Tag: racism

No Forgiveness Unless We Confess and Face the Truth

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, spiritual discipline

“ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his word is not in us.” I John 1:8-10

The Bible is very consistently on the side of honesty and truth. That doesn’t mean everyone in the Bible is honest and truthful, far from it. From Adam and Eve’s deceit about the forbidden fruit, to Abraham lying that Sarah was his sister to save his own skin, to Peter’s denying that he even knew Jesus three times, and so many more incidents humanity’s fallible nature shows up in nearly every chapter of the biblical narrative.

That doesn’t mean the standards and values set forward for us in the Scriptures are not high. The 8th commandment is “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” and John 8: 32 tells us that it’s truth, not lies, that sets us free.

God knows we are not going to live up to those high ideals because She made us with free will and knew we would abuse that gift regularly. And knowing that, God built into the system grace and mercy and forgiveness.

But as I John points out, there’s a catch. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” But there’s good news because that verse goes on to say “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

That’s pretty straightforward. We screw up, but if confess our shortcomings and failures instead of trying to hide them from, others, ourselves, or from God, which is a fool’s errand for sure, there is redemption.

I bring that up just now because we Americans are experiencing a real shortage of honesty, truth, and confession right now. Yes, I know that’s always been the case, but just now truth is being exiled and threatened at the highest echelons of American society. Our president is so insecure and ignorant of American and World history, let alone the Christian Gospel, that he is terrified by truth.

He is purging exhibits from the Smithsonian because they make slavery look bad! For God’s sake how can anything make chattel slavery, lynching other human beings for the color of their skin, and 400 years of systemic racism look anything but bad? The truth is that The United States was founded on racism and enslavement of African people and on genocide against Native Americans who were here for centuries before white immigrants arrived.

That’s a hard truth to swallow, I know, but trying to bury it with lies, book burnings, and threats to historians only makes the crime worse. As I John tells us, the only road to forgiveness is through the pain of confession, and confession requires a cold hard look at Truth, no matter how awful it is.

Out of sight may be out mind, but it doesn’t change the truth. Rounding up and imprisoning people experiencing homelessness may make some people more comfortable who don’t have to witness that problem, but it doesn’t change the truth that the wealthiest nation in the world refuses to address the grave social issues of poverty, hunger, health care, and adequate shelter that should be basic human rights

We cannot solve problems we refuse to admit we have. That’s the essence of confession. Climate change is the biggest current disaster caused by denial of its existence. Had we confessed as a nation that we were poisoning our planet decades ago we would not be in the mess we are in today.

The truth can set us free, but only if we have the humility and courage to face it. Until then, “If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and God’s truth is not in us.”

Disunited We Stand

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Government Reform

President Trump’s Big Budget and Policy bill recently passed in the House of Representatives by one single vote, and that was with the considerable power of the Administration advocating for its passage. A procedural matter on that same bill just yesterday passed in the Senate 51-49. These razor thin margins remind us how deeply divided we are as a nation right now. But those votes also reminded me of a piece of early Ohio history that I just learned about five years ago.

This was actually my second reminder of this critical moment in my state’s history. Just last week Bishop Hee-Soo Jung preached at a Juneteenth worship service at our church. Bishop Jung is new to Ohio having been assigned to the Ohio Episcopal Area just nine months ago.

So he has been studying the history of his new home state and reminded us in his sermon that in the 19th century enslaved people in the south thought of the Ohio River as the River Jordan and Ohio as the Promised Land because if they could make it to cross that river they were free.

I told the Bishop after the service of this critical incident in Ohio’s early history that could have changed all of that imagery and reality drastically.

I wrote about that chapter in our history which included a super close vote on approving the Ohio state constitution 222 years ago in an earlier blog post, and with our current political climate being what it is I decided to repost that piece to remind us all that we’ve been here before and that acts of solitary individuals can make a history-altering difference.

The post is from June of 2000 entitled “One Vote Really Matters.”

Until very recently if one of the most important names in Ohio history were to be a Final Jeopardy answer I would have been clueless. And I’m guessing that most of my fellow Ohioans who took the required Ohio History class in middle school would also not be able to identify Ephraim Cutler.

I would still have no idea of the critical role Cutler played in shaping the history of my state if a friend of mine had not recently moved to Marietta, the first white settlement in what became the Buckeye state. Because this colleague of mine now resides in Marietta she made mention on social media of David McCullough’s recent book about Ohio’s beginnings, “The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West.”

I am a big fan of McCullough and am very glad to be reading this book. I must say it started slow and took me awhile to get into it, but it was worth the effort for one of the most relevant stories in the book that lit up for me like a Christmas tree because of our most recent unrest about the evil of racism in our nation.

Cutler and his father were prominent leaders in establishing the first settlement in the 1790’s in the newly acquired Northwest Territory and because of their prominence in Marietta Ephraim was elected in the early days of the 1800’s as one of two delegates to represent Marietta and Washington County at the convention responsible for creating a constitution for Ohio statehood.

I was surprised to learn that one of the most heated debates at that convention held in the Territorial Capitol at Chillicothe was over whether slavery would be permitted in Ohio. And even more shocking to my naïveté was how close the vote was on the provision about slavery.

Ephraim Cutler was one of the most vocal opponents of the slavery provision, but on the day of the critical vote on that item Cutler was so gravely ill that he could barely get out of bed. His friends pleaded with him and physically helped him to get to the chamber for the vote, and it was a very important thing they did; because the proposal for Ohio to be admitted to the union as a slave state was defeated by that one single vote.

My mind is still blown by that piece of history. I am shocked at how close my home state came to being a place where human slavery was allowed. I have been self-righteously smug that we Ohioans are better than that, but we came within the narrowest of margins of becoming a slave state.

That history has helped me understand better the depth of the political divisions in our state and our country even today. I knew there have always been deep-seated disagreements about race from day one in these United States — which have never been united on that issue. But realizing how heated that debate was at the very inception of statehood here in Ohio helped me understand at a deeper level why it is so hard to resolve this issue.

Ephraim Cutler also taught me again that one life and even one vote can make all the difference in the world. Imagine what Ohio history would look like if we had become a slave state. Would we have joined the Confederacy? Would we have statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson being removed here in our state capital?

I thank God that brave pioneer dragged himself out of bed to take a stand for justice that day in Chillicothe. His bravery and integrity inspires me to do my part in that on-going struggle for America’s highest ideals today. I hope I do not soon forget who Ephraim Cutler was, and I thank David McCullough for telling his story. It has never been more important to study and learn from our history.

Try this in a small town

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith Development

“When he (Jesus) came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.” (Luke 4:16-17)

All the discussion of country singer Jason Aldean ’s song, “Try That in a Small Town” reminded me of Jesus’ return to preach in the small town where he grew up. I flunked my first sermon in seminary preaching class, but Jesus got a much harsher response to his first message that day in Nazareth. Luke tells us Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, and that part of his Sabbath was very well received. Verse 11 says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

But then Jesus goes ahead and interprets the text and tells his audience that the good news he brings to the captives, the blind and the oppressed is not just for them but for all of God’s children with examples of how the prophets Elijah and Elisha went specifically to minister to gentiles in Sidon and Syria instead of to those in Israel. And just like that the crowd does a 180 and turns on him. “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.” (Verse 28). And where the Gospels of Mark and Matthew just have Jesus leaving town at that point, Luke adds these words: “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” (Vss. 29-30)

I did a lot of research in graduate school on such negative reaction to public speaking and wrote a paper I titled “They Shoot Prophets Don’t They?” I had a personal interest in that topic having come of age in the last turbulence in American history which saw the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers and Dr. King, all within a five year period. In my research, I became impressed with the work of Lawrence Kohlberg on moral development and the role of cognitive dissonance in persuasive communication. To my great pleasure that very research was mentioned by one of my favorite author’s, Father Richard Rohr, in his book, “Everything Belongs,” which I just happened to be listening to on the very day I started thinking about this topic again. I am humbled and thrilled that Fr. Rohr’s use of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is almost verbatim what I wrote about that research in my Ph.D. dissertation 40 years ago. The application of Kohlberg’s theories about how to effectively communicate with people who have very different moral and ethical values formed the heart of my own theory of preaching which I shared with seminary students in preaching classes over a 20 year period from 1991-2012.

I believe that theory can help us understand and bridge some of the vast divide we are experiencing in our country today. The country song controversy is very illustrative of how volatile and dangerous that divide is and has been throughout American history. I grew up in a small town and can identify with the good, bad, and ugly aspects of what that experience was and still is like. There were many positive aspects to spending the first 20 years of my life in Wapakoneta, Ohio, a small, county-seat town in very rural, very white, and very conservative northwestern Ohio. It was a very safe place where kids were free to roam all over town on our bikes. Everyone knew everyone else; so people looked out for each other’s kids. I am grateful for that age of innocence and the freedom it provided for me to enjoy a carefree childhood and adolescence.

But I am also angry about the flip side of that experience. We didn’t know what we didn’t know about the broader world outside our comfort zone. Our fathers and uncles who were survivors of the Great Depression and/or veterans of World War II certainly knew more than they shared with us about issues of race and political divisions, at least in my family. All I remember being told about why there were no people of color in our town is that “we aren’t prejudiced; those people just don’t choose to live here.” It turns out there was good reason for that. I learned many years later that one of my great uncles was a leader in the local chapter of the KKK, and just this week heard from a high school classmate that for some time there was a sign outside our town that said something to the effect “Get Your Black Ass Out of Town Before Dark.” That’s the ugly kind of small town life Aldean certainly alludes to in his song and accompanying video.

One major factor in the political chasm threatening our democracy is the rural-urban divide Aldean sings about. The life experience of small town and rural people in this country is so different from urban life that it is like living in two different countries. I addressed some of that in my post on July 18, “Culture War Games While the Planet Burns,” but I want to focus here on how to approach that reality in a constructive way. In an oversimplified description, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development I mentioned above is that there are 6 stages of moral development numbered 1-6. Stage 1 is a very self-centered stage we all start out in because that kind of selfishness is necessary for infants to survive. People in stage 1 say what is morally good is whatever is good for me. Stage 6 is the other extreme where morality is defined in a universal way to mean that moral goodness is determined by what is good for everyone and for the whole world/universe. Only people like Jesus, Mohammad, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Dr. King ever come close to stage 6.

Most people, and this is just fact, not judgment, never grow beyond a stage 3 or 4 in moral development, and that’s the problem prophets like Jesus have in small towns like Nazareth. Kohlberg’s research found that when there is a gap of 2 stages or greater in moral development between a speaker and an audience there is a major breakdown in communication. That gap creates so much cognitive dissonance, which is the perception of contradictory information and the mental stress it causes, that we consistency-loving humans will do whatever we can to reduce that stress. That often means simply ignoring the one causing the cognitive dissonance or, as the gap widens, arguing, disparaging or insulting the speaker, and ultimately, if the gap is too great either driving the speaker out of town as happens to Jesus, or in the most tragic situations actually killing him or her, which again finally happens to Jesus on the cross.

The major lesson for us Americans right now is to turn down the heat in our political discourse by bridging the gaps in our cultural, moral, worldviews. Kohlberg concludes that we cannot communicate with each other until the gap between us is one stage of moral development or less. In other words a speaker who is a stage 4 trying to communicate with a stage 2 or 3 person must meet that person where he or she is and communicate respectfully with that person in ways that are not threatening to them. We must find common ground to stand on before we can hope to understand one another. For example, all humans have a basic need for what Abraham Maslow calls psychological and physical security and safety. People in small towns and big cities all share that need, and to understand that we all express that need in different ways goes a long way toward bridging our differences on other values and beliefs. And when our feeling of safety is threatened by people who look, act, and think differently than we do, we need to resist the temptation to attack, blame, ridicule, or judge them. The Golden Rule to treat others as we want to be treated is always a good first step in building a bridge or tearing down a wall that separates us from others.

Unfortunately it seems our human instinct is to do just the opposite when confronted with the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Social media is full of memes these days making fun of small town people and calling each other names instead of trying to understand where others are coming from. We live in very scary times and most of us don’t know how to express that fear. To do so makes us feel vulnerable and cowardly. It’s much easier and more fun to attack those we disagree with, but it only turns up the heat and the fear on both sides.

I had a very simple example of a change of just one word making a huge difference just last week. I try to avoid debates on social media because they are often unproductive and can seem endless in their back and forth nature. I expressed that reluctance to a friend that I felt a need to respond to by saying that I hate “arguing.” Her very helpful response to me was, “This is not an argument, it’s a discussion.” That one shift in perspective moved the conversation from a win-lose situation to a productive exploration of where we could find common ground.

We need more discussion and less arguing, more willingness to meet others where they are in a spirit of understanding. From there we can both learn and grow from each other and help each other move to a higher stage of moral development where we all strive to do what is best for everyone. The alternative is to end up like “The two cats of Kilkenny. Each thought there was one cat too many. So they fought and they fit; they clawed and they bit, until except for their nails and the tips of their tails, instead of two cats there weren’t any.”

Culture War Games While the Planet Burns

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Government Reform

Sometimes things are so bad I just have to laugh to keep from completely losing my mind. This Monday night was one of those times. I watched way too much tv and internet news that day as I spent hours prepping and recovering from a colonoscopy. Fires, floods, scorching heat waves, mass shootings, and Putin’s madness are not the kind of news designed to improve my outlook on life after a less than chipper day.

But then came the icing on the cake from our local newscast at 10pm. With all the other problems threatening our very existence on this planet guess what critical legislation our beloved Republican Ohio legislature is spending their time and energy on? 50 of them are co-sponsors on a bill banning Drag Shows where children might be present! Our illegally gerrymandered legislature is a laughing stock, but they have outdone themselves this time.

I am not one who is likely to ever attend a drag show, but this proposed legislation, blatantly aimed at threatening the LGBTQ+ community, shows yet again how threatened so many people are about any hint of sexuality that is different or unfamiliar to them. I am frustrated but also feel empathy for those legislators and the constituents they are pandering to for votes. The world is going mad so fast that people are retreating into the armor of clinging to anything that even vaguely resembles a past that seemed stable and secure in comparison to all the frightening developments elsewhere in urban centers and around the world.

Most of our Ohio Republican legislatures come from small towns and counties where much of life still resembles a slower and simpler 20th century existence. I grew up in one of those rural counties and have served churches in two others; so I have some empathy for people who live and vote there. For the most part these people are still living with a worldview they learned in those conservative communities. Most have not been exposed to diversity in race, theology, sociology, or politics. The values they cherish have been handed down for generations and are reinforced by their political representatives and news outlets like Fox News.

People who look different, speak a different language, worship in different ways, and those who challenge even our most intimate sexual identities are a threat to a way of life that is changing at the speed of light. Politicians have learned to use the fear of change people are experiencing to manipulate them into voting for their conservative political reps and keeping them in power.

These frightened people are a minority in our country, a shrinking minority, which fans the flames of their fear, and unfortunately the right wing demagogues have outsmarted most of us by using antiquated systems of government, like gerrymandering and the Electoral College, to grab and hold power for their own benefit and especially for the benefit of their political donors.

Change is difficult, but the backlash to change we have been experiencing in this country ever since Barack Obama was elected President is truly frightening. At the heart of that backlash and the unshakeable support shown for a twice impeached and twice indicted former President I believe is the systemic racism upon which this country was founded 400 years ago. That fear of people of color is so strong that millions of people are willing to destroy our democracy over it.

We of course survived a bloody civil war over racism, but this attack from within the halls of Congress on our system of justice and our electoral procedures is far more insidious and dangerous. I write this dire post because I truly believe the next 16 months will determine the fate of American democracy. Our allies are amazed and frightened that a second Trump presidency is even a possibility. There is speculation that Putin will try to extend the war in Ukraine long enough to see his friend Trump elected and pull the rug out from under Ukraine and NATO.

Republicans like Kevin McCarthy who were sharply critical of Trump after the January 6th insurrection are now attacking the Department of Justice for investigating the traitors who staged that bloody attempted coup. Trump’s defenders are trying to convince the American people that what we all saw live on our televisions that day didn’t really happen. If that strategy works 2024 will become 1984 and the great American experiment will crash and burn like the wildfires caused in part by the deniers of climate change. If those climate change deniers regain control of our government the whole planet is toast. I am just praying that this summer of extreme weather will awaken enough voters to avert further damage to our planet and our democracy before it is too late.

The Dream That Will Not Die

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, mission, purpose

They say “misery loves company,” whoever “they” are, and I experienced a little “comfort” from being in the majority yesterday, MLK Day. NPR did an excellent job all day of doing interviews about people who influenced Dr. King and vice versa. I was listening while driving so couldn’t take notes, but I was struck by one professor’s comment. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s important to remind people today who rightfully honor King for being the great civil rights leader that he was that he was not loved and was even reviled by a majority of Americans while he was alive. He cited stats indicating that about 60% of white Americans regarded MLK as a rabble rouser and trouble maker during his lifetime, and a bit surprising, that 50% of black Americans disagreed with King’s tactics and felt he was making their lives more difficult.

Those stats helped ease some guilt I’ve carried for 50 plus years for being one of those whites who dismissed Dr. King as a troublemaker. I even remember thinking the horrible thought that “he got what he was asking for” when he was assassinated. Given my upbringing in an all white, very conservative family and community where in the words of a Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song from “South Pacific” I was “carefully taught to hate all the people my relatives hate” that is not too surprising. In fact I learned just a few years ago that there was a KKK chapter in my NW Ohio community and that one of my great uncles was one of the leaders in that ugly movement. My younger self had no chance but to breathe in the putrid stench of racism.

I was a senior in college, however, when King was gunned down in Memphis and should have begun to know better. My old worldviews were being stretched a bit at that point, but I still remember hearing a sermon the Sunday after Dr. King’s murder where the preacher referred to King as a “Christ figure.” That was more than my puny mind could handle back then, and in hindsight I think it might have been too much for his congregation too since he was soon forced out of that church after only two years there. And that was one of Methodism’s more “liberal” churches. Ironically that pastor became a good friend, colleague, and mentor to me 5 or 6 years later when I was appointed associate pastor to that same congregation after graduating from seminary.

By then I had been converted to a social gospel theology by my seminary professors, and I too got in some hot water for crossing the imaginary line between church and politics. A few years later when I went back to grad school to study rhetoric, which classically is the art of persuasive discourse, I wrote a paper I titled “They Shoot Prophets, Don’t They?” That paper was partly my excuse for not being a more outspoken social critic and partly my more scholarly attempt to understand the very real historical phenomenon I had lived through in the assassinations in Dallas, Memphis, and L.A. in just 5 years between 1963 and 1968.

Prophets are much easier to love from the perspective of history — when they are not goring our current oxen. Lincoln was reviled and hated in his lifetime. Gandhi was assassinated. And let’s not forget about Jesus. We’ve sanitized his crucifixion with the flawed doctrine of substitutionary atonement when the cold hard truth is that Jesus was executed because he was a thorn in the side of the Jewish and Roman authorities who had to go.

One other thing I remember about grad school 30 plus years ago is that I wrote a different paper analyzing the rhetorical effectiveness of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. My argument then and now is that the reason that speech was so powerful is because the dream MLK delivered so eloquently on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was not a new dream. King’s dream speech was brilliantly built on the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition all the way back to Amos and Micah and Isaiah. Those visions of “righteousness rolling down like waters,” of “doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God” were also woven into the founding documents of our nation by Jefferson. King reminds us all in his powerful voice and vibrant images of those very values our common life aspires to.

That dream has survived crucifixion, persecution, crusades, pogroms, Holocaust, genocide, and systemic racism for over 2800 years. It is so easy to be discouraged that the forces of evil have risen up in recent years to seemingly defeat that dream, but the lesson of history is that truth and justice will prevail someday. It’s very frustrating that we have regressed in our pursuit of the dream Dr. King lived and died for. Our schools and neighborhoods and churches are still segregated. Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate Robert E. Lee day on King’s birthday. White supremacy has polluted the political mainstream and taken over the party of Lincoln. But we still have a dream that is stronger than hate, and “deep in my heart I do believe, that dream will overcome someday.”

Dis-United: Realism vs Aspirations

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Government Reform

May 2022 will go down in my personal history as one of the most difficult in my life. I have not written a post here for over a month for a number of reasons, including trying to work through my chronic pain to help care for our beautiful 2 acre property. My depression over my failing strength has coupled with despair over humankind’s addiction to violence. From Mariupol to Buffalo to Uvalde bloodshed has colored the news and my Eeyore-like emotional state.

Amidst all the terrible news of current affairs the unmerry month of May has been the scene of schism in the United Methodist Church, my church home for 65 years. That split along with the related political paralysis in our country got me searching for a common thread. There are several, but the one that captured my imagination is the semantic commonality shared by both my country and my church, namely that both share in their names a paradoxical claim to be “united.”

The UMC was founded 54 years ago in 1968 with the merger of two denominations, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren and is younger than the USA by almost 200 years. Realizing that the word “united” in both cases is more aspirational than descriptive, it still saddens me greatly that in both cases the divisions have widened over their lifespan rather than moved closer to living up to their names.

Case in point: “The United States may have been founded on the idea that all men are created equal, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slaveholding was common among the statesmen who served as president. All told, at least 12 chief executives—over a quarter of all American presidents—enslaved people during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office.” (history.com)

The authors of the American experiment in democracy included the damning phrase in our constitution that enslaved persons only counted as 3/5 of a person because those authors were predominantly slave owners. That 3/5 clause was a compromise to “unite” the northern and southern colonies, but at a price we are still paying for today. Systemic racism had already been in existence for over 150 years in those colonies, and the battle over it dominated the country’s politics for 80 years ending in the bloodiest war in our history. But, unlike what most of us were taught in school, that war didn’t solve this existential problem. Systemic racism continued to poison our nation through lynchings, Jim Crowe laws, and outright genocide against Native Americans. That racism may have seemed to go underground for a few years after the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s but reared its ugly head again in the 21st century in the twin evils of birtherism and Trumpism.

It frustrates me greatly that we weren’t taught about this disunited history in school. Our history text books never mentioned the Tulsa massacre of 1921or many other similar atrocities all over the country. We did not learn about the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee or lynching of black folks for public entertainment sanctioned by the church. Those omissions were not our teachers’ fault. Those ugly parts of our history were so buried and censored that our educators didn’t know either and kept passing those lies along. “United” States? Not even close.

The disunity of the United Methodist denomination is a similarly sad story. I was ordained in 1969 in the first class of ordinands in the infant UMC. Three years later the exclusionary language condemning homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching” was inserted into our Book of Discipline, the rule book governing the UMC, by the first General Conference of the new UMC. And for the next 50 years that culture war has raged, leading to the schism in our denomination.. That Covid-postponed split began to unfold officially on May 1, 2022 with the launching of a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church by those who are opposed to ordination and marriage for LGBTQ people.

So we have these two “united” in name only entities with ever-widening irreconcilable differences. When stuck in that kind of relationship a married couple faces the painful reality that separation and divorce may be the lesser of two evils. Divorce is always messy but sometimes necessary for both parties to survive and flourish. Even Jesus instructed his disciples in Matthew 10:14: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

Are we at that point in either the UMC or USA? For me the answer is yes and maybe. In the case of the UMC I am convinced that a divorce is necessary. For 50 of my 53 years as an ordained pastor in the UMC the debate over LGBTQ equality in the eyes of God has dominated a large part of our corporate life and consumed so much time and energy that could have been used in more important forms of ministry. As one with first-hand experience with marital divorce I can attest to how much emotional energy is consumed by conflict and pretending to be something we are not. There comes a time in some marriages when the most loving decision is to set each other free, and the UMC is at that point.

As for the USA the issues are far more complicated. Our two major political parties are so far apart on most issues there is little common ground upon which to stand. The Gospel of John tells us that we need truth to set us free and we aren’t getting much truth. The Republican Party has descended to fear-mongering and lies to get or maintain power. Too many individuals are so concerned with inflation and losing our own privileged lives to see the bigger picture. Such short-sightedness means we keep kicking the can of climate change and other critical issues down the road and leaving our children and grandchildren with a bleak future. Any modicum of impartiality and non-partisanship in the judiciary at every level has succumbed to political gamesmanship. Any hope for real election reform to undo the damage caused by Citizens United would have to be enacted by the very lawmakers who benefit from existing laws. That seems to be an idealistic pipe dream.

When we can’t even manage a peaceful transition of power in a Presidential election it seems hopeless to think we Americans could engineer any kind of altruistic or amicable divorce.

For real or even semi-unity in either of these cases a healthy dose of conversion to comply more closely to our founding ideals in the Bible or the constitution respectively would be necessary. Unfortunately the only road to conversion is through confession and repentance, and I see little humility needed to make that happen in our church or nation. If we continue to bear the heavy burden of pretending to be something we are not instead of facing the hard truth of our real history we will never have the courage or energy needed to hear the truth.

But here’s the truth that sets us free. We are still loved even in our division and sinfulness. Our creator’s unconditional love is what sets us free to confess our failures and move toward a more perfect union. It’s that simple and yet so hard because it requires a leap of faith. The alternative is to keep widening the chasm of disunity until it is beyond repair.

Critical Race Theory and the Road to Reconciliation

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, spiritual discipline

I spent part of the pandemic studying and discussing systemic racism with other Christians concerned about living out our faith as anti-racists. In that process I have learned many hard lessons about the dark side of American history that most of us did not learn about in our schools or churches. It is very uncomfortable work, and while there are signs of hope, the current pseudo-debate over Critical Race Theory reminds us how far we have to go to heal 400 years of injustice and the wounds caused by racism.

I know much of the anti-CRT rhetoric coming from the Republican Right is just more red meat for the Trumpist base, but it also occurs to me that part of the problem that has gotten us where we are must be owned by the Christian church. A large part of the reason we have not learned about the horrors of lynchings as public spectacles or events like the Tulsa massacre is a failure by the church to teach and live out the true good news of the Christian Gospel.

Most of us can think of events in our own lives or of our families that we would be very embarrassed to have made public. I certainly have plenty in my life. It’s no different for a nation to want to put the best face on our actions and accomplishments as a country. For example, if we are writing a history of 1969 we Americans would much rather focus on the Apollo 11 moon landing than the My Lai massacre. But both are part of that year’s history, and we can’t get an honest picture of American culture in the ‘60’s without knowing about both.

Criticism is never easy to swallow. A favorite push back against critics of the Viet Nam war was the slogan “America: Love it or Leave it.” Such a defensive reaction to having unattractive aspects of our history exposed is easy to understand, but unless we can get comfortable with being uncomfortable about those embarrassing parts of our lives as individuals or as a nation we can never learn from them or move beyond them.

Much of our failure to embrace all of our history stems from a misunderstanding of God and God’s justice. Father Richard Rohr describes the difference between human and divine understandings of “justice” this way in his daily meditation this week (7/6/21): “When we think of justice, we ordinarily think of a balance: if the scales tip too much on the side of wrong, justice is needed to set things right. But God’s justice does not make sense to human ideas of justice! We define justice in terms of what we’ve done, what we’ve earned, and what we’ve merited. Our image of justice is often some form of retribution, which we then project onto God. When most people say, ‘We want justice!’ they normally mean that bad deeds should be punished or that they want vengeance. But Jesus says that’s simply not the case with God. The issue is how much can we trust God? How much can we stand in the flow of God’s infinite love? How much can we let God love us in our worst moments?”

This means that understanding God’s grace as unconditional love, even if we can’t wrap our minds around it completely, frees us from the fear of being punished for our sin. It is what Jesus means in John 8:32 when he says “the truth will set us free.” The truth is God’s love for us is so much greater than our worst behavior, even centuries of systemic racism, that we can face the truth, confess our sin and be set free to live in right relationships with our sisters and brothers.

When we read the many stories in the Bible about God’s relationships with sinful humans we can experience for ourselves what God’s grace feels like. Time after time in Scripture God calls and uses fallible human beings to further God’s reign of righteousness. Jacob deceived his blind father to steal his brother’s birthright, Moses murdered an Egyptian, David was an adulterer and murderer, Rahab was a prostitute, Saul was a vicious persecutor of Christians before God turned him around on the road to Damascus. These stories and what we hear on the nightly news are all examples of how all of us fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

The pantheon of American heroes is no different. Most of the brave men who pledged their “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” by signing the Declaration of Independence owned other human beings. Even our patriotic songs recognize that we are always in need of creating a more perfect union. “America the Beautiful” includes a line asking God to “mend our every flaw.”

We are a flawed nation made up of flawed human beings, but there is no shame or fear in showing God and ourselves that contrary to the famous line in the movie “A Few Good Men” we can and we must handle the truth. The alternative is that the lies about our history that we have passed down from generation to generation by commission or omission will continue to fester and poison our nation with hate and fear.

I John 1:9 Says it best: “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But confession is the key word in that verse. Admitting our failure is the only way to be free of the burden of guilt and move on to a place that is closer to the peaceable kingdom God intends for all of creation. Friends, there is no reason to fear confession or humbly learning about the dark side of our history because God’s love and mercy are guaranteed. Thanks be to God!

Writer’s Block and Political Mayhem

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Government Reform

Sometimes the way through a roadblock is to just drive through it and see what happens. I’ve been stuck for all of 2021 so far in a writer’s roadblock. There are many reasons for that I will not list here because I fear they will sound like excuses.

For whatever reason(s) I have been a distant observer to all that’s happened in our nation since 2021 began with a whimper. COVID precautions, including a 10pm curfew in Ohio made any “normal” celebration of the new year impossible. But we still turned the calendar eager to put 2020 in the rear view mirror. But putting a new date on things did not alter the realities of pandemic living.

An imminent change in our national leadership should have given hope that a new day was dawning, but that hope was blindsided by a violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol just 6 days into the new year. January 6 could have been a good news day for Democrats like me when both D’s won Senate seats in a Georgia run off election, but that ray of hope was lost in the commotion of the Capitol riot.

Much more than windows were shattered on January 6. Any notion of a peaceful transfer of power were trampled in the dust. People died, and that is tragic; but near fatal blows were also struck against our democracy. I believe a second impeachment trial is necessary given Trump’s role inciting violence on January 6 and for the whole 4 years of his reign, but I am very sad that the trial will inflame passions and make any desperately needed attempts to heal our nation’s gaping divisions much harder if not impossible.

I am personally pleased that the Biden administration has begun to roll back some of Donald Trump’s most egregious actions and has begun an organized national response to the pandemic. Unfortunately dealing with the virus of hate, delusion and conspiracy fueled paranoia will be much harder to cure.

The main reason that other pandemic is so intractable is that it has been infecting our nation for 300 years or more. Racism was firmly entrenched in our American psyche long before a gang of slave owners wrote the foundation documents for our experiment in democracy. To patch together a fragile union between deeply divided cultures in the northern and southern colonies a lot of compromise was necessary. The question is whether those compromises were worth the divisions that continued and deepened.

The first 90 years of our democracy were full of debate and conflict over the issue of slavery. That conflict boiled over in a deadly civil war. In the simplified and whitewashed version of American history that many of us were taught in school that was the end of racism. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to our Constitution gave Blacks all the privileges of citizenship. Problem solved.

I came of age in the 1960’s when Civil Rights for our black sisters and brothers emerged from the days of Jim Crowe and the cruel joke of “separate but equal.” The ugly truth of lynchings and Klan violence and intimidation that went on for the 100 years after the Civil War never penetrated the enclaves of white privilege I grew up in. Blood was spilled in that iteration of the civil rights movement. Progress was made at a glacial pace, but when Barack Obama was elected President we again thought our ugly heritage of racism could be laid to rest.

But along came Donald Trump with his birther lies that fanned the embers of racism into a raging blaze of white supremacy which Trump fueled with more lies for the entire duration of his Presidency. On November 3, 2020 Trump’s campaign of lies and hate was soundly defeated by a record turnout at the polls during a pandemic, no less.

So the pampered president who never had anything denied to him in his life could not face the reality that he had lost. And thus began the biggest lie of all that was eagerly digested and propagated by Trump’s conspiracy consumed minions.

In one last gasp to retain power Trump invited his armed fanatics to DC for a rally on the day the election results would be confirmed by Congress. And we know how that infamous day ended. On TV we witnessed an attempted coup against our democracy.

By the grace of God the insurrection failed to stop the finalizing of the election results making Joe Biden our 46th President. If this was a novel that would be the end of the story with the forces of truth and freedom victorious.

But this is reality, not fiction, and the struggle to preserve our democracy continues. Dangerous Qanon conspiracy believers have made their way into the chambers of Congress by election. What Congress, and especially the Republican leadership does about their armed and dangerous colleagues will either help our nation build on the return to Constitutional democracy begun on November 3 or surrender again to the forces of lies and conspiracy.

The biggest truth of this whole saga is that the GOP senators who failed to remove Trump in his first impeachment now have a chance at a do-over. It’s too late to undo the damage inflicted on our nation by Trump and company in the last year. His acquittal by the Senate last year gave Trump carte blanche to do or fail to do his Constitutional duty with no consequences for his behavior and incendiary rhetoric.

If enough GOP senators had been courageous enough to remove Trump from office a year ago thousands of our citizens who died from COVID and Trump’s incompetence in managing this crisis would still be alive. And furthermore if we had had competent leadership in the White House that trusted scientists and public health experts thousands of Americans would not be unemployed and facing financial ruin. Our kids would not have lost a crucial year of their education and the socialization that goes with it. What the long-term damage to this younger generation will be only time will tell.

What we do know for sure is that the party of Lincoln has another chance to regain the integrity and respect worthy of Honest Abe by once and for all excising the cancer of Trumpism from the body politic, or at least from the halls of Congress.

How Many?

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, Faith and Politics, Uncategorized

As I watch the steady rise of the number of American deaths on the COVID scoreboard I remember the line from an old Bob Dylan song: “Yes, and how many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?” It’s apparently more than 177,000. It’s apparently more than George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and a host of other people of color cut down much too soon. It must be more than the police officers who fear for their lives because we live in an armed camp.

When I think about mounting death tolls I am taken back to the years of the Vietnam War. That war lasted on so long that I graduated from high school, college and seminary while it dragged on and then continued 4 more years! Like 2020 the death count in that war was served to us with dinner every evening on the national news. We thought we were winning because the scoreboard usually indicated we killed more of them that day than they killed of us. The scoreboard of course didn’t include the more than a million Vietnamese civilians killed, part of the infamous “we had to destroy the village to save it” mind set of our leadership. I guess Walter Cronkite thought that to know that ugly truth might have spoiled our appetites.

Dylan’s haunting question “how many?” can be asked about wars, hurricanes, floods, wild fires, even those caused by climate change, gun violence, racism, cancer, drunk drivers, and pandemics. How many must die before we say “enough!” What does it take to move us to action to correct the centuries-old injustices of racism? Or to suspend personal or political ambition to create a unified strategy for combatting a pandemic? Or meaningful reform of law enforcement? Or to enact reasonable gun regulations? How many, Lord? How long till we learn that violence in any form only creates more violence, over and over again in a vicious cycle.

For way too long we Christians have taken Jesus literally when he said, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (Matt. 5:39). Jesus didn’t mean we should turn ourselves into punching bags. He was talking about interrupting the cycle of violence which will never end until enough of us realize that as long as we keep trying to achieve peace by unpeaceful means we are perpetuating more of the same.

Just before that verse above Jesus says, “You have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you do not resist an evil doer.” Someone has said that living by the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth philosophy just produces a world of blind, toothless people. Instead of that outcome Jesus later in that Sermon on the Mount goes on to instruct his followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

2000 years later we are still trying to do things the old way and expecting different results. We have failed to learn the critical lesson that someone has to dare to go first to break the cycle of getting even instead of being peacemakers. And until we learn we will continue to ask “How many deaths will it take?”

The Big IF: Confession and Forgiveness

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Government Reform, spiritual discipline

Good news: “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John: 1:9

Bad News: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and God’s word is not in us.”
I John 1:10

The smallest word in those two verses is the most important. “IF we confess our sins….” That’s a huge “IF” and a major stumbling block that gets us into all kinds of trouble as individuals and collectively. To state the obvious, one cannot fix a problem until it is recognized. If I ignore the check engine light on my dashboard I can’t get the problem fixed. Or if I disregard the signals my body is sending me that something is wrong until it’s too late for the doctors to cure it I’m in deep trouble.

When it comes to God and our sin it is such a waste to live in denial. Yes, grace may sound like one of those deals that are too good to be true, but it’s not. John doesn’t say “if we confess our little sins” we will be forgiven! He says, “If we confess our sins, period.” There’s no fine print. The deal doesn’t expire at midnight. It’s an unconditional gift, and all we have to do is admit we screwed up.

Why is that so hard to do? Because we don’t trust the offer! We know too many humans who when we admit a weakness or a mistake will never let us forget it. They’ll hold it against us forever as a tool to manipulate us with guilt.

But this is no human relationship. This is a promise from the God who made us and knows our every flaw. God created us as fallible human beings knowing we all fall short of perfection every day.

So what’s the price we pay for not confessing? That denial loads us down with guilt and shame. It undermines our self-worth and makes it impossible for us to learn from our mistakes and do better. It cuts us off from God’s peace and salvation. That’s horrible on the individual level, but on the collective level it’s even more deadly.

Our refusal as a nation and world to recognize and admit our stupid mistakes costs us precious time to change our ways. We know the clock is ticking before we can no longer reverse the damage to our environment from our selfish ways. There is no Planet B.

Denial of our sins and mistakes is biting us in the butt on so many fronts – racism, world peace, bigotry, and on how to control the current pandemic. The human race needs one giant Mea Culpa because as John knew 2000 years ago, “IF we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” BUT “If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and God’s word is not in us.” Seems like a no brainer to me!