Hey, Kids: Don't Leave Church. Complain!

Radio talk show host Dennis Prager says universities turn young people into liberal secular humanists, but I don't believe it. I was largely impervious to professors' politics, right (yes, there were a couple) or left, and I'll bet almost everyone else is, too. Rebutting Prager, Conor Friedersdorf has a more practical, persuasive explanation for why highly educated young adults become less religious:

[P]eople who attend college leave home. That is to say, they leave their church, the community incentives to attend it, and the watchful eye of parents who get angry or make them feel guilty when they don't go to services or stray in their faith. Suddenly they're surrounded by dorm mates of different faiths or no faith at all. For many of these students, it turns out that their religious behavior was driven more by desire for community, or social and parental pressure, than by deeply held beliefs. Another reason education correlates with secularism is that secularists are more likely to seek advanced degrees, partly because they're more focused than their religious counterparts on career.

To give at least part of the argument back to Prager, one thing about a good education is that it destroys, or should destroy, simplistic theodicies by giving the student a glimpse of the full range of human misery and injustice across the centuries. Knowing how relentlessly the good and innocent suffer, it's hard to believe that God is spending much time protecting me and those I love because we happen to be living in the safest country in the world, going to the right church, or singing hymns in the right key.

Indeed a crisis of faith probably should result from a liberal arts education as night follows day, as should the ability to discern the difference between the divine and its poor reflection in human institutions. Religion sometimes glorifies God and sometimes lets God down. That's why I always tell our St. John's middle schoolers that if they're not getting what they deserve from church, synagogue, or mosque -- a sense of God as a loving, inspiring, challenging, saving force available in every aspect of their lives -- then they should find out who's in charge and tell them.
Hat tip to The Dish

A Lenten Pause In The Battle

John Moorlach, who emigrated from the Netherlands with his Reformed and Christian Reformed family when he was four, tried to read the Bible as a young man, but he started at the beginning and "got bogged down somewhere in Deuteronomy." He told the St. John's men's group this morning that it never occurred to him to begin with the New Testament. Finally, when he was a 19-year-old student at Long Beach State, a friend suggested he read the Sermon on the Mount, which brought him to Christ in earnest.

He says he's counted roughly 2,000 pieces of financial advice in the Bible, many of which concern saving, prudence, humility, integrity, even portfolio diversification. Trained as an accountant, Moorlach, now 53, caught the political bug from an uncle who employed him on his dairy farm ("I learned what money smelled like," he said) and who eventually served on the City Council in Cypress.

In his own political career, Moorlach became a national figure immediately thanks to his prediction of Orange County's $1.7 billion portfolio meltdown and bankruptcy during his unsuccessful 1994 race against Bob Citron, the then-county treasurer who was essentially running a hedge fund with the people's money.

Citron went to jail, and Moorlach succeeded him. In the thick of the bankruptcy, the largest in a municipality in U.S. history, Moorlach did media interviews from 8 a.m. to midnight. In 2006, deciding he could be a better watchdog if he had a vote on policy in addition to a voice on CNN, he won a seat on the Board of Supervisors, where he has battled public employee unions over pensions and, just this week, had his name in the papers yet again. He came to St. John's this morning after reading in the LA Times:

Tuesday's unanimous [Board of Supervisors] vote to suspend a $291,788 education grant with Planned Parenthood followed hours of impassioned public testimony, primarily in favor of continuing the contract.

Ultimately, most supervisors cited moral or religious reasons to vote against continuing the contract.

None of the money is used to fund abortions, said Jon Dunn, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood for Orange and San Bernardino counties.

The health education contract was approved last year through a $7.5-million agreement with the Orange County Coalition of Community Clinics and funded through tobacco settlement revenue.

The funding, first put aside under Measure H in 2000, has been renewed annually since 2001.

Supervisor John Moorlach, who put the issue on the agenda Tuesday, spoke strongly against supporting Planned Parenthood, and he questioned whether sex education, which is not specifically mentioned in Measure H, is an appropriate use of the money anyway.

"It doesn't say one word about education . . . and now they've gotten it, and now it's an entitlement," Moorlach said.

Planned Parenthood in Orange County has used the contract money to provide health education to dozens of groups including teens and pre-teens at Juvenile Hall, Irvine High School, St. Mary's All Angels School and the Santa Ana Youth Council.

Moorlach (invited to St. John's by men's group member Larry Seigel) said no when I asked if political and media controversy contributed to stress and anxiety, though he did aver that if you're going to be in an unfriendly newspaper article, Saturday's the best day. It may also be that he's too busy to worry. "I've always had a focus on time management," he said. "I do this for you 13 or 14 hours a day; my family gets the rest. I don't worry about what I don't get done and tell myself, 'You only do what you can do'."

Another of our members asked what higher office he he might be considering. Moorlach replied that he planned to run for a second term as supervisor in 2010. While he'd love being state treasurer, he said, conservative Orange Countians don't have much of a shot at statewide office.

When a listener asked if California would ever get its budget and deficit under control, John said, "No. The state's essentially bankrupt." He said the only solution was to put it in receivership under the control of a federal judge. On that hopeful note, we presented him with a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, prayed for wisdom and discernment, and sent him back into the fray.

Come, Light Of Christ

A half-hour ago, a friend sent me this photograph of the brand new Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, California, a good image to behold this morning of the Feast of the Epiphany. Christmas ended last night. Today the church celebrates the enlightenment of the world as signified by the visit paid to the Holy Family by the Magi (the gospels actually don't say there were three of them).

In an hour or two, I'll have the blessing of preaching at St. John's School about three epiphanies -- the one in the Bible, the ones we experience when we least expect them (those aha! moments of revelation, belonging, and peace), and the ones we can actually engineer by counting our blessings instead of our grumps. I also just finished writing the "Prayers of the People" for our Epiphany season liturgy at St. John's Church, which will take us right up to Lent (which is closer than you think!). We'll be asking for Epiphany light to suffuse all the shadowed corners of our lives and world:

As our world is darkened by ambition, aggression, and injustice, may those in authority be continually strengthened to do what is best for all your people. We pray especially for the President and President-elect; for those serving in the Armed Forces of the United States; and for the safety of the innocent amid war and strife.

Light of Christ, shine in every heart.

Hat tip to Kris Elftmann

Jeez, You Take Everything So Seriously

My colleague Jim Lusby, at the pinnacle of a distinguished career in independent and Episcopal education, is an astute observer of the interpersonal dynamics of the not-yet-old. He enjoyed this New York Times article by a UC Berkeley psychology professor about the danger of defining bullying too widely:

The reason teasing is viewed as inherently damaging is that it is too often confused with bullying. But bullying is something different; it’s aggression, pure and simple. Bullies steal, punch, kick, harass and humiliate. Sexual harassers grope, leer and make crude, often threatening passes. They’re pretty ineffectual flirts. By contrast, teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human.

Amen. I'm afraid it took me about 45 years to figure this out. In childhood I learned to process all teasing as criticism, as confirmation of my sense of inadequacy. Eventually I learned that there are people who go through life making cheerful fun of everybody. It's how they communciate, and by and large they enjoy being teased back. I've also learned that it's best not to try it via e-mail, since visual and tone of voice cues are missing (you humorless, judgmental bastard).