By Charles Kiker

January, 2013

Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it? It’s not supposed to be. It’s the title of a book (Copyright 2000) by Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. Professor Putnam chronicles and laments the decline of doing things together in the United States. He found that civic clubs of all kinds were shrinking. Even bowling leagues and teams were in decline. People would rather just bowl as individuals. Hence the title: “Bowling Alone.”

It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows religious life in American that Putnam found churches and other religious institutions to be in decline. And that trend has continued in the dozen or so years since the publication of his book. So much so, that now sociologists and wannabes find “nones” a significant plurality in religious life. These nones are not atheists or agnostics; they are not anti-Christian. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious” in that they have no affiliation with any religious group. They are individualists in their spiritual life.

This has been coming on for a long time. When I was a campus minister in the early ‘70s there was a little ditty some of the college youth liked to sing: “Just me and Jesus got a little thing going . . . Don’t need nobody to tell us what it’s all about.” (more…)

By Charles Kiker

December, 2012

We have been assaulted, insulted, and sickened by the deaths of innocent children in recent days. It was not the first incidence of a “slaughter of the innocents.” Prayerfully it will be the last. But from what we know of the history of human cruelty that is not likely.

We can go all the way back to the Book of Exodus, to the infancy of Moses, for an early demonstration. The Pharaoh of Egypt was getting nervous about all those Hebrew boys being born in his realm, and put out a decree ordering the midwives to kill all the baby boys as they were born. How many were killed? We don’t really know. But Moses was saved by the trickery of his sister and the soft-heartedness of Pharaoh’s daughter.

That incident is echoed in the infancy narrative of Jesus as told by Matthew. Joseph was warned in a dream, and took the child to Egypt, out of Herod’s grasp.

The magi were called to Herod, and they told him of the birth of this king-child. Herod was not pleased about a possible usurper to his throne. The magi were warned in a dream of Herod’s evil intent, and did not report back to him as instructed. Seeing that he had been tricked by the magi, Herod went into a rage, and ordered that all the male babes of Bethlehem under two years old be put to death. Matthew remembered this verse from Jeremiah:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
     weeping and loud lamentation
Rachel weeping for her children,
     She refused to be consoled, because they are no more.

Rachel has wept for her children repeatedly throughout history. She wept for the Jewish children of Germany, gassed and incinerated by the cruelty of Hitler. She wept for Native American children when a blue coated general said that Indian babies were like nits that grow up to be lice, so gave the order to kill them all. She wept when little Amish children were gunned down irrationally in their school a few years back, and she must have sobbed inconsolably a week ago when twenty first graders and six of their teachers and administrators were inexplicably gunned down with an assault rifle—a weapon that the shooter had earlier used to kill his mother. And then the shooter took his own life.

I think it was Joe Stalin who said, “The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a thousand people is a statistic.” And Joe did his part to create many statistics among his own people.

Lest those children and adults of Newtown, Connecticut are thought of simply as statistics, let’s remember them with their names, one by one:

Charlotte Bacon, 6 years old; Daniel Barden, 7; Olivia Engel, 6; Josephine Gay, 7; Ana Marquez-Greene, 6; Dylan Hockley, 6; Madeleine Hsu, 6; Catherine Hubbard, 6; Chase Kowalski, 7; Jesse Lewis, 6; James Mattioli, 6; Grace McDonnell, 7; Emilie Parker, 6; Jack Pinto, 6; Noah Pozmer, 6; Caroline Previdi, 6; Jessica Rekos, 6; Avielle Richman, 6; Benjamin Wheeler, 6; Allison Wyatt, 6

And the adults:

Dawn Hochsprung, school principal; Mary Sherlach, school psychologist; Rachel Davino, teacher; Anne Marie Murphy, teacher; Lauren Rousseau, teacher; Victoria Soto, teacher. Dawn, and Mary, and Victoria gave their own lives in an attempt to save their children, and in fact may have saved some of them.

Let us remember also Nancy Lanza, mother of the shooter; and the troubled soul who was the gunman, Adam Lanza.

A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation,
     Rachel weeping for her children.
She refused to be consoled, because they are no more.

Let us weep with Rachel for these God’s children, and for all the people of Newtown, Connecticut.

 

“Nobody else out there does what you do.”

These words kept emerging as I talked to 100 members of a Pentecostal church in Colorado.  They shared painful stories of an ill-conceived federal prosecution tearing apart their lives and their church.

“Nobody else does what you do.”

It’s true.

The narrative campaigns sponsored by Friends of Justice spell the difference between hope and despair.  

“You saved our lives when no one would listen,” a woman in Louisiana told me a few months ago.  “Without Friends of Justice, my family would still be locked up.”

More than sixty men and women owe their freedom to the intervention of Friends of Justice.

But addressing the punitive roots of bad public policy requires a new conversation, a changing wind. Our narrative campaigns are designed to replace racial fear and resentment with reconciliation and a hunger for biblical justice.

With your help, in 2013 Friends of Justice will launch Mission Viento Contrario, a new kind of narrative campaign. 

Friends of Justice will film a series of documentaries dealing with the plight of undocumented families in the Rio Grande Valley, bringing ordinary men and women from big city suburbs along for the transformative ride.

Our documentaries will provide people in communities of faith, civic organizations and the mainstream media with an opportunity to re-imagine justice, to feel the changing wind of justice moving through the land.

This holiday season, we challenge you to Re-imagine Justice with a generous, tax-deductible donation to Friends of Justice. 

Yours for justice,

Alan Bean

By Charles Kiker

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . .” (from the Declaration of Independence)

All men are created equal? Probably the founding fathers were not using the masculine term “men” in the generic sense of “mankind.” It would seem they meant men. And more specifically white men. At least few if any of them treated females or people of color as their equals.

Is a broadened equality desirable? An equality more comprehensive than that mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, to encompass all humankind, is that kind of equality something we should strive for? (more…)

By Charles Kiker

Ill fares the land
To hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates
And men decay.

Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village” (1730-1774)

Here in the Texas Panhandle, we watched Ken Burns’ documentary on the dust bowl and were reminded of the consequences of the mistreatment of the land leading to that ecological disaster. Ill Fares the Land.

Later we wasted one of the most precious commodities—far more precious than silver, gold, or livestock feed—the non-renewable water from the Ogallala aquifer. A friend who worked in the seed business frequently traveled the dirt roads of Swisher County. He said, only slightly exaggerating, that every bar ditch in Swisher County was a running creek in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Those creeks, along with Tule Creek, run no more!  Ill Fares the Land.

On Black Friday people of faith participated in prayer vigils at Wal-Mart stores across the country, praying for the employees of Wal-Mart, seeking more just wages and health care benefits. Some of my family participated in one of those events at a Metroplex Wal-Mart. We were not picketing Wal-Mart. We were simply praying for their employees, and asking customers entering and leaving the store to pray for them and for other low paid workers in America. Since we were not disruptive, store management ignored us. At the end of our vigil we gave local management a copy of a letter which was sent to corporate management, asking for fair treatment of employees.

Where wealth accumulates—the average full time Wal-Mart associate earns about $15,000 per year. The CEO of Wal-Mart has compensation of over 18 million dollars, over 1,000 times as much as his average associate.

Where wealth accumulates—in 2010 six members of the Walton family had wealth equal to that of the bottom 42% of American families.

Where wealth accumulates and men decay—according to a news item in Amarillo Globe News, November 30, 2012, top executives of Hostess Brands Inc. will receive bonuses totaling up to 1.8 million dollars while they close down the company, putting 18,000 people out of work. The company has not contributed to its employees’ pension funds for the last year.

Where wealth accumulates—according to a Wikipedia article, the CEO of Goldman Sachs had earnings of 16.1 million dollars in 2011. Goldman Sachs was of course too big to fail, and received a massive infusion of low interest federal bailout dollars in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

It is a well-documented fact that wealth is concentrating more and more at the top in our country. And some, myself included, see that as unfair.

A Facebook “friend” not concerned about fairness asked the question, “But what is fair?”

A Federal judge, asked to define pornography, said that he could not define it but he knows it when he sees it. I cannot define “fair,” but I know “unfair” when I see it.

Hebrew law provides for a sabbatical year for land:

When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield, but in the seventh year there shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vine: it shall be a year of complete rest. You may eat what the land yields during its Sabbath—you, your male and female slaves, your hired and your bound laborers who live with you; for your livestock also, and for the wild animals in your land all its yield shall be for food (Leviticus 25:2-7, NRSV).

And for people:

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed. Of a foreigner you may exact it, but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you. There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you . … (Deuteronomy 15:1-6, NRSV).

And in the year of Jubilee—the fiftieth year—all debts are forgiven, and land is returned to its original owner (see Leviticus 25:8 ff.).  It is important to note that in Leviticus 19:33-34 the Mosaic Law commands that the alien residing among the Israelites should be treated as a citizen.

Evidently these provisions helping to guard against gross inequality were not being observed in the time of the prophet Isaiah, circa 700 BC, for Isaiah observes gross inequality, with land and people being abused.

Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land.
The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing:
Surely many houses shall be desolate,
large and beautiful houses without inhabitant.
For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath,
And a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah. (Isaiah 5:8-10, NRSV; a homer is approximately 6.33 bushels, and an ephah is .63 bushels.)

These Old Testament texts show that God was concerned with fairness to the people and for proper treatment of the land.

We cannot follow these texts literally, but it is high time and past time that we take their principles seriously!

“… the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.”  Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, 2012