A New Year's Resolution for the Jesus Movement

Like all people, Crusty Old Dean has spent the last 48 hours in mourning for the amazing Carrie Fisher and her amazing mom, Debbie Reynolds.  Given my curmudgeonliness, it may surprise readers in crustyland that COD has a soft spot for Golden Age Hollywood musicals.  The Great One (aka Crusty's Mom) would make me watch every time one of the classic Hollywood musicals came on TV back in the

She could make a line like "nerf-herder" work.

day.  Old Man Time Machine:  you know, back in the 1970s, daytime TV on the five channels we got consisted of classic movies and bizarre talks shows with truly odd groups of people sitting around and smoking (Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore, and so on).  The Great One's favorites were anything with Debbie Reynold and/or Gene Kelly, so of course Singin' In the Rain (any real musical buff knows there is no 'g' at the end of the gerund) was the holy grail.  Debbie was also one the last links to the great golden age, though we still have Olivia de Havilland with us (and who is a member of the Episcopal cathedral in Paris, BTW).  As for Carrie Fisher -- well, Star Wars came out in the summer of 1977 when I was eight years old, so let's just say COD is thankful he never grew up not knowing there could be awesome kick ass female role models.  And this is not even taking into

Unlike La-La Land, these people could actually sing and dance.

account their multiple, and extensive, offscreen contributions in drawing awareness to substance abuse and mental health advocacy.  Rest eternal, let light perpetual shine upon them.

This mourning interrupted Crusty's meditations on his 2017 New Year's Resolution -- that's right, singular, resolution.  COD has tried to mark each year by promising to try to work on one thing.  Just one thing. It can be anything.  One year COD dedicated himself to learning how to tie a bowtie.  Another year it was a promise to eat a fruit and/or vegetable at every meal.  Sometimes it's been in a more spiritual area.  COD has done this because we should never presume we never have anything else to learn, or aren't capable of stretching ourselves, and rather than picking big, grand, extensive, impossible resolutions, he's tried to pick smaller, manageable ones.

Which got Crusty thinking about the church.  COD has one New Year's Resolution for the Episcopal Church, though he's under no illusion the church cares at all what he thinks.  (Seriously, why are any of you reading this poorly laid out, wordy, ranting blog?)

We've heard a lot in The Episcopal Church in the past year about the Jesus Movement:  a mantra of the Presiding Bishop to help call us to a renewed understanding of mission and evangelism, and the central role of the church as not only being about vestments and knowing how to find the right

Funny how we talk about Sarum Blue but not Sarum Yellow.

Sunday lectionary readings (though to be sure COD is not against either), but about the central role of church in spreading the good news of Jesus.  We are not only Episcopalians or Lutherans or Catholics or whatever fragment of the Christian world we call home, we are part of the Jesus Movement.  As part of this, Bishop Curry has talked about The Episcopal Church as "the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement."  A wonderful, powerful, evocative, and potentially transformative way of looking at ourselves.  COD has been incredibly thankful to Bishop Curry for placing so much emphasis on this message, for a couple of reasons.

For one, it's given cover for us to talk about evangelism!  COD was in a church meeting once where he was specifically asked not to use the word evangelism, "Because it sounds like we're trying to convert people."  COD responded, "Well of course we are.  If not, why are we here?"  That line was to get people's attention, and then he talked about the Jesus Movement and placed emphasis on sharing the good news and good things that we have.  Thanks be to Bishop Curry for giving us the opportunity and the cover to bring evangelism back into the church!

For another, if you've wasted much time on this blog at all, you know that Crusty is firm believer that denominationalism as we have experienced and understood it is over.  The historical and theological factors which created denominationalism from 1500-1800 have changed remarkably, and we are being shaped by different historical and theological contexts.  The church didn't look the same in  the years 100, 400, 800, 1200, 1500, or 1800, and it's not going to look the same in 2100.  There are an enormous number of factors that go into this current phase of change and transformation, from

If only!

globalization, to changes in how we know things, relate to one another, build and form community, to understandings of ecclesiology and biblical interpretation, generational shifts, and on and on.  Denominationalism is dead.  And thanks be to God! Denominationalism in America has been a reflection of our racial, gender, and class distinctions.  Nearly 100 years ago the eminent scholar H. Richard Niebuhr spoke about American denominationalism as reinforcing the caste systems of our society.  Dr. King famously stated that Sunday morning was the most segregated place in America.  Crusty's favorite meme has been the whole "X at the beginning of 2016...X at the end of 2016."  We're getting there with denominationalism, not aren't quite there yet.

In addition, denominationalism has at times meant each expression of Christianity somehow jealously focused on the one or two things distinctive to it, while failing to see overwhelmingly similarities between expressions of Christianity.  COD served in a Presbyterian Church briefly and seemed to spend most of his time discussing polity.  Episcopalians and Anglicans at times fetishize our liturgy when their are plenty of other liturgically minded Christians out there.  Lutherans mark themselves with an understanding of grace cribbed from Paul and Augustine and which the Catholic Church has officially stated doesn't contradict its understanding. None of these elements were wrong at the time they were laid out.  Anglicans were right about adapting liturgy to reflect changing circumstances in the church.  Luther was right to re-emphasize classic Pauline and Augustinian formulations of grace.  But we can fetishize these things at times because they reinforce those markers of tribal identity that form denominationalism.  Crusty was having dinner with a Church of South India bishop once, and marveled at the ability of the Church of South India to merge Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist churches into a single entity.  COD asked him how they did it.  The bishop smiled and said, "Because they were your divisions, brought by the missionaries, not ours.  We didn't have as much invested in them."  One of the reasons church unity faces such a tough slog in Europe and North America is that we have so much invested in our divisions.  This is a sin against the body of Christ, but sadly we've even lost any sense of church division or separation even being a sin, and have normalized it.

To COD is thankful these efforts to shape the church around being "The Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement."  But as 2017 dawns, Crusty also has some concern about this, and it can be put simply:

Are we going to be THE EPISCOPAL BRANCH of the jesus movement  

or will we be
 the episcopal branch OF THE JESUS MOVEMENT.

Will this phrase be nothing more than an effort to buff our brand, emphasize our distinctiveness, so that we can increase our market share?  Is this little more than the Decade for Evangelism or the

20/20 initiative ? (Old Man Alert:  Crusty now has to post links to these things that he remembers when they happened since they're now historical events.)

Or are we willing to live into what it would mean to see ourselves as part of the broader Christian world, preaching the good news of Jesus?  When asked as a new rector what my vision for the church was, COD replied, "We transform lives through the gospel so that we can transform the world. The church doesn't exist to do the things its been doing, it doesn't exist to pay for a rector.  It exists to spread the good news, and everything we do should be in the service of that."

Crusty says he has concerns because we are seeing two major aspects of what being the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement will look like in 2017.  The Episcopal Church has announced a series of Episcopal Revivals for 2017 and 2018, multi-day events to "motivate, equip, and mobilize dioceses to love and follow Jesus and to engage in his work of evangelism and reconciliation."   The church has also placed considerable initiative behind racial reconciliation, with three staff persons on the denominational staff charged with leading this work, and an impressive series of curated materials. 

To be clear, COD is enthusiastically in favor of both.  Crusty's noted his efforts to reclaim the evangelism word and have the local congregation think about what it means to organize itself around spreading the good news; despite the title of this blog, COD is now just a humble country parson, rector of a pastoral sized congregation.  As a historian and as someone who teaches church history, Crusty has tried to be as clear and consistent about the need for the church to commit to racial justice and racial reconciliation, and my history courses spend considerable time looking at the history of the church's relations with historically marginalized groups.  Reconciliation has to begin with a clear and honest reckoning and recounting, and COD has tried and will continue to try to do that in his classes. 

Crusty is enthusiastically in favor of public, organized, intentional efforts to raise awareness of The Episcopal Church, and looks forward to a Revival coming near him.  

The concern is this:  how are we doing the work of revival and racial reconciliation in cooperation, conversation, and collaboration with other members of this Jesus Movement?  

Have any of these Revivals reached out, for instance, to full communion partners?  Are these revivals another spasm of denominations desperately trying to preserve membership when denominations are going to change dramatically in the next 25-50 years into a post-denominational world?  Are we going to spend all that extra money designated for church planting plopping Episcopal churches on street corners and strip malls without collaborating with churches that we are in full communion with, down to sharing of clergy?  Crusty was recently interviewed by Episcopal News Service on the 15th anniversary of Called to Common Mission, the agreement with the ELCA that established full communion and interchageability of clergy.  COD was there at the beginning, starting as associate ecumenical officer a few months after the agreement came into effect.  One thing which Crusty said that did not make the final edit of the article was how disappointed he was in the failure of will in both churches to try to bring about closer ties.  Fifteen years after CCM, we have one shared joint appointment on denominational staffs.  This is simply pathetic, and is a failure of will and vision on the part of leadership, more interested in pouring money and staff and resources into institutional self-preservation.  

COD has actually come to the conclusion that full communion agreements may never really be lived into because the churches could be more interested in last ditch attempts to burnish their brands -- but given that they allow for interchangeability of clergy, perhaps these agreements can be lifeboats to transition us to a post-denominational world, and building blocks to construct a new foundation on the wreckage of our sinful and arrogant divisions.  BTW, please no straw person arguments about not wanting to merge into a single, bland, sterile featureless Christianity.  Christianity has allowed for diversity within unity.  The Roman Catholic Church has staggering diversity, from Eastern Rite churches with married priests to charismatic expressions to fusions of indigenous belief and Catholicism to socially progressive women's religious orders and so on.  Christianity in its first thousand years was no monolith, allowing for regional expressions and variations in Ireland, Spain, North Africa, and so on.  Saying we somehow have to give up diversity for the sake of unity is, by and large, just a way of rephrasing we are unwilling to give up our fetishes in the name of the one gospel of Jesus Christ.

Issues of racial reconciliation are complex and impact all aspects of our society.  It's one thing to talk about racial reconciliation internally in our denomination, about equipping our congregations to address issues in our local communities.  We should be doing that, we have been doing that -- though we are nowhere near making the kind of progress we should be -- and we have a body of resolutions, resources, and materials to help us in this.  

But that's not enough.  Crusty has said on this blog before and will say again: we are entering into a potentially very dark time in our nation.  The United States has spent most of its existence as a totalitarian, apartheid, white supremacist state.  White supremacy was written into our Constitution, legislated in our federal and state laws, and enforced by both the power of the state and by terrorist violence.  COD is concerned about some of the rhetoric around Muslims, immigrants, and persons of color which has emerged in the past few years and in the last election cycle. 

Thinking we need to focus on racial reconciliation in our denomination is no longer enough.  If we as Christians are not fighting for equality in justice in our society, then we are not Christians.  This must be done ecumenically with all people of faith who share these convictions.  Thinking we can have any impact in racial reconciliation without working ecumenically is either naive, delusional, or pathetic, or some combination of the three.

Crusty has been reading and rereading a lot of Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately, it's what he did when he woke up on November 9.  Bonhoeffer realized the failure of denominational Christianity over 80 years ago, as he saw Christianity in Germany, England, and the United States sacrifice the gospel through conforming to society, albeit in very different ways.  The church had clearly failed in his native Germany, as the vast majority of Christians rather quickly and seamlessly accommodated to Nazism.  He spoke in his letters of the need for a "post-church" and "post-religion" Christianity, since the church had so obviously failed.  COD believes were are in a similar place in the United States in the 21st century: the need for a post-denominational, post-church Christianity.  

The Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement can be a part of that, if we don't blow it through our own fear and proclivity to sin.  The stakes are too high right now.

So here's my New Year's Resolution for you, Episcopal Church:  be "The Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement," valuing all words equally.
 

Crusty on Trump: The Cost of Discipleship?

Several people have asked Crusty when he was going to weigh in on the events in our nation in the past couple of weeks, and my thoughts on the election of Trump as president.  COD has always tended to take a bit of a wait-and-see, trying to balance addressing issues of pressing concern while also waiting to see how things begin to settle; since Crusty was trained as a historian, he's inclined to try to take a longer view at things -- often our vision and perception can be clouded in the immediacy of events -- while also showing a proclivity for sentences that tend to drag on; this can involve extensive

Put the Carpenter in!

use of dashes, semicolons, and can similarly evidence a fondness for the passive voice being used.  Crusty would like to offer his thoughts as someone who is a openly and proudly both a person of faith and a committed progressive.  For full disclosure, on the one hand Crusty was a Sanders person and on the other hand has learned never to trust blindly in any candidate of political system; if anything, the Judeo-Christian tradition tells us our trust and hope should be in God alone.  Or, as Woody Guthrie once put, "God above our king!" 

COD has found his thoughts grouping in a couple of different areas.

1)  One has been thinking about the nativism, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT and general ugliness in American society this election has brought to the surface.  Crusty is disgusted and appalled by this, and calls on the President-elect to call out, denounce, and renounce any efforts to divide people by these categories.  Unfortunately, the news is not encouraging, given some of the names that are involved in the transition at this stage.

However, there are two other aspects of what is happening with regards to these issues that cannot be lost right now.

One is that issues of nativism, racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant sentiment have NEVER not been a part of our cultural and political fabric.

Crusty just finished teaching his class in church history this semester.  COD zeroed in on the 1918-1923 period in American history: a time of profound anti-immigrant sentiment, with a backlash against German Americans as part of World War I turning into the Red Scare of the post-World War II era.  Prohibition only passed (it is hard to amend the U.S. Constitution, so a broad coalition was needed) through a coalition of religious groups aligning with racists who argued that alcohol would lead to black men raping white women to anti-immigrant nativists concerned that shiftless drunken immigrants would be a drain on society.  The U.S. government, lead by unrepentant racist Woodrow Wilson, segregated the civil service while advocating for freedom and self-determination for white Europeans, and restricted essential civil liberties, including free speech and freedom to assemble, even imprisoning presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs.  Lynching and organized violence against African Americans spiked, with organized mobs of whites massacring African Americans and destroying communities in Rosewood, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.  These were not "race riots," as is often the euphemism in some American histories, these were organized pogroms of white supremacy that killed hundreds of African Americans and destroyed African American communities.

We could identify other times in American history where these issues of racism, nativism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant sentiment bubbled to the surface.  The Civil War, the greatest trauma in this nation, was about whether or not we would permit an apartheid state that considered other human beings to be property, and many in our country have spent 150 years trying to deny or explain this interpretation away.

Crusty in no way means to condone, excuse, normalize, or mainstream these repulsive aspects of our society, but here is the second aspect of the emergence of these issues: to be surprised by them is to show one's privilege. To give another example, the United States was no more religiously diverse and the world was no more globalized on September 12, 2001, than it was on September 10, 2001.  It was the United States that changed, not the world.  It was those with privilege and power who were shaken and made aware of the issues of globalization and diversity, and of the violence that stalks so many people in so many parts of the world:  for it takes the insulation of privilege to not see the diversity, globalization, and violence; just as it would take the insulation of privilege not to see that the United States has, at a number of times in its history, asserted white nationalist supremacy in an effort to create an apartheid state. 

We must condemn the racism, nativism, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT, and anti-immigrant sentiments that have come to the fore.  But we cannot be surprised by them.

2)  There has also been discussion around whether there can be "reconciliation" with Trump and his supporters.  The answer, in its broadest sense, if of course "yes...IF."  First off, Crusty thinks a good number of Trump supporters are decent people who feel left out, scared, are frustrated and voted vociferously for change.  IF we're talking about these folks, then yes, reconciliation and accommodation is possible; hell, Bernie Sanders was speaking to many of the same concerns of people feeling left behind and vulnerable.

There's also "yes...BUT."  BUT if we are talking about Trumpism as an agent of reactionary white nationalism, then there's a big BUT.  BUT if the cause of all these problems will be scapegoated on the backs of the marginalized, then a different conversation needs to happen.  Reconciliation must involve acknowledgment of wrongs, an effort to seek common ground, and pledges to move forward with wholeness and justice.  You don't tell an abused spouse to "reconcile" with an unrepentant, abusive partner.  Crusty spent time on a research grant in the Czech Republic and Ukraine earlier this year, and discussed exactly this topic:  he interviewed church leaders on how they accounted for actions taken by their churches during the Communist period, how the churches reconciled the different actions taken by people under Communism.  Some of these stories were incredible, powerful, and uplifting, show that it is possible through honesty about the past and a pledge to right wrongs to move forward.  Yet some other stories were terrifying.  One church leader told Crusty flatly and simply, "Many churches did nothing to account for its sins of collaboration during the Communist period."  I asked him, "Can you give me an example?"  He looked at me and said simply, "I was at a meeting of the Council of Churches last week.  A leader from another Christian communion was sitting across the table from me.  In 1986 when they arrested me and were beating me, they paused the beating to bring him in.  They asked him, 'Is this the man you saw celebrating communion and baptizing in an unlicensed house church?'  He looked me straight in the eye and said 'Yes.'  They took him away and continued to beat me.  Now he sits across the table from me 30 years later and somehow can look me in the eye.  We have done nothing, had no conversations, no accounting.'"

Of course there could be reconciliation.  But it can not be an empty gesture, it must involve acknowledgment of wrongs and commitment to seeking redress and justice; otherwise it only reinforces unjust power structures and privileges the abuser.

3)  These past months have shown the utter theological vacuousness of a significant swath of conservative Christianity: and this, by the way, has been something many conservative Christians have noted as well.  Crusty noted here that many prominent evangelical Protestants have been critical of Trump. What is largely termed as "evangelical" Christianity must now be called for what it is, culturally conservative individuals simply ascribing their own preferences and prejudices to God and draping them in theological language.

4)  We must see what opportunity there is here.  We must see what moment of accountability God is calling people of faith towards.  We must see the opportunity for the church truly to be the church.  Because the reality is this talk of whether reconciliation is "possible", think-pieces about the state of evangelical Christianity -- frankly we do not have time for this. 

Trump has methodically spent the last 18 months moving the goal posts in terms of what is acceptable in order to normalize the next atrocity.  There's a straight line from getting away with talking about Megyn Kelly's menstruation cycle to appointing Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions.  By continually testing what is acceptable, and getting away with it, you

Augustus was only "Making the Republic great again."

normalize the atmosphere for the next, more extreme, action.  The people don't make a decision to create a Communist state: you start by overthrowing the incompetent Czar and promising to replace the ineffectual provisional government.  The early Roman Empire still offered the outward trappings of the Republic, still elected consuls and kept the entire government machinery of the Republic in place, while it slowly established a centralized military dictatorship.  The only title Augustus ever took was "first citizen."  Getting away with Kristallnacht had to precede the Final Solution.

I am not saying there will be a fascist state or  another Holocaust.  Rather, looking to history as our guide, I think instead we are looking at another spasm of efforts to impose a white nationalist apartheid state, which the United States has done, or attempted to do, time and again throughout its history.  It will be African Americans, others persons of color, immigrants, poor whites, women, gay and lesbian persons, and Muslims who will be the ones who are the victims of state-sponsored or state-condoned organized violence and oppression.

In the past week, we have seen the president-elect of the United States elevate a racist, white nationalist as Senior Advisor and Chief Strategist and has appointed a man as attorney general who was considered too racist by a Republican-controlled Senate to be appointed as a federal judge in 1986.  Believe nothing Trump says:  his words are meaningless, and he has shown he will say whatever he thinks he needs to say at a given time.  It is his actions that matter, and his actions in the past week have revealed what the next four years hold.  We are entering a time like 1918-1923, like the rollbacks on Reconstruction and establishment through violence of Jim Crow in the 1870s and 1880s, like the 1780s when we chose to found a nation based on slavery, like the Civil Rights era in the 1950s and 1960s:  we are entering another phase of efforts to create a white nationalist apartheid state, and we will be tested as a nation to see if we will permit it.

What will people of faith do?  Roman Catholic bishops have shown they care more about abortion than immigrants, and really only care about self-preservation. Roman Catholic bishops of Pennsylvania have been silent on the racist, anti-immigrant message of Trump, but several had no problem sending letters to each and every congregation advocating against lifting the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, which would expose them to financial liability for decades of covering up sexual abuse, including calling out some state legislators by name in their letters.  The Archdiocese of Massachusetts was the single largest contributor financially to the ballot measure opposing the legalization of recreational marijuana, calling defeating this ballot question "one of its highest priorities," but have been silent on the forces of nativism being stirred up.  Apparently toking up is worse than creating a national registry for Muslims.

People of faith are going to be asked to choose sides.  Will we be silent, like the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in 1856?  With Kansas at war over whether to be slave or free, the House of Bishops refused to comment, stating that "the Church had “nothing to do with party politics, with sectional disputes, with earthly distinctions, with the wealth, the splendor, and the ambition of the world."  The same church forced Bishop John Paul Jones to resign for daring to oppose the U.S. entry into World War I. Will those that have comfort and privilege shield themselves, talking about "process" and "wait and see"?  I'm a white, 47-year-old, middle class white guy with a Ph.D.  They're not coming for me.  Will I stand by when they come for others?

Let these events be the final nail in the coffin of the complacent, smug, establishment, therapeutic moralist Deism that so much of Christianity in North America has taught.  Put down your Meyers Briggs inventories,  stop talking about the color of the f****g carpet in the parish hall.  Pick up your Bonhoeffer.  Read the beatitudes in Luke.  Listen to the man who said that to follow him could be summed up as: "'You

Lord, when did we see you grabbed by the pussy?

shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."  Who told us in a parable, "“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

Jesus never says, "Follow me, it will be easy."  He actually said the exact opposite.  It is time for the many (but certainly not all churches!) North American churches to stop feasting at our carcasses of cheap grace that have sustained our complacency.  Trust in God, trust in the greatest symbol that God has given us:  the Cross.

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

--Elie Wiesel, "Night"

Crusty's playlist for this blog:

And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says, What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize
Went on to organize

Joe Hill ain't dead, he says to me
Joe Hill ain't never died
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side
Joe Hill is at their side

Now Tom said, "Mom, wherever there's a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I'll be there
Wherever somebody's fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody's struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Ma, and you'll see me."

They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair.

Black day, stormy night
No love, no hope in sight
Don't cry, he is coming
Don't die without knowing the Cross
Ghettos to the left of us
Flowers to the right
There'll be bread for all of us
If we can just bear the cross

Sweet song of salvation
A pregnant mother sings
She lives in starvation
Her children need all that she brings

We all have our problems
Some big, some are small
Soon all of our problems
Will be taken by the Cross

The Church's Billy Bush Moment?

As Crusty flails through the dystopian nightmare of this election season, he's at least thankful to be back in pastoral ministry, preaching every Sunday.  This is something that COD missed about serving in academia: the way that preaching every Sunday, week in, week out, is one of the most fundamental aspects of pastoral ministry.  It's part of engaging in an extended conversation with God as revealed in Scripture, and how we are to make sense of the world around us.

The past few weeks have been interesting, to say the least.  But in the midst of the many varied ways in which this election season is bringing to light many profound rifts and changes in American society, Crusty has also been watching how religion and the church (small c) has had its own dark places laid bare.  Just a few examples:

--We have the fact that the U.S. Catholic bishops, by and large, seem to have abrogated any kind of teaching function the episcopate supposedly has.  By reducing the role of the church solely to

Hey Catholic bishops, remember this guy? He spoke truth to power in June 2004.

opposing abortion and supporting "religious liberty" (as they define it), they seem to have been unable to stand for the Catholic Church's historic teachings on anything else, incapable of addressing a candidate spouting racist, anti-refugee rhetoric and openly advocating torture, when, in fact, there are lots of Catholic teachings supporting refugees and immigration, and opposing torture and racism.  COD is not talking about endorsing or electioneering, but simply speaking truth to power and advocating for issues, something that the Catholic Church, including its current Pope, oftentimes seems to find the time to do.  Crusty finds it interesting that more elected Republicans seem to have disavowed their presidential candidate than Catholic bishops have made clear where the church's teaching differ from policies proposed by that candidate.

--There is the revelation of divisions within evangelical Protestantism.  This is the story here, friends, and COD has been annoyed by the predominant narrative that "Evangelical Protestants paradoxically support Trump."  While it is certainly the case that the majority of persons self-identifying as evangelicals will be voting for Trump, and that many religious leaders have served as little more than spiritual money launderers for Trump, willing to explain away and excuse anything if it gets their hands closer to the levers of power, evangelical support, particularly from evangelical leaders, has been far from monolithic.  There have been consistent voices in opposition.  The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest conservative evangelical church in the United States, has approved  supporting refugee resettlement.  Some of its top leaders, sich as Richard Land and Albert Mohler, have openly, consistently, and regularly disavowed Trump's policies.   Others include Max Lucado, Tony Campolo, Beth Moore, and Jim Wallis, among others.  Saying "Why do evangelicals continue to support Trump?" is like saying "Why don't Muslims condemn violence?"  Moderate Muslims have been condemning violence for over 15 years, it's just that most media doesn't report or pay attention.  Prominent evangelicals have been disavowing Trump, it's just that most media doesn't report, pay attention, or have any modicum of understanding of the dynamics involved.

Crusty was also pondering some of the responses by religious leaders to the audio recording of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women.  Reading a few articles, Crusty also saw that producer Mark Burnett has hundreds of hours of videotape from Trump's TV show, footage never meant to be aired of background conversations.  As he did, COD suddenly found himself thinking:

What if we had hundreds of hours of videotape of church meetings and church leaders?  What if we had hot microphones that recorded some of our own conversations?  What would it lay bare about our own sins and self-serving lies?

There is the reality that in some cases, in some places, more often than we might like to admit, we would learn that the Episcopal Church has an ordination process that borders on spiritual and emotional abuse, if not, at times, downright misconduct.  The following are all actual stories from the ordination process.

--I asked someone once how their interview with the Commission on Ministry went, and the person replied, "Well, I'm not sure how well I responded to one question."  I asked what the question was. The person said that they were interviewed not by the Commission as a whole, but had two interviews with smaller groups of 3-4 Commission members.  In one of the small groups, a male clergyperson asked her, "How will you deal with the fact that you are so attractive you will be a distracting presence leading worship?"  She then told me what her answer had been, and said she couldn't tell by the members' responses whether it was the right one or not.

I said, "I just want to say that I'm sorry that you were sexually harassed as part of the ordination process.  And I'm even sorrier that the apology had to come from me, and not from anyone actually involved in the process."  She looked startled that I had named it as such, but then she paused and said, "That's what I thought, too, but since none of the other people said anything about it, I thought that I was overreacting."  Since the person who had asked the question was a clergyperson, I informed her what her rights were under the Constitution and Canons should she wish to pursue a complaint.  She quickly said, "No, I couldn't do that, the person would torpedo my ordination process."

--Another person shared with me that his Commission on Ministry interview was prefaced by the following words: "We're going to ask you some questions, and don't say you can't answer some of them, because the church is exempt from what may be considered discrimination under the law.  And if you don't answer them, you will be considered as not complying with this process."  Apart from being untrue, or possibly an outright lie by someone who knows better, this is simply normalizing abuse as a way to begin an interview process.

--A young woman in her mid-20s was told, "You will have the most intimate details of people's lives in your hands.  You need to get more life experience and come back in a few years."  This despite the

Welcome to your Commission on Ministry interview.

fact the person had been active and engaged in the Episcopal Church in all sorts of ways since birth.  This person wasn't having it, and said to one Commission member, "You son is my age and is in law school, he'll have people's lives in his hands.  Did you tell him to go get life experience first?"  This also despite the fact the Commission had just approved a 45-year-old with a successful first career who had been a churchgoer of any kind for barely eighteen months.

--A friend of mine shared in his Commission on Ministry interview that he had entered Alcoholics Anonymous several months previously.  A member said, "If you're just saying that so we'll be sympathetic to you and not ask any difficult questions, that's not the case, we're going to treat you like we do everyone else."

There's been a lot of talk of "gaslighting" in this election season.  Named from the classic movie where Charles Boyer convinces Ingrid Bergman she's losing her mind by imagining flickering gaslights that he himself is causing, "gaslighting," loosely defined, is a process by which one person manipulates another through abuse, lies, and deception to get that other person to doubt their own perception of reality and impose a power dynamic of the abuser's choosing.  Many have noted how politics, presenting starkly

Coming soon: Gaslighteucharist?

different perceptions of reality, has ventured into this territory.

Friends, our ordination process is just one way in which the church has its own gaslighting, justifying sometimes offensive, insensitive, and abusive behavior as perfectly normal. Yet because the people being gaslighted have no agency and are powerless in the ordination process, we'll never know how many more stories like this are out there.

Trump's bragging about sexual assault has been rightly condemned by some church leaders.  In doing so, however, Crusty wonders what the church's Billy Bush moments could have been, had we been caught on tape with our own sins of sexual abuse laid bare.

--Perhaps if we had a Nixon-like taping system at 815 we would have known about former Presiding Bishop Ed Browning covering up sexual abuse of minors by the former bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania.  This has been public knowledge since 2010 and there has never been any kind of acknowledgment of the failure of the Presiding Bishop to be held accountable for his actions.  And please, no sanctimonious protestations that we shouldn't bring this up because of Bishop Browning's recent passing.  He was a public figure, and, like public figures, he is the sum of his actions and his legacy is part of the public record.  We do not treat other public figures, even religious figures, this way.  Several news outlets noted some of the controversies surrounding Nobel Peace Prize winner Elise Wiesel in their obituaries.  Crusty bets many people who would protest we shouldn't bring up PB Browning's actions will pile on when war criminal Henry Kissinger is finally called to account for his genocide when he meets his maker.  Bishop Browning was a great leader and gift to the church, but never was held to any kind of accounting for, let us repeat, covering up sexual abuse of minors.  There was no reporting to police, there were no ecclesial charges.  The already-retired bishop was asked to resign from the House of Bishops, refrain from performing any clerical duties, and seek counseling, all of this in private.  This is does not undo all the good that PB Browning did for the church, but it is a stain on his legacy, and it is to the church's continued shame if it consistently refuses to address this in the rush to hagiography.

--Perhaps the coverups at Episcopal schools like St. Stephen's in Texas, St. George's in Rhode Island, would have been more difficult if we had audiotape of the conversations of those in power.

--Perhaps we could call to account all those still held unaccountable of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.  Crusty has heard stories than he cannot share about sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior, and sexual abuse, especially by female colleagues, because they have been told in confidence.  We have to denounce the continued coverup of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in our own church, and set in place some real efforts to hold not only the perpetrators accountable, but those who ignore, excuse, rationalize and flat-out cover up this misconduct before we congratulate ourselves for rightly condemning it in our political sphere.  Would that there was a Spotlight movie for the Episcopal Church.

Trump's numerous attempts to blame others for his behavior, including that he was "egged on" by Billy Bush, has led to the twitter hastag "#BillyBushMadeMeDoIt."

What if, in addition to mockery, we asked ourselves:  what if Billy Bush was there to expose the church's sins?

It's the End of the Church As We Know It

Crusty has noticed some buzz in the interbloggerwebotwitfacesphere around the Episcopal Church's release of annual membership statistics, which can be found here.  The news, friends, continues to be not good, very bad, alarming, four horsemen of the apocalypse, dogs and cats living together, bad.

Among the tidbits:

--A drop from 1,923,000 members in 2011 to 1,770,000 in 2015.

--More alarming in Crusty's opinions is the number for Average Sunday attendance (ASA), which is, in many ways, the more significant one, since it reflects those actually engaged regularly in the worshipping life of a congregation.  This has dropped from 657,000 in 2011 to 579,000 in 2015.  That's 12% in four years.

--The average ASA of an Episcopal Church is 58.  We are increasingly a collection of small churches.

Crusty has said before on this blog that the church on every level, from the parish to the diocese to the denominational structure, needs to address this reality.  Crusty's said this several times.  We need to be merging congregations and dioceses, strengthening ecumenical cooperation and collaboration, revamp our churchwide structures...basically just stroll through the blog posts that aren't bashing Justin Welby and you'll get an idea of what COD has been Cassandraing about for the past five years.

Hey, here's three times Crusty has written a post covering some of the same topics as this one, going back to 2011 when he posted on the release of the membership statistics back then. If you'd like some specific deja vu, read here, and here, and here.

Once, twice, three times Crusty.

OK, glad you're back.  I had a lovely gin martini while you read those postings.

Here it is, five years later, and yet another round of terrifying attendance numbers.  Crusty was not surprised in the least when he read them, and, hate to break it to you, Sunshine, but Crusty also thinks it is going to get worse before it gets better.

Couple of things to keep in mind:

1)  This decline is a complex collection of various factors, involving some elements particular to The Episcopal Church, and some elements shared by all religious expressions in the United States, if not those areas culturally "Western" (Europe, Canada, USA, Australia, other similar places).  Part of this is demographics.  Some examples:

--Anglo components of the Roman Catholic Church show the same kind of decline pattern as The Episcopal Church, but the Roman Catholic Church's decline overall is much less (about 1% per year) because of growth in its Hispanic/Latino and Asian/Asian American components, Catholics that emigrate to the USA, and other diverse populations contributing growth.

--The Episcopal Church is overwhelmingly old and white (87% white and average age of 58 last time Crusty checked) in a country that is increasingly racially diverse and whose average age is much younger than the typical Episcopal Church (63% white and average age 37.6 according to 2010 census).

--We have seen tremendous internal shifts of population, and the Episcopal Church has had historic strength on the losing end of this: the Rust Belt versus the West, for instance.

--In a related vein, Episcopalians have never kept up with these shifts.  Around the year 1900, 90% of Episcopalians lived East of the Mississippi.  In the year 2000, a whopping 12% of Episcopal

White was obviously not a Village People fan, given his reluctance to Go West.

congregations were founded after 1968.  This is nothing new; William White became Bishop of Pennsylvania in 1787 and never even set foot in Pittsburgh until the 1830s, and only on the urging of a mission-minded priest in his diocese named Jackson Kemper.

2)  Part of this decline, however, is due to massive, systemic failure in evangelism and discipleship at all levels of the church.  Our churchwide system seems to exist solely for the purpose of holding meetings.  At the 2015 General Convention, the Committees, Commissions, Agencies, and Boards (CCABs) were thoroughly overhauled, and we were constantly told this would make is more "nimble" and would save money.  Well, we ended up budgeting MORE money for meetings at General Convention 2015 than GC 2012.  We appointed a blue ribbon task force to consider restructuring, and then implemented practically nothing it suggested.  Convention decided it would keep doing more or less what it had been doing, and spend more money on it.

This from a church as a whole that has slashed campus chaplaincies and Christian Education and formation.  We seem to be increasingly a church that has a General Convention whose main purpose is to hold General Convention and pay for meetings in between General Conventions, and dioceses whose main purpose is to prop up single-priest parishes.  We are blessed in having a new Presiding Bishop who is trying to return our focus to mission and evangelism, since we truly are part of the "Jesus Movement."

A fundamental question is whether it's already too late, and whether the structures for organizing ministry that we have simply need to collapse and we create new ones.  Crusty wrote about this at length four years ago here, so won't rehash that posting.  Suffice to say not much has happened in the past four years to change any of the thoughts COD had when he wrote that post.

Part of this decline is undoubtedly due to conflict in the past generation about theological matters, such as the ordination of women and the ordination of LBGT persons to the priesthood and later the episcopate.  Please don't think Crusty is saying all of our decline is due to demographics or failure to evangelize; part of it is undoubtedly due to conflict in the church.  But we honestly have no real way of knowing just how much.  COD thinks that much of the decline in the past generation is due to members dying and not being replaced with newer members, but part of it -- maybe 5-10% -- has to do with persons leaving the Episcopal Church for theological reasons.  But that's just a guess.  COD is open to something other than unfounded polemical arguments that a decline from a peak of 3.6 million in the 1960s to 1.9 million today is due solely to the church becoming more liberal, but hasn't yet come across one that's convincing.  The decline is due to a combination of factors, of which one is certainly, but not solely, internal conflict.

Now, Crusty would also like to point out that he also has no time for hand-wringing, pearl-clutching sobs that the "church" will somehow die out.  Hell no.  The church cannot die because it is of God, and God is not dead. What COD is saying that the church as we know it is probably already dead.  The (by and large) racially segregated, denominational ghettos we call most American expressions of Christianity that we have lived in are crashing down.  To that, Crusty says, thank God.

The church hasn't died despite challenges it has faced far greater than our denominational, suburban captivity of the church of the past 60 years.  Mao couldn't destroy the church and Stalin couldn't destroy it, so we sure as hell can't destroy it despite our failure to live into the Gospel.

We also cannot give ourselves over to weak resignation in the face of massive changes sweeping over the North American religious landscape.  The number of parish clergy Crusty encounters who are quite aware of these changes and their implications for their congregations but are more or less just waiting it out till they retire is shocking and appalling.  There is a lot we can and should and must do.

However, we didn't get here overnight, and we're not getting out of this overnight, if at all.

Crusty thinks ASA will dip to the 400,000 level, congregations to the 5,000 level, over the next 10-15 years.   The church will get to a tipping point when it realizes -- or doesn't -- that massive, thorough, top to bottom change is needed in how we organize and structure ourselves for mission.  The demographic tsunami (the Episcopal Church is shockingly old and white in a country that averages younger and less white) will have had more years to deepen.

Right now we are demonstrating the worst of both worlds.  We are too decentralized right now to address the crises in mission and evangelism with any kind of coordinated effort, and on the local level (the diocese and parish), parochialism and insularity have the tendency to result in either denial or survival at the expense of the larger picture.

From a big picture perspective, Christianity in the 21st century in the West is entering into a post-denominational landscape, and we are living among the wreckage of denominationalism.

However, just like with other crises (climate change, or economic inequality) there are those who, frankly, aren't helping.

Crusty here is referring to the latest crap bomb from the Institute for Religion and Democracy, the North Korean journalism of American religion.  When it comes to the IRD, Crusty should hasten to add it's a free country, and the IRD is perfectly entitled to their beliefs, opinions, and perspective.  While COD disagrees with the IRD, he doesn't begrudge their right to exist or hold their opinions.

Let's take the so-called "Juicy Ecumenism" blog, and its recent entry on the latest round of statistics.   IRD's narrative that it has been pushing for years  is that the liberal trends of mainline Protestant denominations have caused its decline and is pushing members away.  This narrative has been more or less debunked by reasonable, non-polemical sociologists and historians of American religion. Many, many theologically conservative denominations have been declining as well.  The Southern Baptist Convention has been losing members for years, for example.  Liberal=decline and conservative=growth is a canard that no responsible observer should believe.

The title alone reveals the Institute for Religion and Democracy's perspective:  "Episcopal Church Continues Uninterrupted decline."  Right from the headline, we can see that this article doesn't hold water:  after all, the very text of the article notes eleven dioceses which have shown growth.  So is it

If we don't adopt some cool rules pronto, church growth is going to get more bogus.

uninterrupted decline or not?  This calls to mind the incisive words of Jeff Spicoli.  When Jefferson's brother points out that Jefferson will not be pleased that they have wrecked his car, Jefferson's brother notes "He's gonna s**t!  He's gonna kill us!"  In response, Spicoli adroitly notes the obvious discrepancy: "Make up your mind, dude.  Is he going to s**t, or is he going to kill us?"  Make up your mind, IRD -- the decline clearly isn't interrupted, because you yourselves note eleven dioceses showing growth.

Also in the article, they themselves acknowledge there are external factors involved.  They note that Bishop Michael Curry's diocese of North Carolina escaped decline because it was "aided by a booming state population" and point out that the pattern of decline in the 2015 statistics "is consistent with past years, in which dioceses in New England, the Rust Belt [COD feels need to go sic here because of the appalling lack of an Oxford comma] and predominantly rural areas post sharp declines, while diocese in the South either retain their numbers or decline at a more gradual rate."

These two statements show that IRD knows damn well that demographics are significant components in matters of church membership.  As COD has said before, this cuts both ways.  We weren't necessarily geniuses when the church was growing from 1920-1980, because we were riding a demographic wave.  The town where Crusty is currently rector grew from 1,900 in 1950 to 20,000 in 1990.  My predecessor at that time, now pushing 90, told me, "It seems all I had to do was open the door and people came in."  Guess what?  Since 1990 population in that same town has stagnated at around 20,000 (there just isn't much more land to build on), and has significantly aged.  Census projections are that the only demographic in this town that will grow in the next 10 years will be people over 55.  COD has spoken with Christian Education leaders in the parish that this doesn't absolve us of our responsibility to invest in Sunday School, youth group, and discipleship, but we also need to know the headwinds we are facing.

The Episcopal Church is not declining because of its liberal bent; there is no direct correlation between theological standpoint and growth or decline.  The Unitarian Univeralist Association, far more liberal than the Episcopal Church, has shown stable membership in the past 15 years while The Episcopal Church's has cratered.  Church decline and growth are a complicated blend of a number of different factors.

That said, the numbers are real.  This is the fifth post Crusty has written on the shocking decline in membership numbers in five years for The Episcopal Church.  The question still remains:  are we willing to have an honest, open, and frank conversation, and make an effort to try to do something, or are we going to wait for the structures to collapse and build something from the ruins?  And don't say we can't do anything; that just means you are unwilling.  We have done this before.  This is not the first time this has happened.  Anglicanism collapsed after the American Revolution.  Membership dropped by 50% in a DECADE (and we bemoan a 40% drop over nearly 50 years as the end of the world), the state of Massachusetts had one functioning congregation, and Anglicanism was in danger of splintering into competing, regional expressions.  Our forebears did what was needed to revive the church:  they kept some aspects of their Anglican heritage but radically reimagined others.  Can we do the same, or will endless meetings and comfy CPG pensions keep us from being faithful in our own day and age?  As the great hymn puts its:

Save us from weak resignation
to the evils we deplore
left the gift of your salvation
be our glory evermore.
Grand us wisdom, grant us courage
serving you whom we adore
serving you whom we adore.

Breaking News: Archbishop Sanctions Own Brain

LONDON,  September 3:  Breaking news from Lambeth Palace.

In a move likely to send ripples through the Anglican World, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby announced he is imposing consequences against part of his own brain.  Bishop Nicholas Chamberlain of Grantham has announced that he is in a long-term gay partnership (albeit celibate) and that the Archbishop knew of this before his appointment: "People know I’m gay, but it’s not the first thing I’d say to anyone. Sexuality is part of who I am, but it’s my ministry that I want to focus on."  He also

Intelligent, attractive, crime solving priests? Clearly fiction.

helpfully clarified that he is bishop of Grantham, not Grantchester, and unfortunately his long term partner is not the smoking hot priest from the television series of the same name.  "Yeah, I wish," he responded when asked by a confused American reporter.

Archbishop Welby confirmed Bishop Chamberlain's statement that he knew of the bishop's sexual identity, stating that "I am and have been fully aware of Bishop Nick’s long-term, committed relationship. His appointment as bishop of Grantham was made on the basis of his skills and calling to serve the church in the diocese of Lincoln. He lives within the bishops’ guidelines and his sexuality is completely irrelevant to his office."

The ensuing backlash, however, has caused Archbishop Welby to impose consequences on that part of his brain that believes sexual identity to be irrelevant to the episcopal office.

In January of 2016, the Primates imposed "consequences" on The Episcopal Church for amending its marriage canons to permit same-sex marriage.  For a period of three years, The Episcopal Church will not participate in any discussions on doctrine or polity at the Communion level, or represent the Anglican Communion in ecumenical committees, or be permitted to serve on any decision making bodies.  Subsequently, Archbishop Welby has confirmed  that although this was initially presented one-time decision, it turned out after all not to be a one-time decision, but that a disciplinary process has been put in place that will be used for any other decisions taken by any province which contradict whatever the primates think at a given time.

And the Primates have spoken.  "Celibate? Does he really think that we're buying this?" said one Primate.  Another released an official statement declaring that, "Lambeth 1998 condemned homosexual 'practice' as contrary to Scripture, and living in a long-term committed partnership, even if it is celibate, certainly sounds like they have been practicing at being gay for years."  A third primate declared, "We must close the 'homosexual practice' loophole.  At the next primates meeting, I

Remains to be seen whether there will be a gift exemption.

will introduce a resolution that owning more than one item from the Williams Sonoma catalogue should be the standard for defining homosexual practice."  On the basis of these statements, since the primates function with no transparency, Archbishop Welby stated, "After consulting with myself, I have determined I have violated Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and thus must face the same sanctions with which I have repeatedly threatened other provinces of the Communion."

At his press conference, the Archbishop outlined how these sanctions would work. "It is important to separate the different ways the Archbishop functions," he said.  "I will no longer take any advice from that portion of my brain that thinks sexuality is irrelevant to the episcopal office ONLY when functioning as an instrument of communion of the Anglican Communion," he helpfully clarified.  "In my office as Primate of All England, or diocesan of Canterbury, I am free to take advice from that portion of my brain."

Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion and also present at the news conference, provided helpful clarification as well. "I have made it clear my belief that Lambeth I.10 is binding on the Anglican Communion even though Lambeth Conferences are not binding and therefore agree with Archbishop Justin's imposition of sanctions on that part of his brain which has deviated from this. For the
next three years I will no longer take direction from Archbishop Justin on matters of ecumenical relations or doctrine and polity, given the westernizing progressivism he has demonstrated.  I will, instead, report to the shell of Archbishop Laud's dead tortoise for oversight in these areas."

The shell could not be reached for comment.

The Unicorn Appears: Racism, Progressive Christianity and the Media

A great discovery has occurred.  Not since the New York Times was dumbfounded by noticing that Brooklyn had reappeared after hiding in plain sight has the mainstream American media been this

Back in '92, NYT discovered "grunge."

astounded by noticing something which has surrounded them for decades.  After the Democratic National Convention last week, the following facts which have existed for decades if not centuries have been noticed by media outlets:

Hey, African American Christians tend to support the Democratic Party.
Hey, there are progressive Christians.

This has revealed a yawning gap in the mainstream media's coverage and understanding of religion in America.  The term "Christian" is all too often been synonymous with "evangelical", which actually is a term that in reality defines "a politically conservative person who goes to church maybe once a month."  This overidentification of "christian" with "evangelical" and the fact the term "evangelical" doesn't really mean anything as commonly used helps explain the utter incomprehension of why people can't seem to fathom why "evangelicals" voted overwhelmingly for Trump than, say, candidates like Rubio or Cruz.  Because we have an unthinking, uncritical definition of what an "evangelical" is.  The reason Trump carries these voters is because the term "evangelical" actually defines a constituency which barely goes to church, self-identifies as an evangelical, and is really a political and not religious label. Russell Moore, the Director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, certainly no liberal himself, even announced he was going to stop calling himself an "evangelical" because “The word ‘evangelical’ has become almost meaningless this year, and in many ways the word itself is at the moment subverting the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Now, to be sure:  yes, there are lots of people out there who identify as evangelical, are deeply immersed in the theological components of evangelical Christianity, and who are politically and socially conservative.  And yes, there are people who identify as evangelical who are pretty much doing the equivalent of faith money-laundering for Donald Trump.  Dozens of religious leaders have sacrificed their own integrity to vouch for a man who has no discernible connection or understanding of the Christian message, solely because doing so gets them closer to the levers of power.

No arguments to any of these and other concerns, my main concern here is the oversimplified approach to "evangelical" and unsophisticated grasp of the American religious landscape, with attention only really given once every four years during a presidential election cycle.  What the media and broader culture simply have to understand, because failure to do so clouds the ability to perceive the actual dynamics at play, is that

a)  not even all conservative theological persons fit the stereotype of "evangelical" that is peddled and accepted as definitive.  Real evangelicals, like the Southern Baptist Convention, have staunchly supported immigration and support for refugees.

b)  there are ALL SORTS OF OTHER CHRISTIANS OUT THERE.  The Roman Catholic Church alone has huge numbers of conservatives and liberals, as well as a substantial charismatic movement which has links to Pentecostalism.  Look, Crusty knows he has a PhD in this subject and doesn't expect everybody to know every nuance or detail.  That's fine.  But just do a little f****g research.  Much of religious coverage, to Crusty, is the equivalent of having someone writing for the science and technology beat marvel about how incredible it is the world is round and the internet is a series of tubes -- a series of obvious, ill-informed, over-simplistic caricatures.

So, now on to the unicorns the media have breathlessly discovered in their hyperventilating wanderings around the Wells Fargo Center this past week:

At Vox: "The Democratic convention's most surprising argument: Christianity is a liberal religion", which somehow stated that "Just think...of how Christian [emphasis in original] it’s been, and how the convention tried to argue for Christianity as fundamentally liberal. Yes, there’s always been a Christian left, largely dominated by Jesuits and the black church. But the Christian left has been positively anemic in influence since the end of the civil rights era."

This is so utterly mindbogglingly oversimplistic it's hard to fathom. "largely dominated by Jesuits and the black church"? Maybe you could have done more than just name the first two Christian

organizations you could think of.  Seriously, just because you read that Kaine had been a Jesuit missionary, and saw some African American Christians, you leap to saying progressive Christianity has been dominated by Jesuits and the black church?What about groups like Sojourners or Evangelicals for Social Action? What about faith based organizations coming together around climate change? What about progressive women's religious orders, everyone from Sister Helen Prejean's anti-death penalty activism to Nuns on the Bus? But that would take, like, research and not just walking around the Convention floor.  Positively anemic? What about the religious left groups that been at the forefront of marriage equality and LGBT rights?  that helped rebuild black churches after they had been burned during arson attacks in the 19090s?  Hey, here's a married Episcopal priest and her wife who is part of the group challenging Mississippi's religious freedom bill.  "Anemic"?  Sure, while dynamics have changed, spend a little time with Google.

In Slate, "Bright Shining as the Sun: Infused with the spirit of the black church, the Democrats became the party of optimism."  Jamelle Bouie came a little closer by noting how "What is remarkable is the extent to which this kind of patriotism—and much of the mood surrounding the convention—is rooted in black traditions of political and religious rhetoric. In ways small and large, the lifeblood of the Democratic National Convention was the black church."  This is true, absolutely, but also leaves out the central place faith has played, and continues to play, in the lives of Hispanic/Latino and white Democrats.  To name two of the top of my head...hmmm...let's say HILLARY CLINTON who

Remember, in 1980 "evangelicals" preferred a divorced guy who was never really a member of a Christian church and whose wife was more into astrology than Christianity than this guy who regularly testified to his faith, taught Sunday school every week, has been married to the same woman for more than 70 years.

has been shaped by her Methodist upbringing.  Or perhaps one of the most powerful models of what it means to be a progressive Christian, JIMMY CARTER  who was PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, won the Nobel Prize, has done more for the world than any ex-president, and even beat cancer's ass.  Seriously, I think he's going to live to be a 120.

While Bouie is on target to note the influence of traditions of the African American church on the Convention, it's also important to note that Conventions themselves, as a whole, are inheritors of aspects of American Christianity.  There's important historical work done that argues that political Conventions are the descendants of the camp meetings and religious revivals of the 19th century -- here's a decent distillation here.  Mass spectacles, with series of speakers, designed to evoke social action.  Kind of like birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, Bare Naked Ladies are descended from They Might Be Giants, and Coldplay are descended from U2, Conventions as a whole are descended from camp meetings and tent revivals.  So in addition to the influence of the African American church, there is the important context of how American religion has shaped many institutions.

In the National Catholic Reporter (admittedly by far the best of the lot of these articles):  "The divided soul of the Democratic Party," noted that "To judge by public perceptions, and more than a few pundits, the Democratic Party is the default home of secularists and atheists, with practicing

Popularized in the 80s, the movie slow clap is descended from Charles Foster Kane.

believers shunted to a side room only to be trotted out when a political event needs a gloss of godliness. But walking around the Democratic National Convention taking place here this week and talking to delegates and activists reveals a much different picture, with people of faith -- almost every faith -- eager to testify to their beliefs and how they in fact bolster their political choice for a party some view as inimical to religion."  Way to go, NCR:  you are honored with a Crusty 80s slow clap for your awesomeness.

OK, so we've noticed the special snowflakes that are progressive Christians.  While Crusty's glad that this kind of light is being shone on the role of progressive Christianity, there's also a couple of things which also need to be called out:

One of the first is to call out the inherent racism and privilege in "suddenly" noticing things that have always been there. The New York Times ignored Brooklyn when it was predominantly poor and people of color and only noticed when white people started moving there.  Does it really take going to a political Convention to notice black Christians?  Is this like the trope popularized by the movie "The Help," that people of color don't exist until white people notice them?

Another is the anti-Christian myopia of the secularized left.  Crusty, frankly, is tired of the knee jerk ignorance and prejudice from lots of folks on the secular left who simply assume all Christians are hateful, bigoted, stupid, homophobes.  Here's just a few examples:

--Someone once asked me how I could possibly be a Christian given all of the injustice done in the name of Christianity.  This person was(is) a huge soul music fan.  I replied, "How do you listen to the music of James Brown, given that he was repeatedly arrested for domestic violence?"  The person then went on an extended discourse about separating the music from the person involved.  I said, "Yet you don't offer me the same right to separate myself and my actions from those of others."

--Ok, here's another example.   Circulating around Facebook this past week, at least in Crusty's feed, was a photo of the Obama family, stating that they were scandal free, the kids never got caught doing anything wrong, and "MOST WHITE CHRISTIANS HATE THEM BECAUSE OF THEIR RACE." Can't find it in my Facebook feed, Crusty points to anyone who can dig it up.

Crusty's first reaction was, "The glib and incorrect identification of 'most white Christians' as racist is not quite as offensive and ignorant as the racism this calls out, but undermines the point."  This should have been recaptioned, "Let me show my own ignorance while calling out that of others."

--Here's an example Crusty used in an old blog post on Ken Burns' Prohibition documentary:

COD admits having a larger bone to pick. COD has problems with people reading back the disgust and disagreements many have with the religious right in this country at this time into their view of religion at all times and in all places.

COD was outraged in a similar vein many years ago when he saw Spielberg's film "Amistad," which tells the story of Africans who were captured and for the slave trade, who overtook their slave ship, and landed off the shore of Connecticut, sparking a legal battle for their freedom. What shocked COD was the simplistic way Spielberg presented religious abolitionists. There is an appearance in the film of some abolitionists, whose response to the situation of the Amistad captives is to kneel and pray for the slaves outside their prison. This was such a ludicrously inaccurate portrayal that COD burst out laughing in the theater, prompting several folks who were being properly indignant in their reaction of those religious folks on screen briefly to take a break from their indignation and glare at him.

The fact is that abolitionists were actively involved involved in the plight of the Amistad captives. Members of Christian churches were intimately connected with the legal battle for the kidnapped Africans, including raising money for their legal defense. Attorneys who were members of New Haven churches offered their services gratis. Reducing Christian abolitionists to pious do-gooders who do nothing except praying for the slaves was simultaneously insulting and ignorant of historical fact. It does, however, play on the general impression in the culture that religious persons are hypocritical and sanctimonious, whose only response is prayer when action was needed.

True today as when Crusty wrote it four years ago.

--There's the privilege and racism inherent in this ignorance of Christianity.  At a party one time, someone asked me what I did, and I replied "I'm an ordained minister."  Crusty then got a speech on all the evils of Christianity.  The (white) person then said, "The only church I could see myself going to is an African American church, given their commitment to justice and equality."  "Oh really?" Crusty replied. "Are there any you have in mind?"  The person then named a church just down the block. "Oh," Crusty said, "I'm not sure how happy you'd be there.  Their minister brought a resolution to the local ministers' association asking us to condemn homosexuality, and, when we declined to approve it, he walked out and said he'd never come back.  That particular denomination also doesn't permit women to serve in the ministry."  This person, from their place of privilege, revealed their own ignorance and racism.  That had their own assumption of what the "black" church was, untroubled by any actual interaction with the diversity of the black church tradition.  The problem for the secularized left is believing that having African American Christians at their Convention makes them hip to Christianity just like voting for Obama finally gave them the black friend they don't have.

The kind of broad generalizations evoked by the secularized left with regards to Christianity, would, simply, be considered unacceptable when applied to almost any other group.  Picture your reaction to these kind of over-generalizations with regards to Muslims, or Jews.  Or African Americans.  Or "Most women..."

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Crusty says this is a lifelong and proud member of the progressive left, both politically and religiously: he was registered in the Green Party for a while and did his first same sex blessing in 1995.  This frustration comes from someone inside the tent, not outside.  And in calling this out, it is in not meant to equivocate with or excuse the excesses of the religious right, including preposterous "religious freedom" laws intended to enshrine discrimination and efforts to force a particular set of beliefs on a culture.

Get back to your summer, people. Crusty's back to swinging on the flippity-flop.