Racism in the Church

I once heard a woman say, "I'm not a racist; I just don't like Filipinos."  She was not joking, and she did not pick up on the fact that the second part of her statement completely negated the first part. She had no idea that she was the very definition of a racist.  It was bad enough that she said it and meant it, but it made it even worse that she was also a longtime ruling elder in a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation.  We Presbyterian (USA) folks pride ourselves on being inclusive, sensitive, and diverse.  In this area, I think we've done better than a lot of other branches of the Christian family tree when it comes to our national policies, but my experience "on the front lines" of pastoral ministry has been that these policies have not changed what really needs to be changed: people's hearts.  When I say "people's hearts" I'm not talking about people outside the church.  I'm talking about the hearts of Christians.

Just a day or two ago a 21-year-old white man attended a Wednesday night prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.  After about an hour, he stood up and said, "I'm here to shoot black people" and then he did what he had come to do.  Nine people, nine beloved children of God, nine of our brothers and sisters in Christ, died in this hate-filled man's effort to "start a race war."  It is coming out that the murderer was an avowed white supremacist.  He seems to have been motivated not by mental illness but by a societal illness and an illness of the heart and soul: hate.  It does not appear that he hated Christians; it appears only that he hated black people.  My guess would be that the only reason he went to a prayer meeting to kill black people is that he knew enough about Christians to know that a white person would be accepted into a prayer meeting of black Christians.  In many other contexts he might have been excluded or viewed with deep suspicion.  But everyone is welcome in the circle of prayer.  "Come on in, brother."  Perhaps some of those who were praying thought, "Wow, we're really making progress in building bridges with our neighbors."  Maybe they thought that before their neighbor shot them to death. 

It is scary to think that a violent racist could walk in from outside the church to kill people inside the church.  That frightens me.  But I'm not sure how much I can do about the racism of those outside the church.  My concern at this point is the racism that exists inside the church, even within my beloved Presbyterian Church (USA). Over my years of experience in many different congregations, I have been in church meetings during which racist statements have been made by leaders of the church without a second thought.  "We can't hire that company to do the work on the building.  They'll just hire a bunch of Mexicans to do it."  I have visited parishioners (also officers of the church) in the hospital who have told me that they didn't like the hospital they were in because "all the nurses are colored here."  Yes, in the 21st Century they used the word "colored."  Although it doesn't involve race, I have heard church leaders say derogatory things about women ("That's why we shouldn't have lady preachers, because all they do is cry.") and people who are gay and lesbian (completely out of context: "It could be worse; we could live in San Francisco with all the gays.") These are Christian people, and not just Christian people but leaders in the church, and not just in any church but in the PC(USA).  I have heard these things in churches not just in South Carolina, but in Oklahoma, in Louisiana, and in Ohio, which I have found to be just as racist as anywhere I've lived in the South.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in the area of the world then known as Galatia he felt the need to say, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."  The fledgling Christian communities in Galatia were having trouble understanding exactly what was the indicator that they belonged to the people of God.  Paul is telling them that Christ is the indicator that they belong to the people of God. They have been "clothed with Christ" rather than clothed with their race or economic status or gender. Paul's statement was so revolutionary that even he doesn't seem to have been able to live it out entirely (see 1 Timothy 2:12).  But just because he didn't live it out perfectly (which has had tragic repercussions for women in the church for 2,000 years) doesn't mean that the revolutionary statement is not true.  Galatians 3:28 is a statement about who God in Jesus Christ is.  1 Timothy 2:12 is a statement about who Paul of Damascus is.  What I'm getting at is that we Christians, if we are really clothed with Christ, will "wear our new clothing" by dissolving boundaries between who is "in" and who is "out."  We will still see different shades of skin (nobody is really "color blind" when it comes to people) but instead of using that as a way of dividing people we will celebrate the diversity of God's creation.  There is no place for racism, or classism, or sexism (and I would had "homophobia" as well) in the community of followers of Jesus.

I admit that sometimes I have racist thoughts come into my mind.  But here's what we must do: we must "cut them off at the pass" before those racist thoughts make it from our minds to our hearts.  We do this by identifying them as sin.  Whether those thoughts are the result of the way we were raised, of our surrounding culture, or of very real experiences that we have had in the past, those thoughts are still sin.  We label them as sin and then we repent of those thoughts.  "God please forgive me for thinking that way."  But we have to remember that the word "repent" doesn't mean "say you're sorry."  It means to change, to turn in the opposite direction.  For that we will need God's help.  "Lord, help me to see every person as you see her or him, as your beloved child."  Then we live our lives as forgiven people, open to the Spirit's transformation. Part of this is that we confront our fellow Christians when they say things or act in ways that are racist (or sexist or homophobic, etc.)  And as a pastor, I beg of you not to leave it to the pastor to always confront people.  If someone says something about "those Mexicans" (which usually means any people of Hispanic heritage) or "the blacks" and so on and so forth, you call them on it.  Everybody expects their pastor to be a stickler about these things.  It will have more power coming from "one of their own."

While the victims of the horrific mass murder in Charleston were Christians, we as Christians (even those of us in the open-armed PCUSA) have to come to terms with the fact that we are often a part of our nation's (and world's) problem rather than a part of the solution.  Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas writes, "The Church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people.  Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints."  As Christians it is our baptismal vocation (the life purpose given to every person at their baptism), through the power of the Holy Spirit, to live as a community and as individuals that give an example to the world of what God wants humanity to be like in how we relate to God, to ourselves, to one another, and to creation.  So plain and simple, even if we read our Bible every morning, pray several times a day, go to Sunday school and worship, and put money in the offering plate and even give to those in need here and abroad, when we live in racist ways (and other ways that look down upon or mistreat others), we are not living into and out of our baptismal vocation. Perhaps the best Scriptural summary of our baptismal vocation is Colossians 3:17, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."  Anything that is racist cannot be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, therefore anything that is racist is not to be done by those of us who bear his name.

May God grant comfort to the families and friends of the victims, may God do a work in the heart of the murderer so that he may know peace with God and others even as he pays the just consequences for his hateful actions, and may God transform the hearts of the Church so that we are no longer a part of the problem, but an obvious example of God's solution, what Jesus called "the Kingdom of God."

Terror At the Top of the World

As the story goes...

back in the 1600's there was a big push among the Catholics to spread Christianity throughout Asia.  In 1628 a Catholic priest (of the Jesuit order) from Portugal spent some time in Tibet and then showed up in Nepal. Apparently it was the first time anyone in Nepal had ever heard about Jesus or about anything that had to do with this strange "Christian" religion.  The official histories say that this priest, Father Juan Cabral, was welcomed with open arms by the Hindu King Lakshminarasimha Malla (and you thought you had to spell your name for the barista at Starbucks!).  I cannot find anything else about what Father Cabral did or what happened to him after his initial reception by the king.

In the 1660's a couple more Jesuit priests, one from Belgium and another from Austria, came to Nepal but apparently didn't stay very long.  It does not appear that there was any kind of sustained Christian presence in Nepal until 1707 when a small group of Capuchin friars walked into the city of Kathmandu.  Capuchins (the Catholic religious order, not the monkeys) follow a form of Franciscanism.  They were founded back in the early 1500's when a Franciscan friar felt that the Franciscans had gone soft, gotten a bit wimpy in their Franciscanism.  He wanted to found an order that would be as "hardcore" as Francis of Assisi himself.  The small group of Capuchins lived in Nepal for fifty years.  This lasted until a change in government in 1769 forced the very small Catholic Christian community to leave Nepal to find refuge in neighboring India. Christians of all different flavors started showing up again in Nepal in the 1950's and have been around ever since.  My own aunt and uncle were missionaries to Nepal back in the 1980's.  Although Nepal is still almost entirely Hindu, there is still a small Christian minority of between 1% and 2%.

Something interesting about Nepalese Christians is that they worship on Saturday instead of Sunday.  A lot of us think that we have to worship on Sundays but it doesn't say that anywhere in the Scriptures and Jesus never mentioned it.  He just said to gather together, but he never said when to do it.  We have gathered on Sundays over the past 2,000 years for the most part because Jesus was raised from the dead on a Sunday. Yet even a stickler for rules like John Calvin said that even though Sunday should be the default, if another day works better for the vast majority of folks that it just makes sense to worship on a different day. Well, Saturdays make more sense in Nepal because Saturday is the one day of the week that is a government holiday. Most folks have to work on Sunday but they don't have to work on Saturday.  So they worship on Saturdays.  Again, what is important is that we gather to worship, not when we gather to worship. The reason I bring up Saturday worship is that it was during the Saturday Christian worship time just a few days ago that the massive 7.8 earthquake shook the nation, killing at the very least 4,000 people.  Stories are coming out about church buildings collapsing onto worshiping congregations.  One congregation just outside Kathmandu lost 80 worshipers when their rental worship space fell on them.  Because of the concentration of Christians in small spaces at the time of the quake (because they were in worship) it is estimated that even though Christians make up just 1.5% of the population that between 10%-15% of the dead are Christians, that is our brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the wake of this horrific natural disaster, Christians are joining with everyone else in coming together not merely as a Christian family but as a human family.  It is important for us to be faithful to God in Jesus Christ at all times, but one of the ways that we are most faithful is by loving our neighbors regardless of who our neighbors happen to be (remember the parable of the Good Samaritan).  No matter what faith (or non-faith) someone claims, that person is created in the image of God, loved by God, and it is a person through whom we can minister to our Lord Jesus Christ (remember the parable of the sheep and goats in Matt. 25).  Love is the language of the Christian and I am proud of our particular group of Christians (the Presbyterian Church (USA)) for reaching out to the suffering in Nepal.  Here is the latest press release from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance: "PDA is providing emergency aid through partnership with ACT Alliance.  Members of ACT Alliance which have been working in Nepal for several years are on the ground and already working to assist many who have survived the quake, by distributing immediate lifesaving supplies such as water, food, shelter, and medication."

Please pray for the people of Nepal, no matter what their faith.  Also, though, pray specifically for our Christian brothers and sisters in Nepal.  Pray that in their grief, shock, and fear that the Holy Spirit will comfort them and pray that in the midst of their own suffering that they will reach out to others in Christ's name.  Also, give.  You can do that here at DONATE TO PDA.

May the God of resurrection bring many good things out of something so terribly bad.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett

Sunday Morning at the Ballpark

As the story goes...

back in the early 1970's a Detroit sportswriter by the name of Watson Spoelstra noticed that some Major League Baseball players were trying to organize chapel services for their teams on Sunday mornings.  He thought that worship for those who work in professional baseball was important enough that it should be supported in some official way by the league.  He presented this idea to the MLB commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn.  The commissioner approved Spoelstra's proposal and in 1973 Baseball Chapel began.  By 1975 every team offered a chapel service at the ballpark every Sunday morning of the season.  Baseball Chapel spread to the minor leagues in 1978 and now every single MLB-affiliated Minor League ball club has Baseball Chapel on Sunday mornings.

We like to spend a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark.  We saw evidence of this last Sunday when some fortunate members of our church family headed out right at the end of worship to go to watch the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals play.  Our enjoyment of Sunday games, however, means that not just the players, coaches, and umpires, but every single person that works at the ballpark has to be at work on Sunday.  Boo hoo, right? Multi-millionaires have to work on Sundays.  Big deal.  Well, first of all, multi-millionaires are created in the image of God, loved by God, saved by Christ, and in need of worship and Christian community too. Secondly, what about the guy or gal that sells hot dogs and cotton candy?  Lots of people have to work on Sundays these days. We can't complain about people working on Sundays and then expect to be able to eat lunch at a restaurant or fill our car with gas or go shopping a the grocery store on Sundays.  The only reason they have to work--and players have to play--is because you and I value their services on Sundays.  So if they can't go to worship, worship has to go to them.

That being said, too many of us in the church still live in a past during which the vast majority of folks had Sunday off and people could be expected to come to the church's building on Sunday for Sunday school and worship.  We still expect for people to come to us in order to have their lives touched by the gospel and how it is lived out by this community of faith.  Here we are on the corner of Market and Hinde Streets.  The doors are unlocked early on Sunday mornings.  Come to us.  It is time for us, however, to have a reality check and the place to start is with the Scriptures. You see, Jesus didn't tell his disciples, "Find a place to hang out and then people will come from all over the world to hear what you have to say."  Nope. He said, "Go and make disciples of all nations."  The key word is, "GO!"  In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is constantly sending the early church out to spread the gospel, taking the gospel to people, meeting them where they are.  I applaud the folks of Baseball Chapel for doing just that.  

Not one place in the Scriptures does it say that Christians have to meet in a certain place, in a certain building, or even at a certain time.  Worship at a ballpark is just as valid as worship in a cathedral.  Worship in a breakroom in a factory, or in the lounge of a dormitory, or on a submarine, or in a bean field is just as glorifying to God as the pope leading mass at St. Peter's Basilica (and maybe more so depending on the hearts of the participants).  If what we want is to perpetuate the institution of the church as it currently is then it might make sense to sit around waiting for people to come to us.  If what we want to do, however, is what Jesus called us to do, which is spreading the gospel, then we are going to have to follow Baseball Chapel's example and go to them. As A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh books, once wrote, "You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you.  You have to go to them sometimes."   

               

There's Always Been Sunday School... Or Has There?

As the story goes...

the cities of Britain in the late 1700's were crowded, unsanitary, soot covered, awful places to live. Poverty and disease ran rampant.  Infant mortality was high and children worked long dangerous hours in dark unventilated factories.  Stop to thank God that you were born in the 20th Century instead of in the 18th. These poor children worked six days a week, and they received no education whatsoever.  The only day of rest they had was Sunday.  

In the 1780's mission and service minded British Christians decided to start offering classes on Sundays to teach these (predominantly "unchurched") children to read and write.  Hence the name Sunday school.  As a textbook, they used the Bible. In addition, they usually studied a simple Christian catechism, learned hymns, and learned Christian morality. Even poor and working class families that had no interest in the Church otherwise, sent their kids to Sunday school for the valuable free education.  This movement spread across the Atlantic to the United States. This model of Sunday school as a mission and evangelism outreach to poor children lasted until just after the American Civil War.  It was around that time that more young children (though nowhere near all children) were going into public schools instead of going to work at the factories. Eventually children learned to read and write in those public classrooms.  The original model of Sunday school had served its purpose and was no longer needed. It is then that Sunday school evolved into being exclusively about the deepening of faith and biblical knowledge.    

Prior to Sunday schools, children were educated in the Christian faith at home by their parents and grandparents.  Eventually, though, as Sunday schools became less about teaching predominantly "unchurched" poor children to read and write, it became more about educating the children of Christian adults in the Christian faith.  The parents' job became the Sunday school teacher's job.  Hopefully it was a team effort.  The idea of adult Sunday schools seems to have come much later as an innovation.  Both children's and adult Sunday schools met with great success in the post-World War II decades when religious and community involvement skyrocketed. This is evident from the photos you can see in most churches of Sunday school classes from the 40's, 50's, and 60's with overflowing classrooms of both children and adults. Most people in a certain age group think that is how it always was, but really those decades were abnormally successful when you look at the history.

I have been a part of a large number of conversations with folks from all kinds of churches all over the country and the vast majority are saying the same thing, "Hardly anyone comes to Sunday school anymore." This is especially prevalent when it comes to children, youth, and their parents, but it is becoming more and more true when it comes to all ages of adults as well.  Sunday school is dwindling.  People are panicking. There has always been Sunday school!  We can't have church without Sunday school!  It may seem that way but it simply isn't true.  Sunday school in any form has only existed for about 245 of the 2,000 years of Christianity.  Sunday school in its current form for children has only existed for about 145 years and Sunday school for adults has existed for a much shorter time than that.  Sunday school as a highly attended successful model for Christian education has only existed for about the past 70 years, which is less than 4% of Christian history.  Now that brief era of success seems to be winding down.  

Recently I read an interesting article written for the Presbyterian Mission Agency called "Why We're Not Interested in Your Sunday School: Young Adults Seek New Forms of Christian Education," The author, a certified Christian Educator named Andrea Hall, writes "Regrettably, many congregations continue to employ the traditional Sunday school model--designed to transmit information that [young adults] no longer seek.  Maybe it's not incidental that many congregations are experiencing declining particpation, especially among [young adults] and their children.  The Sunday school model may no longer be the most effective way to reach young people in the United States."  I encourage you to click on the link to read that article as it offers many good insights and suggestions.  

Although those folks who do participate are well "fed," the obvious truth is that Sunday school participation is very low in our congregation.  I know it makes some folks uncomfortable or even mad to consider it, but what might other models of Christian education look like for all ages? What did Christians do during the other 96% of Christian history when Sunday schools didn't exist, existed for different reasons, or weren't yet successful?  What are some things that have never been attempted before or that are working elsewhere? Sunday school hasn't always existed, and it won't always exist.  People's particular needs during a particular time in history are what birthed Sunday school.  It just might be people's particular needs during a different particular time in history that cause it to either change drastically or to die altogether.  For too long we have thought that if we just do the same thing differently or better it will work this time.  Maybe, but probably not. Sometimes (but not always) the answer is something completely different.  I'm not suggesting anything concrete, but it is something a lot of people in the Church are thinking about, and probably something we ought to be thinking about too.

Christ be with Me: St. Patrick's Story in about 500 Words

As the story goes...

Patrick was born in the year 389 in England.  That's right; Patrick is actually English not Irish.  The son of a Roman official (England was part of the Roman Empire then), he grew up near the coast, and when he was 16 years old he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland.  Kind of puts getting a pimple or failing your driver's test in perspective, doesn't it?  The next time your teenager thinks something insignificant is the end of the world, you can say, "It could be worse.  You could have been kidnapped, sold into slavery, and forced to be a solitary shepherd in the wet freezing pastures of ancient Ireland!"  In his own "confession" (spiritual autobiography) Patrick writes about those years, "I was chastened exceedingly and humbled every day in hunger and nakedness."  That is way worse than being put on the JV team rather than varsity.

As often happens, in the midst of immense stress and heartache, Patrick leaned on God in Jesus Christ more than he ever had before.  He became a person of deep prayer (who else was he going to talk to?) and his faith is all that got him through the terrible ordeal.  After six years of being a slave, he escaped and eventually made it back to his family's home in England.  Surely everyone thought that he'd find some sort of vocation that would afford him a comfortable lifestyle living near his family.  But his faith had become so deep that he could think of nothing else but studying for the priesthood.  While he was working toward ordination he started having dreams in which the people of Ireland were begging him to bring the gospel to them.  His superiors said, "Are you crazy!?"  But he didn't hate the Irish for their exploitative and hedonistic ways; he pitied them.  He believed they could change.  As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!"  He felt called to be the one who took the gospel to them.  This reminds me of hearing about prisoners who have profound spiritual experiences while in the penitentiary and when they are released choose to go back in to lead Bible studies.  

In 432, consecrated as the bishop of Ireland (a hopeful move since there weren't really any Christians in Ireland yet), the 43-year-old Patrick set foot on Irish soil for the first time since he'd escaped slavery.  He got to work and according to Robert Ellsberg "within ten years he had established... a network of churches and monasteries throughout the country, all in the hands of a native clergy.  He personally baptized tens of thousands of the faithful and ordained hundreds of priests.  Although he was not all alone in his work of evangelization, his stature as patron of Ireland is well deserved." 

May you have a happy St. Patrick's Day.  Tip a pint of Guinness (just one) in honor of the old saint, and take this lesson from his life: even the people who hurt you are children of God, although they probably don't know it.  Use your energy not to curse them, but to lift them up to God.  This will bless the both of you. 

Vikings!

As the story goes...

the people that we often call "the Vikings" began to become Christians around the year 1000. Before we get started in exploring this, however, we ought to note that we don't really use the word viking correctly. Viking isn't really a person; it was something a person did.  It was a profession.  Viking is a verb that means something to the effect of "raiding." Particular groups of Scandinavian men (Norsemen) would pool their resources and "go out viking."  In other words, they would "band together to man ships for the purpose of sailing along the coasts to raid ill-defended coastal settlements."  You did not want to see a group of ships filled with viking men (and sometimes women) show up on your shores.  You were dead meat.  Anyway, people who went out viking were really just one profession within the larger tribe-based Scandinavian society. All Scandinavians (Norse people), regardless of whether they went out viking or stayed home farming, worshiped the pantheon of Norse gods. Mixed up with all of these gods was a very violent warring and hedonistic mentality.  But something started to shift around 1000, not so much the warring/hedonistic mentality (that stuck around a lot longer) but the religion the Norsemen used to justify that mentality.

It appears that a shift that preceded the conversion of the Norse people was that small chieftains were trying to take over enough of their competitors' lands that they might build themselves a kingdom.  They had ambition.  They didn't want to be chieftains (earls) anymore; they wanted to be kings.  They had come in contact with many large kingdoms in continental Europe with very powerful kings, very strong economies, and massive armies.  "Now that's a real kingdom!  That's what I want to be like!  So I just need to build up a big enough army, get rid of all my challengers, and I'll be a real king like the kings in Europe.  Oh yeah, one more thing: those kings are all Christians, so if I want to be a real king then I'll have to give up my ancestral gods.  Oh well." That's a big price to pay, but in the mind of many chieftains of the time, it was worth it for power, fame, glory, riches, land, and lots and lots of casual sex.  People still give up their faith to gain those things all the time.  Just like the folks who do it now, the Norse kings never noticed that the Christ they would profess was against all of those things. Christianity was just a tool they used to get what they wanted. Eventually there were surely some "true believers," but probably not at first.

Let me just give you one brief example of how this seemed to work.  Olaf Trygvesson was a Norseman poster boy.  When you think of a Norseman, you think of Olaf.  Olaf loved to go out viking and he was really, really good at it.  He once put together a fleet of 90 ships that burned, slaughtered, raped, and pillaged all over northern Europe.  He became very, very rich and very, very powerful.  Finally, he decided he was ready for the big-time so he headed for what we call England.  That's where the real money was!  Eventually, Ethelred, one of the kings of the several kingdoms that modern day England was broken into, offered Olaf a massive amount of money to go away.  Later on, though, through an interesting story that involves a prophet, a vision, a mutiny, and a baptism, Olaf becomes a Christian (not necessarily in faith, but in practice).  He didn't go forward at church camp to give his life to Jesus.  Nothing like that.  No, he decided that he needed to be baptized so he could move from the "minor leagues" (a pagan chieftain among pagan chieftains) to the majors (a real European king!)  An old issue of Christian History Magazine says, Olaf's "new faith conferred upon him a dignity and stature among kings that he had lacked."  Both being Christians now, Olaf and Ethelred made a pact not to slaughter each other any more.  They'd just slaughter other people now instead.  Really gives you the warm and fuzzies doesn't it?  I'm not sure that's what the writer of "Blest be the Tie that Binds" had in mind.

People have been claiming to be disciples of Jesus for the wrong reasons ever since the beginning.  People still do it--to gain influence, to get elected, because that's what is expected of them, to make money.  Time and time again people come to the church claiming to be Christian brothers or sisters in need of just a little help.  Numerous times it has turned out that they were lying to get money for drugs.  We usually think of using the Lord's name in vain as using God's name as a cuss word.  That is just one way of misusing God's name, however.  A much more sinister way is to use it to manipulate people to get what we want.  The Norse people and the early English were just a few among millions or billions of so-called Christians that have done this.  It is important for us to examine our own hearts to make sure that we call ourselves Christians for one reason: because that is what we are.

How Far Would You Walk for $200?

As the story goes...

Eliza Davis was born in Texas in 1879.  She was an African-American Christian woman whose parents had been slaves.  After hearing a preacher that had just returned from an evangelistic trip to the west African country of Liberia, she determined that she would spend her life as a missionary in Liberia.  In 1914, at the age of thirty-five, she finally stepped foot on Liberian soil. Immediately she went to work founding a school for tribal children in the interior of Liberia.  Just three years later, however, the National Baptist Association replaced her with a married couple. Seeing that in order to get much support from the mission board or from churches back home she was going to need to get married, she accepted a proposal from G. Thompson George in 1918.  The newly married Mr. and Mrs. George stayed in Liberia and founded the Kelton Mission, which cared for hundreds of children.  They also started numerous tribal schools, a maternity clinic, and a seminary to train pastors.  Perhaps no one has ever lived who was as committed and as persistent in their service to God and to others as Eliza Davis George.

Her ministries were constantly in desperate need of financial support, barely scraping by.  One time while her husband was in the United States speaking at one church after another in an attempt to raise funds, Mrs. George did something that showed her commitment, persistence, and her desperation. When she received word that a mail ship had arrived, she and two boys walked the twenty miles to the town where the post office was.  That was not unusual for her. When she got there, there was a letter for her saying that a $200 money order was being held in the city of Monrovia.  They would hold it for thirty days. The letter had been written 28 days earlier.  She had to get to Monrovia and quick!  The problem, however, (and it was a BIG problem) was that Monrovia was 200 miles away!  She and the two boys walked to the beach and started walking in the direction of Monrovia, sleeping only a couple of hours a night.  Six days later, on tattered and bloody feet, they walked into the post office in Monrovia, hoping that the money order was still there.  They really needed that $200.  They were devastated when the postmaster told them that when no one showed up after 30 days, it was sent back to America. And you think you've worked hard with no measurable results!  I would have totally lost it.  Not Mrs. George, though.  She had a good cry and then started the long journey home.  Nothing was going to stop her from spreading the Gospel!  This prayer that she wrote captures the essence of her struggle and determination:

"O heavenly Father, you have taught us to pray for our daily bread.  Lord, you know that I do not have one penny to buy food and pay the workers here at the mission.  Father, send us something to meet our needs as you have promised.  Help me to keep trusting you so that the children will know you are caring for them."

Mrs. George's husband, Charles died in 1939.  Thirty-two years later, she was still at it.  More evidence of her perseverance is given by a missionary doctor who describes his meeting with her in 1971 by saying, "I met 'Mother' George at the Evangelical Negro Industrial Mission deep in the bush.  She was 91. Her ministry was vast.  She was almost blind.  She walked with a walking stick.  She had a large cancer on her leg and she was still pressing the claims of Christ." The next year she returned to the United States, living in Tyler, Texas until her death in 1980 at the age of 100.  Hundreds upon hundreds of Liberian people had Mrs. George to thank for giving them the gospel of Jesus Christ, an education, healthcare, hope, and purpose.  This causes me to ask myself: what am I doing for the gospel and for others today?

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

As the story goes...

Ann Lee was born in 1736 in Manchester, England.  She was born and raised in the Friends Church (Quakers).  When she was 16 she got involved in a sub-sect of the Quakers that taught complete celibacy and that practiced ecstatic trembling during worship.  They claimed that the trembling was the Holy Spirit purging sin from their bodies.  That is why this group of people came to be called "The Shakers."  According to these eccentric folks, if you never had sex and trembled enough in worship you could get pretty darn close to reaching perfect purity. Another distinctive characteristic of this sub-sect of Quakers was that unlike all other forms of Christianity at the time, they believed and taught the complete equality of men and women in all areas of church leadership. They felt that once you took sex and childbirth out of the equation there really isn't a difference between men and women.  This idea was way, way, way "out in left field" at the time. As a result of this way of thinking, young Ann was able to rise to prominence as a leader in the group.  She preached, shouted at people about the imminent return of Christ, danced around at strange times and in strange places, and spoke of having visions.  She even spent some time in jail for her behavior.  In 1774 she said a vision told her to take a group of believers to the American colonies, which she did.  Her husband went with her but apparently it all got a little too weird for him (not to mention the celibacy thing) because he bailed on her right after they got to America.  I'm all for trying to make marriage work, but I can't say that I blame the guy as there came a point when she considered herself to be the female counterpart to Jesus Christ and that she might just be the Second Coming of Jesus.

The Shaker communities spread out from New York, popping up throughout New England as well as in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio.  They made a lot of really cool stuff--buildings, furniture, and clothing.  One Shaker song has spread into other Christian communities.  That song is "Simple Gifts."  It's the one that goes: ""Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free" and so on.  Their progressive ideas on the equality of genders are important and interesting, but weighed down by all the strangeness that came with those ideas.

My favorite story about Shakers comes from right here in Ohio.  Apparently the people in Lebanon, Ohio were jerks to the Shaker community, while the people in Dayton were very nice and welcoming. Because of this, the Shakers rode through Lebanon pronouncing a curse on the town.  Then they rode through Dayton pronouncing a blessing.  At the time Lebanon and Dayton were about the same size.  To the superstitious, the old Shaker curse is why Dayton prospered and grew while Lebanon stayed a little town.

Secret Lovers, That's What We Are

As the story goes...

sometime just before the year 300, the Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus signed an edict prohibiting soldiers from marrying.  Supposedly, he felt that a soldier who had a wife and kids back home was never fully invested in what was happening on the battlefront; all the soldier wanted to do was put in his time and get home. If soldiers just wouldn't marry then they would give themselves fully to the battle and be willing to risk their lives with more abandon for the empire.  All you have to do is watch the movie American Sniper to see that logically speaking the emperor had a point.  The pull of home is a very, very strong pull even for the most disciplined service-person. It is also interesting that the Apostle Paul actually made the same argument in 1 Corinthians 7 regarding Christians.  He felt that because the end of the world was upon them (most early Christians were convinced of this) single people should stay single so that they could give themselves fully to the (spiritual) battle and be willing to risk their lives with more abandon for the Kingdom of God.  Anyway, as the story goes, the emperor declared that soldiers could no longer get married.

The Christian Church viewed marriage as sacred (and still does) and sexual relations between two unmarried people as sin (and still does).  So the emperor's edict causes a problem for the small minority of soldiers who were Christian.  They cannot get married but they are romantically involved with women back home.  They want to make an "honest woman" of their beloved but they are prohibited by their emperor from doing so.  They are unwilling, however, to give up their relationships with their significant others and we all know that when a man and a woman are in a romantic relationship that eventually it is going to become physically intimate.  The Christian is to wait to become completely physically intimate until the covenant of marriage has been made between the two and God.  But what if marriage was not allowed?  That puts a Christian in a real pickle.  

In steps a Christian priest named Valentinus.  He doesn't want these soldiers and their girlfriends to have to give one another up and he doesn't want them to live in a sinful way outside the covenant of marriage.  So he says, "I don't care what the emperor says.  I answer to God in Jesus Christ.  Come to me, and I'll do your wedding."  Father Valentinus officiates at several secret weddings for soldiers until somehow he is ratted out.  He is arrested, imprisoned, and beaten. You simply do not thumb your nose at the emperor and get away with it. He refuses to budge on his stance in favor of the sacredness of Christian marriage and is sentenced to death and considered a martyr for the Christian faith.  Sometime later the Pope declares a feast day to give thanks for the Christian witness of St. Valentinus.  The day that is chosen is February 14.  

Nobody knows if any of that really happened, but it is a pretty old story and I really like it.  In our current time, when some folks want to get married so badly that they're marching and fighting in court about it while other folks increasingly refuse to get married, I think it is important for us to remember the importance of that covenantal bond.  Marriage can be difficult and sometimes one or both partners get so self-absorbed that they make marriage downright impossible, but the story of Father Valentinus (factual or not) shows us how serious and powerful that bond is.  Those soldiers who were Christians loved their significant others and wanted to do the godly thing by sealing their love within the covenant of marriage, but their government wouldn't let them.  So a brave Christian stepped in and risked it all for love.  It kind of gives new meaning to Paul's words, "These three remain--faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love."  

Happy (Early) Valentine's Day!

Pastor Everett 

Those Crafty Christians

As the story goes...

Julian, the nephew of Constantine, became the Roman emperor in 361.  Several decades earlier his uncle had caused a seismic shift in history by favoring Christianity although it had previously been a suspicious and sometimes persecuted faith.  Constantine's decision seems to have had way more to do with politics and power than it did with genuine spiritual experience.  It also took a simple faith and way of life that was often concentrated within the poor and neglected portion of the population and turned it into a cultural/political/economic/military machine.  Much of the simplicity and spiritual power of the gospel was lost.  Regardless of Constantine's motives, Christianity became a big deal throughout the empire and even among the ruling elite.  Julian thought this was a terrible anti-Roman development.  When he became emperor he was determined to undo that which his old uncle Constantine had begun.  

Interestingly enough, Julian was raised as a Christian.  A great problem, however, was that this Christianity was "rammed down his throat" by his very zealous Arian Christian (didn't believe in the Trinity) cousin Constantius II.  Julian grew up watching his older cousin order the deaths of non-Christians and even had to endure his cousin having a good number of Julian's family murdered. Julian grew to hate everything Christian so when he became emperor he decided he would choke the Christian faith by making it very, very difficult to live in Roman society as a Christian.  He doesn't seem to have cared whether or not Christianity continued to exist, he just wanted it back the way it used to be: a strange little religion made up of the poor and uneducated on the margins of society.  Also, it appears that Julian was nostalgic for a time he'd never experienced himself.  He wanted to live in a Roman Empire that was strong and pagan like in the "good old days."  

Julian made edicts that forced churches to give back the assets that had been seized from pagan temples.  He re-instituted the worship of Roman gods and lowered the status of Christian bishops. He also wrote quite a bit about why he thought Christianity was not only superstitious but toxic. Calling Christians by the name "Galileans" he argues that they use offensively manipulative tactics in converting people to their dangerous faith.  The most famous criticism that he fires out is, "These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agape, they attract them as children are attracted with cakes." To Julian the fact that Christians were feeding both the Christian and pagan poor could only mean that these Christians were pulling a bait-and-switch.  Hungry people came for food and then they were hit over the head with a bunch of nonsense about some crucified peasant.  Julian felt this not only showed how conniving Christians are but it also exposed something about his own adopted Roman/pagan faith: the pagans weren't caring for their own poor.  It was the pagan lack of care for their own poor that made hungry pagan folks reliant on and susceptible to those manipulative and ignorant Christians.  He says, "While the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors."  If the pagans would just feed their own hungry, then the Christians would have no appeal.  I have to admit that it's pretty sound logic.

What this reminds me of is the fact that when someone doesn't like you you're just going to lose no matter what.  If you don't feed the poor you're criticized for doing nothing to help those in need. If you do feed the poor you're accused of having ulterior motives.  No matter what the Julians of the world think of us, however, we "Galileans" are commanded time and again by our Lord Jesus to provide food both for the belly and for the soul. I'm sorry that Julian's experience was so terrible. The Christians around him bear much of the blame for his later disdain for the faith.  That is also true for the large number of folks in our current culture that feel the same way as Julian. That being said, though, neither Julian nor our culture will be our ultimate judge.  Our ultimate judge is the one who said, "Whatever you have done for these least of these brothers and sisters of mine you have done for me."

Sail Away with Me

As the story goes...

Florence Young was born in New Zealand in 1856.  She was of English heritage and her father had been a judge in India before moving back to England to get married and then moving all the way to New Zealand to become a farmer.  She began to take her faith seriously while in her late teens.  It is during this time that her family moved to Australia.  Her brothers started a sugar plantation, which employed many workers from all over the Pacific Islands.  At the age of twenty-one, Florence began teaching the workers the Christian faith. Soon after, she expanded the ministry to other plantations, sending out letters to churches soliciting their financial support.  She did not care which churches sent the money or sent volunteers as long as these volunteers, regardless of denominational affiliation, were "true and faithful followers of the Lord Jesus, and willing to work with other Christians on the common ground of faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." This willingness to work with all kinds of Christians is called "ecumenism."  

In the 1890's, Florence handed over direction of Queensland Kanaka Mission to coworkers and moved to China to serve as a missionary.  She was a pioneer in doing as a woman what the church had told her and many others could only be accomplished by men.  Her time in China came to an end as a result of the Boxer Rebellion, which was a widespread and extremely violent uprising of Chinese peasants with the ultimate goal of chasing all foreigners out of China, especially Christians of European descent.  Feeling she had more work to do, she chose not to be martyred and moved back to Australia.  She expected to resume her work with the ever growing Christian communities of Pacific Island workers on the plantations.  This was not to be, however. In 1901 a law was passed that expelled all Pacific Islanders from Australia and deported them back to their ancestral homelands.  This created great fear and hardship among the workers because they had left their homelands on purpose as there was no work to be had back home (sound familiar?).  Also, they'd been in Australia so long (many for multiple generations) that they often did not live by many of their ancestral ways. It would be a tremendous culture shock to go back now.  Plus, thousands had become Christians and they feared being persecuted or even put to death when they returned to their native lands. They were also quite young in their Christian faith. They'd have no guidance to help them grow into spiritual maturity.  The situation broke Florence's heart.

Many of us would say, "That sounds tough.  I'll miss you."  Not Florence!  She and a few others bought a yacht (not what we think of as a yacht) and began sailing throughout the Pacific Islands to supply and support the more than 2,000 Pacific Islander Christians that had been deported from Australia.  She did not see it as her mission to try to share the gospel with the native population herself.  That should be done by the Pacific Islanders themselves.  Her mission was to teach and support the Christian Pacific Islanders so that they could share the gospel.  For years she lived on the boat, called Evangel, going from island to island, teaching and praying with and for the Pacific Islander Christians.  Eventually she moved to Sydney, Australia and took on a more administrative role in what had come to be known as South Sea Evangelical Mission.  She died in 1940.

As a person who is often too lazy to get up early enough to have a morning devotional time and who thinks I've gone a long way to do God's work when I have to drive to Columbus, I am awed by Florence's commitment to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with others.

On the Job Training

As the story goes…

Ambrose was a civil governor in the Italian city of Milan in the late 4th Century. During Ambrose’s time there was a big Christological (who is Jesus?) conflict within the church in Europe and northern Africa. It was between those who believed in the Trinity (God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and those who believed that the Son (Jesus) was not fully divine but created by and less than God. The Trinitarians were called Catholics and those with the other point of view were called Arians (after their top proponent Arius). As civil governor, Ambrose chastised the church for being so divided and told them to figure it out peacefully. As often happens, because he was the one that had the idea, someone said he should be the one to make sure it happened. “Ambrose for bishop!” someone yelled. Others joined in and the chant became deafening, “Ambrose for bishop!” Ambrose got out of the building as quickly as he could. He ended up going into hiding to keep from having to become bishop.

Why didn’t Ambrose want to become bishop? Well, first of all, remember that he already had a job—civil governor. The biggest reason, however, was that not only was he not an ordained priest (usually a prerequisite for bishop), but he wasn’t even baptized! Eventually he gave in to the pressure, feeling that just maybe it was God’s doing. So Ambrose had to be baptized, confirmed, and ordained in speedy fashion so he could become Bishop of Milan. He had absolutely no training whatsoever, yet he ended up becoming one of the best bishops ever!

One thing Ambrose is famous for is that he identified a young man who’d been headed in the wrong direction and then mentored him, preparing him for service to the Church. This young man was named Augustine, and he ended up being the most important Christian theologian after the New Testament. The other thing about Ambrose that sticks with me is that when the Goths began to overrun the Roman Empire, they began to kidnap people, threatening to kill them unless a ransom was paid. The families could not pay and the government refused, so Ambrose ordered that all the gold objects in the churches be melted down and used to pay the ransoms. He said, “It is a better thing to save souls for the Lord than to save treasures. He who sent forth his apostles without gold had not need of gold to form his Church. The Church possesses gold, not to hoard, but to scatter abroad and come to the aid of the unfortunate. Would not the Lord say to us: 'Why have you let so many needy perish of hunger? Since you had gold, you should provide for their needs'...Could we say: 'I feared to leave the temple of God without ornament.' But that which can't be bought with gold does not take its value from gold. The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.”

Amen, brother.  Sometimes those who start out without a clue what they're doing end up being the best there's ever been.

Something New for the New Year

In the three years that I've had this "Beneath the Celtic Cross" pastor's blog, I've written more than 130 posts. I've discussed everything from Batman to tornadoes and from baseball to Jungian psychology. As would be expected, over time it has grown harder and harder to figure out what in the world I'm going to write about from week to week. Also, I've become a bit tired of my own musings and judging from the steady decline of readership over the last year or so others have gotten tired of them too. My first inclination was to discontinue the blog, but enough people appreciate it and look forward to it each week that I decided not to end it all together. Instead, I'm "re-launching" the "Beneath the Celtic Cross" pastor's blog as "As the Story Goes: Pastor Everett's Weekly Take on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Church History in About 500 Words." In case you have this page as one of your favorites in your web browser (a guy can dream, right?) you should know that I'm not changing the web address.

Each week in 2015 I'll tell you a little bit about some figure, group, or event in the history of our Christian family. Some of those stories will be uplifting, some will be embarrassing. Some will be humbling, and others will be downright terrifying. I'll try to do it in a way that will engage you all in the great story that is the history of the Christian faith. I won't just "report the news;" I'll tell the story. Although I said I'm tired of my own musings, there will probably be some of those slipped in each week as well. But out of mercy for you and for me I'll limit myself to 500 words for each post.

Each week I will begin the post with these words: "As the story goes..." Then I will tell you a brief story from the history of the church that I've read somewhere. One week it may be about some giant of Church history like St. Augustine or Martin Luther and the next week it might be about someone or some event of which you've never heard. Why am I doing this? Well, to be completely honest with you part of my motives are self-serving. I absolutely love history. I can't get enough of it! This will give me yet another opportunity to learn more about it. Second is the fact that, as Christians, church history is our family story. Just like the stories of our biological families, our Christian family story is full of "the good, the bad, and the ugly." It is important for us to be encouraged by the encouraging stories of our Christian family and inspired by the bad and the ugly to be better disciples of the Prince of Peace than our forebears have been at times.

Well, that's about 500 words. We'll get started next week.

Blessings on your New Year,
Everett