end a killer disease (malaria) and raise $100 million to contribute to the effort was not news. In the scheme of things a protracted disagreement over human sexuality, a disagreement that is now more than a decade old, was still “newsworthy” because it involved conflict.

It’s tiresome. Journalism has fallen into a predictable track and when it heads down this particular track it’s increasingly irrelevant. There is nothing new to say about the debate over sexuality, at least nothing new has been said that I’ve heard. So making conflict the rationale for covering an event of this magnitude and ignoring the wide range of concerns of this number of people seems remarkably out of touch.

In an excerpt from her new book posted yesterday, Arianna Huffington offers a sharp, accurate critique of the mainstream media for its coverage of politics. It seems to me her critique parallels our experience in religious coverage. More specifically, it describes the nature of coverage by national mainstream media.
The most important insight, I believe, that can be gleaned from Huffington’s critique is that the persistent framing of conflict puts the agenda of the media in front of the agenda of the people involved. It pre-determines the nature of the story and this pre-determines content. It magnifies and legitimizes extremes, providing them a larger platform than they would otherwise have. And this can lead to the impression that the extremes are more representative, or more knowledgeable than, in fact, they are because the focus is on the conflict and not on the quality of information.

Extremist groups have learned how to play this game exceedingly well. Huffington says this symbiotic relationship between media and extremes is how “the lunatic fringe highjacked America.” Pretty strong words but a critique worth considering.

On the whole, given the incompetence of mainstream media covering religion, I was not disappointed they didn’t show up in Ft. Worth.

Social entrepreneurship is touted today as a more effective way to lift people from poverty than old-style charity. From CEOs of major corporations to energetic startups, mixing entrepreneurship with social improvement is getting lots of talk.

I heard a plea recently for non-profits, in this case religious organizations, to become more entrepreneurial. It’s an interesting proposal, one that deserves more examination.

Why aren’t there more social entrepreneurs in religious groups, more specifically, among those mainline groups where I spend most of my time? If entrepreneurship is, in fact, more likely to lift people from poverty, it would seem people would be rushing to embrace the concept. But they aren’t. Many are resisting.

Why?

There are as many reasons as there are resisters, I imagine. High on the list are contrasting values. Benevolence is different from profit-making. One is about giving freely, the other is about making profit. This fundamental difference cannot be easily bridged. A few have done so, but it’s not a natural reach. Even when those who profit are the poor themselves, it’s difficult for benevolent minds to appropriate marketing and charging the poor, who are already victims of economic exploitation or others not so poor, fees for services or products.

The current issue of Sojourners offers the text of a letter by famed Roman Catholic social activist Dorothy Day that illustrates. Writing to New York city officials after they took a building used by Day’s Catholic Worker movement and offerred payment with interest, Day sent the check back with a letter explaining, “We do not believe in the profit system, and so we cannot take profit or interest on our money. People who take a materialistic view of human service wish to make a profit but we are trying to do our duty by our service without wages to our brothers [and sisters] as Jesus commended in the gospel (Matthew 25).”

For Day the question of profiting from the poor or the not poor is answered biblically and the answer is “no.”

But for others the issue isn’t resolved. The selling of bednets to prevent malaria rather than freely distributing them is only one example of a recent difference in approach. The claim is made that people will better use and maintain nets if they’ve paid for them.

An even more important venture is economic empowerment through micro-lending. It is demonstrating that the bridge can be built, especially after the growing success of the Grameen Bank and Mohammad Yunus. This form of social entrepreneurship is finding widespread acceptance among religious groups, as is fair trade.

But if the biblical injunction is interpreted as prohibition against all profit, it’s difficult to build the bridge and a second principle comes into play, as Day points out. Not only is profit counter-cultural, people who work in these groups usually see their work as a vocation. They are giving of themselves to make a contribution to the larger mission. A vocational commitment gives higher meaning to work than profiting from it. Some may even be seeking escape from the profit sector. This vocational commitment reinforces benevolent values and actively prevents a culture of entrepreneurship.

I often muse that if they were entrepreneurs, staff of many of these religious organizations would not come to work in the organization in the first place. That’s not who they are nor why they want to do the work they feel called to do. This is not exactly a breeding ground for entrepreneurial ventures.

And that leads to third obvious consideration. The entrepreneurial skills and motivation to profit aren’t present in these organizations. And it’s not only because the mission of the organization isn’t entrepreneurial, it’s also because these organizations aren’t structured for entrepreneurship. Program officers are separated from fund-raising, and often regard it as a necessary evil even if it pays their salaries and funds their programs. This is structural. Many voluntary, benevolent organizations are structured so that entrepreneurship is not possible.

I’ve witnessed this tension throughout a thirty-year experience working in the non-profit sector. Even the word “marketing” is suspect among some. It represents exploitation and selling out to values that are less than the self-giving benevolence that we all should hold dear. Can a religion remain above the consumerism that mis-shapes life toward material ends if it presents itself as yet another competing commodity within that culture?

I’ve seen revulsion of marketing take extreme form. I’ve had sharp discussions with program officers who did not want to tell important stories because they felt that merely informing donors about human need risked exploiting those in need. This is obviously an important proscription and it should be considered sensitively. I always argue that communicating with sensitivity and respect avoids exploitation, and I don’t subscribe to the most blatant examples of advertising that exploit images of people made weak by hunger and deprivation. Images of malnourished children with flies in their eyes, and often in comatose state, are exploitative and I’ve avoided them. There are other ways to tell the story of hunger.

But not telling the story is not only organizational suicide, it’s irresponsible. People facing life-or-death struggles in poverty conditions lack the voice to gain attention. They are among the most vulnerable and powerless of the world’s peoples. Forgotten and exploited, they benefit from partners who share power with them and also assist them to find and express their own voices. One important function of storytelling is to help people find their voice. It can legitimate their stories and provide access to others so they can be heard.

Broadly defined that’s marketing and communication. Each is legitimate and enables community empowerment. Both should be used by all who seek social change, not sublimated by misplaced values that denigrate them.

So I come down in a middle position that neither rejects nor places ultimate faith in these disciplines apart from values that keep them in check. But I’m more favorable than opposed.

In fact, I share the belief that we should be benevolent, especially we who live in a materially blessed society as the United States. We should also feel responsibility for others who live under less blessed conditions. And we should willingly give up some of what we have so they can have a better life.

In a global culture that is increasingly profit-driven, the challenge to benevolent souls is how to survive and achieve justice for those left out, exploited or abandoned. Benevolence is far from dead. But it’s also not the only way to create change today. It’s being challenged. And it must rise the challenge or become marginalized itself.

I’d like to see more conversation about religious social entrepreneurs in mainline traditions and I’ll write more later.

Word came yesterday that Caterpillar has asked for continuing conversation with the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church about Caterpillar equipment being used in Palestine by the Israeli military to knock down houses of Palestinians. It’s a highly charged issue and it’s been debated across the mainline religious community.

The willingness of Caterpillar executives to continue the discussion is a positive step. Equally important is the response of the General Board of Church and Society to withdraw proposed legislation from the General Conference of The United Methodist Church calling on divestment from Caterpillar.

The Conference begins April 23 in Ft. Worth with delegates from around the world attending. Divestment had loomed as one of the issues with potential to generate considerable debate. Now that it’s off the table and into dialogue, a much more productive conversation can begin, one that will be helpful to all concerned.

Caterpillar expresses concern about the use of its products which is both a morally responsible position for the corporation to take and the first step to meaningful conversation.

On the whole, my hat’s off to those who have gotten us to the point–Caterpillar CEO James Owens, General Secretary James Winkler and The Rev. Timothy Bias. All have helped us reach higher ground and I think the conversation will be more fruitful as a result.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

But an insidious, destructive strain of anti-institutionalism coupled with an individualized theology that insists on its own rightness is present, and it’s doing harm. Division has torn at the Episcopal Church. Southern Baptists are another conflicted communion.What is present in mainline denominations is disdain for institutions coupled with an ideology of individualism that finds expression in divisive issues the most notable being human sexuality. Pressing claims of doctrinal correctness, critics have undermined or sought to take control of the institutions that help carry out some forms of ministry as in the Episcopal Church and Southern Baptist Convention.

While some regard it as faithfulness, Hedges points out that the insistence on rightness of belief makes it easier to exclude those who don’t believe “correctly” and it leads to an insularity that opens the way for manipulation by leaders bent on advancing particular agendas.

I believe it also reduces vision because it focuses attention inward rather than outward. Survey after survey of attitudes toward churches reveals those who have negative views speak of churches run by cliques, as unhospitable to new persons and more concerned with institutional preservation than with problems people face in daily life. Whether these criticisms are accurate matters less than the perception these seekers have of religious communities. They paint a picture of self-absorbed, inhospitable, insular groups unconcerned with the everyday matters that affect faith and offer assistance toward a spiritually fulfilling life.

And so I end where this series began, but with questions. If I were seeking to understand faith more fully would I go to a community that openly accepted my questions, doubts and all, and engaged in a dialogue with me about them and affirmed that my quest is acceptable faithfulness? Or would I go to a community riven with division, one that excludes some people and holds absolute positions on key issues of faith that I am required to accept or be condemned as unfaithful?

Those who claim the decline of mainline denominations results from disaffection with liberal leaders, ineffective clergy or lack of doctrinal faithfulness find easy answers for complex problems that are far from the simple clarity they claim. Membership statistics are, at best, inexact and at worst incomplete and inconsistent. They don’t prove or disprove much beyond the haphazard way most denominations keep such records.

But the claim that lack of orthodox belief is a cause for decline presents an interesting question. Why is the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that has been most aggressive replacing moderates with hardline conservative leaders, in decline at a pace even greater than some mainline communions? According to research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Roman Catholicism, which has seen a clear return to traditional dogma under Pope Benedict, is in greater decline in the United States than any mainline communion. And, more troubling, the Pew survey finds the number of unaffiliated persons has doubled.

Rabbi Funnye says he was drawn to a community that willingly asked the questions more than it proferred the answers. Dana Jennings writes he was attracted to the diaogue, a dialogue that spans centuries, yet remains current.

The conclusion I take from this review is that there are those in the Western world beleagured by materialistic individualism for whom the search for meaning is more attractive when conducted in an accepting, inquiring community open to questioning, even doubt. The search is seen as a natural outgrowth of faith and it is conducted with integrity by honoring both tradition and on-going dialogue that allows for new interpretations.

They are not seeking fixed answers so much as they seek guides along the way as they explore. Interestingly, when it was experiencing its greatest growth, the Methodist movement created “learning societies” in which inquirers sought greater understanding and came to a deeper appreciation of scripture. Perhaps the journey of faith is not about finding the right answers but probing ever more deeply to ask the right questions.

Perhaps faith is a journey not a destination, and there is richness in discovery. I wonder if that’s how we could understand Jesus’ statement, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly?” (John 10:10)

This is the third in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing in particular on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

The views Christians and Jews have about community affect how sacred text is studied and how it shapes faith. Levine says God has given the Torah to Israel, the community, and it is the role of the community to interpret it. In this way Israel honors both the Scripture and God. Faithfulness demands engagement, questioning and on-going dialogue.

In contrast, among some Christians–not all, but a vocal minority–the Bible is viewed as the absolute, unchanging, inerrant word of God. Faithfulness involves holding fast to unchanging principles. Those preaching this view have been in the ascendancy in public media exposure recent years. They have shaped how Christian faith is perceived among those unfamiliar with more moderate faith groups.This approach creates a different kind of community than the learning community Levine characterizes. In the latter instance, it is one which leads to a view of the world as hostile and a stance that faith is a bulwark against this hostility. Viewed from this perspective, the Bible must be defended from those ideas that challenge its inerrancy rather than to engage and challenge it as a way toward more complete understanding.

Similarly, the community must defend itself against all manner of threats. Questioning and dissent are viewed as unfaithfulness. Mix this with labels such as liberal or conservative and left or right, and the debate becomes more than a little unsavory. It starts to characterize people and their faithfulness, or insufficient faith. It is the soil in which division is sown and purges develop. It’s my way or the highway.

At its worst this leads to facism. For an excellent discussion of Christian facism see Chris Hedges’, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Hedges says Christian fascists are a minority but regardless the number, fascism must be watched and refuted.

The most unsettling result of the methodology of individualistic faith is its distortion of the biblical principle of justice. Justice in the Christian right’s definition is a legal system based on “Christian principles” which they alone have defined. As Hedges notes this results in a legal system designed to protect “Bible believing Christians.” It no longer revolves around universal human rights.

One need only recall the Judicial War on Faith Conference following the Terry Schiavo episode and the national telecast a couple of years ago in which some high level right wing politicians equated U.S. judges to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to see how this perverted definition of justice finds expression. Writer Max Blumenthal explained how key values of a democratic society get re-defined when framed in this narrow view of the world.

This is the second in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing in particular on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

In her book The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy Jill Levine says willingness to search and remain open to new understandings of faith and sacred text within a community of faith marks a fundamental difference between Jews and Christians.Levine, a Jewish scholar who teaches New Testament at Vanderbilt University, writes,

“the general sense in the Jewish tradition is that one argues with the text and with fellow Jews about the text, and that in some cases multiple meanings are possible. Jews are more inclined to say, ‘I’m right and you may be right, too.‘” (p. 205)

This perspective sheds a different light on the divisive theological quarrels that occur in nearly every Protestant denomination today. These quarrels don’t often result in the mutuality Levine describes. Only the first half of the equation–the “I’m right” half–applies. In fact, some antagonists are more likely to seek banishment of those who believe “incorrectly,” that is, who believe differently from what the purists claim is the historic faith.

Levine says Jesus was a product of the rabbinic tradition of dialogue and his teaching must be understood in this context. It is marked by continuing discussion, discernment and new interpretation. To consider Jesus out of this context is to misunderstand his Jewishness and equally problematic, to misunderstand his teaching. Levine concludes Jesus is a misunderstood Jew.

We have come to this point she says because Jesus’ followers faced a challenge–How to extend his teaching among Jews and to non-Jews as well. Inherent in the challenge is another question: Was it necessary or desirable for non-Jews to become observant Jews?

It became clear to first century Christian leaders that it was neither possible nor desirable. Cultural contexts, political realities and racial and ethnic differences led the early Christian leaders to see that a dual mission was necessary, one that reached Gentiles as well as Jews. Paul took the mission to the Gentiles and Peter sought to present Jesus to Jews, primarily from his base in Jerusalem.

Because it took place outside the synagogue in social, political and cultural settings different from Jerusalem, the effort to reach non-Jews resulted in a different method, a focus on individual voices–Jesus, then Peter, and Paul–and their teachings. The Gentile mission also stepped outside the give-and-take of the rabbinic tradition.

Levine says this was a crucial shift. It led to different readings of sacred text and interpretations of the importance of religious practices. These, in turn, led to doctrinal disputes that required resolution and as Gary Wills has pointed out elsewhere, much of Paul’s writing deals with his attempts to keep the Gentile churches together and to clarify a consistent theology for the growing faith.

This is the second in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing in particular on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

It’s a measure of how enduring historic Jewish and Christian approaches to faithful inquiry are that they find fresh expression in the daily newspaper. Dr. Amy Jill Levine raises several significant concerns in The Misunderstood Jew about how Christian biblical study misses the sharpness of Jesus’ first century critique of religion and also has progressively (and unintentionally in many cases) bolstered anti-Jewish attitudes.What is striking today is how differently the two traditions interpret the role of Jesus and scripture and how these affect our contemporary religious practices and attitudes. Levine writes that Christians read the Old Testament retrospectively and see Jesus as the suffering servant described by Isaiah.But she writes,

Jews traditionally see Isaiah 52:3-9 as referring not to a single, future figure but to God’s servant the people Israel, redeemed from exile. (p. 211)

In contemporary Christian understanding Jesus as the messiah is viewed as a personal savior of individuals, a role so sharply defined it is a mission statement for many Christian denominations. But the understanding in Jewish teaching, expressed most beautifully in Isaiah, is that Israel the people are the suffering servant called to obedience to God. The two could not be more divergent–individual or community.

This is the first in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing in particular on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

The Jew has always questioned,” says Rabbi Capers C. Funnye, Jr. profile in the Sunday New York Times. Rabbi Funnye states he found intellectual and spiritual liberation in Judaism because it encourages constant examination.As a teenager he felt disconnected and dissatisfied in his Methodist faith. He tried other religions including Islam before turning to Judaism.

In a first person account a week earlier, New York Times journalist Dana Jennings reports converting for a similar reason. These two narratives caused me to reflect on how the two faith traditions view inquiry and spiritual development, an especially relevant subject in this Holy Week for Christians.

Both accounts captured my curiousity because I’m trying to understand why a vocal minority in my own faith community seem offended by much that it is doing that I consider good and a willingness to do harm to those they disagree with to the point of calling them pejorative names. There seems to be no sense of mutuality much less compassion and respect.

In the next few posts I will write about this effort to understand a seeming paradox.
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