Brian R Corbin's Reflections on Religion and Life

Living Your Faith as Citizens and Leaders in Politics, Culture, Society and Business

March 22, 2009 • 7:24 pm 0

Operation Rice Bowl Continues: week 4 of Lent

Fourth Week of Lent: Solidarity Will Transform the World

Honduras

Located in Central America, Honduras is a resource-rich country that also struggles with the devastating effects of tropical storms and political conflict. More than one-third of the workforce is in agriculture, most as subsistence farmers. Through its Natural Resource programming, Catholic Relief Services helps farmers, like Martín Reyes Granados, to develop sustainable methods of farming, increasing their yield so they can sell their surplus.

Pray

What do we see when we look at the world with the light of Christ? We see a world so beloved by God that God entered our human existence in order to dwell in it with us. We see a world that sings of the presence of the divine, in its abundance, its beauty, its creative genius. And we see a world that continues to suffer as it waits for the peace, justice and common good promised in God’s reign. As Nicodemus discovered when he visited Jesus under the cover of darkness, if you want to associate with the Son of God, you have to be willing to walk with him into the light of day and get to work. In your prayer this week, express your gratitude for the many blessings that God has placed in your world. At the same time, reflect on the work that is still to be done, the suffering and need that occur right before us in the light of day. Ask God to give you the courage to respond with the compassionate light of Christ.

Fast

People are not the only ones to suffer from injustices, from imbalances of power, from conflict and greed. The earth suffers too as it is worked in ways that are not sustainable, as it is deforested, eroded, poisoned and paved over. This week, let your fast express care of the earth. Fast from foods that are produced in wasteful or inhumane ways and instead eat foods that are produced locally using sustainable and ethical methods. Fast from modes of transportation that pollute and waste resources, and instead walk, bike, carpool or take the bus. Fast from purchasing items that are over packaged, and instead bring your own bags to the grocery store or buy used items from a local non-profit thrift store. Fast from purchasing items that are produced using unfair labor conditions, and instead purchase items that are certified as Fair Trade.

Learn

Martín Reyes Granados learned he did not have to go it alone as a small subsistence cattle farmer living in Estancias, Honduras. By attending the CRS-sponsored Country School for Small Farmers, he found himself in a network of support and learning that helped him to change his farming practices and improve his entire agricultural community. The school teaches small farmers to learn from one another and share experiences and experimentation. After joining the school, Granados went from owning a small herd of cows that barely produced milk to running a small but productive dairy farm. Today he is working to improve his community and region as the president of a local dairy co-op and a member of the Fair Trade Network in Honduras.

Give

This week, free up some money for your Rice Bowl while implementing some cost-saving green principles in your own home. Here are several suggestions: * Instead of purchasing paper towels to clean up messes, cut up several old towels and t-shirts to make a pile of rags to keep in the kitchen and bathrooms. Drop them into a basket after you’ve used them, so you can wash and reuse them. Need a little extra scrubbing power? Wrap a rag in a plastic mesh fruit bag, the kind that oranges come in. These can be reused over and over again.

* Instead of purchasing window and counter cleaner, put a mixture of equal parts water and vinegar in a spray bottle. You can use this everywhere, from sinks to counters to windows. For your windows and mirrors, use newspaper instead of using paper towels.

* Instead of buying powdered cleansers, pull out the baking soda and the borax for a little extra scrubbing power.

* Instead of throwing the laundry in the drier with softening sheets, hang it outside to dry and to be freshened by the sun.

Put the money that you didn’t spend into your Rice Bowl this week.

Monies collected from Operation Rice Bowl, collected in the parishes during Holy Week, are split between local (25%) and international (75%) efforts.  The local amount remains in the Diocese of Youngstown for small grants to parishes and groups working to relieve hunger.  The 75% goes to Catholic Relief Services to provide humanitarian and long term development efforts around the world.  Thanks for your generosity.

Filed under: consumerism, Culture, Market Place, Personal Reflections, Social Justice, Spirituality

March 8, 2009 • 9:02 pm 1

Hyper-Muscular Christianity: Any reflections?

Sightings 2/19/09

Hyper-Muscular Christianity

— Joseph Laycock

In Seattle, self-described “charismatic Calvinist” Mark Driscoll preaches that “Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand, and the willingness to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship…I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” Justin Fatica, founder of the Catholic ministry group Hard as Nails, found a different way of demonstrating the rugged power of Christ when he appeared in an HBO documentary shouting “Jesus loves you!” as a colleague beat him with a folding chair.

Although Fatica is Catholic and Driscoll is Protestant, there are remarkable similarities between the two: Both were raised Catholic but had a lackadaisical approach to their faith until a conversion experience in their late teens (at age seventeen for Fatica, and age nineteen for Driscoll). Both men also emphasize their tough origins. Driscoll believes Jesus had calluses and does not hesitate to compare Joseph’s vocation as a carpenter with his own father’s career as a drywaller. Fatica comes from affluence but emphasizes that prior to his conversion he lived a shady, worldly life in New Jersey where he “hung out with some characters.” These narratives generate the capital of manliness necessary for their sermons.

The preaching styles of Driscoll and Fatica–which are both controversial and confrontational–appear to be motivated by a concern that Jesus has been emasculated by a bloodless church that is more concerned with culture than salvation. They are not alone in this view. Fundamentalist cartoonist Jack Chick produces a comic tract entitled “The Sissy,” in which a hirsute trucker named Duke mocks a fellow trucker’s Christianity because “Jesus was a sissy.” Have we actually reduced Jesus to, “a limp-wristed hippy in a dress with a lot of product in His hair,” as Driscoll claims? Or are there other cultural forces behind these types of extreme preaching?

As Molly Worthen notes in a New York Times piece on Driscoll, men from Billy Sunday to the Promise Keepers have railed against the feminization of the church. “Muscular Christianity,” which emphasized an ideal of vigorous masculinity, first appeared in Victorian England. The term was coined to describe the writings of Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, who felt that sports and athleticism would produce Christians who were more fit for civic duty. Hughes and Kingsley also shared a concern over the changes of industrialism and worried whether traditional morality would be able to adapt.

Driscoll and Fatica appear to embody a sort of muscular Christianity on steroids. Rather than sports, Driscoll and Fatica tie Christianity to modern spectacles of violence. Fatica admits that his signature use of folding chairs is borrowed from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Driscoll has organized an event called “Fighting with God” in which he discusses spiritual warfare with Christian athletes from the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

If Kingsley and Hughes were concerned about industrialism, Driscoll and Fatica seem to blame consumerism for feminizing Jesus. Driscoll writes in his book Vintage Jesus , “Jesus did not have Elton John or the Spice Girls on his iPod, The View on his TiVo, or a lemon-yellow Volkswagen Beetle in his garage.” Tim Hanley, a speaker for Hard as Nails Ministries, has commented, “We’ve had enough of the facades and the fake people…We live in a world that’s so fabricated.” According to Worthen, the most popular movie at Driscoll’s church is Fight Club , a tale of manly emancipation from consumer culture.

However, the perception that manliness must be restored to the church seems suspiciously linked the rise of women as well as gays and lesbians in the ministry. Another similarity between Driscoll and Fatica is that both have been cited making misogynistic comments. Fatica is known for pointing out overweight women in his audience and yelling, “You’re fat!” He claims this is done to demonstrate the cruelty of consigning people to their categories. While Fatica encourages women to join the Hard as Nails ministry, Driscoll reminds his congregation that women must submit to their husbands and are forbidden from taking preaching roles. On his blog, Driscoll implied that Ted Haggard’s wife contributed to his downfall: “A wife who lets herself go is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.” These comments beg the question: Is this hyper-muscular Christianity really a radical, transgressive approach to ministry? Or is it actually the death-throes of an outmoded patriarchy?

References :

“Who Would Jesus Smack Down? Mark Driscoll–A Pastor with a Macho Conception of Christ,” Molly Worthen, The New York Times , 6 January 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11punk-t.html?_r=1

“Controversial Preacher is ‘Hard as Nails,'” John Donovan and Julia Hoppock, ABC News.com, 20 June 2008.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaithMatters/Story?id=4013475&page=1

Mark Driscoll, Vintage Jesus (Good News Publishers, 2008).

Joseph Laycock is a PhD student studying religion and society at Boston University, and the author of Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires (Praeger Publishers, 2009).

Filed under: Culture, Personal Reflections, Spirituality

March 4, 2009 • 8:06 pm 0

PRO-LIFE E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO CONGRESS EXPANDS NATIONAL POSTCARD EFFORT


 
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has launched an e-mail campaign urging Congress to maintain widely-supported pro-life policies and to oppose the federal funding and promotion of abortion. The e-mail campaign augments the massive national postcard campaign launched in dioceses throughout the country in late January. Both efforts are being coordinated through the USCCB’s partner organization, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA).
            Since 1993, NCHLA has coordinated national postcard campaigns equipping citizens to express their pro-life views clearly and respectfully to Congress. The current campaign is unprecedented in scope, exceeding those sponsored by the Catholic bishops in the past.
            Deirdre A. McQuade, Assistant Director for Policy and Communications at the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, explained the supplementary e-mail campaign. “Tens of millions of cards have been distributed in parishes, schools, non-Catholic churches, and civic organizations across the country,” she said. “The e-mail campaign will give even more citizens the chance to participate.”
            The e-mails urge a constituent’s Senators and Representative to “please oppose FOCA or any similar measure” and “retain existing laws against funding and promotion of abortion.” They also state: “It is especially important that Congress retain these laws in the various appropriations bills, e.g., the Hyde Amendment in the Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill.”
            “To guard against the erosion of current pro-life measures—and to keep abortion from becoming a federal entitlement—our voice is needed now more than ever,” McQuade said.

Filed under: Culture, healthcare, morals, Politics, Social Doctrine

March 4, 2009 • 12:52 am 0

‘Charity As Cure’

from Catholic Relief Services Blog by John Lindner

“For me, the word charity assumes meaning not only in what I daily observe but also in Scripture and in the lives of the saints—unofficial and official. At the very least, charity assumes a sharing of resources….

“One powerful scriptural example of such sharing occurs in Luke’s description of an early Christian community: “The company of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common…. There was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:32-34). How wonderful to think of the human family without a needy person among us! But the gulf between charity and greed extends beyond the distribution of human resources, because the seeds of both charity and greed reside in the human heart. It is the difference between a “this is mine” viewpoint and a “whatever is mine is to be shared” approach to life. The first letter of John provides an illustration: “The one who has the goods of the world and sees a brother [or sister] in need and closes his heart, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 Jn 3:17).”

That’s George Anderson writing in America: The National Catholic Weekly, in an article titled Charity As Cure.

Filed under: consumerism, Culture, Personal Reflections

February 26, 2009 • 2:11 pm 3

2nd Day of Lent: Solidarity

“Solidarity is the conviction that we are born into a fabric of relationships, that our humanity ties us to others, that the gospel consecrates those ties and that the prophets tell us that those ties are the test by which our very holiness will be judged.” -Rev. J. Bryan Hehir

GIVE some time today to reflect how solidarity relates to your life.

Filed under: Culture, Personal Reflections, Spirituality

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