In John’s telling, Jesus is invited to the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. It is Judas in this telling that protests to the expensive perfume being used on Jesus instead of being sold. In Luke’s telling, Jesus is invited to the house of a Pharisee. Instead of Mary, an unnamed woman with a bad reputation, called “a sinner” anoints Jesus’ feet. The Pharisee protests the action, not because the perfume was expensive, but rather because the woman was ritually unclean and was making Jesus unclean by touching him. Jesus uses the opportunity to show the Pharisee what sin really is: lack of love, and in this case- lack of hospitality.

Jesus calls the Pharisee out on his lack of hospitality. It was considered hospitable in Jesus’ time to have a guest’s feet washed, to anoint the guest’s head with oil, and to greet the guest with a kiss. Jesus points out that the Pharisee failed to do all of these things, so he is the real sinner- not the woman with the poor reputation. Jesus didn’t need to quote laws of hospitality from the Tanakh; he demonstrated them through his words and actions. Jesus teaches the reader that the woman with the alabaster jar demonstrated radical hospitality. It wasn’t even her house, but she brought hospitality with her!

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by Lucas van Leyden image courtesy of Wikipedia

You may also be wondering why we heard the story of Sodom and Gomorrah today. This story was not in the lectionary. But for our community, it is important to know the real meaning behind this story that has caused our people so much pain for too long. So we are going to charge ahead full-force and tear this thing apart!... in a scholarly manner or course.

I know the story is a long one, but there are certain details that we don’t want to miss. First, note that Lot and his family are Jews who are foreigners to Sodom. The text tells us that two angels go to Sodom. Lot finds them and invites them to stay in his house. Lot demonstrates hospitality to the guests by feeding them well and giving them a safe place to stay. So far, so good.

But before the angels fall asleep, the men of Sodom gather around Lot’s house and ask Lot to bring the angels out so they may “know them” or “have sex with them.” Let’s pause here for a minute. This is the part where some fundamentalists have said, “See! The homosexuals are surrounding the house trying to have sex with the angels!” This kind of statement shows profound biblical ignorance. First, the word “homosexual” is not used in this text and it also was not even a word until the 19th century. Second, the angels were seen as foreigners and in the ancient world, penetrating someone of another culture was considered shaming their people. A winning army would often rape the remaining men of the other army. So the men of Sodom were not gay men looking for a hot date; they were heterosexual men looking to rape the visitors as an act of dominance. This is said to have been the culture of that place.

Lot responds with a terrible proposition: “Here, take my daughters! You can have them instead!” What a good father… I bet he never saw another Father’s Day gift after that incident.  The men of Sodom reject Lot’s proposal, not because they weren’t attracted to women but rather because they weren’t out to have a sexual encounter; they were out to rape people of equal societal status- men, so that they would be shamed.

This is the point of the story that we want to focus on today. The so-called “sin of Sodom” was not same-sex attraction. The sin of Sodom was lack of hospitality. The rest of the story is pretty terrible. The angels urge Lot and his family to flee Sodom because God was going to destroy it for its wickedness. They flee, but Lot’s sons-in-law don’t believe Lot and they stay. Sodom and Gomorrah are consumed by sulfur and fire from God. Poor Lot’s wife looks back and turns into a salt lick. And since there aren’t any men left after the three escape, Lot’s daughters have the bright idea to get their father drunk and have sex with him. So they do and they each have a baby. And that is how Genesis explains the people they didn’t like: the people of Moab and Ammon. They say that these peoples originated from the incest of Lot and his daughters. But Abraham and his decedents lived happily ever after. The end!

There are so many things ethically wrong about this story that it’s hard to even take it seriously. God is viewed as wrathful, not loving. Lot offers up his poor daughters. Lot’s poor wife is turned into a pile of sodium just for her curiosity. And we have to hear about a yucky incestuous incident so we know that a couple of other cultures are bad. The text itself seems to condone a lot of horrible things in the first place. But like any text, we must look for some redeeming message.

The rest of the Bible, including the Christian Testament, references Sodom several times. Not once does it mention same-sex attraction. In their book,"Is The Homosexual My Neighbor?" , Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott point out how the rest of the Bible interprets the story of Sodom.

1. Ezekiel 16:49-50, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
2. Isaiah 1 “The specific sins mentioned are greed, rebellion against God, empty religious ritual without true devotion to God, failure to plead the cause of orphans and widows, failure to pursue justice, and failure to champion the oppressed” .
3. Jeremiah 23:9-15 “[The] focus is on adultery, lying, and cooperating with evildoers…” .
4. Luke 10:10-12, “But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”
5. Jude 7, “…Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same matter as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust (or “strange flesh”), serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” This “unnatural lust” does not refer to same-sex attraction but rather to the desire to have sex with heavenly beings (angels).
6. 2 Peter 2: Sins listed are adultery, greed, and idolatry (62)

So we can safely say that this ancient story is not about us. So-called “sodomy laws” were wrongly named. Homosexuals were wrongly named, “sodomites.” I would go as far as to say that churches and people that are not welcoming of LGBT people are the real sodomites! They are the ones committing the sin of lack of hospitality. As Jesus entered the house of the Pharisee, we enter the house of the fundamentalist. We are not greeted with a kiss. We are not anointed or given the waters of baptism. No, we are rejected as the woman with the alabaster jar who had a bad reputation. If Jesus were with us as we walked into these places, I am sure he would show them their lack of love.

But we can’t blame only others for lack of hospitality. All of us are guilty. How many gay and lesbian people fail to be welcoming to bisexual and transgender people in their midst? How many monogamous gays and lesbians shun polyamorous people from their social circles? How many transgender people who “pass” well as their preferred gender will not associate with transgender people who don’t “pass” so well. How often do gays and lesbians tell bisexual people to “Pick as side already!”?

There is great diversity on the queer spectrum. We are not uniform, but we should seek to be unified. That’s part of the purpose of LGBT Pride Month. We get to reassess year after year how well we are doing at embracing the full diversity of queer folk.

How is our church doing at this? Do we truly embrace all of God’s Rainbow People? Do we provide an environment of radical hospitality for all who seek a connection with the Divine through beloved community? We may say so in word, but sometimes we are saying the opposite with our actions. In everything you do in the church, put yourself in the shoes of others. How would you like to be treated if you were new here? What things might make you uncomfortable and not want to come back? What kind of positive words and actions would you look for in a faith community you are visiting?

Do these things because we are called to radical hospitality! Hospitality isn’t just about coffee and doughnuts (though those things are much appreciated!). Hospitality is about showing the stranger, no matter what their identity, that they are loved unconditionally.

Bishop Yvette Flunder of the Fellowship of Welcoming Churches writes this in her book "Where the Edge Gathers “Radical inclusivity demands hospitality. Marginalized people experience hospitality where they have neither to defend nor to deny their place or their humanness. Real hospitality agrees with the notion and acknowledges the fact that everyone already has a seat at the welcome table of God- all they need to do is claim it.”

My prayer for us today us that we may each always claim our seat at the table of God’s Love Feast, and we may always save a seat next to us for those on the margins yet to come. And so it is! Amen.

Adweek reported on the “Shame on Kraft” campaign by One Million Moms, an arm of the American Family Association, which issued a tart rebuke to the food giant’s current print advertising for its “Zesty Italian” salad dressing.

The magazine ad stars birthday-suited model Anderson Davis (“The Zesty Guy”) sprawled across a red-and-white checkered picnic tablecloth, a corner of which strategically covers his male signifier. He lounges beside a basket, a bottle of wine, grapes, bread and, least prominently, the product he’s serenely hawking.

Not taking the affront lying down, OMM declared it “the most disgusting ad on the inside front cover that we have ever seen Kraft produce.”

This is the same group that recently took affront to the NBC sitcom “Save Me” starring Anne Heche as a housewife who sees herself as a prophet of God.

“A full 2-page ad features a n*ked man lying on a picnic blanket with only a small portion of the blanket barely covering his g*nitals. It is easy to see what the ad is really selling.”

(OMM said it used asterisks to get past certain spam filters.)

The organization’s dressing down continued:
“Kraft has gone too far and will push away loyal, conservative customers with this new ad campaign. Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising. The consumers they are attempting to attract — women and mothers — are the very ones they are driving away. Who will want Kraft products in their fridge or pantry if this vulgarity is what they represent. One Million Moms cannot get over the gall of this company. It is unnecessary for Kraft to use s*x to sell salad dressing!”
Naturally, Kraft Foods defends its “Let’s Get Zesty” campaign, which has shaken up a certain video channel.

The ad “is a playful and flirtatious way to reach our consumers. People have overwhelmingly said they’re enjoying the campaign and having fun with it,” said the conglomerate, based outside Chicago.

Kraft and “The Zesty Guy” are loving the exposure, if Twitter feeds are any measure.

* “Both HOT and Hilarious.”
* “Watching zesty commercials all night.. drooling over @andersondavis. … Thank you.”
* “If you can’t handle the Zesty Italian, get out of the kitchen.”

As always, sex does indeed sell.

While it’s common for individual works to occasionally sell for less than they are worth, consider:

* In January, a late 14th-century Florentine painting of Jesus on the cross estimated between $80,000 and $120,000 sold at Sotheby’s for $86,500.
* An Italian Crucifixion from the same period, estimated between $100,000 and $150,000, sold for $110,500 at the same auction.
* The previous December, Sotheby’s London sold a mid-16th century Netherlandish Crucifixion sculpture estimated at $31,500 to $47,000 for about $27,500.

Even images of Crucifixions by established masters can be purchased on the cheap, said Joaneath Spicer, curator of Renaissance and baroque art at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Spicer hasn’t purchased Crucifixions for the museum in some time.

Crucifixion, representing the death of Jesus on the Cross, painting by D. Velázquez, 17th c photo courtesy of Wikipedia

In part, she said, Christian art has become the victim of its own success.

“If I want more Crucifixion bronzes, there are some in storage that are quite nice,” she said.

But there are other cultural factors that may be contributing to the declining sales prices. One of them may be changing worship styles that rely more on words and music and less on visual images. A bigger one may be an unwillingness to openly and publicly display one’s religious commitments.

“The de-emphasis on art as part of the devotional experience within the Catholic Church surely has had some impact on this,” said Spicer.

Catholics are also less likely to display religious art in their homes, said Eike Schmidt, curator of decorative arts and sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

“Wealthy Catholics nowadays, in general, do not seem to be particularly ambitious to crown their art collections with an outstanding crucifix or a painted Crucifixion,” said Schmidt, a former Sotheby’s London department head. “House-altars have become a rarity.”

The interiors depicted in architectural magazines and furniture sales catalogs today tend to be devoid of any religious iconography, “with the odd exception of mass-produced Buddha heads, which I suspect have very little to do with Buddhist theology and practice,” Schmidt added.

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large at “America” magazine, agrees that Catholics are less likely to adorn their homes with Sacred Hearts or crucifixes.

“People are less comfortable with displaying their piety on their walls for fear of offending people because we live in a less religious culture all around,” he said.

At a time when prosperity teachings are especially popular, people don’t relate as much to Christian concepts of sin and suffering.

And for non-Christians, the image of the suffering Jesus can be particularly troubling.

“If you’re not religious, the image of a person nailed to a cross is probably very uncomfortable,” Martin says. “It’d be like getting an image of a man strapped to an electric chair.”

With a rising Asian market for art, it’s not surprising many buyers are turning their backs on Christian imagery.

“I have seen museum visitors from India and China to be surprised and appalled by the depiction of a man who dies from torture, and moreover to be told that this is the central image and at the theological core of a world religion,” said Schmidt, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts curator.

Despite their lack of comfort with religious art, collectors are looking for direct images that strike an emotional chord. For many collectors, that means contemporary art, such as works by Andy Warhol, but that kind of directness is displayed in works by the Old Masters, many of which are religious, as well.

“The Old Masters field in general — while some of the prices have hit astronomical levels, which is terrific — is undervalued,” said Margi Schwartz, senior vice president and head of the European sculpture and tapestry department at Sotheby’s.

“It’s a supply and demand issue,” she added. “And as we feel that squeeze, I think there will be more and more collectors realizing that they’d better get in there, because there are not a lot of opportunities to find things. This art is not being made any more.”

The Superman reboot is filled with messianic parallels—from the caped hero stretching out his arms as he falls to earth only to rise again to a scene where Clark Kent ponders whether to accept his destiny while he sits in a church in front of a stained-glass image of Jesus—and it turns out these similarities weren’t coincidental. Screenwriter David Goyer told the Los Angeles Times that he was thinking about the Bible when he wrote it, and Warner Brothers, the studio behind the film that grossed more than $125 million this weekend, hired faith-based public relations firm Grace Hill Media to make sure the Christian market didn’t miss the connections.

This is only the latest attempt by a major studio to target religious audiences, and the trend raises an important question: Is Hollywood manipulating Christians to turn a buck?

Grace Hill Media describes themselves as “the industry leader in church-based promotion” established “to reach an enormous and underserved population—religious America.” Their past projects are a motley crew of films including “National Treasure”, “Lord of the Rings”, “Ratatouille”, “Cinderella Man”, “Elf” and “Walk the Line”.

For “Man of Steel”, Grace Hill orchestrated a full-scale campaign that provided pastors with movie clips, sermon outlines, and a nine-page briefing titled, “Jesus: The Original Superhero” for download on a flashy Superman ministry resource site. They hired theologian and Pepperdine University professor Craig Detwiler to prepare the materials. He produced similar briefings for “The Blind Side” in 2009 and “The Book of Eli” in 2010.

Marketing firms like Grace Hill began popping up several years ago when Hollywood noticed the desire among religious Americans for content that aligned with their worldviews. Mel Gibson was able to rake in more than $370 million with “Passion of the Christ”, for example, and the “Chronicles of Narnia” trilogy pulled in more than $500 million. More recently, we might look to History Channel’s epic miniseries “The Bible”, which attracted more than 10 million viewers weekly.

“There’s been more openness to it in terms of understanding the need to serve an underserved audience out there, specifically the faith-based audience,” says Devon Franklin, Vice President of Production for Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony Entertainment. “Hollywood has been more willing to develop film projects to tap into that market.”

On the one hand, there is much to applaud in Hollywood’s effort to explore religious themes through film and television. Too much of it is merely mindless entertainment without any redemptive elements to speak of. The more art produced that expresses the good, true, and beautiful, the better.

And yet, the whole ordeal makes me a little uncomfortable because it represents another step forward in the commodification of Christianity. In a land of profit and greed, these trends illustrate once again that unchecked capitalism can leverage anything—even faith, even Jesus—to turn a buck. As one comic blogger said, the effort “comes off like a money grab.” It’s hard to disagree with him.

Let’s be clear that Warner Brothers isn’t trying to spread the Christian gospel; they are trying to make a profit. And, whether we like it or not, religion in America can be a lucrative business. In this case, generating profit means transforming pastors into marketers, hocking movie tickets from their pulpits. If the real test of morality is not just the nature of a behavior, but how that behavior shapes us as human beings, then this trend fails that test.

So let’s and rejoice at Hollywood’s efforts to produce art that resonates with religious moviegoers, but let’s also be as “wise as serpents” in how we partake. If Christians allow themselves to be manipulated by movie marketers, they may unwittingly participate in making faith a means to a end rather than an end in itself.
- See more at: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/06/18/is-hollywood-manipulating-christians/#sthash.v60icQmh.dpuf

Even before the full House took up the bill Tuesday (June 18) to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Republicans had a sharp reminder of how sensitive the issue can be when Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., appeared to say that rape rarely results in pregnancy.

“The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy (is) very low,” Franks said at a June 12 committee hearing on the bill. Franks later said he meant that third-trimester abortions of pregnancies caused by rape are rare.

But for a party that has been blunt about its negative image with women, the controversy is like seeing a bad movie over again.

“This comes too close for comfort. It’s different, but it’s too close for comfort,” said Ari Fleischer, former Bush administration spokesman who co-wrote the GOP’s post-election report on its need for better communication with minorities and women.

“Republicans should have learned a lesson as to how to talk and act more respectfully. Even this comes too close after the two previous problems. Stop anything on this topic that even comes close to being foolish and out of touch.”

The incident summoned up two previous embarrassments for the GOP: During his 2012 attempt to unseat Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Republican Todd Akin said that women cannot get pregnant from “legitimate rape.” And in a February 2012 hearing over contraception coverage in employee health plans, Republicans called only men to testify.

The debate on the bill allows Democrats to continue the theme of a GOP “war on women” — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the legislation “disrespectful to the rights, health and safety of the American women.” And it will provide more microphone time during which Republicans may get into rhetorical hot water.

“Communications means taking your stand on the issues you believe in, but doing so in a way that brings people in instead of in a way that drives people out,” Fleischer said.

The bill may well pass the Republican-controlled House but would be unlikely to go far in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

In an interview with Roll Call, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., said it is a mistake for Republicans to bring the abortion bill up for a vote instead of focusing on economic issues. “The stupidity is simply staggering,” he said.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the legislation was prompted as a response to the crimes committed at the Philadelphia abortion clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell. “I think the legislation is appropriate,” Boehner said.

Republicans suffer because while Democrats have developed the “war on women” theme for their position on abortion, Republicans have no similar narrative for their efforts on the other side of the issue, says Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, which contributes to anti-abortion women candidates.

“They’re shooting themselves in the foot because they haven’t created an overall narrative within which mistakes can be made.”

Republicans should be presenting their legislation in the context of protecting maternal and fetal health, she said, emphasizing “fairness toward the vulnerable – the vulnerable women in these clinics and the vulnerable late-term children who are being aborted.”

Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments, and a similar remark by Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock, were viewed by Republicans as costing them two reliable Senate seats in 2012. The 2014 elections, when Republicans again hope to take control of the Senate and make more gains in the House, are nearly a year and a half away.

Democratic groups will be sure to remind voters about the GOP efforts on abortion come election time.

“This isn’t about the Trent Franks of the world, this is about all the Republicans who are going to have to take this vote” on the House bill, says Marcy Stech of Emily’s List, which supports women candidates who favor abortion rights.

(Martha T. Moore writes for USA Today.)

Even close friends and family could not fathom why this Grace Kelly look-alike, who gave Elvis his first on-screen kiss and had her pick of acting jobs, would stow herself away in a nunnery for the rest of her life.

As if to test her resolve in those weeks before she left Hollywood, Universal Studios offered her a role opposite Marlon Brando, a role she turned down shortly after she broke off her engagement to Don Robinson, a kind and handsome businessman who loved her intensely.

“Even my best friend, who was a priest, Father Doody, said, ‘You’re crazy. This is absolutely insane to do this,’” Mother Delores Hart remembered in a recent interview, conducted 50 years after she entered the Order of St. Benedict.

To try to explain her decision to a world that’s perhaps even more enamored of celebrity than it was a half century ago, Hart, 74, has written “The Ear of the Heart,” a memoir of her life on screen and behind the convent walls.

Even though she wasn’t raised Catholic, 9-year-old Dolores decided to convert when she found meaning and comfort in the rituals of her Catholic school. At 24, she quit Hollywood to answer a call she heard from God. “I left the world I knew in order to reenter it on a more profound level,” she writes.

But others took the abandonment of her career as an almost personal affront.

“It just offends so many that I would somehow look at that and say, ‘It’s useless, it’s meaningless, there is something more important. Because for most persons, success and money and fame are the things that really make life worthwhile, and so you don’t just dismiss that,’” she said.

“Even my beloved aunt, who was a sister of St. Joseph, she was livid,” Hart continued. “Because she loved having a niece who was famous.”

Hart’s book tour will take her across the country, and away from the place she has rarely left since she abandoned her movie star dream life, and where she is now prioress. The Abbey of Regina Laudis is 450 acres of farmland, barns and chapels in rural Connecticut, 100 miles north of New York City — an abbey that, not coincidentally, includes a working theater.

Founded by Hart and the late actress Patricia Neal, the open-air theater seats 300 and stages both dramas and musicals at reasonable prices for people who could not otherwise enjoy live theater. And yes, they have produced “The Sound of Music,” Hart confirmed without having to be asked.

Hart made 10 Hollywood movies from 1957 to 1963, including two with Elvis, and “Where The Boys Are,” the blockbuster 1960 comedy in which she stars as a college girl looking for spring break fun — and perhaps premarital sex.

She is most proud of her supporting role in the 1959 Broadway comedy, “The Pleasure of His Company,” for which she received a Tony Award nomination, and the film “Lisa,” (1962) in which she stars as a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.

To prepare for the role, she wanted to talk to a survivor who had actually lived through the Holocaust.

Suzanne Zada, a young Jewish woman who had survived Auschwitz and immigrated to Los Angeles, hated to be an object of curiosity for those impressed by her wartime trauma. But she agreed to meet Hart at a restaurant on the Sunset Strip, and remembers how disarmed she was by the first thing the young actress ever said to her:

“Before I sit down, may I tell you, on my way here I was considering myself a real pig for wanting you to remember your suffering, just so I can do a better acting job.”

Hart was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of “Lisa.” Today, Hart is the only nun who is a voting member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscars).

Maria Cooper Janis, the daughter of screen idol Gary Cooper and one of Hart’s best friends, said Hart found a way “to keep a foot in Hollywood” while fully embracing Benedictine life, which keeps the nuns mostly isolated, and on a strict schedule of prayer, study and manual labor.

A painful neurological disease, peripheral idiopathic neuropathy, now limits her physical activity, but for decades, Hart worked in the abbey laundry and in the wood shop, building coffins.

She also carefully tended her friendships from her movie star days, and made Regina Laudis a welcoming place for those who needed a spiritual break — or those who just missed her and her borderline naughty sense of humor.

“Built like a brick shipyard,” is how Hart admiringly describes her friend, the retired actress Valerie Allen, and makes herself laugh when she remembers Allen’s questions about Catholicism:
“Once we were talking about heaven and Valerie said, ‘I’m not Catholic, so what does it mean, when you go to heaven, that you’re going to get your body back? And I said, ‘That’s what the Lord says.’ And Valerie said, ‘When I go I’m going to ask him for my boobs when I was 18, my waist when I was 33 and my ass when I was 36.’ And I said, ‘Valerie, if that’s what you want, ask for it. Faith teaches you to ask for whatever you need.’”

It was Janis who had introduced Hart to Patricia Neal, when the Oscar-winning actress was struggling with weighty personal problems. The two developed a strong bond. Neal, one of many in show business to seek rest and counsel with Hart at Regina Laudis, is the only one to become a Catholic on her deathbed at the abbey, and to have been buried there.

Janis — along with Hart’s devoutly Catholic fiance — was one of Hart’s friends who did not argue when told that she was leaving for the convent. Janis said she did not assume, as many others had, that her best friend was “running way from men, or Hollywood or running away from life.”

“I knew this was absolutely what she had to do,” said Janis, who is Catholic, but said she is moved more by the spirit of her religion than its doctrine. “You don’t stand in the middle of the tracks of a speeding train coming at you.”

Zada, the Holocaust survivor who became fast friends with Hart, did try to talk her friend out of monastic life.

“I was very upset and actually for a couple of years I was still writing her angry notes about throwing her life away,” said Zada, who still travels from Los Angeles to visit Hart at the abbey.

“If you heard what I hear,” Hart once told Zada, “you would come, too.”

Zada said she came to realize that even though she would never understand what compelled her friend to give up one life for another, Hart did understand, and that was all that mattered.

“Everything comes from her heart,” Zada said. “As corny as it sounds.”

It’s an unusual situation in a country where death is an off-limits topic due to local culture. But as locals brace themselves, anxious and hopeful, they remain stoic and protective, insisting on Mandela’s privacy as he battles a lung infection. And they say he has a right to be left alone.

“This is a man who gave so much of himself to this country,” said Roseline Wilson, 30, an insurance company representative in Johannesburg. “He must rest. He has suffered too much in his old age.”

Mandela on Monday (June 17) spent a 10th day in the hospital where he is being treated for a recurring lung infection.

Nelson Mandela Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Mandela, 94, is revered in this country and throughout Africa for his dedication to the freedom of South Africans. He spent 27 years in prison for leading civil disobedience campaigns and for his role in acts of sabotage to violently overthrow the government. But when he emerged from prison in 1990, he led a campaign of reconciliation with the repressive white regime that had institutionalized racism in a system known as apartheid.

He and the white president at the time, Frederik Willem de Klerk, received the Nobel Peace Prize for shepherding democratic reforms and the peaceful abolishing of apartheid. The reforms led to free and fair elections in which Mandela became the country’s first black president in 1994.

“He saved a bloodbath in the making,” said Sam Omar, 72, a doctor in the small town of Vereeniging. “Most importantly, he forgave. This is a message for the country.”

Over the past few months, Mandela has been repeatedly hospitalized for respiratory problems originating from tuberculosis he contracted during his captivity. He was readmitted to the hospital for fluid in his lungs.

Locals are skeptical about reports that Mandela’s health is improving. Mandela’s family has been a constant presence at the hospital. Wife Graca Machel and his grandson Mandela arrived at the Pretoria facility last week.

Omar said that many of his patients don’t talk about Mandela being sick but focus on the man himself and the future. Talk on the street is not about his illness but about “letting him go.”

According to Isintu — a Zulu word for traditional South African culture — the very sick can’t let go from life unless the family “releases” them, or gives them permission. If they do, the family is essentially telling their loved one that they will be able to survive their passing. Then the dying can find peace and surrender to death.

African culture also holds that people do not talk about a person’s death until they die. This is called “ubuntu” or respect.

Some people are unhappy about how Mandela’s illness has played out in the public. In this culture, they say, the matter should be a private one between the dying and their families.

“I don’t think he is getting the right respect that he deserves,” said Darko Destanovic, 28. “Everyone is sitting on the edge waiting for him to die as if he was a spectacle. People want him to stay alive for themselves, not for him.”

(Zaheer Cassim and Catherine Featherston write for USA Today.)

Last week, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled his suit can proceed.

The pastor, Keith Cressman of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Bethany, Okla., contends the image of the Native American compels him to be a “mobile billboard” for a pagan religion.

A trial judge threw out the suit. But on June 11, the appeals court ruled that Judge Joe Heaton should have recognized that Cressman’s suit contained a “plausible compelled speech claim.”

Cressman, a former lawyer, claims he can’t be compelled to use religious speech that violates his own religious beliefs.

Cressman’s lawyer, Nathan Kellum of the Center for Religious Expression in Memphis, Tenn., said the First Amendment not only guarantees freedom of expression and religion, it also guarantees that people cannot be forced to say things with which they do not agree.

“My client does not believe he should be compelled to display an image that communicates a pagan practice, that of shooting an arrow into the sky to draw rain from a ‘rain god,’” Kellum said.

The image is a reproduction of a sculpture by master sculptor Allan Houser, a version of which is owned by the Smithsonian Institution. Titled “Sacred Rain Arrow,” the piece is based on an ancient Chiricahua Apache legend about a warrior who had his bow and arrow blessed by a medicine man for the purpose of ending a drought.

A committee chose the image because it is very well known in Oklahoma and sits in front of Tulsa’s Thomas Gilcrease Museum.

The appeals court ruled that Cressman had presented enough evidence to establish that the message on the license plate is a “particularized claim” that others would recognize.

Diane Clay, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, said the 10th Circuit is well known for its tendency to err on the side of freedom of speech.

The state could allow the trial to return to Heaton’s court, file a petition for rehearing before the entire appellate court or petition to be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. lawmakers are considering an amendment to the defense spending bill that would allow atheist chaplains in the U.S. Armed Forces. Are you in support of the amendment?

They have petitioned Archbishop/Cardinal Donald Wuerl to force Georgetown to conform to church teaching or to declare that the school no longer can call itself Catholic.

Many people will chafe at this protest, but in a world where it's harder and harder to know who's who and what's what, colleges should at least have the moral responsibility to say honestly who and what they are. How else are parents and students supposed to know?

This is, by far, the most high-profile protest against miscreant behavior in Catholic higher education. Four colleges – Marist University, St. John Fisher College, Nazareth College and Marymount Manhattan College – have been stripped of their Catholic identity, but Georgetown is among the most prominent American Catholic universities, an icon of the Jesuit tradition.

Click here  to read the full complaint. To summarize, the 198-page petition, a 120-page institutional audit and more are offered as evidence that Georgetown has refused to heed Pope John Paul II's rules for Catholic universities, set out in “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” (From the Heart of the Church).

This issue gets to the heart of what it means to be called “Catholic,” a topic I addressed in a March 18 blog. The Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative watchdog of Catholic colleges, has claimed for years that most so-called Catholic colleges are anything but Catholic.

This protest has far-reaching implications. If Wuerl refuses to act, Blatty's group may go over his head, to the Vatican. If Wuerl censures Georgetown, it may loose a torrent of similar actions by emboldened alumni from other colleges and perhaps force other bishops to act on their own. If the bishops do act, with or without petitions, it will be a major step for a Catholic leadership that has shown an inclination not to rock the boat.

Hartford Faith & Values led a walking tour among the dead in Grove Stree Cemetery in New Haven. The tour was a fundraiser for HartfordFAVS.

This past week, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary devoted its summer leadership conference to insights from his life and work.

The conference drew an eclectic mix of participants, including psychologists and social workers, educators, clergy and laity.

It also functioned as a reunion of various cast members and staffers from the show, which ran on the Public Broadcasting Station from 1968 to 2001.

Mr. Rogers

image courtesy of Wikipedia

Two films about Rogers were screened, alongside panels on Rogers’ ability to handle life transitions creatively.

Rogers’ widow, Joanne, wearing a Neighborhood Trolley pin, spoke briefly as well.

Rogers earned a degree in children’s ministry from the seminary and later was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He never led a church, but saw his career in broadcasting, including 33 years as writer and star of the Pittsburgh-based children’s program, as a ministry.

His show taught children how to respond to challenges, fears, and life transitions. And while it was never overtly religious, it cultivated the virtues: neighborliness, hospitality and respect for others.

Children’s spirituality “is not an add-on to children’s lives but part and parcel of who they are,” said Patricia Crawford, associate professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh. She said the conference helped her understand that children’s sense of “caring and kindness” needs to be nurtured.

Retired Pittsburgh pediatrician Dr. Jane Breck came to the conference to pay tribute to Rogers, who earlier in her career had asked for her help in explaining physical check-ups to children.

She remembered the show’s producers visiting her practice in 1993. They wanted to replicate the feel of a real pediatrician’s office to demonstrate the experience of having a physical exam. Breck recalled the producers took with them tongue depressors and otoscopes to inspect ears. Then she was asked to find two children who might be comfortable having a full physical exam on camera.

Now a part-time student at the seminary, Breck recalled how Rogers was attuned to what made children anxious.

She’ll never forget the question he asked her: “When you look in my ears, can you see through to my brain?”

“He really was the way he played himself on TV,” she said. “Spending time with Fred Rogers left an indelible mark on everyone’s soul and psyche.”

Judith A. Rubin, the “art lady” on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for three seasons, screened a documentary on Rogers. She recalled the freedom he gave her on the set to help children and parents explore their creativity.

Her movie examined Rogers’ early days on the “The Children’s Corner” a live puppet show produced by WQED from 1953 to 1961. It also looked at some of the experts Rogers came in contact with — psychologists Erik Erikson, Anna Freud and Margaret McFarland, as well as pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock.

Adult audience members sang along as the movie played clips from the children’s television show.

James Davison, director of Continuing Education at the seminary, spoke of the Christian principles he glimpsed in the show, suggesting that the parable of the Good Samaritan formed the basis for the show’s central question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Davison believes what was unique about Rogers was his “ideas of how to treat others from his biblical religious background,” deepened by Rogers’ studies of psychology.

That neighborliness was never just a TV construct. Margaret Eisen Fischer, a Pittsburgh resident, recalled that her son’s preschool was out walking one morning on a Pittsburgh street when Fred Rogers saw the group and told them: “I’m glad to know you’re my neighbors.”

Hartford Faith & Values will host a Walking Tour of New Haven’s Historic Grove Street Cemetery from 2 to 3 p.m. June 15, 2013.

Hartford Faith & Values will host a Walking Tour of New Haven’s Historic Grove Street Cemetery from 2 to 3 p.m. June 15, 2013. For more information click here.

I started writing in cemeteries as a freshman at Hiram College.  An early nineteenth-century graveyard sat on the edge of campus, wrapped in the serenity of Ohio forest and farm.  How could any young woman who loved the past and its secrets resist?  I continued the habit as a Yale graduate student; but in New Haven, the habit became a survival tool.  City life was a shocking flurry of people, noise, and exhaust to my rural Midwestern sensibilities—a place where time never seemed to stand still.  And, with the busy life of a graduate student punctuating this frenetic energy, I needed time to stop.  I needed time to encounter silence, just a wisp of it, so that I could hear my own thoughts again.  Here, in Grove Street Cemetery, I could do just that.  In the silence of the dead, my quietest thoughts could speak.

And yet, I have also found that this silence has its own cruelty. Its presence is an indicator that death obliterates life’s particularity.

Though I still love the past, I know that there are some secrets it will never tell me.  I shall never know how those, whose headstones now keep me company, viewed their lives.  I shall never hear Mr. Sweetland, in eighteenth-century accents, speaking to me about the virtues of studying Latin or the advantages of marrying your tutor’s daughter.  I shall never know Professor Schultz’s height or if Rebecca Abigal loved her husband. I sigh at this loss and draw breath.

I draw breath from the silence.  A breath that now mingles with the smell of spring blossoms, whose delicate scent is a promise that life, in all its lived particularities, is about to begin again.  I press my back more firmly against the gravestone of Professor Schultz; at this moment, its quiet pressure is as good as any human embrace.  Though I shall never know the personal stories of those buried around me, their silence allows space for something larger to echo through my own thoughts:  we are created creatures, who spring out of and melt back into the ever creating Divine.  Our stories are but whispers in the shifting roar of time. 

Stories, that when they stand in silence, become one.

(Editors Note: Sarah will be leading a walking tour of Grove Street Cemetery on June 15 at 2 p.m. The tour is a fundraiser for Hartford Faith & Values. Click here for more information.)

In one article  Brent Arends argues that American college students are being scammed by “what may well be the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history.” They spend thousands of (mostly borrowed) dollars every year for an education that isn't worth the money. In the other written/video presentation Jeff Selingo maps out the five biggest myths of a college education – myths most Americans still believe.

The Yahoo presentations raise the troubling question of the morality of skyrocketing tuition. I had it easy. I was in college in the days when my tuition was, as I recall, something in the range of $1,000 per year because the California state university system was flush with cash, and egos weren't the driving factor among faculty and administrators.

Today, egos rule. Public colleges face the added burden of reduced aid. (Example: Only 20 percent of the University of Iowa's budget comes from the state.)

Colleges, public or private, no longer teach students about moral decision-making. The fact that tuition continues to rise faster than the cost of living suggests the reason: If students were taught to evaluate and make decisions based on morality they would conclude that ever-increasing tuition rates are immoral, and they would demand change.

Ultimately, it will take millions of people to change the system by asking: Is the tuition I'm being charged morally justifiable? If not, is it my responsibility to change the system or to abandon it?

Moral decision-making also requires a basic understanding of right and wrong. That's where God comes in.

My question: What's more important to you: God's sense of right and wrong? Or yours? Unless it's God's, you'll someday make decisions that others deem immoral, and thus you'll be unable to complain about the immoral choices that injure you.

A "Food for Thought" will be held Wednesday( June 19) from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Knox Park Foundation in Hartford. The event explore questions such as " How does urban farming change our economic, educational and cultural landscape of a community?

Contact: Amanda Roy 860-685-7599 for more information an register at : cthumanities.org/register/f4t

The featured speaker will be H. Charmaine Craig, Community Outreach Director, Knox Parks Foundation.

Members of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, gathered on the final day of their annual meeting in Houston, also acknowledged the right of churches to remain in Scouting, urging them to “seek to impact as many boys as possible with the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

While expected, the Baptists’ resolution stopped far short of calling for an all-out boycott, as they did in 1997 with the Walt Disney Co. to combat what they saw as the company’s gay-friendly policies. That boycott was ended in 2005.

A Boy Scout marches with his troop during the Memorial Day parade in Smithtown, N.Y., May 27. RNS photo by Gregory A. Shemitz

“This isn’t Disney redux, as some media predicted,” tweeted Russell Moore, the new head of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, calling the move “wise, balanced, and gospel-focused.”

Nonetheless, Baptists expressed their “continued opposition to and disappointment” with the recent change in policy. The lengthy resolution notes their concern that some BSA officials and gay advocates expect the May decision will eventually lead the Scouts to allow openly gay adult leaders.

“We encourage churches that choose to sever ties with the Boy Scouts not to abandon their ministry to boys but consider expanding their Royal Ambassadors ministry, a distinctively Southern Baptist missions organization to develop godly young men,” the SBC delegates said in their statement.

BSA spokesman Deron Smith said his organization has “deep respect” for the Southern Baptists but stressed that the new policy is about accepting a boy with same-sex attraction, not condoning homosexuality.

“We believe the BSA policy is fully consistent with how Southern Baptist Churches respond to young people in their congregations, and (it) allows them to maintain their beliefs about homosexuality and minister to children who are still learning and developing,” he said shortly after Wednesday’s vote.

Baptists, including Southern Baptists, are the BSA’s sixth-largest sponsor, with close to 4,000 units and more than 108,000 members.

Baptist delegates in Houston voiced a range of opinions on the appropriate next steps for the denomination. Wes Taylor, a pastor from Palatka, Fla., who was an Eagle Scout, supported the resolution.

“I think Scouting is a great movement, but unfortunately I’m very sad to say that it seems as though they are moving away from the principles that it was founded upon,” Taylor said, arguing that young boys would now be “exposed to something that is ungodly and unacceptable.”

Charlie Dale, pastor of Indian Springs, Ala., church, was concerned about the message the resolution would send.

“I think the Boy Scouts have said that they are against all sexual activity of any boy,” he said. “So I don’t think they’re condoning homosexuality. I think that this is not going to help the cause of Christ — this resolution.”

Delegates considered stripping language that acknowledged that some Southern Baptist churches might choose to remain tied to the Scouts. But David Dykes, a member of the resolutions committee and a pastor from Tyler, Texas, said that’s not the way SBC rules work.

“We do not believe we have the authority to tell churches exactly what to do and this resolution allows churches to go whichever direction the Holy Spirit leads them,” he said.

Some prominent Southern Baptist leaders, including former SBC President Bryant Wright and SBC Executive Committee chairman Ernest Easley, have already announced plans to break ties with the Scouts.

Other religious leaders urged the Southern Baptists not to completely abandon the Scouts.

R. Chip Turner, chairman of the BSA’s Religious Relationships Task Force, wrote an open letter to Southern Baptists asking them to realize that Scouting troops remain a place for evangelism.

“As ‘fishers of men,’ are we not to go where the fish are located?” Turner asked after the BSA vote. “In the case of church-based Scout units, there are unreached people already in your buildings!”

A.J. Smith, president of the Association of Baptists in Scouting, also supported continued ties to the Scouts, saying troop-chartering churches can enforce a conduct code that prevents “any kind of sexual activity” and can remove those who violate it.

“I believe that it is possible, even desirable, for Baptist churches to continue to utilize Scouting as an outreach ministry of the church,” said Smith, whose association includes Southern Baptists.

The vast majority of evangelicals have voted with the GOP in recent elections. In fact, despite some qualms about his Mormon faith, 79 percent of evangelicals voted for Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, the same percentage that voted for President George W. Bush in 2004.

So why would the party hire its former South Carolina chairman to lead engagement to a group that for a generation or more has been the reliable anchor of the party faithful? Here are four reasons:

1. They need to

“A lot of folks in the faith community stayed home last election,” said Chad Connelly, the party’s new hire. “I don’t think (the position is) odd; it shows a commitment to what you say you believe in.”

After the GOP’s string of losses in the 2012 elections, the Republican National Committee’s post-mortem report, the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” identified the need for a full-time faith-based outreach director.

Part of it is shoring up the base: Evangelicals constituted nearly one in four voters in the 2012 electorate, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. And they’re overwhelming Republican: 65 percent of evangelical voters identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party in 2008, while 28 percent aligned with the Democratic Party.

Gary Marx, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who spearheaded outreach to social conservatives for Republicans in 2004, said Connelly is a natural fit for the party because he “understands evangelicals and speaks the language so it makes a lot of sense.”

“I don’t have to wear faith on my sleeve,” said Connelly, a Southern Baptist deacon and Sunday school teacher who vowed to be President Obama’s “worst nightmare” after his state chairmanship election in 2011. (Faith is) “who I am; it’s who I try to be.”

2. Mending fences

Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, told social conservatives in April to stop contributing to the party until leaders “grow a backbone and start defending core principles.” As the party adjusts to cultural changes, Connelly says Republicans might see it communicating a bit differently in coming elections, and evangelicals will need to adjust.

“It’s like when churches went through the (contemporary Christian music) change: ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ folks didn’t like ‘Shout to the Lord’ as much,’” he said with a Southern drawl. “It’s the same message, just the delivery pattern might be different.”

Some social conservatives have threatened to leave the party if it shifts its position against same-sex marriage. As some have suggested recalibrating the marriage message to reach younger voters, Connelly says the party’s stance is firm.

And as issues such as immigration heat up in Washington, Connelly will handle messaging to religious voters, who have become a late but critical voice in the reform effort. “As long as you hear people say border security first, people in the faith community are fine with a path to citizenship,” said Connelly.

Either way, evangelical leaders say the outreach — for either party — has to be more than lip service.

“I would hope that a liaison to evangelicals in either party would listen to evangelicals as much as speak to them,” said Russell Moore, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “They cannot simply take evangelicals for granted.”

3. New alliances

Republicans have won elections when they can unite the three pillars of the party: economic conservatives, pro-defense hawks and religious (mostly evangelical) conservatives. The 2010 elections saw the emergence of a new partner, the anti-Washington libertarian wing.

Now, everyone is trying to figure out how to work together. John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron, said evangelical turnout was lackluster in Ohio, Florida and Virginia — all crucial swing states that went to President Obama. That may be because it’s tricky to get religious social conservatives to work with the more assertive libertarian wing of the party.

“It’s easy to say on paper the parties have religious constituencies, but to make them work together effectively in a coalition requires a lot of effort,” Green said. “Evangelicals have told me the party has to change its image, but they don’t think their issues are the cause of the image problem.”

4. Competition from Democrats

While he has not worked out the details yet with the party, Connelly said he would also likely reach out beyond evangelicals. Catholics, for example, are often allies of evangelicals on culture war issues but sided with Obama in both elections.

The question for the GOP is whether religious voters can be persuaded — and mobilized — in enough key states to swing an election. The Democrats certainly hope so; their religious outreach flourished in Obama’s 2008 run but took a decidedly lower profile in his 2012 reelection campaign.

The 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 open White House contest will be telling, observers say.

“The Democrats have done a better job in the last few years in engaging, listening and responding to evangelical concerns,” said Gabe Lyons, founder of Q Ideas, a sort of virtual think tank for the new generation of evangelicals. “They would engage in friendship and not just stick around for one season.”

Derrick Harkins, a Washington, D.C., pastor who headed religious outreach for the Democratic National Committee for the 2012 cycle, but is not currently on the party’s payroll, said the party has to work to retain the relationships it built with religious voters in recent years.

“We can’t be knocking anew in 2014 and 2016,” he said.

While the proliferation of Muslim websites provides a platform for a multitude of voices, Sahar Khamis, communication professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, said there is a shortage in the amount of rational, critical deliberation and debate taking place online.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report suggesting that Muslims who use the Internet tend to have a more favorable view of Western movies, music and television than their offline counterparts.

Though Khamis said she’d like to see more Muslims online — a median of 18 percent of Muslims worldwide regularly use the Internet, according to Pew — she wants it to be in a way that promotes civil discourse. As it stands, that is generally not the case.

Khamis, who co-authored the 2009 book “Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace,” highlighted three mainstream Muslim websites — islamonline.net, islamway.com and amrkhaled.net – in a recent talk at the American Islamic Congress.

The problem, she said, is that all three sites tend to lack a negotiated middle ground. Like-minded posters reached consensus, while those with differing views often expressed themselves in aggressively inappropriate ways.

Using Arabic terms, she said that there is “no genuine shura (consultation) or ijtihad (interpretation) in an Islamic context online,” Khamis said, adding that those two elements are vital to a properly functioning virtual Muslim community. Without it, Muslim websites can be a “double-edged sword,” she said.

Khamis said that the growth of the online Islamic community has introduced the “threat of uninformed religious advice, or fatwas, from online muftis” (interpreters of Muslim law). She said online forums tend to lack traditional Muslim scholars, and websites from authoritative voices “are not very well-visited websites.”

Another missing piece of the virtual Islamic community? Moderators. Khamis said that the posts on IslamOnline’s English forum, where users often deride others as “kaffirs,” (heretics and nonbelievers), shocked her and her co-author, Mohammed el-Nawawy. 

“It’s a very troubling phenomenon, that we’re seeing this kind of uncivil discourse,” Khamis said.

This isn’t just an issue for the online Muslim community, said Jen’nan Read, a scholar at the Duke Islamic Studies Center, noting that the take-no-prisoners style of discussion is reflective of wider society. Most people seeking online forums, she said, are either looking for a place where others will agree with them or a place to argue.

“I’d be shocked if you found a real useful dialogue,” Read said. She also cautioned that the online Muslim community is not representative of all Muslims. “The online community is not representative of anyone. Period.”

Mohammed Abdul Aleem, CEO of another popular website, islamicity.com, said the presence of Muslims online has helped organize the Muslim community, allowing it to more easily counter anti-Islamic sentiments by relaying messages about Islam. Using informal polls, he estimates that 20-25 percent of IslamiCity traffic is from non-Muslims.

“We do see a good amount of discussion that is taking place,” Aleem said. While IslamiCity has rules against denigrating people or their religion, Aleem said there had been few instances where they’ve had to delete offensive posts.

“I think everyone is getting to terms with the freedom to express whatever they want to express,” Aleem said. “I think we are seeing that there is more rational debate about things.”

The report, released Tuesday (June 11), says the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is hamstrung by conservative purists who make it impossible for the church to join with other programs or agencies to combat the systematic causes of poverty.

“A small but well-financed network has emerged as a relentless opponent of the bishops’ social justice campaign, which has long been recognized as one of the most influential funders of grassroots community organizing,” writes John Gehring, who authored the 24-page report for Faith in Public Life, a Washington-based lobby of religious progressives.

What may be most significant about the report is that it has won strong public backing from prominent bishops and church leaders, including two former presidents of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

With a new pope who has made a priority of championing the poor — even if it means linking arms with nonbelievers — defenders of CCHD and social justice are finding an assertiveness that was missing during the more hardline papacies of Benedict XVI and even John Paul II.

“I’m confident that if Pope Francis knew about the CCHD program he would say, ‘God bless the American bishops!’ for doing what they can to help the poor,” said retired Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, a former USCCB president, before heading to this week’s closed-door meeting of the nation’s bishops.

The CCHD distributed $9 million in grants to community groups and social action initiatives last year, but in recent years the program has drawn renewed fire from church conservatives who say its programs favor liberal economic policies.

Critics also accuse the program of working with non-Catholic groups that undermine battles against abortion and gay rights that they say should dominate the bishops’ agenda.

A number of bishops and some parishes have halted or discouraged CCHD collections in their dioceses after hearing charges – almost all of which have proven unfounded – that the CCHD funds groups that promote same-sex marriage or reproductive rights.

“Using guilt by association and other tactics from the McCarthy-era playbook,” Gehring writes, “these activists are part of an increasingly aggressive movement of Catholic culture warriors who view themselves as fighting for a smaller, ‘purer’ church.”

The decades-long tug of war over the CCHD closely tracks the fissures that are dividing the Catholic Church – splits between political liberals and conservatives; and between those who want to engage the world and those who want to rally a tradition-minded core against a secularizing society.

On a larger scale, the fight over CCHD reflects a longstanding divide over whether a few litmus-test issues — most of which do not include social justice concerns — can or should define what it means to be a Catholic in America.

The two former USCCB heads — Fiorenza and retired Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash. — were joined by eight other bishops and a who’s who of more than 30 Catholic social justice activists, including former USCCB officials, two past CCHD executive directors, and several well-known priests and nuns.

“At a time when poverty is growing and people are hurting, we should not withdraw from our commitment to helping the poor,” Fiorenza, who headed the USCCB from 1998-2001, is quoted as saying in the report. “Catholic identity is far broader than opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.”

The bishops’ meeting in San Diego will be the first gathering of the U.S. hierarchy since Francis’ election, and Fiorenza said he hoped that their awareness of the pontiff’s priorities would encourage bishops who have opposed the CCHD “to take another look.”

‘I’m really tired of being defensive’

The CCHD was begun in 1970 and is supported by an annual collection in the nation’s parishes. It was hailed by John Paul II for “removing the causes of poverty and not merely the evil effects of injustice.”

But conservatives always chafed at the program’s liberal-sounding approach and they ramped up their criticism and activism in the wake of the 2008 election of President Obama, who worked with CCHD-backed groups as a community organizer in Chicago.

In 2009, a coalition called “Reform CCHD Now” was formed by the American Life League, one of the most vocal anti-abortion lobbies, and it has spearheaded the opposition by raising questions about groups that receive CCHD grants.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for “Reform CCHD Now” said the group stood by its charges that CCHD continues to fund grantees that are “involved directly in the promotion of contraception, abortion and homosexual activism.”

Rob Gasper also rejected the accusation that the “Reform CCHD Now” coalition is pursuing a “guilt by association” approach. Rather, he said, “if a CCHD grantee joins a coalition that has as one of its operational goals the promotion of items against Catholic teaching, then that grantee is guilty by participation.”

A 2011 memo from two bishops who oversee the CCHD for the hierarchy said all but one of the many accusations against the CCHD were unfounded and they denounced “the repeated accusations of those with clear ideological and ecclesial agendas.”

But the anti-CCHD campaign continued, and it has succeeded in having a number of grants rescinded by arguing that some recipients worked with organizations that do not always endorse or promote the church’s teaching on sexuality.

In 2012, for example, Companeros, a small nonprofit in rural Colorado that helps immigrants, lost CCHD funds amounting to half of its budget because of its association with a statewide immigrant rights coalition that included a gay and lesbian advocacy group. Companeros itself does not work on gay rights.

Also, in the past year alone, five affiliates of the Gamaliel Foundation, one of the nation’s largest faith-based networks, lost CCHD funds because of charges, which it rejects, that Gamaliel is an “organization promoting homosexuality” and supporting abortion rights.

“I’m really tired of being defensive,” David Liners, who heads a Gamaliel affiliate in Wisconsin, says in the report. “Just the act of being defensive gives credence to these people. As a Catholic, I find all of this unspeakably painful.”

The coalition has also gained traction with the growing political conservatism of the U.S. hierarchy and its staff in Washington. Several bishops have halted the annual CCHD fund drives or have raised so many hurdles for funding that only select, church-run groups can qualify.

That has undermined the program’s effectiveness and led some church officials to resign in protest, the report says.

“Many of these critics are bomb throwers who believe that by destroying the credibility of those working for social justice they will somehow enhance the pro-life agenda,” Tom Allio, who retired as Social Action Director for the Diocese of Cleveland, is quoted as saying. “Nothing could be further from the truth. They want to make social justice and faith-based organizing dirty words.”

On that day, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ended its ban on blacks in its priesthood, opening ordination to “all worthy male members,” including those of African descent.

“For me,” former church President Gordon B. Hinckley said on the day’s 10th anniversary, “it felt as if a conduit opened between the heavenly throne and the kneeling, pleading prophet of God who was joined by his brethren.”
Amram Musungu, a Mormon from Kenya, is a leader in Swahili Mormon ward in Salt Lake City but says the church still has lingering prejudice, even 35 years after it lifted the ban on blacks entering the priesthood.

Show caption Amram Musungu, a Mormon from Kenya, is a leader in Swahili Mormon ward in Salt Lake City but says the church still has lingering prejudice, even 35 years after it lifted the ban on blacks entering the priesthood. RNS photo courtesy Steve Griffin | The Salt Lake Tribune.

There now are nearly 400,000 Mormons in Africa, two missionary training centers, three working temples (South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria), with two more planned (Democratic Republic of the Congo and another in South Africa).

Brazil, with its heritage of mixed races, has been especially fertile territory, with 1.2 million Mormons. In Europe, many of those willing to listen to Mormon missionaries are African immigrants. And the church is growing steadily in urban America, home to millions of African-Americans.

For most white Mormons, the historical controversy is over. “It’s behind us,” Hinckley told “60 Minutes” in 1995. But the ban still haunts many African-American members. They frequently have to explain themselves and their beliefs to non-Mormons, other black converts, even themselves.

They occasionally hear racist comments from fellow believers, such as “black skin is cursed” or “when you become more righteous, your skin will grow lighter.” Some report being called the “N-word.”

Such racist remarks exist in every faith and group, of course, but some Latter-day Saints see the persistence as troubling.

“Thirty-five years after the end of a racial restriction that had so burdened the church,” said Armand Mauss, a pre-eminent Mormon sociologist, “the old racist folklore that came with it has still not been formally repudiated” by top church leaders.

Most Mormons did not challenge the ban on black males in the priesthood, but they did want to know why God would institute such a policy. Various explanations, many culled from American culture at the time, emerged.

Some LDS leaders, including then-apostle Bruce R. McConkie, taught that black skin was “the curse of Cain,” an allusion to the biblical figure who killed his brother Abel. Others added the notion that blacks were “less valiant” in Mormon theology’s “premortal existence.”

The official position is that only God knows the reason for the 125-year ban, and only a revelation from God could end it.

The blacks-as-cursed belief continues to be circulated at the grass-roots level and supported in publications such as McConkie’s “The Mortal Messiah” and former LDS prophet Joseph Fielding Smith’s “Doctrines of Salvation.”

Last year, after Brigham Young University religion professor Randy Bott was quoted in the press describing those racist theories, the church issued a strong condemnation of the so-called “folklore.”

“The church’s position is clear — we believe all people are God’s children and are equal in his eyes and in the church,” the statement said. “We do not tolerate racism in any form.”

Dalyn Montgomery, a white Latter-day Saint married to a black convert in Philadelphia, believes he knows what to credit for the progress: Mormonism’s structure.

Throughout U.S. history, the most segregated day of the week has been Sunday. Worshippers often divide along racial lines, attending churches with people who look like themselves. But Mormonism doesn’t allow that, Montgomery said.

“Because of its lay ministry, everybody has to work together to make Sundays run. In any geography that captures both (black and white) races, people are forced to spend time together on leadership councils and in each other’s homes.”

In places such as Philadelphia and Atlanta, he said, a young, white, highly educated family and an older African-American woman of little means “are in each other’s homes, meeting in meaningful ways on something — faith — that matters to both of them.”

Even so, challenges remain. Church-owned BYU has 30,000 students and 1,226 professors, but only 254 black students and one full-time black faculty member.

For Josy Petit, a black BYU graduate from Queens, N.Y., who has been a Mormon since she was 8, being on the largely white campus helped her develop “a sense of humor — and ready answers” when confronted with insensitive comments and false assumptions.

“Even though they knew I was a top performing student, some of my professors just saw a black person,” she recalled. “Some of the nicer teachers asked me, ‘What sports do you play?’”

She got engaged to a white Mormon but had to call it off, she said, “because his family couldn’t get over the fact that I was black.”

Petit believes such prejudice is based on the former ban and continues to fester within Mormonism because members are uncomfortable talking about it.

“I wish (LDS leaders) had more confidence in their doctrine and that the Holy Ghost testifies of truth. Black members could be presented the historic information and still choose to stay, like I did, because of all the good there is in the church. Truth will carry them through.”

Amram Musungu joined the LDS church in 1992 as a 14-year-old living in Nairobi, Kenya, and within three years served a full-time mission in his homeland.

Now living in Utah, Musungu is married with two children, works as an accountant, sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and helps lead a burgeoning, 300-member Swahili ward in Salt Lake City.

He doesn’t care about the former priesthood ban.

“Everyone asks why, why, why it didn’t happen sooner,” Musungu said. “We don’t know. We are just rejoicing at our opportunity to hold the priesthood and bless the lives of our families.”

Even Musungu, though, has experienced the sting of racist comments. Once, when he was introduced as being a Mormon from Africa who sings in the choir, another church member asked: “What are you doing in our world?”

Stunned, the gentle African replied, “We are brothers and sisters, and this world belongs to all of us.”

(Peggy Fletcher Stack writes for The Salt Lake Tribune.)

Little wonder, then, that many evangelicals withhold their support, and kids. And through their support of conservative politicians and policies, evangelicals have been, broadly speaking, part of a political dynamic that has shrunk support, financial and otherwise, for public schools.

But there is a serious problem with this flight from public education. Evangelicals are realizing there are real human beings in those left-behind schools who are struggling to teach and learn against difficult odds, and the future well-being of those kids and our communities depends on their success. Shouldn’t Christians with hearts full of love and compassion be helping them?

Absolutely yes, argues Nicole Baker Fulgham. Formerly vice president at Teach for America, Fulgham is author of the new book “Educating All God’s Children” and heads an upstart nonprofit called The Expectations Project working to improve outcomes for students in our public education system. Fulgham and her work exemplify a new kind of evangelical engagement with public schools that is dedicated solely to helping kids rather than arguing over school prayer, evangelism, and other culture war flash points.

“There are so many places where Christians can make a positive impact without explicitly sharing the Gospel — and public schools are one of them,” Fulgham says. “Part of our work on this planet, I believe, is to bring equity and justice to broken systems.”

At the annual Q conference this spring, Christian engagement with public schools was a big topic. Among the quick-hit presentations was a talk on a church-school partnership in Portland, Ore., that many churches around the country are viewing as an inspiration and a model.

Captured in a documentary titled “Undivided,” the Portland story goes like this: As part of a day of service by the area’s evangelical churches, members of a large suburban congregation gathered at a struggling city high school to spend a day sprucing up the building and grounds.

The people from SouthLake Church were not content with one and done, however; they have “adopted” Roosevelt High School and made the relationship the central component of the church’s ongoing public engagement these past five years.

From the volunteers operating the clothes closet where kids access free outfits and toiletries, to the SouthLake staff member who works at the high school every day on the congregation’s dime, the church people have become a permanent helping presence. The church volunteers have all agreed not to evangelize and, to this point, there have been no reports of anyone breaking that pledge.

A similar ethos prevails at Kauai Christian Fellowship in Kaloa, Hawaii. Founding pastor Rick Bundschuh says the 400-member church resists suggestions to start a Christian school and instead encourages its people to enroll their kids in the public schools and get involved — “with no agenda,” Bundschuh says, “except to serve.”

These efforts are few and scattered, to be sure — although a wider movement is building in the Portland area. Yet even if there’s a nationwide boom in churches serving schools this way, evangelicals will be fighting a hard current until society becomes more supportive of the public education system. That’s why Fulgham is calling on her fellow Christians to go beyond volunteering to address the systemic injustices evident in the vast student achievement gaps between wealthy and poor zip codes.

If this kind of post-culture wars approach to social engagement becomes a major part of evangelical Christianity’s public face in the years ahead there is cause for optimism.

The coming up of a new generation of socially committed evangelicals promises new energy, heart, and skill for the fight. These are people with whom nonreligious progressives and liberal people of faith can form partnerships and coalitions for the common good.

For those embittered by the likes of Falwell and Dobson and Palin and Bachmann — the emergence of these “new evangelicals” poses a challenge to old stereotypes: These evangelicals are not trying to take over. Their critique of right-wing politicized Christianity bears much in common with the critique you’ll hear from many a non-evangelical progressive.

Despite the reflexive edginess many of the nonreligious feel when they hear that evangelicals are mobilizing in the public-education arena, this different evangelical dream — in which all kids get a shot at a good education and a promising future — is not creepy or threatening. It bears a striking resemblance, in fact, to the best features of another dream with which we’re all familiar and comfortable — the American dream.

(Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland-based writer specializing in religion in public life and author of the new book “The Evangelicals You Don’t Know.”)

“It was inspirational, but also very humbling in a lot of instances, just to see how some people are living,” Luter said, days after returning from Ethiopia and Uganda.

Struck by the poor living without running water and by missionaries willing to “leave the comforts that we have here in America,” Luter wants more members of his New Orleans congregation — as well as more of the nation’s 16 million Southern Baptists — to take overseas missions seriously.

In particular, he wants more of his denomination’s relatively small black population to serve as missionaries.

As the denomination meets in Houston Tuesday and Wednesday (June 11-12), Luter’s trip is bringing home a stark and persistent reality: Few missionaries are black.

“We do have some African-American missionaries,” Luter said, “but just not enough.”

Although an unspecified number of black churches send members on short-term missions trips, just 26 of the 4,900 Southern Baptist missionaries — or one half of 1 percent — who have served more than two years in overseas missions are black.

Across a range of denominations, 1 percent of domestic or foreign missionaries are black, and just 6 percent of them are in leadership positions, said Leroy Barber, author of the forthcoming book, “Red, Yellow, Black, and White: Who’s More Precious in his Sight?”

There are several reasons for the scarcity of black missionaries, but observers cite three: Culture. Money. And priorities.

“One is a philosophical barrier, that we’ve got a lot of people right across the street … on their way to hell so why are we trying to go to another country?’’ said Keith Jefferson, African-American missional church strategist with the Southern Baptists’ International Mission Board.

Jefferson and other black missions experts say the conventional assumption is that white missionaries are sent to evangelize people of color. At the same time, black Christian leaders often feel their hands are full addressing problems at home without considering international work.

Jefferson, who first met a black missionary when he was 41, said his goal is to have 100 blacks committed to long-term missions by 2015.

Through a “Black Missions Link” initiative, the IMB has distributed cards with photos of black missionaries to Southern Baptist churches encouraging them to “pray for Eric and Ramona” in South America, for example, or “Courtney and Arleen” in the Caribbean.

A new IMB mentoring program has connected African-American college students with black missionary couples who serve as mentors on a short-term overseas trip.

“It was especially important that I was a young African-American woman and in that particular town they don’t see a lot of that,” said Victoria Obamehinti, 25, a student at the University of North Texas at Dallas who just returned from Senegal. “They see missionaries, but they’re usually Anglo.”

She’s hoping to describe her experiences from Senegal to younger people who might one day become missionaries. And she’s open to future mission work herself: “If God tells me to go then I’ll go.’’

Though few in number, blacks’ involvement in Southern Baptist missions dates to the early days of the SBC, which began amid its Civil War-era defense of slavery. A building at the IMB’s headquarters in Richmond, Va., is named for William W.  Colley, who served as a missionary to Nigeria in the late 1800s.

Pastor James Dixon Jr., the missionary for African-American church development for the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, was a member of the multiethnic team that traveled with Luter to Africa. Each year, his church in Fort Washington, Md., travels to Guyana to help a church there with leadership training and evening crusades.

“No matter where I go, I want them to know that we got black folk in America who don’t mind giving themselves away, who don’t mind embracing otherness in terms of entering the lives of people and not leaving them the way we find them,” said Dixon, who is black.

Jim Sutherland, director of independent Reconciliation Ministries Network, has also traveled overseas with 25 multiethnic teams since 1994.

“I wouldn’t call it a smashing success,’’ he said. “However, we do have an African-American missionary in south Sudan serving in a remote village that has no electricity or running water, no cell phone coverage.”

Despite the cultural changes and personal sacrifices, some younger African-Americans seem primed for the mission field.

Taelyr Patton, 22, a student at California State University, Fullerton, called her recent trip to Peru life-changing. Like Luter, she was humbled by the experience after witnessing the poverty in Lima and being asked by a woman why God would let her suffer.

A senior majoring in sociology, Patton has her eyes set wider than La Puente, Calif., where she hopes to become a therapist. “I don’t want to have just a little private practice in La Puente,” she said. “I definitely want to go around the  world.”

It’s fairly easy to talk about being an environmentalist or wanting to help the planet, but I have found that not many people actually do much to actively benefit the environment. This seems to be partially because people feel that it’s too hard to start and partially because people just don’t know how to start. Now I consider myself a conservationist rather than an environmentalist but I think there are basic at home practices that we can all do, that are easy, and that benefit everyone by benefiting the sustainability of the environment.

The first thing I started doing was recycling. My town offers pick up of recyclable materials with the garbage; in towns that don’t offer this service you can do an internet search of “recycling in CT” and find out how to turn in your recyclable materials. In my house we use two small bins and we sort the recyclable materials as we use things. I was shocked by how much we were able to recycle, and how much it reduced our bagged garbage.

The next step, which is a little more complicated, is composting. Composting allows our family to reduce garbage even more by placing some types of food waste into a composter, as well as paper and leaves, and gives us an end product that we can use to fertilize the yard and our garden. Composting does require a bit of research and a composting bin. It takes a bit of practice, but is rewarding.

All of these are just little changes that can be made fairly easily but can help reduce the overall negative impact on the environment. Start small and the changes become habits that don’t even require thought to do. Taking care of our world is especially important for those who follow religions that embrace honoring the earth and the spirits that inhabit our world.

Love isn't sex. And sex isn't love. Sex without love is self-serving. I've already discussed, on Feb. 20  and Feb. 25, how loveless sex warps a man's brain.

Love, however, emphasizes the other person. The title of a Gary Smalley book says it well: “Love is a decision.” Love isn't about feelings. It is a conscious choice someone makes to do good for another, regardless of the consequences. This is how God loves, and it's the way He wants us to love. That's why He sent us the Holy Spirit – so we can love as He does.

A husband needn't feel deep desire to love his wife in the (usually non-sexual) ways she wants to be loved. But when he decides to do so and acts on that decision – when he decides to love her solely for her benefit, in other words – he meets her needs. That should fully satisfy him, in and of itself. If it doesn't he has a problem that only God can fix.

True fulfillment comes from meeting your commitment to love – i.e., to give what's good, right and pleasing for the other person's well-being. Therein lies the problem. Most people don't want to love; mostly they just want to be loved.

As I said in those earlier blogs, a man is motivated primarily by what he sees. But it's one thing for him to grab whatever he sees and wants. It's altogether different for a wife to willingly decide to show her husband what he most wants to see and then give it to him freely, even joyfully. That is the greatest privilege a man can experience.

All husbands and wives must view sex as a gift to be given, not an appetite to be satisfied. If that act of giving and receiving isn't totally rewarding for a husband and/or wife then something is terribly wrong in their marriage. And only God can fix it.

God wants holy marriage to precede sex because it's only via holy marriage that God unites two people and becomes their partner, teaching them how to love for the other one's well-being.

Husbands and wives who lack sexual desire are saying something to each other and both need to listen. I suspect that sexual desire wanes in couples that don't communicate well – who don't confess their waning erotic desire to God and their mate and who thus don't seek ways to restart it.

My question: Do you truly listen to your spouse and God when it comes to sex? Are you committed to doing so? Do you have the the courage to speak up?