The Inextricable Bond of Spirituality & Justice (eCrozier #253)

On March 6, 2015, in Community, culture, Death Penalty, discipleship, gospel, Justice, mission, Piety, Spiritual Disciplines, by bishopbenhase

Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple. – John 2:15

We’re more accustomed to a different Jesus, aren’t we? The Sunday School image of Jesus as the gentle good shepherd carrying a baby lamb on his shoulders still resonates with us. So when Jesus takes a whip and clears the temple, we’re taken aback. His action doesn’t fit our Sunday School image. But maybe such an image is mistaken? Some believe Christians should never get angry because Jesus never did. Well, he did. There’s nothing wrong with anger when it’s directed toward pursuing justice for God’s children.

We shouldn’t sit idly by while people suffer injustice. In fact, I’d say that if we’re not angered by injustice, then we’re not being faithful to the Gospel. It’s anger with injustice that leads us to confront the sin of racism. It’s anger with state-sponsored vengeance murder that compels us to end capital punishment. It’s anger with our society’s indifference to homeless people that leads us to work for safe housing for everyone. We should be angry when we see God’s creation polluted or God’s people brutalized.

Some of us, however, have adopted an insular spirituality. Pursuing spirituality is very popular these days. People want to become more spiritual. But much of what is called being “spiritual” has no basis in the Bible. Biblically speaking, there’s no separation between our spiritual connection to God and our pursuit of justice for God’s people. The Great Commandment sums this up: Jesus says that loving God and loving our neighbor go hand in hand. We can’t love one without also loving the other. And we can’t love our neighbors without seeking justice for them. It’s just not biblically possible.

But that’s what some people do. They’re just interested in their spiritual growth as if such growth can be separated from justice. The Bible claims a wholeness of spirituality and justice, of prayer and action, of contemplation and its inextricable connection to God’s justice. If we wish to be spiritual, we should help a child learn to read. If we wish to be spiritual, we should help a hungry person find the food they need. If we wish to be spiritual, we should rebuke that colleague when he makes a racist or homophobic joke.

Yet, working for justice will be rudderless and random if it’s not grounded in the faith of the Church, for that’s where we learn how to order our lives so we’ll avoid a superficial spirituality or a definition of justice that simply mirrors a political party at prayer.

The pursuit of God’s justice needs to begin with our own self-examination and fearless personal inventory. Before we can point our finger at anybody else, we need to point the finger at ourselves and allow our anger to motivate us to change how we live. We must admit that in some ways we’re no different than the buyers and the sellers Jesus confronted in the temple. When our lives in the Church are turned over by Jesus the same way he turned over the temple tables, then we’ll begin to learn to be the Church. Then we will live holistic lives where our spirituality isn’t disconnected from seeking justice for God’s children.

+Scott

 
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We Murdered a Man on Tuesday Night (eCrozier #248)

On January 30, 2015, in Death Penalty, Justice, by Diocesan Staff

We Georgians murdered someone Tuesday night. It was premeditated. We planned the murder right down to the precise amount of poison we would use. And then we did it at night. Maybe we thought God wouldn’t see us if we did it at night? God though was watching. The person we premeditatedly murdered was a man named Warren Lee Hill. He had a clemency hearing five days ago in front of the State Board of Pardons and Parole. That Board could’ve stopped our vengeful and shameful retribution, but they chose not to do so. They deemed him unworthy of clemency and said he was unfit to live. Warren Lee Hill did some despicable things in his life. He was a murderer.

But by murdering him on Tuesday we taught our children that two wrongs make a right. We taught them that it’s all right to murder someone as long as the State does it. By murdering Warren Lee Hill we’ve chosen to be like him, morally speaking. We’ve chosen the lower, baser path and not the path of humanity’s higher calling grounded in the merciful love of Jesus. By murdering him maybe we thought we were achieving some sort of justice, but what we really achieved was the recognition that we’re more like Warren Lee Hill than we’d ever cared to admit.

My brother and colleague in the Diocese of Atlanta, Bishop Rob Wright, wrote before Warren Lee Hill was murdered that it wouldn’t “be done in his (Bishop Wright’s) name.” That’s how he sees it. While I stand with him in opposition to this barbarity, I differ a bit with my brother and colleague. There’s no truthful way around this. This murder was done in Bishop Wright’s name, in my name,and in your name. Every citizen of this State, whether we want to own it or not, is complicit in the murder of Warren Lee Hill. No, we did not strap him to the executioner’s table, nor did we inject him with poisonous drugs, but we cannot deny our complicity.

Some have contended that Warren Lee Hill was horribly abused as a child; that he grew up to live violently since he was taught to be violent by his abusers. They’ve also pointed out that he was mentally deficient with an IQ of 70 and that Georgia’s standard for judging such mental deficiency (“beyond a reasonable doubt”) is unique among the other 49 States, which have a lower standard (“a preponderance of evidence”). So, they feel that those issues should have stopped his murder. But in my mind, Warren Lee Hill could have had an IQ of 140, had no childhood issues whatsoever, and what we did to him would still be wrong. This is about our behavior, not his. We chose vengeance and that, as the Bible tells us, is God’s province alone.

There are those who will reply to what I’ve written saying that Warren Lee Hill just got what he deserved. But isn’t our faith grounded on receiving the mercy we don’t deserve? Or, they’ll reply that we were just exercising the Old Testament maxim of “an eye for an eye.” But Jesus demands that we show mercy to others as God has shown us mercy through his mediation on the cross. I wish I could find some way for me and you to feel good about what we did. I wish I could find something uplifting to say, but I can’t. We murdered Warren Lee Hill on Tuesday. May God have mercy on us all.

+Scott

 
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The Moral Bankruptcy of Violence (eCrozier #245)

On January 9, 2015, in evil, Facts, fear, Grief, Justice, media, morality, news, politics, by bishopbenhase

As we all heard the news of the mass shootings at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, it was natural for us to be horrified by such violence, which is so often fueled by perceived political or religious anger and grievance. This news from Paris comes at the same time as the lone surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings begins to have his day in court. In the midst of such violent news, we may lose our perspective, and thus the big picture and the larger trajectory humankind appears to be on, at least based on the real data we have. More on that in a moment.

Mass murder, such as we just witnessed in Paris this week, has almost always been born out of people’s twisted response to their anger and grievance (at least in their own minds) over some great wrong being done to them or to their “tribe” or to their “people.” Timothy McVeigh was motivated by such anger and grievance when he set off a deadly bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the same state 74 years earlier, hundreds of white citizens in Tulsa systematically murdered as many as 300 black residents in a part of town known as the “Black Wall Street,” which at the time was the wealthiest African-American community in the United States. In Wilmington, North Carolina there was the so-called Massacre of 1898, which was actually a coup d’etat of the elected government. No one knows the full extent of the massacre since many of the bodies of the African-Americans killed were dumped in the Cape Fear River and never recovered.

In each of these instances, as we will probably discover with the one this week in Paris, the deranged actors all justified their murderous act or rampage on settling some score or righting some wrong. In their own warped sense of logic (engaging in an evil for an alleged evil), they were right to do what they did. The actions of others, they claim, led them to do what they did. That leads inevitably to the old “ends justifies the means” argument, which is always morally bankrupt.

But we should also know, even as the horrendous act in Paris sinks in, that such actions are actually fewer in number and less frequent than at other times in human history. It may be hard for us to believe because of the media available today, but war and other forms of political violence (like the examples above) are declining. As Steven Pinker illustrates in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, deaths related to such political violence are falling. This coincides with a steady decline worldwide of extreme poverty, child mortality, and hunger as well as the continued growth, since the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, of the number of countries that are democracies.

Of course, such perspective doesn’t help those who mourn now for their murdered loved ones and fellow citizens. For now, we should just grieve with them and share their outrage and sadness, while also reminding ourselves about the historical moral bankruptcy of responding to evil with more evil. But I do hope it helps us all take a step back and see the arc of history better. As Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1967, Jr. (paraphrasing the words of the Reverend Theodore Parker a century before): “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.

+Scott

 
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“The Hanging Sermon” & The Social Gospel (eCrozier #235)

On October 10, 2014, in culture, gospel, grace, Justice, preaching, sin, by bishopbenhase

This week I attended two lectures by Dr. Charles Marsh at the Virginia Theological Seminary’s Alumni Convocation. Dr. Marsh is a professor of religion at the University of Virginia. His topic for the lectures was reclaiming “The Social Gospel for the 21st Century.” His lectures were magnificent. The Social Gospel historically came out of the Progressive Era in our country, a time when theologians were seeking a biblical response to the consequences of rapid industrialization. The Social Gospel provided the theological grounding for ending child labor, limiting the workweek, establishing health & safety laws for workplaces, etc. It was largely successful. It presented a positive, hopeful approach claiming, and this is a broad generalization, that if the church appealed to the populace’s sense of justice and fairness based on Jesus’ teaching, then our human community could get pretty darn close to utopia. As we know from history, what we now call World War I ended such positive expectations for human community.

So the so-called Social Gospel became discredited as being unrealistic. And there was good reason to question its claims. It did not, as Reinhold Niebuhr critiqued it, take into sufficient account the power of our sinfulness and our human propensity to mess even good things up. But the criticisms of the Social Gospel never denied the prophetic claims Jesus’ teachings had on society’s injustices. Nor did they deny that the results of ending things like child labor weren’t a good outcome. Skip ahead 100 years, as Dr. Marsh did in his lectures, and we find ourselves going through a similar economic shift when the Church’s social witness to social injustice is still much needed. What Marsh contends is that this time a Social Gospel must be based on a deep acknowledgement of human sin. In doing so, we all could have a stronger empathy for those who suffer on the margins.

Marsh’s insight is important. If we come to acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own propensity to mess even good things up, then we’ll be more understanding of those who have made bad choices in their lives (or had bad choices made for them) and are now unemployed, stuck in low wage jobs, or don’t have the education to climb the economic ladder. We’ll be less inclined to blame them exclusively because we know our own sin only too well. Marsh referred to what was known as “the hanging sermon.” In previous generations, the night before a criminal was hanged, the entire town turned out for a religious service with the condemned person in the front row. This wasn’t an occasion to focus on the one condemned, per se, but an opportunity for everyone to become more aware of their own real sin before God, realizing as they looked at the condemned man that “there but for the grace of God go I.”

That’s just the tonic our culture needs as we face present social ills like growing income inequality. These days we have the tendency to group people into “good guys” and “bad guys” (with “our tribe” always part of the good guys). This gives us de facto permission to ascribe our status to our goodness while concluding that those on the margins deserve their fate because they lack such goodness. That’s bad theology. A healthy awareness of all human sinfulness, ours especially, can correct such theology. I propose we bring back “the hanging sermon” (the lethal injection sermon?). But would anyone attend?

+Scott

 
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The Right Thing is for Hungry People to be Fed (eCrozier #189)

On September 13, 2013, in Justice, by bishopbenhase

Nearly 15% of U.S. households, in the world’s richest nation, have food insecurity. That’s obscene enough, but it would be easier to accept if we knew that the percentage of hungry people was falling. But that’s not the case. Our nation has actually seen a 25% increase in food insecurity over the last decade. Food insecurity, which is just a wonkish term for hunger, was actually falling in our country for decades since the 1960s, but not so more recently.

The cause of increasing hunger is complicated. It doesn’t lend itself to the simple sound bytes found on cable news. From my analysis of this crisis, the increase in hungry people in our midst is due to the interplay of unemployment/underemployment, continued wage stagnation, growing income disparity, misguided government actions (there’s a surprise), and in some cases, poor choices by individuals who are lured by low cost foods that provide little nutrition and actually contribute to obesity and diabetes.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our shared way as citizens to help reduce hunger. It used to be called Food Stamps. It provides a monthly food subsidy based on family size and monthly income. It’s a proven way (the data are clear) to provide a nutritional safety net for hungry families. Hunger would be much worse than it is without SNAP. There’s no credible evidence of significant abuses with SNAP and lots of evidence that it reduces hunger among the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens like children, disabled persons, and elderly people.

But now, due to our recurring budget deficits, there’s a political push to significantly cut SNAP to needy families in order to reduce that deficit. Now, I believe we need to cut the deficit, but this particular way, on the backs of the most vulnerable, is cruel and short-sighted. This becomes especially clear since we now know that some of the politicians calling for such cuts are the same ones who have personally received millions of dollars of farm subsidies for themselves and who recently voted to continue to receive them. So, they have concluded, it’s all right for them to receive a subsidy, but it’s not all right for hungry people to receive one. Talk about unjust desserts!

The Bible is quite clear: the mark of a righteous people is how well they treat the most vulnerable among them. As a Church following Jesus, we can’t abdicate to government our own responsibility to reduce hunger. Congregations like St Athanasius Brunswick, Christ Church Augusta, and other congregations provide food for hungry families in their respective communities. And we have other congregations like St Patrick’s Albany and our three congregations in Thomasville, who are getting to the root of the hunger crisis by establishing community gardens to help hungry families feed themselves.

In following Jesus, we’re all well aware of our own sinfulness, which tells us we’ll never get life right this side of heaven, but that should never stop us from seeking to do the right thing and in this case it is quite clear. The right thing is for hungry people to be fed. This is a goal in which all of our congregations can and should participate.

+Scott

 
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Disrespecting Justice: HSBC’s Get-out-of-jail-almost-free card (eCrozier #165)

On February 15, 2013, in Justice, by bishopbenhase

In 1983, as a just-graduated seminarian from Virginia Theological Seminary, I spent time in a District of Columbia jail for staying too long in the Capitol Rotunda praying for peace and singing hymns. I mention that, not to raise the issues that led me there, but to point out it is more jail time than anyone from the British bank HSBC will ever spend from their wrong-doing. HSBC recently admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Latin American drug cartels and breaking other U.S. laws such as The Trading With the Enemy Act.

HSBC’s $1.9 Billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department happened during this past Christmas shopping season, so you may have missed it. The $1.9 Billion fine, by the way, only represents about 5 weeks of revenue for HSBC. So, we should be clear here, a bank that knowingly laundered drug cartel money, money gained from countless murderous acts, has no one going to jail thanks to the decision made by the Obama Justice Department. The New York Times editorialized that HSBC was not only “too big to fail,” it was also apparently, “too big to indict” out of concern that bank executives going to jail might upset the international banking system.

Until now, I always had concluded that I deserved my jail time. I knew what I was doing in my civil disobedience; that one possible outcome might be jail time. But now I need to reconsider whether I (or others who spend time in jail) actually deserve to be there. If one can knowingly launder drug cartel money, money coated in murderous blood, and not go to jail, then how can anyone representing any sense of justice tell me my time in jail (or anybody else’s) was deserved?

I know, as my Daddy used to say: two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact that HSBC bank executives will not spend even one night in jail does not justify my crime and make it right. But this conveys a message that if one is wealthy and connected enough, then one can really get away with murder, or at least accessory to it. Remember, no one is merely “alleging” these things were done; the five-weeks-of-revenue-plea-agreement is an admission they were done.

I don’t believe in the death penalty for anyone or any crime (Jesus said it, I believe it, and that’s that). The rationale people give for the death penalty is that it deters heinous crimes. But most death sentences are handed out to murderers who commit their crimes in the heat of passion (or drug/alcohol-induced passion). In the act, deterrence isn’t a rational consideration for them. For those who buy the deterrence argument, then these HSBC executives would be prime candidates. It takes rational planning and thought to set up these schemes to launder billions in drug cartel money. If bank executives thought that they might be executed for such crimes (a Guillotine on Wall Street comes to mind), it would clean up the banking system quickly.

The larger moral challenge for us is how we explain this to our children so they will have respect for justice. Right now, I’m at a loss for an explanation.

+Scott

 
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