"Problem" Women in the Southern Baptist Convention

 

                                                       Messengers at last year's Baptist Convention 

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord, as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the gentiles. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ.  Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you.  Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Israelites who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

Romans 16: 1-7 NRSVue

I have to be blunt in saying that some Christian groups are so consistently cruel and in such stark contravention of what I consider the gospel of Christ that I'm almost embarrassed to admit I'm in the same spiritual species. Honestly, I don't think I am, as much as I want to be generous about the "big tent" of Christian faith. 

This has risen to the surface again as the Southern Baptists of the United States prepare to gather Tuesday in Florida for their annual meeting. There they’ll debate for the fourth year in a row whether to formally ban churches with a woman serving in any role resembling that of  pastor — not just the top position in a congregation. The Southern Baptist Convention has become increasingly conservative over the past 50 years and the right-wing of the denomination has pushed out moderates, expelling some of their biggest congregations which have given women positions of leadership. 

This year, an amendment proposed by Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, would exclude any church that acts “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.” Not long ago Mohler said it would even be a “problem” for a church podcast to include a woman answering questions about that week’s sermon.

There are so many reasons to find this stifling of women to be reprehensible, including the respect the Apostle Paul expressed for female leaders at the conclusion of his letter to the Romans. He goes so far as to describe Phoebe as a deacon and Junia as an apostle.

Another is the level of hypocrisy by a church that covered up hundreds of situations of sexual abuse by male pastors for decades, until the SBC was outed by the investigation by the Houston Chronicle newspaper. 

We have Southern Baptist family members in the States whom we love yet we are baffled by their willingness to stay in this denomination. The women are far from subservient. 

 And we won't get started on the strong support for Trump within the denomination. 

Nature for Healing and Wholeness

                                                   Along the Belleville Waterfront

1 Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently,

nourish the life of the world in our care:

gift of great wonder, ours to surrender,

trust for the children tomorrow will bear.

4 God of all living, God of all loving,

God of the seedling, the snow and the sun,

teach us, deflect us, Christ reconnect us,

using us gently and making us one.

                                      Voices United 307

 From time to time our son Isaac, pastor at Trenton United Church, asks if I might visit a member of the congregation in Belleville Hospital. I am what the UCC terms a Voluntary Associate Minister with all the appropriate shots and paperwork.

This doesn't happen often because Isaac is a conscientious visitor to his flock but he lives and works half an hour away and we are five minutes from the Belleville Hospital. So. the other day I stopped in on two people, one in their eighties and the other not far off one hundred. Both have demanding medical needs but I was touched by their positive outlooks and determination to get back to church again. They both new me before the visits so we were able to chat openly and pray at the conclusion. 

The person in her late nineties is in a room overlooking the marvelous waterfront trail at the edge of the Bay of Quinte, an arm of Lake Ontario. Ruth and I regularly cycle along this path. We love the vistas but the view from several storeys up is spectacular on a sunny late Spring day. 

As I admired the view I commented that studies have shown that looking out to trees and water contributes to recovery for hospital patients. This charming person, remarkably lucid and engaged, agreed enthusiastically. It was obvious in our conversation that she loves the natural world, including the variety of birds at her home feeders. 

We have come to understand how important it is to encourage children to enjoy the outdoors and what we term Creation in our Christian faith. A friend and former parishioner is an interpreter at a Conservation Area not far away and he has commented on the ways in which kids open up to wonder in that setting. I've met children on the boardwalk there and even though I'm a total stranger they are bursting to share what they have seen and heard. 

Surely this is true throughout the seasons of life. And we should ensure that this is part of the design of our healthcare institutions. The Hospice facility for Quinte has rooms which open onto a green space with sliding patio doors in each room so that patients can experience nature to the very end of their days. 

I figure that Belleville Council should send a photographer to the roof of the hospital for photos to promote the city and this time of greening would be ideal. 

PS: As I write this blog entry the birch trees outside my study window are dancing in the breeze and I getting occasional whiffs of the nearby lilacs. 

Hope for a Trenton Little Forest

A drone view of the Yakama Nation's Healing Forest, which is in the shape of a medicine wheel, in Toppenish, Washington State

Recently  I have seen a number of articles about Little Forests or Pocket Forests or Miyawaki Forests, named after the Japanese botanist who founded the movement in the 1970s. The concept is planting a relatively dense and complementary patch of trees and plants in smaller areas, often in urban settings. One of the studies suggests that these small forests had limited value for reforestation and the outcomes can't be generally verified. But this seems to be missing the point that they are intended to be tucked into places where little else is growing and people are engaged in establishing them. Most of the articles are uplifting. 

Miyawaki worked with Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi, offering workshops for employees to teach them how to turn barren land into mature forests. Now there are Little Forests around the globe.

A couple of years ago I attended a Kingston Little Forest Seminar in Napanee and left enthused by the concept. I was a Sunday worship leader at Trenton United a short time later so I focused on the many passages of scripture about trees in the bible, from start to finish, and I shared my Little Forest seminar experience.

Money was raised at Trenton United to purchase specific trees and during last summer's drought a dedicated member nursed them along at her home. Then in the Fall a determined group of organizers and congregation members of all ages from TUC planted a variety of native trees in an area by the Trent River designated by the Conservation Authority.  Ruth and I went to take a look in late April and we were delighted to see that most of them were budding and leafing out. 

There is also a plaque describing what the trees represent and naming Trenton United as a source for the project. I feel that this is an important Christian outreach and witness by the congregation and maybe we need to organize a return group junket to see how our saplings are doing. 

Ecologist Akira Miyawaki developed this planting method to re-create lush native forests preserved in sacred areas near temples and shrines in Japan. He was a scientist (he died in 2021) but there was also a spiritual aspect. Whatever our faith tradition, we can find practical ways to "live with respect in Creation" (UCC New Creed) and see the sacred forest and the trees. 

Wild Saints & Wild Christianity

 

It was roughly 30 years ago that I drove with son Isaac, just emerging as a teen, from Sudbury to Toronto to attend a seminar with the Rev Herbert O'Driscoll. He was an Irish-Canadian Anglican writing regularly in the United Church Observer magazine but we made the trek because he was speaking about Celtic Christianity, a relatively new area of exploration at the time. O'Driscoll had recently published a memoir The Leap of the Deer: Memories of a Celtic Childhood. He was a fine presenter and he had lots to say about the Celtic saints who were known for their love and immersion in the natural world or Creation. 

Through the years I have been fascinated by the legends of these hermits who communed with birds and otters and other creatures. On one level they are highly improbable and on another they remind us that these Christians had adopted the sense of interconnectedness with nature that they took on from the Druids and is also part of our biblical story. 

I see that writer/theologian Paul Kingsnorth, now living in Ireland, is writing The Book of Wild Saints, and I can hardly wait for it to be published. Kingsnorth is an admirer of St. Kevin, one of my favourite Celtic saints as well. Here are a few paragraphs from a piece he wrote for his substack earlier this month. 

Yesterday was the feast day of St Kevin of Glendalough. Kevin, or Coemgen, whose story I told here in April, was one of the Christian wilderness ascetics who I’ve taken to calling ‘wild saints.’ I am fascinated with these people. Why? Well, partly because I think they bring the Christian Way to its purest expression. Partly because their stories are so intriguing and eccentric and sometimes even inexplicable. There’s a deep mystery to them. And finally because I have a strong intuition that they have something important to tell us today.

What could that be? I tried to get at the answer in an essay I wrote last year for First Things magazine, entitled A Wild Christianity. In that essay, I wrote that we are living in what we might call a ‘desert time’: a time of collapse and change and radical reinvention. If that is true, then these old Fathers and Mothers of the desert might have something to tell us about how to live in it:

I feel like I am being firmly pointed, day after day, back toward the green desert that forms my Christian inheritance … Back to the song that is sung quietly through the land by its maker, the song that is in the stream running, in the mist wreathing the crags, the growling of the rooks, the thunder over the mountains. Back to the caves, to the skelligs, to the deserts green and brown … I feel that in another time of crisis and confusion we need to go back to our roots, both literal and spiritual. To flee from the gaze of a civilised centre that denies God and launches salvo after salvo daily against the human soul. To seek out a wild Christianity, which will see us praying for hours in the sea as the otters play around us. To understand—to remember—that the Earth and the world are not the same thing.

In recent years I've come to appreciate Indigenous spirituality and have been humbled by how dismissive colonial culture has been, of this gift, including the Christian church. I do want to rekindle my love of the Celtic saints as well. 

At this time of year we to endeavour to be outside as much as possible, although this year the mosquitoes are not creatures I am willing to embrace as a treasure from the Creator. 

Ebola and Burying the Dead

 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 

                                                      Romans 12: 14-15 NRSVue

I listened to a brave science and medicine reporter for the New York Times describe the circumstances in the region of the DR Congo where the Ebola virus is sickening and killing hundreds and perhaps thousands. There are many issues including lack of medical supplies and isolation. Another is the funeral practices of families who have lost loved ones. Not only to they want to bury the deceased, it is customary for mourners to touch the face of the person, a disaster with a highly infectious disease. It has been very difficult for officials to dissuade families from doing this and conspiracy theories abound. 

We saw how traumatic it was for those who couldn't be with loved ones as they died during the COVID pandemic and funeral gatherings weren't allowed. It seems that this disrupted burial practices here in Canada that we are still experiencing.

I thought about my first pastoral charge in ministry beginning in 1980. I've described it as a Maritime Green Acres because I was the minister from the big city of Toronto arriving at my five preaching points in outport Newfoundland. So much there was different from what I took for granted about religious practice and I was the odd person. God help me when I naively messed with those conventions. 

I was quietly appalled at the custom for mourners to touch the face of a deceased person as the body lay in the casket at the back of the church. Funeral homes were an hour way back then so folks filed in, some of them weeping dramatically, all of them touching the dearly departed. I actually came to respect these customs to a degree even though they were a departure from the stoic funerals and memorials I grew up with. Why wouldn't we weep at the loss of someone who was precious to us? 

We can pray that this Ebola outbreak will be brought under control soon, although it is proving to be a challenge. I suppose we can all ask what customs and observances we would want when we're "promoted to glory." 

Sagrada Familia and LEGO

 

                                                                Lego Sagrada Familia -- Antonio Gaudi 

I have expressed my regret that I will never visit Sagrada Familia Basilica, the astonishing architecture tour de force of Antonio Gaudi. 

Construction work began in 1883  and in February of this year, Sagrada Família became the world's tallest church when a part of its central tower was lifted into place. The official dedication service and ceremony will take place on June 10th. Gaudi was a brilliant architect and a person of deep Christian faith who attended mass almost daily. I've written about the movement to have him recognized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. 

LEGO, the construction toy that has launched untold numbers of profane outbursts by parents who stepped on them has created its own Sagrada Familia masterpiece. The new LEGO Architecture set was announced to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of the renowned architect Antoni Gaudí. At 12,060 pieces, the model surpasses the previous record holder, the LEGO Art World Map, by nearly 500 pieces. You can preorder the set, to be released in November, for a modest $1,100 Canadian. 

I've already teased my six-year-old grandson, a LEGO savant, that it would probably take him the better part of a day to complete this model. I won't offer to purchase it for him so I can't enjoy the basilica vicariously either. 

What an amazing accomplishment stretching across three centuries.

The Journey of Abraham into the 21st Century

1 To Abraham and Sarah the call of God was clear,

'Go forth and I will show you a country rich and fair.

You need not fear the journey for I have pledged my word,

that you shall be my people and I will be your God.'

2 From Abraham and Sarah arose a pilgrim race,

dependent for their journey on God's abundant grace;

and in their heart was written by God this saving word:

'that you shall be my people and I will be your God.'

3 We of this generation on whom God's hand is laid,

can journey to the future secure and unafraid,

rejoicing in God's goodness and trusting in this word:

'that you shall be my people and I will be your God.'

                                       Voices United 634

 I see that the Common Lectionary, or schedule of Sunday scripture readings, offers us passages from Genesis and the story of Abraham. In fact the next four weeks tell us a bunch of gripping tales about a bunch of important characters. Abram and Sarai are called by God this week and are renamed Abraham and Sarah. Then this ancient pair are informed by angels or travelers or God that they will have a son, against all odds. The following week we're introduced to Hagar and Ishmael, revered figures in Islam. We'll then move on to the disturbing near-sacrifice of beloved son Isaac by father Abraham with the promise of a new covenant. 

These stories are key to Judaism and Islam and Christianity and in some respects bind these three monotheistic religions together and push them apart. Years ago Bruce Feiler wrote an insightful book exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of these connections. 

One of the few positive developments in the first Trump administration are what are known as the Abraham Accords of 2020. They offered a glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East, or at least a de-escalation of mistrust and possible violence. All that changed with the attacks by Hamas on Israel in 2023, followed by the horrendous campaign of retribution in Gaza. Then Trump blew up the stability of the region with the ongoing war with Iran, and Israel invaded Lebanon.  

In the on-again, off-again ceasefire Trump has repeatedly claimed that a peace deal with Iraq is at hand but has baffled many with his insistence that a condition will be a number of nations signing on to the Accords:

I am mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its Agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition,

Is "mandatorily requesting" akin to "volun-told"? Who knows. This unexpected insistence hasn't played well with several nations. 

It is interesting that thousands of years after this saga of Abraham and Sarah and others unfolded there is still at least symbolic heft, even though a certain leader probably couldn't find in the bible if his life depended on it. 

May the blessing of the God of Sarah and Hagar,

as of Abraham,

the blessing of the Son, born of the woman Mary,

and the blessing of the Spirit, who broods over us

as a mother her children,

be with you all. Amen.

                      Voices United 428