Archive for June, 2005

Spain moves forward

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 30, 2005
in GLBTQ and Politics
. 37 Comments

Happy news from Spain today: 

Just two days after Canadian members of Parliament passed same-sex marriage legislation, Spanish lawmakers have voted to allow gays and lesbians to legally marry.

We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told the chamber. "After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality."

Zapatero’s Socialist government proposed the legislation shortly after winning the 2004 elections.

Spanish gay couples can get married as soon as the law is published in the official government registry, which could come as early as Friday, or within two weeks at the latest, the parliament’s press office said.

One has to wonder whether Spain’s gays and lesbians have George Bush to thank!  After all, Zapatero’s Socialists were swept into power in March 2004 as a result of a massive voter backlash against Spanish Conservative support for the American intervention in Iraq.   I must confess, I rather like the idea that the legalization of gay marriage in Spain is an unintended consequence of the Iraq War.  Under Franco, homosexuality was a crime; less than thirty years later, what was once the most reactionary state in Western Europe has become only the third country (after Belgium and the Netherlands) on the continent to give full equality to gays and lesbians.    Who could ever have predicted that Spain would do this before, say, Norway or Sweden or Germany?  Surely the Iraq story factors into the equation.

For social conservatives across the globe, this must be disheartening news.   How can the right fight coordinated battles against gay marriage in Spain, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, and elsewhere simultaneously?   Here in the States, I hear nothing from the Republican-dominated Congress about the Federal Marriage Amendment.   What say you, social conservatives?  Has your fearless leader betrayed you?  The president champions Social Security reform, he champions the war in Iraq, but where are his stump speeches for a national marriage amendment?   Are you disappointed?  Frustrated?  Is it beginning to become evident that though you may have fought the good fight, whatever happens in individual American states cannot stop the inexorable advance of full equality for gays and lesbians across the globe?

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m gloating.  But I am happy that the anti-gay backlash that seemed so potent last November seems to have faded so quickly.   I’m not yet ready to predict that the anti-equality forces have hit their zenith, but I suspect that they’re awfully close.

On a related note, see this post on Canadian marriage and gay history by my fellow Cliopatriarch, Greg Robinson.

I’m off to give summer midterms.

Thursday Short Poem: Kooser’s “Student”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 30, 2005
in Poetry
. 0 Comments

Ted Kooser is currently our poet laureate.  I like this poem very much; it reminds me both of myself twenty years ago and of more than a few of my students today.

Student

The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
into wave after wave of responsibility,
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,

paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak
breaks the cold surf. He’s got his baseball cap on

backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

Surely anyone who survived college and grad school knows what it is to live the concluding lines!  (And I always wore my baseball caps backwards in those days; thankfully, I’ve outgrown that.)

Loving the alien, and paying him too

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 29, 2005
in Christianity, Ethnicity and Politics
. 46 Comments

For the last couple of years, we’ve lived in a small condominium complex in northwest Pasadena.  It’s a "transitional" neighborhood, but we’ve put a lot of time and effort into improving the look of our block in recent months.  For the most part, our fellow members of our Homeowners Association share our vision for our townhouses.   (I’m the temporary president of the board of directors of the HOA).  But in the past week or two, we’ve had a major conflict over the issue of hiring undocumented workers to handle landscaping and minor construction tasks around the property.

We are just a few blocks away from two large hardware stores and a lumber yard.  Day laborers, almost all Mexicans and Central Americans, line nearby streets looking for someone, anyone, willing to hire them for a few hours of work.  In response to complaints from residents about trash and loitering, the City of Pasadena opened a day laborer center on Lake Avenue, less than a mile from our home.  Folks wishing to employ workers for the day can simply drop in to the job center and hire as many or as few as they like.

To me, it is unthinkable to question the immigration status of those whom I employ on a temporary basis around my home.  Indeed, not only is it unthinkable, it seems fundamentally at odds with the gospel.  (More on that in a moment).  But one of my neighbors is very uncomfortable, for ideological reasons, with employing temporary workers who might be undocumented.  He told me, in very strong language, that hiring "illegal aliens" was pushing California towards Third World status.  Instead, we ought to be hiring American citizens to do all of our work for us, even if that meant paying higher wages.  (My neighbor and I both work for public entities; we are both members of public sector unions.)  His was, in a sense, a progressive argument: hiring the undocumented for cash-only transactions drives down wages for the American working class.  My counter-argument was that by hiring those who need work the most desperately, we are helping to lift the most marginalized out of poverty.  Trouble is, I think both of our arguments have some merit.

Whether worshiping in Catholic, evangelical, Mennonite, or Episcopal churches, I’ve always belonged to congregations that had strong feelings about welcoming all immigrants.  Here’s the Mennonite policy, based on Leviticus 19:33-34:

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.

Is it loving an alien as myself to ask to see identity papers before hiring someone?  If I am called to treat the alien as if he were native-born, how can I as a Christian not offer him work?

In general, we Christians are called to follow the laws of the secular state.  We are to render obedience to Caesar, save in those instances when Caesar’s imperatives conflict directly with God’s call to radical, biblical, universal justice.  Civil disobedience has a place, after all; I am convinced that Christians are called to be disobedient to the state when the state demands that we treat folks differently based upon their immigration status. 

But those of us who hire the undocumented must be very careful not to exploit them financially.  After all, giant corporations regularly hire "illegal aliens", not out of biblical compassion but out of a desire to save money by hiring vulnerable, non-union labor.   Having hired many, many day laborers over the years to help with everything from moving to landscaping to very minor construction, I’ve always made sure to pay wages that are well above the minimum.   (I’ve never hired anyone for under $20 an hour, frankly, and I’ve often paid more.  Indeed, I try to pay day laborers what I think I would pay someone whose name I got from the Yellow Pages, though that is often tough to gauge.) 

I know that many of the men I’ve hired are sending money home to Mexico, Central, and South America.   Our church has an ongoing, long-term mission project in a small Sinaloa town near the Pacific.  On my visits there, I’ve seen the tremendous good that the money sent home by those working in America has brought about.  (When I visited my fiancee’s family last year in rural northeastern Colombia, I saw the same enormous benefits that remittances from America had provided.)  When I hire a day laborer, and pay him well, I’m not merely enabling him to eat; I’m helping to support an entire community.  And as a Christian, I believe I am called to love a Latin American community every bit as much as one here in the United States.   Yes, my salary is paid by taxes — but villages in Mexico and Colombia survive on the money I pay to their sons and daughters here.  Is it not contradictory to the gospel to prefer one’s own people to those who live abroad? 

My neighbor and I are at a bit of impasse.  If he wants to insist on hiring only documented workers to work around our place, I’m happy to let him make those hiring decisions.  I will not, under any circumstances, ask to see a laborer’s identification.  My concern is simply that whomever we hire be paid justly.

I’d like to hear from my fellow Christians or other people of faith on this issue, please.  I’m sure I’ve got plenty of readers who are staunch opponents of hiring the undocumented.  I know the rhetoric, thanks.  This is one of those times when, frankly, I want to limit the discussion to the intersection of issues of faith, immigration, and obedience.  Your cooperation is appreciated.

Danica Patrick, Lawrence Summers, and grace in the face of sexism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 28, 2005
in Feminism and Sports
. 59 Comments

First off, if anyone subscribes/buys the TLS, please pick up a copy of this week’s issue; my brother’s book is very favorably reviewed within the pages of the world’s most important literary magazine.  No link to the review yet.

I read the National Review on-line, even though I think it’s a silly magazine.  This morning, Carrie Lukas writes about Danica Patrick, the racing sensation:

The Indy Racing League’s new rookie phenomenon, Danica Patrick, is breaking ground — and not just with her performance on the race track. Last month, Patrick finished fourth in the Indianapolis 500, the best finish by a woman in the history of the nearly century-old race. Her response to sexist remarks made by Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone, during a “congratulatory” phone call, deserves equally enthusiast applause.

When talking to Patrick, Ecclestone remarked that “women should be all dressed in white like all other domestic appliances.” He also repeated this bizarre sentiment in an interview. This wasn’t the first time Ecclestone has made offensive remarks. According to an Associated Press story written about the phone call, in 2000 Ecclestone told Autosport Racing magazine that for a woman to compete in Formula One, “she would have to be a woman who was blowing away the boys. … What I would really like to see happen is to find the right girl, perhaps a black girl with super looks, preferably Jewish or Muslim, who speaks Spanish.”

Patrick’s reaction to the weird, sexist comments? She shrugged them off: “I was a bit confused. …So I don’t really know what to think about it. I don’t know if he was talking about someone else or the majority or what, I’m not really sure. Or, maybe that’s his real feeling. If that’s the case, then you know, [it] doesn’t really matter because I’m racing in the Indy Racing League."

So far, so good.  Then it’s Lukas who gets weird:

It’s a refreshing change from the overreaction we have come to expect when someone is confronted with offensive behavior. Patrick could have called for Ecclestone’s resignation or fueled a media frenzy to investigate the “boys club” of auto racing. She could have demanded that Formula One create a nonprofit seeking to achieve greater gender balance in auto racing.

But she didn’t. She’s in the Indy Racing League, after all. Some jerk’s remarks are small potatoes.

Compare that reaction to the hysteria surrounding Harvard President Larry Summers’s comments about gender at an academic conference earlier this year. When Summers dared to suggest that it was worth exploring how innate differences between the genders contribute to the dearth of women in the upper echelons of science — a legitimate line of inquiry — female professors and their radical feminist sisters went berserk. They weren’t just offended, they were personally distraught. One wilting violet described nearly fainting after hearing Summers’s offensive words.

Bold is mine.  Gosh, Carrie.  Where to start?  Danica Patrick was responding to a personal insult directed at her (by Ecclestone, whose Formula One circuit is about as exciting as watching paint dry, and I say that as a former F1 fan).  The critics of Summers were responding to a staggering generalization about women as a whole.  Ecclestone, as Patrick points out, has no oversight over IRL racing in this country, so his opinion is essentially irrelevant.  Feminists were angered by Summers because, as president of Harvard, he is in a position of authority over thousands of bright young women whose aptitude for hard science he openly questioned.  In other words, Ecclestone was personally offensive to Patrick; Summers was professionally offensive to hundreds, even thousands of women in the sciences.  I’ll agree that Danica Patrick showed grace in her response, but the offense was simply not comparable.

I’ve known lots of women in the sciences.  A good friend of mine got her Ph.D. from Caltech in chemistry in the 1980s, when it was far more male-dominated than it is now.  Every day, she endured the humor at her expense; almost every day, someone questioned whether she belonged there.  She succeeded, and indeed, she still loves Caltech.  But she understands why women were "distraught" at what Summers had said.  When the legitimacy of years of work is called into question because of your sex by the highest leader at your university, to be personally hurt is hardly an overreaction.

Ecclestone’s "appliance" remark was so odd that even folks in the anti-Danica camp seemed a bit bewildered by it.  His influence in Danica’s racing league is somewhere between negligent and non-existent.   Patrick could afford to shrug off his bizarrely offensive words because they had no real power to affect her career.  Summers, as president of America’s most prestigious private university, has infinitely more weight in the lives of women scientists than Ecclestone does in the Indy Racing League.  Patrick’s personal graciousness, as laudable as it is, cannot be used as an exemplar of how feminists ought to respond to the inexcusable remarks of a man in Summers’ position.

Home from Michigan

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 27, 2005
in Chinchillas
. 6 Comments

I’m in my office early on a Monday morning, catching up on tons of weekend e-mail and the like. 

Friday night, my fiancee and I hopped a red-eye to Detroit.  We are moving forward on the development of our Pet Homes for Ranch Chinchillas charity, and as part of that process, flew to Michigan to meet with Sally and Adam, the young couple who originally came up with the whole "Pet Homes for Ranchies" project.   Sally, Adam, my fiancee and I constitute the initial board of directors, though we have a couple of experienced chinchilla folks in mind whom we intend to ask to join us. 

Sally and Adam live in Jackson, Michigan, just over an hour west of Detroit.  We showed up late Saturday morning at their place, bleary-eyed but ready to talk chins.  The highlight of our visit (photos were taken, and will be up on the blog later this week) was spending quite some time with their forty-two wonderful chinchillas.  We got lots of chinnie kisses, rubbed lots of noses, fed a few treats, and watched a dozen dust baths.  We got to hold a few former ranch chinchillas who have already been saved from pelting, and that was very emotional for us.

We’re all prepared to make re-homing ranch chinchillas a major part of our lives over the next few years.  There was much talk of the technical and legal aspects of running a 501(c)3, but also of how we hope to reach out not only to the chin community, but to the wider "pet world."  So few folks really understand how remarkable chinchillas are!  They are both much more work — and much more reward — than other rodents.  No offense to hamster lovers, but chins can live to twenty years; they require carefully monitored diets and a cool environment.  (Far too many folks assume chins can endure heat; they die above 75 degrees.  Next to pelting, heat stroke is the leading cause of untimely death for chinchillas in this country.  Love a chin, prepare to lay out capital for air conditioning!)  But the love these little creatures give is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I say that as a lifelong pet lover who was fortunate to grow up surrounded by dogs, cats, and horses.

There are so many organizations out there that deserve time and money.  In the midst of all of the suffering in the world, how can we justify giving so much time and attention — not to mention financial resources — to these small animals?  In a world of grinding poverty and unspeakable human suffering, is it irresponsible, perhaps even selfish,  to spend so much and work so hard to save cute little rodents from being pelted?  I’ve prayed a lot about that in recent months, recognizing that many of my fellow animal rights activists have shown a disturbing disregard for the well-being of their fellow humans.    I don’t like to think of myself as someone whose compassion is saved primarily for the adorable, the cuddly, and the soft!

But my beloved and I do tithe, and what we are giving to the Pet Homes for Ranch Chinchilla project does not affect what we are called to give to God.  We also believe that it is a fundamental good to struggle against all forms of suffering, whether that suffering is endured by humans or animals.   Chins, unlike almost other household pets in the United States, are regularly killed for their fur.  Imagine how anguished dog and cat owners would be in this country if they knew the breeds they loved were being turned into coats on a daily basis!  While we would love to see pelting ended, the goal of our charity is not to lobby for change.  The goal is to save chinchillas, as individuals or entire herds.  To do that, we will work cooperatively with individual ranchers.   No other organization in North America is single-mindedly dedicated to providing every chinchilla with the opportunity for a high-quality of life from birth until natural death.   

Ultimately, building the Kingdom of God is about more than justice for human beings. It is about good stewardship of the entire planet, and compassion and mercy and love for all of creation.  Though Scripture tells us that humans were made uniquely in God’s image, all life shares some aspect of the Creator.  When we protect and care for the most vulnerable parts of His creation, whatever they may be, I believe we are practicing intelligent, loving stewardship.  And I believe that a few of us have been called to protect and care for chinchillas, not because they are the only creatures that matter, but because their need is so great.

For what it’s worth, we did enjoy our whirl-wind visit to Michigan, despite the heat and oppressive humidity.  We spent some time in Ann Arbor, which has wonderful restaurants, and toured the massive campus of the university.  Yesterday, we drove around many different parts of Detroit, and had some particularly good ice cream in Grosse Pointe.  We arrived home just before midnight last night, absolutely exhausted but very happy, with lots of good ideas for the charity and even more love for chinchillas in our hearts.

Mea culpas and clarifications

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 24, 2005
in Christianity and Relationships
. 6 Comments

Rilina and Camassia have posted strong responses to two different aspects of my Bulworth post. 

Rilina, quoting me, writes:

To say interracial dating and marriage is a "fundamental social
good" inevitably implies, however unintentionally, that non-interracial
dating is somehow a less valid choice.

Yes, that was unintentional on my part.  I am not a better person because I am engaged to be married to a non-white woman today than I was in my second and third marriages (both to white women, one of whom looked enough like me that we were frequently  mistaken for siblings.)  But I also believe that interracial dating, particularly when it leads to marriage and children, has a salutatory effect upon the broader culture that marrying within one’s own race does not.  The effect, of course, is of increased tolerance and understanding, as well as a blending of cultures.  That doesn’t make interracial relationships more virtuous, but it’s what I meant by a "fundamental social good."  I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer.  Rilina, writing from a Korean-American perspective, has some other interesting points as well.

Camassia — as well as Mythago in my comments section — are troubled by my support for inter-religious dating.  The original thrust of my post was aimed squarely at ethnic issues, not religious ones.  But writing quickly in the comments section, I allowed myself to be carried away by suggesting that inter-faith relationships are relatively easy.  I wrote:

I can’t tell you how many serious inter-faith couples I know who
work very, very hard to honor both aspects of their heritage. I know
what it is to go to synagogue on a Friday and church on Sunday and to
believe both are vital. It makes for long weekends!

The cross is not hummus. But just as we can blend our culinary
traditions, we can blend and synthesize our religious traditions
without compromising the distinctives of either. I have seen it done,
seen it done by family and friends dear to me. It isn’t easy. But it
can work.

In reply, Camassia writes:

For every couple Hugo knows that seems capable of being permanently
bireligious, I wonder how many there are who find they can’t bear the
tension and settle into one church — or no church. In fact, the more
normal story that I’ve encountered in my life is that when two people
of different faiths fall in love, one of them converts before the
wedding. This is especially true since one of them is usually more
devout than the other.

Another
question I brought up earlier in the thread is what happens to the
descendants of these couples. They obviously can’t go on keeping the
family permanently in two religions, so they must either pick one,
leave religion entirely, or develop some syncretic version. Syncretic
religions exist, some quite successfully. But they are definitely different
religions, not big tents that somehow embrace more than one religion at
a time. Since Hugo normally positions himself as the more evangelical
Christ-centered believer in his liberal-pluralist congregation, it’s
weird that he’s advocating a position that seems destined to turn the
world into a Unitarian soup. I can’t help wondering if there’s
something else going on here, that I’m not quite perceiving.

Well, I know some lovely Unitarians.  (Father, stepmother, and sisters, for the record.)  But Camassia is right:  it is kind of soupy, and there isn’t a lot of meat to chew on.    There’s no question that it’s easier to live as part of a community when you and your spouse share the same beliefs about the nature of the divine and what it is we are called to do with our lives!   Camassia is right: I am an evangelical in the sense that I believe Christ to be my savior.   I consider myself in "personal relationship" with Him.  Would I want my children to have such a personal relationship with Him?  Of course.  Do I believe it possible that they could find happiness, fulfillment, and even Salvation without knowing Christ as I do?  Yes, I do.  I’m not going to comment on my fiancee’s faith, mind you.  But I can say that at least at this stage of my life, I believe I can be both faithful to Christ and faithful to a relationship with someone whose views on Him may be different from my own.  (Folks, please don’t press further on this subject.  Thanks.)

Lastly, I made a number of quick remarks in the comments section which clearly upset some of my Jewish readers.  Upon reflection, writing glibly about the "dreidl and the cross" was offensive, and I apologize.  I ought to have done a better job of limiting the post to a discussion of interracial dating, marriage, and reproduction.

I’ll be away from the computer this weekend, folks.

 

Considering Porn Sunday

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 24, 2005
in Faith, Feminism, Porn and Sexuality
. 6 Comments

One of the problems with posting so often is that one has a hard time keeping up with the different comment threads.   Call it my ENFP flightiness, or my Gemini nature, but I can’t stay on a single topic for long.  Apologies to those who are waiting for me to respond on everything from interreligious marriage to the future of the Anglican Communion to the men’s movement.  I keep telling myself to post less often, and make the posts I do put up more reflective. 

But it’s Friday, and Friday is a day for lighter things.  I’m a big fan of the ministry of XXX Church: the #1 Christian Porn Site.  Yes, it’s absolutely work-safe.    It’s the project of two young Christians, Mike Foster and Craig Gross.  Rather than providing the usual anti-porn bromides, XXX Church works daringly and bravely with the porn industry.  They’ve put up booths at adult industry trade shows, and have done direct outreach to those who produce and perform in porn, and they’ve even developed a working friendship with porn director "Jimmy D" — at whose non-Christian daughter’s wedding they plan to officiate.

The graphics are slick and enticing.  The theology is simple and sound.  They’ve got two big projects in the works, the first of which is  National Porn Sunday (October 9, 2005):

For some it is ludicrous to link three X’s with church. For others
it’s long overdue. The one undeniable truth that we can’t ignore is the
blatant push for all things sexual in our society. It is out of
control, from Saturday morning cartoons to the prime time line up on
the networks and cable channels. PornSunday seeks to drive the
conversation about pornography in our churches, families and lives.
PornSunday wants to bring healing and recovery to those struggling with
pornography.

It’s not a small problem:


A 2003 survey from Internet Filter Review reported that 47 percent of
Christians admit pornography is a major problem in their homes.

• An internet survey conducted by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in
2002 found 30 percent of 6,000 pastors had viewed internet porn in the
last 30 days.


• A Christianity Today Leadership Survey in 2001 reported 37 percent of pastors have viewed internet porn.


• Family Safe Media reports 53 percent of men belonging to the
Christian organization Promise Keepers visit porn sites every week.

I’ve written bluntly about porn before.   But I confess we haven’t spent much time talking about pornography with the kids at youth group.  I think that I’d like to see that change this  year, perhaps in conjunction with the Porn Sunday project of XXX Church.   I know that virtually all of my teenagers  have been exposed to porn, and judging from what I’ve heard from a few of them, a not insignificant number "consume it" (meaning view it and masturbate) regularly.  From both a feminist standpoint and a Christian standpoint, porn is intensely troublesome.  (Pace, my pro-porn feminist allies.  I am not unaware of your arguments.)   And given how "wired" teenagers are today, no age group is more likely to have their view of sexuality distorted by pornography than those under 20.

At All Saints, we rarely here about sexual morality from the pulpit.  If the word "pornography" has been used in a sermon, I haven’t heard it!  Talking about porn is embarrassing.  We’d much rather talk about justice for garment workers, or the death penalty, or Iraq.  Focusing on these worthy but yet distant concerns keeps us from having to look to closely at the messy intimate details of our private lives. This fall, using the Porn Sunday material that Gross and Foster have developed, I want to see All Saints tackle this issue with the youth. I want us not to shy away from speaking (prophetically, naturally) about pornography and sexual imagery in the lives of our youth.  And I want to challenge my "kids" and my peers to confront their own relationships with porn, and to be accountable for their most private of actions.

We’ll see how this flies at All Saints.   I don’t expect a sermon on porn from the pulpit (though I would be delirious if we got one), but that doesn’t mean we can’t hit the subject head-on on a Wednesday night. If we can call prophetically for inclusion for gays and lesbians in the life of the church, we can ask young people to live out their Christian values with what they watch and with what they choose to use to arouse themselves!

And the second big project from XXX Church?  Why, it’s Wally the Wiener!  (Yes, still work-safe).  Visit Wally, and take his challenge.  (Yes, it’s rather obviously directed at men, and ignores the many women who struggle with addiction to porn.  But it’s still a fun and useful tool.)

Here at the evil cackle club, self-loathing is practiced daily.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2005
in Feminism and Men and Masculinity
. 67 Comments

The folks over at Stand Your Ground are spending more time on me than I deserve.  (So too are the boys at Mancoat Forum, but they password protect their site.)

It’s the usual drivel, but it’s entertaining.  Shades of Pale writes:

I find this guy to be evil, and nothing short of utter shunning is sufficient for such a one.

Gosh, they don’t seem to shun me very often. 

Mr. Bad, regular visitor to this site, writes at SYG:

Folks, Hugo’s a nipple-piercing, thrice-married, feminist, women’s studies professor who claims to know about not only healthy masculinity, but also what is involved in healthy marriages. As I’ve to said to many a feminist there: Bullshit. Hugo’s sources for healthy, normal masculinity are Michael Kimmel, Michael Flood and the gang at NOMAS. ‘Nuff said.

Like I said, IMO Hugo should stick to what he knows, i.e., feminist and queer studies. I stand by my assertion that despite alleged "macho men husbands gagging re. this site," you folks here have a lot more accurate, reasonable and mainstream views of healthy masculinity than they do over at Hugo’s feminist cackle club.

Am I the head chicken at the cackle club?  The rooster?  Oh, and before I forget, Michael Kimmel will be on the Glenn Sacks show this Sunday.  Tune in!

And the mysterious Typhonblue:

If Hugo was gay he would have to connect to men on some level and that he cannot do. He is completely identified with women. He isn’t able to reconcile himself to masculinity as *any* part of his personality, a reconciliation which is necessary in order to be attracted to a man. Therefore his incapable of functioning as a female-identified transgender who has sex with men. (Maybe as a lesbian one, which seems to be quite chic lately.)

What you’re looking at is the physical manifestation of the "vagina man" psychological condition. A male who is sexually functional with women but has never, in his life, identified with men.

That’s terrific!  I’ll share that with my boys in youth group.  (Or maybe not).  Sight.  I suppose vicious armchair psychologizing is the sincerest form of flattery.   

I’m going to issue the same challenge to the Stand Your Ground folks I’ve issued before.  Tell me what you are doing to reach out to young men.  I’m a mentor to several individual teenage boys at church, and I work as a youth leader and confirmation teacher.  I lead all-male mini-retreats at All Saints.  I also teach courses on men and masculinity.  Besides trying to figure out what peculiar perversity lies beneath my surface, what are you folks doing to reach the next generation of young men?  How many hours a week are you giving? 

After all, guys, do you really want to leave the youth of America (or even Pasadena) in the hands of pro-feminists like me? 

Reflection on Nottingham

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2005
in Christianity and GLBTQ
. 19 Comments

In a widely expected but very close vote, the Anglican Consultative Council has voted to exclude the American and Canadian churches from its meetings for the next three years.   The American and Canadian churches were not permitted to take part in the vote, which was 30-28 to exclude them from ACC policy-making meetings until 2008.

It’s not a good decision from the standpoint of most progressives.  Of course, the closeness of the vote is interesting indeed.  Traditionalists in the church (who oppose the American and Canadian liberal position on homosexuality) cannot argue that theirs is the position of the overwhelming majority of Anglicans worldwide.  Had everyone who is usually allowed to vote in ACC meetings been permitted to do so, the vote would have gone the other way.

The vote came after a very strong attempt Tuesday by progressive American Episcopalians to explain our position on homosexuality.   All Saints Pasadena priest Susan Russell, president of our national organization of GLBTQ Episcopalians, was the lead presenter.  The full text of her address is here.  She has some very good bits; I loved this piece on the "ex-gay" movement:

You have heard and will hear stories of those who understand themselves to be "healed of their homosexuality" — those who tell moving and compelling stories of God healing them of an unhealthy lifestyle — freeing them to become fully and wholly the person God created them to be. I do not doubt the sincerity of their witness and I praise God if they have found place of healing and health. I do not question their healing — I question what it is that has been healed. It is not possible to be healed of something that is not an illness — and we are convinced that sexual orientation itself is morally neutral — that what matters to God is not our sexual orientation but our theological orientation — that when we turn to God and ask to be healed of patterns of behavior that are destructive to ourselves or others God in God’s grace will heal us . . . whether we are homosexual or heterosexual.  (Bold is mine).

That’s good, but so is this:

One question I often hear is "What kind of values are we teaching our children?" We are teaching our children that no matter what their sexual orientation we expect a high standard of relationship that includes fidelity, monogamy, mutual respect and life-long commitment. We are challenging all couples — gay and straight — to live their lives in relationship within the context of Christian community: both supported by and accountable to their brothers and sisters in Christ. And we are modeling to gay and lesbian young people — those so tragically at risk for self-loathing and suicide in our communities — that there is a place where they can be loved by God, embraced by a community of faith and where Jesus loves them just as they are as they grow up to be all that they can be.

Amen, Rev. Susan.  I can’t tell you how proud I am that a priest from my parish, where my time and money and prayers go, spoke these prophetic words to the leaders of the Communion in Nottingham.

But as I said in my post Tuesday, I don’t think the splitting of the Anglican Communion will be the end of the world.   I suspect that after the global Anglican church gathers with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2008 (at the decennial Lambeth Conference), the Communion will cease to exist as we have known it.  That will be cause for some sadness, surely.   I don’t think God rejoices when His people decide that they cannot stay together.  But an amicable divorce beats the pants off a marriage that is irretrievably broken, and I for one see our Communion as just that, irretrievably broken. 

In 1991, All Saints Pasadena blessed the first public same-sex union in the Anglican world.  Fourteen years later, we remain on the cutting edge of prophetic Christian action for inclusion.  But as the Archbishop of Canterbury rightly pointed out on Monday, prophecy has a cost.  I quote again:

To claim to act prophetically is to take a risk. It would be strange if we claimed the right to act in a risky way and then protested because that risky act was not universally endorsed by the Church straight away. If truth is put before unity - to use the language that is now common in discussing this - you must not be surprised if unity truly and acutely suffers.

He’s right.  We at All Saints must not be surprised that our actions in 1991 — and other subsequent actions of our national church — have been met with scorn who think that what we call "prophetic" is a sinful capitulation to modern culture!  Prayerfully, I believe that the global church will be "where we’re at" on the issue of homosexuality within a few generations.    But with all respect in the world to Susan Russell, all the fine speeches and Powerpoint presentations in the world will not convince a great many of our fellow Anglicans of the justice and biblical soundness of our inclusive position on homosexuality.

If I were a cradle Episcopalian, I might have a far stronger sentimental attachment to the Anglican Communion.   But my Anglicanism is weak and superficial — my faith in Christ is strong.  I’m more interested in seeing my church follow Him than I am in seeing my church stay in Communion with those who think we are deluding ourselves as to the nature of His witness!   I think we ought to remain friends, good friends even.  But in our Father’s house there are many mansions, and if we choose to live in different rooms for now, we can remind ourselves that we remain under the same roof of He who loves us.

Touting Sgt. Sandra

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2005
in Faith and War
. 1 Comment

Later today, I hope to post more about events from Nottingham, England.  In the meantime, I’m checking in for news at Kendall Harmon’s blog.

One of my best and brightest students, both this past spring and this summer, has been Sgt. Sandra Mercado, who at 23 is a veteran of Kosovo and two tours of duty in Iraq.  She’s headed off to USC, where she will be in the ROTC program on her way to becoming an officer.  She’s profiled this week in this public relations piece on the college website, and I thought I’d add to the chorus of praise for her.  (She also got married this past weekend, but was in class bright and early on Monday morning).

I believe it is possible to be both a pacifist and an admirer of the profession of soldiering.    The conviction, nurtured in my time as a Mennonite, that all Christians are called to radical pacifism, endures even now.   But dislike for the cause and admiration for those who fight for the cause are not mutually exclusive; condemnation of the war and uncomplicated affection for the warriors can go hand in hand.  Hurrah for Sgt. Mercado.

Thursday Short Poem: Morgan’s “Pictures with Cigarettes”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2005
in Poetry
. 1 Comment

I’ve posted poems about cigarettes before.  I was a small boy in the 1970s, and when I was young, everyone smoked.  My childhood was hazy with smoke; as a small boy doing dishes, I did countless family ashtrays.   Before big family parties, I unwrapped packs of cigarettes, and placed them butts up in attractive silver cups, and arranged them around the living room next to boxes of matches.  I came through just fine, though some near and dear to me have been scathed by cancer.  But my family pictures look a lot like those of Elizabeth Morgan, who offers this fine poem.

Pictures with Cigarettes

Look closely:
Mother’s pack of Luckies lies on the endtable,
See Dad’s face against the baby’s cheek?
The hand not lifting Tommy holds the smoke.
In this one, Grandpa’s cigar smolders by the highchair
while Grandma holds her cigarette and wineglass
and a baby with one hand.

But this is not a tract; all these babies thrived,
survived their separate sorrows, bloomed
into periods of pure beauty, whole weeks
of unadulterated success,moments of total
attention from what seemed like the whole world.
All still know results of love.

Of the smokers this is not a judgment,
only a report on mortal signs in pictures –
the scythe laid propped against the press,
the hourglass, sunset, drooping pheasant
replaced by cigarettes.
The pictured smokers are all gone,
not up in smoke, but somewhere we hope
they remember life as right in length
and without regrets.

Dating to disappoint and the Bulworth solution

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2005
in Ethnicity, Race and Relationships
. 72 Comments

Rilina links to the Sandra Loh post, and one of her commenters notes that when she first saw the title "daring to disappoint one’s parents" she misread it as "dating to disappoint one’s parents."  Rilina replies:  "Well, many children of immigrant parents do that too. Heh."

This got me thinking.

I’ve often asked my students how comfortable their parents are with the idea of interracial, inter-religious dating.  (I usually ask this question in the gender studies courses as the topic of race emerges.)  The results are predictable.  Very few of the native-born white kids think their parents would mind if they dated someone of another race.  (To be more precise, I’ve never had a white male claim his parents would be upset if he were to date — or marry — a non-white person, but I have had a few white female students admit their parents would be distressed if they brought home a young black man.)   My Latino students generally report that their parents would prefer another Hispanic, but would be comfortable with their child dating someone white, but not black.  My more recent immigrants, particularly Asians and Armenians, almost imvariably report that their parents would be extremely distressed if they dated, much less married, outside of their culture.

This is where my own white liberalism blinds me so!  I get very, very angry when I hear of parents forbidding their children to date someone because they didn’t meet the right ethnic profile.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s pure unadulterated racism.   Real tolerance must be about more than being willing to share public space with folks of other ethnicities, it must also be about the willingness to welcome them into one’s family and rejoice when they become the spouses of one’s children and the parents of the grandkids.  I’m convinced that that’s true, and I admit I see interracial/interethnic marriage as a fundamental social good.  How else can we fully eradicate racial and ethnic prejudice save through mixed marriages?

One of my favorite movies ever made (I own it and watch it over and over) is Warren Beatty’s brilliant Bulworth.   Beatty’s character Sen. Jay Bulworth, in the middle of a television interview with a newscaster named Connie, delivers a magnificent rap on this very subject of race (warning, expletives ahead):

Bulworth:
Rich people’ve stayed on top, dividing white people from colored people. But white people’ve got more in Common with colored people than rich people. We’re just gonna have to eliminate ‘em.

Connie:
Eliminate?

Bulworth:
Eliminate.

Connie:
Who?
Rich people?

Bulworth:
White people.

Bulworth:
Black People, too.
Brown people,
Yellow people.
Get rid of ‘em all.

Connie:
Get rid of them all?

Bulworth:
We need a voluntary, free Spirited,
compatible, open ended program of
procreative racial deconstruction.

Connie:
Uh…

Bulworth:
Everybody just got to keep fucking everybody
till we’re all the same color.

When I heard that in the movie theatre seven years ago, the audience (of mostly upscale whites, as I recall) erupted in cheers and raucous laughter.   I heard a loud "amen", and I think it may have escaped from my lips.   My liberalism was, and in some ways still is, the liberalism of the melting pot.  The historian in me and the Christian in me regard ethnic distinctives (other than food and innocuous holiday customs) with suspicion.  How can we form religious and political unity when we still hold historic allegiances to our own ethnic group, I wonder?  Isn’t Beatty’s Bulworth, for all his madcap vulgarity, absolutely right about the solution?  Aren’t those parents who are adamant that their children marry within within their ethnic and religious group enemies of progress, civilization, and a functioning civil society?  Shouldn’t kids from these parents "date to disappoint", and eventually give their parents grandkids who don’t look like them?

But I’m aware of the weakness of what can be called the "Bulworth" solution.  I know full well that the desire to retain cultural distinctives is not the same as a belief in racial superiority.  For example, for Jews and Armenians whose forebears survived genocide, the preservation of cultural identity has an imperative to it that I don’t always grasp but of which I am not unaware.   In a culture that is predominantly Anglo still, is the Bulworth solution — Hugo’s solution too — another form of well-meaning genocide? Heck, from the perspective of women of color,the Bulworth solution is also problematic.  Everybody just got to keep fucking everybody  till we’re all the same color sounds like a sensible battle cry to me.  But given the history of rape and sexual abuse of indigenous and African women by white men in this country, I’d understand if Bulworth’s rap doesn’t sound so inspiring to some of my sisters.

My generation of my family is, as I’ve written before,  practicing melting pot marriage with enthusiasm.   In recent decades, I’ve seen my cousins marry folks of Latino, Chinese, and East Indian descent.  Some very beautiful mixed-race babies have been born.  I’ll be marrying my fiancee soon, of African-Colombian-Croatian ancestry.  A generation from now, the family photos will be far browner and richer than they were a generation ago.  I celebrate that.  Nothing has been lost, from my perspective, and much has been gained.  But I’ve never known what it is to feel like a resident alien in a strange land, never known what it is to desperately try and cling to the ways of my family in a country that finds those ways alien and impenetrable and anti-modern.   The Bulworth solution excites and inspires me.  But I also wonder if that doesn’t say more about me and my whiteness (and my hero Warren Beatty) than it does about the sensibility of the solution itself.

Rethinking Loh: a response to Camassia

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2005
in Christianity, Faith and Marriage
. 14 Comments

First in her comments here and now at her own place, Camassia has a very thoughtful, critical response to my post on Sandra Tsing Loh’s graduation address at Caltech.  Camassia writes:

…my personal experience is coming to bear on this. When I was a twentysomething college grad hanging out with my peers in San Francisco, the challenge wasn’t getting us to play around but getting us to stop. We hopped around from job to job, city to city, going back to school, trying this and that. And we were nearly all horrible at managing money. My friend who live on her credit card in Spain was perhaps the most dramatic example; but there was also getting your power cut off, running up debts, running out of food, and trying to withdraw money only to discover you didn’t have any. One friend didn’t even have a permanent home, last I heard from him, but engaged in a practice common enough to develop a name: “couch surfing.” None of this really harmed us, and we mostly learned our lessons, but that was precisely because we had parents willing to bail us out of real trouble. Blowing them off is not a good idea if you’re probably going to have to go back to them asking for help.

She’s right, of course.  But neither Loh nor I are advocating permanent slacker-dom!  She urges Caltech grads to spend a summer snorkeling, not to spend a decade couch-surfing.  There is a difference, and one would like to think that those bright enough to receive degrees from Caltech (or equivalent institutions) would recognize that.   Choosing not to be a workaholic for a season is hardly the same as dropping out of civilized society and becoming a leech! (Parenthetically, Camassia and I had different post-college experiences.  I went straight from undergrad to grad school, straight from passing my Ph.D. qualifying exams at UCLA to teaching full-time at Pasadena City College.  From my days at Humpty-Dumpty Nursery School in Santa Barbara to today, I’ve never not been in school.  I might have benefited from some more time off to reflect.  Then again, I might have gone mad and never gone back had I left school for even a brief period.)

In the comments below Camassia’s post,  Rilina writes that she’s surprised that I didn’t deal with the Christian implications of Loh’s address:

Hugo’s reaction to it (somewhat surprisingly) had no reference to what it means to be Christian thinking about these issues. And I know of what Loh speaks here: I’m your classic overachieving middle class Asian American. But I’m also a Christian child of non-Christian parents. From my perspective, “dare to disappoint” seems to replace one idol, the traditional Asian family, with another idol, happy-go-lucky Western individualism. Christianity, in contrast, supports neither of those things: it challenges as the supremacy of the family unit (Mark 10, etc.), but also reminds the believer that believers still have commitments and responsibilities for others. We may be called to leave family behind for the sake of the good news, but we’re also called to honor our parents and to care for the elderly.

A lot of my friends are Asian American and the children of immigrants; I’ve seen many of them, especially the Christians, come into conflict with their parents over their life choices. (”Why do you want to work for a non-profit? Why don’t you become a doctor or lawyer?”) I’ve been very lucky in this regard; my parents may have urged me toward the traditionally acceptable life paths–law, medicine, business–but they didn’t press when I declined to go that way. “Dare to disappoint” may be an important message for those who haven’t yet figured out that honoring one’s parents and obeying one’s parents aren’t always the same thing, but for those of us who have figured that out it’s way too simple.

(Bold is mine).  That’s a good corrective from Rilina, and of course, I agree with her completely.  One of the things I liked best about Pasadena Mennonite (where Camassia now worships, and where I was on Leadership Team for a brief season) was its insistence that "salvation is as much communal as individual".  The Kingdom, Mennonites insist, is built in community as much as it is built in the privacy of our hearts.   Our greatest responsibility as Christians is neither to obey our parents blindly nor follow our own transitory impulses, but to build the Kingdom of God.  Rilina is right that there’s a tremendous difference between disappointing one’s parents by becoming a missionary or a non-profit fundraiser instead of a doctor or an engineer, and disappointing one’s parents by couch-surfing through one’s twenties!

When I read Loh’s piece, I thought of many of the students I’ve had from traditional Asian families who’ve told me of the immense family pressure that they are under to be successful.   I’ve had at least a dozen in recent years tell me that they like history much, much better than chemistry or engineering, but know that they could never major in the liberal arts without devastating their mothers and fathers. (Their parents sound much like Loh’s father, whom Loh describes as considering the humanities akin to poledancing.)   I want these students of mine to dare to disappoint their parents by following their genuine academic and spiritual passions.  I’m not encouraging anything less than that and I’m sorry that my post gave that impression. 

In this regard, I’m struck again by the very famous words of our second president, John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Perhaps "disappoint your parents" is another way of exhorting young people to embrace the values of the generation of Adams’ grandchildren.  Note that he mentions what his sons "ought" to do, as opposed to what his grandkids will have the "right" to do.  One generation’s obedience ensures the next generation’s freedom.

The kingdom of heaven will be built by people who allow their own desires and the needs of the world at large to intersect.   Fulfilling our parents’ dreams for us, rather than our own, brings no glory to God.   Only following our transitory impulses is no better.  We need to teach young people to discern their own inner muse, but also to ask how following that muse might be of service to the planet and its people.  But while they are busy figuring out how their passions and the world’s needs might both be met in their choice of future career, it’s also worth telling our hardest-working and most dutiful young people that they ought to take a break!

More to teachin’ than lecturing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 21, 2005
in Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 6 Comments

Tenured faculty at PCC are evaluated only once every three years.   When I was first teaching, I was always fearful about evaluations, knowing that to at least some degree, tenure hinged on favorable feedback.  Now, I look forward to in-class evaluations because I get the chance to learn what my students think about the class, and how I might improve my teaching.  It’s a lot easier to take constructive criticism when one’s teaching position is secure, I’ll say that.

This week, I’ve been looking over the evaluations that were done last fall (I finally had a chance to sit down with them).  They were mostly laudatory, happily enough.  Many of the criticisms revolved around reading load, and my insistence that grammar and spelling ought to count in history term papers.  One student didn’t like the way I dressed, another didn’t like the goatee I sport on-and-off, and two complained about the early office hours I have.   

Immodestly, I’ll say I’m a very good lecturer.  But there’s more to teaching than lecturing, and the only regular and serious criticisms I got this year were that  I spend too much time on lecturing and not enough time leading discussions.  (For the record, my women’s studies class — where discussion is far more frequent — made no such complaints; these suggestions came from my Western Civ survey courses.)  I note that at Rate my Professors, a number of recent commenters (I do check periodically) praise my lecturing but imply that I ought to employ other methods as well.   

The frustrating thing about this is that years ago, I was accused of having "too much discussion."   When I first started teaching, I was far more worried about monopolizing the classroom.  I invited lots of discussion and questions.  A few students seemed to like it, but I got a great many criticisms about this in the evaluations. (E.G.:  "I paid to learn from my teacher, not from my classmates"; "He spends so much time letting us debate small points he never tells us about the important points we need to cover.")  I began to fall behind badly in some classes.  One year in Western Civ, when I was supposed to reach the Reformation, I barely made it to the barbarian invasions of Rome.  In modern European history, rather than reaching the present, I was lucky to reach the outbreak of World War One.  I was so eager for my students to reflect at length on what we were covering that the material that ought to have come at the end of the course was ignored.

Teaching survey courses is hard.  I’m required to cover everything from Mesopotamia through the Middle Ages in the first half, and the Reformation to the end of the Cold War in the second.   The more class time spent lecturing, the greater the chance that I will meet the parameters of the course stated in the syllabus.  The best solution would be to have four semesters of Western Civ, cutting the amount one has to cover each term by half.   That would help tremendously.

I’ll reflect this summer on ways to encourage discussion that don’t sacrifice the obligation to cover a vast amount of material in a very short time period.

The Archbishop on the way forward, division, and friendship

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 21, 2005
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity, Faith and GLBTQ
. 22 Comments

Over at his superb Titusonenine,  Kendall Harmon is busy blogging the events taking place in Nottingham, England, this week.  The Anglican Consultative Council is meeting there to discuss many issues, chief among them homosexuality.   The American Episcopal Church has been asked to explain its inclusive position, a stance that has led the church to embrace same-sex unions and to  consecrate an openly gay man as bishop.  Among those leading the delegation from the States is Susan Russell, president of Integrity and a priest at All Saints.  Progressive Episcopalians from across the country have been praying for the delegates to Nottingham, who are making their main presentation to the ACC today.

On Monday, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed the gathering.  It was a fine homily indeed, one that has given both those who support and those who oppose full inclusion for gays and lesbians much to think about.  Archbishop Williams’s address is up in full at Kendall’s place, and it’s worth blogging about here. 

For starters, the good Archbishop summarizes the two positions deftly and fairly.  The traditionalist stance he summarizes thus:

One story is this. The churches of the ‘North’ are tired and confused,
losing evangelistic energy. For a variety of reasons, they have been
trying to reclaim their credibility by accepting and seeking to
domesticate the moral values of their culture, even though this is a
culture that is practically defined by the rejection of the living God.
A history of over-intellectual approaches to the Bible and the
communication of the faith has led to a disregard of the Bible’s call
to transformation. The revolt against the plain meaning of Scripture’s
condemnation of same-sex activity is a symptom of this general malaise.

That’s good.  I can’t imagine any serious conservatives quibbling with that.  The progressive, inclusive view is then described:

Another story is this. The churches of the North have been made aware
of how much their life and work has been sustained in the past by
insensitive and oppressive social patterns, with the Bible being used
to justify great evils. Whether they like it or not, they inhabit a
world where authority is regarded with much suspicion; it has to earn
respect. In recent decades there has been a huge change in the general
understanding of sexual activity. Can the gospel be heard in such a
world if it seems to cling to ways of understanding sexuality that have
no correspondence to what the most apparently responsible people in our
culture believe? It is not enough, some have said, to stick to the
words of the Bible; we have to go deeper and ask about the logic and
direction of the Bible as a whole. And when we do that, we may find
that it is not so impossible to reach a position that can be taken
seriously in contemporary culture.

This liberal is quite satisfied with that summary.

At All Saints, we talk weekly of acting "prophetically."  Williams reminds us of just how problematic it is to describe one’s teachings and one’s actions in that way:

It is said that there are times when Christians must act prophetically,
ahead of the consensus, and that this is such a time for some of our
number. We should listen with respect to what motivates this
conviction. But we also have to say that it is in the very nature of a
would-be prophetic act that we do not yet know whether it is an act of
true prophecy or an expression of human feeling only. To claim to act
prophetically is to take a risk. It would be strange if we claimed the
right to act in a risky way and then protested because that risky act
was not universally endorsed by the Church straight away. If truth is
put before unity - to use the language that is now common in discussing
this - you must not be surprised if unity truly and acutely suffers.

Bingo!  He nailed exactly the reason why I, as a progressive, have no problem seeing the Anglican Communion fracture over just this issue.  I am interested in putting truth before unity, especially if maintaining unity is at the price of denying full inclusion in the body of Christ to my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters!   At some point, focusing relentlessly on "staying together" (in the Anglican Communion or in a marriage) becomes idolatrous.  We are reminded by Christ that to follow Him is more often to choose the path of division rather than unity.  Rather than asking either side to sacrifice their own perception of such vital and important truths, is it not far better to honestly and amicably sever the historic bonds that have held the Anglican Communion together for centuries? Rather than seeing schisms as sinful or tragic, might we not see schism and divorce as an opportunity for new beginnings?  If all the energy expended on staying in relationship with those whose views we find unChristian were instead expended on the poor and the marginalized, could we not do far more good for God’s kingdom?  These are the questions that this Episcopalian is asking himself this week.

I think the Archbishop is aware that the Anglican Communion is about to founder over the issue of homosexuality, and he’s not willing to see endless attempts to patch holes in a ship that ought to have long since slipped beneath the waves.  The most moving part of Monday’s talk was his suggestion for a way forward, after the separation has happened:

But if there is no easy solution, and there is not, we can at least
think about this simple suggestion. If it is difficult for us to stand
together at the Lord’s Table as we might wish, can we continue to be
friends? Its sounds so weak, doesn’t? But, I actually think it is of
great significance. It is a way of saying that we do not know how to go
on being visibly full brothers and sisters, that we can find no clear
visible way of expressing any sense of being together in the Body of
Christ. But this is the case already with a number of other Christian
bodies, and several other Christian bodies view us in this way, notably
the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. And yet we maintain respect
and often something more than respect. Friendship in Christ, it seems,
is possible even when sacramental communion isn’t.

What would be the defining qualities of this future friendship?  Williams is magnificent here:

Friendship in Christ is a willingness to share prayer, to listen
without rancour to each another, to respect and even enjoy difference,
to be patient with each other, not expecting quick healing of divisions
but not walking away every time difference raises its head. Friendship
in Christ is best and most creative when it is linked with sacramental
fellowship; but if that fellowship is hard or controversial, we need to
remember from our ecumenical experience that this need not and should
not mean a spirit of bitter contempt towards each other. It has taken
the great churches of the world centuries to make this sort of
friendship a routine matter, but, thank God, it is so now for the most
part. Can we make a resolution - not pass but make a resolution – that
it will not take so long to confirm these bonds between us? Of course
it is harder in some ways: direct conflict and even rivalry darkens the
sky so much. But when we cannot witness together as fully as we long to
do, this is something of real witness nonetheless. We can look at and
listen to the language we use about each other and watch how easily we
are ready to let it slip from proper and honest disagreement towards
contempt and mutual exclusion. Yet as baptised believers, we still have
something to offer each other; and the friendship of the baptised
should remain, whatever else divides.

Bold emphases in this and earlier sections are mine.

All my life, I’ve been interested in those who work at building bridges across ideological and theological divides.  To stay in friendly relationship with those with whom one disagrees mightily –without ignoring those disagreements — is vital.  Far too many of my friends surround themselves with those who share their world view.  (I remember a friend of my mother’s, years ago after the 1984 election, express disbelief that Reagan had been reelected.  "But everyone I know voted for Mondale", she said, with a tone that implied that Fritz’s overwhelming  defeat must therefore have been due to fraud.) Lord, save us from only being in relationship with those who know you as we do!  Save us from only breaking bread with those who understand your word as we think it ought to be understood; save us from our hubris and our petty certainties, and save us from isolation into intellectual and theological ghettoes where we are always surrounded by "our kind of people."  But save us also from false unity with those with whom there can be no real agreement!   Archbishop Williams wants a third way , and he calls that third way neither unity nor division, but friendship.