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The Century and Civil Rights: Indirect Action

During the early 1950s, the Century’s editors could hardly be classified as strategists in the war for civil rights, but they tried their hand at analysis and expressed sympathetic support for both the commanders and the ground troops. As Supreme Court decisions moved toward desegregation, editors urged "Christian forces" to assume their responsibility in assuring a peaceful transition toward compliance. They noted that "the court wisely postponed" any directive as to how and when segregation must be completely ended in the southern states. Editors conjectured that this postponement would give Christian forces in the south an "opportunity to calm any storm which may blow, and to lead toward acceptance and implementation of the court’s verdict" (May 26, 1954). They were optimistic that southern leaders would ensure a calm reception of the desegregation order (June 2, 1954).

The Century supported the proposal made by Tennessee officials that "integration be started in the first grade and move gradually, a year at a time, through the upper grades" (September 1, 1954). Editors also believed in educational programs, church activities, and the law’s power to effect change. They expressed the conviction that "the silent public opinion of the South has already marked off segregation as a doomed and dying social arrangement" (June 2, 1954). Therefore, editors counseled patience. "To plead for time for white Americans’ education and conversion is at the same time to ask Negro Americans for more patience with the insufferable . . . Yet it is the stitch in time that saves nine. . . . And consistency is a small sacrifice if it avoid fresh rents, if it speed a whole fabric" (February 26, 1958). Before long, they realized just how naïve such sentiments were.

The Century moved toward a more insistent posture in the wake of the nonviolent resistance in Montgomery during most of 1956. An editorial in January 1957 hypothesized that the Christian influence in those demonstrations "may in the long run be seen to constitute the most important Christian achievement of 1956 in this country" (January 9, 1957). The next week, the editors issued a call to church leaders to become more active in supporting the court’s decisions (January 16, 1957).

A few months after Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat in the "white" section of the bus, editor Harold Fey traveled to Nashville, Jackson and Tuscaloosa, where he encountered firsthand the emerging White Citizens Councils, and then reached Montgomery, where he provided an account of the bus boycott for Century readers. Fey met and prayed with a few of the leaders, including Martin Luther King and Ralph D. Abernathy ("quite, cultured Christian leaders") shortly before their arrests (March 7, 1956). This reference to King marked the first time his name appeared in Century pages. King contributed a couple of essays the next year (February 6 and June 5, 1957). In 1958, Fey proudly announced his appointment as an editor-at-large, and a few of King’s essays appeared annually. In 1960, King wrote for the "How My Mind has Changed" series (April 13, 1960). Later, the Century had the distinction of offering the first national publication of King’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in its entirety (June 12, 1963). In these ways, the Century promoted King’s role as a teacher of the whole church. (By way of contrast, Christianity Today did not even mention King by name until early 1964, when two sentences announced he had been named Time’s "Man of the Year.")

"Race relations" as a category in the magazine’s indexes grew larger and larger. From 1963 to 1965, it contained more entries than any other subject, rivaled only in 1965 by "Catholicism." Profoundly moved by the wisdom of nonviolent resistance, editors reported on, analyzed and theologized about all the events of these years, from Montgomery to Little Rock to the sit-ins to the freedom riders, with considerable interest and always accompanied by profound expressions of respect and human sympathy.

By 1963 calls for patience had disappeared from the Century. Instead, editorials asked "How long, O Lord, how long!" (March 20, 1963). Events in Birmingham, and the imminent threat of violence associated with them, appear to have acted as a turning point. A court injunction had tried to end peaceful demonstrations there. Editors supported King’s decision to ignore the court order (April 24, 1963) and chastised Billy Graham for advising King "to put the brakes on a little bit"(May 8, 1963).

But they also objected when King decided to use children on the frontlines of the march (May 22, 1963). King’s use of children actually helped create the atmosphere that made possible a tangible agreement with city officials.

Century editors feared the eruption of black violence in response to the intransigence and stupidity represented in the actions of Birmingham’s Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor. Some of their increasing impatience also grew from fears that the Black Muslim extremists, and other blacks who felt differently than King, might gain the upper hand if solutions to the crisis were not forthcoming (April 24, 1963; April 1, 1964). White liberals felt a new sense of urgency to get things done in order to avoid the growing potential for violent actions. Whether the issue was civil rights, Vietnam or urban renewal, the Century always feared the activities of the radical element, and abhorred the use of violence to gain power in public life.

Fey participated in, and wrote about, the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in the summer of 1964 buoyed the Century’s optimism that the goals of the movement might finally be achievable (June 24, 1964). Editors endorsed King for the Nobel Peace Prize and celebrated when he received it (October 28, 1964). Dean Peerman and Martin E. Marty made their way to Selma in March of 1965, joined by some 400 other white clergy, to march with King on behalf of voting rights. Kyle Haselden, who became editor when Fey retired in September 1964, had spent years of active advocacy on civil rights matters. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Century concluded the battle for civil rights had finally been won. "The war is over," declared a lead editorial; "the sooner the south accepts this fact and loses itself in the nation the better for it and for the nation" (April 21, 1965).

Then came the summer of 1965. Watts and other riots turned optimism to pessimism once again. As the struggle for civil rights moved to the North, from a skirmish for liberty to a full-scale conflict seeking equality and self-sufficiency, the Century found itself bewildered. By 1966, the editors divided good black organizations from bad black organizations. Mainstream Protestants assessed emerging diversity within black life by whether or not what it had to offer was compatible with American life as they hoped it would be.

The Century supported the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP and the Urban League, but warned against the "personal empire-building" of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (July 20, 1966). Editorials rarely revealed an appreciation for, or understanding of, the contribution of the black power movement to the ultimate success of the civil rights movement. Generally, it took outside authors to note that articulate "Negroes" like James Baldwin, Dick Gregory and James Foreman "do not share every value of white bourgeois culture," and that black power must be seen as "a reaction to inaction" rather than "reverse racism or some ugly form of nationalism" (C. Lawson Crowe, November 4, 1964, and Margaret Halsey, December 28, 1966).

Showing perhaps too much confidence in nonviolence, education, legislation and litigation as the only appropriate means to eliminate cultural prejudice, the editors never wavered in their support for civil rights in general. They spoke frankly on the issue and usually girded their comments with both theological concern and some measure of action. But editors were not sure what to do when the term "black" became, as a Century editorial phrased it at the time, "the ‘in’ word among many Negroes, a symbol of their new deepening negritude" (October 25, 1967). The civil rights movement’s national cohesiveness seemed to die with King in 1968. Demonstration tactics no longer seemed to work. The word "charisma" so rightfully used to describe King now "applied to men who exercise theirs negatively, and call for destruction and revenge.

The editors recognized that new tactics were needed, but they had no idea what would serve the need. About all they could do was reach into their hearts and acknowledge the whole people’s need for repentance, "even though only symbolic persons enact their crimes" (April 17, 1968).

Editorials anguished over Protestantism’s defection from the cities and deplored the expansion of "racial ghettos." They urged Protestantism to develop "an inner city program consistent with its gospel" (April 3, 1963). The pro and con arguments related to urban renewal found regular expression in Century pages during these years, demonstrating that the mainstream had some difficulty determining what to think about these government-funded programs. Editors supported urban renewal, but lamented the presence of governmental "red tape" and criticized those who saw a way to make a quick dollar at the expense of the poor. Observers like Fey felt urban renewal represented the best hope for the "frightened, disadvantaged people" in the cities, but they possessed a limited vision for how it might be accomplished. They depicted leaders like Saul Alinsky as the enemy. Through the Industrial Areas Foundation, Alinsky organized uneducated urban dwellers in order to give them a voice in their own affairs. Once organized, these impoverished people sought self-serving power, often through questionable means. Fey and others reasoned that these power-seekers were unable to see what was good for them (February 12, 1964).

Though these editors were largely unable to understand the perspectives of the blacks in the inner cities, they did seek to address the racism that affected them. They recognized the terrible truth that racism still prevailed. Even a traditionally liberal enterprise like labor had failed to address the issue. By the late ‘60s, labor had "made it" and, as a result, had no real desire to disrupt its own enjoyment of things as they were. The Century’s recognition in 1968 that labor unions were no longer "dependable partners in a liberal coalition" indicates that powerful changes in labor and society had not escaped editorial notice (October 2, 1968).

The earlier optimism among liberals gave way, but left in its wake a deeper appreciation for the depth of the sin, and of their own involvement in it. This realization helped them to focus attention on problems closer to home. Millions of blacks had moved into the cities, where Catholics met their needs better than Protestants, who had spent the latter portion of the decade leaving the cities for the suburbs. Black power soon turned into black theology, a distinctive and mature voice all its own, and confronted Protestants with new challenges deserving of response. Protestant energy over the next decade had to be spent attempting to deal with problems related to racism in church life; to mainstream white leaders, at least, that problem seemed more immediately approachable than the problem of racism in society as a whole.

Forming a Family

More Lasting Unions: Christianity, the Family, and Society.

By Stephen G. Post. Eerdmans, 205 pp. Paperback.

Christianity and the making of the Modern Family.

 By Rosemary Radford Ruether. Beacon, 284 pp.

These two books should nudge Christians toward a more compassionate, gender-conscious and tradition-aware understanding of marriage and the family. On the basis of empirical evidence, Stephen Post critiques the "divorce culture" in the U.S. and shows, for example, that stepfamilies are much less safe environments for children than are intact families. A Christian "prophetic family" is characterized by the principles of care for all children, faithful monogamy and equal regard between husband and wife.

Post includes excellent chapters on adoption and on the demands, limitations and anguish of intensive care-giving. He considers an issue that has attracted increasing theological interest recently -- how to balance the demands of "loyalties to biological family members, the church community, and all of humanity." Post has devoted much of the past nine years to the care of people with Alzheimer’s disease and their caretakers, and the sensitivity of his reflections will generate much encouragement and gratitude.

Rosemary Radford Ruether’s book invites comparison with her recent Women and Redemption, since it too ranges from the birth of Christianity to the present. The book achieves its aim of showing "that shifting ideologies involving the family and ‘family values’ are generally coded messages about women and how they should behave in relation to men." The idealized, modern, nuclear family, in which male headship and the separate spheres of husband and wife are taken for granted, is shown to lack both biblical and historical warrant. But Ruether is less successful at achieving her second aim of "rethinking the theology of marriage and family."

Ideology can best be unmasked by the prolonged exposure of its falsehoods, and this is what Ruether’s historical chapters do. The sections on the family in biblical times and on asceticism and marriage in patristic and medieval Christianity successfully relativize assumptions about fixed family forms. Different theologies of marriage and attitudes toward divorce are traced through the time of the Reformation. A chapter on the making of the Victorian family examines "key aspects of the reorganization of economic and social roles that laid the basis for . . . dramatic shifts in the ideological identity of the family, women and children in relation to adult men." Four chapters cover the 20th century.

Ruether describes the many faces of the family at the turn of the millennium and claims that a "postmodern perspective calls for an acceptance of this reality of diversity of family models." Paradoxically, Ruether premises the availability of divorce on social realities -- on changing patterns of work, and on women becoming "autonomous legal persons" with legal and growing financial independence from men. She calls’for more sex education and warns that "no American woman can safely be socialized as a teenager or young adult into a future based on the expectation of being supported by a husband for the rest of her life." The welfare-to-work program doesn’t work, she contends, since the available jobs won’t lift people out of poverty. Ruether makes political proposals for a sustainable family policy, and urges "a new vision of family, of home and work" based on "the mutuality of whole human beings."

Both authors are positive about lesbian and gay people. Typical of Post’s inclusive vision of Christian faith is his declaration that "nothing I write on behalf of permanence in marriage as a basis for optimal child rearing should obscure my respectful attitude toward human differences in sexual and gender orientation." Ruether urges the creation of covenant celebrations that are equal in value and equally available to gays and straights. Both disown "the plague of patriarchy," but in different tones. Post (following Don Browning and others) sees the Promise Keepers men’s movement as both "a step forward and a step backward." Ruether thinks there is little point in dialogue with most religious conservatives because "irreconcilably different presuppositions" make reconciliation impossible, and "progressives are being stalemated in every church as they try to concede to the fundamentalists in order to keep their international church or congregation together."

Both authors wrestle with the apparently antifamily sayings of Jesus. These "crisis-sayings," Post states, "emphatically do not suggest a diminishment of the centrality of marriage and family in Jesus’ teachings and hopes; they do, however, convey Jesus’ strong reaction to the absolute patriarchal grip on the family in antiquity." Perhaps.

Ruether, with disappointing brevity, sees "the antifamily tradition of the New Testament [as] rooted in a critique of the family systems of the day," which were an expression of the demonic powers and principalities of a fallen world." The new family of the church broke down these disfiguring separations, and a recovery of this subversive character of the early church would enable Christian families to become, once more, "redemptive communities."

Where Post sees formlessness, Ruether sees a post-modern philosophy which simply "recognizes a diversity of forms of partnering." She does not discuss the problems inherent in such diversity. Not all forms of partnering deliver equivalent goods. Why then, should they all be equally supported? If we are willing to discuss, say, low wages, or gender imbalance at work, or the oppression of women throughout history, why should we be silent about the oppression of children through arrangements for their upbringing which they may not like and which may not be conducive to their flourishing?

Ruether proposes that temporary vows be formulated for younger couples "not yet ready for permanent commitment personally or economically." This arrangement, which would "explicitly exclude child-creation," would allow these relationships to be no longer "veiled in lies." A second type of covenant would "allow a couple to enter into a permanently committed relationship that seeks a fuller unity of eros, philia, and agape over the course of many years, with or without the expectation of creating and raising children together." Even this permanent covenant is not actually named as marriage, although that is, of course, what it is. Ruether commendably engages with the issue of sexual friendship and sexual experimentation prior to marriage.

I would argue, however, that the point of the growing use of the biblical word covenant in relation to marriage is that it recovers something of the analogy between spousal love and the love between God and the world and Christ and the church. It is hard to see how this basic theological analogy can be fairly used to support temporary relationships. Would these not be contracts (that is, temporary agreements of fixed duration, revocable by either party) rather than covenants, at least in a theological sense?

It is a pity that Ruether only touches on these proposals. They are sufficiently radical and important to demand more careful argument. While the long historical sections of her book provide an important background for her discussion of the contemporary family, sexuality and gender, history could provide her with more help in defining covenant relations. An obvious example is the biblically and historically warranted practice of betrothal, which is capable of providing remarkable new insights for the beginning of the covenant commitment which is marriage.

There may be further problems with temporary covenants. Since contraception can only reduce the possibility of pregnancy, not eliminate it, how is the exclusion of children from temporary (and some permanent) covenants to be assured? Will covenant vows specify what will happen to the children when the vow of childlessness turns out to have been inadvertently broken?

Post affirms child relinquishment "as a reasonably free agapic act, even if it is inevitably and to some degree a forced option accompanied by at least a degree of compunction." Early converts to Christianity "all believed that they were adopted into the faith, and they sometimes left hostile biological families in the process." Post attacks the deep cultural assumptions, well known to adopting parents, that "a family built through adoption is inferior to a biological one."

Post’s discussion of adoption and of caregiving is driven by his conviction that agape lies at the root of family relations, while not being confined to them. He might have strengthened his argument by emphasizing the Pauline theology of adoption -- not least because of its familiarity to evangelical Christians. All Christians are adopted into the family of God through Christ, and, as Paul states in Romans, "the Spirit you have received is not a spirit of slavery, leading you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry "Abba! Father!"’

A path remains to be blazed from adoption as a core theological theme to the practice of adoption as an instance of embodying divine love. Post’s treatment helps begin that work. Antiadoption prejudices affect the "impartial" advice on abortion given to women contemplating terminating their pregnancies. Adoption is rarely seen as an option because it is rarely presented as one. This book’s cautious but wise commendation of adoption is counter-cultural in a deeply Christian way.

Ruether is more realistic than Post in showing how patriarchy has disfigured and continues to disfigure Christianity. Many of her proposals and judgments are laudable, especially her insistence that family relations should be "an ethic of sharing that is truly equivalent" and that the "work-home partnership of men and women needs to be re-negotiated." But her notion of "the postmodern family" involves a suspension of criticism precisely where criticism is most needed. Is it not possible both to sustain an ethic of care that embraces everyone and to advocate particular family forms on theological and social grounds? This worry aside, I am grateful for both books. They demonstrate a critical imaginativeness and a cautious inclusiveness that is vital to Christian faith.

Taking the Bad With the Good

The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation

By R. Scott (Appleby. Rowman & Littlefield, 429 pp).



Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence

By Mark Juergensmeyer. (University of California Press, 316 pp.)

The news media regularly report on events in which religion and violence come together. In a recent Washington Post article, for example, Congressman Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) argued that a lack of religion was the explanation for the recent shooting of one six-year-old by another. Another article in the same issue of the Post suggested that the hundreds of deaths among a Christian group in Uganda resulted from an excess of religion. Is religion part of the problem or part of the solution? Is one kind of religion bad and another good? Do we know how to tell the difference? Can we have the one without the other?

Religion looks more complicated today than it did some 50 years ago, when a tolerant liberal Protestantism shorn of the irrational and the pagan seemed to fit well with a liberal political regime. Now we are not so sure if that was really religion. It looks to some as if liberal Protestantism self- destructed as it accommodated itself to secular liberal society. Recovering "religion" has become a national project across the political spectrum. The endorsement by President Clinton and by both presidential candidates of government assistance to "faith-based" charities is one example. A puzzle that arises in this context is how to understand and whether to tolerate, or even support, "illiberal" religion of various kinds.

Scott Appleby, professor of history and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, and Mark Juergensmeyer, professor of sociology and director of Global and International Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, argue in their very different books that violence is in some sense fundamental to the religious imagination. Addressing the general reader, each book displays an impressive and detailed knowledge of contemporary religious violence amid an extraordinary sensitivity to the difficulties of describing and understanding it.

Two explanations have been offered for the recent deaths among the Ugandan Christian group: either both the members and their leader believed in an imminent apocalypse, according to their understanding of biblical and Marian prophecy, or the leader murdered his deluded disciples in order to steal their property. Either we must accept the idea that Christianity, to some degree, seems to align itself with such violence or we must assume that hundreds of apparently faithful Christians were deceived by a dangerous con man. Both explanations challenge our understanding of religion.

Appleby’s book grew out of a series of initiatives by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. It is unabashedly programmatic. An initial chapter presents a phenomenological description of religion, drawing on classic (but not uncontested) theories of religion to show what Appleby takes to be a fundamental "ambivalence" in the human response to "the sacred" -- an ambivalence that is the inevitable result of the limits of human understanding. We can see this ambivalence, Appleby explains, in the two kinds of religious activists, or "militants," on the scene today: extremists, on the one hand, and peacemakers, on the other. In subsequent chapters, Appleby presents case studies both of militants who use violence and those who work for peace.

The Ambivalence of the Sacred is a treasure trove of information on religious activists around the world, many little known even to an informed public. Appleby describes, for example, the work of Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, the 68-year-old Buddhist primate of Cambodia. In 1993 Maha Ghosananda led hundreds of Buddhist monks, nuns and laity on a dramatic month-long march from Siam Reap in the country’s northwestern part, through its central regions, to the capital, Phnom Penh.

Held on the eve of the UN-sponsored elections of a new national assembly and government, the peace march, known as Dhammayietra II ("Pilgrimage of Truth"), traversed dangerous territory marked by landmines and firefights. The marchers hoped to build popular confidence in the elections and overcome the fear that had been aroused by Khmer Rouge threats of violence and disruption. By the time Maha Ghosananda and his supporters reached Phnom Penh, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians had encouraged the marchers and more than 10,000 people had joined their ranks. Ninety percent of the electorate in this devastated country voted in the subsequent election.

This book, however, has another agenda, one that Appleby takes from what he calls "the growing end of an argument" among religious people. Since the "axial" age (approximately 500 B.C.E.), a time some scholars point to as the fount of the salvation faiths -- when Confucius, the Buddha, Zoroaster, Deutero-Isaiah and Pythagoras were all alive -- the argument for peace as the goal of religion has been gaining strength. Appleby believes that in the "great" traditions, the resources for peace warrant a cautious optimism if -- and this is a big if -- government and religious institutions give religious peacemaking the acknowledgment and support it needs.

Rejecting what he calls the "minimalist" approach to religion’s participation in public life, an approach in which religion is privatized and kept separate, Appleby wants us to consider the possibility that the right kind of religious zeal, not religious restraint, is the answer to global violence. While immensely appealing to religiously motivated reformers, this evangelical argument sits uneasily with Appleby’s academic, religious-studies description of a deep and ultimately knowable ambivalence about or within the sacred.

Juergensmeyer’s book results from his personal interviews with religious terrorists. Like Appleby, he finds both peaceful and violent aspects in the religions he examines, but he explores these aspects at the individual, not the group, level. The book begins by describing religious terrorism in five traditions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and Buddhism. Juergensmeyer focuses on particular incidents and people. It is typical of his careful and generous evenhandedness that he discusses Christianity first. He reminds us that Michael Bray, a convicted abortion-clinic bomber, justifies his actions by using a just-war theology that cites the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, as well as those of Dominion Theology. "When I talked with Rev. Bray in his suburban home in Bowie in 1996 and again in 1998," Juergensmeyer writes, "I found nothing sinister or intensely fanatical about him. He was a cheerful, charming, handsome man in his early 40s who liked to be called Mike. Hardly the image of an ignorant, narrow-minded fundamentalist, Mike Bray enjoyed a glass of wine before dinner and talked knowledgeably about theology and political ideas." Is Bray a devil in angel’s clothing? Or do all religions contain such contradictions?

In the second part, "The Logic of Religious Violence," Juergensmeyer depicts religious violence as a kind of theater that expresses its deadly symbolic power on a cosmic stage. He repeatedly tells us that religious terrorists are interesting, thoughtful, often likable people who think of themselves as living in a world at war -- a cosmic war legitimated in scripture and justifying extreme measures. But, like Appleby. Juergensmeyer concludes on a hopeful note: "My conviction is that the same religion that motivates such potent acts of destruction also carries an enormous capacity for healing, restoration and hope."

Both authors are reluctant to draw conclusions from their studies, and the titles of their books suggest an uneasy and ultimately unanswered ambiguity. Appleby’s title seems to insist on an unresolvable inscrutability about the religious imagination, and Juergensmeyer’s seems to promise a god’s-eye view of terrorism. Appleby’s title leaves us wondering whether it is people who choose between the violent and the peaceful response to "the sacred," or it is "the sacred" itself which is somehow ambivalent about violence. Juergensmeyer’s asks whether humans imagine the terror in the mind of God, or whether the terror is actually there.

In each case, however, the tension in the title is at variance with a text that reaches for the unambiguous answer that religion is ultimately about peace, and that peace is what God wants. In the course of his book, each author places the agency firmly with the human. And yet there is a lingering sense that each avoids the critical questions. Is violence an inescapable part of the human condition? If so, what role does/can religion play in fomenting or reducing violence? Is violence an inescapable part of religion? If so, can humans change that fact?

Both authors suggest that the remedy is education. Appleby argues for a deliberate intervention by international actors to promote the peacemaking resources within the major religious traditions. In a more traditionally humanistic way, Juergensmeyer argues for understanding. Ultimately, Appleby is more optimistic and programmatic. One might almost call his book very "Catholic." His sees human nature as essentially good and well-meaning, as something that can be improved through the efforts of institutions like the post- Vatican II church, which have the resources to educate and form their members. Juergensmeyer sees people as fundamentally flawed, and his solution -- a more Protestant one, perhaps -- seems to come at the level of the individual. For Appleby we are saved as a community; for Juergensmeyer we are saved one by one.

The apparent failure of modern secularism and of secularization theory -- created as a response to the religious violence of the 16th century -- has left a vacuum in both society and the academy. The resulting global religious revival and the renewed respectability of religious studies have provided new opportunities for scholars of religion. Appleby’s and Juergensmeyer’s books are two of the best of the recent popularizations which inaugurate a public language about religion that is at once tolerant and informed. They have done us a tremendous service by presenting the evidence that makes it impossible to deny the violence of religion and thus avoid taking responsibility for it.

It is instructive to listen to another debate about religion and violence, one that occurred on the threshold of modernity. In the mid-16th century a remarkable argument about the humanity of the Indians of the New World occurred in Valladolid, Spain. Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican missionary who was serving in Chiapas, New Spain, and Ginés de Sepúlveda, the royal historian, argued for five days before Philip II. Las Casas later published his argument. It has been translated into English and edited by Stafford Poole under the title In Defense of the Indians. In this long and wonderfully passionate work, Las Casas cites authorities ranging from ancient Greeks to medieval scholastics.

At one point, Las Casas addresses and rejects Sepúlveda’s argument that the Indians should not be regarded as human because they practice human sacrifice. He writes, "Every man, no matter how innocent he may be, owes God more than his life; and so, although these persons do not will it by any explicit act, yet they perform an act that is owed, since all men are obliged to give their blood and their life whenever God’s honor demands it."

Las Casas knew from personal experience that the Indians were human and that they had a religion. He explicitly rejected forced conversion. But Las Casas, citing the binding of Isaac and the killing of the firstborn, did not flinch from defending human sacrifice as a justified religious act. If we are not simply to clean Las Casas up and make him a modern, we must come to terms with his argument.

The books by Appleby and Juergensmeyer reveal a larger contemporary debate in religious studies (indeed in the academy generally). What role should normative questions play in the academic study of religion, or any area of human endeavor? There has, for example, been an intense discussion about the ethical questions raised in the study of Aztec sacrifice. In both Appleby’s and Juergensmeyer’s volumes, there is a conflict between the use of religious-studies vocabulary and the urgent desire to make that language serve particular ethical ends. Both Appleby and Juergensmeyer use the neutrality of religious-studies language to describe the complex structures of religious world views, but both also use value-laden language to distinguish bad religion from good.

Juergensmeyer says that "religion does not ordinarily lead to violence" and that "the object of faith has always been peace." Appleby repeatedly distinguishes "strong" religion from "weak," praising "authentic" religion and decrying religious illiteracy. Both want to insist that religion can lead to peace and understanding. That conclusion seems premature to me. We want academic religious studies both to explain religion and to show us how religion can save us. I am not sure that it is up to the second job.

Juergensmeyer says that the "reasons why we need religion and why we have violence are the same," implying that both are the result of a failure of modernity. Yes, but to say that we know what religion we need to end this violence is a false resolution. It repeats the Enlightenment temptation to design a religion that will serve human ends. Though it tries to refine the project by rejecting the Enlightenment fear of religion, religion is still tamed. Making religion serve human ideas of peace can deny religion’s orientation to something larger than this world. Religion takes the long view. Its ways are not always our ways.

Stirrings of Divinity (Luke 2:41-52)

This has to be the censored version! What parents would leave a crowded city -- one that was not their home -- and journey a whole day without noting that their child was missing? Today they would be charged with child neglect. What 12-year-old from a loving home would calmly detach from his parents, enter the portals of probably the most daunting building in the city, and be found three days later in solemn debate with theologians of note? And then, what Jewish momma, finding her missing child after three days, would simply be "astonished"? Can you imagine her saying in polite Aramaic, "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously." Give me a break!

Of course, the language of the Bible is decorous about many things that we express in a much more "in your face" manner these days, so how Mary really said it will have to remain veiled. I think we can safely assume, however, that Jesus didn’t use this episode as the model for his best-loved parable, with its touching climax, "This my son was lost, and is found!" It doesn’t surprise me at all that when he went back with them to Nazareth, he "was obedient to them."

But even if we get a sanitized version of the domestic dynamics, these verses have to be precious because they are the only record of the childhood of Jesus anywhere in scripture, and Luke has something more in mind.

In the telling of this event, it may be that he is helping us work with some of the mystery of who Jesus was. All of the Gospel writers, in their own way, wrestle with this. The author of John’s Gospel, whose profound and poetic prologue we love so dearly, may have taken the easier path; he shrouds the incarnation with the awe and mystery of the "Word made flesh, come to dwell among us." While he reminds us that Jesus was the light which enlightens every person coming into the world, the way it all happened is left wonderfully vague.

Luke, however, is determined that the Jesus we encounter in his Gospel is one whose humanity cannot be disputed. For Luke, as for Matthew, it is important to locate Jesus’ birth in circumstances of place and time that anchor him in Israel’s history. His genealogy (in Matthew) and his close family (in Luke) are important markers of his humanity. Luke’s Jesus begins life in surroundings that are grubby, poor and human, with two very human parents.

We should never forget this. It is all too easy to distance Jesus to a position beyond the boundaries of our humanity. I notice that many preachers these days avoid the name Jesus, but refer to him always as "Christ" or "the Christ," almost as if using his real name would make him too much like us. I understand that title and revere it, but interestingly, none of the Gospel writers -- not even John, to whom it would surely have come most naturally -- uses it widely. "Jesus" is the Gospel name for this very human Nazarene.

Jesus is also the name for God!

The birth we celebrate is nothing less than God coming to dwell among mortals (Rev. 21:3). We cannot fathom the mystery of incarnation, nor can we tether it with bonds of rational argument. It is more than we can ever know. All we can do is to offer our awe and worship in its presence, as Charles Wesley did:

Let earth and heaven combine,

Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs divine

The incarnate Deity;

Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made man.

This is our confession of faith, and the language of worship remains our only way to speak this mystery.

If we struggle with Jesus’ being "fully human and fully God," it should not be surprising if the Jesus child wrestled with his identity too. We do not know when the first intimations and stirrings of divinity within his humanness made themselves felt, but given who Jesus was, and what he would have to give his life to, it is inevitable that such moments would come. We can imagine him beginning to yearn for some confirmation, some touch of his other, eternal home.

Later, at his baptism, he would receive signs of special kinship with the Father, but here, at a mere 12 years, we can imagine his heart leaping when he saw the temple. His parents went to Jerusalem every year for Passover, surely a great adventure for the youngster. We can imagine the young Jesus, like Samuel centuries before, being powerfully moved by this holy place in which Yahweh dwelt. Each year he would have heard the story of Israel’s liberation retold, and seen the sacrifice made. We can imagine a sense growing inside him of identification with that sacrifice, and a need to explore more and more of its meaning for himself. Without understanding it all, maybe we can see how he would have been drawn to the temple’s portals and its learned men. This, surely, was where the most important meanings of his life would be found.

"Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?"

We are told that while Mary and Joseph didn’t understand at the time, "his mother kept all these things in her heart." She knew this Jesus child was only loaned to her.

We too must work out who we are, not by birth, but by God’s generous grace. The most important discovery we can make is to find that our identity is bound up with the one whom Jesus called "Father." Even more important -- when our children demonstrate that sense of holiness and awe which speaks of God, the best gift we can give them is to "lose" them to its embrace. They are, after all, only loaned to us.

Somebody’s Calling My Name (Is. 43:1-7; Lk. 3:15-22)

Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Memorial, was explaining to a TV interviewer why her remarkable work has come to have such a strong grip upon the emotions of the American people. "It’s the names," she said, "the names are the memorial. No edifice or structure can bring people to mind as powerfully as their names." She is right, and that’s why I’m ashamed of how poorly I remember other people’s names. I am also saddened that in this digital age we are as likely to be asked for our numbers as for our names.

God doesn’t substitute numbers for names. "I have called you by your name, you are mine." In this Isaiah passage, the fact that God has named Israel makes all the difference. It is a guarantee of so much. It reminds Israel’s people of their divine origin, of being created and formed by Yahweh. It banishes fear and announces redemption. It offers God’s protecting hand in fire and flood. God woos Israel with a declaration of covenant love and confesses that Israel is "precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you." In scripture, being called by one’s name is a rich gift.

These promises and great privileges, however, come with a claim of ownership. Yahweh goes on to remind Israel that the name it bears is Yahweh’s name. The Lord speaks of bringing back from north, south, east and west every one who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made."

It’s a little like carrying both a given name and a family name. The first makes me special because I’m me. The second tells me I’m not only me; it reminds me of a heritage I carry with me. In Africa, ancestor veneration is a deeply spiritual acknowledgment of this accountability. People are concerned with not offending the integrity of their "old ones" -- the names of their forebears.

Names tell us we are loved and call us into accountability. What greater accountability can there be than to know that we are called by God’s name, created for God’s glory?

Names play another role in scripture. Some who claimed the biblical equivalent of celebrity become little more than historical markers for the real players.

Luke opens his third chapter with a quiet irony. After a roll call of the celebrities of his day -- Emperor Tiberius; Pontius Pilate; Herod, prince of Galilee; Philip, prince of Ituraca and Trachonitis -- he drily informs us that "the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness." Not to those with the pompous titles, but to a wanderer in the wilderness. The difference was that his name was God-bestowed, with an angel promise that this John would be great in the eyes of the Lord (Luke 1:15).

In an MTV world of dreary "celebrities" whose only claim to fame is their inability to keep their clothes on or their excesses of boorish crudeness, it is important to remember that God has another list, chosen not for celebrity rating, but for faithfulness to God’s great enterprise of healing the world.

Some of those Bible-day "celebrities" were angered that the word of the Lord had gone in John’s direction. Herod was particularly irritated by John’s denunciations of his love life, and finally imprisoned and killed John. Today, however, Herod is only the punctuation mark, while John’s ragged figure is scripture’s signpost to Jesus, the center of human history.

So here Jesus is, standing in the water with the crowd who press in from the Jordan banks for baptism. It’s been 20 years since he engaged the teachers in the Jerusalem temple. The last we knew, he was growing up in the home of Joseph and Mary. Now he begins his public ministry, and it opens with a humble baptism that identifies him deeply with the people he has come to redeem. What could bind him more closely than to wade into the muddy Jordan with people weeping for their sins, quietly urging the hesitant Baptist to wash him too?

It is out of this act of utmost humility that Epiphany comes. As Jesus prays, heaven’s glory opens and God’s Spirit-dove descends upon him. Suddenly, all those first inklings of vocation that stirred in childhood, the unshaped consciousness of call, the inner yearnings and searchings, are brought into sharp focus. And Yahweh names him with the name only he may hear: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

This affirmation is the defining moment for the Nazarene. It is God’s declaration of love to God’s new Israel; it is God’s naming to supreme accountability; it is God’s surprise, visited upon the world of the pompous and powerful.

There is nothing more important for any of us than to hear God call our name. What Jesus received by right, we are invited to receive by grace.

In the office of a United Methodist bishop in Ohio, there is a fountain where water runs down the face of a smooth granite slab. Visitors are invited to place their hands on the slab, let the water stream over their fingers and meditate on the words carved into that slab, "Remember your baptism, and be thankful." Until we know we are made, loved and claimed by God as God’s children, we have nothing to offer this world that it cannot offer us. The remembrance of our baptism is our own, small epiphany.

Let the Imbongis Sing! (Ps. 96; Is. 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Lk. 2:1-20)

Back in 1994 TV viewers all over the world watched transfixed, as South Africa’s first democratically elected president took the oath of office. While a dignified Nelson Mandela addressed the heads of state, many viewers wondered about the man dressed in leopard skins, standing directly behind him with a little flag stuck quaintly in his headgear. He was the imbongi -- the praise-singer, who, according to Xhosa custom, had come from Mandela’s home region to recite his praises. Imbongis are regarded as specially gifted by God; they proclaim not out of their own wisdom, but are possessed and overwhelmed by the greatness of which they speak.

Certainly, if you were a South African emerging from decades of apartheid darkness, there was much to sing about. The nation had been delivered by what even hardened journalists called a "miracle." The BBC commentator welcomed British viewers that morning to "South Africa’s ‘Day of Grace."’

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, the psalmist envisions all of creation becoming an imbongi for God because of God’s "marvelous deeds among all peoples." All of nature is called out to join in the shout: let heavens rejoice, seas roar, fields exult, trees and forests shout for joy! The families of nations are told to sing a new song, to bow down, to dance, and to declare and proclaim God’s majesty and splendor.

The news that leaps out of scripture today is simply too much to handle with calm; it should overwhelm our senses and fill us to bursting. People who have walked in deep darkness have seen a great light! These people, according to Isaiah, have been dwelling in a land as dark as death -- and suddenly everything has changed: a light has shone on them. They’ve been laboring under a dreadful, chafing yoke, and God has shattered it. Oppression is gone, and all the boots of trampling soldiers and garments fouled with blood have become fuel for a cleansing fire.

Imagine it if you can.

Those of us from nations who have known oppression, who have groped around for years in that "darkness deep as death," have no difficulty doing so. Those of us who have experienced God smashing the yoke can still taste the moment -- the most exhilarating joy we have ever known.

So why this same, incredible ecstasy right now?

Isaiah locates this joy in the giving of a little child. He dreams a new day into being, when true authority and dominion will be found -- but not in battalions of soldiers; they will cast their bloody uniforms into the flames where they belong. God’s new day is about the birthing of a child who will bear the symbol of dominion on his tiny young shoulders. He will inherit the boy-king David’s throne, do battle with evil and bring a realm of justice and peace. This coming child turns the world of power upside down.

God is passionately determined, even zealous, to achieve this.

We are not sure whether the writer has a specific person in mind, but he is clear that God intervenes in history in a way radically different from anything our shadowed, sin-bound minds can imagine. The great light will shine on our darkness through a young woman bearing a special son; the calf and the young lion will lie down together only when we are led by a little child.

Paul’s letter to Titus invites us further into the praise song of our salvation. It is the song of a people loved undeservedly into new life. "For the grace of God has dawned upon the world with healing for all mankind; and by it we are disciplined to renounce godless ways . . ." (New English Bible).

Disciplined by grace!

We come close to the secret of our faith when we discover that lives are made different not by laboring to deserve love, but by being undeservedly loved. Only those who have known what it means to be loved with an indefatigable, impossibly forgiving grace can understand these words. It is when we know that someone has "sacrificed himself for us, to set us free from all wickedness and to make us a pure people marked out for his own," that we become truly "eager to do good."

So, whether we look to the liberation of those peoples living in lands dark as death or to that inner liberation that comes by the discipline of grace, we must find this indefatigable lover, this child of hope. Luke tells us where he will be found: in history, among us, with us. Not out there in some wishful scenario of the future, but in a date nailed down in time. Not in some air-conditioned, cushioned sanctuary, but in a peasant girl’s arms on a cold night in a cruel and disputed land. Not in some New Age journey into our pampered psyches, but in a world ruled by Caesars and their puppets, looking for new ways to fleece the poor.

That is where the child will be. God’s gift of grace is vulnerable indeed, because he is born into a real world.

But when strong and humble hearts make that discovery and look to the Christ-child for their liberation, they will hear creation’s imbongis sing as the psalmist commanded, "Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth peace.

Grace in the Face of Suicide

Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide.

 By Kay Redfield Jamison.

Every 17 minutes someone in America takes his or her own life. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students, and the third among teenagers. In 1995 more young Americans died by suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza and lung disease combined. Worldwide more people die by suicide than by homicide (in the U.S. the numbers are 30,000 compared to 19,000) or warfare. Studies suggest that the great majority of these people suffered from a diagnosable mental illness, and that most of them received either no treatment or inadequate treatment. People with schizophrenia are eight times more likely than the general population to die by suicide, those with manic-depression 15 times, and those with depression 20 times.

Statistics such as these, Kay Redfield Jamison argues, cry out for a response. A professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Jamison herself suffers from manic-depression (effectively treated with lithium). She has explored bipolar disorder and her own experience of it in two previous books: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

What distinguishes Night Falls Fast is Jamison’s skillful weaving of individual portraits with scientific perspectives. In an interview, Jamison explained why she integrates these two approaches. On the one hand, the personal stories are compelling and affecting in a way that medical studies are not. On the other, there is "a tendency for people to individualize suicide so much that they don’t see it as a treatable illness. . . . It’s on the basis of seeing patterns. . . that we have been able to successfully treat cancer and heart disease. We just haven’t had that attitude about suicide."

Jamison argues persuasively that "most suicides, although by no means all, can be prevented." How? Through the proper diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. Our failure to provide this care shows "how little value our society puts on saving the lives of those who are in such despair as to want to end them."

Mental illness and suicide raise profound theological questions -- but few theologians have engaged them. During the past ten years, numerous short pieces of pastoral advice on how to respond to death by suicide have appeared, and most do an admirable job of translating psychological insights and Christian compassion into sound pastoral care. But most of this theological attention to suicide has focused on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide or on suicides in religious cults. The number of people who have ended their lives in these ways is small compared to the number driven to suicide by mental illness. And one can hardly argue that the latter suicides are private acts and therefore of less social interest than other forms of voluntary death.

Jamison’s book contains only two explicit theological references. The first comes in a fleeting mention of the doctrine of sin. As Jamison notes, sin used to be the theological locus for the consideration of suicide. Fortunately, advances in the understanding of mental illness and new currents of theological thought have checked this tendency. But important questions about free will and moral culpability pervade discussions of mental illness and suicide, just as they do discussions of cancer and heart disease. A bipolar person’s lack of compliance with his prescribed drug regime, a recovering lung cancer patient’s return to smoking and a heart transplant recipient’s relapse into poor eating and exercise habits are rooted in complex dynamics, and the moral dimension cannot be evaded.

Friends and family members frequently castigate themselves after a loved one takes his or her own life. Most of the time this self-blame results from their grief and their longing to feel some control over life’s terrifying events. But sometimes they are indeed recalling culpable action or inaction. Then the psychological reassurance that they are not responsible and have nothing to feel guilty about fails to do justice to their painful self-knowledge. Churches must provide a place where people’s confessions can be heard and where they can receive absolution. While the church must disabuse bereaved people of an exaggerated and unfounded sense of responsibility for another’s mental illness or suicide, Christians can acknowledge the sinful entanglement of people in their own and others’ tragedies, offer forgiveness and reconciliation, and point to the grace of regeneration.

Jamison’s second theological reference is her only reference to God. After her suicide attempt when she was 28, Jamison asked the poignant and familiar question, "Where had God been?" Job and Jesus might nod their heads in sympathy. Their stories of disproportionate, unmerited suffering demand that when sufferers cannot feel the companionship of God, we try to assure them of it.

Though I think there is a lot of sentimentality and shallowness in the recent angel craze, I think belief in angels can, in a symbolic and anthropomorphic form, assure people of the omnipresence of God. The family and friends of many of those who commit suicide are haunted by the knowledge that their loved one died alone, and often in horrific circumstances. They may be helped by the traditional belief in guardian angels. The image of an angel cradling the loved one as he or she died may be a powerful way to help people think of God’s presence. Retellings of the biblical stories of heroes’ despair and God’s continued faithfulness may also comfort those left behind.

Other issues of theological import pervade Jamison’s work. A central question in An Unquiet Mind is "Am I who I was before manic-depression descended? Does my dependence on lithium change who I am?" Questions about personal identity in the face of a mental illness or a brain-altering medication invite reconsideration of the interrelationship of mind and body. Theology is only beginning to deal with such concerns.

In many respects the Buddhist sense of the self as an illusive flux is especially attractive as a way to answer such questions. But the Christian concept of the self as a unified center of psychic and moral action suggests that the self must be a synthesis of what the person was before and after treatment.

This view of the self raises further questions. Jamison credits lithium with her ability to function well and, quite literally, to live. But she admits that she often misses her manic self. That self is capable of prodigious work and intense emotional ecstasies. She struggles to reconcile these two "selves."

Then there is the case of Drew Sopirak, an Air Force cadet whose rapid descent into a bipolar illness and eventual suicide is chronicled in Night Falls Fast. Surely he would see a much greater dissonance between his pre- and post-illness self. The former was an academic achiever centered in friends and family. His illness made him a paranoid loner uninterested in and unable to sustain any meaningful work or relationship. His tragic story forces us to think deeply about the biological basis of the self.

Though Jamison gives weight to psychological and environmental factors, she thinks the scientific evidence points to a biological basis for the devastating mental illnesses that spawn most suicides. This pushes the identity question into larger considerations of creation and providence. What sort of world is this that predisposes roughly 20 percent of human beings to suffer mental agonies? If we accept Jamison’s argument that the greater community might derive an evolutionary benefit from containing a number of mentally ill people, since such an illness is often accompanied by unusual creative talents, what does this say about the kind of Creator who guides the evolutionary process?

On these points Douglas John Hall’s God and Human Suffering and Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil are helpful. Both argue that the doctrine of creation must include a recognition of the element of struggle. Hall speaks of this as a "dimension of the becoming that is implicit in the creaturely being of all that is." Levenson’s reading of biblical texts suggests a view of creation as "combat" against the onslaughts of chaos. Both scholars reject the notion that all gaps between what is and what we wish were are due to sin. Rather, some belong to the very conditions of creation, including the conditions of the evolving human body. Both move questions of theodicy away from attempts at explanation and defense and toward compassionate response and solidarity with those who suffer.

Such solidarity would ally churches with what Jamison regards as the best hope for the prevention of suicide: the proper diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. It is cause for dismay that when Jamison discusses how communities and institutions can combat suicide, she never mentions churches. She outlines ways in which parents, schools, universities, physicians and researchers do and can participate in detecting mental illness and suicidal intentions. That she leaves out the church is perhaps both an authorial oversight and an indication that churches have not shown enough concern about this issue -- or, at least, have done too little to make their concern known.

In Chicago the largest provider of services to those bereaved by the suicide of a loved one operates under the auspices of Catholic Charities. Though these services carry no explicit religious content, a theological vision does undergird such outreach. Perhaps we should be more intentional about publicizing these services. The church has been instrumental in forging and perpetuating the stigma that haunts mental illness and suicide. It now has the responsibility to proclaim its compassion for the mentally ill, the suicidal and those who die by suicide.

Some steps churches can take in this direction include stocking libraries with books on the subject and making available an up-to-date directory of medical, legal and welfare services to which people can be referred. It was because my pastor was aware of a suicide support group that I was connected with this life-sustaining organization within days after a relative’s suicide. Pastors or specially trained volunteers can assist families in the sensitive process of planning the funeral service of a person who dies by suicide. My family was comforted by meeting with the priest to discuss the content of his homily. I wish, however, that someone had told us that pleas for mercy on the soul of the deceased are always part of the Catholic funeral rite and were not meant as a special comment on the manner of death of the deceased.

Churches might also consider advocacy work on behalf of the mentally ill -- working, for example, to end the inequities in insurance coverage. Those who volunteer in homeless shelters and fair housing projects would do well to remember that 30 percent of the homeless are mentally ill and need treatment for their illness.

Jesus was a healer who restored tormented individuals to health and community. The Bible is full of stories of what we would now term mental illness -- Saul’s derangement and the healing of the Gerasene demoniac come to mind -- and it contains several instances of suicide -- the deaths of Saul, Samson and Judas, for example. Preaching on these texts demands explicit attention to mental illness and suicide and, even more important, to the proclamation of God’s love for the ill and despairing and of God’s command that we extend this love.

Scientists may never entirely cure mental illness. But something can be done to help heal the ruptures it creates. When treatment is ineffective and interventions fail, Christian hope offers something that therapeutic hope cannot: the promise that the sufferer remains loved and cared for by God. The world of mental illness and suicide is bleak terrain to be sure. But Christians will be inspired by this book to carry the light of Christ into this God-unforsaken realm.

Compassionate Conspiracy: AIDS Action in Namibia

When Sister Raphaela Handler arrived in Namibia in 1996 to coordinate the country’s Roman Catholic hospitals and health-care clinics, she realized that AIDS was a "time bomb" about to burst. She had worked previously in Tanzania, and had seen the AIDS pandemic spread there. Although Namibia was years behind Tanzania in the spread of this disease, the pattern was similar. Namibia was beading for disaster.

By late 1998, Namibia was the third most HIV-infected country in the world, with more than one in five adults estimated to be HIV-positive. Even more disturbing, according to Sister Raphaela, was that the churches were "conspirators in the silence," doing nothing to address the crisis. She initiated a mass advocacy effort that resulted in Catholic AIDS Action, a program approved in 1998 by the Namibian Catholic Bishops Conference. It was the first national church-based program of HIV/AIDS prevention and care in Namibia.

The Namibian bishops laid down two ground rules: first, the program must build on Christian values, and second, it shouldn’t cost the bishops conference any money (it had none). And so, with prayers that "God will provide," Sister Raphaela started looking for people with whom she could share her vision -- those within Namibia who could do the work, and those outside the country who could provide the funding.

At the time I met Sister Raphaela I was completing a study of the country’s orphans and was developing a guide to the policies and programs for children in need. I was excited by her vision, so I said, "Sure, I’ll help."

We began with a structure already in place: the country’s 91 Roman Catholic parishes, 300 small Christian communities or outstations, and its Catholic hospitals and clinics, schools and hostels. We began putting up posters throughout the country, proclaiming our theme: "Courage to Fight and Strength to Care." Archbishop Bonifatius Haushiku declared at the official opening of Catholic AIDS Action, "AIDS is a disease, not a sin."

Since one out of four Namibians is Catholic, we could reach many of the country’s residents by reaching Catholics. And since we were able to build on existing church structures and overseas church contacts, we moved right into implementation. As a result, our impact was almost immediate. Donations began flowing in from individuals and small German church organizations that knew and trusted Sister Raphaela’s work. Soon UNICEF, UN-AIDS and Germany’s Misereor sent money for staff training.

We developed a mission statement rooted in biblical text and the life of Jesus: "Acting in the spirit of Christ, Catholic AIDS Action challenges the AIDS pandemic in Namibia with the courage to fight and the strength to care. It builds on Roman Catholic affiliated groups and institutions to inspire and sup-port programs of HIV/AIDS prevention, home-based care, spirituality and support of orphans."

Home-based care and issues of social welfare were readily supported by the church. They reach to the core of what it means to be a Catholic and a Christian: to reach out and serve the whole person spiritually and physically, as both Jesus and the early missionaries did.

It was tougher to find common ground on the issue of AIDS prevention. We wanted to distinguish ourselves from the government and most nongovernmental organizations, which were focused on promoting the use of condoms. We felt that this was an insufficient strategy, given the continued escalation of HIV infections. But we knew that we had to address issues of sexuality and sexual expression openly and honestly. To ignore or condemn condoms would be to invite rejection.

We also knew that "Thou shalt not murder" applied to situations where one partner was infected with HIV and the other was not yet infected. Even for the most religious and loyal Catholics, serious moral dilemmas emerged. After much debate, we attempted to reconcile all perspectives by modifying a set of slogans we had originally heard from Patricio Rojas, Namibia’s representative to the World Health Organization:

•A is for Abstinence before marriage.

•B stands for Be faithful in marriage. This is the Christian way, and it guarantees life. But if you find that you cannot follow this teaching, then choose

•C for Condom, because the alternative is

•D for Death.

Much as we might wish that everyone could fulfill a higher moral standard, we decided that our first priority is to keep people alive.

Despite its humble beginnings, AIDS Action has grown quickly. Thirty trained volunteer groups now provide nationwide home-based family care to people infected with HIV and AIDS. Another 35 groups work on income-producing projects, living programs for people who are already infected, peer support, and outreach. Our prevention program has graduated over 4,000 youngsters in a ten-week UNICEF-sponsored course called "My Future Is My Choice." Last year we opened Namibia’s first AIDS drop-in center. We also sponsored the country’s first national conference on "Living Positively with HIV/AIDS," where President Sam Nujoma spoke to a crowd of 500. We have now established national standards for training and supervising home-based care, as well as care of needy orphans.

Our staff consists of nine Namibians (including six religious sisters) plus four long-term foreign volunteers. As one measure of our diversity, the prayers which we say at the beginning and end of our meetings are offered in nine different languages.

Most of our more than 240 volunteers are religiously motivated, and the vast majority are women. Many are HIV-positive. We often hear volunteers refer to their "desire to help others as long as possible, knowing that I might need help one day too." One volunteer explained that she has chosen to help others in order to serve as a good role model for her daughter. "I can’t control what my husband did to me," she said, referring to the way she contracted HIV "But I can show my family that I’m not completely helpless, and I can still do something good with my life."

Foreign Aid: Does It Harm or Help?

Aid to Africa: So Much to Do, So Little Done

 By Carol Lancaster University of Chicago Press.

Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century

 By Michael Edwards. Earthscan Publications, London.



For 50 years, foreign aid programs have been a standard feature of Western dealings with non-Western places, guided by seldom-questioned notions of assisting "modernization" and "development." In the case of the US., foreign aid was long tied to the nation’s military and geopolitical strategies as defined by the cold war.

As the crusade against communism waned, foreign aid programs had to find new reasons for existing, which is not easy. Though the public wants the government to help end poverty and injustice, it increasingly doubts that aid really helps. Powerful global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, hitherto indulgent of aid agencies and their micro-projects, today prefer to act at the macro level: they want to fix the rules by which poor and "transitional" countries manage their entire economies and workforces, run their governments, and take their places in the world system.

Criticism of foreign aid is not new, but it is now getting acrimonious. More intensive efforts to steer the debate have been coming lately from ideological heavy-hitters like the OECD Development Center in Paris and the World Bank in Washington, as well as from ex-volunteers and ex-staff at aid agencies. In the 1980s books appeared with titles such as Giving Is Taking, Deadly Help and Lords of Poverty. Those titles sound rather timid when stacked against titles that appeared in the late ‘90s: The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity; Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa; and Aiding Violence. The Development Enterprise in Rwanda.

Against this backdrop appear two books on aid to Africa, both bearing titles suggesting hope. A couple of Pollyannas? The books are anything but uncritical or naïve. Their authors are seasoned veterans in the world of aid. Carol Lancaster, who teaches at Georgetown University, has worked on U.S. policy toward Africa as a fellow of various Washington think tanks, as deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa in the Carter administration, and as deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Clinton administration. As a senior engineer, if not an architect, of the "Washington consensus" on reform in Africa, she carries some responsibility for U.S. relations with that continent.

Michael Edwards, who recently joined the Ford Foundation after a stint on the World Bank’s civil society team, comes from the world of private aid agencies (sometimes termed nongovernmental development organizations or NGDOs). He has worked chiefly in Great Britain. Until 1996 he was head of research at Save the Children Fund-UK, a professional agency not to be confused with its controversial cousin, Save the Children USA. He is best known for his focus on the relationship between NGDOs and civil society, a new and lively topic among development experts.

Though the two authors disagree on some important issues, they also share some significant points of agreement. Both agree, for example, that sub-Saharan Africa is in deep trouble. The cruelties of its warlords and the miseries of the people displaced by war are but the most visible and dramatic results of declining economies and the unraveling social fabric. By conventional measures, sub-Saharan Africa is getting poorer. Its recorded domestic output in 1975 (expressed in ‘87 dollars) came to $671 per capita; in ‘97 it had dropped to $518 per capita. Its exports have long been losing purchasing power, and its consumer markets are small and stagnant. Its labor force is poor in skills (the best-educated people emigrate to more prosperous countries), which, along with mounting security concerns, makes it unattractive to investors, foreign or domestic. Much of Africa is drifting to the margins of the world system.

Though progress has been made in infant survival rates and education levels, that progress is terribly slow and can be quickly reversed (and has been in some countries). Absolute numbers of poor people are on the increase. Africans show tremendous ingenuity and stamina in their struggle to survive, but their struggles and strategies are often deliberately kept out of sight of the authorities. Much of their economic activity never registers in official statistics.

And though apartheid and dictatorships have been placed by electoral politics, the management of public affairs in these countries remains weak, and democratic in name only. A ‘96 World Bank report, cited by Lancaster, states that "almost every African country has witnessed a systematic regression of capacity in the last 30 years; the majority had better capacity at independence than they now possess." Edwards concurs: "Africa’s crisis is really one of governance."

What role does foreign aid play in this crisis? On this question, the authors also agree In sub-Saharan Africa (except in oil-producing countries like Nigeria), political independence has been accompanied by a steady rise in dependence on aid. That upward trend has been broken only in recent years. Lancaster cites data showing that foreign aid accounted for 10 percent or more of GNP in some 20 countries during ten or more of the years from ‘70 to ‘93. In most African countries, virtually all public development -- schools, health centers, roads, power -- is paid for by donors.

Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between this rise in aid and decline in development? According to the data, aid has seldom had a statistically significant effect on recorded output one way or the other. Its impact is simply too puny when weighed against that of private investment, technological change and trade. Lancaster’s cautious conclusion is that "aid has had no significant impact, either positive or negative, on economic growth in the region."

Edwards comes to a bolder conclusion: "The best performers in terms both of growth and poverty reduction have been the least dependent on aid projects." Even British economist Paul Mosely, a longtime defender of aid, supports that statement. Mosely recently presented evidence that between 1960 and ‘90 "the net impact of aid . . . [was] neutral overall, probably positive in most Asian countries and almost certainly negative in most African countries." That is, in Africa more aid has meant poorer economic performance.

Lancaster and Edwards agree that aid has rarely helped and sometimes damaged the capacity of Africans to govern their own affairs. Both note that aid has propped up autocratic, winner-take-all, incompetent governments and a violent opposition movement or two. Both see governance in Africa as far too centralized. It lacks the checks and balances of parliaments and organized citizen movements, and it pivots on patronage systems built on kinship and ethnic hierarchies. Competition among these hierarchies drives politics and wars. Because aid is also a kind of patronage system, it has tended to fit neatly into African political life.

As a U.S. policymaker, Lancaster probably felt some pressure to keep quiet about her country’s aid to unsavory African regimes, whose brutality lives on in the violence and disorder of states like Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and Congo-Kinshasa. To her credit, she does touch on the issue. "In these states," she writes, "aid may have unintentionally encouraged the misrule that led to collapse or to civil conflict."

Such wording seems rather coy, as does her circumspect statement that Angola’s government was "challenged by a United States- and South African-backed insurgency." Challenged? This was an all-out war, in which about one out of every ten Angolans perished. It was analogous to what happened in Mozambique, where the South Africans operated without overt U.S. backing but with the same aim of rolling back "communism" and with just as much spilling of blood.

Lancaster also observes that in more than one African country "the accountability of the government to its people . . . gradually [was] replaced by accountability to its major aid donors." This statement (appearing almost as an afterthought at the end of a key chapter) highlights one of the ways that aid has helped destroy what fragile reciprocity may have existed between African states and their citizens. Governments that finance their activities through taxes and fees at least have to negotiate to some extent with their citizens, whereas those that rely on foreign aid focus their attention on the source of that aid. Aid, in other words, helps centralize power -- and not just in African capitals.

African governments have also suffered from deliberate efforts, at the behest of aid agencies with powers over development dogmas, to "shrink the state." In Africa as in Washington, D.C., politicians’ tendency to bloat the armed forces and pad public payrolls to reward their followers or buy off opponents must be checked. But massive downsizing, the slashing of real wages and the degeneration of working conditions for public servants have deprived millions of Africans of whatever minimal access to health care, schooling and responsive public services they once had. In these circumstances, petty corruption has grown, fostering yet more cynicism and disorder in the relation between governments and their citizens.

While both Lancaster and Edwards deplore the collapse of public services, their explanations for this collapse differ. Lancaster indicts African governments but also faults the aid system, pointing to serious but ultimately secondary matters, such as the absurdity of expatriate aid workers doing jobs that Africans could do themselves if their governments could afford to hire them. Edwards, on the other hand, traces a direct line between the erosion of public sector capacity and the imposition of one-size-fits-all policies of structural adjustment driven by international finance agencies during the Reagan-Thatcher years.

Indeed, it is on the bigger issues of overall analysis that Lancaster and Edwards part company. Lancaster aggressively attacks the model of state-led development that flourished in the immediate postcolonial years, noting correctly that Western officials and economists played major roles in designing and promoting it. She regrets the tendency of donors in the ‘70s "to emphasize redistributive goals while downgrading the importance of growth" (although in the preceding chapter she cites evidence that greater equity -- the redistribution of assets and social services -- tends to promote growth).

She welcomes the change that came in the ‘80s, when "aid was used to dismantle the unsustainable development model adopted by most African governments and to urge its replacement with a neoclassical economic vision of free markets, private investment-led growth and minimal government intervention in the economy." She attributes the failure of these reforms to poor local capacities, to the resistance of African interest groups, and to donors’ lack of savvy and backbone in negotiating aid-for-reform deals.

Edwards disagrees. Drawing on the large numbers of studies undertaken by people in the aid world and by independent researchers (few of these studies are cited in Lancaster’s volume), he points out that the structural reforms have largely failed and the situation continues to deteriorate. (This is true not only of Africa. Consider the catastrophe that has befallen Russia since 1990 under the auspices of neoliberal visionaries.) The primary cause, says Edwards, is not African evasion and weakness, but fundamental flaws in thinking about reforms and the blind, undemocratic processes used to impose them.

Lancaster criticizes the lopsided balance of power between donors and their clients, and she often implies that Africans have relinquished power, or failed to call the shots, in their dealings with donors. Yet she appears to be more distressed about programs in which the donors loosen the leash and let African governments make decisions, as in Sweden’s "recipient-oriented" approach in Tanzania. Still, she joins in the rising chorus stressing the importance of recipient "ownership" of development policy, and the need for "demand driven" aid. Africans should draft the broad frameworks and propose the projects -- though, of course, in the end these have to fit within the donors’ strategies and priorities. And indeed most of Lancaster’s book is about how to strengthen donor agencies.

Lancaster systematically compares the ways that the American, French, British, Swedish, Italian and Japanese governments and the World Bank and European Union run their aid systems. Despite her attempts to be even-handed, she has a strong pro-U.S. bias. She goes out of her way, for example, to cite a study praising USAID in South Africa. She might have balanced her account by comparing USAID’s performance with that of other agencies in that country, but she does not. Or she could have cited the extensive evidence of U.S. shortcomings. A 1995 survey of South African NGOs and their dealings with donors concluded: "USAID . . . is widely regarded as administratively incompetent, lacking in responsibility and understanding, and aggressive in its dealings with people."

Insisting that what is important is not the amount of aid but its quality (a point of agreement with Edwards), Lancaster makes a number of sensible proposals for reform which are mainly of interest to specialists, and certainly grist for policy mills inside the Washington beltway.

But will it suffice to retool USAID, the World Bank and the rest, and then persuade (that is, indoctrinate and politically maneuver) African leaders to "own" their policies? I share Edwards’s doubt on this point: "Despite its good intentions, the new vision is permeated by lingering attitudes of control, inequality and standardization. ‘In the past we were wrong, but now we are right.’ Until, that is, we are proved wrong again."

Edwards, despite his skepticism about those peddling the magic bullet against poverty, offers his own formula for foreign aid. He proposes a system driven by demand and joint supervision. Each country would negotiate a long-term, mutually binding compact to integrate domestic and international action, and on that basis receive an "investment entitlement" from one consolidated pot of money channeled through independent local foundations with cross-country representation of donors and recipients. Noting that this kind of idea -- a democratized world fund -- has been put forward before, he states that it could promote local ownership without sacrificing accountability to donors.

He also discusses how to humanize capitalism. Looming large for Edwards are the powers of civil society (which he confusingly treats sometimes as a heroic actor, sometimes as the theater itself), although the political skills developed there "must be translated into the formal political arena to make a real difference.

His argument for "building constituencies for change" is a plea to move beyond the intervention mode that passes for "international cooperation," beyond the patronizing practices of private aid agencies driven by business competition rather than by civil constituencies and emancipatory agendas shared with others. Genuine cooperation across boundaries is possible and necessary. To continue with aid as we know it is to risk diminishing both sides, turning one group into philanthropists and the other into supplicants.

Edwards concludes: "True freedom is attainable only through relations with others, since in an interconnected world I can never be safe until you are secure; nor can one person be whole unless others are fulfilled. That is only possible in a cooperative world. Is that the kind of world we want to live in and bequeath to those we love? If so, our responsibilities are clear."

Who Can Be Saved? (Mark 10:17-31)

Here comes that man again, running up to Jesus with a question about eternal life. We can hear those dreaded words on Jesus’ lips even before the man approaches: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Even before Mark tells us so, we know that the rich young man will turn away grieving, for he has many possessions. And some of us grieve with him as we see him leave, knowing his choice could be ours as well.

I remember the first time I read this story I was seven years old, reading Mark’s Gospel in bed. When I got to verse 25, I was so alarmed that I slammed the Bible shut, jumped out of bed, and went running down the hall. I shook my mother out of a sound sleep. "Mom," I whispered urgently, "Jesus says that rich people don’t go to heaven!"

"We are not rich. Go back to bed," came my mother’s response.

I knew better. I knew I had all I needed plus plenty more. I would later learn of fascinating attempts to soften the text (the use of the word "camel" for "rope," of "eye of the needle" for "a small gate"), but the little girl inside me knew that these words of Jesus were clear and hard and scary

Mark 10:17-31 hangs on the question of eternal life. The rich man wants to know how to get it. The disciples want to know who can have it. And the good news that Jesus offers is this: "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

This story is one of the healing stories. The rich man runs up to Jesus and kneels, just as countless other Jesus-pursuers have done throughout the Book of Mark. The scene is set for him to request and receive healing, and his running and kneeling show that his request is both urgent and sincere. But he is the one person in the entire book who rejects the healing offered him.

"Jesus, looking at him, loved him." Matthew and Luke leave this out. But Mark, always spare with words, takes the space to note that Jesus loves this man. He offers him healing. "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (In Mark, the word "go" is used almost exclusively in the healing stories.)

What is the healing that this man needs? What he lacks is that he does not lack. This man is possessed -- but only by his possessions. Jesus is offering to free him of his possession, to cure him of his excess. But the rich man turns his back.

I grieve too. I have accumulated so much since first reading this text. Am I also possessed, but only of possessions? Am I refusing to be healed by Jesus? What can I do to inherit eternal life? Nothing. For mortals it’s impossible. But not for God. To say we must give up all our wealth in order to be saved puts the burden on us to save ourselves. Neither wealth nor divestment of wealth saves us. God does.

Even Jesus realized he could not save himself. Those who think they can will surely lose their lives. But those who recognize the utter futility of self-reliance, who realize that their salvation really is not possible, will be saved by the God who makes all things possible.

Yes, there is still the problem of having too much stuff. It keeps us from realizing our need for God because we use it as a buffer against vulnerability. We use it to fill the emptiness in our souls. We use it to feel less susceptible to the vagaries of life. It keeps us from seeing how needy we are.

The rich man’s secure status in life led him to keep asking the wrong question: What can I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus’ response was that there was nothing he or anyone else could do. And Jesus told him to release his wealth and give it to the poor -- to grow closer perhaps to the fragility of life, to take his own place among the poor.

The poor, the sick, the demon-possessed and the children of whom Jesus speaks all live close to the fragility of life. They are thus more likely and more able to respond to a vulnerable Christ. The disciples freed themselves of what would stand between them and that fragility and were somehow able to follow the One whose life would soon be a ransom for many. In many ways we have to be like children, or like those who know they are really sick or like disciples who have let go of all the things they once relied on -- in order even to see how much we need Jesus.

What must we do to inherit eternal life? We must let go of all that we have and all that we do that gets in the way of seeing that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. Even then, letting go of it all is beyond our capacity. The hardest news Jesus has is the best news we could get -- our salvation is impossible except for God. "But not for God; for God all things are possible."