Category: DOC Thoughts
Stop, Children, What’s That Sound?
My denomination is living through a paradigm shift that will give direction to the next 20 years of our existence. I think of it as our 3rd reformation. I’m done with “transformation” as a descriptor or process. Rather, I embrace evolution because it captures the essence of change necessary to adapt for today and tomorrow. Because I’m working through a paradigm shift here in Oklahoma of program ministries for k-35 year olds I read what others are noting as similar shifts in culture. I participated in an interesting twitter exchange about what it would mean to occupy Church in a similar way that people are participating in OccupyWallStreet. I’ve wondered where the religious voices are in this latest demonstration. My guess is that lawyers would advise caution so the government doesn’t alter their tax status. This is just another problem with our current tax structure. What we were really talking about is the evolution of Christianity and not institutional Church. We may be witnessing the evolution of what it self-government means.
Thomas Friedman, like David Brooks, is weekly reading for me and he has a good column addressing the evolution that is taking place around the globe. Here is a paragraph or two.
There’s Something Happening Here
Thomas Friedman | The New York Times | Oct. 11, 2011When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.
Two master narratives — one threat-based, one opportunity-based, but both involving seismic changes.
The lyrics of “For What It’s Worth” identifies the “place” our culture, religion, economic system and politics is hovering, again.
“For What It’s Worth” (1966)
Buffalo Springfield
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, now, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Following the SCOTUS
Another thought about what “commissioned ministry” means and what you can be sued over. Martin Marty follows a Supreme Court case in his latest Sightings.
A Lutheran School
— Martin E. MartyBack in the middle of the twentieth century, when I lived and worked too briefly in Washington, D.C., a photographer friend sneaked me in to look on as he took formal pictures of dignitaries. I decided that the Supreme Court bench was the place to be among the powers. The building inspired awe. Its nine supreme employees had life tenure and ample research staffs. Location near the Library of Congress with its resources appealed to the historian side of me. Yes, the Supreme Court was the place to be.
In my sixty-two happy years in Exile or in the Promised Land away from the capital, I have found almost daily reasons to revise my vision, for one main reason. The Court cases that fell into my scholarly zone and aroused my citizen passions had to do with religion, coded as “Church and State.” And in that zone it became apparent that all cases which reach the Supremes are extremely difficult and, in some ways, insoluble, but they must be adjudicated. For most of us in this zone, two conflicting interests or demands almost always surface. On one hand, we want to see constitutional safeguards which assure religious freedom defended and enhanced. On the other, we need to see that justice be done, especially in religious controversies which impinge on the civil order.
All those concerns surface each autumn when the Court agenda gets prefigured and each late spring when the decisions show once again that conflicting interests cannot all be addressed or cases decided to the satisfaction of half the citizens and even to both sides of the brains of each. Try this year’s puzzler; Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a case originating in Michigan. There a church school board fired Cheryl, a “commissioned minister” who, with that title was vulnerable for dismissal, which would not have been so ready an instrument for the employing school were she a “called” teacher. Such, in the complex terms and hunches of the church body in question, would have been a protection against such dismissal. She has sued. Enter the EEOC.
When I said, “it’s complicated,” I meant it’s really complicated, as all these cases are. Notable constitutional and Court scholar Michael W. McConnell sided simply with the church which sponsors the school, with a Wall Street Journal editorial, headlined somewhat polemically, “Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister.” Should it be put that way? Well, “it’s complicated.”
In the half year ahead citizens will have plenty of opportunity to read contradictory testimonies on many aspects of the case. Already, interested parties are on hand trying to determine what percentage of her time did Ms. Perich devote herself to “secular” subjects and what to “sacred” or religious ones. Further complicating things: get Lutherans to define Lutheranly what is “secular” and what is “sacred.” And then, dear Court, decide how much is too much or too little, on either side. Oh, to complicate things, work your way through the plot to find out what such Lutherans mean by “ministers” to get this case adjudicated with the now-traditional “ministerial exception” in view. One could pursue the issues and find that almost all reflect ambiguities and apparently mutually contradictory elements. Yet justice should be done, or aspired to.
So why follow the case, if we have little more to observe and say than “it’s complicated”? In a time of extremism, of over-simplification and noise among the polarized leaders, participants, and commentators, an awareness of complexity may be helpful. Hosanna to Hosanna-Tabor for forcing this not-simple exercise on citizens.
References
Michael W. McConnell, “Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011.Mike Sacks, “Supreme Court Asked To Exempt Churches From Employee Discrimination Lawsuits,” Huffington Post, October 5, 2011.