Sunday, February 23, 2014

Finnish With Style

Like many of you, I've spent the past few weeks watching the Winter Olympics.  Although I don't get quite as much into the Winter games as I do the Summer games, I appreciate not only what the athletes are able to do in the snow and ice (and this year, perhaps my indifference has more to do with how much snow and ice we've had here in Indiana) but also the fact the winter games never seem to drag like the summer ones do (perhaps because there aren't nearly as many events).  That being said, and though I do miss, when it comes to ice skating, the old national judging system, it has been great to see such outstanding competition (even if the USA didn't always win).

This year's Winter Games are being held in Sochi, Russia. And like anytime the games aren't in the US (or at least so it seems) the media has paying a good deal of attention to the host country.  Some of that attention has been favorable, some of it has been perhaps overblown (it is not as if Sochi was the first games were there were cost overruns, the politicians in power gave contracts to their friends, and not everything was finished when people started arriving), and some of that attention has not been all that it should have been (glossing over the atrocities of the Soviet era for example).

While much of the attention before the games was on the Putin government's policies to gays and lesbians, in the last week, the world has been reminded that Putin has also been working towards recreating the lost Soviet Union (or at the old Russian Empire).  And to a degree that has gotten me thinking about matters of faith.  Oh sure, there are from time to time mentions of God or religion in reports from the games themselves (either from the athletes or from American reporters discovering the Orthodox Church), but for me the image of faith and the games comes not from Sochi, but rather from the Ukraine:




The image above, and others like, made the rounds on the Web this week, as priests from the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine stood between protestors and security forces (who backed the now deposed Russian supported prime minister).  For a few moments at least, the fighting stopped.  Perhaps we will one day look back and see it as the moment the opposition needed, the moment the government's forces began to question what it was they were doing.  Perhaps. Much is likely yet to play out over Ukraine's future, and who knows what might happen once the world's attention is drawn away from Eastern Europe.

But that image also got me thinking about conditions in the US.  We have entered, in the past year or so, a great debate over religious liberty in America, as well as a related one on the proper demarcation line between Church and State.  Readers of this blog (as well as of The Mainline) know that it is an issue I've touched on before.  And it is one that was raised last month, when a friend from Finland posted an article on Church and State in his country.  My friend and I corresponded a bit more on the topic, with his thought below:

"Paradoxically, Christianity plays a lot larger role in US politics compared to over here, state church or not. Presidential candidates are asked maybe once an election cycle about their views on religion, and a round-edged answer of maybe appreciating everyone minding their own spiritual business and Christmas church being a nice tradition is the correct and proper one. A politician openly demanding policy based on Bible or even Christian morals (as opposed to just, you know, what's moral) is considered to be fringe and eyes are rolled. I'd say the separation of C'n'S is more ingrained in the individual citizen, if you will, around here."

While American priests, ministers, and pastors are quite active in battling over social issues (where their is much disagreement between both Americans in and out of the pews on a host of topics ranging from abortion to gay marriage), one wonders if any of them would be willing to stand between warring factions and literally remind people on both sides that it was time to stop killing.  One wonders if people on either side would listen.  Are we different than Finland in that respect?  Are we different than the Ukraine?  Let us pray that we need not ever have to find out. 

Religious liberty is not something to be taken lightly, nor are infringements upon it trivial (even if they don't amount to persecution).  But part of this discussion over the proper role of Church and State is also about religious symbolism, and how politicians employ it.  Perhaps it would be a good thing, if like in the Ukraine, the Church in America invoked its own symbols (and talked openly about doctrine) as much as those seeking votes from people in the pews.

Monday, February 17, 2014

A Word (or Two) from Our Top Two Presidents

Today in the United States, we officially celebrated George Washington's birthday.  Of course, as many posts today have pointed out, it isn't actually Washington's birthday, nor is it really "President's Day" (which is largely a marketing ploy, or sloppiness amongst officials, depending on how you look at it).  Indeed, the holiday wasn't designed to honor all of our presidents, or even all the presidents born in February, it was to be Washington's Day.  But with a birthday that changed with a revamped calendar, coupled with the desire to give federal employees three day weekends, Washington is now coupled another February-born president, Abraham Lincoln, to give some of us a day off from work and school, and historians an opportunity to bring out fun facts or plum the depths of their presidential souls to give us some new insight on the American experience (among the best I read today was from Thomas Kidd, about the faith of both men).

But the two men, so often ranked as our two best presidents (I can't fathom the justification for not putting them in those slots) are worth reading in their own words.  So, tonight, I give you some quotes that are worth pondering. The first, is from George Washington:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

I love that last part:  "...forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."  As I sketch out future book ideas (one, in particular, about American Christianity and culture) that line strikes quite the chord.  Washington of course, as he often was, was thinking of the future, but he was also crafting these lines in the midst of the French Revolution--when totalitarianism, perhaps for the first time, seemed on the verge of overwhelming liberty.  It would not be the last time, but it is still striking how timely Washington's words remain.  Coming from a man who had rejected empire for revolution, rejected his farm and home for his national duty, who had not just fought a war to gain independence, but also helped craft a government to keep the republic free, perhaps we'd do well to ponder what he has to say on more things.

And now, for a quote from Abraham Lincoln:

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."  

 Context of course is always important.  Lincoln wrote these words not as the Civil War approached, but rather in 1838.  In some respects, it looks prophetic, knowing what we know would soon happen.  But they are words worth pondering today as well.  Having come through my college years at a time when there was (and to degree, there still is) raging academic debate over American exceptionalism, I think you are hard pressed not to conclude that Lincoln thought it was a pretty special place.  A nation that had, as it's national father, George Washington, a nation that was worth preserving, worth making better, worth fighting for (both in political rhetoric and then eventually--sadly--on the battlefield).

When we think of presidents, there is every reason to think of these two men.  And though they lived and died long ago, to use them to measure all the rest who have followed (and aspire to do so) them to the office of president.