8 Things the Church Needs to Say

by Tom Ehrich [2] 07-15-2014 | 1:45pm

Web version of this article 

If Christians stopped bickering about church, presenting sex as a first-order concern, telling other people how to lead their lives, and lending our name to minor-league politicians, what would we have to say?

We need to figure that out, because we are wearing out our welcome as tax-avoiding, sex-obsessed moral scolds and amateur politicians.

In fact, I think we are getting tired of ourselves. Who wants to devote life and loyalty to a religion that debates trifles and bullies the outsider?

So what would we say and do? No one thing, of course, because we are an extraordinarily diverse assembly of believers. But I think there are a few common words we would say.

1. We would say the name “Jesus.” We might mean different things by that name, but he is the center, the reason we exist.
2. Allowing ample room for our diversity, we would say what we mean by faith in God. Not how right we are and how wrong others are, but an I-message: Here’s why I believe in God.
3. We would tell stories about God’s impact on our lives. Not grand doctrines, not airtight theories, not definitions of who’s inside the circle and who’s outside, but stories of personal encounter.
4. We would listen to other stories, respectfully, not defensively, eager to hear what our fellow Christian has to say.
5. We would each tell as honestly as we can how we are trying to lead our lives in the light of our encounters and stories. We would sketch the bridge between faith and action.
6. We would tell what we see in the world — not in the woe-is-me, sky-is-falling, Satan-is-winning manner people expect from us, but just what we see and how we think God cares about it.
7. We would speak of hope, a durable, solid-rock hope that God is God, and God can use us to make a difference.
8. We would talk of joy. Not giddiness, not even happiness, as the world understands happiness, but that deeper response to God that feels whole and peaceful.

Personally, I think these eight things are what we ache to say. They are why we walked in the door of a church in the first place. They are why we stay, despite abundant reasons for leaving.

Everyone has a theory about “why people are leaving the church,” “why millennials don’t come to church,” “why churches are dying,” and “what’s wrong with society.”

Personally, I think we should stop worrying about institutional outcomes — especially outcomes that we hope will prove we were right all along — and try instead just to be hopeful, joyful, active people of faith.
I think we should take our parts in the great political debates — power and wealth, after all, were Jesus’ primary concern — but then agree that, whether X or Y gets elected, God will still grieve our cruelties and sufferings, and we will all have much work to do as believers.

Whatever the label — progressive or conservative, contemporary or traditional, denominational or nondenominational — we will each have something unique and necessary to contribute.

There is more binding us than dividing us. For division comes from our small and selfish places. Binding comes from God.

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the president of Morning Walk Media and publisher of Fresh Day online magazine. Get the new Fresh Day mobile app here [7]. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com [8]. Via RNS [9].

Can the voters change the GOP? by E.J. Dionne JR

Can the voters change the GOP?

From the Washington Post

By E.J. Dionne Jr. August 3 at 7:46 PM

Read the article as published here.

The central issue in this fall’s elections could turn out to
be a sleeper: What kind of Republican Party does the
country want?

It is, to be sure, a strange question to put to an electorate
in which independents and Democrats constitute a
majority. Yet there is no getting around this: The single
biggest change in Washington over the last five years has
been a GOP shift to a more radical form of conservatism.
This, in turn, has led to a kind of rejectionism that views
cooperation with President Obama as inherently
unprincipled.

Solving the country’s problems requires, above all,
turning the Republican Party back into a political
enterprise willing to share the burdens of governing, even
when a Democrat is in the White House.
For those looking for a different, more constructive
Republicanism, this is not a great year to stage the battle.
Because of gerrymandering, knocking the current band of
Republicans out of control of the House is a Herculean
task. And most of the competitive seats in the fight for the
Senate are held by Democrats in Republican states. The
GOP needs to win six currently Democratic seats to take
over, and it appears already to have nailed down two or
three of these. Republicans are now favored in the open
seats of South Dakota and West Virginia, and probably
also in Montana.

Nonetheless, there is as yet no sense of the sort of tide
that in 2010 gave a Republicanism inflected with tea party
sensibilities dominance in the House. The core narrative
of the campaign has yet to be established. Democrats
seeking reelection are holding their own in Senate races in
which they are seen as vulnerable.
And then there was last week’s House fiasco over
resolving the refugee crisis at our border. It served as a
reminder that Republican leaders are handcuffing
themselves by choosing to appease their most right-wing
members rather than pursuing middle-ground legislation
by collaborating with Democrats.

The bill that House Speaker John Boehner was trying to
pass last Thursday already tilted well rightward. It
provided Obama with only a fraction of what he said was
needed to deal with the crisis — $659 million, compared
with the president’s request for $3.7 billion. It also
included provisions to put deportations on such a fast
track that Obama threatened to veto it. A White House
statement said that its “arbitrary timelines” were both
impractical and inhumane.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi happened to be
meeting with a group of journalists when the bill
meeting with a group of journalists when the bill
collapsed. “In order for them to pass a bill, they had to
make it worse and worse and worse,” she said, referring to
Boehner’s efforts to placate members who have entered
into an unusual cross-chamber alliance with Sen. Ted
Cruz (R-Tex.) to foil even conservative legislation if they
regard it as insufficiently pure. When the bill was pulled
back, Pelosi observed: “They couldn’t make it bad
enough.”

On Friday, the GOP leadership pushed the measure still
further right and added $35 million for border states to
get it passed at an unusual evening session — but not
before Republicans themselves had complained loudly
about dysfunction in their own ranks.

In the meantime, the Senate was paralyzed on the issue
by filibusters and other procedural hurdles that have
rendered majority rule an antique notion in what once
proudly proclaimed itself “the world’s greatest deliberative
body.”

As the House was preparing to pass its bill, Obama told a
news conference on Friday that GOP leaders were well
aware that he’d veto it if it came to him and bemoaned the
fact that “even basic, commonsense, plain vanilla
legislation” can’t get through because Republicans fear
“giving Obama a victory.”

Last week’s legislative commotion could change the
political winds by putting the costs of the GOP’s flight
from moderation into stark relief. House Republicans
found themselves in the peculiar position of
simultaneously suing Obama for executive overreach and
then insisting that he could act unilaterally to solve the
border crisis.

Pelosi, for her part, went out of her way to praise “the
Grand Old Party that did so much and has done so much
for our country.” Commending the opposing party is not
an election year habit, but her point was to underscore
that Republicans had been “hijacked” by a “radical right
wing” that is not simply “anti-government” but also “antigovernance.”

On balance, Washington gridlock has hurt Democrats
more than Republicans by dispiriting moderate and
progressive constituencies that had hoped Obama could
usher in an era of reform. The key to the election will be
whether Democrats can persuade these voters that the
radical right is the real culprit in their disappointment —
and get them to act accordingly on Election Day.

Explore – Malcolm Gladwell's spectacular conversation with...

Steve Perryman shared with you:   Explore – Malcolm Gladwell's spectacular conversation with... explore.noodle.org - A discovery engine for meaningful knowledge, fueled by cross-disciplinary curiosity. A project edited by Maria Popova in partnership with Available on the App Store.

Sent from my iPad.

When “But” Makes you a Sphincter-Leader

Steve Perryman shared with you:   When "But" Makes you a Sphincter-Leader leadershipfreak.wordpress.com - Sphincter-leaders unwittingly throw cold water on enthusiasm. A happy employee catches you in the hall. "Project 'A' is going well," they report. It's obvious they feel good. You're a sphincter-leader when you say, "But." Available on the App Store.

Sent from my iPad.

What I Read Today - Monday October 7, 2013

He Beat Us in War but Never in Battle To defeat any adversary, the late North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap permitted immense casualties and the near total destruction of his country. By JOHN MCCAIN I met Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap—who died on Friday—twice. The first time was in the Vietnamese military hospital where I was taken shortly after my capture in 1967. My father commanded all U.S. forces in the Pacific, which made me an object of curiosity in some quarters of the North Vietnamese government. I remember several high-ranking visitors in addition to the guards and interrogators I saw daily. Giap, North Vietnam's minister of defense, was the only one I recognized. He stayed only a few moments, staring at me, then left without saying a word. Our second meeting was in the early 1990s, during one of many trips I made to Hanoi to discuss the POW/MIA issue and the normalization of relations between our countries. I had asked then-Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach and his deputy, Le Mai, to arrange a brief interview with the legendary commander of the People's Army of North Vietnam The next day I was ushered into the grand reception room of the Beaux-Arts presidential palace the French had built for their colonial governors, where the general was waiting. Smiling, diminutive, aged but spry, and dressed in a gray suit and tie, he hardly looked like his wartime reputation as a ruthless fighter with a fierce temper. Giap greeted me warmly beneath an enormous bust of Ho Chi Minh, who had led Vietnam in the wars against the French and the United States. Both of us clasped each other's shoulders as if we were reunited comrades rather than former enemies. I had hoped our discussion would concentrate on his historical role. After I came home from Vietnam in 1973, I read everything I could get my hands on about both the French and American wars there, starting with Bernard Fall's "Hell in a Very Small Place," his classic study of the 1954 siege of Dien Bien Phu, where French colonial rule effectively ended and Giap's genius first became apparent to an astonished world. I wanted to hear Giap describe that nearly two-month long battle, to explain how his forces had shocked the French by managing the impossible feat of bringing artillery across mountains and through the densest jungles. I wanted to talk to him about that other marvel of logistics, the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I knew he was proud of his reputation as the "Red Napoleon," and I presumed he would welcome an opportunity to indulge my curiosity about his triumphs. I wanted us to behave as two retired military officers and former enemies recounting the historical events in which he had played a critical part and I a small one. But he answered most of my questions briefly, adding little to what I already knew, and then waved his hand to indicate disinterest. That is all in the past now, he said. You and I should discuss a future where our countries are not enemies but friends. And so we did, two politicians discussing the business between our countries that had brought me to Vietnam. Giap was a master of logistics, but his reputation rests on more than that. His victories were achieved by a patient strategy that he and Ho Chi Minh were convinced would succeed—an unwavering resolve to suffer immense casualties and the near total destruction of their country to defeat any adversary, no matter how powerful. "You will kill 10 of us, we will kill one of you," Ho said, "but in the end, you will tire of it first." Giap executed that strategy with an unbending will. The French repulsed wave after wave of frontal attacks at Dien Bien Phu. The 1968 Tet offensive against the U.S. was a military disaster that effectively destroyed the Viet Cong. But Giap persisted and prevailed. The U.S. never lost a battle against North Vietnam, but it lost the war. Countries, not just their armies, win wars. Giap understood that. We didn't. Americans tired of the dying and the killing before the Vietnamese did. It's hard to defend the morality of the strategy. But you can't deny its success. Near the end of our meeting, I made another attempt to test Giap's candor. I asked him if it were true that he had opposed Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia. He dismissed that too, with something like, "the party's decisions are always correct." With that, our meeting came to an end. We stood up, shook hands, and as I turned to leave, he grasped my arm, and said softly, "you were an honorable enemy." I don't know if he meant that as a comparison to Vietnam's other adversaries, the Chinese, the Japanese or the French, who had killed his wife, or if it was an implicit recognition we had fought for ideals rather than empire and that our humanity had played a part in our defeat. Maybe he just meant to flatter me. Whatever his meaning, I appreciated the sentiment. Mr. McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona. A version of this article appeared October 6, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: He Beat Us in War but Never in Battle. Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com

What I Read Today - Monday September 30, 2013

From: The New York Times Our Outlaw President? By HENRY J. AARON WASHINGTON — THE United States government is likely to shut down nonessential services tomorrow, after House Republicans voted before dawn yesterday to attach a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law (and a repeal of a tax to pay for it) to legislation to keep the government running. The Democratic-led Senate is expected to refuse. House Republicans also said last week that they would not agree to lift the debt ceiling unless implementation of the health law was delayed by one year. So the government is also headed toward a mid-October default on its debts — and a full-blown constitutional crisis. Failure to raise the debt will force the president to break a law — the only question is which one. The Constitution requires the president to spend what Congress has instructed him to spend, to raise only those taxes Congress has authorized him to impose and to borrow no more than Congress authorizes. If President Obama spends what the law orders him to spend and collects the taxes Congress has authorized him to collect, then he must borrow more than Congress has authorized him to borrow. If the debt ceiling is not raised, he will have to violate one of these constitutional imperatives. Which should he choose? In 2011, when Congress last flirted with not raising the debt ceiling, lawyers disagreed. Some argued that the president must honor the debt ceiling, thereby violating budget laws. Others held that he must honor budget legislation. No one argued that he should unilaterally raise taxes. Professors Neil H. Buchanan and Michael C. Dorf, who parsed the arguments in the Columbia Law Review in 2012, concluded that all options were bad, but that disregarding the debt ceiling was least bad from a legal standpoint. I agree. Lawyers tend to play down policy considerations as a basis for interpreting law. In this case, the consequences are so overwhelmingly on one side that they cannot be ignored by the president and should not be ignored by the courts. If the debt ceiling is not increased, the president should disregard it, and honor spending and tax legislation. A decision to cut spending enough to avoid borrowing would instantaneously slash outlays by approximately $600 billion a year. Cutting payments to veterans, Social Security benefits and interest on the national debt by half would just about do the job. But such cuts would not only illegally betray promises to veterans, the elderly and disabled and bondholders; they would destroy the credit standing of the United States and boost borrowing costs on the nation’s $12 trillion publicly held debt. There is no clear legal basis for deciding what programs to cut. Defense contractors, or Medicare payments to doctors? Education grants, or the F.B.I.? Endless litigation would follow. No matter how the cuts might be distributed, they would, if sustained for more than a very brief period, kill the economic recovery and cause unemployment to return quickly to double digits. Nor is it reasonable to expect the president to collect more in taxes than is authorized by law. For him to do so would infringe on Congress’s most fundamental powers and the principles on which the nation was founded. The only defensible option for the president if the debt ceiling is not raised is to disregard the debt ceiling. The action would be unconstitutional because it would be illegal. Financial markets might react negatively, but not nearly so negatively as if the United States failed to redeem bonds or to pay interest on its debt. The president would be attacked. He might even be impeached by the House. But maybe not: the House would then be saying that the president should have illegally failed to pay F.B.I. agents, or school districts, or Medicare doctors. In any case, he would not be convicted by the Senate. And he would have saved the nation from much agony. Disregarding the debt ceiling would have one additional, thoroughly benign effect. It would end the capacity of Congressional minorities to precipitate crises in order to accomplish goals for which they lacked the votes. Today, a minority is holding hostage all federal programs in an attempt to eviscerate a law that Congress passed, the president signed and the Supreme Court upheld — the Affordable Care Act. In the future, an imaginative and irresponsible minority could use the threat not to raise the debt ceiling for any purpose — to shape tax policy, or foreign policy, or civil rights policy. The debt ceiling is the fiscal equivalent of the human appendix — a law with no discoverable purpose. It is one law too many. Once Congress has set tax rates and spending levels, it has effectively said what it wants the debt to be. If Congress leaves the debt ceiling at a level inconsistent with duly enacted spending and tax laws, the president has no choice but to ignore it. Henry J. Aaron is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

What I Read Today - Monday August 26, 2013

Threatened by the Armageddon Caucus By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: August 25 From the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-threatened-by-the-armageddon-caucus/2013/08/25/4dfc0308-0c1e-11e3-b87c-476db8ac34cd_story.html Are you ready for the Big Magilla of American politics? This fall, every important domestic issue could crash into every other: health-care reform, autopilot budget cuts, a government shutdown, even a default on the national debt. If I were betting, I’d wager that we will somehow avoid a total meltdown. House Speaker John Boehner seems desperate to get around his party’s Armageddon Caucus. But after three years of congressional dysfunction brought on by the rise of a radicalized brand of conservatism, it’s time to call the core questions: Will our ability to govern ourselves be held perpetually hostage to an ideology that casts government as little more than dead weight in American life? And will a small minority in Congress be allowed to grind decision-making to a halt? Congress is supposed to be the venue in which we Americans work our way past divisions that are inevitable in a large and diverse democracy. Yet for some time, Republican congressional leaders have given the most right-wing members of the House and Senate a veto power that impedes compromise, and thus governing itself. On the few occasions when the far-right veto was lifted, Congress got things done, courtesy of a middle-ground majority that included most Democrats and the more moderately conservative Republicans. That’s how Congress passed the modest tax increases on the well-off that have helped reduce the deficit, as well as the Violence Against Women Act and assistance for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. All these actions had something in common: They were premised on the belief that government can take practical steps to make American life better. This idea is dismissed by those ready to shut down the government or to use the debt ceiling as a way of forcing the repeal or delay of the Affordable Care Act and passing more draconian spending reductions. It needs to be made very clear that these radical Republicans are operating well outside their party’s own constructive traditions. Before their 2010 election victory, Republicans had never been willing to use the threat of default to achieve their goals. The GOP tried a government shutdown back in the mid-1990s, but it was a political disaster. Experienced Republicans are trying to steer their party away from the brink, the very place where politicians such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and a group of fourscore or so House members want it to go. Particularly instructive is the effort to repeal health-care reform. The very fact that everyone now accepts the term “Obamacare” to refer to a measure designed to get health insurance to many more Americans is a sign of how stupidly partisan we have become. We never described Medicare as “Johnsoncare.” We didn’t label Social Security “FDRsecurity.” Tying the whole thing to Obama disguises the fact that most of the major provisions of the law he fought for had their origins among conservatives and Republicans. The health-care exchanges to facilitate the purchase of private insurance were based on a Heritage Foundation proposal, first brought to fruition in Massachusetts by a Republican governor named Mitt Romney. Subsidizing private premiums was always a Republican alternative to extending Medicare to cover everyone, the remedy preferred by many liberals. Conservatives even once favored the individual mandate to buy insurance, as MSNBC columnist Tim Noah pointed out. “Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seatbelts for their own protection,” the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler said back in 1989. “Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance.” Since all of us will use health care at some point, Butler argued reasonably, it makes sense to have us all in the insurance pool. But that was then. The right wing’s recent rejection of a significant government role in ending the scandal of “a health-care system that does not even come close to being comprehensive and fails to reach far too many” — the words were spoken 24 years ago by the late Sen. John Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican — tells us why Congress no longer works. The GOP has gone from endorsing market-based government solutions to problems the private sector can’t solve — i.e, Obamacare — to believing that no solution involving expanded government can possibly be good for the country. Ask yourself: If conservatives still believed in what both left and right once saw as a normal approach to government, would they speak so cavalierly about shutting it down or risking its credit? This is what’s at stake in the Big Magilla. Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Read more on this issue: Greg Sargent: Ted Cruz is right about Obamacare Jennifer Rubin: The ‘dumbest idea’ is threatening to defund Obamacare Eugene Robinson: The GOP in Fantasyland Dana Milbank: Republicans’ Obamacare search-and-destroy mission © The Washington Post Company