intersections

A Guide to the Health Care Reform Debate

Below is the context of an email that went out to over 1,200 clergy today, from the PICO National Network, signed by me and my friend, Rev. Rayfield Burns. I encourage you to download both the clergy guide and the congregational handout.

With Congress moving full speed ahead on one of the most crucial civil rights and social justice issues of our time - making health care affordable and accessible - it is important that people of faith take the time to understand how health reform will impact the quality, stability, and affordability of health care for all Americans.
PICO and Sojourners have teamed up to produce "A Guide to the Health Care Reform Debate," an 8-page booklet aimed at helping clergy and lay leaders participate in the health care debate in a constructive way, based on their values.  View the guide here.
We've also produced a 2-page congregational handout that can be shared with members of your faith community. Click here to view the 2-page handout.
Please note that these guides have been produced for Christian faith communities.  To find additional resources for other faith traditions, visit www.coverallfamilies.org
 Both pieces begin by examining the biblical basis for the need for quality health care.  They then look at the current health care reality for many of our nation's families, as well as the different proposals being considered in D.C.  Finally, they lay out some principles for a values-based, commonsense approach to reform, as well as ideas for how people of faith can influence the debate.
Many pastors and faith leaders have endorsed the guide.  Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS, calls the guides "a helpful starting point in coming to understand the issues in the current debate."
Dr. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed in Orlando, FL, says, "I found this guide to the health-care discussion very helpful. It not only reminded me of our biblical mandate to be involved, but it informed me of some of the important points and principles to keep in mind as I communicate with my congregation."
View the 8-page guide for clergy, or the 2-page congregational handout.
Together, people of faith can have a tremendous impact on the decisions of our elected leaders in D.C. and be a decisive factor in moving our country towards ensuring quality, stable, affordable health care for all Americans.

Sincerely,
Rev. Rayfield Burns
Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church
Kansas City, MO

Rev. Ryan J. Bell
Hollywood Adventist Church
Hollywood, CA

PICO: Economic Recovery Summit in Washington, D.C.

Last week I participated in the Faith and Families Economic Recovery Summit along with nearly 300 other leaders from PICO affiliates around the country. I traveled to Washington, DC with our executive director, one organizer and two other leaders from LA Voice.

The PICO National Network is made up of 53 affiliate organizations in 17 states around the country, representing over 1 million American families. Our national work achieved a major victory when, on February 4, President Obama signed the expanded S-CHIP legislation into law, effectly opening the way to provide heath care coverage to 4.1 million additional children (read more).

Now the PICO Network is turning their attention to two primary issues at the national level: universal health coverage and an end to unnecessary home foreclosures. Below are several videos that will give you a little taste of what our week was like.

Click here to read a report of this most recent PICO event in Washington, DC.

Join the fight for affordable housing in LA

Los Angeles Families Phone City Council Urging Passage of a Mixed-Income Housing Ordinance By June!

Housing Advocates establish a hotline this week to urge city council to take decisive action on the Los Angeles Housing Crisis and pass a mixed-income housing ordinance by June. This ordinance would ensure that in every new development in the city would include units affordable to working families.

To learn more and download a Press Release, click here.

Empire Remixed

I'm preparing to give a lecture on the emerging church at La Sierra tomorrow. I'm a guest in Drs. John Jones and Charles Teal's class, "The Experience of Religion in Three Cultures." It's a section of the course on Protestantism and I'm supposed to engage with the students around the emerging church phenomenon. I don't like being the resident expert on emerging church, mainly because I'm not an expert on it.

Anyway, in thinking about how to structure my hour tomorrow I've been catching up on blogs that I've been meaning to read and I've run across a new blog that I'm so excited about. I think two of the most creative theological and political minds in the church today have got to be the husband wife duo of Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh. Together they wrote Colossians Remixed, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Their forthcoming book is, Romans Disarmed. Better still is the fact that Walsh and Keesmaat will be the speakers for the annual Keough Lectures at Columbia Union College.

All that is set up to tell you about a new blog I discovered called Empire Remixed, where Brian and Sylvia are writing. (FYI - if you're in the Toronto area next month you really should take in Evolving Church: Amidst the Powers).

In a recent post, Brian Walsh writes thoughts that are so similar to my own in this post-election season.

I know and I appreciate that today is a day of hope. Today is a day of promises fulfilled. Today is a day that, for many Americans, begins to take away the shame and the embarrassment of the last eight years. I stood, without reservation, with everyone else in the room as Mr. Obama took the oath of office. and I put my hands together in applause.

 

And I appreciated the wisdom and the seriousness of Mr. Obama’s address. I heard him when he called America to humility and restraint. I appreciated his insistence that America can no longer consume more of the world’s resources than is just or fair. And he is right in saying that America has been a child and it is time to grow up.

 

But I worried when he said that America is ready to “lead once more.” I was deeply concerned when he said that America “will not apologize for our way of life.” And while I appreciated his statement that the issue wasn’t the size of the GDP “but the reach of our prosperity” I’m not sure that he has quite understood that American prosperity has consistently been bought at the expense of both freedom and prosperity for much of the world.

 

When Mr. Obama says to America’s enemies that he is confident that they will suffer defeat and yet, “we will extend the hand if you unclench your fist” I confess that I am appalled. Appalled at the lack of understanding of his so-called enemies. Fists get clenched for a reason and they will seldom open because the threat is uttered with greater intensity. The bullshit of the clenched fist can only be transformed into the open hand when the reasons for the clenching of that fist in the first place are redemptively addressed.

Read more...

2008 in Review

There is so much I could say about 2008. It has been, by far, the biggest growth year in terms of the Hollywood Church. And I don't mean primarily numbers (though the church grew by 20% this year). More people found faith, more connected to Christian community as something healthy and life-giving who never thought that would happen for them. We have more leaders in the church this year than last year. We've also had our setbacks: our mural project got stuck in the city-wide legal problems surrounding public art murals (it's a long story). We've had key people move out of town and some hit hard by financial and other life challenges. But I would say that overall, our life in the city as witnesses to God's reign is stronger than a year ago. More on this later, perhaps.

Our children are in a new school that is working out much better for them. We are all VERY pleased that Sophie started Kindergarten and Zoe is now in 3rd grade at Franklin Elementary.

In addition to this here are some other highlights of our year...

Travel

Obviously, the traveling Elysabeth and I have been privileged to do has been probably the #1 highlight of our year. In addition to traveling to Moscow (here, here and here) and St. Petersburg in October and Israel (here and here) in December, I went to

• Washington, D.C. in January for research meetings about PICOs ongoing work around health care reform.
• Princeton, NJ in June for the Envision '08 conference. (Also here).
• Orlando, FL in September for the annual Spectrum/Adventist Forums Conference.
• Columbus, OH in October for the Innovation Conference.

Community Beautification Grant
The Hollywood Adventist Church received a $10,000 Community Beautification Grant from the City of Los Angeles to paint an art mural on the wall of our church that faces the freeway. (More here and here).

Interfaith work
2008 was the year I got deeply involved in interfaith work. Some of the highlights of this was participating in the Memorial Day Interfaith Service at All Saints in Pasadena, meeting Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad from the Parents Circle Families Form and being elected Treasurer of the Interreligious Council of Southern California (website).

Community Organizing with LA Voice/PICO
We have had another amazing year partnering with LA Voice in local community organizing, mostly around the crisis of affordable housing in Los Angeles. My participation in the national work really dwindled this year as I had so many other travel commitments, but I'm looking forward to getting back involved in early 2009.

Adventists Against Prop 8
I am so proud of the work our little group did in speaking out, as Christians, for the rights of gays and lesbians in California (website). This is a fight we temporarily lost, but our work united many good people who have either left the Adventist Church, have been on the fringes of the church, or who just never imagined that anyone in the church would stand for religious liberty and human rights in the way that we attempted to do. I am also very grateful to the leaders of the local Conferences and the Pacific Union who worked with us to allow a different voice to be heard in this debate. I'm glad my church can tolerate diverse viewpoints.

And of course, for me, one of the greatest highlights of the year was...

the election of Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States

BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2008

I've read a lot of books this year, as usual, but I really haven't read that many good ones. I'm not sure what that means. And I can't tell you how many I've started but never finished. Here are the cream of the crop from what I read this year, in no particular order. As usual, these are not books that necessarily came out in 2008 (though some are).

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson

The Fidelity of Betrayal, by Peter Rollins

Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, OSB

Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright

Evangelism After Christendom, Bryan Stone

Here's to a healthy and joyful New Year!

Wading Into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

As you know, Elysabeth and I were in Israel earlier this month. We never went anywhere near the Gaza Strip, but we did drive up and down the Jordan River and right up next the border between Israel and Lebanon and Syria. The only time we entered the Occupied Palestinian Territories was to visit Bethlehem (O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie?) Our guide gave us quite the lesson in modern Israeli history. Needless to say, the violence between Israel and the Palestinians that we have been hearing about for the last 5 days or so has been deeply disturbing to me and I've been trying to read anything I can get my hands on.

While I am terribly unqualifed to speak with any authority on Middle East politics, I want to share with you what I am reading that I have found helpful in the hopes that you will also find these resources helpful.

What's Next on Gaza/Israel and Why Americans Should Care, by Daniel Levy
I've read a lot of articles and blog posts on this issue in the past few days but this is the single best piece I've read on the recent conflict and many of the historical and political reasons behind it. Yes, I realize it's from the Huffington Post and that some of you will be turned off by this fact alone, but consider for a minue that Daniel Levy has worked under several Israeli Prime Ministers. His bio is here.

Anti-Semites and Israel's assault on Gaza
I found this piece through Bill Cork's blog. This comes from a strongly pro-Israel source but strikes me a pretty balanced piece.

Brian McLaren shares a couple emails he's received from an Israeli friend in Palestine
Here and here.

The Christian Century on the blockade of Gaza.

Here's two sides (here and here) of the argument from The Chrisitan Science Monitor.

Ressurrecting Empire, by Rashid Khalidi
This is a book I'm reading right now, at the recommendation of my friend Doug Morgan. It is a great overview and history of the West's "involvement" (interference would be a better word) in the Middle East. It's craming a lot of history into a small space, so I'm not sure I'm retaining all the fine points, but it's a good primer on Mid-east politics and history.

My Analysis
This is my very simplistic and amateur analysis.
1. Hamas is an enormous problem. Right now they seem to be the present cause of the violence. Their persistent firing of rockets into Israel over the past several years is terrorizing and provocative and Israel feels duty bound to respond.

2. The Israeli government has been maintaining what amounts to a siege on Gaza, prohibiting the flow of basic resources such as food, medical supplies and electricity and sanitation, which has created a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

3. Hamas places is military establishments in residential areas, however what occurs to me is this (and I haven't read this in any article up until now). There are 1.5 million people who live on the 139 square mile piece of land known as the Gaza Strip, which makes it one of the most densely populated places in the world. No matter where you locate military establishments, you our bound to be nearby civilian neighborhoods.

4. Why are the Israelis targeting police stations and police graduation ceremonies if their target is Hamas? (This is an actual question).

5. Here's the bottom line for me: Israel's response is not making Israel more secure, which is ostensibly their goal. On the left sidebar of this blog, just under my picture, is a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. that I believe with all by being.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

The Israeli government has the 5th strongest military in the world, backed by the single strongest military in the world. The world needs Israel to be a leader in the Middle East, not a retaliatory sibling. Yes, Israel is being bullied. Yes, Hamas is a destructive regime bent on destroying Israel. But we need Israel to show restraint and most of all, leadership, in creating a new reality in the region. I know this sounds naive, and maybe it is, but the Prince of Peace who we Christians claim to follow, calls us to nothing less. And it seems to me that the survival of the planet demands that someone stand up and be the leader.

So, I hope that you will join me in first of all praying for an end to this insane conflict. As of today 390 Palestinians have died, 60 of them civilians (according to the LA Times). Israel has rejected a call for a truce and seems prepared to engage a ground conflict any day now. Nothing good can come from this. Nothing!

Second, support organizations like CARE who are trying to save people's lives.

Third, learn all you can about the history of the Middle East and understand the problems on all sides.

Take Action
Abrahamic Faiths Peacemaking Initiative
This is an organization I am very proud to say I am a part of. The organizing committee for this group just met to lay plans Memorial Day 2009. Stay tuned!

Churches for Middle East Peace
I haven't worked with this group before, but it seems like a something good you might want to check out.

Dear Mr. President - P!nk

My friend Kori told me about this song this afternoon. Yeah, I apparently live a sheltered life. Take a listen (and a look).

Obviously one man is not responsible for all the problems in the world, but he sure bears a great deal of the responsibility. I heard one speaker recently say that George Bush should be remembered as the president who revoked generations of law protecting prisoners, suspended habeas corpus and authorized the use of torture. How can he sleep at night?

Frankly, I think this is a song for any president. Just because we have a new president taking office in just a few days, the same questions must be asked. Hopefully the answers we get in future will be more humane.

Finally, we all need to hear this song addressed to us. We are culpable by the choices we make. How can we sleep at night?

Talking with Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad

Yesterday I had the incredible privilege to sit with two modern-day heroes, Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad (pictured above). Robi's son, David, was killed by a Palestinian sniper. Ali's brother was shot by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint at the edge of his village in the occupied Palestinian territories. They are featured in the 2006 documentary, Encounter Point, which tells the story of the Parents Circle-Families Forum, where they are active leaders.

Before the meeting started I approached Robi and extended my hand. She greeted me warmly and said, "I'm Robi." I said something like, "Yes I recognize you," which seemed to surprise her (I'm not sure why. She's become quite famous). She asked me who I was and what Seventh-day Adventists were. After an awkward and stumbling explanation she smiled and said words I'll never forget, "I don't care what religion you are as long at it makes you into a human being." This seems exactly right to me. But I also realize that this is not an uncomplicated statement. Many would be quick to point out that it is naive in it's liberal idealism. This remark from Robi was juxtaposed against my recent reading of Carl Raschke's latest book, GloboChrist. I read more than half the book when it first came out at the beginning of the summer and then put it down for a variety of reasons. I just finished it a few minutes before heading over to Stephen S. Wise Temple for this meeting. Still ringing in my ears were these works of Raschke:

The only way Christianity can hope to succeed against Islam in today's global context is to put aside the secularist project altogether.... Christianity today must become far more radial than it has ever imagined (114).

Though we do not need to conceive of a Christian jihad, mainly because it would be instantly misconstrued, Augustine's point is something of which Christians need to remind themselves. The fulfillment of the Great Commission will not be without struggle. The struggle is ultimately a spiritual one, but it is real, it is contemporary, and it will become more intense as the years wear on. Through dialogue, Muslims and Christians may come come to agree on common points of their mutual Abrahamic faiths, but the differences will always outweigh the similarities. The differences make the difference. Islam is founded on an absolutely objectivist revelation that we either accept or reject. Christianity is founded on a revelation in the person of Jesus, to whom we give the whole of our life and being.... We are engaged not so much in a struggle for the doctrinal truth of our faith as in a struggle to manifest the presence of Christ in what we know as the radical relationality that is at the heart of our commitment to the One who gave his life for each of us and for others (115).

In these statements, and in the next chapter, Raschke depicts an inevitable "collision of eschatologies." I am troubled by these things. Why does Christianity have to succeed AGAINST Islam? Why must religion be a zero-sum game? I am not suggesting a relativism in which every belief and every practice is equally valid. There are genuine problems with both the Christian Bible and the Qur'an. But Raschke himself admits that the Mahdist tradition upon which much of militant Islamism is based is not even a part of the Qur'an.

As I sat with Robi and Ali in a small, intimate setting with 20 other religious leaders from Jewish, Christian, Muslim and B'ahai faiths, talking about religious and political conflict, and as I thought about Robi's definition of good religion as that which makes you into a human being, I wondered again about the value of our various exclusive truth claims. Must the other "lose" in order for me to "win?" Why do we persist in talking about our faith in terms of winning and losing?

Toward the end of our time together Ali said, "It's so easy to be right. Everyone is right. What is difficult is to be honest." The Parents Circle believes that honesty and conversation is the way to peace in their war torn country. Even for me, their honesty was shocking and refreshing.

Huge thanks to my friend, Rabbi Ron Stern, for making this possible and hosting this conversation at his congregation, Stephen S. Wise Temple.

MORE:

• I first heard of Robi and Ali and the Parents Circle from the amazing radio show, Speaking of Faith, with Krista Tippett. You can hear that remarkable interview for yourself and read more about their story here. THIS IS THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO TO UNDERSTAND THEIR STORY!
• Check out the website for the documentary, Encounter Point, and watch the trailer. The doc is available on Netflix.com.

In Conversation

Last Friday morning, November 7th, four friends recorded a conversation as a pilot for possible future podcast which will feature Adventist leaders in conversation. All the details are not worked out yet about how this podcast will develop in the future or how it will be distributed, if at all. So, I offer it here, as do my colleagues, for your enjoyment but especially for your feedback.

For those of you who have been a part of re-church in the past or have been recently involved in helping me think about the future of re-church, I am especially interested in your thoughts and whether this might be a helpful format for re-church to adopt as one of it's projects.

In this conversation is

• Kumar Dixit, Associate Pastor of New Hope Church in Fulton, Maryland and author of Wondering About God blog.
• Lisa Clark-Diller, Associate Professor of History at Southern Adventist University
• Julius Nam, Associate Professor of Religion and Theological Studies at Loma Linda University (dang, he has a Wikipedia entry. I don't have a Wikipedia entry) and author of Progressive Adventism blog.
• and myself.

Click here to listen.

On November 4, vote NO on Prop 8