Sucked into a Christian Book Study Group

A Personal Look

             I never would have predicted it and I’m not sure I’m suited for it, but I got sucked into a Christian book study group over last summer. It started because of a book called Everything Must Change. I couldn’t have agreed more with the title, and it intrigued me that a Protestant pastor would be so outspoken to suggest, as Brian McClaren does in that book, that contemporary American Christians are in league with corrupt global capitalism, propping up a vast and unsustainable economic, political, and moral charade. If they really want to preserve civilization, he says, they ought to be practicing the hard, humanitarian work Jesus lays out for them in the Gospels.

           There were four facilitators of this seminar-like study group, two of them friends of mine. Another friend loaned me the book. I read it before the seminar began. It was pretty amazing. McClaren is a political liberal—make that a radical—calling for nothing less than a revolution in western society, not violently in the streets but in the hearts and minds of Christians. In chapter after chapter, writing with the evangelical fervor of a Peter or Paul, he lays out his points like any peacenik or socialist or tree-hugging environmentalist.

            We are killing ourselves and the planet with our voracious materialism, he says. And that includes a bloated military. But in the Gospels—in Jesus’ life and teaching—we find a way to calm ourselves down, simplify our lives, and reset our relationships so that all are included without prejudice. That’s true Christianity, and if it’s also radical extremism, don’t people realize Jesus was a radical extremist?

            I’m not sure McClaren’s book fully convinced me. I agreed with his analysis of the enormous, Hydra-headed problems we face today, but his solutions through the institutional church seemed tepid to me by comparison. And I don’t think he accounts adequately for Christianity’s baggage. The Church has been a principal perpetrator of the imperial evils which have brought us to the brink of spontaneous global die-off. Can the Church really provide the cure? Or is this a companion case of too-big-to-fail?

            Nevertheless, I stayed connected to the process through several meetings of the study group, participating in discussions and meeting some thoughtful, interesting people—most of them, unlike myself, practicing Christians.

            The reason I’m not a practicing Christian or a member of any church goes back to my days as a senior in high school. It’s not theological or ideological. It’s pure adolescent attitude.

            My father, for some reason, had a thing about making me go to Unitarian Sunday school and church. I of course was far more committed to my Saturday nights, out late with my girl friend. My father would come into my bedroom Sunday morning and throw open the curtains to let the glaring morning light stream in directly on my sleeping head. So long as I was in school, he said, he and my mother would insist I get up for church on Sunday morning. It was a direct attack on the poetry of my soul, and it really pissed me off. I swore that once I graduated from high school I would never go to church again in my life.

            And I’ve pretty much held to it, even though I love churches, especially cathedrals. That’s because I love spirituality, reverence for life, soft philosophies of love and tenderness, stories of Eden and reflections on eternity and life everlasting. To enter a church, especially a gothic-style cathedral but also a plain, unassuming chapel, has always brought a quiet awe-filled joy to my mind and heart, an “Ahhh” of relief from the noise and confusion outside.

            But that’s when there’s no service going on. When the service starts, that feeling for some reason begins to leave me, and the longer the service goes on the less close to the sacred I feel. That’s why I had no fire for getting up for church when I was in high school. It was such a disappointment. It couldn’t begin to light my spirit with the same glow as Saturday night at the YWCA dance.

            Maybe it’s all the standing up and sitting down, constantly interrupting my reverie; maybe it’s the lackluster hymns that make my temples ache when I sing them; maybe it’s the dull sermons that tip-toe around strong emotions, startling ideas, and, of course, sex; maybe it’s the canned prayers and the monotonous drone of responsive readings. Maybe it’s all of those. The truth is, I don’t connect with God in church services as much as in other places, using other means. I seem to require my own personal spirituality which I don’t find, or haven’t yet found, in any liturgy.
            But after the Brian McClaren book was done, the study group leaders decided to continue, and two offshoot groups formed, one studying the Hebrew tradition and the other offering to compare The Heart of Christianity, a book by Marcus Borg, with Native American Spirituality, where one of our group’s pastors has expertise. I was quite interested in the latter because Native American spirituality was my entry point into understanding my own spiritual feelings. But I didn’t see much connection with Christianity there. I wanted to learn if there was one.

            Well, the answer is complicated, but, overall, I believe, negative. As became pretty clear to me in the study group, a sizable gulf exists between standard Christian belief and the Native American animistic experience of unity with all creation.

            After that second book study, the group decided it wanted to keep meeting, and a third book was chosen, The First Christmas by Borg and a co-author, John Dominic Crossan. I decided to stay in the group for a while longer because, for one thing, the cost of the book was covered. But, as I perform in an annual version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the second-most popular Christmas story in the world, I thought it behooved me to learn more about the first most-popular version.

            Well, The First Christmas pretty much destroys the magic of the nativity story in the Bible, like telling a child there is no Santa Clause. The angels, the virgin, the stable, the star, the shepherds, the magi, the narrow escape from an evil king—it was all advertising. The authors say as much. They trace how the details of the Gospel story were transposed from older stories of prophets in the Jewish scriptures and world saviors in pagan myths. Jesus’ followers were in competition with those established stories and myths. To attract believers, they needed a comparable myth. The beloved Christmas story is one result—a public relations coup, when you think of it, but maybe not entirely effective. While Jesus definitely replaced Zeus, it’s not so certain he’s yet to replace his chief rival Caesar.

            I left the book study group for my acting job before we finished The First Christmas, so no doubt there was more to come than simply demystifying the Bible nativity. But I heard the group would continue after the holidays with a new selection. Eventually, Naked Spirituality by Brian McClaren—the Everything Must Change pastor—was chosen, and meetings began this February. I had a perfect opportunity to slip out of the group at this point, but the people drew me back. I missed them, and they seem to like me and my take on things. I like them, too. They’re earnest, sweet, and accepting. Most are recovering fundamentalists of one sort or another, including Catholics, drawn to a contemporary movement sometimes called “the emerging church” because it seeks societal renewal through a rededication to the basics of Christianity as practiced by the first Christians. To me it reflects a hope for another Great Awakening of the sort which swept America in the 19th century.

Edgar Cayce

            But some, including one of our facilitators, are also long-time members of the Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment. Cayce, a fundamentalist Christian who became a phenomenal psychic, was an anomaly. There’s no explaining him by any measure of religion or science. But in the 1920s and ‘30s he began what has become a large movement of followers worldwide, many as staunchly Christian as he, who also believe in reincarnation, practice meditation as well as prayer, favor alternative health advice, and entertain a wide and various swath of esoteric and occult ideas and information.

            This unique group forms a bridge between fundamentalist Christianity and spiritual independents like me who find greater comfort in the quiet mysticism of the East than the compulsive salesmanship of the West. Edgar Cayce uniquely spanned them both while adding much of his own into the mix which the wider culture has slowly but steadily been catching up with ever since his death in 1945.

            That’s the best explanation I can come up with for why I keep returning to meetings of this eclectic Christian book study group. It’s just wacky enough to inspire both my love and my mirth, a rare but satisfying combination indeed when it comes to spiritual practice.

Civil Disobedience and Prison

Personal Reflections on “the Way of the Cross”

  

            One night last week I went to a talk by Steve Baggarly, our resident peace felon, at Sacred Heart Church in the fashionable section of Ghent here in Norfolk, VA, USA. Steve is no stranger to Sacred Heart. He and his wife Kim have been cooking breakfasts for the homeless in the church kitchen for nearly two decades. Recently I went to a massive dinner in his honor there after he got out of a federal prison in West Virginia.

            In his talk the other night Steve presented an overview of his experiences in that most recent imprisonment, an 8-month sentence for trespassing during a peaceful protest at a nuclear weapons manufacturing facility in Oakridge, TN.

            When questioned, with no hesitation he said he’d do it again. I have trouble understanding that, but I believe his reasons for it are sound and right.

            Steve and Kim are Catholic Workers. They run the Catholic Worker House in Norfolk and are the backbone of the peace movement here. Occasionally Steve gets arrested for something like trespassing on the property of one or another hallowed American military site. Then he goes to court and sometimes away to jail for awhile. In that sense he’s not like the rest of us in the peace and justice crowd who hang out with each other. But he and Kim are the ones who brought us together and who keep the faith pure.

            The faith is Catholic, but certainly not everyone in the loosely knit network is Catholic or even religious. That, in a way, is remarkable. With little ideological divide, people of many faiths are connected in the seven cities of Hampton Roads—or eight, if you count Williamsburg—through a vision of world peace and justice, which, at its vital center here, is based in Roman Catholicism.

            But Catholic Worker Roman Catholicism is not exactly the official brand. It compares more to what the first Christians were like, minus the fevered evangelism. It’s communal, it’s focused on service to the poor and destitute, it’s fiercely anti-war, and it’s entirely devoted to Jesus, the holy rebel, as its model of nonviolent behavior. Jesus calls his followers to take up the cross, Steve often says, and by courting arrest for illegally entering restricted government military installations to protest what goes on there, he is reminding us by example of Jesus’ teaching. He wants us to take it seriously, as he does.

            In fact, he believes, it is a Christian’s duty to break federal laws, if that’s what it takes, to call attention to the evils of the U.S. military empire, which, in our name, voraciously consumes resources for defense that could better be used to heal the sick, feed and clothe the poor, and comfort the grieving, as Jesus commanded his followers to do. The best defense against an enemy, Steve might say, is charitable works.

            And nothing could be less defensible than the continuing allocation of those resources to the perpetuation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. government and the military industry conspire to demand and the vast majority of people obediently pay for.

            It was interesting to me that among the people at Steve’s talk were few of those I’d met in my days of covering protests and marches for Port Folio Weekly, the local alternative newspaper (now defunct). Most of his audience seemed to be mid-life, progressive-minded, relatively devout Catholics interested in Steve’s perspective.

            And he wasn’t just talking about reasons to resist U.S. war policies. In his chilling descriptions of life in the three different prisons where he was held—two of them county jails in Tennessee and Georgia—Steve also reminded us that thousands of poor souls are housed in these gulags, where the full dimension of the cruelty, bigotry, and injustice festering at the core of our society hits home most starkly

            To experience that as a co-defendant, as Jesus did, is the way of the cross.

            It’s also the point on which a whole lot of deep reflection is required of anyone who is interested in a better world—a world where, if people don’t exactly love each other—they at least honor the other’s right to exist.

            On the other hand, without disparaging Steve’s stand in Oakridge and his subsequent heroic stoicism in bearing the absurd abuse of the bureaucratic state, there is the possibility of bringing a deeper layer of consciousness into the problem of establishing a better world

            In covering the peace and justice activists in Hampton Roads from 1999 to 2009, I saw a lot of passion. Much of it was anger. Even Steve at times seemed angry to me. When I think of the reality of the U.S. Empire and the hypocrisy of its rulers—invoking Biblical morals as they kill, torture, and accumulate wealth—I become angry, too.

            But if I turn East to Hinduism or Buddhism or the Tao, I’m relieved of that anger by the reminder that anger on the outside reflects anger on the inside. One must transform one’s anger into blessings for all sentient beings, including oneself. One must cultivate peaceful nonviolence. This requires a great deal of inner work—meditation, contemplation, introspection, study.

            There may be no need to confront the Empire in order to change it. It may be possible to change the Empire by transforming one’s anger into empathy and compassion and practicing that day to day, moment to moment.

            I’ve known Steve since 1999. I honor his path. But I wonder how ordinary Christians feel about their own commitment to the cross when they hear his story. Do they feel an urgency to find a way to stop the mindless waste, to flush out the systemic corruption and routine inhumanity practically institutionalized in global market society? I know I do.

            The justice of Steve’s arguments are irrefutable, from a faith-based point of view. In the light of the life of Jesus, there is no way to excuse humanity for its wanton acts of mass murder and destruction across our planet, from ancient times to a climax of madness in our own. We may all, indeed, reap the whirlwind. Something major must change if we are even to survive as a species. Yet there are no signs that the “rough beast” the poet Yeats foresaw is likely to be turned back from its determination to dominate creation. Powerful forces stand in the way, backed by world-wide military might led by the United States and its far-reaching intelligence network.

            So what would it take? A hundred thousand of us risking arrest to protest nuclear weapons? Maybe it will come to that. There are more people in jail now for civil disobedience than ever before, I’m told. Many are Catholic Workers. To committed pacifists, that’s progress.

            But the Eastern gurus are right, too. If we want to change the world, we must first change ourselves. From our meditation cushions we can influence world events as powerfully as speaking truth to power in the streets. That’s because in the Eastern perspective thoughts and actions are not separate. Thoughts are actions occurring in the mind, and if they occur often and persistently enough they become actions in the world as well. Therefore, if thoughts are angry, actions have already happened and, if not interrupted—if allowed to feed on themselves in the kitchen of the mind—they erupt into manifested reality as well, causing suffering for self and others and adding fuel to the anger burning in the mind.

            But if, tamed and managed by meditation, thoughts become peaceful, then peace in the world will eventually follow, for the world, most simply, is our mirror. Or, as the Beatles put it, “Your inside is out and your outside is in.”

            This makes sense to me, which is why, I think, I’ve never been eager to court arrest for civil disobedience. I don’t know how Steve does it so serenely. But I’ve gotten clues from him and other Catholic Workers over the years that point to some possible explanations.

            Foremost is the austerity of prison life, which they compare to a monastic existence allowing for spiritual practice and discipline. That’s attractive to those like Steve who have the temperament for it. Living inside the monastery offers a predictable stability hard to find in the hectic outside world with its overload of distractions.

            Another is an alternative sense of manhood, beginning with the example of Jesus, who must have been one tough dude to live as a homeless wanderer and bear crucifixion with forgiveness in his heart. Jesus as manly man, as consummate spiritual warrior sacrificing the very life of his body to fulfill the commandments of God, appeals to a spiritually inclined youth, just as soldiering and adventurism and even the rough-and-tumble of competitive sports appeal to young men less spiritually inclined. When he was a boy, Steve has said, he wanted to be a soldier. In interviews with me both he and Kim have told me that part of their motivation in practicing civil disobedience is to share the sacrifice of military families, with Steve’s jail sentences the equivalent of deployments. They also seek solidarity with the disproportionately impoverished people of color who overcrowd American’s increasingly punitive and privatized jails and prisons.

            But on one occasion, at his get-out-of-jail celebration that night at Sacred Heart, an intriguing sour note arose when Kim, from the sidelines as Steve spoke to the assembled, reminded him to thank all the people who looked after his kids while he was off doing his thing. Other comments from male Catholic Workers have come my way from time to time to suggest an oblique strain of what might be called sexism among those who, while admiring Dorothy Day as a saint, find the male role models in their ranks—the Berrigan brothers, for instance—most compelling. I myself, though not a Catholic Worker, found Ammon Hennacy more compelling than Dorothy Day when I met them in the late 1950s. Ammon was more colorful, more...well...manly.

            Hennacy, in his autobiography The Book of Ammon, may state it most succinctly. He says he loved Dorothy Day, but, he goes on, after his first marriage ended in divorce he avoided getting tied down again because he didn’t want to be tamed by a woman. Interesting comment. He couldn’t hold to it, either, but later did remarry.

            Nevertheless, getting away from the daily grind, including the wife and kids, may not be so great a sacrifice for a soldier of conscience. Not that wives may agree, left at home to run a family and a social mission with only volunteer support. But to maintain as followers of Christ under such tensions is part of the bargain. It’s built into the vows they take to each other and to God.

            In the end, we all must make some commitment to how we’re going to handle our changing times. How many of us will go to jail? How many stay at home? How many become complicit with the inevitable backlash to enforce the laws and customs of more familiar times? How many try to tough it out or simply go with the flow?

            How many will survive?

            There’s no telling if those who follow the nonviolent path of peace and justice—the path of Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King—are models of our future or fools on the path to nowhere. There have always been martyrs, it seems, but has the world truly changed?

            On the other hand, we are all temporary residents of this planet, and what do we know of what’s before birth and after death? Yet, knowing so little, we tamper so much with what little we can grasp of the whole. As a civilization we are like the sorcerer’s apprentice who doesn’t know how to reverse the havoc he’s wrought in his ignorance of the bigger picture.

            So one must do something, even though what little one can do seems futile compared to the enormity of the task before us—nothing less than to change human consciousness from spoiler to caretaker of the unique planet hosting our 3-D experience. Steve Baggarly admits he was sorely tested in his faith when he spent five months in a notorious southern jail, eating the same meals every day with nothing to do, not even a television to watch for distraction. And his only “crime” was to step over a line onto federal property where the next generation of nuclear weapons, among other more conventional delights, is being made ready for an eventuality that is unthinkable. Except a number of powerful people are thinking it.

            So how do we confront this unbridled power and disarm it? I seek to disarm it in myself, which frankly is no small task, but I’ve got some years of practice behind me and find it gets easier. And I haven’t encountered too many situations in recent years which compelled me to confront institutional power directly. If ever I do, it may not go well. I may end up like Steve, in jail for refusing to comply with a brain-dead regulation. If that ever is the case, so be it. But it’s not something I’m ever likely to voluntarily court. I didn’t want to be a solider when I was a kid, I wanted to be a big-league baseball player or an actor starring in movies. That morphed in adulthood into poetry, theater, and journalism, with a full-time commitment to creating material of value while making a living doing it.

            My cross to bear, then—at least so far—is the appearance of irrelevance. Perhaps it’s the same for Steve Baggarly on his cross. But what the hell? It just can’t be helped. We all are who we are and must do the best that we can.

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In the Belly of the Beast, a two-booklet set of 77 articles which (except for one) were originally published in Port Folio Weekly between 1999 and 2008, gives a fuller picture of the peace movement in Hampton Roads and is also now available as a Thinking Dog Publication. Email me, Delaney, if you are interested.