What Jesus Said and Did about Guns and Killing

This is my response to a lot of what I read and hear about faith and what happened in Aurora CO, and about gun control in the U.S.

There is a huge tradition about Jesus dying “for us” or “for our sins.” The apostle Paul went further and said that the death of Jesus was the end of death itself. Powerful stuff. These are interpretations of Jesus’ death, not the ultimate meaning of his death.

The suffering and death of Jesus are significant because this was the undeserved and gruesome death of a great teacher of love and peace. His suffering and death for me symbolizes the undeserved and horrible suffering and death that befalls anyone and everyone who is such a victim.

The suffering of Jesus was no greater than the suffering of every victim of every crime and political execution and war. Jesus didn’t have to suffer more than anyone else for his death to have meaning for the rest of us. Neither was the suffering of Jesus less painful than it would be for us, because he was divine. If we think of his death in the context of his teachings, we cannot imagine that Jesus wanted us to focus on his suffering. With all his teaching about the Kingdom (Empire or Rule) of God, we can understand that it was his desire that we should all live as if God rules the world. I need to say here that God’s Rule in the context of Jesus’ teachings is no rule at all, at least as we understand law and power and rule.

The main and perhaps the only point of Jesus’ death is that it was wrong. This is a powerful statement because it means that the suffering of all the millions of others who have been tortured,
raped, and killed to suit someone’s desire for power, control, and revenge that has occurred 
in a hundred places and situations that we could name – their deaths were and are wrong, too.

Our traditions teach that Jesus died for our sins. I see no way that his death atones in any way for my sins or yours. His death, his spirituality, his religion, his God were about resistance to the uses of power against people. That resistance was non-violent and active, not passive. Jesus died because of our sins, because we want or consent to violence and killing.

The teaching of Jesus that we would rather he hadn’t taught, is to love our enemies. The power of Jesus was his subversive way of viewing the world, living in it, and dying. The power in Jesus' death was the great integrity by which he died for the values by which he lived. There is atonement only if you and I cease to support a system that does violence to people and kills them. 

When I ponder the death of Jesus, I don’t see the end of sin as such but a witness to the need for ending cruelty and torture, the death penalty, war, killing, and the end of violence itself. If Jesus in any way died for my sin or sins, or yours, he died so that no one else would have to die as he did.

If Jesus died for our sins, and we wish to follow him, we must renounce violence.

So are you a Christian? How many Christians do you know? Could you become one? I have never been sure about myself. In my best moments I only witnessed to Jesus on these matters.

Iowa Noir

I grew up in Sioux City Iowa during the '50's. There are few books about Sioux City, so I ordered this one with great curiosity and without question. I lived less than a mile from Jimmy Bremmers who was kidnapped and killed in 1954 and from Donna Sue Davis who was kidnapped and killed in 1955.  But I didn't know half of what is in this book, Sex Crime Panic: A Journey to the Paranoid Heart of the 1950's, by Neil Miller (Alyson Books, 2002).  I read it in May and was in a kind of shock for weeks.

I was ten and eleven when these crimes occurred, but I knew the names of the cops and politicians who were involved. I didn’t know how they sought to make names for themselves and how they lived out their narrow understandings of the good society and what it is to be human. Now I understand better some of my Mother's fears and anxieties. Now I know why the Warrior Hotel was not spoken of in polite company. Now I see what a cloistered life I led and what a repressive society Sioux City embodied. Reading this book I could see the streets and homes and downtown buildings. My visual, aural, and olfactory memories went into overdrive. My questions about the milieu of my childhood multiplied. My preconceptions about society were shattered, as if they weren’t fragmented enough.

There were few clues leading to the child killers. After Jimmy disappeared the police found Ernest Triplett, a divorced ex-pimp who sold accordions door to door for a local music store, who was in the neighborhood the day the boy was taken. Triplett was tried and convicted. When the girl’s body was found there was no easy suspect. The police and the DA came up with an idea. They went after the queers.


There weren’t any “gays” yet. These were very different times from our own. I am told that it would be wrong to judge people’s attitudes and actions then by today’s standards, but we do anyway. The bar (the stylish Tom Tom Room) and adjacent men’s room at the Warrior Hotel (a wonderful art deco building across the street from First Presbyterian Church, where Carol and I were married in ‘66) were the center of the secretive gay community during the ‘50's. These sexual “perverts” must have been at the root of these kidnappings and other crimes. As the city became a bit unglued, the homosexuals were rounded up. One of the cops arrested a friend of his from high school. A high school teacher and a great many hair dressers and department store window dressers were among the suspect/victims. Rumors ruined the reputation of a pediatrician, whom it seems was totally innocent. He was able to keep out of jail and his patient families remained loyal to him. I am ashamed that we used his name as a joke and assumed his guilt when I was in junior high school.

Gov. Hoegh and some state legislators had ideas about all of this. They launched a moral crusade and a plan and a place for the perverts. Two really corrupt psychiatrists at the state mental hospital at Cherokee had been prominent in putting away Triplett. Now the governor asked the state hospital at Mt. Pleasant, in the southeast corner of the state, to set up a wing for sexual deviants. Twenty homosexual men from the Sioux City area were taken there.

I am relieved to know that the mental hospital in Mt. Pleasant did not do such great unpleasantness as they might have to the gay men who were sent there as "sexual psychopaths." The staff at Mt. Pleasant understood that these guys were harmless and could not be changed into “normal” heterosexuals. The great thing about political solutions to big problems is that they tend to evaporate when the political need for them goes away. Within a year the wing was closed down, and the men signed off to relatives and other “respectable” persons. Sadly or not, these men later repressed their experiences of Sioux City and Mt. Pleasant. Even they accepted the mores of the times in which they lived.

An Iowa law professor took on the Triplett case which was overturned in 1972.  Whether he was guilty or not remained disputed by those who knew him. In 1976 the state sexual psychopath law was overturned. A side note: How society defines sexual behaviors and defines some as crimes has an astounding history of its own. In the early ‘90's I remember a dispute in our church in Chicago. A majority wanted all the children fingerprinted and given bracelets to wear for identification. Carol and I and a few others protested, but were thought uncaring by the fearful.

Look how we identify and track what we now call “sexual offenders.” The laws passed in 1994 are more enlightened than the persecution of gays in the ‘50's. But a study of Megan’s Law in NJ “concluded that it had no effect on time to first re-arrest, showed no demonstrable effect in reducing sexual re-offenses, had no effect on the type of sexual re-offense or first time sexual offense (still largely child molestation), and had no effect on reducing the number of victims of sexual offenses. The authors felt that given the lack of demonstrated effect of the law on sexual offenses, its growing costs may not be justifiable.” [Wikipedia] Questions about the law in New York state are detailed at http://theparson.net/so/.  Every 20-30 years there has been a change in our definitions, descriptions, and prescriptions for sexual offenses. Every 20-30 years there is a new “sex crime panic.”

A side note: Megan Kanka for whom Megan’s Law is named was kidnapped and killed only a few miles from where I lived in New Jersey, but eight years before her death. I seem to be following these events. Perhaps life imitates Stephen King or Dennis LeHane novels.

I suspect that Sioux City hasn't changed a great deal. There was always a lot of sleaze in Sioux City. A lot of stuff that used to be hidden is now in the open. I don’t know how good or bad that is, although I like daylight. The descriptions in this book of Sioux City in the '50's and the '90's are very accurate. If we as a nation are to understand and transcend our past, we need more of this kind of social journalism.

I Declare Success in My Career!

When I was in my first church, someone asked me what I hoped to accomplish in the church. My response then and ever was: “I want to drag the church out of the 17th century (or the 16th or the 5th or the 4th)!” Now for many millions of people this has come to pass.

1965 was the high point of membership in mainline Protestant churches. I joined in 1966 and from that time on membership declined. I swear that I was not the cause of this. Many like me in my generation weren’t good supporters of the status quo, but I was in that cohort that decided to try to change things from within the system. I’m not sure that it worked. I suspect things would have changed without me.

Many conservatives blamed “liberals” like me for wrecking the church by promoting social action, supporting minority rights, the poor, the hungry, and for talking too much about war and peace. There was a Ross Douthat op-ed piece in the New York Times this week saying exactly that thing. The kind of church Mr. Douthat wants is the one Tom Paine said was “the shame of God.”

One of my teachers, Carl Dudley, responded with a sociological analysis titled Where Have All the People Gone? Much of the loss had been demographic – we didn’t have enough children to sustain the membership and too many children weren’t sticking around. The National Council of Churches responded with Punctured Preconceptions, a statistical analysis which showed that more people had left the church because it hadn’t changed enough than had left because it supported too much change.

The world was changing very fast (and the change has accelerated). Many who wanted to keep up had to leave the church because it couldn’t. Some of us wanted to allow children to participate in the Lord’s Supper before Confirmation. (Many children would leave the church after Confirmation.) New theologies were proposed and preached which were challenging spiritually as well as politically.

There’s that word, spiritual. What does it mean? "Spirituality" before 1978 (or thereabouts) would have been understood as “discipleship.” It was about following Jesus and participating in the church, not because your friends and neighbors did, and not because it was helpful socially as people worked their way up a corporate ladder into the middle or upper classes. It meant allowing yourself to be influenced by the teachings and example of Jesus and the heroes of the faith who had gone before. In my earlier life this included Albert Schweitzer, Pearl Buck (Presbyterian but suspected Commie), Bonhoeffer, and even Gandhi.

Issues of gay rights have dominated the churches since the late ‘70's. Public attitudes towards gays have become much more positive since then. The churches are following (instead of leading).

Spirituality is popular because it avoids the 4th and 16th centuries. We don’t have to fight about “beliefs” so much now. I think more people in and outside of churches think that Jesus thought we (as a society, not just as individuals) owed something to the poor and that he didn’t support war. If that is so, that’s my victory and success.

Writer’s Block

 I haven’t “blogged” in about a month. There have been many things I wanted to say or comment upon, but I couldn’t do it. It is called “writer’s block.” 



I have the solution to writer’s block taped to my computer screen. They are words from an episode of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion from a few years ago. They do a skit that has Garrison as an adult child living at home. He is a writer who has difficulty getting published. Sue Scott plays his Mother. There is someone who plays an old man who is the grouchy and very critical Grandfather.


Garrison complains about not being able to write. His Mother says:

“Why doncha write some words
and if you don’t like ‘em,
cross ‘em out and write some new ones
and sorta build like that.”

There just isn’t any answer to that. Except that first part – writing some words.

Our Presbyterian Outlook

The Presbyterian Outlook is a magazine that serves up news and a forum for the Presbyterian Church (USA). I follow this occasionally for news of my ecclesia mater, especially as we approach the now biennial General Assembly. (It used to be annual, but then we couldn't afford it.) This is the representative body that decides such things as the ordination of gays. Next on the agenda will be gay marriage so the pages of The Outlook are hot and of course those of The Layman are hotter still. Should we allow non-geographical regional bodies so that those opposed to the ordination and marriage of gays can live in purity with their own kind? That is an issue this year.

The decline of the denomination is serious and so The Outlook sent a survey instrument to the 177 presbytery “executives.” (This is a title dating from the early ‘70's, when corporate management thinking ruled the church.) I sent this in response to The Outlook article:

The Outlook survey of EP's was a creative initiative. I remember telling an EP in the '70's that the rest of us needed his observations and analysis of what was happening because only he had the big picture from interactions with all the congregations. Even 54% of returns are better than nothing. I hope that you worked with Research Services, one of the great and unique assets of the PCUSA.

It seems that what many of us suspected is now more real: We will lose 7-11% of membership and congregations over gay rights issues. Let's get on with it. I remember in 1994 sitting in a meeting of denominational executives discussing leadership issues. These were experienced men and women from the Episcopal Church, the UCC, the UMC, the Disciples of Christ, the RCA, the ELCA, and the United Church of Canada. Lunchtime conversation was about how there ought to be a grand re-alignment to result in a progressive United Church of North America. I was very surprised to hear this from that group. Now more than ever it seems so obvious. Many have said that they have much more in common with like-minded persons from these other denominations than we do with some of our PCUSA brothers and sisters. 

We are burdened with our past. The issues that made us separate denominations are mostly just history. The great questions of the last 50 years have included the role of tradition in our lives, the degree of ambiguity we can accept, and the meaning of community in the digital age. How much diversity can we accept without losing whatever identity we begin with?  Some pastors and congregations are busy working this out. It means re-thinking who we are -- as seeking people rather than the ones with the answers who are all in agreement. As we speak more and more of “Spirit” we need to question our root belief in the supernatural. Our organizational structures and procedures are heavy burdens that distract us from these more basic questions.

None of us handles high levels of continual change well. Nor can we live without more change in response to the changes that are both around and in us. This contradiction may be resolved only by the God that a pastor friend suggests is or resides in our ability to experience transcendence and to come to new consciousness about the things that challenge us.

This last comment is in reference to last Sunday's sermon by John Shuck, my on-line pastor and friend. I think it is some of his most significant and profound writing. I will blog on this. He tells us how prayer might be of value when we are essentially talking to ourselves. “God” as our ability to bring the unconscious to consciousness.  Hmm. A touch of Jung there that seems timely. Perhaps our outlook is improving.

40 Years for the Record

This week marks 40 years since I was ordained to “Minister of Word and Sacrament” or “Teaching Elder” in the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, now known as the Presbyterian Church (USA). This is a review where I have been and some things I did since seminary. In another posting I will declare my overall success and maybe even on what a young person might do with his or her life now.

I could have been ordained in the church to which I was going after semnary. I chose to be ordained in the church that mentored me through seminary: Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church in Chicago. The pastor, a model for ministry to me, Bill Taylor, some of my seminary professors, and lay people important to me and Carol laid hands on me. Two years later Bill left ministry telling the Chicago Tribune “The church of the ‘70's is a betrayal of the church of the ‘60's.” Yeah. [Somewhere I have photos I took of the Sears now Willis Tower in '71-'72.] The ordination ceremony was a significant ritual to mark the beginning of a career. I have now made it to retirement, but the denomination began its decline in 1965. A major problem was that ministry as a career was coming to an end, even as I began it.

The first congregation I served (Don’t you just love the churchiness of such locutions?) was Zion Presbyterian Church in Ellsworth, Minnesota. Membership was 330 in a town of 588. Now the town is 463 and the church is 291, but this is after a neighboring church of about 200 members was closed and essentially merged into Zion. It was here I learned that I am not a country boy. Not a sophisticated place; I didn't expect that. Not an especially gracious place. I remember asking for an offering for flood relief in South Dakota. “They shouldn’t build where it floods. They should have had insurance.” Small and small town churches are great for training new ministers. I learned how to speak evangelical here. There was a good priest and some great sisters in Ellsworth. Their Bishop pulled them and sidelined them for being too progressive (They were fans of John XXIII.)

Then I became Assistant Pastor (an obsolete title, hired by pastor, not by church as current Associates are) at Glen Avon in Duluth. This was a large church (1,400 members, now 545, a good picture of mainline church decline). I was attracted because I was more and more interested in teaching and church school program development (which I did citywide), and I was attracted by the more experienced “senior” pastor. I soon found that there was little to learn from him, but I was not loyal, so I had to move on.

Trenton NJ was alien to a midwesterner like me. Eight years that felt like exile in some ways. Here was a church that claimed 400 members, only I couldn’t find half of them, so church decline was my fault. My beloved predecessor had married everyone in the community and asked them to join the church in exchange. Lots of conflict, so I got a D.Min. to learn about the church as an organization. I was much involved in social issues in Trenton. My thesis project resulted in an area urban ministry/ community organizing effort that still exists as the “urban mission cabinet.” Our housing ministry project created home ownership for working poor, our soup kitchen converted some of my church members to help rather than fear the homeless, and our peacemaking task force helped persuade the denomination to establish one. I think I did good work here but my conflict management prof said I was a masochist.

I decided administration was more congenial to me than the parish. I raised money (at least $4 million) for good things in Chicago and participated in what was thought to be high level church politics. After eight years of that I moved on to headquarters in Louisville to lead professional development programs. Here as elsewhere I did not think or act politically enough to make things work better for myself (and therefore for others). I think I was mostly being used in that position by people who wanted other things for themselves, but it was lots of fun until a certain GA moderator wanted a newspaper for which there was no money. Close four different offices including mine – Voila! Newspaper failed as predicted.

Having worked with presbytery execs (equivalent to bishops, or at least a suffragan bishop as administrator to the body of teaching and ruling elders that are the presbytery, but don’t say it too loudly) I now became one. Lots of respect was given to my positional authority. I learned how to be wise on occasion, e.g., visiting a congregation in great conflict, I listened and then said “You will get through this,” which was followed by gasps of relief. Expending hours with churches that said they wanted to merge, I then discovered that they had gone through this futile exercise every seven years. Sort of a parable about how no one really wants to change anything in churches.

Frustrated by the glacial pace of change in the church, I jumped at an opportunity to work outside or on the fringes of the church. I went to work with Bob Funk, founder and director of the Jesus Seminar. Wow, what a lot of wonderful scholars from around the world, and people in and about Santa Rosa, a special place (northern California). I raised money but the finances were going down because of embezzlement that I didn’t know about until a year later. Couldn’t find a job for Carol and couldn’t afford to live under the great housing boom (2002) so I returned to Illinois.

I discovered the larger church didn’t want me anymore, but finally a “larger parish” of 4 small congregations, two of which were UCC, wanted me as a co-pastor. I arrived in the most conservative county in Wisconsin and learned that the churches were in absolute denial about their finances. The co-pastor and I led them through a year-long planning process which led to our both leaving. I stayed half-time for about a year with the more sensible of the congregations.

Carol and I each found interim ministry positions on Long Island. This was desirable because our older daughter lived north of Albany and this brought us closer at a time when we were anticipating a grandchild. Good folks who spoke openly and had fun together at the congregation in Baldwin; not so much at the more conservative church Carol led. I found an interim position in Albany, we moved north to the Adirondacks and to retirement.

Family trumps church.

40 Years Later

I was ordained at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church, Chicago, in early June, 1972.

The ritual was performed at the right hour
and in the right way
by the right people
in the right vestments
and in accord with all the traditions.
Many people were in attendance
dressed in their finest
singing the best familiar and stirring hymns of glory
and all of this led them to feel that they
were in the presence of the transcendent divine.
The candidate was charged to be present to those he served
and to remember that he was a part of a wondrous history,
a new leader of the institution for its greater future
but most of all for a better world for all.
He knelt and hands of friends and mentors and teachers
were laid upon his head and shoulders.

All of this receded into the past
and many then present are now dead
and the body then celebrated is now a shadow
and the candidate is absent there
but now
celebrates daily
the turning of the earth,
the immensity and indifference of the cosmos
and life and creativity and serendipity and love
and music and art and a community of freethinkers.
The former ritual sought imagined favor and blessing
and authority
that was always ours to claim and to make and
to enjoy not forever but while we live.

(Note that before the sermon was on the blog I always preached when possible from the table as I learned at Lincoln Park.)