Thursday Examen

I’m grateful to these for setting a tone, pointing out paths, and wandering along with me and many others as we matured.  They are “youth workers” within and beyond traditional Church and Christian faith.  A few of the many that I owe thanks:  Rev. Tommy Potter, Rev. Margarett Harrison, Paul Gertz, Rev. Dr. Nancy Pittman, Burr Phillips, Rev. Bob Schomp, Dr. Andy Fort, Dr. Claudia Camp, Dr. David Grant, Rev. John Callison, Dr. Ambrose Edens, Dr. Cy Rowell, and many camp counselors along the way.

Today, I remembered these during the Examen.

Opening Music to Ponder . . .
“Grace”, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, U2, 2000.

Psalm 19

Reflecting

For what moments was I most grateful today?
For what moments was I least grateful today?

Thinking about the important “youth workers” or “mentors” in your life, remember a time when one of them listened to you.
Thinking about the important “youth workers” or “mentors” in your life, remember a time when one of them encouraged you.
Thinking about the important “youth workers” or “mentors” in your life, remember a time when one of them challenged you.

When did you last listen to a child or youth?
When did you last encourage a child or youth?
When did you last challenge a child or youth?

When did I feel most alive today?
When did I most feel life draining out of me today?

When today, did I have the greatest sense of belonging to myself, to others, and to God?
When did I have the least sense of belonging?

Psalm 40

Departing Music to Ponder . . .
“Come Sophia”, Hymns Re-Imagined, Miriam Therese Winter, 1999.

 

Today is “Thank a Youth Worker Day.”  It’s an unofficial way to remember those that journey alongside children and youth as they mature, claim their beliefs, and practice a faith.  For me it is both secular and religious because there are many that as Social Workers, “Big Brothers and Big Sisters,” teachers and public school volunteers, coaches, and neighbors that look after, guide, and advocate for children and youth without religious intentions that are as important as those who have a religious affiliation.  These are different folks from those that stand in as adopted parents, mothers or fathers, for children and youth whose parent(s) that are absent, too busy, too immature, fallen, abandoned or have died.  There is not an unofficial day to remember these persons, but there should be.

I serve in youth ministry out of what I consider my “obligation” to the adults that journeyed with me.  One layer of my call to ministry is to be the kind of adult in a religious setting as the many that listened, encouraged, and challenged me.  This extends beyond the Christian community to the kids that ride their bikes through my yard, wander the neighborhood, and those that talk during the movie I’m trying to watch.  Though it seems unpopular, I do think it takes a village to raise a child which is one reason why my companion and I treat other people’s kids as our own.  It is why I follow what is happening in the school systems.  It is why I am concerned with “grade inflation” and the Christian revisionism that is happening within the Texas State School Board and textbook committee that infects all textbooks in public schools.  We are childless by choice, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility for children and youth simply because they don’t share our specific DNA code.  Quality “youth workers” want children and youth to have their own experiences of belief, disbelief, challenge, comfort, and faith.  Our responsibility, I think, is to ensure opportunities and access just as we had, but moreover, to advocate just as adults did for us, or in spite of what adults did, when we were that age.  I think another aspect of a quality youth worker is that it requires you to be a mirror for parents, institutions, and systems responsible for children and youth.  Just because I don’t have kids that live with me doesn’t mean that I can’t reflect back what is being said, taught, organized, and instilled by parents, institutions, and systems.  I’ve been observing parents, systems, and institutions in my capacity as “youth worker” since 1985.  I’ve participated in my denomination’s youth ministry in local, Regional, and General manifestations since 1981.  It is why I bring a sense of urgency and obnoxious cynicism to statements like, “If the OGMP is concerned for children’s ministry and youth ministry in our denomination then budget for it the same way you do new church ministry.  Otherwise, please stop talking about it.”  If you are a Sr. Minister in a congregation concerned about children’s ministry or youth ministry in your congregation or community, the next time your congregation decides to raise your salary, set a tone and ask them to give that money to support ministry with children and youth.  Remind people from the pulpit at least twice a year that children’s ministry and youth ministry is something you all do together: volunteers, dollars, listening, teaching, and modeling the practice of faith.  It is not something a hip-college kid does alone or that parents do because everyone else has done their time.  Set the tone that children and youth matter not because they can help your congregation grow, but because the hospitality model of Jesus welcomed them and cared.  That is missional ministry as important as mission work in other parts of the world.  For me it is why universal health care, school lunches, and quality educational programs beyond congregational walls is as important as what happens during Sunday school and at youth group.

, 05/03/2012. Category: Culture, DOC Thoughts, Michael D, Theological Rant, Youth Ministry.

Sightings

Martin Marty’s, “Sightings” this week is a reminder about the “why” that quality public education is important.  Critical thinking skills are a necessity in an age when the ability to misquote and revisionism for effect are everyday activities in political, marketing, and religious life.

David Barton’s Jefferson
— Martin E. Marty

Our premier historian of late colonial and early republican America, Gordon Wood, while reviewing a book on Roger Williams warms up readers with references to Thomas Jefferson. “It’s easy to believe in the separation of church and state when one has nothing but scorn for all organized religion. That was the position of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s hatred of the clergy and established churches knew no bounds. He thought that members of the ‘priestcraft’ were always in alliance with despots against liberty. For him the divine Trinity “was nothing but ‘Abracadabra’ and ‘hocus-pocus’. . . Ridicule, he said, was the only weapon to be used against it.”

If you wanted to promote the idea of “a Christian America,” one which would privilege one religion, a version of Christianity, and de-privilege all others, and if you want to get back to roots and origins, the last of the “founding fathers” on whom you’d concentrate would be Jefferson. Yet the most ardent public and pop advocate of privilege and virtual establishment, David Barton, cites Jefferson for Bartonian positions which are directly opposite of Jefferson’s. Never heard of David Barton? Most of the historians you would ever meet never heard of him, and if you told them about him and his positions, they would yawn or rage about listing him among those who deal honestly with Jefferson.

Sightings does not over-do ad hominem and sneering references, so we leave to others all the disdaining that Barton so richly merits. Do note, however, that he has invented a case and product which serve his viewpoint and draw him enormous followings among “conservative” factions which oppose separation of church and state in most cases except those they choose. Listen to Mike Huckabee or Glenn Beck or rightist cable TV and you will find Barton showing up everywhere.

His favorite founder seems to be Jefferson, of all people. How does he work his way around to the prime builder of “a wall of separation between church and state,” in the metaphor that would not be my favorite. Sample: Thomas Jefferson, razor in hand snipped all supernatural references out of his copies of the Gospels (in the four languages he read in White House evenings), to keep Jesus as a pure ethical humanist. This spring Barton is publishing The Jefferson Lies, which most historians would title Barton’s Lies about Jefferson. Astonishingly, he twists a slight reference to Jefferson’s book on Jesus and turns it into a tract which, Barton says, Jefferson would use in order to convert the Indians to Christianity. Reviewer Craig Ferhman in the Los Angeles Times found all that Barton found to be “outrageous fabrication.” On TV, Barton even said, with no evidence, that Jefferson gave a copy of his Jesus book to a missionary, to use “as you evangelize the Indians.” Had the Indians been converted with that text, their heirs would have had no place to go but to what became the humanist wing of the Unitarian-Universalist church.

Why does any of this matter? One, basic honesty is at issue; do American religionists need to invent such stories in order to prevail? Two, what if they did prevail? Most of the founders thought that religion was most honest and compelling when its leaders and gatherings did not depend upon lies about the state and, of course, upon the state itself. “Separation of church and state” is admittedly a complex issue, dealing as it does with inevitable conflict and messiness in a free and lively republic. May debates over it go on, but with honest references to Jefferson and his colleagues and not on the grounds David Barton proposes.

References

Gordon S. Wood, “Radical, Pure, Roger Williams,” New York Review of Books, May 10, 2012.

People for the American Way, “David Barton’s ‘Outrageous Fabrication’ about Thomas Jefferson,” Right Wing Watch, January 9, 2012.

, 05/01/2012. Category: Culture, Guest Column, Theological Rant, Youth Ministry.
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