Preamble: Evangelically Departed
This newsletter is intended to help. I think generally that I am a hopeful person. This hope is not something that I have conjured up from ability, maybe even not from temperament. This hope, for me at least, comes from faith. Thing is though, I am not really that interested in getting you to believe what I believe. What I’d prefer to do, what I aim to do is to bear witness to the hope that I have.
The name of the newsletter comes from the context of having been a pastor in an evangelical church for over 25 years. I loved it. I loved the people. The secret I’d like to tell though, is that I did not love some key parts of the theology. I found the theology to be dark and often hopeless. It was a contrast to the hope that I found in the Jesus of the Bible. Evangelical in its translation means “good news”. However, too often the truth is that evangelical, in its current meaning politically and socially and religiously has come to mean “bad news”. If you believe that mostly everyone who has ever lived is doomed to a horrible, even torture-filled eternity unless they believe what you believe, I’d say that is bad news. If you believe that an eternal devastation is coming for everyone except for people like you, I’d say that’s bad news. If you were told that almost everyone around you is going to be forever doomed, but that you might escape such a fate, would you call that good news? I think that such belief is more “dysangelical” (bad news).
Since I have taken steps away from what evangelicalism has become in our cultural context, I have felt more hopeful. I have found a greater depth of faith and I have had affirmed a love of all humanity rather than the escape of a few from some dismal future.
So, Evangelically Departed. But it’s good news, really.
2021 Week One
First: A suggestion for a word for 2021 – “Empathy”
The pandemic of 2020 (and now beyond) has meant that the word of the year for 2020 is “COVID-19”. I would love it if the word of the year for 2021 could be “empathy”. No one wants to live in a time of massive illness, tragedy, loss and international calamity. Safe to say that none of us would have chosen this. Yet here we are, in this ongoing pandemic.
It has been astounding how much people have faced in the midst of this. People have lost family members and been unable to see their ailing loved ones. Healthcare workers have accepted risk to their own lives and given more to their work than they could have imagined possible. People have been laid off from work, many left to try to map out some kind of future in terms of finances, looking for a way to pay the bills.
What can take away emotional energy perhaps the most, is disappointment. We have long since dropped the hopeful naiveté of the words, “we are all in this together”. Things have not really turned out that way. In Canada, early January 2021 has brought news that a number of politicians travelled for vacations and other non-essential reasons during the pandemic. Our public health authorities and federal and provincial governments have said that we should not travel unless we really have to, unless it’s essential. One of the politicians who travelled to Palm Springs California (twice) said that it was essential. In his words the travel was necessary for “essential home maintenance” on a resort property of his. Awesome!
We can too often put our individual rights ahead of the common good.
We would clearly rather not be “all in this together”.
In speaking with friends who are doctors and nurses I have seen a common exasperation; sometimes to the point of emotional exhaustion. This bleakness comes from an awareness that we can too often put our individual rights ahead of the common good.
Somehow it made me feel better recently to see that Pope Francis was also exasperated. In a homily the Sunday after New Years he spoke about how he was disappointed that people were travelling, putting their individual comfort ahead of others lives.
So, the word “empathy”:
A recent column in the Washington Post outlined the importance of empathy at a time like this. The authors mention two types of empathy. The first is emotional empathy. This has to do with sharing other people’s feelings. Emotional empathy is important in helping us relate to other people and in making decisions based not on our comfort, but on the good of another person. The second kind of empathy is cognitive empathy. This has less to do with feelings and more to do with seeking understanding. Cognitive empathy leads us to try to understand another person’s perspective. For things to get better in 2021 the biggest necessity will be effective vaccination programmes. For things to get and stay better in 2021 we will need cognitive empathy. This means that we don’t first marshal facts and information to back up our view of how misguided or terrible other people are. Instead we start with seeking to understand their perspective. As long as we demonize people on the other side as evil or stupid or horrible or terrible we likely won’t get anywhere good (even if there is some truth in our assessment). A better way is to look for the humanity of the other person. What do they care about? Why might they be acting as they are?
For things to get better and to stay better in 2021 we will need cognitive empathy, the desire to understand the perspective of others.
We can all try it. Determine to seek cognitive empathy with people who think and act and believe differently than you do. We’ll all be the better for it.
Second: Faith and Politics and Hope
This week in Politics – Oh, again USA?
Tuesday is the day of the run-off elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that will decide the balance of power in the United States Senate.
A recent editorial on the Fox News website claimed that if you are a Christian and you want to vote according to Christian values you must vote for the two Republican candidates. It is striking how unlike Jesus these kinds of comments sound. They are an example of how the word “evangelical” in the United States has come to refer to politics, not to faith. There are Christians who vote Republican out of Christian conviction and Christians who vote Democratic out of Christian conviction. Any statement that says otherwise is a political statement, not a statement about faith or religion. What is curious to me is that the author of the editorial (a far right leader of the Christian nationalist movement) would argue that the pastor of the church that Martin Luther King Jr. used to lead is somehow not a Christian. It’s a kind of sickness to do things like this.
I am waiting for the editorial from a right-wing evangelical leader in the United States that argues for parting company with Jesus because he was dangerously socialist. It seemed laughable to me not long ago that such a thing could exist, but the way things are going, it might be appearing soon.
Third: An Example of Empathy
If you want to see an example of hope and empathy, find a way to watch a film that was critically acclaimed at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2020. CNN was involved in the production of the film so it was recently (Jan 3) shown on the network. It is called, “Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President”. Carter won the presidency in 1976 and lost it in 1980. It is no coincidence that the right wing evangelical movement was shaped largely in opposition to Jimmy Carter. Jerry Falwell and others saw Carter as a threat. I think that Carter was and remains an example of Christian Faith and Hope. As 2021 begins with a transfer of presidential power in the United States (contested largely by evangelical Christians) it is a contrast to see how Jimmy Carter handled losing. Due to the Iran hostage crisis and the American energy crisis, Carter was seen as weak and lost the electoral college 489 to 49). Fifty-two hostages had been held in the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. Carter had been encouraged to take up major military action against Iran, but he saw that option as a threat to the lives of those hostages. He wanted to ensure their safe return. As Carter arrived back in Plains, Georgia after leaving the White House, he spoke before the crowd welcoming him home. He spoke with genuine joy about the fact that the hostages had just been released and were safe. He thought not of himself (arguably the circumstances were humiliating for him) but of those 52 people. With a big smile on his face he told the crowd that the hostages were safe and then, still with the smile, he danced with his wife Rosalynn.
Watch the film. It’ll give you some hope that light is greater than darkness.
A beautiful passage of scripture from Philippians chapter 2.
A foundation for empathy;
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.”
I could say of my husband who passed....he had a servant’s heart.