Category: Guest Column
the latest Sightings
Sacred Air at the Festival of Faiths
— Martin E. Marty | Nov. 7, 2011Writers who deal with current topics are expected to “declare an interest,” which on occasion—today is an occasion—I do. For many of the sixteen years since the Festival of Faiths has been celebrated in Louisville, Kentucky, I’ve been on the scene, and was again last weekend for this year’s November 2-7 event. Christina Lee Brown served as Honorary Chair. Though mourning the recent death of her husband, Owsley Brown II, she showed that she can keep the Festival spirit despite that loss and in the face of some grim subject matter. Enough about that: have I declared enough interest?
This year an environmental topic attracted, since it dealt with a theme dear to us and to others who enjoy clear air and would like to be surrounded by it a bit longer. Since the event was “interfaithed,” the theme was dressed up a bit as “Sacred Air: Breath of Life.” But if “air” was the element being featured this year, the wide variety of programs during the week had participants keeping their feet on the ground. One signal of this was the presence of Bill McKibben, a notable environmentalist leader of our years, who inspires but is also ready to take on gritty political issues. He did so here in Louisville at a crowded service club meeting, a youth breakfast and workshop, and more. He seldom walks into a room where the audience is all in agreement with his approach to dangerous threats to the environment. Never mind, he seems to say, as he invokes spiritual, religious and theological references, which abound when one discusses Creation.
During McKibben’s days at Louisville, the media were featuring national news by reference to Environmental Protection Agency reports that, despite hopes that things had been getting better, they were improving little; many indicators suggested they were worse. Despite overwhelming agreement by scientists in the field, every reference which suggests a need for reappraisal and reform gets countered by a small but well-financed phalanx of opponents who always find a lone scientist here or there—Denmark comes to mind as one of the few “there’s”—who tells us that the bad news is simply part of a multi-year or multi-century “natural” warming of the globe, and, as we wait things out, in a few hundred or thousand years, some of us will survive.
The Festival of Faith participants are more moved by the understanding that the faiths commend a responsible approach to the environment as a major theme; not only Judaism and Christianity attend to the “doctrine of creation” as being prime among the focal teachings and beliefs. A few years ago some religious conservatives—Christians among them, whom most of us know best—backed off, put off by talk of “harmonic convergence” and “Gnosticism” by many. That is changing. Pursuing my interest at various sites and festivals and conferences, from Grand Rapids to Boise to Louisville—I stay home most of the time—I note that once shy or opposing evangelicals are now in the forefront. In an about face, some leaders changed, and they now lead the pro-environmental fronts which they used to shun. Groucho Marx must have influenced them: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Or, many at Louisville would say “. . . . or your own scriptures.” The environmental movements are imperfect and may get many things wrong, but enough positive, sure, scientific, and spiritually profound themes get invoked that they provoke me to write columns which force “a declaration of author’s interest.” Next week I’ll go back to being fair and balanced and objective about less controversial subjects.
References
The Festival of Faiths website is at www.festivaloffaiths.org.
Following the SCOTUS
Another thought about what “commissioned ministry” means and what you can be sued over. Martin Marty follows a Supreme Court case in his latest Sightings.
A Lutheran School
— Martin E. MartyBack in the middle of the twentieth century, when I lived and worked too briefly in Washington, D.C., a photographer friend sneaked me in to look on as he took formal pictures of dignitaries. I decided that the Supreme Court bench was the place to be among the powers. The building inspired awe. Its nine supreme employees had life tenure and ample research staffs. Location near the Library of Congress with its resources appealed to the historian side of me. Yes, the Supreme Court was the place to be.
In my sixty-two happy years in Exile or in the Promised Land away from the capital, I have found almost daily reasons to revise my vision, for one main reason. The Court cases that fell into my scholarly zone and aroused my citizen passions had to do with religion, coded as “Church and State.” And in that zone it became apparent that all cases which reach the Supremes are extremely difficult and, in some ways, insoluble, but they must be adjudicated. For most of us in this zone, two conflicting interests or demands almost always surface. On one hand, we want to see constitutional safeguards which assure religious freedom defended and enhanced. On the other, we need to see that justice be done, especially in religious controversies which impinge on the civil order.
All those concerns surface each autumn when the Court agenda gets prefigured and each late spring when the decisions show once again that conflicting interests cannot all be addressed or cases decided to the satisfaction of half the citizens and even to both sides of the brains of each. Try this year’s puzzler; Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, a case originating in Michigan. There a church school board fired Cheryl, a “commissioned minister” who, with that title was vulnerable for dismissal, which would not have been so ready an instrument for the employing school were she a “called” teacher. Such, in the complex terms and hunches of the church body in question, would have been a protection against such dismissal. She has sued. Enter the EEOC.
When I said, “it’s complicated,” I meant it’s really complicated, as all these cases are. Notable constitutional and Court scholar Michael W. McConnell sided simply with the church which sponsors the school, with a Wall Street Journal editorial, headlined somewhat polemically, “Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister.” Should it be put that way? Well, “it’s complicated.”
In the half year ahead citizens will have plenty of opportunity to read contradictory testimonies on many aspects of the case. Already, interested parties are on hand trying to determine what percentage of her time did Ms. Perich devote herself to “secular” subjects and what to “sacred” or religious ones. Further complicating things: get Lutherans to define Lutheranly what is “secular” and what is “sacred.” And then, dear Court, decide how much is too much or too little, on either side. Oh, to complicate things, work your way through the plot to find out what such Lutherans mean by “ministers” to get this case adjudicated with the now-traditional “ministerial exception” in view. One could pursue the issues and find that almost all reflect ambiguities and apparently mutually contradictory elements. Yet justice should be done, or aspired to.
So why follow the case, if we have little more to observe and say than “it’s complicated”? In a time of extremism, of over-simplification and noise among the polarized leaders, participants, and commentators, an awareness of complexity may be helpful. Hosanna to Hosanna-Tabor for forcing this not-simple exercise on citizens.
References
Michael W. McConnell, “Washington Wants a Say Over Your Minister,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011.Mike Sacks, “Supreme Court Asked To Exempt Churches From Employee Discrimination Lawsuits,” Huffington Post, October 5, 2011.