Amos in New York

All sorts of questions come to the mind of this preacher as I contemplate the implosion of Wall Street. Like: what might Amos say in such a situation?

You recall he was not one of the religious hired hands in ancient Israel. That person’s name was Amaziah. He was pastor of the church—or, as they would say, priest of the sanctuary—at Bethel. It was the king’ sanctuary, so prophets—what we call today preachers—had to be careful what they said. It was more important, evidently, what the king thought than what God thought. That is a tough spot for any proclaimer of the Word.

Amos thought the king should protect the poor, care for the widow, give justice to the weak, and distribute the material goods of the kingdom so all might share in the prosperity of the land.

You can read all about this in the small book of Amos. It is part of the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament. We also call him a Minor Prophet, which is a misnomer if ever there was one. It is a short book, just nine chapters. But that makes it minor in the same since that the Gettysburg Address is minor.

The little book of mostly poetry was a favorite of Martin Luther King, Jr. who liked to quote chapter five and verse twenty-four: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos would ask questions of the king: in this massive billion-dollar bailout, are you helping the rich or are you helping the poor? Are you more concerned about the people who might lose their life savings or the executives who might lose their salaries?

I read today that Lehman’s Brothers Bank in New York filed for bankruptcy; but before they did they set aside $2.5 billion dollars in a bonus pool to pay workers at the New York office. Last year their chief executive made $34 million.

Police in New York will spend hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to fight street crime: robbery, drug use, bad checks, unpaid rent, parking fines. These are normally the offenses of the poor, street people who have little to eat and often nowhere to sleep. They will be arrested and prosecuted.

But at Lehman Brothers, and a dozen other high and mighty firms, the white collar criminals will escape prosecution. Instead of losing their freedom for bringing the world to the brink of chaos or even losing their jobs for mismanaging billions of dollars, they will be bailed out and evidently receive rewards. The American government, led by the former executive at Goldman Sacks, will pay them handsomely for their work.

I think Amos would have something to say about some of this. But he would be told to shut up. “This is the king’s sanctuary,” he would be told. “You know nothing of the intricate rules of international finance. Go read your Bible and stick to your own business.”

But today, it is Amos that we quote, and Amaziah whose name we cannot remember.

The Palin Predicament: Gushee versus Land

Last Monday David Gushee, professor at Mercer University, wrote an article entitled “The Palin Predicament.” It was published in the national newspaper, USA TODAY. He contented that southern evangelicals were culturally conditioned to resist the election of a woman to a place of national power, especially since they routinely deny women places of leadership in their churches.

Richard Land, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, took sharp exception. He wrote a column for Baptist Press contending that Southern Baptists distinguish between the home and church, on the one hand, and all other places of employment, on the other. Biblical rules of male leadership apply to the congregation and the family, but nowhere else. This frees southern evangelicals, he wrote, to restrict women in the home and church but free them elsewhere.

But he is wrong, and for two reasons.

First, Southern Baptists and other Southern Evangelicals do not limit their restrictions on women to the congregation and the home, as Land contends. In fact, they extend their limitations to every sphere over which they have control. Land could not name one single position of influence and power among Southern Baptists now held by a woman: not leading a Board of Trustees, not directing a seminary or agency, not even convening a gathering or convention.

One SBC seminary recently fired a professor because she was a woman; women, they claimed, are not supposed to teach men. It has been just a couple of years ago that a prominent female preacher who carries the name Graham was disinvited as a speaker to a gathering of preachers solely because she was a woman. And just this month the Baptist book stores removed from their sales rack a magazine published by another denomination that featured a cover story of female pastors. The fact is that the Southern Baptist Convention has both written and unwritten policies against women in charge, and I suspect Dr. Land is simply too embarrassed to admit this.

Second, this restriction of women to second-class status in the church and family shapes what little boys and girls think about their future. If these children grow up seeing males always in charge and females always sitting in silence they learn the cultural lessons. It is no co-incidence that women are rarely elected to public political office in those states dominated by the Southern Baptist Convention. This coheres with data from a 2007 research poll conducted by Baylor University that says 44% of evangelicals believe that men are more suited to political leadership than women.

It seems clear to everyone that if a woman can be vice-president of the United States, she should also be elected vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention; and if electing a woman as vice-president of the country is to say she is qualified to serve as President of the United States, then it should follow as night follows day that a woman is qualified to serve as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. There certainly are women who are available for such election but I will bet my money that it will never happen, regardless of what Land writes; and this is why Gushee is right and Land is wrong.

But Land could prove his critics wrong by standing at the next annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention and nominating a woman as their president. We shall see if he has the conviction and nerve to do it.

Prayer Circles in Cyber Space

Here is the best way I know to keep in touch with friends and family during a medical crisis. It is called Caring Bridge and the web site is http://www.caringbridge.org.

For several months now my friend Philip Wise has maintained a report page on this site; http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/philipwise. He writes about his medical condition and his treatment at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Every time he posts a new report—I suppose we could call it a blog but he writes only about once a week—the Caring Bridge site sends an email to everybody who has signed up on his contact list.

Feel free to visit the site and sign up yourself if for no other reason than to see how it operates. It would be nice, however, if you joined us in prayer for Philip. His weekly updates help me keep my congregation here in Lexington, Kentucky up-to-date on Philip’s situation. There is also a place, as you will see, to email a message back to Philip.

Philip is a minister from Alabama living in Lubbock, Texas. He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer less than six months ago. He has been on the caring end of many sick people during his long career as a pastor but now this new web site, Caring Bridge, helps his many friends keep in touch with him. He says he has received thousands of cards, calls, and emails from people all over the country who have tracked his treatment through the web site.

I share this with you because you might need a communication tool like this in the near future; or I might, who knows?

NEWS: I want to report to all of you that the grand opening of my son Ike’s studio at Gallerie Solliel in downtown Lexington last night was a smashing success. It was a clear, warm evening and more than five hundred people came to his exhibition. It was part of the Gallery Hop. See for yourself: http://www.ikemoody.com

Tomorrow is Sunday so I shall rest from my blogging but late in the evening or early Monday morning I will weigh in on what one writer called the “Palin Predicament” of Southern Evangelicals. It drew a sharp rebuttal from a defender of the ecclesiastical glass ceiling for women—see http://www.bpnews.org/BPnews.asp?ID=28959. Should be interesting!

The Moral Life of the Unborn

Yesterday I registered my resistance to calling an unborn child a “person.” Today I want to address the subject of the moral state of the unborn child.

But first, let’s begin with a text of Scripture, Genesis 2.7: “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” The created thing becomes a living soul when he starts to breath.

In the Bible the “soul” is often a synonym for what we today call the self. I am a soul and you are a soul; a soul is the union of flesh and spirit. It is the soul that makes the human animal so different from all other animals; we are a soul, whales are not. (I would say dogs are not but that would generate more heated protest than anything I might write about a person!)

It is the soul that falls into sin; it is the soul that is redeemed; it is the soul that rejoices in God; it is the soul that struggles between right and wrong.

Is an unborn child a soul? The book of Genesis seems to teach that he or she becomes a soul only when he or she emerges from the womb and begins to breath: that is, takes on a life distinct and increasingly independent from the mother.

So is an unborn child a soul? Before you answer too quick consider this: is the unborn soul a moral being, capable of good and ill, subject to condemnation and in need of redemption?

Historically, the Christian church has taught that moral agency begins with birth or sometime after birth. Many Protestants have the idea of “the age of accountability.” Many Christian theologians—not this one—have taught that children are contaminated with (original) sin from birth; this is why they advocate baptism soon after birth—to remove the taint of sin.

But does this contamination extend into the womb? If so, why has there been no teaching on the moral state of the unborn? If so, why do we wait until birth to baptize or christen?

These are not silly questions. The debate about life, choice, and abortion has generated political and theological assertions that push us to think about these things. Just as I rejected “personhood” yesterday, today I reject the notion that unborn children are moral agents, not a soul in the biblical sense of the word.

Human Life and Personhood

There are several reasons why I have never jumped on the “Personhood” bandwagon when it comes to unborn children.

I believe that life in the womb is God-ordained human life; that is a theological assertion. But to call that living human being a “person” is to interject a legal term into the discussion. A “person” has rights and responsibilities under the law and those rights go much further than the “right to life.”

For instance: if a two month old fetus is a “person” under the law, he or she is entitled to legal representation independent of the mother or father, he or she would have standing in court for damages done by his or her parents during gestation, and he or she would have claims on property and income.

More than that, the constitution of the United States directs the government to take a census every ten years and count every person. This would be problematic if millions of these “persons” are hidden in somebody’s womb. This is not trivial, as the number of “persons” in a region determines how many representatives that area is entitled to and how much money it is entitled to. These are not minor things. If we declare that a fetus is a person, would a parent be legally required to report that to some government office?

We have never treated the unborn as “persons”—they do not receive a birth certificate (or a conception certificate, which would be more appropriate)—they do not receive a Social Security number—they are not granted insurance policies—and they are not embalmed and buried (unless death occurs late in the pregnancy, and I cannot remember reading very many pre-natal obituaries in the newspaper.

A birth date, not a conception date, is still the standard in determining age. A driver’s license is granted when a person reaches 16 years of life—which means 16 years since birth. How old are you is the common language? We mean: how long since your birth? Age from birth affects things like school, military service, and even marriage.

This discussion about “personhood” is important these days because the movement to outlaw abortion has adopted a new strategy: to pass state constitutional amendments declaring that the unborn child—the fetus—is a person. On November 4, for instance, voters in Colorado will vote on such an amendment.

Tomorrow I will write about the theological description of the unborn child. That also is fraught with complications.