Unconventional About Gender

In his talk to LA Episcopalians on Saturday morning during our annual convention, progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis described "playing the Sam Harris role" in a conversation with Muslim women on the subject of interfaith conflict. "I said, 'Wouldn't it be better if we just got rid of religion? Isn't religion the problem?'"

Wallis said one of the women replied, "Religion isn't the problem. It's males' interpretation of religion."

Wallis said the most important book he'd read in years was Half The Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who argue that a significant percentage of the world's worst problems could be ameliorated by the education and economic empowerment of women in the developing world. Be that as it may, the developed world still needs to empower them in the church, as well as in mosques and synagogues. Roger Ebert has an apt post about how most religious institutions devalue women by barring them from ordination, segregating them from men, or excluding them from leadership positions.

Among the few denominational exceptions is the Episcopal Church, and the Diocese of Los Angeles is a standout in TEC. This time last year, we elected two women as suffragan, or assistant, bishops, Diane Jardine Bruce and Mary Douglas Glasspool. They concelebrated our Holy Eucharist service Saturday morning, an unthinkable event in the vast majority of the churches where mass is said.

Not that our church or diocese is a paradise of gender equity. We heard a report that even in LA, male priests are paid more than women for comparable work. Nor has our stance on controversial questions earned universe acclaim. Bishop Glasspool is shown (top left) moderating a conversation about the proposed Anglican Covenant, which would impose unprecedented disciplinary procedures on the loosely federated family of churches know as the Anglican Communion. Punishment would be meted out when dioceses or provinces took actions that were offensive to other dioceses or provinces -- such as the ordination of women as bishops (which divides the Church of England) and TEC's continued insistence on the full sacramental stature of gay and lesbian people.

As usual, our two-day convention wasn't all speeches, budgets, resolutions, and elections. We heard a stemwinding sermon from our Diocesan bishop, J. Jon Bruno, urging everyone to bring a friend to church over Advent and Christmas (which I essentially repeated at church this morning). Calling in from Minneapolis, our beloved retired assisting bishop, Bob Anderson, who is in the late stages of pancreatic cancer, gave us a five-minute lesson on how to die in peace and faith (which I also repeated).

We prowled Riverside's historic, festooned Mission Inn. There was plenty of time for fellowship within our deputations (that's most of the crew from St. John's, above right) and with friends from around our far-flung, five-county diocese. Our worship was organized by Canon Randy Kimmler, a gifted liturgist. For the first time in my ten or so conventions, we didn't have an organ, just Fran McKendree and his Martin*. His voice, fingerpicking, and spirit filled the vast space as he led us in singing hymns, praise songs for thinking people, and Taize numbers.

A noted '70s folkie and an Episcopalian since youth, McKendree's become a welcome fixture at LA conventions and clergy conferences. For about two years after I saw his band, McKendree Spring, in high school, his composition "Got No Place To Fall" was my favorite song. Finding an mp3 would be the promised land.

***
*Fran writes that he was playing a 34-year-old Larrivee. Pretty embarrassing, since I'm a Larrivee guy myself.

Down By The Riverside

Progressive evangelical preacher and leader Jim Wallis (left) is married to the Rev. Joy Carroll, an Anglican priest from England who was the model for the fictional character in the BBC series "The Vicar Of Dibley." Speaking this morning to the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in Riverside, Wallis said that when their younger son, Jake, was watching Joy celebrate Holy Eucharist one day, he turned to dad and said, "Are guys allowed to do that?" More later on Wallis' reflections on women and faith. He's shown here with Paul Reza of St. John's.

No Episcopalians Yet, But We're Working On It!

Who's praying with the President? A circle of five, says the New York Times:

None of these pastors are [sic] affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming.

But as a group they can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either. Most, like [Sojourners' Jim] Wallis, do not take traditionally liberal positions on abortion or homosexuality. What most say they share with the president is the conviction that faith is the foundation in the fight against economic inequality and social injustice.

“These are all centrist, social justice guys,” said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, a politically active pastor of Azusa Community Church in Boston, who knows all of them but is not part of the president’s prayer caucus. “Obama genuinely comes out of the social justice wing of the church. That’s real. The community organizing stuff is real.”

A Debate Redolent Of 1981

Interesting if Reagan-era-esque exchange at "Sojourners." First, progressive evangelical Jim Wallis, who's in Davos:

We have trusted in “the invisible hand” to make everything turn out all right, believing that it wasn’t necessary for us to bring virtue to bear on our decisions. But things haven’t turned out all right and the invisible hand has let go of some things, such as “the common good.” The common good hasn’t been very common in our economic decision-making for some time now. And things have spun out of control. Gandhi’s seven deadly social sins seem an accurate diagnosis for some of the causes of this crisis: “politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.”

If we learn nothing from this crisis, all the pain and suffering it is causing will be in vain. But we can learn new habits of the heart, perhaps that suffering can even turn out to be redemptive. If we can regain a moral compass and find new metrics by which to evaluate our success, this crisis could become our opportunity to change.

And in response, "Lord_Voldemort":

That's just a wee bit of an oversimplification. Actually, we've trusted in a mixed economy of private business overseen by an often burdensome regulatory state, backed by a substantial welfare state. That's especially true in Europe, which hasn't escaped any of the difficulties of this recession, and largely true in the US, although the welfare state aspect is much less substantial here.

I think Jim's reference to Gandhi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins" was quite apt, but I think a strong case can be made that much of what has gone wrong is more a failure of the regulatory and welfare state than of markets. For years governments have been inclined to see the goods that private enterprises actually provide, however imperfectly, as secondary to their value as a source of tax revenue or as tools that they can redirect toward their favored ends. In the process, they have created many of the things that Gandhi rightfully scorns: wealth (redistributed) without work, education (in public schools) without character. Not to mention politics without principle. (See: HR 1, the "Stimulus Bill" Heh heh.)

A free-market advocate will not go for very long without acknowledging that markets are to some extent a deal with the devil; much of what we propose to do is harness self-interest. But the same self interest is present in all persons, in the market or in government. Advocates of activist government seldom acknowledge that self-interest affects government as well. If we have romanticized anything in this age, it is the state. And now, I suspect, we are paying for that mistake.