Don't know much about that French I took...

Don't know much about Baruch Spinoza? I didn't either, but this weekend's op-ed in the New York Times, "Reasonable Doubt" by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, got me started. (The link may expire a couple weeks after its publication date - I seem to remember that nytimes.com articles stay live for 14 days.)

"THURSDAY marked the 350th anniversary of the excommunication of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he had been raised.

Given the events of the last week, particularly those emanating from the Middle East, the Spinoza anniversary didn’t get a lot of attention. But it’s one worth remembering — in large measure because Spinoza’s life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable and overwhelming.

The exact reasons for the excommunication of the 23-year-old Spinoza remain murky, but the reasons he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe are not. Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the Creator’s partiality to its beliefs and ways. After the excommunication, he spent the rest of his life — he died in 1677 at the age of 44 — studying the varieties of religious intolerance. The conclusions he drew are still of dismaying relevance.

...Spinoza’s reaction to the religious intolerance he saw around him was to try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking. He understood the powerful tendency in each of us toward developing a view of the truth that favors the circumstances into which we happened to have been born. Self-aggrandizement can be the invisible scaffolding of religion, politics or ideology.

Against this tendency we have no defense but the relentless application of reason. Reason must stand guard against the self-serving false entailments that creep into our thinking, inducing us to believe that we are more cosmically important than we truly are, that we have had bestowed upon us — whether Jew or Christian or Muslim — a privileged position in the narrative of the world’s unfolding.

Spinoza's rationalism led him to some classically liberal positions on the nature of legitimate power, the purpose of government, individual rights, and the separation of church and state. He influenced John Locke (and Adam Smith through Locke) and our own Declaration of Independence.

I've been pondering some of the same questions Spinoza wrestled, and at times from similar angles. I sense a kindred spirit in this 17th-century, excommunicated Portugese Jew.

Spinoza’s dream of making us susceptible to the voice of reason might seem
hopelessly quixotic at this moment, with religion-infested politics on the
march. But imagine how much more impossible a dream it would have seemed on that day 350 years ago. And imagine, too, how much even sorrier our sorry world would have been without it.

Endure, -h

Ricks on our Fiasco

Listen to Thomas Ricks' interview on his new book Fiasco; The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

We simply must begin to have a faithful conversation about our action in Iraq and how we will move forward. The use of force, choosing appropriate means to desired ends, the kind of planning that is becoming of mature adult decision-makers, the place or lack thereof for torture in our action, making the world better - Iraq is certainly a religious issue for us, and St. Peter's cannot be afraid to face it.

If you cannot read Ricks' book, again, listen to the interview and get some of the picture. Bush-Republicans; don't palpitate, Ricks wants to win in Iraq and his criticism could help us do it. We need a major change of strategy, it is obvious to anyone who is informed (turns out many of us are not). Lefties; in case you've forgotten our experience in the Balkans under Gen. Wesley Clark during the Clinton administration, it is possible to use American military force effectively and for greater good. Even if you favor immediate withdrawal from Iraq, please help the rest of us find a way to change course and pursue a positive outcome as your backup plan.

Ricks thinks that about 1/3 of our professional officer corps really gets it - the relational structure of Iraqi society, how to use minimum force to accomplish specific missions, how to effectively, pragmatically get things done - anything we can do to empower, encourage, and expand the numbers of these folks increases the chances of achieving something decent in Iraq.

Unfortunately, it would be a sin of omission not to point out that the upper levels of our civilian leadership, including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Bush, seem hell-bent on ignoring the input, experience, service, leadership, and loyalty of the military's professional officer corps. My take is that if we desire a decent outcome in Iraq, these guys are part of our problem. There are many, perhaps a majority, of good, reasonable Republicans and self-described "conservatives" whose interests and worldview have been betrayed by a small group of kleptocratic impostors; it is these fine folk who wield the greatest power over our national path forward. I have great hope that these patriots will awaken and restore reason, pragmatism, and sanity to the leadership of the Republican party.

MST3K and Aye-ko!

This past weekend I had my first experience with the cult TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000." The program started as a public-access oddity in Hopkins, MN, and grew into a geek classic, not-quote-on-par with Monty Python or Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (I say "geek" with love; these are my people).

"MST3K" consists of a regular Gen-X guy and his two robot buddies silhouetted in front of an old movie or TV show and snarking at it, "riffing" their way through. Genius, right? It's something I would do with friends, except the robots are slightly wittier than the average peer group. One episode was probably enough for me, though I can see how it could be addictive.

The Robots and Guy were watching a 60's-era Batwoman TV-movie with a terrible plot, wooden acting, the stupidest fights on film, and gender stereotypes galore. The villians' weapon was a pill that made women dance uncontrollably (unnecessary, really; the Batgirls danced at every opportunity anyway). Interaction between men and women was thick with unhealthy power dynamics. Clothing. Even Batwoman herself, ostensibly the hero, wasn't smart or strong or otherwise heroic. It was funny, tempered with sad. It was archaic.

And it hit me; my parents, my co-workers, and half of my fellow church members grew up in that context earnestly. That Batwoman episode reflected real attitudes and relationships. To me, it was a foreign culture.

David Brin once pointed out that science fiction in the 50's imagined a future of air-cars and rockets to Jupiter all piloted by young white men. We're not on Neptune yet, and I didn't fly to work this morning, but our astronauts are men and women of all colors, shapes, religious beliefs, and sexual identities. What amazing progress! Within a generation!

So "Aye-ko!" (Ewe language for "Good work!") to everyone alive and our society since the 1950's. If you are 55 or older, you have seen social transformation unequalled in human history. You have survived, many of you have helped and pushed change along, and things are alright for us. Broken and fractured as we can be and feel today, I can't help but think we're steps closer to the Realm of Love Christ talked about so often. It's been a hard path, and it may get harder. But there is enormous potential for good as well: green energy, ending poverty, and curing AIDS could all happen in the next 50 years. Stepping back and seeing the long arc of progress and expanding possibilities gives me hope that were fallibly, haltingly, hewing closer to the path of Jesus.

Schoeni's Letter

A recent Christian Century (June 27, 2006) includes a letter to the editor by David T. Schoeni, who is from our own backyard; Overland Park, KS. Schoeni crystallized something you and I are in the middle of wrestling with.

"I am a '30-something' GenXer and former United Methodist pastor, and the news item about the decreasing number of younger clergy caught my attention...

But is the church simply seeking younger bodies to fill the role of pastor as it has been defined by previous generations? Or is the church interested in new leadership models - ones less focused on tending a declining institution and more invested in embodying a radically inclusive gospel?

As a younger-than-GenX Millenial-in-ministry, David's words have the deep resonance of inner truth. "Tending" can drain and frustrate me on the best of days. Hope of embodying the gospel for someone else keeps me moving when nothing else would.

That's how I try to see my work here. It's not easy for ANY of us. But it's where I think I hear a still-small and still speaking voice. -h

Link - Wrong Shoes, Wrong Shirt, No Service

See this post - "Wrong Shoes, Wrong Shirt, No Service" - over at Philosophy Over Coffee (part of the UCC Blog Ring!).

Jeff puts great language to the question of appropriate church attire with the question "When aren't we in God's presence?" I've been wearing jeans intentionally in worship lately, because I know of specific guests who have felt uncomfortable at St. Peter's because of their dress. He's on target; if this is a make-or-break issue for us... what does that say about our stewardship of the good news?

Next Sunday = tube tops! Jay-kay. -h

Short Brin Thought

This little tidbit by David Brin, one of my favorites, he made in the comments section of his blog post on "Horizon Theory" - his idea that our (American) social and political landscape is best described as competition between groups with wider and narrower horizons of inclusion. The actual comment is a little more than halfway down the page as it stands on July 3 06.

"If you take a pan-spectrum of attitudes across the weird neocon alliance, only one parameter seems to unite social reactionaries, Straussian platonists, kleptocrats, and blinkered libertarians... they all have much closer-in horizons ... of worry, time and otherness-inclusion...

Hyper-patriotism? Anti-environmentalism? Opposition to science? Jingoist demolition of alliances? Emp[hasis of actual war over readiness? Theft and bitter partisanship? And above all, exclusionary demonizing of half of the country in hate-filled, billious "culture war"? Horizons all over the place...

I call it the Jesus Effect, because his sermons were relentlessly and passionately horizon-stretching (even to a degree that violated rational self-interest)...

We should view CW ["Culture War" -howie] as a mental health problem and do whatever we can to ease our countrymens' fears, helping their horizons to expand, not helping them to contract!

Dr. Brin is writing very casually in the comments section of his own blog, but I'm familiar with his body of work and feel qualified to clarify his point. The "Jesus Effect" he describes is the relentlessly horizon-expanding message that Jesus claimed; really, the whole Gospel - that God loves everyone. Women, Gentiles, people who are sick or poor... and who next? Our fathers and mothers said "African-Americans!" Today my generation is saying "Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender persons!" Or even "Muslims! Hindus!" That's the expanding horizon, the ever-widening circle of love and inclusion.

Brin sees that some major forces in our national social and political scene have quite narrow horizons, and that's a cause of worry I share. We're preoccupied with the question of how best to help others expand the way they define their "circle" or "tribe."

How wide our horizons are varies. But the call from Jesus, and for the sake of our own thriving, is clearly to constantly grow our horizons.