“God is Not a Republican…or a Democrat”

March 7, 2012 By Carl Gregg Leave a Comment

Our county’s bi-weekly newspaper published my latest Letter to the Editor this morning (Friday, March 16). Here’s a copy of what was printed:

I am writing in response to Chester Seaborn’s letter, “Christians: Will you support Obama?” (March 7). Mr. Seaborn’s diatribe against the Democratic Party was missing an important counterbalance. He did not once mention the Republican Party. Given our two-party system I can only assume that Mr. Seaborn’s screed against Christians who vote for Democrats is meant to imply that all right-thinking Christians should vote Republican.

In contrast, a much more sensible position was outlined in Jim Wallis’ bestselling 2005 book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.  Wallis reminds us that there is more to “moral values” than who marries whom. Social justice and inclusion are moral values too.

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Filed Under: Church and State, Ethics, Letters to the Editor, Politics Leave a Comment

Dear Rick Perry: “Learning to Love Liberalism and Religion”

December 8, 2011 By Carl Gregg 6 Comments

Texas Governor Rick Perry released a new thirty-second presidential campaign ad yesterday titled, “Strong.” Here’s the transcript:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian. But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As president, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m not ashamed to be a Christian either, but I celebrate that gays can serve openly in the military, and — while the Perry campaign spent the past few days preparing and promoting a bigoted ad — the Obama Administration was announcing to the world that “the United States would use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.” Amen.

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Filed Under: Church and State Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Public School Principal Proselytizes Students in SC

September 27, 2011 By Carl Gregg

The ACLU reports that:

A public school in South Carolina flagrantly violated the Constitution recently by holding a Christian rap concert for students on school property during school hours. While most people would go to great lengths to avoid being caught breaking the law, footage of the event, believed to be taken by the event’s organizers, was posted online….

A school-sponsored performance of this nature would be unconstitutional by itself, but the list of transgressions doesn’t stop there. The video shows event organizers being instructed to pray with students before they return to classes. And as part of the assembly, a preacher, Christian Chapman, delivers a sermon to students. His message? “A relationship with Jesus is what you need, more important than anything else.”

Chapman even admits to a group of parents that the event is legally problematic: “Your principal went to me today and I said, ‘How are you getting away with this?’ and he said, ‘I’m not… I want these kids to know that eternal life is real, and I don’t care what happens to me, they’re going to hear it today.’”

The principal seems to view himself as a martyr. I understand the perspective that one’s commitment to God should take precedent over human traditions. Valuing God’s way of love, forgiveness, and justice as preeminent is what motivated acts of civil disobedience (or, perhaps better, “holy obedience”) in the lives of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero — and, indeed, in the life of Jesus when he turned over the tables in the Temple.

However, the rub is that just because you think you are acting in alignment with the way of God does not mean that you are, in fact, embodying God’s way. Our human tendency tends to be, for example, to pray for victory in war — to pray for God to be on our side. But, as Bob Dylan prophetically sang, “If God’s on our side / He’ll stop the next war.”

As to the Christian rapper B-SHOC — who performed songs such as “Jesus Lean’,” “Crazy Bout God,” and “Christ-Like Cruisin” at the unconstitutional event at New Heights Middle School in Jefferson, South Carolina — I am reminded of an episode from the satire-laden animated series King of the Hill. Upon finding his young son Bobby at a “Hardcore” Christian Rock Concert, Hank Hill says to the band, ”Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity any better, you’re just making rock ‘n roll worse.”

Looking to James Fowler’s brilliant work on Stages of Faith, one could argue that the principal of this school is operating from a “Stage 3″ faith that is tribalistic, in which one cannot see beyond promoting one’s immediate tribe, which in this case is evangelical Christianity. As a native son of evangelical Christianity in South Carolina, I have extensive experience with this sort of tribalistic worldview. But these days I find myself much more challenged by people at higher stages of faith such as the Roman Catholic priest Richard Rohr, who said the following in a recent CNN interview:

You have to allow the circumstances of God and life to break you out of your egocentric responses to everything. If you allow “the other” — other people, other events, other religions — to influence you, you just keep growing.

We don’t have to convert everyone else to believe just like we do. Thanks be to God.

Filed Under: Church and State, Pluralism

Atheists May Have a Point on Clergy Tax Breaks

September 22, 2011 By Carl Gregg

Many news outlets have reported in recent days about a group of atheists who have filed a federal lawsuit to end tax breaks for clergy.

I’m on record as strongly supporting the separation of church and state as outlined in the first part of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” I’ve also said a number of times over the years that I wasn’t sure the government-sponsored tax break for clergy was a great idea: better to keep government out of religion whenever possible.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been that excited to rally against my economic self-interest as a member of the clergy, and clergy salaries are often low; however, I’m not sure government should assume the role of making up the difference.

Below I’ll list a few good points from the articles I have read about this matter that are worth considering.

from the Religion News Service

There are secular humanist organizations that do tremendous service to the common good, but the atheist leaders of these organizations do not benefit from the clergy tax break:

All three plaintiffs receive part of their salaries as housing allowances, but do not qualify for the tax exemption because they are not clergy. That amounts to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, they claim, because the parish exemption aids and subsidizes religion by providing ministers with financial benefits not given to secular workers. ”The government is preferring ministers of the gospel over those of us who think religion should be, if not eliminated, limited,” said Dan Barker, co-president of the FFRF [Freedom from Religion Foundation].

Also, this tax break comes, not from the founding our nation, but from a reactionary, mid-20th century impulse:

The parish exemption entered the tax code in 1954, the same year the phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. The country was deep in the Cold War and providing clergy with a tax break was seen as reinforcing religiosity in the fight against godless communism.

from Associated Baptist Press

There is no provision to limit this tax break to only a clergy person’s primary residence, thereby unduly benefiting the rich and impoverishing tax revenues:

Recently the U.S. Tax Court interpreted the law to apply even to multiple homes, ruling 7-6 that Phil Driscoll, an ordained minister and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter who went to prison for tax evasion, didn’t owe federal income taxes on more than $400,000 provided by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn.

On my earlier point that it is good to keep church and state separate whenever possible:

The lawsuit claims that in order to enforce the tax law the IRS and Treasury Department must “make sensitive, fact intensive, intrusive, and subjective determinations” on religious issues like which activities constitute “religious worship” and whether a member of the clergy is “duly ordained, commissioned or licensed.” Those and other determinations result in “excessive entanglement” between church and state contrary to the Establishment Clause.

from the Wall Street Journal

Some congressional representatives are separately looking into this provision:

Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he wants to ensure that the spirit of the provision isn’t violated. ”It’s fair to question why a clergy member needs a tax-free allowance for more than one home, and whether tax-exempt churches should subsidize millionaire ministers,” he says.

Confusingly the WSJ cites a different start date for this law, and I have not yet had the time to investigate who is correct:

Under a provision of the tax code known as the parsonage allowance, first passed in 1921, an ordained clergy member may live tax-free in a home owned by his or her religious organization or receive a tax-free annual payment to buy or rent a home if the congregation approves.

I welcome your feedback in the comments section.

The Rev. Carl Gregg is the pastor of Broadview Church in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. Follow him onFacebook and Twitter.

Filed Under: Atheism, Church and State

Keep Government Out of Worship Planning for 9/11 or Anytime

September 8, 2011 By Carl Gregg

CNN reports that, “Progressive Christians Join Controversy over Excluding Clergy at 9/11 Event.” In contrast, while I consider myself a Progressive Christian, I applaud Mayor Bloomberg’s courageous stance for the separation of church and state.

According to Sojourners, one of the Progressive Christian organizations interviewed for the article,

Mayor Bloomberg made an understandable but regrettable decision. Religion, and religious leaders, have caused a lot of unnecessary conflict and controversy. But avoiding religion entirely does not get to the root of the problem. The answer is better religion.

I am a supporter of better, healthier religion, but the qualifier “better” raises the question of “Better according to whom?” And there is no noncircular justification for one’s answer to such a question. For some Christian fundamentalists, “better” religion might mean only the pastor of their particular church (and no one else) is qualified to pray at the 9/11 memorial. For some secular humanists, any prayer at a civic event is a violation of their right not to have religion imposed on them.

As the situation currently stands, there will be no prayer at the government-sponsored 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero. There will be prayer at the privately-sponsored 9/11 memorial at the National Cathedral at which President Obama will speak. Individuals, churches, synagogues, mosques, and other communities of faith are, of course, free to have 9/11 worship and prayer services at their discretion.

Whether accurate or not, President George W. Bush and many other neoconservatives used to say frequently that one of the reasons for terrorist attacks like September 11, 2011 is that, “They hate us for our freedom.” The freedom of religion is enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution, but part of the freedom of religion is a freedom from religion for those who so choose. In turn, keeping government out of planning worship and choosing who prays publicly is a good call by Mayor Bloomberg.

For those interested in continuing to reflect on this controversy, The Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog is hosting a roundtable discussion from a variety of religious leaders and political commentators called “No prayer for 9/11?”

My favorite of these posts is from Brent Walker, who is both a committed Christian and an active lobbyist for the separation of church and state. His piece is titled, “A Fine Line between ‘Secular’ and ‘Sacred’.”

Filed Under: Church and State

BOOK REVIEW: "Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics"

September 7, 2011 By Carl Gregg

(Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics, 2011, 230 pages.)

In the 2007 teen film Juno, the title character, after finding out she is pregnant, nonchalantly phones Planned Parenthood and announces, “Hi, I’m calling to procure a hasty abortion.” When she arrives for her appointment, she unexpectedly encounters Su-Chin, one of her classmates, protesting in front of the clinic: “All babies want to get borned! All babies want to get borned!” Her classmate is, in turn, surprised when Juno rushes past her after deciding to allow her child to be adopted. Su-Chin briefly interrupts her chant of ”All babies want to get borned” to shout, “God appreciates your miracle!”

In Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics, Alisa Harris describes participating in similar scenes of ernest, well-intentioned protests as part of being raised in an activist, right-wing Christian home. As Alisa grew older, however, the world began to seem more complicated. She started to meet people who defied her preconceived categories such as a young woman who was a “fiscal Republican, a social Democrat, a pro-lifer, who didn’t believe in banning abortion, and a Christian who didn’t think Jesus cared so much whether people were gay” (143).

She was also shocked, one day, to hear her own grandmother casually proclaim, “No one can take away a woman’s right to choose…. I’m glad I had an abortion” (164). Harris later learned that her mother, at age nineteen, had also had an abortion (165).

These encounters left Harris with an important dose of humility that is often lacking on the Christian Right (14). As the old joke goes, the Christian Right is neither “Christian” nor “Right.” This bumper sticker humor is not to say that the Christian Right is completely wrong. Rather, as Harris’ memoir testifies, life is more complicated than one, simplistic worldview can contain.

Early in the book Harris names that she remains grateful for the ways that her parents taught her to speak out against injustice. But now she sees injustice not only in matters of so-called discrimination against Christians or in matters of sexuality, but also in economic and environmental injustice, inhumane immigration policies, and chauvinistic warmongering (6).

Near the end of the book Harris writes a similarly moving reflection on the lessons she has learned from being “Raised Right”:

Looking back on the years that changed me from someone carrying a George W. Bush tote bag to someone protesting corporate greed, from someone who wept with joy at the national anthem to someone who could no longer sing it without a pang of loss — I’ve wondered what part of me remains. What did my parents teach me that I will pass on to my children? (217-218)

She answers her own question in a number of ways, but I will name the two that were most striking to me. Harris may now disagree in some fundamental ways with her parents’ religion and politics, but her parents importantly taught her not to be apathetic about the state of the world, but, instead, “To Care.” They also taught her, “To Love. Not just with words but with actions” (218). At the center of this memoir is the inner conflict and discernment around where to take action and — as with Su-Chin’s protesting of the abortion clinic in Juno – whether one’s actions are as loving and compassionate as you think or intend.

For those concerned about the teeming masses “taking action” and conflating church and state at Rick Perry’s “Prayer Rally” or for those concerned about the “true believers,” who seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid and flock to leaders like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, Alisa Harris’ new memoir may be of interest. Her life story is a testament that people can change, grow, and mature.

The Rev. Carl Gregg is the pastor of Broadview Church in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. This book review is a part of the Roundtable at the Patheos Book Club. Visit the Book Club for more free resources related to Harris’ book.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Church and State, Politics