Vaclav Havel, center in red scarf, placing a candle at a Prague commemoration of the Velvet Revolution (Petr David Josek/AP)

The New York Times did a nice retrospective yesterday on Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution on its 20th anniversary. I was 15 years old when the Berlin Wall fell along with all the other Eastern European dominoes that fell in its wake. Just old enough to have a global consciousness, but not quite old enough to have a sense of what it all meant and what it still means today. I’m still learning.

Of course, the Times didn’t mention the role religion played in the Czech Republic’s peaceful move toward a free democracy and society. That doesn’t bother me; that’s what we’re here for. And by sheer coincidence I ran across this passage last week by Stanley Hauerwas, written in his book After Christendom, not long after the monumental events of 1989.

These questions [about the “awkward” role of…

Tim Townsend made a splash the other day with his story about Archbishop

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Carlson sending money to help fund the Maine fight against gay marriage. Townsend must have set a record for the comment board. As of this writing there are 153 comments and counting.

Most of the comments seem to be from outside our usual St. Louis Post-Dispatch Civil Religion readership, as JoeL mentioned in comment #145:

This first thing I noticed when reading though the comments to this story is that - like the archdiocese’s use of funds in this political campaign - comments don’t seem to be too local. Unless this hot-button issue fired up some local pro-gay marriage folks who don’t normally participate, it APPEARS the comments are coming from outside the typical STLToday readership. There aren’t too many familiar names, which is perfectly legitimate. The commentary on this blog has all the likings of hissy fit.

But I have a…

www.ucc.org

I‘ve been accused by someone within my denomination of assaulting the first amendment. He describes activities I’ve had a major role in as a “full-fledged assault on conservative media” – “an organized campaign . . . a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations.”

I’ve never seen myself as a part of something like that and I’ve never been described that way before. It brings home the talk about cyberpolarization — how we tend to use media that reinforces our own viewpoints and therefore are not aware of misinformation and are not sensitive to insults and accusations lacking objectivity and logic.

Jeffrey Lord (From The American Spectator)

And it gives me a lens from which to see how it works. It occurs to me that others might be interested in that view. So I’m going to first…

As I stand at the top of the tallest mound, I see the obvious necessity of building the mounds.  The flat, low ground next to the largest North American river should have flooded often.  The  physical structure of the environment necessitated higher ground.  But the mounds are also monuments.  Monuments serve purposes not dictated by the physical environment, but by psychological impulses.

The 20th century psychiatrist, Carl Jung, believed that every interaction between mankind and his environment originates and expresses mankind’s psyche.   What psychological impulses lead to monument building?  I don’t know, but given the chance, I would have questions for the Cahokians themselves.

To the Cahokian chief, I would love to ask, “Why it is that people in power must build exhibits of that power?”  Did the impulse to build the mounds come from the chiefs?  The shamans?  Or is there something about mankind’s social psychology that the needs of a society…

Remember that famous scene from The Brady Bunch where Jan was spouting off about “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia”?

I’m starting to feel that way about healthcare reform. It seems like everywhere I turn, it’s healthcare, healthcare, healthcare.

And if people can agree on one thing, it’s that they can’t agree on anything.

Which is why it’s so refreshing to see this story from CNN.com about Dr. Pedro Jose “Joe” Greer, a gastroenterologist in Miami, Florida who doesn’t care if his patients have the money to pay for his services.

President Obama presents Dr. Pedro Jose "Joe" Greer with Congressional Medal of Freedom. Source: Getty Images

Greer’s comments from his CNN profile are both beautiful and striking:

“I don’t know when it became socially acceptable in our country to refuse a patient because they have no funds,” he told CNN.

“It goes against all the ethics and morals that we know,” he said.

In discussing…

I’ve recently discovered a book by Dag Hammarskjold called Markings.  I’ve not read his work before but was so moved by Markings, that I look forward to reading other works by him.

Dag Hammarskjold was Secretary General of the United Nations from April 1953- Sept. 1961. Mr. Hammarskjold died in a plane crash while on a UN mission to Congo.

Markings is written in diary form, though the many entries have the appearance of an aphorism. The entry dates extend from 1925 to 1961.  The entries trace the development of his spiritual thought throughout this period of his life.  Dag Hammarskjold was not afraid to look deep inside himself (psyche, soul?) and ask tough questions.  The book shows his progression toward a deep spirituality.

I love the title.  The word markings evokes connotations of a touchstone.  Those places on our spiritual journey that mark great insights and revelations.  Dag Hammarskjold is sharing his own insights, written…

authorsinmotion.com

There are so many good books to read. Thanks to Book TV you can often get a very good idea on some (Zindabad means long live i.e., long live Book TV). Over the years I have become a big fan and have recorded and watched scores of programs. There are programs to suit all tastes and interests. There is one this weekend that is especially intriguing. It is about the leadership of the Christian right movement and their control of the Republican Party. The program, this Sunday at 8:45 AM (cst) on CSPAN2, is about Max Blumenthal’s book “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party” Below is a excerpt from the book’s website followed by excerpts from a very long comment by Frank Schaeffer on Amazon. Frank, with his father, was a big player early in the Religious Right movement and is strongly warning sincere Christians to not continue…

The Supreme Court case about the cross in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve is itself a monument–a monument to changing times.

The cross placed in the Mojave National Monument in 1934. Photo by the Associated Press.

The simple white cross was erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Death Valley Post 2884. A plaque accompanying the cross dedicates it to the memory of the dead of all wars. It is similar in design to the crosses we’ve all seen in photographs of the cemetery fields in France.

Fellow blogger Leigh Hunt Greenhaw has said she’ll approach the legal issues inherent in whether the cross’s placement violates the First Amendment’s requirements for the separation of church and state. (the “establishment clause”). There are other issues as well, which are covered in the story published in the Post-Dispatch last week. My own opinions are based not on the fine points…

Obama on the campaign trail last year, courtesy of the NY Times

As we in St. Louis wake up this morning, the news is just breaking that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’m not sure this is going to be a very popular decision here in the US. Already the naysayers are at work, ready to ridicule and deride.  What has he actually done to deserve this, anyway?  But it’s not going to be only the usual anti-Obama crowd who are concerned.  Even Lech Walesa, a fellow laureate, says this is “too soon” and hopes it will be “an encouragement” for Obama to do more. “Let’s see if he perseveres. Let’s give him time to act.”

The Nobel Committee cites “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Their statement continues, “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world…

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on regulatory reform, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Hey Mom.  Sometimes there’s a reason for falling asleep with the television on.  This morning I was awakened by the voice of Congressman-turned-Talk Show host, Joe Scarborough, sharing the news that White House Press Secretary Joe Gibbs awakened President Obama this morning to inform him that he had won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace.  That’s worth a little extra electricity.

What followed was a little more challenging.  ”Morning Joe” then began to discuss with Mika Brzezinski, Lawrence O’Donnell and Savannah Guthrie his views that the President hadn’t earned the award.  The dialogue mentioned the possibility of the prize being given to put political pressure on the POTUS as he makes decisions about troop levels in Afghanistan.  And early Associated Press reporting suggests the award being given to Obama as a “slap at President George W. Bush…

David Horowitz, from the blog http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2008/05/david-horowitz-not-consistent-friend-of.html

In this STLToday article we learn that St. Louis University disinvited David Horowitz from speaking at a campus event entitled “Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights” because “the school was concerned that the event could be viewed as ‘attacking another faith and seeking to cause derision on campus.’” Here we seem to have the classic conundrum of a university in a free society, how to balance the rights to free speech and the free exchange of ideas with the need to stand against the spread of hatred, bigotry, and one-sided distortions of truth. Did SLU balance these needs or was the university’s decision “outrageous” as Horowitz charges?

I don’t know, and I don’t think the article in STLToday gives us enough information to decide, and I think we should hear more about this. Extremist rhetoric shuts down the exchange of ideas, preferring to convince its listener by stirring primal fear…

Credit: Liberty Counsel

My name is Adam, and I am a liberal Christian.

Yes, we really do exist.

And I just found out that there are people praying for me and all of the other Liberals. Well, maybe not for me, exactly - I’m not high enough on the radar and I yield absolutely zero political clout. But if I did, I’m positive I’d be on the prayer list.

The following comes from David Waters’s Under God blog at The Washington Post:

A conservative Christian organization affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University has decided to take a less partisan and more prayerful approach to the “radically liberal” age of Obama. The Liberty Council [sic], a nonprofit that defends religious liberties, is encouraging its supporters to “Adopt a Liberal” and “pray earnestly and intensely for them.”

Adopt a liberal, huh? Am I the only one who finds that just a tad condescending?

Looking at the Adopt a Liberal page…

Last week was a case study in theological theory meeting practice for me.  On Sunday, I shared information with our congregation on the intent of President Obama’s Health Care proposal, reminding them that the United Church of Christ declared support for H.R. 676, an early and more progressive effort calling for a single-payer, universal health care system in our summer General Synod in Grand Rapids.  On Monday, I stood with the leadership of the Saint Louis Metropolitan Clergy Coalition and a representative from Organizing for America to declare support for the president’s Health Insurance Reform and invite others to pray for our elected leadership.  On Wednesday (the day Senator Max Baucus unveiled the Senate Finance Committee plan) at our church’s mid-week Bible study we reflected on the prophetic vision of Isaiah chapter 1 that the responsibility of the people of God extends beyond worship to “defending the fatherless…pleading for the…

A certain Republican congressman yelled “You lie!” during President Obama’s

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9/9/09 remarks on illegal immigrants during his speech to a joint session of congress on health care. The shout, apologized for an hour later, had the press off and running.

Had there been no yelling, perhaps the president’s next statement, all but drowned out in the uproar, would have received the attention it deserved. Maybe.

The president said,

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions…..

Really? The president is being roundly criticized from many quarters for that whopper.

Consider first Douglas Johnson, legislative director, National Right to Life Campaign:

“Barack Obama needs to learn that the mere repetition of a verbal formula does not change reality. The reality is that the Obama-backed House bill would explicitly authorize the federal government insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and would explicitly authorize subsidies for…

I have believed for several years now that the core value that most religions (and many ethical systems) share can be articulated in a simple word: compassion.  “Feeling with or sharing the feelings of another” is the pedantic, pedestrian definition.  Another way to say it might be that compassion is the ability to take the imagination and intellect that God gave us and use them to understand what it would be like to walk a mile in another person’s shoes–without having to actually change footwear.

Compassion is more than a feeling, though–it’s one of the few emotions we have, maybe the only one, that requires a certain level of interaction or exchange with another, if only conceptually.  Being able to look outside one’s own perspective, one’s own narrowly-defined self-interest and imagine the suffering or joy or desires of another person and be moved to action: that is compassion.  It’s all about…

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Standing apart from the avalanche of news stories, editorials, blogs, spin, misinformation and disinformation re the House and Senate’s rapidly morphing health care reform plan(s), was a recent, feisty, fast-paced one-hour TV interview with St. Louis-based Sr. Carol Keehan, President and CEO of the Catholic Health Association.

Joining Sr. Keehan on EWTN’s The World Over Live last Friday was American Life League President Judie Brown and the show’s host, Raymond Arroyo.

The questions put to Sr. Keehan were many. Among them:

Is the official Catholic response a confused one, with the USCCB support at odds with Cardinal Rigali’s non-negotiable abortion challenge?

Why won’t CHA explicitly demand that all assaults on the human person be excluded from any proposed health plan?

Sister Keehan stated that “One non-negotiable is abortion”. How willing is she to leverage that statement? [We learned today of Planned Parenthood' confidence of abortion playing a central role in the final version of the health care bill.]

Are the…

Every major faith tradition encourages those who have the means to help those who do not. So the question that keeps coming up is the following: Is it a moral issue that in the richest nation in the history of mankind more than 1 out of 8 people have no health coverage? That is the question that single payer addresses. Simply put health coverage for everyone. It is similar to what is the situation in countries with the best health coverage, who are spending much less than us on their per person health coverage. So, if done properly, single payer should not cost more than what we are collectively paying but less.These are social decisions but they are also moral ones. Single payer has strong support among physicians as well as in the population at large. The sad part is that it isn’t even on the table in the current health…

I don’t want this to be just another blog ranting about gun control, so let me state my bona fides up front: I come from a hard-hunting, gun-toting family.  Long-haired, dope-smoking, anti-government Harley riders on one side and country club-lunching, single malt-drinking duck hunters on the other, but gun owners all around.

Having grown up around guns and knowing lots of good people who not only own them but love them, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have to write an opinion piece stating my opposition to bringing guns to church.  I thought this might have been self-evidently a bad idea.

But then I read this article about a pastor in Kentucky who is encouraging people to bring guns to church tomorrow, June 27.  According to the Associated Press, Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church is “inviting people to bring their guns to church to celebrate the Fourth…

The eyes of the world are on President Obama and his Middle East trip.  Many observers, myself included, find it a hopeful sign that he is being so intentional in reaching out to Muslims; it is too much of an understatement to say this is an emphasis that has been lacking in American foreign policy in recent years.  In fact, Obama has an enormous job in front of him if he truly hopes to repair the image of the United States and forge the “new beginning,” that he spoke of in his speech in Cairo today.

The speech, given at Cairo University, covered an impressive range of topics and was notable for its candor about the challenges that face us as a global community.  He did not avoid addressing the differences between the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threat posed by Iran, the problem of Israeli settlements in the West Bank,…

small baby: Legal Broadcast Network

The family of Scott Roeder, the suspect in the murder of Dr. George Tiller, has just released a statement:

“We are shocked, horrified, and filled with sadness at the death of Dr. Tiller and the circumstances surrounding it that may have involved Scott Roeder. We know Scott as a kind and loving son, brother, and father who has suffered from mental illness at various times in his life. However, none of us ever saw Scott as a person capable of or willing to take another person’s life. Our deepest regrets, prayers, and sympathy go out to the Tiller family during this terrible time.”

WIBW, to whom this statement was given, has honored the family’s request that their names not be used.

Meanwhile, denunciation of Dr. Tiller’s murder is coming from all quarters: U.S. bishops, Priests for Life, American Life League, Kansas Bishops, CatholicVote.org and Susan B. Anthony List have issued…