Author Archives: Obie Holmen

Lutheran Seminarians Support Task Force Recommendation

CHICAGO (ELCA) — In an open letter to the 65 synod bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Lutheran seminarians expressed their support for a recommendation that would allow Lutherans in committed same-gender relationships to be included on professional church rosters.

On Feb. 19 the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality released a report and recommendation for a process to consider changes to ministry policies that could make it possible for Lutherans who are in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gendered relationships” to serve as ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers.

The task force also released that day a proposed social statement for the church — “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust.” The 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly — the highest legislative authority of the 4.7 million-member church — will consider both documents Aug. 17-23 in Minneapolis.

To date more than 160 members of the ELCA studying at Lutheran and non-Lutheran seminaries have signed on to “An Open Letter from Lutheran Seminarians to the Bishops of the ELCA.” Four members of the ELCA attending Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, wrote the letter.

“We applaud the ELCA’s commitment to the dialogue on sexuality and its affirmation of sexuality as a gift and trust from God,” the letter stated. “After careful consideration of the issue at hand and its influence on the life of the church, we stand in solidarity, affirming the recommendation for structured flexibility within the rostering requirements of the ELCA.”

In the letter seminarians asked synod bishops to “represent our voice faithfully in your involvement in the deliberation process leading” to the churchwide assembly. “Joining with you as people invested in the life, health and ministry of the ELCA, we appeal to your commitment to the gospel and the mission of the church.”

In preparation for ministry, “we both see and experience the harm of the current policy and its denial of the gifts present in the whole Body of Christ. Because of the current policy, gay and lesbian persons ignore calls to ministry, candidates feel compelled to lie about their sexuality, mentors are forced out of the church, and candidates leave the ELCA for more inclusive denominations. The tragedy of these events is weakening the integrity of the church,” the letter stated.

The Lutheran seminarians said it is in the “best interest” of the ELCA to affirm the recommendation of the task force at the assembly. “The life of the church depends upon the full recognition and inclusion of ministerial gifts engendered by the Spirit.”

Galilee Diary: Independence Day



Our hope is not lost, the hope of two thousand years To be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem. -Hatikvah, Israeli national anthem

This year’s observance of Yom Ha’atzma’ut was particularly interesting and thought-provoking for me; here are some hightlights:

At mid-day on Tuesday, Memorial Day, almost the entire population of Shorashim, a few hundred people, set forth in a bus and a caravan of cars toward the Bet Shean valley. Every year we do an educational excursion on the afternoon of Memorial Day, to a historical site connected with the creation of the state. This year, we explored the area settled by Orthodox kibbutzim in the late 30s and early 40s. A highlight of the afternoon was a meeting with Jonathan Bassi, whose parents were among the founders of one of these kibbutzim. Bassi, who was a baby in 1948, recently got interested in researching a pivotal battle from 1948 that helped set the borders in the area, in which several of his parents’ close friends and comrades were killed. He discovered a fascinating history of silence, regret, and guilt – that generation didn’t discuss their feelings, and when he probed, fifty years later, it all came out – the one who was passed over in making up that morning’s patrol because he was needed on the farm, the one who still feels guilty that he didn’t clean the machine gun – and it jammed in battle, the young widow who only knew her husband had been killed when he didn’t come back with all the others (no one would tell her)… etc. It was interesting to contrast that almost pathological restraint with our present invasive media culture, which would not have let any intimate detail escape the public spotlight. We complain about that sensationalistic, prying scrutiny – but it does have its advantages.

Bassi didn’t talk about himself. A recognized and respected community leader, he was appointed in 2005 to supervise the resettlement of the settlers evacuated from Gaza. He became a lightning rod for the strident public controversy over that evacuation, and ultimately was hounded out of his kibbutz by a vocal minority. But we all knew his story (from the media), as we listened to him speak so eloquently about the battles of sixty years ago, and their meaning for him.

We went on to a nearby park, where at sundown we held a brief ceremony – including the sounding of the shofar – to mark the transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day, and a picnic and campfire. Baked potatoes in the fire for the native Israelis; toasted marshmallows for the immigrants.

The next day, Independence Day, we set out to brave the crowds at the Air Force training base near Haifa, where the Galilee Jewish-Arab Youth Circus had been invited to perform at the traditional Independence Day open house (held at many army bases, all over the country). We had wondered how the parents of the Arab kids would feel about this invitation. There was no hesitation; they were proud and supportive. We had actually been a bit surprised at the invitation, and indeed a few days before, a clueless army bureaucrat tried to cancel it, as it was “not possible for Arabs to visit the base;” but ultimately he got it – that these are citizens – and relented. So there they were, Jews and Arabs, in the shade of a Patriot anti-missile missile launcher, launching balls, rings, and each other into the air, to the enthusiastic applause of hundreds of who had come out to show their children Israel’s military might and eat ice cream.

Hopefully some of them got the message – that it takes different types of might to survive as a state, and that the courage to let the Other stand on your shoulders may be at least as important as the courage to fly an F-16.

By Marc Rosenstein

ELCA Presiding Bishop Speaks to Antipoverty Activists


WASHINGTON (ELCA) – The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), spoke to more than 1,200 faith-based and antipoverty activists here at the Mobilization to End Poverty event, April 26-29. He called on participants to “hold each other accountable” for the work they are doing to end poverty. The event was held to engage participants in making antipoverty work a political priority.

Hanson was one of six speakers at the “Church Leaders Roundtable — Uniting and Mobilizing the Church in the Fight Against Poverty” plenary session at the event. Other organizations represented on the panel were the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Convoy of Hope, Reformed Church in America, Micah Challenge and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. The Rev. Brian D. McLaren, author and speaker, moderated.

During the plenary panelists were asked a series of questions regarding obstacles to overcoming poverty, pastors’ reluctance to engage in advocacy, congregational members’ accountability and ways to continue the work to end poverty back home.

Hanson said if he were serving in a parish he would have adults engage in a “community mutual accountability and discernment” hour. “We would hold each other accountable to publicly live out the mandate of serving the poor or spreading the justice of peace,” he said.

“We would confess it didn’t go as well as God intended,” Hanson said. “Then we would become a community of moral discernment, not splitting conservatives and liberals, but engaging the Word in the world as this community of faith in this context.”

Participants also visited members of Congress and advocated for cutting domestic poverty in half in 10 years.

The Rev. Matthew Lenahan, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Akron, Pa., explained that the mobilization was an “equipping” event.

“We are called to initially go back and ask that one question, ‘What is God calling me to do and be now as a result of this mobilization?'” he said. “I have great hope after my day on the (Capitol) Hill that things can actually change when people of faith care enough to step out of their comfortable place and confront systems of injustice with a word of Scripture and a word of hope.”

Hosted by Sojourners, a progressive Christian network, the Mobilization to End Poverty was supported by 23 denominations, religious societies and groups. The ELCA was a financial sponsor of the event.
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The Mobilization to End Poverty blog is at http://blog.sojo.net/ on the Web.
Information about the Mobilization to End Poverty is at http://www.sojo.net/mobilization on the Web.

God’s Image and Caesar’s Image: Torture and the Currency of Empire


One of the central teachings of Torah is that all human beings are made in the Image of God. That teaching and what flows from it are at the heart of Jewish prohibitions on the use of torture — and perhaps at the heart of Christian opposition to torture as well.

Indeed, the Rabbis – living under the Roman Empire – enriched that teaching about the Image as a direct challenge to the power of Rome, the Imperial fount of torture. One of them asked, “What does this mean, ’In God’s image?’” And another answered, “When Caesar puts his image on a coin, all the coins come out identical. When that One who is beyond all rulers puts the divine image on a ‘coin,’ all the coins come out unique.”

Torture tries to destroy the Image of God –- uniqueness, the diversity that is the only way the Infinite can unfold itself in the world — and replace it with uniformity, Caesar’s image on the human soul and body. In the experience of the Rabbis, it was Imperial Rome that used torture. To this very day, the liturgy for Yom Kippur, when more Jews are in the synagogue than at any other time, and in a more deeply devotional and covenantal place than at any other time, includes the graphic and horrific descriptions of Rome’s torturing to death ten of the greatest rabbis of that or any age.

I think this understanding of the Image of God casts a profound light on the story in three of the Christian Gospels in which two troublemakers come up to Jesus and ask him a question: “Should we pay taxes with this coin?”

They evidently hoped to trap him into violating either Jewish or Roman law. For the coin had on it an image of Caesar, marked “Caesar, imperator, divus: Emperor, God.” If Jesus said to use the coin, he might be violating the Jewish law against idolatry. If he said not to, he would surely be violating Roman law.

So Jesus, in a totally Jewish fashion, answers the question with a question. He asks, “Whose image is on the coin?” They respond, more or less — “Caesar’s, dummy, that’s the point!”

So according to the Gospels, Jesus says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” and for 2,000 years Christians have been arguing about what that means.

But now take into account the Rabbinic teaching that Caesar puts his rigid uniformity upon his coins, whereas the Infinite God puts uniqueness into God’s coins: every human being. Surely Jesus, the radical rabbi from the Galilee, knew this teaching.

So I believe there is a missing line in the Gospel story. Either Jesus didn’t need to say it because his first question would reawaken the knowledge in those who were trying to trouble him, or it was later censored out because it was so radical:

“Whose image is on that coin?” he said, and they answered: “Caesar’s.”

And then I think he said, “And whose Image is on this coin?” as he put his hands on the shoulders of the troublemakers.

Only then did he say, “So give to Caesar what is Caesar’s – and give to God what is God’s!”

And of course, as the Gospels say, the troublemakers themselves went away deeply troubled – not because they had failed to trick him, but because he had forced them to think and feel and act anew as they opened themselves to experience the Image of God in themselves. And to understand that the Divine Image stood in radical contradiction to Caesar’s image, so that the world could not be neatly and comfortably divided into two different realms, one “spiritual;” and one “political.”

This teaching needs to be renewed in every generation. One way that Jewish tradition does this in regard to torture is to insist that every Yom Kippur, the community relives the torture of ten rabbis by Rome. In parallel, Christianity insists that every Good Friday the community relive the torture of Jesus by Rome.

These two practices also remind us what brought about the suffering that grieves us. For they remind us that empires torture. The US by its own hand in the Philippines a century ago, by proxies in Central America just a generation ago, again by its own hand in Iraq and Afghanistan. No empire can survive without resorting to torture against those who refuse to bow to its power — by act or even by omission or even by sheer accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those who get in the way of its demand that human beings abandon their uniqueness and bow to uniformity, as Caesar forces his own image onto every human body, drowning the Image of God in a flood of agony.

So what does this teach us about America today? That we have a choice more basic than whether we close Guantanamo or – as is now being done by the Obama Administration — we double the size of Bagram, a similar prison in Afghanistan.

America cannot celebrate both the Infinite God and the tyrannical Caesar, cannot remain both a citizenly republic and a domineering empire. How to choose? One way is to affirm that torture is both a grave sin and a major crime. Refusing to “look back” at the use of torture in the past, refusing to try as criminals those who committed the crime, failing to excommunicate those who committed the sin, means refusing to heal the future.

It would be the same as ripping the crucifixion out of Good Friday or the torture of the ten rabbis out of Yom Kippur. After all, it merely happened long ago. Under a long-gone Empire. What is the point of remembering?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of The Shalom Center, author of Godwrestling, Round 2, and co-author of The Tent of Abraham.

Just a Little Time


From The Union for Reform Judaism, “Ten Minutes of Torah”

This week’s parashah opens with detailed guidelines regarding the holiness of priests and sacrifices. The text places the emphasis on avoiding the desecration of sacred space by insuring the sacredness of the people and offerings entering that space (Leviticus 21:1–22:23). Later, the discussion shifts from the sacredness of space to the sacredness of time (Leviticus 23:1–44).

It is this shift from space to time that separated the Jewish community of the Bible from the other communities in which they communed. It is easy to place a fence around sacred spaces and wall them off from the infectious impurity of the outside world. It is much more challenging to wall off time and set it aside as sacred. This, I believe, is the greatest gift that Judaism brings to the world of religion.

While the focus in Leviticus may be on the priestly obligations during these sacred moments, in a world where we are a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) the obligations and opportunities fall to us. In Leviticus 23, we are all included in the Revelation about these sacred days. Each day brings its own special collection of tasks and benefits. Each day becomes an obligation for every Jew.

Here is the entry way into Jewish life for the post-Exodus Jew. On a regular cycle, we are asked to come into the presence of God and share of our world. Through the sacrifice of goods and, especially, time, we are taught to give—and give freely. It is through this sacred giving that we establish a sacred community in this world. Today, in a world where time is a very precious commodity, how much more important is the opportunity to give of that which is most precious to us for the service of God.

Maybe that is the truest test of our understanding of this parashah today. If we are truly engaged in the give and take with God and the divine relationship is central in our lives, then setting aside precious time for sacred relationship is the pathway to that goal. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel knew this best when he wrote his book, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

Time is most precious, in many cases more important than money. Often it is easier to write the check than volunteer the time. Maybe our portion, like the prophets of old, simply asks us to give a little time for sacred causes. As Torah teaches, “it is not in the heavens . . .” (Deuteronomy 30:12). Time is in our hands.

Rabbi David A. Lipper is spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Akron, Ohio and is an avid student of Torah.

Standing Up to Miss California


The National Organization for Marriage is acting like if Miss California cannot be Miss USA, then she will be the new Queen Esther. But Carrie Prejean is neither one.

We know Miss USA types but, as a rabbi, to show how wrong this allusion is, I must tell you about Queen Esther. She is a brave biblical figure from thousands of years ago. Orphaned and raised by her uncle, she rose against all odds, to be the king of Persia’s favored wife in a time when Persians despised Jews.

At risk of her own life she came out to the king to expose a plot against all Jews. Even her uncle asked her to risk her own life because she was born and raised to the status of queen “for such a time as this.” Because of her bravery, she and all her people were spared from becoming the victims of a grab for power.

So in today’s real life story, who is Queen Esther? Who are the victims?

Carrie Prejean and the National Organization for Marriage feel they are the victims because of the outcry when Carrie came out and said, “In my country and in my family I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman – no offense to anyone out there…”

But offence IS taken when these beliefs are the backbone of anti-gay legislation. Offense IS taken when victimization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is ongoing.

* It is gay and lesbian couples and families who do not have equal protection under the law to marry the person they love who are the victims.
* It is transgender people who are targeted for brutal beatings and murders such as Angie Zapata in Colorado who are the victims.
* It is every child in our public school who is bullied to the point of suicide with taunts of “you’re so gay” who are the victims.
* It is the foster children who are denied a permanent home because gay couples are barred from adopting in state after state who are the victims.
* It is the parents and family of gay people who watch their loved ones suffer persecution and discrimination on the job who are the victims.

In America we have a separation of church and state. Churches and synagogues do not control civil marriage. Conservative people of faith remain free to practice their religion–and even their prejudices. They are not forced to marry anyone in their congregation.

Our founding fathers were wise when they made sure that no religion was the official religion of the United States. They separated religion from civil law. Carrie and National Organization for Marriage want to be viewed as the victims but they are among those who plot against marginalized people who have been forced to live in fear and silence.

Carrie and National Organization for Marriage claim that they are the victims and that Carrie lost the pageant for her beliefs. But one judge, Alicia Jacobs, spoke out afterwards and blogged:

Could Miss California have answered her question in a more sensitive manner? Yes, I believe she could have and she probably should have. Interestingly, her sister is a gay rights activist in the military…go figure? I do not fault her for her beliefs…I fault her for her complete lack of social grace.

Esther spoke up for the underdog and her family. Esther spoke up for justice at the risk of her own life. So if we are to look to Queen Esther, we must all speak out to expose the mass of misinformation about marriage and gay families. There is no threat to straight marriage–only equal opportunity for every person to marry the one they love.

Is Miss Carrie Queen Esther?

I think not.

Are we all called to be like Queen Esther and speak out for fairness and truth “in such a time as this”?

I think so.

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the founding Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, CA. She is a founding steering committee member of California Faith for Equality and the President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis.  She posted this article at the Huffington Post.

Gathering Storm: Miss California Trying to Redefine Traditional Breasts for the Rest of Us


Miss California Carrie Prejean ostensibly lost the coveted first prize of the Miss USA Pageant due to an honest, but clumsily delivered, response to a question about same-sex marriage equality. Thanks, however, to the juvenile grandstanding and self-aggrandizing douchebaggery of Perez Hilton, she earned a seemingly more lustrous and lucrative crown: spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). NOM, of course, is the political organization made infamous by the countless parodies of its “Gathering Storm” ad, in which one desperate-for-any-work actor warned America in barely perceptible English that a “storm is coming” in the form of full civil equality for gay and lesbian Americans.

Prejean, for her part, has vowed “to do whatever it takes to protect marriage” and the newly crowned queen of “Opposite Marriage” appears in NOM’s newest ad entitled, “No Offense.” She also reminded the nation at a press conference that her contemptibly ill-informed comments at the Miss America contest was “not about being politically correct, but about being ‘Biblically correct.'”

Oops! Heaven, we have a problem.

A recent revelation — and not of the Biblical variety — surfaced this week that the prodigal princess had breast augmentation surgery, approved and funded by the Miss California Organization, just weeks before the Miss USA pageant. One has to wonder how the beauty queen has the credibility and moral standing to speak out against “unnatural” and “un-Biblical” marriage with the same breath that is weighted down by “unnatural” and “un-Biblical” implants filtered through $10,000 worth of “unnatural” capped teeth.

Of course, Princess Prejean has a right to her religious convictions and no one should ever lose a contest over speaking those beliefs in earnest. Miss California also has the right to do whatever she chooses within the privacy of her own bra, but she doesn’t have the right to redefine traditional breasts for the rest of us.

For many thousands of years, across every culture and continent, women have known “traditional” breasts to be those that God — or nature — gave them. To think otherwise flies in the face of millennia of human history and spiritual doctrine. Prejean’s Bible repeatedly reminds us we are made in God’s perfect image while warning us against exchanging the “natural” use of our bodies for those deemed “unnatural.” And, while one could argue the right to privacy and personal freedom are inherent in our nation’s founding democratic principles and that every American has a right to his/her own pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, organizations like NOM — for whom she’s now the spokesperson — Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council repeatedly admonish us that life in America would be better if theology and biblical doctrine were the primary determinant of civil law and personal liberties.

While someone else was footing the bill, Prejean made the choice to defy her God’s “perfect” design and creation of her and to rebel against the intended and “natural” purpose of her mammaries: namely, the nursing of babies rather than the visual attraction sufficient enough to win a vanity contest. Moreover, if her teeth aren’t capped, I’m betting they were braced; and I’d also put money down on the fact that Prejean has, at some point, performed other “unnatural” acts with her organs like chewing gum, wearing eye-glasses, enjoying a Diet Coke or two or… well, you get the idea.

So, Carrie, you may find full civil equality for all Americans to be “unnatural” and not “Biblically correct,” but, frankly, neither are your Jugs for Jesus and your Caps for Christ. “No Offense.”

Brian Normoyle in the Huffington Post

Catholic Lay Organizations plan for Council


The major Catholic Church reform organisations in the United States are in the process of organising a large scale, joint meeting in 2011 tentatively titled an “American Catholic Council”. Catholica is aware discussions have been underway between leaders of the largest reform organisations such as Call to Action (CtA), Voice of the Faithful (VoTF), and the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC) and leaders of a number of other major lay organisations have also been involved in the discussions and are at various stages of consulting their wider memberships. Combined these organisations have tens of thousands of members. The scale of this initiative is of particular interest as it could well be the largest lay-generated reform initiative that has ever occurred anywhere in the world. The development might suggest that the continued attrition in Church membership is now cutting into sectors of the population who are no longer prepare to leave the Church without voicing their criticisms of where the ecclesial leaders have been taking Catholicism.

The idea has been promoted for a number of years by the President of ARCC, Professor Leonard Swidler, but recent developments including Pope Benedict’s visit to America earlier this year and the clearly decisive divisions that have emerged between the outlooks of the lay faithful in America and their bishops in the recent Presidential election appear to have added impetus to the initiative.

In a newsletter sent to ARCC members on Friday Professor Swidler writes:

The Reform Movement of the Catholic Church in America — in the spirit of Vatican II — is on the cusp of a “Great Leap Forward”, to borrow a phrase from Mao. ARCC has for several years been promoting the idea of all the major Catholic Reform groups in the U.S. joining together in an American Catholic Council to move our common agenda forward. That Great Leap Forward is now being launched! The largest of the American Catholic Reform organizations– Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful–are on board, along with, of course, ARCC, and others.

Professor Swidler goes on to outline four major points that have been agreed upon in the discussions that have taken place at the leadership levels of the reform organisations. They are:

The basic Resources of the American Catholic Council are the documents of Vatican II and the processes and documents of the 1976 Call To Action led by the National Council of Bishops and involving massive numbers of laity, religious, and priests. The major focus will be on church governance. None of the diverse concerns of the various U.S. Catholic reform organizations will be attainable unless there are structural means to work toward their implementation. That means, minimally, striving for Catholic Church decision-making structures that are built on the democratic principles of accountability, transparency, representativeness, and due process of law.

There will be the widest possible solicitation of input from all levels of Catholics around the country. Techniques that have already been discussed include national public hearings (as was done in 1976), approaches to parish organizations as well as organizations of laity, religious, and clergy, internet and other electronic means. Concrete suggestions in this area are especially solicited from you!

The initial aim will be the coming together of thousands of chosen delegates and interested Catholics from around the country in an American Catholic Council in the year 2011.

This interesting news item was found in an Australian Catholic website, www.catholica.com.au

Obama’s Notre Dame visit continues to rankle


THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The University of Notre Dame said Thursday that it will not award its Laetare Medal for the first time in 120 years, after having the first recipient reject the award over the university’s decision to honor President Obama and its subsequent defenses of its actions.

Instead, the university will have Judge John T. Noonan Jr., a previous Laetare recipient and noted legal scholar, “deliver an address in the spirit of the award” at the May 17 commencement ceremony, said the Rev. John Jenkins, university president.

Because Judge Noonan is a previous winner of the Laetare Medal, “we have decided, upon reflection, to not award the medal this year,” Father Jenkins said in a statement.

Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, said Monday that she was rejecting the medal because of Mr. Obama’s pro-choice actions as president and because the university cited her presence as justifying the Obama invitation. Father Jenkins said then that “it is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient.”

Judge Noonan, a Notre Dame law professor from 1961 to 1966, received the Laetare Medal in 1984. He also has been a visiting law professor at Harvard, Stanford and the Angelicum in Rome. He was appointed by President Reagan to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985 and has served there since.

The Laetare Medal, approved by the university’s founder, the Rev. Edward Sorin, was first awarded in 1883 and had been given every year since that time. It is the university’s most prestigious honor, given to Catholics “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

Its past recipients include President Kennedy and sainthood candidate Dorothy Day.