Tag Archives: Ann Gaylia O’Barr

Strange Meetings and Grace

People called to some task when they were not expecting it have changed the world: Moses discovering the burning bush as he leads sheep in a desert; disciples of Jesus who don’t even recognize him when he meets them on the road to Emmaus; Paul meeting Jesus on the way to Damascus even while he is intending to arrest Jesus’ followers.

Some may at first resist the calling and the changes it requires. Commenting on Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Caitrin Keiper notes the time it took for Valjean to change from thief to benefactor of those in need. In the beginning, after Valjean is caught stealing and brought before the bishop, the bishop not only pardons the man but even gives him more silver. Valjean, however, leaves only to steal again—but then he realizes what he has done, and the redeeming process begins. (“Masterpieces of Impossibility,” Plough, Autumn 2022)

At some point, a calling is answered or a debt is forgiven or a gift is bestowed and accepted. The results, Keiper writes, are a “contract with grace.” The contract stretches “to infinity as it is passed on from one person to the next.”

Somewhere today, even among political hatreds or attacks on defenseless civilians or misery caused by selfish oligarchs, those usually small but called ones are working. They are the ones we search for, to join our callings with theirs.

Taking Democracy for Granted?

Watching events in Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth II has given me a new admiration for a country that has practiced an evolution of democracy through centuries of existence. To an outsider, the British form of government is a gigantic hodgepodge of laws and practices and traditions. Yet it works as a democracy.

I’m concerned about my own country of America in comparison. You would think, considering our traditions of self-government and “government by the people” and our Constitution, we would be just as firmly certain of our democratic traditions here.

Yet, we’re the ones who almost lost, if not the republic, something close to it with the storming of the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots on January 6, 2021.

Writes Adam Russell Taylor: “It’s both alarming and bitterly ironic that false claims of a stolen election continue to be used to make a truly stolen election increasingly possible.” (“Democracy Can Be Easily Taken for Granted,” Sojourners, Sept/Oct 2022)

In that same issue of Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger writes of the recent visit of seventeen international religious leaders to Ukraine. (“Come and See.”) They were answering an appeal from requests on Ukraine social media for religious leaders to visit Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

She commented on the false religious teaching of Putin and others seeking to build a country around “a particular ‘race or tribe.’ It’s what happens when religion cloaks ethno-nationalism with a veneer of mortal rectitude.”

The temptation of political power is strong. Some would even use religion as a weapon to gain that power instead of as a path to God.

Jesus Was Not an American

I never actually made the mistake of thinking Jesus was an American. However, I may have assumed that my beloved country, the United States of America, was his, that is, a “Christian nation.”

In my childhood’s Vacation Bible School (of which I have many fond memories), our procession at the opening of the day included the American flag, the Bible, and the Christian flag. The American flag was the one I preferred to carry, as I think most of my classmates did. That was a long time ago when the Cold War was at its height.

Perhaps it’s safe to say that most of us in my beloved church automatically assumed that the U.S. was a Christian nation. We belonged right up there with Jesus and the Apostles.

The change for me did not come because I left my church, since I never “left” it. Though I’ve experienced plenty of examination of spiritual matters, my church’s love is probably the reason I’ve remained a member of a church group every place I’ve ever lived, even in foreign countries.

No secular movement has ever surpassed Jesus, in my estimation. I never joined protest movements. Instead, I joined the U.S. diplomatic service and served my country in embassies and consulates in other countries. Seeing “established” religions in some of those countries turned me off the idea of any partnership of religion with state.

Jesus, God’s Son, as I believe, was perfect. No nation can ever carry his name and not smear it.

As a Christian, my duty to my country, as I see it, is to serve it in civil matters: voting, service as I am able, and, keeping up with national and international happenings so that I can vote and serve with knowledge.

To equate America with Jesus or even Christianity is, I believe, a form of idolatry.

Lose the Republic or Lose an Election?

Does the idea of democracy—people rule—come from an optimistic view of humankind or a pessimistic one?

Do its adherents believe that people, given the chance to rule, will always (or most of the time) choose the best leader? Do they believe that the alternative, dictatorship or oligarchy, would prove too liable to corruption?

If you believe that power spread widely will naturally result in good rulers, you will be be disappointed in some of our U.S. elections. (I don’t mean only in the 21st century.)

On the other hand, if you believe that the people are going to elect bad leaders at least once in a while, you may weather the occasional bad leader with more optimism.

A problem arises when a significant number of people are not willing to accept the view of the majority (or of electors, given our electoral system.) After the past election, some who voted for the losing candidate were so disappointed in the outcome that they could not accept the evidence of multiple investigations and court cases indicating that Joe Biden had, in fact, won against Donald Trump.

It couldn’t be, they proclaimed, that Trump didn’t win. Surely, he represented what the people wanted. They seemed unable to understand that they had backed a losing candidate.

Of course, loss this time is wrapped up in strong opinions about particularly divisive subjects like abortion and public school curriculums, to name just two.

Perhaps it’s a lesson each generation of Americans must learn: rule by the people (or their electors) means we lose sometimes—even in matters that deeply concern us.

Congratulate the winners and start working for the next election. Be grateful for the promise of a next election.

Divide and Fail

The United States doesn’t have a state religion. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in our Constitution.

The founders of the Republic, despite shortcomings, had learned one thing from the history of countries they or their recent ancestors had left, usually in Europe. Religion as a form of government was deadly. Groups fought, burned at the stake, beheaded, cut in pieces, and otherwise practiced atrocities in attempts to force their particular religious beliefs on society as a whole.

In fact, religious beliefs pertain to ultimate questions: What happens after death? Does life have meaning? What is my purpose for living?

How can answers to such questions be decided by a king or even one group of religious believers for everyone else?

Yet, some of our citizens now practice a kind of “no quarter” politics. It’s them or us, and if our side doesn’t win, it doesn’t just mean we loose for another two or four years, after which we get to try again.

No, it’s now between them and us to decide ultimate questions or the country is doomed: The elites and the true Americans. The other side is not just wrong. They are out to wreck Christian America.

Interesting that the early Christians spread their beliefs so widely in spite of outright opposition, even persecution, by the mighty Roman Empire.

And then Christians, after conquering that empire in a spiritual sense, somehow lost sight of how they had won. Some of them began to assume that this Jesus whom they worshiped needed political power.

Eventually, of course, this seeking after political power led to breakups among Christians and then to abandonment by many, disgusted by this un Christlike behavior.

When the United States was formed, leaders wisely saw what political religion had done to Europe and tried to avoid that mistake in this new country.

The attempt to separate religion and state led, not to an abandonment of religion, but to its unprecedented growth. The current attempt to change course and tie the country to a form of political religion may end up making religion as unimportant in the United States as it grew to be in Europe.

 

Blood and Soil Christianity

I grew up white in segregated Nashville, Tennessee. My neighborhood was white, my schools were white, and my church was white.

Along the way, my ideas about race and the segregated system were challenged. Why couldn’t black families enjoy traveling and motels like my family did? Why did a group of white boys jeer at an old black lady walking to the bus stop?

After a while, I no longer believed in the segregated system or that whites were a superior race. Eventually, the churches I joined as I moved around for job changes in the south and elsewhere were integrated.

However, I was an old woman when I read Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.
At that moment, what I had not understood all my life came into focus. Every time a black American stepped out of their neighborhood, they had to remember what I rarely thought about—that they were likely to be noticed because of their skin color. Always, they must be on guard.

A country that, for most of its existence from early settlements until centuries later, treated a segment of its population as inferior has much baggage to unpack. Interestingly, some of the difficulty comes not so much from those now-integrated or willing-to-be-integrated churches, but from those who used to attend them but now don’t.

As we know, attendance at churches in the south and elsewhere has dropped and is dropping. Some of those who, in their youth attended white only churches, dropped out before many of their churches answered the altar call to change their ways.

Yes, Southern churches have changed, but, as Russell Moore commented in an interview with historian Daniel K. Williams, studies show “a fast-growing trend among white Southern Protestants who seldom or never attend church and yet self identify as evangelical Christians.” (Russell Moore “When the South Loosens its Bible Belt,” Christianity Today, postdated August 11, 2022.)

Some of these former churchgoers may become even more extreme. Says Russell: “The kind of cultural Christianity we now see often keeps everything about the Religious Right except the religion. . . . Cultural Christianity, as we once knew it, is largely being replaced by a kind of blood-and-soil sense of belonging and obligation not to a church but to a particular brand of white political and cultural identity.”

Moore calls for what, indeed, the church has always called for: reaching out to those in need.

“Yes, if all people see of ‘Christianity’ is the anger and loneliness of half-Christians, they will not see the real Jesus. But the converse is true, too. In a time of loneliness, separation, and boredom, we ought to see craving for what Jesus told us we all need.”

From slavery to women’s rights to civil rights and more, the needs have always called forth those who answered. Sometimes they seemed to have failed—Germany as a nation followed Hitler. However, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the confessing church are the ones who inspire us today.

I can see the faults of my south only as one raised there can see them. I also know that people, black and white, are working to overcome those centuries of wrongdoing. May God have mercy and bless these efforts.

Reading Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton, an eighteenth century refugee to America from the West Indies, served as a young aide to General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He served his adopted country again as President Washington’s first treasury secretary.

After reading Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, I realize how much we owe Hamilton for the financial structure he laid out in our nation’s beginning years. However, I was most struck by the nation’s titanic political battles during those years and our continuing struggles into our present day.

Indeed, we have fought over our nation’s directions and choices for its entire existence. We fought Great Britain to gain our political freedom, yet many of our founding fathers owned slaves with no freedom. Great Britain abolished slavery in most of her empire a few decades after the American Revolution, while its former colony, having won the struggle for independence, would not give up slavery for almost another century.

We have struggled over racism and women’s rights. We struggled over the power of monied interests to bribe politicians. We have struggled for a civil service uninfluenced by those interests. We have struggled over the use of our military power and our influence in the world.

Our discovery of the internet and social media have increased ways to share news and ideas, but the struggles evidenced in our tweets mirror the old battles between selfishness and service. Demagogues take advantage of those frightened by changes, as they always have, encouraging an us/them mentality.

Overcoming the never ending dangers to the republic bequeathed to us by Washington and Hamilton is a constant struggle. We will always struggle; that’s the price of choice by fallible humans.

The issue is whether we can disagree without hatred. It depends as much as anything else on our ability to sympathize with those with whom we disagree. As long as we respect each other, we can work for solutions.

Return to Political Patronage?

James A. Garfield served the shortest term of any U.S. president. Sworn in on March 4, 1881, he was assassinated a few months after taking office by a disappointed seeker for a political job. The assassin was one of many seeking a government job, not because of any expertise, but because of simple loyalty to a politician.

Garfield’s tragic death led to a movement resulting in our modern civil service. Our government seeks to hire employees because of ability, not because of loyalty to an individual.

Max Stier (“Opinion: The Patronage System Was Corrupt. It’s Threatening a Comeback,” Politico, August 2, 2022) writes: “Today, our nation’s 2 million career civil servants swear loyalty to the Constitution, not fealty to an individual president. They’re hired based on their ability and skills and cannot be fired for partisan or non-merit reasons. These protections provide civil servants with the latitude to offer unvarnished advice, to execute important policies and report illegal activity and misconduct without fear of retribution.”

Yet, some are calling for a return to the corrupt ridden patronage system. Presumably, if the patronage system were returned, civil servants, to avoid losing their jobs, would be tempted to report only news the president wanted.

Remember when former President Trump tried to overcome a weather report about a hurricane? He insisted that his incorrect statements about Alabama having been in the possible path of Hurricane Dorian were true , even altering a forecast map with a permanent marker. Government forecasters, not fearing for the loss of their jobs, stuck to the true forecast.

One of the stark differences between democracies and dictatorships is the freedom democratic sources are given to deal with facts and truth

Without unbiased government reporting on numerous subjects from foreign affairs to unemployment, presidents could hide any facts damaging to their power.

Writes Stier: “The arbitrary firing of tens of thousands of civil servants by a new administration could not only put the nation at risk, but potentially hamper the government’s ability to effectively deliver important services, from veterans’ benefits and Social Security to farm programs and ensuring military readiness.”

Do we want truth from government reports or political propaganda pieces?

Meditation on the Sixties

The other night, the hot weather kept me awake, so I got up and played a few oldies by Peter, Paul, and Mary. I sometimes call up other sixties singers as well.

Some of us remember those days of protests and the earth days. The protesters and others of us who sympathized really thought we were going to change things. We were inaugurating a new era of racial justice and protection of the earth.

Same song, second verse. We are, it appears, really beginning to burn up the planet. Racial justice issues continue to surface, too, and we’ve also got protestors who came close to toppling our electoral system of government in the United States. Not to mention echoes of the Cold War in Europe and Asia.

I think some of the blame must go to an us/them temptation. We are the good guys, and those on the other side are the bad guys. Listen to the old protest songs: we’re coming for you, don’t stand in the school doorway, etc.

Maybe this time around we could protest a little less and talk with each other a little more. Abortion? Can we move the “mother’s-rights-vs-baby’s-rights” debate toward helping women and men not create babies they don’t want in the first place?

We also need resources to help the mentally ill tame their demons. (Perhaps we could tax the rich a bit more for the resources we need. After all, children of the rich also suffer mental illness, not to mention harmful drug use. We could at least find money for equal treatment, regardless of income level.)

How about allowing parents the time to parent?

How can we overcome the ungodly desire for money that fuels the drug trade?

Finally, we could seek to understand, even share feelings, instead of demonizing those we disagree with.

Stopping Before the Water’s Edge?

Arthur Vandenberg, Republican senator from Michigan (1928-1951), is credited with saying that American politics “stops at the water’s edge.”

We take this to mean that although U.S. political parties may favor different directions for the country domestically, we are united in our international policies. In other words, we care for our country too much to be divided in dealing with the rest of the world.

Though not always (Vietnam comes to mind), Americans do tend to support international policies of whoever is governing. The problem usually is with our national policies. Here agin, however, it’s not simple disagreement. We do not simply disagree on direction for our schools, or on the amount of attention paid to our racial history, or on police actions, or on abortion, or on a host of other matters. Now we are tempted to believe that our side must win even if it means ignoring democratic principles.

Some of us don’t really believe in elected governments. Some of us would cheerfully override constitutional checks if we think we can get away with it.

Our country isn’t a pure democracy, of course. The states have more power than individual voters because our constitution allows two senators for each state, regardless of that’s state’s population. The division of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial also is in constant flux.

However, the danger comes when we advocate forceful overthrow of our government by small armed groups, as the events of January 6, 2021, demonstrated.

Rule by popular government is far from perfect. It certainly does not always elect the best leaders. However, allowing a small group to oversee our government is far more dangerous. The temptation to dictatorship, to the use of government for our own selfish purposes, is always present if only a small group governs. In a democracy, we can change peacefully.

At least we can, if we will individually allow the other side the right to win.

Primary Election 2022

The voters’ pamphlet for our 2022 Washington state primary election arrived in our mailbox. The election is to be held August 2.

I opened it up and was surprised to see eighteen people running for the position now held by Senator Patty Murray, including Senator Murray. I cannot recall when this many candidates were contending. It seems a bit much.

The various parties for which the candidates have declared include the usual Democratic and Republican parties, but also: Socialist Workers Party, no party preference, JFK Republican Party, Independent Party, and Trump Republican Party.

The candidates for our representative to the U.S. House include these parties: Democratic, Republican, MAGA Republican Party, no Party Preference, and Conservative Party.

Is the large number of both candidates and parties an attempt to muddy the water so we will give up and not vote? Or perhaps the idea is to spread out the candidates so that current office holders will be overwhelmed and thrust out of office, overtaken by some unknown candidate?

I confess I don’t know, but after listening to this past Tuesday’s congressional hearings on the January 6 2021 riots, I’m more concerned than ever for our serious involvement in voting.

A “Christian” Nation?

Throughout the centuries since Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth, Christians have wandered between the hardships of persecution and the temptations of power.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day spurned his teachings. As Christians increased in number, the secular Roman powers grew alarmed at their growth. They feared that the teachings of this Jesus might lead to insurrection, so they persecuted early Christians but were unsuccessful in stopping their growth.

In time, Christianity’s spiritual power overwhelmed both the secular and religious powers. Jesus’ followers then had to deal with the temptation to forge a political kingdom. Indeed, from the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry, some had attempted to make him a political leader. However, he refused temptations to be a king.

The fight to overcome the temptations of power has emerged whenever Christians have gained favor. The struggle resurfaced in the United States when an antiquated electoral system put in the White House an irreligious president never popular with a majority of Americans. To assure that he remained in power, he used U.S. Supreme Court appointments to curry favor with Christians.

What has resulted is a Christian movement gaining political power but losing in numbers and moral power.

Jesus refused to gain power through political means. When Christians have fallen prey to the temptation to do so, Christianity is weakened.

Lessons From Puddleglum and Wulfstan

In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tale, The Silver Chair, one of the characters, Puddleglum, along with two children, are trapped underground by a wicked witch. She tells them that the good things in the world above, the world of the children’s protector Aslan, are all made up fantasies. Puddleglum, as pessimistic as his name implies, nevertheless leads the children to victory over the witch and her contention that the good things the children believe in are only made up.

Puddleglum answers the wicked witch: “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.”

Times of crisis and danger require real life Puddleglums to lead us. Such a time happened in the British Isles around 1014 A.D. In “The Sermon of the Wolf,” (Plough, Summer 2022), Eleanor Parker tells of the English Anglo-Saxons when they were being overwhelmed by the Vikings. Christianity had reached England by that time, and the archbishop of York, Wulfstan, gave a sermon. For him and those around him, it may very well have seemed the end of the world. He did not pretend that the Vikings might not conquer. His aim in the sermon, however, was to call for personal integrity and repentance.

Indeed, the Vikings did conquer. However, Wulfstan continued to work with them also, seeking reconciliation and just laws. Parker writes: “. . . the laws they made formed the basis for many later codes, ties that still sought to hold English society together centuries after Wulfstan was dead.”

Perilous times are nothing new. Bad things will happen. We can choose to give up or perhaps lose ourselves in frivolous pursuits.

Or, as Parker says in telling us of Wulfstan: “Whatever the darkness of the times we live in, some good can yet be done by every turn toward the truth.”

Working Out Working and Home

Several decades ago, I lived for a while in a small town in north Georgia, a mill town in years past. As in many such towns, most of the jobs had moved elsewhere, often to other countries. Fortunately, the town was close enough to Atlanta to experience growth from that urban area, offsetting loss of mill jobs. In fact, the mill village that had housed former workers was seeing some revitalization as a cluster of both historic and affordable housing.

When the mills first came to the town, the mill housing was not as separated from the jobs and commercial sections as in later suburban housing in larger cities. Nationally, this newer separation of work and housing became more pronounced after World War II. Many Americans bought houses in suburbs away from city centers, commuting in then affordable automobiles using cheap gas.

Rising costs of commuting as well as the Covid pandemic may have changed these housing patterns, at least temporarily. First came “the great resignation.” Secondly, some workers who were able to work from home via their computers have resisted a return to pre pandemic work customs.

Some workers resigned because of difficulties in finding child care when the pandemic was spreading. Another reason for resignation appears to be a new level of job dissatisfaction with commuting. A surprising number of workers have resisted returning to the old nine-to-five office presence once the pandemic became more manageable.

For several centuries, we in the western world have accepted increasing separation of home and work. Factories, then offices, became the standard place of work. Cities became employment centers while workers lived elsewhere, increasingly in suburbs, increasingly further from city centers.

Throughout recorded history, however, until the industrial revolution, work and home were physically close. Will the work/job separation caused by the industrial revolution continue or will computers now make possible workers returning to more historic norms?

Letting the Other Side Win

Carl Bernstein, the author, along with Bob Woodward, of All the President’s Men, has written an account of his earlier days as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. In his recent book, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recounts events he covered in the Kennedy/Johnson presidencies, beginning when he was in his teens.

When reading about the scandals, tragedies, and major political events of the 1960’s, I was struck by a sense of dé·jà vu with some of today’s events

Bernstein described a campaign rally in Maryland for George Wallace, running for president in 1968: “It was the first time I’d seen a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens who I’d thought were familiar to me.”

His reporting on the Wallace rally included a description of a group led by someone waving a Confederate battle flag. “When the bedlam subsided, he [Wallace] repeated his boilerplate speech about federal encroachments on states’ rights and his opposition to the civil rights bill, saying it would mean death to labor unions and private property.” Later in the speech, Wallace told the crowd, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The anger that spurred rioters on January 6, 2021, to attack the capitol is related, it seems to me, to the same emotions spurring those Wallace supporters. It also was evident in the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in the death of a protester.

Again and again, we have difficulty allowing the political process to play out when the process brings in changes we don’t like. That difficulty ignited falsehoods about stolen elections in 2020, leading finally to those January 6 riots.

The final test of democratic rule is allowing the other side to win.

The Out of Step Jesus

The writer Philip Yancey (www.philipyancey.com) in his book, Soul Survivor, says he often feels like the most liberal person among conservatives and the most conservative person among liberals.

This statement resonates with me. I was raised in a Southern evangelical church. Fortunately, unlike Yancey’s childhood church, this church was a loving congregation, led by a pastor both caring and intelligent. The lower middle /working class church forgave him his sometimes scholarly sermons because he loved and cared for them.

Thus, I had no need, as I grew up, to rebel against a die-hard fundamentalist culture. For me and the other young people, the caring of the adults allayed the path of rebellion sometimes chosen by young people in less loving churches.

In my adult years, spent in myriad cultures and regions, my politics became more liberal. Because of my fortunate childhood, this liberalism was one of growth, not of rebellion. It is not rebellion against the childhood-taught faith I continue to practice.

I remember a song we children sang in loud abandonment: “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white; Jesus loves the children of the world.”

On the wall of our Sunday school room was a picture of Jesus walking joyously with those children—red, yellow, black, and white.

My childhood church no doubt included people we would call racist. Certainly the majority held, I’m sure, quite conservative beliefs. Over time, Jesus’ teachings, if taught sincerely, may not necessarily lead to political liberalism. They certainly will result, however, in a repudiation of hatred.

Glory Days: Cold War’s End

In December, 1990, a young U.S. diplomat was serving at the U.S. consulate in what was then Leningrad, in the former Soviet Union. He took a trip into the neighboring country of Latvia. The diplomat, George Krol, wanted to visit the Latvian officials who had recently declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Following the astonishing revolts that year against Soviet rule in various Soviet republics, Latvia was among several former republics declaring their independence.

However, even as Krol was visiting, the celebration was cut short. News arrived that a coup of former Soviet communists against Russian President Boris Yeltsin was intent on restoring the Soviet Union. Word spread that Russian tanks were even on their way to Latvia to restore Soviet rule.

As Latvian leaders thanked Krol for being with them at this dangerous moment, Krol realized what it meant to represent America: “To them, I was not George Krol, a young American diplomat from New Jersey, I was America; and America was standing with them in their darkest hour. . . . I thought: I represent the United States of America; I can’t believe they pay me to do this.”

Today, as Ukraine fights back against Russian power in a struggle that was supposed to have ended over thirty years ago, we might revisit what that America is called to be.

May God help us overcome the hatreds that work against what we are supposed to be and what the world has such need of.

Another Mass Murder of Innocents: Thoughts

For a day or so after the mass murder of innocent children and two adults in a school in Texas, I refused to look at the news. I could not process or live with it. This current horror had followed the murder only a few days before of supermarket shoppers, and I wondered if the country had reached a place too low to climb out of.

Finally I steeled myself and read the reports, accepting that I could never be part of overcoming these horrors if I let despair win. To identify with the victims, I had to own them, had to know them as best I could.

Coupled with my dealing with the awful tragedy were other thoughts brought on by reading a thoughtful book by the late Richard Twiss, a native American, One Church Many Tribes.

How does allegiance to a nation compare with allegiance to God?

My generation basked in the afterglow of defeating the Nazi powers and of defending against godless communism. We found it easy to merge religion (majority Christian) and country.

Many of us came to think of America as a sort of “God’s country.” For those Americans able to vote and live in new suburbs, America meant white America. We forgot about our genocide against native Americans or our enslavement of blacks or our racism.

Amazing today that some who call for defending America against immigrants are themselves descendants of immigrants who invaded and stole land from original inhabitants. By condemning immigrants, they are condemning their own ancestors.

So far as I know, I and all my American relatives are descended from those who came to this country from various nations in Europe before the American Revolution. They were part of white people who settled on land originally belonging to native Americans. At least one of my direct ancestors owned slaves.

Of course, two of my ancestors patriotically fought in Europe in two world wars, one suffering for years from post traumatic stress.

As far as I know, all of my ancestors professed the Christian religion, as do I.

In looking back at this history of my family, I admire many of their qualities—for raising children to love God and to be good neighbors in their communities, to give time and money to worthy causes. I find little evidence of any who worshiped wealth.

However, I am called to repent of their and my sins for a sometimes superior attitude. It easily assumed no responsibility for racism and drew a line against which no non-white should cross.

I condemn but, because of beliefs I myself have flirted with, must assume some responsibility for those who, on January 6, 2021, decided to override democratic norms by storming the Capitol in a rebellion against our constitutional processes.

I condemn, but will not hate, those who are so concerned about an America turning less white that they will swallow obvious lies about an election, an election whose proven results do not agree with what they wanted.

I, like other white Americans, have been part of an America who worships guns instead of God. I must bear some responsibility for the unbelievable killing and suffering that takes place with those guns we refuse to control.

Perhaps the killing of innocents and our refusal to regulate the guns used in their killing are a part of our worship of power. We prefer this false worship rather than living out the justice and mercy preached by the Jesus many of us profess to follow.

Religious Freedom and Religious Belief

Few practices weaken the message of Jesus more than allowing his followers the power to force their beliefs on others.

During the Middle Ages, as the political power of the church increased, its moral power and the respect for its teachings decreased. The established church too often became a power broker in various political rivalries leading to war and suffering.

The founders of the United States, no doubt learning from the religious wars endured by many of their immediate ancestors, included freedom of religion as an unmistakable principle in their founding document, boldly enshrined in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As political scientist Francis Fukuyama writes: “But respect for autonomy was meant to manage and moderate the competition of deeply held beliefs, not to displace those beliefs in their entirety.” (“A Country of Their Own; Liberalism Needs the Nation,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2022)

Though the early U.S. included dedicated Christians, many Americans calling themselves Christians probably meant it in a cultural sense only.

As education and cities increased, American Christianity deepened. Christian movements thrived in an atmosphere where no adult was forced into an established religion and where Christians competed for the hearts and minds of citizens. Movements included anti-slavery groups, temperance organizations, missionary societies, and those working among the poor. Christians grew in number in the United States and in the world.

Then two world wars, a cold war, and the growth of terrorism led to a worldwide displacement of suffering people. Many Christian-raised Americans examined the depth of a “Christian” country whose good works had nevertheless allowed slavery, racism, and domination by the pursuit of money.

The idea of returning to a mythical American past is a chasing after phantoms. Writes Fukuyama: “Some American conservatives hope to return to an imagined time when virtually everyone in the United States was Christian.”

The word “imagined” is important. America has never been “Christian.” The best times for Christians in the United States have always been when a few people, dedicated to the practices exemplified by Jesus, have attempted to live out his example.

A Small Dog in Ukraine

A small Jack Russell terrier named Patron (the word means “ammo” in Ukrainian) has been trained to sniff out explosives in Ukraine left by Russian forces to maim and kill. Patron is credited with detecting over 200 devices for effective neutralization by bomb squads.

Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dressed in his casual wartime attire, recently presented Patron and his owner with a presidential medal for their heroism.

“A dog who helps clean our land from the traces of the occupiers, and who also helps teach children mine safety,” he said. “Due to the Russian invaders, this is now one of the most urgent tasks — to teach children to recognize and avoid explosive objects.”

Zelinsky talks frequently to his people with nightly news addresses, but he also walks among them, having refused evacuation when the war began.

Contrast this with the instigator of the war, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, sitting at a huge banquet table, several feet and sometimes more apart from the people he is talking to.

Or consider one of Putin’s earlier meetings with Andrea Merkel when he brought along his Labrador. Merkel, because of an attack by a dog earlier in her life, is extremely uncomfortable around them. Putin later denied that he had brought along his dog to discomfort Merkel.

At any rate, here is this short guy in work clothes giving a medal to a little dog who saves people’s lives by sniffing out explosives so they can be safely detonated.

I have a hard time imagining Vladimir Putin taking time to come out from his big table to present an award to a small dog.