Mother Teresa's saintly struggles  by Lloyd Steffen

Ten years ago, within the space of a week, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa both died.

While the 10th anniversary of the death of the princess was marked with various remembrances in the media and even memorial services in Great Britain, that same anniversary for the Saint of the Gutter, Mother Teresa, went mostly unnoticed.

Mother Teresa's name might not have arisen at all, except for a book that was being published that brought Mother Teresa back to the front page. The book, ''Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light,'' a collection of previously unknown letters written to her superiors and confessors over a 66 year period, revealed something so unexpected as to be sensational.

Mother Teresa disclosed a long experience of lonely spiritual emptiness, a darkness of soul in which the presence of God was nowhere to be found. Yes, this is the same Mother Teresa acknowledged by so many as a true saint, the Mother Teresa known the world over for her simple but profound faith, the Mother Teresa who in the spirit of Christ and with a joyful heart ministered to the poorest of Calcutta's poor.

The letters in ''Come Be My Light,'' however, reveal that this woman so widely honored for her deep faith was a tortured soul.
According to the letters, she had been for 50 years of her life racked with doubts and spiritual turmoil, what a recent Time magazine feature cover story would describe as her ''deep and abiding spiritual pain.''

Mother Teresa was for many years the most admired woman in the world, and for good reason.  Sometimes in my classes, when I needed to grab onto an exemplar of noble, saintly behavior, I would invoke Mother Teresa's name as if by that invocation I could rest my case that selfless individuals --saints -- are among us.

I disagreed with Mother Teresa's opposition to birth control and reproductive choice and had no feel for her authoritarian leadership style, but Mother Teresa put her faith into action.  She concerned herself with the material well-being of those she served, being with people when they died and making her order, the Missionaries of Charity, a witness not only to the ministry of service but to the injustice of a world where so many people were reduced to deep material want.  She donated her entire Nobel Peace Prize award to the poor of India. Who could not admire this? Who could not see in her a saint?

Mother Teresa has been beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and is on the way to formal sainthood, but most people have for a long time reckoned her a saint as we understand saints in ordinary ways. But saints also present a problem. At the very moment they show us what we could be, they seem to reassure us that we are not like them -- and cannot be. They possess gifts and capabilities beyond ours. And because we are not like them, we are relieved of any obligation to try to be like them -- they present an unrealistic, unrealizable spiritual or moral perfection.

So identifying saints has become a way to take ourselves off the hook: what the saint did we cannot do, and although we admire the saint, because the saint is unlike ourselves -- that is why they are saints and we are not -- we do not have to feel that we need aspire in our own lives to such acts of spiritual daring or selflessness as we see exemplified in their lives.  Our easy assumption that Mother Teresa was a saint, a spiritual ideal unattainable by the rest of us, is about to undergo revision. With the publication of Mother Teresa's letters, readers will encounter a woman of high religious dedication who is also besieged with doubt and tormented with an experience of the absence of God.

She will express utter loneliness and the feeling that she is abandoned in a spiritual desert. Her interior life, once assumed to be ideal and perfect, is exposed, and suddenly she is not an imaginary representation of something none of us can be -- she is one of us and she is returned to a spiritual life many of us find recognizable and familiar.

Some people have been upset that Mother Teresa expressed doubts about God; others have wondered about how these revelations will affect her canonization. The reality is that even -- especially -- people eventually recognized by religious authority as saints have almost to a person experienced doubts and the deep and abiding spiritual pain expressed by Mother Teresa. Even Jesus had his Gethsemane.

For saints experience spiritual dryness and even the sense of abandonment. Ordinary people do as well. There are rhythms in the spiritual life, times when all is not connected and the sense of absence dominates. And then there are experiences that can affect the spiritual equilibrium. If Mother Teresa once looked like a saint to me, she now looks very human and perhaps is more to be appreciated because of that. She is now detached from the untouchability of sainthood--which in a paradoxical way makes her even more like a saint, since saints commonly suffer such things in their lives as she did.

Readers of ''Come Be My Light'' are saying that it will become one of the great spiritual autobiographies. Mother Teresa had the gift of faith, not the gift of belief. She never walked away from her calling or ceased her work or stopped trusting -- and trust, not belief, is the heart of faith.

Lloyd Steffen is university chaplain and professor of religion studies at Lehigh University.

Rethinking Suffering       by Lloyd Steffen

Published in Morning Call, May 20, 2007

             An important way to gain insight into one’s own religion is to study faith traditions not one’s own.  I have come to think hard and critically about my own Christian values as a result of having studied Buddhism, especially around an issue no one thinks trivial:  suffering.

             Buddhism and Christianity both take suffering seriously.  In Buddhism, suffering is the first of Four Noble Truths:  “All existence is suffering,” it goes.   That does not mean that all of life is a continued experience of pain, as if every moment loved ones are dying, open sores are everywhere on the body, or hunger or thirst are constant and unrelieved.  As a Buddhist once explained it to me, this idea about suffering is like sitting on an old wooden ox-drawn cart moving down a rutted dirt road.  One of the wheels is out of round, so there is an ever-recurring bumpiness and unsettledness to the ride.  It is hard to rest, hard to enjoy the ride, and hard to take one’s mind off of the situation.  The rider’s consciousness becomes focused on a desire for a smooth ride and relief from the unpleasantness, which may not be too bad if one is up for it, but may be horrible if one is not.  This is suffering—and that is a metaphor for our existence. 

             Buddhism then goes on to say that the suffering is caused not so much by the bumpy ride but by the desire to be somewhere else, and that what is needed is to get beyond this craving to flee into some other reality. Buddhism then turns moral and says that by following a path of right conduct, right speech, right vocation—an Eightfold path before the teaching is done—the suffering can end. 

 So what I learn from Buddhism is that suffering is an important and even foundational condition of our lives, but I also learn this unmistakable yet simple insight:  suffering is not a good thing.  In fact, the next move is to acknowledge that there are things we can and should do to alleviate it.  The reason Buddhism emphasizes compassion is because compassionate people  realize beyond their own suffering that others are suffering too, and that fills the heart with sympathy and a willingness to help others come to a place where suffering is overcome.

              I like this understanding and think it not only rational, but wonderful as a religious perspective giving rise to an ethic of non-injury and attentiveness to others.  When as a Christian I think about the stories I know of Jesus, I think this view conforms to what Jesus taught, since Jesus appears in the Scriptures as one concerned for the suffering of others.  Biblical scholars are quite willing to say we cannot be sure of many things concerning the actual historical life of Jesus, but one thing they do seem to agree on is this: Jesus was a healer—there is so much attention to this aspect of his life and work that there is every reason to believe healing affliction and addressing suffering were defining aspects of his ministry.  Whatever Jesus believed about God, somehow it expressed itself in an ethic of sympathy and compassion for others—it was a way of addressing suffering, and alleviating it by acts and a presence of healing.

             That is Jesus—healer.  Now we come to Christians, those who follow Jesus and his teaching, and this is where things get difficult.  Many Christians, it seems to me, have ideas about suffering that do not grasp suffering as a bad thing or set us to work to relieve it in others.  In fact, there are parts of the Jesus story that have led this Christian tradition that is my own to valorize suffering—that is, to make it actually a good thing, something we should honor and hold up as good.

 We can look to the story of the Passion of Jesus, even Mel Gibson’s film by that name.  Many Christians were moved by that gory film, and it was because they believe that the suffering Jesus underwent was something God needed to have as expiation for human sin, so by those bloody wounds we are healed, saved, restored to God. 

              Here’s what I think.  That suffering was terrible and cannot be justified.  Even though I have no doubt that Jesus was guilty of the crime of sedition for which he was executed—he did not condone the cruelty of the crushing Roman empire and all it did to harm people—not only did he not deserve that punishment:  no one does, not any one of those three Good Friday offenders.  But Christians have made that terrible suffering of Jesus a good thing because they have theologies where that suffering leads to their salvation.  No wonder so many Christians support the death penalty—how bad can it be if it was through that means I am saved?  In my view, Jesus’ suffering should lead us to say, “We failed him then, God could not possibly have wanted this, and we must work in this world so that what happened to him never happens again—to anyone.” If we ask, “What would Jesus think?” I actually believe he would agree with that.

               And the idea of valorizing suffering—making it a good thing—appears in some Christian approaches to medical care.  There are hospitals affiliated with Christian denominations that are guided by theological ideas that wind up inflicting, rather than alleviating suffering.  Therapeutic abortions to save a woman’s life have been denied at some religiously affiliated hospitals.  Other facilities have refused to give emergency contraception to rape victims because of theological teachings opposing contraception.  And in one situation I know of a woman was denied an experimental treatment because it required contraception due to possible fetal injury if the woman became pregnant, but the hospital where the doctor worked would not allow the contraception, so the woman was denied a possibly life-saving treatment. 

                These actions cause suffering.  It is a short step from thinking suffering is a good thing to actually causing suffering in others.  And if we who are Christian were to ask “What would Jesus do?” can we really think Jesus would refuse a rape victim access to the kind of help that would alleviate her suffering—as if Jesus would assert some theological belief as more important than alleviating the horrible suffering of a rape victim for whom a pregnancy would simply make the suffering worse? 

                The religious life is so interesting because we are continually trying to figure out what it means to be spiritually attuned to truths bigger than the little ones that keep us comfortable and in the illusion that suffering is God’s to heal, not ours.  If Jesus is any guide, the suffering of others is our responsibility.  And we need to start thinking about this in different ways theologically:  that if I let the suffering of others pass me by, if I assume it is someone else’s responsibility, then it is not only the other person hurt by my action or inaction—it is God.  Perhaps as we ponder suffering, we shall come to see that God does not want suffering, does not enjoy it or require it or offer it as a “gift,” but wants only to alleviate it—and is depending on us to do it. And when we fail, and even use God as a reason for inflicting even more suffering, the pain that is caused reaches into the very heart of God.

Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University.  He can be reached at LHS1@lehigh.edu.

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Remarks at Dedication of Linderman Library - May 17, 2007

 Lloyd Steffen

In these days of information technologies built on the electronic wizardry of high performance computing, high-speed internet and CD rom collections of once inaccessible research materials, we are constantly reminded that a library is about more than books.  It is about more than stone walls and new shelves and beautiful stained glass windows and even wireless connectivity—but it is even about more than books.  

But having said that, let’s not forget that in some essential, defining way, this place is about books—and what every book is and hopes to become.   For on the shelves housed in this temple of learning are hundred of thousands of conversation partners anticipating a hoped-for footfall, awaiting the catch of an eye, the reach of a hand, the sudden stretch of  the spine and the deep breath of the opening of pages—and then, the exposure of thought and desire, passion and  understanding, and even love as the book is given a chance to speak, even to commune.  So this library is about more than books, but it is about books; and even more than that--it is about conversation partners.  And all who come here as students and scholars and teachers, and all who work here, are in the business of arranging conversations.   

Linderman now opens its contents, like a book itself, to show the world who we are and what we value.  Now refurbished, rebuilt, restructured and reconfigured, air conditioned, electronically up to date, this library is now beautifully restored to its long standing purpose on this campus—to aid and encourage knowledge-seeking on the part of those who would be the servants and interpreters of nature—meaning not only the world external but all that is human.

If these books here are conversation partners, to be found here are many of the wisest sages of the ages.  But we must also be honest—and perhaps this next thought is a distinctive faculty contribution to this occasion—for on these shelves are errors beyond counting and so many words that are mistaken, wrongheaded and even foolish that one would  search in vain, I suspect, to find in this shelter of thought one book in which everything written is true.  Truth eludes, even as the lure of wisdom persists, even prevails.  And we acknowledge this even though many faculty at Lehigh have contributed their thoughts and insights to books shelved in this and in other libraries because of that insatiable desire to contribute to the conversation, to the learning. So have we contributed to the mistakes, even the folly?  Of course.  But we take heart—even Plato, who banished the poets, could get it wrong.

The faculty at Lehigh university, always eager to engage in conversation, that noblest of human pursuits, expresses gratitude to the benefactors and to all in the university who have created out of a landmark of tradition a new, revitalized conversation space.  For faculty this will  be a welcoming work space where attentive ears hear the call to move along, to think the next thought, to allow the imagination to fire through the energetic exchange of ideas and sharing of points of view, whether in the closed rooms of the classes or in the silence of the reading room.  And this facility, now open and working again, will continue to reflect who we are and what we value even as it expresses a dream, which I hope as a faculty member I can say on behalf of my colleagues—is a dream for understanding, peaceful encounter with others, respectful disagreement, and above all a hope for wisdom.

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Opening Remarks, Noon-time Service of Prayer and Remembrance at Packer Memorial Church, concerning Events at Virginia Tech University

April 17, 2007

Rev. Dr. Lloyd Steffen

University Chaplain, Lehigh University

The terrible news that came out of Blacksburg, Virginia yesterday has shocked a nation; and for all of us who live and work and study in colleges and universities, this news has brought with it a deep sense of violation.  For our institutions of higher learning are among the most important symbols of what a free and open society should be—for in these places, we pursue knowledge and we share common values; we do not say this enough, but among those values is a deep and abiding dedication to peace and non-violence, without which we could not be free or open; we could not go about the business of leaning and teaching.

Yesterday, we witnessed how on another campus that context of peace was violently disturbed; and even all these miles away from Blacksburg, we experienced here, as has every other college and university in the nation, how vulnerable those of in this setting can be.  We should, I think, be mindful that a free and open society is always vulnerable to those who would tear at the fabric of peace out of confusion, or hatred, or misplaced anger, or with some profound dislocation of madness.  We can be prudent and do many things to protect the peace of a community, but incidents like yesterday remind us that an individual who wants to hurt and kill others and die in the effort may very well succeed in doing so, since that particular scenario is hard to predict and even harder to prevent—and were this not such a difficult moment we might even remind ourselves that events like yesterday are rare because, in fact, we are able, in many situations, to help people and relieve the stress of the demons that attack sanity and thus threaten the safety of others.

Because of our vulnerability, a vulnerability created by the fact that we choose to live together not in defensiveness against the outsider, but in peace and in accordance with the values of inclusion and difference, we may at this moment be tempted to give over to fear.  I hope we do not give into that temptation.  Fear is a terrible dynamic that if unloosed creates suspicion, barriers, and a shifting of values away from openness and freedom.  Our university communities must resist giving into fear even as we continue to emphasize the prudence and caution that all members of our community must continue to exercise for personal safety.  But as I say, yesterday was the kind of event it is hard to predict, harder to prevent for one willing to die to do what that gunman did.

We do not yet know what may have motivated a Senior English major at Virginia Tech to open fire on students and beset the Virginia Tech campus yesterday with mayhem.  We do not know all that happened as university officials tried to respond to and contain a shocking situation in the early morning that compounded exponentially by late morning, but I hope we shall keep this in mind:  we are always looking for someone to blame when these things happen—that is natural, I suppose, because in the face of such outlandish absurdity and chaos, we want to blame someone, for that is a way we can control our own sense of vulnerability.  So blaming will go on, a sign of our own coming to terms with a need to make sense out of the senseless.  It takes real courage to face the poet’s truth, a truth Jim Cohn has put this way:  “sometimes the threads have no weave.” 

We do not have the weave, only threads, and we need in this moment to be reflective and to understand that in a moment of crisis, information is sometimes sparse, there is no weave, no pattern, and decisions are made in contexts where all kinds of things are not known, and timing is everything—though in the moment we do not even know that.  There is much we do not know and much we shall never know, but we must not let our desire to control this event by understanding the details of it obscure the fact that something terrible happened yesterday, and that how it happened may have simply been unpreventable, for someone was willing to die to do what happened, and that is hard to predict, and even harder to prevent. 

What we do know about yesterday—of this there is no lack of information—is that there was a terrible loss of life on the campus of Virginia Tech University, and for that our hearts here at Lehigh are grieved.  We here at Lehigh University, in this place, extend our condolences to all the families and friends of those who were killed and wounded yesterday in Virginia; and we gather to hold in prayer those so deeply hurt by the attack yesterday.  We know that there are people in our community who know students and faculty there, who know professional colleagues, who know the campus and have friends there.  Paul Torgerson, class of 1953 here at Lehigh, is a former President at Virginia Tech, and a 1994 honorary degree recipient at Lehigh—there are probably many connections between our institutions some of which you know even if the rest of us do not.   For those affected by a personal loss of a friend or colleague, our hearts go out to you.  We hold you today in prayer, and offer you our hand in hope of healing.

Father Killian and I shall offer an opening prayer for this time together; then the podium here is open for any who would like to share a thought or prayer.  We gather in silence, and you are invited to meditate or pray in silence or share with others a thought or prayer as you will.

PRAYER: 

God of peace, God of comforting love:  We find ourselves gathered here today in the midst of confusion over the frailty of our condition.  We turn our thoughts to friends and colleagues, faculty and students and staff at Virginia Tech University, and extend to them our deepest sympathies over an experience of unimaginable loss.  We ask that we might join your spirit of embracing compassion in extending our love as well to those recovering from wounds, to the families of victims, to the friends of those killed and wounded, to those who are offering medical assistance and counseling help, to those wounded in body and spirit so that they might be healed by your grace of hope and understanding.

We give thanks that the Blacksburg community afflicted by so much pain is resilient in hope—we give thanks that in a time of crisis, heroes arose to help and sacrifice and make pathways to safety possible for many.  We would ask that the spirit of peace overcome the desire for recrimination; and that among those to whom we extend our sympathy is the family of Cho Seung-Hui whose suffering is every bit as great as any other in the experience of loss.  We know the threads do not sometimes make a weave, and we ask that you be with all those suffering the pain of loss in holding them in your comfort, your peace, your fabric of faith, the weave of which we can see only dimly.

We ask blessing on your gathered people heartbroken by loss, that you might be with all of us, to comfort us, to hold us as we hold the threads that sometimes do not make a weave.

AMEN

Remarks:  Parent Weekend, November 5, 2006  (Packer Memorial Church)

"Religious Diversity on Campus:  A Problem in Need of Attention"

By Lloyd Steffen, Lehigh University

     I was recently asked by someone curious about the higher education world what is the big issue of concern at my campus?  I had to pause for a moment to consider the usual suspects—careerism, sports, social life, politics; and then I said something that surprised even me. “Diversity.” 

      A campus-wide discussion about diversity is currently underway atLehigh. It was prompted in part by an admissions profile two years ago that included less than two dozen African-Americans entering the first year class.  The small number exposed the uncomfortable reality that we were not doing enough to make our academic and social life offerings attractive enough to matriculate most of the African American students who had been offered admission.  The revelation about this admissions problem embarrassed the entire community.  It also provoked worried and widespread conversation—and calls for action.  Students with faculty support initiated a movement which they called “The Movement,” the purpose of which was to address diversity issues and strategize about action with the administration.  “The Movement” is ongoing today; the university administration has in turn set up task forces to recommend action steps to improve our diversity profile. 

     As we have turned community attention to the issue of diversity, we are still concerned to increase underrepresented populations on our campus.  That said, however, diversity in the university setting is not and should not be simply about numbers and percentages—it is about education.  Students who to come to into the contemporary university should expect to encounter people who are different in all of those ways people can be different; and students who do not experience change because of living in a richly diverse environment are cheated of the kind of education they need to succeed in our world today.  As Lehigh continues to adjust its curriculum to involve students in a global learning environment, our educational mission has focused on educating citizens for life in a culturally complex, racially, ethnically and economically diverse world.  The diversity issue is—and should be--about education.

     But one aspect of diversity I have not heard discussed much has to do with religious diversity, and this is what I want to address.

      Religion is one of the major transmitters of values.  Religion shapes attitudes about such things as sex, family, marriage, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, uses of force, war and peace, economic justice issues; and even people who do not consider themselves religious cannot escape the power of religion as it affects the dynamics of cultural life in the wider society.  Religion can inspire people to attitudes that may be positive and life-affirming, yet it can play a destructive role and cause people harm, for religion can inspire hatred, even violence.  We are certainly familiar this aspect of religious in our time. 

              Religious diversity begins with the affirmation that people have a right—a right guaranteed by our Constitution—to religious freedom.  What this means is that, in general, people can believe all kinds of things religiously as long as the  free exercise of religion does not harm others.

              Religious diversity in the university takes into account the uniqueness of the university population.  Non-sectarian universities are more diverse places religiously than society at large.  In society at large there are twice as many Protestants as Catholics; at Lehigh Roman Catholics equal and may even outnumber Protestants.  In the university setting, the percentage of secular humanists is much higher than the national average; and Jewish, Muslim and  Hindu students comprise a larger portion of this population than the society at large. 

              Religion provokes a diversity worry in the university but it is not due to the mix.  The problem, I think, arises out of the university’s mission.  That mission is to advance education, and, as I said, diversity in the community is integral to the educational product the university wants to sell.  So in our effort to be non-discriminatory and welcoming to all kinds of people with all kinds of different backgrounds, we actually welcome people whose religious viewpoints and beliefs are at odds with our educational mission.  That is a diversity issue we have yet to confront. 

     Consider this example.  Our university nondiscrimination policy allows us to welcome into our community gay and lesbian people.  That same policy honors religious freedom and welcomes people of diverse religious backgrounds.  Some religious perspectives do not welcome gay and lesbian people—some people dislike, even despise gay and lesbian people, and do so for religious reasons.  Diversity is up against diversity.  Respect for religious freedom brings into our community people who hold negative attitudes about gay people—attitudes that contradict our basic mission of openness and hospitality to gay and lesbian people.

     Our mission of inclusiveness creates an internal conflict concerning diversity.  On the one hand, we honor non-discrimination; but observing that policy means that we inevitably admit people whose religious views regarding gays and lesbians are quite discriminatory indeed.  We have had on the Lehigh campus some bias incidents and many students have been upset by them—rightly so.  But what is the issue?  Can we be upset solely at the individuals who might write a demeaning and discriminatory epithet on a wall—without also seeing that some who might do such a thing have the attitudes they do because of their religious formation?  And do we not want to preserve respect for religious diversity as well and not discriminate against people because of their religious beliefs.

      Do you see the conflict?  We welcome people of different faith traditions here and do not discriminate on the basis of religion—yet religion is one of the major transmitters of the very values that stand opposed to the university’s mission of inclusiveness.

     If we are going to have a thorough conversation about diversity, we are going to have to ask where these attitudes of hatred and discrimination come from, and if we should finally tease out their origins in religious ideas, we must move the conversation to religious ideas themselves.  The question we have to face—and it is a troubling question—is, do people with such attitudes belong in the university?  Can the university community—not just ours but any university with our mission—welcome into it people whose religious ideas and values put them at odds with the basic educational mission of the university? 

      I believe that the answer to this question is yes.  We must continue to honor religious diversity.  But the troubling part is that we can honor religious diversity only if we insist that individuals who hold beliefs and values that defy the university mission not act on them.  Just as in our constitutional system religious freedom is limited and can be overruled to protect people—think of courts ordering blood transfusions for the children of Jehovah’s witnesses who would die without them--the university, likewise, must insist that its mission trump religious freedom if exercising religion might lead to harming of others.  We are not free to exercise religion in such a way that it leads to harm; and religious freedom will not protect anyone who defies the code of conduct we have put into place to protect the community and to support an intentionally created, religiously pluralistic environment. 

      Religion is one of the major transmitters of values—positive as well as negative.  And the reality is that if we are going to live together amicably, we have to subordinate religious values to moral values of respect and cooperation.  The hope is always that religious values will conform to moral values, but the fact is that they need not.  What is clear, however, is that in the university, that moral vision must prevail.  If individuals are in a religious tradition that authorizes them to be hostile to gays for some theological reason, the solution for the community can be nothing less than this:  to affirm that these individuals are free to hold their beliefs while also insisting that they are not free to act on them—they are not permitted to enact their hatred behaviorally and tear the bonds of respect that make possible our experiment in diversity.

      When students convened a campus discussion to address what it feels like to be a gay student on the Lehigh campus, I did not hear anything in the time I was in attendance about religion.  And the fact is that most of the hatred gay people experience in our nation, and on college campuses, springs from religion.  Yet the university is committed by its policy of non-discrimination to the view that a straight person’s college experience is impoverished without an experience of living and learning with gay folks.  The question then is, “How do we do diversity when diversity tells us we want gay people in our community, yet we also want to say that that we will not discriminate in admissions or in job hires against people whose religion tells them gay people are perverse or  evil?”  Inclusivness and religious freedom are both diversity issues.  Both need discussion.  Nothing is simple when religion comes into the mix.

     My hope is that by bringing religious issues into the discussion in more explicitly ways, we will actually begin to allow the pull of what we do in the university as educators to affect people’s beliefs and understanding of religion.  To hold a belief and not to be able to enact that belief will affect the strength and meaning of the belief for the person who holds it.  By not allowing people to act out the negative, even destructive meaning of some of their beliefs, perhaps we invite reflection and even change those beliefs; and is that not all to the good?  I do not think we should be afraid to challenge people’s beliefs, even their religious beliefs, in this setting—for asking questions and pushing conversation is what we do.  That is our mission too.  The purpose is not to question a person’s right to believe anything in particular, but to raise questions about our understanding, our limited perspectives, our different experiences, our interpretive fallibility. 

     We have had bias incidents on the Lehigh campus, and, like others, I am upset that they have occurred.  But I also want to say this:  how could we not expect to have such incidents when students come here from the wider society and in the wider society they learn bias?  Out there is racism, sexism, hatred of gays, hatred of women, discrimination against people who are poor, or ugly, or short, or tall, from this ethnic heritage or that religion--all kinds of discriminatory attitudes.  People come in here with what they bring in.  What we try to do here is educate and raise prejudice to the level of conversation—for a prejudice that is under discussion is a prejudice that is dying. 

     Diversity is a pressing issue:  if we do not attend to it, we can fail in our mission to provide an educational experience that attends to the reality of life in this rather complicated world of ours.  And we move toward accomplishing that mission when we mix people up racially, ethnically, politically, religiously, in terms of class and gender and sexual orientation.  We create a community where people expose their differences to one another, then have to talk with one another, which means they will have to learn from one another.  And we impose a rule of respectful engagement to govern those conversations. That conveys a moral vision as it is expressed in the values of our mission.  Respect for others is more than an ideal—it is a practical reality that members of the university community enact everyday behaviorally;  and we can demand respectful behaviors of all members of the community whatever beliefs might be held, whatever the sources of those beliefs—even if they  be in religion.

     My thought is simply that as we discuss and strategize about diversity in our university settings, we must not ignore the role of religion.  Religion can be divisive and exclusionary, and even in the university religion can provoke fear, even the fear of confronting religious ideas in their negativity, should such negativity surface.  But in the university setting, it is a moral vision of respectful engagement that governs our encounters, our conversations, our learning; and religion must, in this setting, submit to that moral vision so that learning can take place, which includes, presumably, the dispelling of ignorance.  The university can model for the wider society how to honor diversity by welcoming difference and insisting that it be treated with civility and respect. 

Opening Ceremony for the “Eyes Wide Open-Pennsylvania” event at Packer Memorial Church,  Lehigh University, October 6, 2006.

              Good Morning.  We are pleased to welcome to our campus the “Eyes Wide Open—Pennsylvania” project of the American Friends Service Committee.  Today’s exhibit is a part of the national Eyes Wide Open project, and it brings to the Lehigh Valley, beginning today, here on the Lehigh campus, a reminder of the human cost of war.  The exhibit features one pair of military boots for every Pennsylvania casualty in Iraq (and 50 pairs of civilian shoes, tagged with Iraqi names, representing the 50:1 ratio of Iraqi to US casualties in the current conflict.)

As of July 2006 Pennsylvania has lost over 128 soldiers, the third highest state casualty count in the US; and this includes Sergeant Jennifer Hartman, of New Ringgold, Pennsylvania, a Tamaqua High School Graduate, who died in a car bomb explosion in West Baghdad on September 14th.

              This project is a reminder that war is a desperate and tragic means for solving conflicts; and it is also a memorial to those who died.  Wherever the Eyes Wide Open project has gone, whether here in Pennsylvania or around our country, it has met with acclaim as it has reminded us, the same way the AIDS Quilt did here some years ago, that casualty statistics hide in their impersonal numbers very personal stories, very personal losses, and very personal grief, pain, and sorrow. 

              We open this event with some brief statements from a representative of this event’s on campus sponsors, the Progressive Student Alliance (Tamara Nisic); fro Professor John Pettegrew, Director of American Studies;  from Terry Briscoe representing local community people working with LEPOCO, and from Scilla Wahrhaftig, from the Pennsylvania American Friends Service Committee.  Following these statements, the names of each fallen Pennsylvania soldier will be read along with an Iraqui civilian casualty.  The exhibit is open for you to walk through, to pause for prayer or reflection or meditation; to leave notes or flowers or other tributes; to remember and to mourn. 

              This event is a memorial tribute to the dead—and it is offered as hope to the living, that by remembering, we might renew our efforts as individuals and as a nation to work always for understanding, to work always for peace. 

(Note:  As of yesterday, the total number of deaths in Iraq number 2728, with 11,335 wounded and returned to action and 9352 wounded and not retunred to action.

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“When the World is too Much With us. . . .”  ( A Reflection on Hope and Choice)  (A somewhat shorter version published in The Morning Call on August 19, 2006, p. D9, Faith and Values Column)

Lloyd Steffen

           “The world is too much with us” William Wordsworth sighed two centuries ago in a short poem--and who would not agree?  

           Our world is filled with discord, violence and hostility.  So many things seem out of control.  Everywhere we look we face seemingly intractable conflicts and problems that defy solution.  Think of the world that is “too much with us” us today:  war in Iraq, Israel’s war with Hezzbolah, religious extremism and terrorist plots to blow up airliners.  Poverty is pervasive all over the globe, and environmental degradation, illiteracy, overpopulation, disease and natural disasters pose continual threats to human well being, even survival.   In the United States, we face unprecedented calamities in geopolitical affairs, and looming about are the domestic crises of health care, public education, immigration, a massive and unparalleled public debt, oil production interruptions and rising prices at the gas pumps.  The warnings about global warming are suddenly real, and in the background:  hurricane season.  The world is too much with us, and we wonder what will come next. 

            A few months ago I was involved in a discussion with some college students about “the great issues of our day,” and one student put her finger on a problem that is often obscured when we catalogue all that is not well with the world.  The student asked a simple yet arresting question: “But what can I do?”

             That question reveals bewilderment and powerlessness.  As new and complex problems arise and do so in the immediacy of a news break, bewilderment is a natural response.  Events seem to catch us off guard, and we often lack the background for grasping the news of the day.  How many Americans really knew about Hezzbolah before the recent conflict broke out? And moral compasses seem to spin rather than point, as when the American ambassador to the United Nations prepared a release (not formally delivered but nonetheless prepared) stating that the deaths of Israeli civilians are somehow worse that the deaths of Lebanese civilians?  Amid so much conflict, ignorance and moral confusion, we find ourselves at times simply inadequate to the task of understanding what is going on.  We are bewildered.

             But more than bewilderment is the feeling of powerlessness that rushes in on us like a wave of exhaustion.  So much seems out of control, and like that student, we feel personally helpless to affect change and make things better.  When powerlessness joins bewilderment, the poet’s insight seems to say it all:  “the world is too much with us.”

             Our religious traditions address questions like “But what can I do?” by moving us to the spiritual resources that then allow us to make positive and creative responses to the problems of our world.  Christianity, for instance, emphasizes the need to take into the world faith, love and hope—and in these days perhaps the greatest of these is hope.  Hope is not optimism.  Optimism is a kind of personality orientation whereby people approach the world as if things will not only get better but have to, for clouds do have silver linings and streets have sunny sides.  Optimism has foundations in character—some folks are just oriented that way. 

 But hope refers to an attitude, even a confidence that things fit together even though “the events of the day” would suggest otherwise.  An antidote to feelings of helplessness, despondency, or hope’s classic antagonist—despair, hope is what puts things into motion and impels us to labor; it directs us to envision possibilities and surround them with care; it stirs our imaginations to expect things—and not only to expect but also to attempt.  Hope can mitigate grief and make consolation possible; it can heal even when there is no cure and move us to overcome difficulties.  Hope directs us to the expectation of meaning and then makes real the possibility of spiritual truth, allowing us to approach the events of the day with balance, even some calmness, urging us to live as if we have yet to see the bigger picture. 

             That bigger picture inspires people to create possibilities for change.  Recall how the original American constitution condoned—legalized—slavery and the political suppression of women.  The curve of constitutional change since the time of Lincoln has been consistently in the direction of increasing freedom, equality and inclusiveness in our society.  That is a big picture hope for those who experience discrimination before the law. Gays and lesbians are today victims of a terrible bigotry in American society, but as Bishop John Shelby Spong has said, “When we start talking about bigotry, its days are numbered.”  As painful as this time is for gay and lesbian people, there is comfort—hope—in that insight. 

             So “What can I do?” when the world is too much with us?  Buddhism lays out some guidelines for its vision of right living, directing people to respect life, avoid anger, gossip and boasting, and to act with kindness.  And Buddhist teaching instructs people to find a right livelihood.  A college student wondering “What can I do?” ought to give serious attention to that issue.  What kind of occupation or career can I pursue that will contribute positively to peace of mind and the peace in the world?  In Buddhism, this end cannot be accomplished by, say, making armaments or feeding a desire for wealth.  The message:  think about the need to conform work to the values of peace and compassion rather than sacrificing those values to the necessity of making a living.

            “What can I do?” is a moral question about how we shall live, and it is a spiritual question about how we will use our freedom—to what end. In a world too much with us, heed Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you seek.”  The question “What can I do?” ought not be a lamenting cry of despair but an opportunity to take hope into the world and an occasion to build that world through the pathways we take and the choices we make.

 
Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain and Professor Religion Studies at Lehigh University.

AIDS and Faith  (Published in edited form as a Spritual Journeys Column "Churches Offer Conflicting Messages about Gays" in the Express-Times, Friday, December 16, 2005:  C 12, C 9.)

              The issue of homosexuality and the Church has led to heated, often divisive debates in the Christian Church.  Many Protestant Churches have been torn apart by disputes over including of gay and lesbian people into the full life of the church.  These disputes sometimes center on ordination, sometimes on equal marriage.  The Bible is not the fuel for these debates—the fuel is homophobia--but it is like the oxygen source needed to sustain the combustion.  Some argue that the Bible condemns homosexuality, which in some places it does, while others argue that other values than obedience to the letter of the text must guide practice, values such as love, acceptance, and inclusion. 

              Given how rancorous and hate-filled some of these debates have become in various religious communities, all peace-loving people of good will, religious or not, ought to be grateful that those who appeal to, say, the Hebrew Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality do not push their literal interpretation so far as to agree with the divine commandment that homosexual people should be put to death, which is, literally, the punishment the Lord imposes on those guilty of homosexuality (Leviticus 20.13).  Religious morality often has a “pick and choose” quality to those who claim to be literal interpreters of Scripture. It is as if they find themselves saying, “I’m literal when I quote the verse or part of the verse I like, but  I can ignore what I do not like.”  Nothing like the attention given the few verses in Scripture that deal with homosexuality is given to the more than 2000 verses that deal with the poor.

              Roman Catholic Christians have recently heard from their new pope, Benedict the XVI, that gay men should be barred from the priesthood (unless they are free of “profoundly deep- rooted homosexual tendencies” and have overcome transitory homosexual inclinations in a three year period prior to ordination to the deaconate).  This document arises from a study begun in 1994 and reinforces a stance the Church has taken since 1961. 

              Although this recent pronouncement  argues that homosexuals suffer from an “objective” disorder that “gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women,” there is no doubt that the context for this document is the clergy sex abuse scandal.  The papal pronouncement  subtly reinforces an irresponsible stereotype.  Read against the backdrop of the clergy sex abuse scandal, that unfounded stereotype is that homosexual people are sexual predators.  (In fact, social scientists contradict this idea with data showing that sex offenders are as likely to be heterosexual as homosexual.) 

              The papal document does not mention clergy sexual abuse but it suggests that in order for priests to related correctly to men and women, the Church must refuse holy orders to men who happen to be gay and who want to respond to a call to the priestly vocation.  The suffering this may cause gay men who feel called by God to the priesthood will never be fully known.  The Roman Catholic Church is facing various problems with the priesthood, but this document, which does not address the sex abuse scandal, provides a basis for concluding that homosexuality is the problem underlying that scandal.  That conclusion is uninformed and  irresponsible.

              Lest it be thought Christianity is inherently hostile to gay people, it is worth noting that some Christian Churches have taken progressive stances of support for gay people, welcoming them into congregations and into leadership roles, including ordination.  There is even a Protestant denomination that directly targets its ministry to gay, lesbian and transgendered people, the Metropolitan Community Church.  We are blessed to have an MCC congregation in the Lehigh Valley.

              The beliefs advanced in the Metropolitan Church denominational Statement of Faith says nothing about gay and lesbian people.  The statement of faith accepts that the Bible shows forth God to “every person”  that “all people are Children of God being spiritually made in God’s image,” and that God’s love is available to “all people.”  On the basis of this theological vision, the Metropolitan Community Church reaches out to those who suffer exclusion in the community of faith, which in very real and practical ways includes gay, lesbian, and transgendered people.  When, at a recent Sunday service, the local Metropolitan Community Church recognized World AIDS Sunday, the invitation to communion was extended to all, including those who have been turned away elsewhere in faith communities. 

              At that service, speakers acknowledged 46 million people world wide who are infected with HIV/AIDS, over 1100 of those people known to be living in the Lehigh Valley.  The  congregation focused on the healing power of faith and the difference people of compassion and inclusion can make in a world where condemnation and exclusion too often rule the day.  Part of the AIDS quilt was draped behind the altar.  Some acquainted personally with loss due to AIDS were present in the congregation.   

              The themes of this service were echoed elsewhere around the world.  The Ecumenical AIDS Consultation issued a letter from Bangkok, Thailand to Christians everywhere reminding the Church that it is a healing community with a mission of “love and compassion,” and that the “Church can achieve much more than it has in the areas of awareness building, training, networking and advocacy to overcome prejudice, ignorance, fear and judgmental attitudes.”  That letter called upon all member churches to “deepen a spirituality based on the love of God, the love of neighbor and love among ourselves especially as regards people living with and affected by HIV an AIDS.” The Church was itself envisioned as a sanctuary of love. 

              As debates in some areas of the Christian community focus on excluding gays, lesbians and transgendered people, others are reaching out to acknowledge their suffering and offer a healing place of refuge where the focus is not on judgmentalism but on compassion.  They transform the community of faith by this emphasis. 

              Having experienced the celebratory service on World AIDS Sunday, I was reminded that those of us who are religious finally chose how we shall be religious.  Although religious faith can always be used to sanction hatred and fear, there are other choices to make, choices that turn in the direction of healing, compassion and love of neighbor.  And those are the choices that hold, I think, the world’s only real hope for peace and healing.  

Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University.

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Homily for Parent's Weekend - November 6, 2005
Packer Memorial Church
Parents Weekend Interfaith Service
Rev. Dr. Lloyd Steffen

Already?  (A Protestant Meditation)

Protestants are a mishmash of oddly disparate ideas, organizational systems and beliefs-there are over 250 different denominations within Protestantism, and they are all over the map:  liberal, conservative, moderate.  If they have anything in common, it may be those shared conceptions that go back to the Reformation idea that every person should be his (or her) own priest-and with that as a founding principle you can see why there are so many different forms of Protestantism.  Protestants in general hold that the Scriptures testify to God's revelation, and the center of worship is not prayer or music or a sacramental rite-it is the proclamation of the Word in preaching.  Protestants preach-if you see Christian programming on TV where someone is preaching from the Bible, you are watching a Protestant in action..

With all the differences dividing Protestants from one another it is important to remember what they do hold in common.  Protestants think the Word is important.  The Word of God by the way is supposed to be Christ rather than the Bible-but many Protestants think the Word of God is the Bible, and that then leads to all kinds of problems and confusions.  I could straighten all that out but do not have time this morning.  The point I want to make is that the Word is important, but I am one protestant who thinks words about the Word are important, and sometimes the words are very small and ordinary, humble even, and seem not to be designed for carrying heavy theological freight.

I want you to consider with me one word this morning.  And here's the set up.  Our Commencement Speaker at Lehigh last June, poet and novelist Maya Angelou, is a person of deep faith.  This fact is widely known.  Accordingly, people sometimes approach her when they first meet her and say of themselves, "I'm a Christian."  Ms. Angelou-Dr. Angelou-always responds to this statement from the strangers she meets the same way.  She says, "Already?"

"Already?"  Now that is a great word in this context.  Think of the rich implications of responding to someone's confession of religious identity, "I'm a Christian."  "Already?"

Dr. Angelou is reminding those people who say "I'm a Christian" that they are claiming to have arrived at a kind of destination-a destination of identity.  "I'm there" they are saying-"I know you're a Christian. I'm a Christian-we have this profound religious identity in common."  Her little response, "Already?" is proposing a different point of view on the matter-oh that is very Protestant.  The Christian prospect and possibility,  that little ordinary word "already" seems to say, is, rather, a process, a traveling rather than a destination, an open-ended on-the-road notion rather than a closed, sealed up identity.   Its more like a question than an answer, more like a verb than a noun, more like a hope than a realization.   People who identify themselves as "being Christian" rather than becoming Christian take a lot on in the way of assumptions and understanding.  Maya Angelus little ironic question pricks and even rebukes that little bubble of self-enclosed identity.

But the question, "Already?" challenges the idea that things are settled in the realm of the spirit.  That word asks us to reflect on what it might mean when people say "I am a Christian" and mean by that that they have arrived and reached the destination.  Could it be that that final destination, that place of ultimate realization is where one is a Christian because one has become, dare I say it, Christ-like?  And if the Christian identity is to be Christ-like, what is that?

I wonder if it might be all those things that Jesus of Nazareth exemplified and called for in his ministry and teaching:  that compassion for others, that unfettered freedom to be a presence of peace and understanding, that attention to the beauty of the world and the suffering that goes on in it, that willingness to sacrifice for friends, that willingness to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick and broken of spirit.  Those are all things Christians believe Jesus exemplified.  Is saying "I'm a Christian" -meaning I am already a Christian-like making a claim that I have realized these things in my life:  "I am that person of peace and mercy and compassion-I have realized in myself the Spirit of God I have learned to see in Jesus of Nazareth, in Christ. It is accomplished."

To become such a person-to have accomplished the Christian challenge to be Christ-like--is actually a very beautiful thing to contemplate, I think, and one does not need to be a person in the Christian tradition to appreciate this beauty.  But is that what it means when someone says "I am a Christian"--that to be a Christian means that I have become Christ-like, no, even more, I am Christ-Christ to others, and as such I can even see Christ in others?

That word "Already?" makes me wonder if we Christians invest too much in thinking about faith as something that transforms us from one thing to something totally different and distinct -I was a sinner, now I'm saved; I was lost, now I am found.

While this is an important part of the tradition, it seems to me that the great spiritual task we who try to be Christians must make is integration, not transformation.  Can we take our brokenness, our doubts, our many failings, our insensitivities, and find ways to integrate these realities about who we are into our projects of faith?   Maya Angelou offers a gentle rebuke as well as a reminder that all is not accomplished when she responds, "Already?"  What our task is, is not to see this rebuke as mean-spirited but as the exemplification of what humility looks like in the realm of the spirit.  Maya Angelou has known terrible adversity and suffering in her life-she has chronicled that in her writing.  And it is the pain and despair she has experienced that has affected her and changed her and challenged her-it is that pain and suffering that  has been integrated into the person we know today as wise and compassionate.  She did not transform, convert from one thing into something totally different -which by the way seems always to fail, thus leading to charges of hypocrisy, which can arise anytime someone claiming to be Christian doesn't  seem to be very Christlike.  Maya Angelou did not transform, she integrated and grew.

The challenge we face in the spiritual life is not to be but to become-we are who we are, and our challenge spiritually is to become aware of who we are in our weakness and frailty, in our failures and foibles as well as to see our abilities and talents and the possibilities that lie before us.  Our challenge is to shun the too quick identification of this somewhat ragged and humble self with the spiritual ideal, which for Christians is to be found in the life and ministry of Jesus.

We Christians are frail and fallible people.  We can be mean-spirited, vengeful, unable to forgive, unwilling to lend a hand, selfish, violent, supportive of violence as a solution to all kinds of problems-and we can be that way even in the moment we go up to Maya Angelou and say, "Hi, I'm a Christian"

I would ask you to consider today what it would mean for those of  you in the Christian faith tradition to identify yourself as people do to Maya Angelou.  What should come back to you, not from Maya Angelou, not even from a curious Christ, but from your own awareness of who you are and what is required of you in faith, is a simple word, a reminder, a prod, a rebuke, a skeptical "Oh, really?"  Maybe even that little word, that little question "Already?"

Opening Remarks:

President George Bush declared this day, September 16, a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Our meeting here in Packer Church is our Lehigh University community response to that call.  I am Lloyd Steffen, the University Chaplain, and on behalf of Father Wayne Killian, Director of the Newman Center and Catholic Chaplain to this campus, I welcome you to this brief service of prayer and reflection.

 In response to Hurricane Katrina, President Gregory Farrington wrote to the Lehigh community saying, "Our primary focus since the tragedy has been on providing support to members of the Lehigh family from that region to help them through this terrible time. Recognizing that this crisis is far from over, we will continue to provide our community with information on how each of us can help."

After that communication, the President's Office announced that Lehigh University and its four colleges --- College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business and Economics, College of Education, and P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science --- have available office space and library resources, as well as some laboratory facilities, to accommodate faculty members from Gulf Coast universities who have been displaced by hurricane Katrina.  The University Admissions Office undertook to offer guest student status to academically qualified students who had been at institutions forced to close by the hurricane.  As of this moment we have 8 such students on campus.

 Institutions of higher learning in the Gulf Coast region were not all similarly affected, but those seriously affected have had an excruciating difficult time.  In New Orleans alone, Tulane University had some flooding but mainly downed trees and wind damage; Xavier University was flooded up to the roof tops of many buildings, historically black Dillard University was a 55 acre campus covered by 5-8 feet of water.

 Lehigh's response to the disaster included some other notable efforts.   The Student Senate passed a resolution offering student encouragement and support for university efforts to open Lehigh's doors to displaced students.  The Dean of Students Office organized a general relief effort idea session last week, and among the ideas receiving attention is organizing volunteers for an alternative Spring Break or early summer trip to the affected area to lend a hand in the rebuilding effort.  Faculty were gathered by the Global Citizenship program to discuss the broader societal questions provoked by the disaster and the response to it.

 The efforts that Lehigh and other institutions of higher learning have made to offer a lending hand have been commendable, and the opening of  pocketbooks and the flow of contributions to disaster relief organizations to displaced persons has demonstrated once again the willingness of Americans to show their generosity.  Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster of enormous national consequence, and it reminds us of how connected we are-and how connected to one another we should be-as Americans.

 But all of us are aware that this hurricane, terrible as it was, is not responsible for all the suffering and death that has occurred in the Gulf Coast area.  The tragedy of Katrina was compounded by decisions human beings in positions of power and responsibility made about how to respond, and it is important to remember that inaction and not responding quickly were decisions people made, not simply inattentiveness or ignorance.

 In our outrage and consternation we seem to have overlooked that the response of the federal government  in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane  was actually consistent with a reigning political philosophy, confirmed by national elections, about what the role of the federal government should be-that it is a limited role, and that states and local communities must take the lead in dealing with local problems.  The federal government has identified its role as concerned primarily with external terrorist threats to our national security-and accordingly, it has reorganized government at the federal level to lessen involvement in responding to natural disasters.

 Budgets express moral priorities-they are moral documents.  They reflect what we care about and what we do not care about.  When our national relief effort as represented by FEMA for such an event as this one is considered organizationally and as a budgetary concern, it is clear responding to a disaster like Katrina has been subordinated to the federal concern with terrorism.  As you, I was shocked to hear some government officials initially responding to the disaster with words of relief that there was no evidence terrorists had broken the levees in New Orleans or were in any other way-as far as we knew, they said--taking advantage of the situation in the Gulf Coast,  This is good to note perhaps, but should that be the focus given the immensity of human suffering that was presenting itself to us?

  I think these are issues worth  contemplating as we are called by the President of the United States into a day of prayer and remembrance.  A question worth considering today is, "How should we, not only as individuals but as a nation, respond to such a disaster?"  How should we think about our fellow citizens in trouble and the resources that will be necessary to help them?  Do we as citizens want to empower our government to act as our agents of concern, and do we want to direct our concern for our fellow citizens with our tax dollars, with our governmental structures, with our budgets?  These are very practical questions, but the practical questions have to affect how we think and theorize about the role of government.  As I say, there is a deep philosophical consistency in the initial governmental response that has only changed under political pressure fueled by  moral outrage from the vast majority of American citizens.

  And we need to ask ourselves how as citizens we can support efforts to help affected and suffering citizens.  Will it be through ad hoc volunteer ways, which are certainly useful;  or do we also want to insist on a national response where our agent of action is actually the federal government, which we empower to be concerned with the welfare of all-black and white, rich and poor-and express that concern through our tax dollars, knowing that it is the tax dollar that makes possible the care for shelter, medical attention, food and water, and hope for recovery-that we as citizens want to extend to others as we would want to have the same directed to us?  Perhaps we should even revisit the Golden Rule and consider this:  Do unto to others as they would have you do unto them.  That would be a hard test in the present situation.

 The question worthy of considering today as we  ponder and pray for our displaced fellow citizens is a moral challenge that asks whether we have done all we can to lessen human suffering  A consensus is forming that we have not and did  not, and I think at this point that is not a controversial statement, even for such an occasion as this. The President has admitted that the response was ineffective and has actually taken responsibility for failures in offering meaningful and effective help to lessen the loss of life and ease human suffering.  What that acceptance of responsibility means we shall have to wait.  Finger-pointing kinds of questions will continue to be asked about all of this in the days ahead, but there are even bigger  questions we should be asking, questions that go to issues about what we as a nation care about and how we establish priorities, and how we think about the role of our federal government, the extent of federal responsibilities and the issue of security; and even what it means to contribute to the national capabilities for responding to natural disasters by organizing government, prioritizing budgets, and paying taxes.

 In calling for a day of prayer and remembrance, the President has asked us to pray for the victims of Katrina, and we shall do that today, both in silence and in our shared expressions of concern.  But let us also pray for the President, and our other national leaders, and for ourselves as a nation, and reflect on whether we are doing what we need to be doing to lessen suffering, to lend assistance to those whom Jesus called "the least among us," the poor and those dispossessed of access to the goods of life because of race and economic status.

 We have seen the underside of America in the last two weeks, and the picture of Americans being left behind, not only figuratively because of economic status, but literally-as people who could not leave, who were left stranded,  as a hurricane tore through their communities and destroyed their homes and their lives, --is nothing if not disturbing.

 Let us pray today for the victims of Katrina and pray as well for our nation and its leaders, so that in the days ahead we might transform our individual concerns for the thousands who are suffering today because of the hurricane and the response and transform our willingness as individuals to show generosity into a broad community response that reflects the best that is in us as a people.

 I invite you into a time of quiet reflection and silent prayer.

The Rev. James A Forbes, Jr., senior pastor at the Riverside Church in New York,
has several times visited the Lehigh Valley. One of America's great preachers, he has been the
guest speaker at local Martin Luther King Day events, and among other visits here and honors
he has received, Lehigh University invited him as its Baccalaureate speaker in 1991, and he
received an honorary degree that year.

Rev. Forbes has, over the years, used his pulpit at Riverside to address a variety of public
policy and social justice issues, and he, like many other Americans, is distressed about the nation's
direction at this moment in our history. The leadership at Riverside Church, realizing that their pastor
is a prophetic voice and a spiritual resource for the nation, has encouraged and supported Rev. Forbes
in a call to action that aims to inspire, inform, and rally the public to actions of justice. Rev. Forbes
will be coming to the Lehigh Valley to be featured speaker at  Rally in the Valley on October 12;
and on July 4th , buses will leave the Lehigh Valley to journey to Riverside Church in New York City
to hear Rev. Forbes preach on the occasion of  Independence Day.

Rev. Forbes has written to the Christian Church community that at no time in the nations's
history has our witness been more urgently needed that it is now. The year 2004 is a critical one for
our congregations to come together and create a collective witness to reconnect America with its moral,
spiritual, and democratic values.

The crisis to which Rev. Forbes refers is economic, social, political and ultimately, spiritual,
and it does not take hard investigative reporting to discern its parameters.

Consider the economic issue of poverty in the United States. The federal government claims
to have taken five million people off the tax rolls, helping low income workers through tax cuts and
training programs. The poverty rate, however, rose from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 12.1 percent in 2002
 the latest statistic available, and critics point out that the federal government underestimates the problem
because it fails to classify many low-wage workers as poor, due to unrealistically low poverty standards.
According to the government a family of four with an annual income of about $18,500  an hourly wage of $8.89
 is poor, but the economic reality is that any family of four with income below $30,000 in any city in this
country is going to have trouble making ends meet. A $30,000 a year income requires an hourly salary of
$14.42, and according to the Economic Policy Institute, about 24 percent of workers earn less than $9
an hour, the federal poverty line for a family of four.

This is poverty in America, and were we go global in our outlook, the economic reality
is even more devastating. A Bread for the World reports that 842 million people across the globe
are hungry on any given day, and in the developing world, more than 1.2 billion people currently live
below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day. Eleven million children younger
than 5 die every year, more than half from hunger and related causes but that is over 30,000 per day.

The issues of concern could be multiplied on several fronts. There is disease, for instance,
the AIDS problem that is not only pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa but increasingly an American crisis,
especially in the black community. Environmental degradation and lack of safe drinking water for
millions in the world today is another concern, along with high child mortality rates, poor maternal
health, lack of universal primary education as well as a lack of decent housing. The problems we
face in America as American citizens and in the world as global citizens are mind-numbing, then
add to the mix religious and ethnic conflict, violence, war and terrorism. No wonder people of
good are distressed and troubledBand perhaps even reluctant to face any more: it seems too much.

What Rev. Forbes has said is that religious communities have a responsibility to address this
crisis, and he is speaking directly to clergy. Writes Forbes: If clergy
are silent, intimidated, afraid to speak up; afraid to confront, where there is injustice and untruth; if
we are scared, hiding behind pulpits while the nation is starving for justice and peace and compassion; if
preachers are hiding in the pulpit, what good news will get out to the nation?

Forbes cherishes America's democratic ideals, and is, like many others, distressed at the
problems we face concerning jobs, health care, education, affordable housing, elderly options,
safe communities, and peaceful resolution of conflicts. And he is wanting to hold the religious
community and its clergy leadership responsible for failing to address our problems in ways
that mobilize people for action. He not only accuses preachers of hiding in the pulpit, but
has said on several occasions that if preachers Aare not going to speak up, then turn in your badge.

Mobilization 2004, the name Forbes has given his effort, is designed to get Protestant, Catholic,
Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist leaders to work their leadership roles for the good of the nation and
for the good of people who are hurting, suffering, and dispossessed.

What will become of this effort is yet to be determined, but it is heartening that local religious
leaders in the Lehigh Valley have formed an inter-faith "Mobilizaton 2004" coalition aimed at reconnecting
citizens to democratic values and people of faith to ideals of personal and communal responsibility. The mobilizers
are calling on local Lehihg Valley people of faith to reflect on the crisis so many see so clearly, assume responsibility,
and even ask if their own local religious leaders are attending to it. Are they speaking out, urging people
of faith as people of faith to mobilize for action directed at addressing inequality and human suffering?
Are they propohetic voices for justice, or, as Forbes suspects many are doing, hiding in the pulpit?

The prophetic voice of our time may or may not come from clergy, and Forbes has performed
an invaluable service by reminding clergy that their greatest temptation may be parochialism. But as mobilization
2004 gets underway, the point for spiritual reflection is that the responsibility for addressing the great
issues of our time belongs not simply to clergy but to all of us, which means that people of faith must
address these issues, not as political partisans, but as people of faith committed putting faith into action.

 "Who will say the blessing?"  This is a question that sometimes arises as people sit down
to eat a meal together.  Out of family traditions a ritual of blessing invites people to say
together words of gratitude and thanksgiving for the food before them, which they pause
to see as a gift; and the words of blessing usually express a resolve to dedicate the gif
t received in service to God.  Blessing is thus a complex matter:   it is prayer; it is
thanksgiving, it is a bond of community and intimacy; it is consecration and dedication  to service.

       Blessing comes in the saying of it, being one of those unusual words that performs its work in the
speaking: "Bless this food" or "Bless me" or "God bless you" and by the utterance the deed is done.
 Blessing makes happy with gifts; to bless someone or something is to confer well-being and
happiness out of abundance.  "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" Yahweh says in the
first commandment uttered in the Hebrew Bible.  Abundance and generosity attend this divine
blessing of plenty, and elsewhere in the texts of the Bible one can find a God
blessing by providing, whether it be bread from heaven or springs of water in the desert.
God provides by blessing, seeing to it that people's needs are met.
The whole creation reflects a divine generosity that confers well-being and brings happiness
out of abundance.

        Blessing, however,  need not express abundance, and even the scriptures show another meaning.
Blessing can figure into an economy of scarcity, as if it were a rare commodity that had
to be carefully conserved and parsimoniously doled out.  When Cain and Abel offer up
to God their sacrifices in hopes that they will receive blessing in return, Abel's offering is
accepted and Cain's rejected, as if God has not enough blessing to go around.  And the
lack of blessing for Cain leads to terrible consequences.  Cain is upset and resentful of
the blessing his brother received.  God offers Cain no comfort or reason for his rejection
but tells Cain he ought to master his feelings of anger and rejection, which he cannot do.
Rejection and anger spiral into the first murder.  Brother against brother.  The first homicide a
fratricide.  And at issue is the shortage of blessing, as if it were not as abundant as the waters
of the earth or the stars in ths sky, but a scarce resource, not enough for two brothers but one
only, as if there were simply not enough to go around.

          Blessings are powerful and desirable, and we seek the benefits of blessing in life
even if we are not accustomed to using the language of blessing. But blessing confers the
sense of well-bing that comes from feeling included and accepted, affirmed in who we
are and what we are doing.  Who does not want that?  And who does not want to feel
special, unique, esteemed?   Blessing confers these gifts on us, and to receive these gifts
is a wonderful experience.  If blessing is scarce, however, if there is not enough to go
around, people can find themselves put in competition  for blessing, experiencing
resentment and anger as the feeling of blessing eludes them.  Competing for blessing
can lead people to do things they ought not to do, as Cain did, as Jacob did when he
resorted to trickery and deception to receives a  blessing from his father that by birth
order should have gone to his older brother.  The competition for scarce blessing can
result in a feeling of exclusion and not-belonging, fostering a sense of rejection and even
abandonment by those who should love and care for us.
         What the scriptures have to say to us about blessing is of course complex, but this
is clear:  since there are different and competing ideas about blessing, we have a choice to
make.  Which vision of blessing do we want to carry with us into the world?  Is it to be an
idea of blessing based on abundance, or based on scarcity?  We all have the power and
ability to bless and to receive blessing?  Which kind of blessing do we want to offer others,
and which kind of blessing will we accept?
             These are difficult questions, since we operate more out of scarcity models
of blessing than we do out of abundance.  For the scarcity model offers us the possibility
of feeling distinct and unique, of receiving happiness and good things due to something
special we are.  But in the abundance model, who is not special?  The Cain and Abel
story ought always to remind us that a bestowing of blessing at someone else's expense
is a terrible thing for those denied blessing.  Scarce blessing is always a potential source of
conflict and tension.  Think of the different world we would be living in if in the land of Palestine
all who inhabited the area felt blessed to be there and respected each other as blessed -
and out of that sense of having been blessed could then freely and without fear bless one
another.

      Consider family dynamics.  As we enter this period of upcoming holidays and family
gatherings, how might family dynamics be changed by rethinking our relationships in terms
of abundant blessing.  Imagine parents blessing their children and children their parents,
conferring all those things that come with abundant blessing: a sense of well-being and
being loved, gratitude, generosity, thanksgiving, forgiveness and acceptance, appreciation
for the gift that they are to us.

      Blessing presents us with one of the great spiritual challenges of life, for we must ask
how to bless, how much to bless, and whom are we willing to bless?  When the question
is next asked before a meal "Who will say the blessing?" remember that the power to
bless is a power each of us possesses; and we should offer blessing mindfully so that
we might offer blessing generously.  For we offer blessing in thanksgiving and
dedication for that which sustains us and nourishes us, be it the food we eat or the
company we keep, and nothing is a greater sign of having received blessing than
that we should offer blessing freely and with joy to one another.
 

Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University.

Globalized Spirituality?  (A Spiritual Journeys Column to be published in the Express Times Friday, April 25, 2003)

         Many Americans have become accustomed to thinking about spirituality in
a privatized, personal realm.  For many, the idea of "my spirituality"
is completely divorced from institutional religion and various forms of
traditional religious practice.  An important book published last year,
however, suggests that this kind of a viewpoint on issues of religion
and spirituality does not represent any kind of trend in the world
today.  In fact, if Philip Jenkins is right in his book, "The Next
Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity," institutional religion
will continue to be the catalyst for spiritual reflection in the decades
ahead, and shifts in cultural influence will, Jenkins warns, lead to a
time of even greater religious conflict.

        Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn
State University, has chronicled global shifts in religious affiliation.  He
lends support to the observation others also have made that Christianity
will grow exponentially in the areas of the world experiencing enormous
population growth-Asia, Latin America, and Africa-the "global South."

       Christianity has always been a culturally adaptable
religion, and this has been the legacy of the tradition since Saint Paul transformed a
small Jewish reform sect that originally met in synagogues, into a
religion that claimed cosmic significance and transcended geography and
accommodated important aspects of the Greek thought world.  As much as
Islam is today booming around the world, Jenkins claims that it is
Christianity, the world's largest religion, that will continue to claim
dominance, but that it will be a Christianity different from that
inherited from Europe and represented by "mainstream" liberal churches
and denominations in the United States.  Jenkins predicts that by 2050,
only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be
non-Hispanic Caucasians.  The other four-fifths of Christians from the
dominant South will be overwhelming the world with a form of
Christianity that is more traditional, morally conservative,
evangelical, and apocalyptic.

        The form of Christianity that is dominant in the South,
associated with independent churches in Africa and Pentecostalism in Latin America, is
transforming Christianity's faith center.  European-based Christianity,
which is becoming increasingly moribund, hence the decline in
traditional "mainstream" Christian churches in the North, emphasized
involvement with liberal and progressive political and social concerns.
The "the next Christendom," however, will center on a faith that is
mystical, puritanical, concerned with belief in prophecy, exorcism,
faith-healing and dream visions.  A fourth Christianity beyond Roman
Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestant,  is emerging as the dominant form
in the South-Pentecostalism, a hybrid religion that takes the
traditional Protestant emphasis on the centrality of the Bible then
fuses it with the ecstatic, mystical  "folk religion," associated with
such things as Mary devotion from Catholicism and local folk concerns
such as ancestor worship.

       Jenkins' analysis takes existing trends and forecasts a
potentially difficult future.  Although Jenkins could be challenged because he seems
not to give adequate attention to the way political power and economics
may affect religious organizations, his central claim deserves serious
attention.  That claim is that religion is going to affect global
politics over the next fifty years and do so dramatically.  Jenkins
claims that religious identification is becoming the  primary loyalty of
millions of people in the South, taking precedence over national
loyalties.  This shift in loyalty can lead to  religious conflicts,
which may continue to arise as they already have in Indonesia, the
Philippines, Nigeria and the Sudan.  Many of these terrible and
consuming religious conflicts the "northern" media simply refuses to cover as
stories of importance.

       Jenkins' book is a plea to seek understanding of what may prove
to be the great globalization issue of this and future generations-the clash
of globalizing religions, especially Christianity and Islam.  This clash
may lead to actual warfare, but even in places where it does not, it is
conceivable that the new forms of religion dominating the world scene
may inspire movements toward displacing political secular nation states
with theocracies. Islamic Arab states are not the world's only
experience with theocracy-theocracy has been a reality in Christian
history, and if  today it is seemingly dormant it may be awakening
tomorrow.  Already we are familiar with evidence that the values
expressed in a  "southern" trend are present and growing even in
countries like the United States, where attacks on the separation of
"church and state" continue and seem even to increase; where sexuality
issues are cloaked with a conservative mantle, for which the drapes on
the statues at the Department of Justice are an apt symbol; where
intolerance of homosexuals seems to increase even as support of a
religious conception of fetal humanity imposed on all persons by law
seems not so threatening to many any longer as an issue of basic civil
rights or religious freedom.

       What all of this may mean for persons in America on their
spiritual journeys is not easy to fathom.  But the spiritual life is never lived
outside of our social and cultural contexts, and the reality is that
religions like Christianity in its "Southern" expression are going to
infiltrate and affect how Americans do religion.  Global missionaries
were once sent out from America: America is now their missionary field.
Even the priest shortage in American Roman Catholic churches is being
met to a significant degree with "missionary" priests coming to America
from the "South."

    This southern infusion of religious life and spirituality will
provoke a serious values challenge to those who understood the call to a
spiritual life out of that European-based context of tolerance, reason,
diversity, respect for difference, and appreciation for a privatized
spiritual development pursued outside the dominant religious
traditions.  Jenkins does not and cannot say what American spirituality
will look like 50 years hence, but it is clear that changes will be
coming, that America's great religious experiment in religious diversity
will be tested, and that in the Christian world, the declining Churches
of the "North" will have to find ways to enter into dialogue and
communion with the religious communities from the "South."   Globalized
religion and its impact on politics, culture, and even private
spirituality ought not to be ignored..

Lloyd Steffen is University Chaplain and Professor of Religion Studies
at Lehigh University.

Parent's Weekend Service. November 10, 2002

 Meditation:  "Destructive Faith, Demonic Religion: King Saul and the Westboro Baptist Church"  by Rev. Dr. Lloyd Steffen

Text:  I Samuel 15:1-15, 33B.

       Last year at this time, when students and parents came to this worship service, we were still reeling from the 9/11 attacks.  In the meditation and prayers offered during that service, we remembered those in our Lehigh community who died that day-and many of us were trying to discern the role that religion might have played in motivating 19 al Qaeda hi-jackers to commit murder and suicide..  Some folks directed blame for the 9/11 events at Islam, obviously not knowing much about the religion; others looked elsewhere for explanations, especially in the arena of geo-politics and international economics.

       Here, in this place, we considered the contributing role of demonic religion-religion that is not false religion but an authentic expression of religion; demonic religion, religion that is powerful, that addresses and meets the spiritual needs people will have for meaning, for identity, for belonging and community, for power derived from relation with the ultimate values, ultimate reality.  Religion concerns ultimate things, those things deemed most important-at its heart religion provides ways for us to establish relationship with ultimacy and thereby meet our spiritual needs.

        I don't mean to make religion sound academic or bloodless-to the extent 9/11 had anything to do with religion, religion certainly cannot be called bloodless.  But the point of reflecting on such events, on the religious and spiritual dimension of how people engage the world religiously, is simply this: we choose how we will be religious, and we are morally responsible, both individually and in community, for how we choose to be religious.  And we have an option in religious life.  We can be religious in life-affirming ways, in ways that promote goodness.  We can be religious demonically.  One way is creative and seeks to build more inclusive community and ever greater unities between people; the other is exclusive and excluding.  Demonic religion does not promote the value of life but gets itself entwined in destructiveness, using ultimate values to tear down and tear apart.  Demonic  religion invokes ultimacy to foster hatred.  It will be grounded in a certainty that all who are not like us are enemies with a false message-they are wrong of course, but not  only wrong, but condemned, and not only condemned, but worthy of disregard, disrespect-in some cases the demonic will go so far as to advocate and  justify killing.  Religion is concerned with the mystery of life and death-when religion turns demonic, it serves a death-dealing vision that can inspire the worst imaginable destruction.

        Now every religion knows about destructive faith and demonic religion.  Does Islam contain within it folks who pursue faith demonically-of course.  But we can find that demonic dynamic in native American religion, in Taoism, in Buddhism, in Hinduism, in Judaism and in Christianity-as well as in Heavens' Gate and Jim Jones Guyana.  We can even find examples of traditions dealing with demonic religious notions in their preserved sacred scriptures, which brings me to the reading for today.

        The story in 1st Samuel concerns Saul, King of Israel.  The text relates a sometimes obscured command that comes from God-a command called "herem."  Herem is a notion of total warfare, total destruction.  It was a best practice in the ancient world,  and not only for Israel but her neighbors.  Herem required that a people destroy all they could of their enemies, both animate and inanimate things, on the religious grounds that what was sacred to one nation was anathema to the other-so it all had to be destroyed.  The command to destroy utterly was a divine command-in Israel that command came from God, and the story I read, tells what Saul was commanded to do.  He was to kill all the Amalekites, men, women, and children, and then everything else Amalekite-all property-all the sheep and goats and ducks and geese-everything-total obliteration.

       Saul as the story is told does not do all that he is commanded to do by God-he does not undertake herem but disobeys.  Now when you read pious commentators-and perhaps that is what I am supposed to be here-they will say one of two things.  They will say that we must understand this in context and not be too quick to make moral judgments since we raise the specter of being hypocrites if we do.  Thus does one commentator on this story says this: "[Herem] was an ancient practice especially abhorrent to us today.  It is the belief that God could order the extermination of a whole people.  We do not feel the same horror about the near extermination of th American Indians or about the massacre of whole cities by aerial bombardment, presumably because these inhumanities have not been perpetuated in the name of religion" (John Schroeder, p. 871).  This scholar seems to hint that we impose a double standard if we condemn extermination as a religious practice but not do so if it is undertaken on non-religious grounds.  That may be true, but the moral question of course is how any act of total  extermination could ever be justified-even if God commands it.

      And the second response is so to construe the story that the objectionable thing is not the command to destroy but Saul's refusal to do so.  So Saul's motives are impugned and he is made to appear the worse for showing some restraint in his use of religious violence.  In this story,  the Biblical account points out that Saul is disobedient and that his motives for refusing God are selfish.  Saul does go to battle, he does kill more than the combatants-he goes after the women and children as he is commanded; but he is made to look like the greatest of sinners because he spares the life of  King Agag, and he doesn't do the total obliteration-he spares the things that are valuable and good.  The biblical narrative, and those who comment on it, go out of their way to show Saul in the wrong-he is selfish for sparing the king; saving the good things means that only the worthless things of the enemies are given in sacrifice to God: Saul is disobedient and showing  disrespect.  The idea that Saul might have had a nobler motive in preserving things he saw as "good" the text even says good-is not even entertained much less dismissed.  Saul is condemned.  The story proceeds to show how he is made to repent his disobedience, and the religious authority, Samuel, does God's bidding: the prophet and spokesperson of God undertakes to hack Agag to death and then kill all the best cattle-herem is obeyed: total obliteration is accomplished finally at the hands of the religious authority.

      I find this an extraordinary story.  It is about religiously inspired violence; it is about power and religious power used for death dealing.

        Two things we should always remember about religion.  One is that religion is powerful.  The other is that religion is dangerous.  It is true, I think, that many American do not experience religion as powerful.  Religion is a Sunday morning thing for many, and for even more there are lot's of better things to do on Sunday morning than attend to religion.  Religion in our culture today appears to be marginal, easily controlled, understandable, an aesthetic ornament to life, and its importance can be dismissed-O,  it is important, but not that important.  It takes a jarring encounter with people who are religious in different ways to wake us to religion's power and danger-and that I believe is one of the enduring lessons that needs to come out of  September 11.

      Religion is powerful, and the power of religion can be seen in the command that came to Saul to obliterate.  Taht power can be seen in the way the religious authority, Samuel,  finally overrules the political leader and fulfills the command to obliterate from a religious rather than from a political base of power.   The divine will have its way.

      And the danger of religion is to be found in the core of this story-the danger comes from the way religion can turn power not to the end of  peace-making but  to the end of warfare and killing, all in the name of ultimacy,all in the name of God.  Dangerous religion identifies enemies and then seeks divine sanction for acting to obliterate them.  This is demonic religion-religion that is destructive, even blood-thirsty.  This is religion that  wants all other religious competition eliminated and eliminated utterly; this is self-righteous  religion  possessed of absolute truth, religion that will sanction and sanctify the worst that human beings can do in the name of ultimate truth.  Herem. Samuel.  A hacked up King Agag.  A dejected and repentant Saul.  What a story.

      And remember Saul is condemned religiously for failing to do all he was commanded.  From a moral point of view, his refusal to obey a demonic command from a destructive God is itself  praiseworthy-Saul is to be criticized for not going far enough in his refusal and resistance.  After all, he killed the women and children as commanded.  Its just that this demonically portrayed God wanted, for reasons of religious purity, even more death and more destruction.

      Demonic religion can infect any religion, any religious tradition.  When the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich back in the 1950s contemplated demonic religion he went nowhere else but to his own tradition, Christianity, the same way many today go to Islam.  And Tillich identified as demonic the Christian practices of Inquisition, formulas of condemnation, Crusades,  the doctrine of papal infallibility, the tyranny of protestant biblical fundamentalism and the fanaticism of protestant  sects.

      Discerning that faith can serve goodness and creativity or go destructive, that religion can be life-affirming and promote the goods of life, or turn demonic is necessary today, for without it, one will miss the complexity of religion and the options for how people can choose to be religious and meet their spiritual needs.

      We are at Lehigh facing a confrontation with demonic religion, and I want to speak to this issue only briefly here.   For parents here who don't have background on a local community event, an interfaith memorial service was held on September 11 of this year in Bethlehem, sponsored by the Bethlehem Council of Churches.  At that service, a Baptist pastor made disparaging comments about the Metropolitan Community Church, membership of which is largely dominated by gay and lesbian Christian people.  The minister of this church  was in attendance and participating in the service.  The Baptist pastor's comments were to the effect that the sin of homosexuality played a role in God's judgment on America and thus contributed to the events of 9/11-a reprise of the Jerry Falwell and Pat  Robertson comments made in the immediate wake of the actual September 11 attacks.

      The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas got wind of this story, and have now planned to come to Bethlehem the first weekend of December to picket the churches involved in the Bethlehem Council of Churches.  And they also got wind of a diversity forum held here at Lehigh, that was a follow-up to Lehigh's new diversity initiative.  The forum  involved conversation between university officials and  corporate officers  talking about steps they were taking to diversify  their work forces.   Westboro understands the word "diversity" to be code for defying a biblical prohibition on homosexuality, so they have now placed Lehigh on its list of picketing sites.  Cedar Crest College is also going to be picketed since they awarded an honorary degree to Bill Jean King.

      Students of course are upset, and many want to respond to the Westboro picketers, which, of course is what Westboro want-they are publicity hounds and deem any attention at all as a victory for their cause.  And what is their cause: it is a radical religious vision of sexual purification that expresses hatred pure and simple to those who do not accept it.  These folks are the one's who demonstrated at Matthew Sheppard's funeral; these are the folks who have  picketed President Bush's ranch because 9/11 is all about America failing to address its problem with homosexuality.  Their signs say, "Thank God for 9/11" and "God Hates Fags."  Their web site shows a picture of Matthew Sheppard surrounded by hell-fire, with a counter below informing the reader how many days Matthew has been in hell.  Click on his picture and you can hear him scream

     These are not nice people and their religion is not centered in goodness: Their religion does not inspire them to charity-they have no love in their hearts, no mercy, no kindness toward the stranger, no forgiveness; and if they want to get literal about Leviticus and all it says about homosexuals, then they must at some level be advocating killing gay and lesbian folks,  since Leviticus says homosexuals should be put to death.   Leviticus by the way, sanctions death for 26 crimes, including a child cursing a parent,  death for touching the sacred mountain, or violating the sabbath with a condemned animal product-all who get involved in non-worshiping Saturday afternoon events  involving a pigskin are worthy of death according to Leviticus.

     Lehigh students in the days ahead may get a chance to encounter demonic religion directly, out on the public sidewalks in front of Zoellner, where Westboro has scheduled a  picket.  I'm one of the few people who is not totally convinced they will show up-if they don't get attention, they sometimes don't.  Getting people all riled up sometimes suffices for their needs.

     But they may very well show up.  And what are we to think?  Remember that religion is powerful and dangerous-your religion may not seem powerful and certainly not dangerous, but religion taken seriously as concerning ultimate things is always powerful and always dangerous.  And remember that being religious the way Westboro folks are is an option-that such religion is real religion, authentic religion: it is not a perversion of religion or something real religion condemns.  It is one form religion can take.  It is the destructive, demonic form.  You could do your religion that way if that way met your spiritual needs, if the allure of that way of being religiousworked on you.

     But why might it not work on you?  I go back to Saul and his refusal to do what he was commanded.  For all we are told about Saul and for all the unworthy motives imputed to his refusal to pursue the total obliteration as commanded by God and the religious authority, remember that Saul exercised choice.  That means Saul realized his freedom and acted in freedom, even in defiance of an order from God.  He evaluated that order as itself unworthy of God, else he would have followed it.   In his  freedom, in his exer4cise of spirituality-spirituality is what you do with your freedom--Saul said "No."  When demonic religion presents itself, we can do that too.  We can resist and just say "No."  But it is God commanding these things, some will say.  Is it?

      And what if it is?   We image God in ways different from the world of 1st Samuel, and we have sought to conform God to an even more important idea-that of goodness itself.  By the time of Jesus, the association was completed-Why do you call me good, Jesus says, Goodness belongs to God.  Turn your eyes to goodness: when you turn your faith to God and integrate religion into your life however you do that-and we all do that one way or another-be sure that goodness is the hub of that universe: let God endorse and sponsor goodness, and let the power of faith work toward the building up rather than the tearing down of people and  communities.

     We may have some interesting days ahead with Westboro folks-it may all just dissipate: but we ought not to forget that there is no one way of being religious, and that choices have to be made.  Let your choice be a "no" to destructive  faith and demonic religion, but more importantly, let it be a yes to a faith grounded in goodness, a goodness that builds up and issues in the fruits of a life-affirming faith, found in those things I mentioned earlier in our liturgy:   Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Those things identify life-affirming religion.  That is a religious option you can choose.  That is an option for spiritual life just awaiting your attention.  That  option-- for your good and for the good of us all-is waiting your response, your "Yes."   AMEN.

by Lloyd Steffen

Spiritual Journeys column published October 11, 2002, in the Express -Times, pp. D1, D2 under title"Say 'No' to Kansas Church's Demonic Religion"

     The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas--the "WBC"--planned to come to Bethlehem to protest Christians in our area who are gay and lesbian and who may be members of the Metropolitan Community Church.  The WBC recently announced a change in plans due to "scheduling conflicts."  The nature of those conflicts was not given, but who could fail to see a December visit to  "The Christmas City" is designed to attract attention and provide a better platform for their religious protest?  "Stay tuned for more information" says their web site.
     Citizens of Bethlehem might want to acquaint themselves with this Church.  Their web site offers a bracing antidote for any who foolishly persist in thinking that religion is a soft-headed enterprise that is only interested in advancing syrupy platitudes about love and kindness.  "God is love" does not appear on any of  placards these church members carry.  Their signs say things like "God Hates America" and "Thank God for September 11."
      The WBC is not religion for the feint of heart.  It deals with big and powerful emotions-and it mobilizes the faithful.  In 11 years of anti-homosexual picketing, the Westboro church has sponsored over 22,000 demonstrations around the county, including the notorious protest at Matthew Shepard's funeral.  Their web site actually has a counter telling how many days they think that brutally murdered young man has been in hell.
    People who dismiss religion for the insane hatreds that it generates can look at the "WBC" and see all the evidence they need for their distaste.  And people who do not do religion this way can be tempted to say that the WBC does not represent true religion.  But I think that too would be a mistake.
    Religion meets deep spiritual needs people have for meaning, for understanding, for belonging.  It is concerned with ultimate truths and ultimate realities.  There is nothing in religion itself that says religion has to be directed at love and forgiveness and goodness-it can be directed there, of course, but it can also express hatred, destruction and wrathful vengeance against outsiders to the community of faithful.  Religion itself understands destructive and hateful religion to be  "demonic"; and demonic religion is real religion.  It is not false religion.  It is simply religion of a certain sort, just as "God is love" religion is religion of a certain sort.
      So how do people find their way to one form of religion or another, and how are we to understand the difference between creative, life-affirming religion, and religion that is hateful and condemning of persons.  I suggest the answer to this is quite simple, but that the answer is not in religion itself, but in morality.
     Religion has not only to do with beliefs but with actions and decisions-religion is a great motivator for action and determines what-and how-we make certain decisions.  Actions, decisions, and motivations are all moral matters.   How we are religious-how we choose to be religious-is thus a moral matter.
    And just as people can in their daily lives make decisions and act in ways that are  harmful to others, or filled with resentment and hate, they can make decisions to be religious that way as well.
     The Westboro hatred of gay and lesbian persons reflects a decision that that particular religious community made about how to be religious.  This is authentic religion in that at stake are ultimate values and ultimate realities, and these people are referring their way of life and their perspectives to God and believing that they are "absolutely" right in what they are doing. Religion derives its power from this concern with ultimacy..  Religion is one of the few things so powerful that it can even incite people in pursuit of ultimate truth to kill and even sacrifice their own lives, as we saw in  Jim Jones' Guyana, or the Heaven's Gate suicides, and even the September 11 attacks to the extend they might have had some religious motivation.
     These activities ought not to be attacked as being false religion but as expressions of religion's power and danger, and they can be morally evaluated.  A moral evaluation would allow us to say that these acts of destruction and harmful violence do not express or manifest goodness. A moral evaluation will even allow us to say that the God whom these people believe is sanctioning their acts of hatred is not a good God, but a mean and vindictive God who inflicts pain and harm and violence on gay an