Antisemitism

On this day in 1945 U.S. soldiers liberated the Dachau death camp.

Maybe the Episcopal Church should be careful about resolutions that in effect undermine the lives of the people of, and the existence of, the nation of Israel.  

In today’s New York Times, Michelle Goldberg reports, “The Anti-Defamation League this week released a report showing that, in 2021, there were more antisemitic incidents in America than in any year since the group started keeping track over 40 years ago. “We’ve never seen data like this before, ever,” Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the A.D.L., told me. The rapid growth of Jew hatred isn’t limited to the United States. According to a new report from the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, antisemitic incidents were up last year in countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Comparisons to 2020 might be misleading, because pandemic lockdowns likely reduced the numbers of antisemitic assaults and in-person harassment. But in several countries, including the United States, there were more antisemitic incidents in 2021 than in the prepandemic year 2019.”

And from Nellie Bowles writing about the ADL report in today’s edition of Common Sense. “Antisemitism in America continues to get worse: Last year, saw a 167% increase in antisemitic assaults in America from the year before. More than 2,700 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault of Jews were reported.  A slice of news from this week alone: In New York state, a popular bill to make sure students are learning about the Holocaust has been mysteriously disappeared from the agenda. At Rutgers University, after a rally held by Students for Justice in Palestine, a group decided to protest the school’s Jewish fraternity, honking and waving Palestinian flags outside, as if the frat was an Israeli embassy. In Berlin this week, anti-Israel protestors crowded the street; some yelled ‘dirty Jews.’ Georgetown Law hosted the activist Mohammed El-Kurd, whose writing features “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism” like his belief that Israelis “harvest organs of the martyred” Palestinians and eat them. One brave law student, Rachel Jessica Wolff, called attention to what was going on but otherwise it was all celebration for the speaker. 

When defenders of these events in elite media and academia say, “oh these guys outside your Jewish frat are just protesting Zionist policies,” or “that man is only symbolically talking about the blood libel,” those defenders are lying. It’s about hating Jews. They know that.”

The report notes that a good bit of the increase is due to the activities of far-left and far-right political groups. In that regard it’s important to note that some of the resolutions being advanced mirror the approach of the left wing groups. That in itself shouldn’t cause us to reject the proposals. But it may be prudent to pause and reflect a bit. What are the real life impacts of such resolutions? Are we being careless and lazy in how we are approaching this?

Goldberg points out, “Much of the threat to Jews in America seems to come less from a distinct, particular ideology than from the broader cultural breakdown that’s leading to an increase in all manner of antisocial behavior, including shootings, airplane altercations, reckless driving and fights in school.”

The church’s primary contribution to that part of the problem is the worship of God. Here’s a segment from the draft of An Energy Not Its Own by Michelle Heyne, OA and me (to be published later this year). I’ll leave it to your wisdom and imagination to make the connections to the particular issue of antisemitism. 

“The glory of God is a living human being; and the life of the human is the vison of God. Irenaeus 

Kenneth Kirk’s[i] translation in the early 20^th century was, “The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God.” John Behr’s[ii] translation is “For the glory of God is a living human being; and the life of the human consists in beholding God.”

We offer the whole quote in several forms as an affirmation of the radical orthodox position being asserted by Irenaeus. He is saying two things that can be lost in our times. First, the often used translation of “a human fully alive” is easily misunderstood as having to do with vigor and the pursuit of life’s enjoyments. So, the blind and lame are excluded along with those whose life is filled with struggle and limitation. Irenaeus includes all human beings. Second, the source of that life is God. The work of the Holy Spirit, an energy not of our making, is the renewal of human life from sin and death to authentic life. A new life because we are taken into the vision of God.

Two areas of parish development that can be helped by making use of Irenaeus’ quote and Kirk’s work are apostolic practice and social ethics.

The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum is the title of a 1931 book by Kirk. We’ll summarize it with two quotes from the preface.

Worship is the Christian’s first and paramount duty

The highest prerogative of the Christian, in this life as well as hereafter, is the activity of worship; and that nowhere except in this activity will he find the key to his ethical problems.

D. Stephen Long picked up on Kirk’s approach when he wrote Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. In the middle of the book, he offers a few paragraphs on the various ethical stances found in the church—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, and so on. In “Anglican Ethics” he draws on Kenneth Kirk’s work.

Kirk “suggested that Christian ethics best proceeds by avoiding both formalism and rigorism. Formalism seeks to bring all of life under kind of a codification, the setting out of codes and laws that proscribe what is not to be done in advance, but actually demands very little; for all it asks is that we avoid violating some formal code. … Rigorism reacts against this formalism and demands a higher standard.” Kirk  sees both as lacking because they miss that the true purpose of life is the vision of God.  Kirk uses the whole of Irenaeus’ quote,

The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God 

Long goes on to explain Kirk’s notion that worship is the key to humanity’s ethical problems. The way of worship is the alternative to a moralism “that becomes so preoccupied with one’s own virtue or morality that it turns into a self-preoccupation; a ‘vision of self’ supplants the ‘vision of God’. Worship re-directs us from self to God.” A useful orientation in an age of virtue signaling and performance everything

We’ll highlight one additional point Kirk makes. In a section on “Worship and service.” He writes, “The end of all our praying and worship is contemplation or the prayer of union. He’s not writing about a set of contemplative practices as we think of today but a state of being. He seems to be saying much what Martin Thornton means by habitual recollection. In Thornton’s words it’s a state of “constant recollection of Christ’s presence” or “a continuous, even subconscious, awareness of the divine presence everywhere.”

For Kirk, worship is not about our enjoyment or what pleasure we may gain. It isn’t selfish.  “To look towards God, and from that ‘look’ to acquire insight both into the follies of one’s own heart and the needs of one’s neighbors, with power to correct the one no less then to serve the other—this is something very remote from any quest for ‘religious experience’ for its own sake. Yet this, and nothing else, is what the vision of God has meant in the fully developed thought of historic Christianity. … The Christian tradition of the vision of God seems, even so, to have a message for the restless energizers of the modern world, with their problem,  programs and calls to discipleship. The concept of service embraces two very different ideas. Only one of these is Christian – indeed, only one of them realizes the ideal of service at all; for service of the other kind is self-destructive and nugatory. For the purposes of the present discussion, they may be called the service of humility, and the service of patronage. It should not be difficult to see that only the former of these two has real worth. Once this is recognized, it becomes not unreasonable to suggest that worship alone guarantees to service that quality of humility without which it is no service at all.”

It accords with George Herbert’s

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,

And what I do in any thing,

To do it as for thee

Sound parish development requires grounding the community in the teaching of Irenaeus, Kirk, Thornton, and Herbert.”  

There are a number of diocesan resolutions going to General Convention. They may include a sentence or two noting how we are against antisemitism and we are for the right of Israel to exist. They are our attempts to wash our hands while enabling hate and murder. There is a need to look at the likely and actual consequences of what we say as a church.

In the meantime. Two things to do. First, continue our efforts to assist the apostolic members of the parish to deepen their life of worship. Second, I’m going to read the complete ADL report today. I hope you’ll do the same

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[i] The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum is the title of a 1931 book by K.E. Kirk.

[ii] Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity, John Behr; Dean and Professor of Patristics, St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York. Behr makes the case that the ‘heretics’ were intolerant, they would abandon a church community to be part of a different church community that agreed with them. "The early Church was ‘catholic’ not because it was monolithically uniform, but because it embraced a variety of voices all willing to work together within shared parameters — a New Testament, rule of truth, apostolic tradition, and succession — that became clearer through debate. The theological vision elaborated by Irenaeus is important both as a historical phenomenon and also for our own contemporary situation: it answers questions we have today about Scripture, interpretation of Scripture, Adam and Christ, and what it means to be human in a tremendously positive fashion. Never again does someone say, with such clarity and force, that ‘the glory of God is a living human being’; yet that he is speaking of a martyr simultaneously challenges us in a unique manner today."

The Vision of God

The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum is the title of a 1931 book by K.E. Kirk. I’ll summarize it with two quotes from the preface.

Worship is the Christian’s first and paramount duty

The highest prerogative of the Christian, in this life as well as hereafter, is the activity of worship; and that nowhere except in this activity will he find the key to his ethical problems.

A side note -- In today's Daily Office, "Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh and say to him, “Thus says the Lord: Let my people go, so that they may worship me." (Exodus 8:1)  

So then, this is part two of yesterday’s “Apostolic Practice, Social Ethics and Liberal Democracy.”  Kirk’s approach brings together the themes of apostolic practice and social ethics.

D. Stephen Long wrote Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. In the middle of the book, he offers a few paragraphs on the various ethical stances found in the church—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, and so on. In “Anglican Ethics” he draws on Kenneth Kirk’s work.

Kirk “suggested Christian ethics best proceeds by avoiding both formalism and rigorism. Formalism seeks to bring all of life under kind of a codification, the setting out of codes and laws that proscribe what is not to be done in advance, but actually demands very little; for all it asks is that we avoid violating some formal code. … Rigorism reacts against this formalism and demands a higher standard.”

Kirk  goes on to suggest that both are lacking because they miss that the true purpose of life is the vision of God.  Kirk uses the whole of Irenaeus’ quote,

The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God

Long goes on to explain Kirk’s notion that worship is the key to humanity’s ethical problems. The way of worship is the alternative to a moralism “that becomes so preoccupied with one’s own virtue or morality that it turns into a self-preoccupation; a ‘vision of self’ supplants the ‘vision of God’. Worship re-directs us from self to God.”

Kirk has a good bit more to offer. The book presses toward 600 pages. I’ll highlight one additional point he makes. The end of all our praying and worship is contemplation or the prayer of union. He’s not writing about a set of contemplative practices as we think of today but a state of being. He seems to be saying much what Martin Thornton means by habitual recollection. A state or stance, the “constant recollection of Christ’s presence” or “a continuous, even subconscious, awareness of the divine presence everywhere.”  It accords with George Herbert’s

Teach me, my God and King,
        In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
        To do it as for thee

With all this in mind we might suppose that our first task in contemporary parish development is apostolic practice. And the starting place of that is a parish life of Sunday Eucharist, Daily Office (daily) and reflection. A pattern seen in the parish’s common life, week-by-week as well as in the discipline of the parish’s apostolic core. All so we might nurture within us the Vision of God.

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Apostolic Practice, Social Ethics & Liberal Democracy

There are two areas of parish development that have my attention these days. I have ways of addressing the one but am at a loss in regard to the second. The first is apostolic practice. The second is social ethics. My hunch is that if there is a way of effectively addressing the decline of the church’s influence in the culture it has to do with these two concerns.

By apostolic practice I mean the habits and systems of our tradition that place us in the pathways of grace. They don’t make us saints. They do make us more receptive to the work of the Holy Spirit. And that work is about making us saints. The need is to help more parishioners learn how to do, and be supported in, the daily and weekly routines of prayer and oscillation, i.e., Sunday Eucharist, the daily prayers of the church, and personal devotions that nurture a contemplative and reflective inner life. All of which offer the person, and the parish, renewal in our baptismal identity and purpose. A renewal which is needed to faithfully engage life with friends and family, in workplace and civic life. At the moment four members of the Order of the Ascension are working on projects around apostolic practice. Each somewhat different in its approach. I hope we will learn something more about how to advance this need of the Body of Christ.

The social ethics concern is more difficult to address. The political and cultural noise we work within press approaches that are in large part the “solutions” of an activist class. Now dressed in a bit of faith language to make it go down more easily.

There was a recent article in Politico on how the polarization of the nation has crept into local politics. I believe the same can be said of how it has shaped the churches. We have been trained to think about our social ethics in the language and issues of the political and cultural debate. This, of course, is connected with the first concern about apostolic practice. So many of us lack that grounding in the methods and habits of spiritual life that we are ill equipped to engage our civic life as proficient Christians. Even those with a disciplined spiritual life rooted in our tradition are challenged to get our head above water and see what is in front of us. The drum beat of correct answers coming from the edges dominates.

Our ability to effectively engage this requires that we refuse to continue operating as though the necessary conversation is between the political right and left. The activists of those orientations keep presenting the church with a series of political choices that cloud our vision and incapacitate our action. The evangelical churches are more challenged from the right and the Episcopal Church from the left. Each find themselves with prescriptions for urgent action that offer a theological justification for some political goal of the activist groups. The Evangelicals are pressed to act on immigration and gender/sexuality issues in a manner that ends up supporting laws that in practice will cause much suffering. While the Episcopalians will find themselves reacting to the wrongness of it all by tilting toward open borders and conversations about the use of pronouns.  General Convention will face a series of resolutions impacting Israel’s right to exist. In an upside down way, we know that’s what they are about because they assure us they are not about Israel’s right to exist. But in fact, collectively, they undermine the rationale of that right to exist. The Evangelicals on the other hand will have little to say about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

How might we regain our balance and grounding?

First, more training and coaching of our parish communities in apostolic practices.

Second, a way of understanding and acting in regard to the polarization and hate in our civic life. A way that is deeply rooted in apostolic practice and sound thinking about social ethics.

Here’s my very tentative attempt at that.

I’d begin with two assumptions. One that the Body of Christ has existed within many different forms of civic life and governance. And that is what we will continue to do. The faithfulness of the Church is not dependent on whether the society conforms to some template coming from the Church (which in itself is often a dangerous pathway). Second, that the traditions of liberal democracy are the arrangement closest to the faith’s call to justice, peace, and mercy. It ain’t perfect but is the best of what we humans have come up with. Maybe you have a different answer to what is the best. A real, not utopian, answer. If so, you might follow that to see where it leaves you.

I read a newsletter called The Liberal Patriot. This is from today's posting in which the writer explorers Francis Fukuyama's book. 

He quotes Fukuyama -

The most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: you do not have to agree with your fellow citizens about the most important things, but only that each individual should get to decide what they are without interference from you or from the state. Liberalism lowers the temperature of politics by taking questions of final ends off the table: you can believe what you want, but you must do so in private life and not seek to impose your views on your fellow citizens.

 The newsletter continues -
Liberalism may be guided by norms of tolerance and reason, but it is enforced by constitutions, laws, regulations, and court rulings that maintain the political and economic rights of individuals to do as they please, provided that they don’t interfere with other people’s similar rights to self-determination. Liberalism in modern times requires free and fair elections, representative legislatures, a fair and impartial judicial system, neutral bureaucracies, an independent press and media, and a commitment to free speech.

Unfortunately, as Fukuyama correctly argues, classical liberalism is under sustained attack from both the populist right and the identity-based left.

Here's the whole article.

I have to work hard to not simply fall back upon my years of looking at these matters from the perspective of being a left-wing Democrat. It’s not easy. But “new occasions teach new duties.” You probably have your own similar struggle. I can’t point to a current book on social ethics that provides adequate guidance. Maybe you know one. I looked on my bookshelf and found three that served our society during the last great crisis: Temple’s Christianity and Social Order, Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, and Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Maybe a reread of each will help. I was struck that in recent years people like President Obama and David Brooks talked about Niebuhr’s work as important in their own thinking.

Here’s what I’ll do.

1. Stay with the apostolic practice and so ground myself in prayer, scripture, and reflection.

2. Read people, who are not on the fringes, trying to understand what’s happening in our politics and culture 

3. Reread a few basic books in Christian social ethics.

4. Engage the current situation by pressing political and church leaders to protect and advance “free and fair elections, representative legislatures, a fair and impartial judicial system, neutral bureaucracies, an independent press and media, and a commitment to free speech.”

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 Resources

One way to think about apostolic practice is to draw on two ascetical models: The Threefold Rule of Prayer and the Renewal-Apostolate Cycle. You can find more detail in Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Spirituality in the Parish Church and A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery: A Practical Theology of the Parish Church.

Fasting

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. -Liturgy for Ash Wednesday

Well, it’s about time we got to the subject of fasting. Fasting is one of the first things people think of when it comes to Lent. “What are you going to give up? Meat on Fridays? Chocolate? Wine? Jellybeans?” It’s no accident that McDonald’s starts upping the advertisements for its Filet o’ Fish sandwiches this time of year—they know that now is the time for fasting.

When I think about fasting, I remember a wonderful, surprising encounter that happened when I was preparing for my baptism. I was about 25 years old and teaching in a public school in Pennsylvania. I went into the lunchroom on a Friday in Lent and was staring at the food options, trying to figure out what I wanted to eat. One of my students came up and stood next to me. While she and I had never really talked about it, I knew that she was a Roman Catholic from some comments she’d made in class. After standing together for a minute, she turned to me and said with a smile, “Pizza it is! But not the pepperoni, because, you know….” I grinned and finished her sentence, “…Lent!” This memory is so clear and so sweet. It was the first time I felt that kind of connection with another Christian, the first time I experienced the kind of camaraderie born of the sharing the sacrifices of a liturgical season. You know…Lent!

Fasting is a fundamental spiritual practice, an important and lasting tradition of Lent. At the same time, it’s important for us to ask what kind of a fast God is calling us to this year. Maybe last year you felt yourself growing too dependent upon your coffee in the morning, your chocolate in the afternoon, or your wine at night—but this year your diet has been much more balanced, and you don’t feel the need to give up those same things again. Maybe last year your fasting felt more like a diet plan than a spiritual practice. Maybe this year your health is such that you don’t want to be giving up so much protein in your diet. Whatever you decide about what and how you eat during Lent, my prayer for you is that your fast will feel intentional and authentic. How can your fasting connect you more deeply to God, your neighbor, and yourself? How can your fasting bring health and humility to your life, an increased understanding of your body, an awareness of and solidarity with those who suffer daily from food insecurity?

I pray that your fasts, whatever they may be, feel precious, generative, and holy. They should be nothing less—because, you know…Lent!


The Very Rev’d Erika L. Takacs
Rector, Church of the Atonement

Transcendent realism & defiant hope

Fair warning…my mind is skipping around a bit…I’m connecting things that even to me don’t seem connected. Except they are. So here we go.

Transcendent realism & defiant hope

This morning I read Tish Harrison Warren’s[i] piece in the NY Times[ii]. She ends with this.

The Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen called the hope of Christianity — the hope of Ash Wednesday — a “transcendent realism.” Transcendent realism confronts the truth of the grave. And it is in this truth that the most important questions of our lives get a hearing. We need more than diversion, work and pleasure. We need deep, resonant, defiant hope.

Her article was about the pandemic, Ash Wednesday, death, and hope.  My mind went to how Michelle Heyne and I reverence the celebrant as he enters in procession. You see the link, right? Probably not. Let me try to explain.

A symbol

Last night and early this morning I was reading a number of articles on President Zelensky of Ukraine.[iii] Speaking of defiant hope!! Writer after writer commenting on his courage and perseverance. Here’s one by Jonathan Last in the Bulwark.

Zelensky’s conduct over the last few weeks—which has been utterly extraordinary—has substantially buttressed Ukraine’s resolve. He has become more than a man. More than a leader. He has become a symbol.

What we are witnessing is the emergence of a figure who will become a key part of Ukrainian history for the next century. There will be statues of him all over the country. Ukrainians will name their children after him. This is like watching another country’s Washington or Churchill emerge in real time.

The title of the article was “Zelensky Has Become More Than a Man: A symbol.”[iv]

Last continues –

But at some point he may have to make a judgment about how his life best serves his country. Is it more important that he stay alive to lead? Even if he has to eventually leave Kyiv? Or would sacrificing himself to the Russians make the symbol even more powerful?

It is hateful to talk this way about a man because it is important to remember that Volodymyr Zelensky is not just a symbol. He’s a real person. He’s 44 years old. He’s married. He has two children, one of whom is not yet 10.

Human and a symbol

So, a piece of theory. Bruce Reed’s Oscillation Theory can help us see a bit of reality.  I wrote about it in an earlier article.

Reed writes of a movement from extra-dependency to intra-dependency. In essence from dependence upon God as mediated through worship, sacraments, the priest, and a dozen other symbols of religious faith to responsible participation in the life of the world. From dependence on something outside oneself to dependence on one’s own judgement. Thornton writes of the cycle as being “between conscious attention to God and subconscious reliance upon him. 

There it is. The priest as a symbolic person.  Human and symbol. The Divine doesn’t just reach us through the scriptures and sacraments. The priest is a symbol.

Episcopalians routinely bow during worship—toward the altar, the cross in procession, and at various times in the liturgy. Most parishes see some reverencing toward people: when those in the altar party perform some act of service such as handing a chalice to the deacon, or when the thurifer censes the congregation, and in some places the altar party and the entire congregation bow to each other at the beginning and end of the service. 

C.S. Lewis has a famous quote in “The Weight of Glory,”

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror or a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Lewis is correct. All are to be reverenced and honored. All are in the Divine Image. Yet we’re not going be genuflecting or bowing to everyone we meet. But I can do it for President Zielinski as he leads his nation in war and Father Kevin as he processes in to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Zielinski has become a symbol because of his actions in these past days. Kevin is a symbol by ordination and his presiding in the Eucharist. And it does me some good to bow on occasion.[v]

All the symbols point us to transcendent realism and defiant hope

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[i] Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She writes a regular column for the NY Times reflecting on matters of faith in private life and public discourse.

[ii] “Covid made us face death. But there is reason to hope.” by Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times 2-27-22

[iii] Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a former actor and comedian who has been serving as the president of Ukraine since 2019

[iv] In the Bulwark

[v] For those who don’t fully get the incarnational and sacramental world C. S. Lewis reminds us, “The body ought to pray as well as the soul. Body and soul are both the better for it.” Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1963, 1964), p. 17