When it comes to questions about the human soul and its destiny, there are three core options in life: a theistic option, an atheistic option and an “I don’t care enough to think seriously about it” option.

As I read the Constitution of our great nation, it seems clear to me that all three options are allowed, and legally protected. There is no law that prohibits Harvard from hiring an atheist to be a part of the team of chaplains that looks after the needs of students. There is no law that prohibits a group of Muslims from opening a community center near Ground Zero in New York City. There is no law that prohibits a loud, boorish street preacher from shouting at me as I walk to the car. And there is no law that prohibits the agnostic from playing golf on Sunday morning. Chances are reasonably high he would run into some of my parishioners if he did. This is all, in constitutional law, pretty much settled.

We live in a nation that is as much about space as it is anything else. Our Constitution allows each of us to carve out a sliver of personal space and call it ours. What we do with this space is our business. My sliver is handed over to Christianity in the tradition of the United Methodist Church. One of my friends who likes to share reading lists with me has camped out in atheism. A middle-aged Roman Catholic friend likes to email me “Catholic jokes.” A Jewish scholar I have met and shared conversation with writes commentaries on New Testament texts. A Muslim college student sat down with me one afternoon and delighted me with a conversation on prayer. A dear friend who recently passed away taught me much on Lakota spirituality and how it relates to my own faith. And so it goes. These slivers of space afforded each of us by our Constitution have become so entangled in American life that it would be impossible for anyone to remove them from us because they believe certain theologies are “phony.” Our nation would be greatly impoverished in spirit if they did.

Yet, when many in public attempt to talk about these things, they get angry or stupid. We only have to look at the present race for the White House to see both of these things in play. The language either gets bellicose (“The President has declared war on the Catholic Church,) or silly (“The President has a phony theology”). In democratic societies there will be competing interests, such as the debate between some in the church and those seeking to provide affordable access to birth control. In democratic societies there will be diverse interpretations of human and religious experience, such as the president’s protestant Christian faith shaped by the United Church of Christ or Rick Santorum’s Roman Catholic faith shaped by pre-Vatican II influences. These things are allowed and require serious and honest conversation, not angry accusations and cheap characterizations.

The sad part about all of this is that there is a need in our country for a healthy conversation on how we allow each of these personal “slivers of space” to fit together in such a way as to form a “people.” Judging how others may use their sliver of space will never get us there. The desire to control how others live their lives will not get us there, either. Only tolerance, the willingness to risk conversation nd the desire to celebrate the numerous ways people have used their sliver of space to discover wonder and meaning will get us there. Until we figure this out, the forecast for this election cycle looks to be more bellicosity and stupidity.

How embarrassing and sad.

Eric McGlade is an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and pastors a congregation in Bowling Green.

Tags: Barack Obama, Communitarian Soul, Eric McGlade, Rick Santorum

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Opinion, The Communitarian Soul.
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The late Joseph Campbell argued that all religions are grounded in story or myth. These stories or myths have grown out of either historical events that have shaped the affection and passion of a people or a psychological event that inspired a leader of a people. He went onto suggest that a healthy religious myth or story shapes the lives of people in four ways: 1). It provides a way for people to have authentic encounters with the Holy, 2). It frees a person to discover and develop a personal identity,  3). It works to create safe places where people can live peaceably and respect others, and 4). It helps its participants to live into the reality that all things are inter-connected and interdependent on each other.

Often it is the third piece of Campbell’s quadrilateral that provokes the greatest challenge to people who live out of a religious perspective. Sometimes the most religious among us are the least tolerant and safe to be around.  From the Spanish  Inquisition to the Salem witchcraft trials,  history is filled with tragic examples of the devout and religious doing horrible things to their neighbor. The unanswered question from my seminary days that still haunts me is how could a people so acculturated by the story of my faith (Christianity) either participate in or look the other way during the Holocaust.

This is what makes all of this stuff we have been reading about around clergy abusing children so troubling. The clergy abuse is bad enough, it is the looking the other way done by church leaders that is maddening. If providing a safe place for our children to grow into the people they need to become is no longer possible because our institutional structures have become more important that our myths, then what good are we?

Of course, most of clergy types are people of conscious and good will.  The percentage of abusive clergy is very small and not limited to a particular faith tradition. We become clergy types because we are drawn to a mystery much greater than ourselves committed to a cause much nobler than the self. Sometimes we fall and when that fall brings hurt and pain to others, we need to step out.  If we cannot figure that out ourselves, then our bishops or denominational leaders better do it for us. If they don’t, the religious community fails to become a safe place for our people.

The Pope, is now caught in this very issue.  I pray he isn’t naive about this. He has chastised the bishops in Ireland for looking the other way, and he has apologized to victims of the abuse, but he seems reluctant to raise the necessary questions that got his church in this mess in the first place. Furthermore there is some question about abuse that happened on his watch when he was a bishop in Germany. I believe him to be a good man who wants to do the right thing but one’s insulation in the institutional trappings of any organization, especially one as labyrinthine as the church can skew one’s vision.  If he trusts the “myth” we will find his way.  If he trusts the “institution” he will get lost.  This issue is so large, it can consume his papacy if he doesn’t move quickly toward transparency.

Don’t get me wrong, institutions are important.  They are the way our values, our stories and myths get passed along to the next generation.  Without institutions what is important to us dies when we die. But we have to watch them.  It is easy to lose sight of why they exist in the first place.  The trappings and power can become seductive, the need to protect and defend becomes more important than the need to search the soul and become reconnected to the mission.  If Dr. Campbell is right, behind the work of all healthy religious expressions is the work of human dignity and hope. Holy mystery, personal identity, cultivating safe and peaceable places for each other, and learning to understand how inter-connected all things are is noble work… work that will happen if we learn to trust our myths and stories, not our systems and all their trappings.

Eric McGlade is a United Methodist pastor in Bowling Green.

Tags: Communitarian Soul, Religion

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Opinion, Religion, The Communitarian Soul.
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Some of my best friends are conservatives, rock-ribbed Republicans that can quote chapter and verse from William F. Buckley. I know that sounds condescending and self serving, much like what I heard growing up from white guys who told unflattering jokes about black people. After the punch line there would often be an awkward attempt to cover this gross insensitivity by saying “I have a black friend.” Somehow this was suppose to make the jerky thing all right.

In my case, it is true. I have many conservative friends. Many I have trusted without reservation or qualm. A progressive (the gentler, kinder word for “liberal”) can not survive in my line of work without the ability to develop such relationships. For I work in an institution known throughout the world for its “conservatism.” I work in the church.

Of course, if the truth be know, there are more of us lefties in the church than many would suspect. Without launching into a theological diatribe on the subject, the reason this is has much to do with Jesus’ teachings. He had a soft spot in his heart for the poor, the lost, the marginalized. Read the gospels deeply and you run the risk of taking up liberal causes like ending poverty, working for peace and justice, and lobbying congress for universal health care coverage. If you want to avoid these things, hang out in the epistles. Since many do hang out in the epistles, I have spent a lifetime cultivating and maintaining good relationships with people who vote and think ways counter to me. All of this makes for interesting work.

I am sharing my credentials on this not with the intention of doing something jerky like making a joke at Vice President Cheney’s (Jon Stewart does enough of that) expense then trying to make it all better by saying… “I have conservative friends.“ I am not interested in scoring points in an ideological debate or even winning the so-called culture war of our day. I have another motive: shaming.

I never much cared for the idea of stocks, pillories or even the modern day versions of shaming such as yellow license tags or pictures of deadbeat dads. I always figured that a culture as sophisticated and as civilized as ours is supposed to be could find better and more mature ways to get good behavior our of our fellow citizens. I guess I am wrong. Since many conservatives believe in shaming, then need to employ this ancient art on some of their own.

Just when I think I have seen loud, boorish behavior at it’s worst, somebody manages to do one better. When I started this piece, I was going to focus on the stupidity of the protests over President Obama’s speech to school children. Two other presidents have done this, Presidents Reagan and Bush (41) so there is a precedent. I guess a few congressional democrats raised some concerns about Bush’s speech, but nothing like what we have seen today. When wimpy school officials capitulate to angry voices over the President telling children they should stay in school and study hard, something is woefully amiss.

But all of that takes a back seat to the likes of Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina. Shouting that the President is a liar during the President’s address to Congress was a new low in this race to the bottom of intemperate and uncivil public behavior. We have problems that require the attention of grown-ups, not school yard bullies, paranoid wing nuts, our sore losers. It is time for my good-souled, reasonable and rational conservative friends and others like them to set some boundaries on the more extreme elements in their community.

When I have suggested this in conversation with my conservative friends, they are quick to point out that lefties have wing nuts too. They mention Michael Moore. Fair enough. But I do think there is something profoundly different going on here. The disruptions at town meeting halls, the persistent and unwarranted questioning around the President’s birthplace, the fact that people show up at rallies with guns strapped to their hip, and that the Secret Service has reported a four fold increase in death threats against the President is troubling.

One of the core tenants of democracy is that honest and reasonable people can have honest and reasonable disagreements. If this and the civility that allows this gets lost, then the great experiment launched by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and Washington will have failed. Pity the generation that allows this to happen on their watch. It’s time for reasonable and thoughtful conservatives to set some boundaries for the extreme elements in their own community. If they need to resort to shaming, so be it.

Eric McGlade is a pastor in the United Methodist Church and lives in Bowling Green.

Tags: Communitarian Soul

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion, The Communitarian Soul.
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