So, You're In Decline

OK, hypothetical situation.  You're a congregation in decline.  Your membership has been decreasing gradually, and is now significantly lower than it was at its peak.  Those numbers are reflected in worship attendance and offerings, so the budget has shrunken, too.  You're making ends meet, but just barely, so you're not sure you can hire an experienced pastor, much less contribute to Church World Service, etc.  The members are a lot older than they used to be, too.  There are almost no young families, and a majority of the members are past retirement age.  Somewhere along the line, you lost touch with the folks who live in your neighborhood, so you don't know what kind of help they need, but you know you're not doing much to provide whatever it is.  What should you do?

One scenario is to get the house in order and start attracting new members, especially those invaluable young families.  The first order of business is to get a hip new website that comes up first in the search engine results and looks good on a smartphone.  Next, switch to a more contemporary style of worship -- everyone knows that young people don't get into old hymns and organs.  Then bite the bullet and put a coffee shop in the Narthex.  Young people these days drink cappucinos and mochas, not that Folgers stuff you brew one pot at a time.  There are other things you'll need to change, too, but if you put your heads together, you'll figure it out.  

Another scenario is to assume that you're stuck with who you've got, and that the congregation might very well fade away.  If that's the case, you've got to decide what you want the congregation's legacy to be.  If anybody is going to remember it, you're going to have to do something besides showing up for Sunday worship, Tuesday committee meetings, and Thursday choir rehearsals.  Nobody outside your walls will know you're doing those things, much less remember them, so there's no legacy-making material there.  What will people remember?  They'll remember if you go meet those people who live in your neighborhood, find out what they need to let them live into the life God envisions for them, and help them get it.  They might remember other stuff, too, but that one's a promise.

So, how do these two scenarios play out?  If you're successful in the first one, you'll get your membership numbers back to where they used to be.  The offerings will start pouring in, and since a lot of those new members are dual-income young families, you'll be able to cover those "reinventing" costs, including the experienced pastor.  Hopefully, you'll have enough left over to start giving to Church World Service again.  Unfortunately, those dual-income parents are kind of short on spare time, so they're not really going to make much of an impact on your local outreach.  You still won't know who lives in your neighborhood, or what they need.  There's also a possibility that your efforts will be unsuccessful, because no matter what you do, you can't force people to want to join your church.

If you're successful with the second scenario, you've helped somebody.  Maybe you drove the unemployed community college graduate to the job interview that they wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise.  Maybe you spent a couple of hours talking to the widow, and when the predatory telephone solicitor called later that night, she wasn't lonely enough to make a foolish purchase just to keep somebody on the phone.  Maybe you took the mother under your wing when she finally got the courage to take her two toddlers and her infant and sneak out of the house before her drunken husband woke up and beat her again.  None of those things are even intended to bring new members into the church, but you accepted that before you started.  Of course, there is always the possibility that word will get around that you're making a difference, and that people will want to be a part of that.

Working on My First Novel

I am currently working on a young adult suspense/mystery novel. In it, a young woman interning with the company that handles the online voting for a popular television singing contest discovers an anomaly in the online ad revenue. She investigates, and in the process solves the murder of a New York Times reporter who was working on a story about cybercrime.

Prayer Column 4: Prayer Labyrinths

Prayer Column 4:  Prayer Labyrinths

In my last column, I said that I would write more about one of the types of prayer discusses in William Tenny-Brittian's Prayer for People Who Can't Sit Still.  I was unsure of which type to write about until I went to JT's first flag football game.  To get to the field, we turned on Ariadne Trail, passed Theseus Ct., and caught sight of Minotaur Way.  Although I'm skeptical of "signs," I was willing to take this as inspiration for my writing and decided to write about prayer labyrinths.  

The history of the labyrinth goes back at least as far as Greek mythology, which explains that King Minos' labyrinth was built as a prison for the Minotaur.  It was deemed necessary to imprison the Minotaur because he was half man and half bull (through no fault of his own, by the way).  The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus, with some technical assistance from Ariadne.  She had the insight that if Theseus laid a piece of thread behind him as he went into the labyrinth, he would be able to find his way out again (and he couldn't think of that himself?).  

A number of European cathedrals have prayer labyrinths embedded into their floors, most notably including Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral.  They differ from the Minos' labyrinth in that they have only one path, so it's impossible to get lost.  The medieval church used these labyrinthgs as contemplative aids and as a substitute for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for those who could not make the actual journey to the Holy Land.  

Labyrinths fell out of use when the pilgrimage requirement was no longer emphasized.  Much later, they also came to be associated with the occult.  However, many Christian denominations are taking a fresh look at the practices of prayer walking in general and the prayer labyrinth in particular.  The Wikipedia article on labyrinths includes the following quote, attributed to "a Catholic writer":

The labyrinth is a universal symbol for the world, with its complications and difficulties, which we experience on our journey through life. The entry to the labyrinth is birth; the center is death and eternal life. In Christian terms, the thread that leads us through life is divine grace. Like any pilgrimage, the labyrinth represents the inner pilgrimage we are called to make to take us to the center of our being. In some Christian circles today the labyrinth continues to be used as an instrument to facilitate meditation, prayer, personal reflection, etc.

As I mentioned in an earlier column, the Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Dayton has a prayer labyrinth that is open to the public once a month.  Google can also point you to a "labyrinth locator."

Prayer Column 3: Ways to Pray

Prayer Column 3:  Ways to Pray

When you were a child, you may have learned to pray by kneeling beside your bed, placing your palms together in front of your chest, bowing your head, closing your eyes, and reciting, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  Should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."  Or perhaps you were responsible for saying grace at the dinner table:  "God is great, God is good.  Let us thank him for our food.  By his hands, we all are fed, give us Lord our daily bread."  Somewhere along the line, though, you may have realized that you're no longer a child, and decided that you needed to give up your childish ways of praying.  If so, your idea of what you ought to be doing may be more along these lines:  find a chair in which you can sit in a relaxed upright position, place your palms together about four inches in front of your chest, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, spend 30 minutes in deep conversation with God, and sign off with "Amen."  

Time for another confession, and this one is in the category of deep, dark secrets.  I think I can count on my fingers and maybe a couple of toes the number of times that I have succeeded in praying this way, and that includes several times that the "comfortable chair" was an outcropping of rock overlooking an amazing landscape.  I just can't pray that way on any kind of a regular basis.  Unfortunately, for a lot of us, sitting still for 10 minutes is an insurmountable challenge, to say nothing of coming up with 30 minutes worth of meaningful non-repetitious conscious thoughts to share with God.  However, the news is not all bad.  For starters, if you are participating in our 40-day study of Unbinding Your Heart by Martha Grace Reese, you already have in your possession an invaluable resource to provide alternatives to the "standard" prayer technique.  Many such alternatives are included in the 40 days of devotional exercises.  

Another resource is Prayer for People Who Can't Sit Still, by William Tenny-Brittian.  Until I discovered this book, I was under the mistaken impression that unless I was motionless, my prayers were somehow invalid.  Since I couldn't do that, I thought I wasn't trying hard enough.  Sometimes I even thought that it meant I wasn't really a Christian.  That changed when I glanced at the table of contents of Tenny-Brittian's book, and since I can't reproduce the whole book here, I'll give you a whirlwind tour.  Chapter 1 discusses "The Joy of Journaling," which Margaret Lyon wrote about a few weeks ago, and which I personally find to be one of the most meaningful forms of prayer.  There are many variations, but it typically involves choosing a passage of scripture and reflecting on it in a journal.  Chapter 2 talks about dance as a form of prayer (not my personal favorite, but maybe yours), and Chapter 3 covers "Action Prayer."  Praying while walking a "labyrinth" is one of the oldest known forms of prayer, and is the subject of Chapter 4.  In case you'd like to try this technique, Westminster Presbyterian Church has a labyrinth that is open to the public from noon to 7 pm on the first Tuesday of every month, and I'm told there are at least two others in the Dayton area.  Chapter 5 talks about a well-known form of prayer traditionally associated with the Catholic church, which is the use of prayer beads, as well as daisy chains and counting prayers.  Chapter 6 discusses "Sensational Prayer," while Chapter 7 introduces another one of my favorites -- prayer walking.  The last three chapters are about "Artistic Prayer," "Musical Prayer," and "Technology-Assisted Prayer."  The one thing that all of these techniques have in common is that they give us something to do that keeps our mind from wandering, and therefore allows us to stay engaged in our communication with God.

The traditional motionless prayer isn't right for everybody, and none of the types of prayer that Reese and Tenny-Brittian mention will be either.  My prayer, though, is that if you have felt in the past that you were somehow not spiritual enough to "pray right," you will be encouraged by the idea that there are many perfectly valid ways to communicate with God.  I will write more about selected alternatives to the traditional motionless prayer over the next few weeks.  

What's Wrong with Motherhood and Appl...

What's Wrong with Motherhood and Apple Pie:  Reflections on Halos, Good Samaritans, and Nazareth

I hope you will forgive my understatement when I say that our nation currently faces some challenges.  There are many, among them being the number of children growing up in broken homes, the high school dropout rate, and the mismatch between the skills of our workforce and the jobs of our information age economy.  One thing we can do to work toward addressing these challenges is to communicate to our young people the importance of taking responsibility for their own success, staying in school, and setting goals.  These ideas could all be considered to be well aligned with conservative values.  One would think that conservatives would be happy about a leader with considerable respect among the youth of our nation modeling these values and speaking to them on these issues. 

And yet, when exactly that leader announced that he was going to do exactly that, conservatives reacted with outrage.  They labeled it as "indoctrination."  They nitpicked that he used the word "I" when he talked about his effort to improve educational facilities, and the words "help the President" instead of "help the nation."  They complained about the fact that he had not coordinated directly with every school district in America.  They demanded that parents be given the opportunity to opt their children out of his speech, or that the schools not show the speech at all.  When they got their wish to be able to opt their children out, they complained that if they did, their children would feel ostracized.

It seems that President Obama can do no right in the eyes of conservatives.  Perhaps if he had announced that he was going to speak to the children about the goodness of Motherhood and Apple Pie they would have been happier.  Frankly, though, I doubt it.  Somebody would have complained that by speaking about motherhood, he was advocating for fathers to abandon their families.  Somebody else would have argued that apple pie is fattening and that encouraging youth to eat it would contribute to the nation's obesity crisis. 

This is a classic example of what people usually refer to a the "reverse halo effect" (someone with a stronger background in psychology might name a different cognitive bias).  In short, once we've decided that a person has a bad trait (like being a Democrat, perhaps), then we tend to think ill of everything that person does.  This certainly isn't limited to politics, and it leads to errors in judgment no matter where it occurs.

The gospel attributed to Luke contains a relevant passage:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10:25-37, NRSV)

Luke was addressed primarily to the Jewish community, and like many of Jesus' teachings, this story would have been very challenging to a Jewish listener.  Samaria had been the capital of the Northern Kingdom (of Israel), which was conquered and resettled by the Assyrians.  As a result, the Samarians of Jesus' day were the mixed offspring of pagans and Jews, with a distinctly Assyrian worldview.  Some of them continued to practice Judaism, but the Jews to whom Jesus was speaking in this passage thought of the them as "evil cousins" who had corrupted the Torah -- perhaps worse than Gentiles. 

Jesus challenged his listenesr to recognize that a Samaritan could be acting more in accordance with the will of God than a member of the Jewish community, even one who knew and followed the Law of Moses very closely.  The writer of Luke was telling the Jews, through the lawyer, that in the eyes of God it doesn't matter what group you belong to.  What matters is how you live your life.  What I hope is now the obvious corollary is that it shouldn't matter to conservatives that Obama is a Democrat when he is telling our young people to take responsibility for their own lives, stay in school, and set goals for themselves.

There is a school of thought that argues an author should always give an editor one thing to complain about that will be easy to fix, so that the editor can feel that they have done their job and the author can publish the work the way they intended in the first place.  In that spirit, I will risk my conservative critics accusing me of likening President Obama to the Messiah (it's just going to be an analogy, folks!).  While officially being a Jewish province, Galilee was rife with pagans and fanatics.  Its residents held an even lower place in the esteem of the residents of Jerusalem than did Samaritans.  Yet Jesus was born there, in the town of Nazareth.  Hence the following early dialog among the apostles reported in the gospel attributed to John:

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.'  (John 1:45-46, NRSV)

My point is not that President Obama is the Messiah (he's not, OK?).  My point is that too many conservatives respond the same way as Nathanael when they hear about a Democrat.  Can anything good come out of Obama?  Come and see.

Acknowledgement and Epilogue

I need to acknowledge the help of the Rev. Dr. Verity A. Jones in understanding the context of the Good Samaritan story, though obviously any errors are entirely my own.  Rev. Jones is the Publisher and Editor of DisciplesWorld magazine, and I am proud to call her my friend.

Also, after I drafted the majority of this post, I listened to NPR's report on President Obama's address.  It includes these encouraging words:

In Florida, where the speech was harshly criticized by state Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, school officials in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools said parents were initially concerned, but seemed more agreeable after the text was posted on the White House Web site.

"We basically made it voluntary. We sent a message to the parents and to all the schools that if it's something dealing with the instructional mission of the classroom that they can view it if they want," said Hilda Diaz, district spokeswoman. "If the parents send a note, then the students don't have to participate."

Even Greer backed off his opposition after he read the text, saying Monday that he thought the speech was fine.

"It's a good speech," Greer told ABC News."It encourages kids to stay in school and the importance of education, and I think that's what a president should do when they're going to talk to students across the country."

Last week, Greer had said he was appalled that taxpayer dollars were being used to spread Obama's "socialist ideology."

Prayer Column 2: What Are the Purposes of Prayer?

Central Christian Church of Kettering's 40-day study of Unbinding Your Heart by Martha Grace Reese is now two Sundays away.  Last week I wrote about a simple definition of prayer:  "Prayer is talking with God."  I also observed that this definition matches up pretty well with the first part of a more formal definition turned up by Google that says prayer is "the act of communicating with a deity (especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving)."  This week I'm going to take a look at the second half of the formal definition.

Bear with me for a moment while I briefly illustrate these four types of prayer with a somewhat facetious example.  Suppose that a mutual friend of ours visited the Ohio lottery website to see if he had the winning ticket in a big drawing.  Before he checked the winning numbers, he might pray, "Lord, please let me have a winning ticket."  That would be a prayer of petition.  If our friend took the time to click on the "About the Lottery" link, he might pray, "Lord, it is only because of you that the lottery has been able to provide more than $16 billion to public education."  That would be a prayer of adoration.  Of course, if our friend stopped to think about all of the good things that he could have done instead with the money he spent on the ticket, he might pray, "Lord, forgive my shortsightedness and greed in playing the lottery."  That would be a prayer of contrition.  Finally, if our friend found that he did have a winning ticket, he might pray, "Lord, thank you for guiding me to play the lottery this week."  That would be a prayer of thanksgiving. 

If you're like me, you might be skeptical that God takes an active role in choosing lottery winners, turning traffic lights green, or opening great parking spaces just in time for us to fill them.  Prayers of petition can be much nobler.  We might, for example, pray for the safety of our family, for the healing of a sick friend, for patience in dealing with work issues, for greater faith, or for our daily bread.  God does answer "yes" to many prayers of petition, but even when we petition God with the noblest of intentions, God sometimes says "no."  God's reasons are often a mystery to us, and many books have been written on the subject.  For now, though, we'll just acknowledge the mystery and note that a prayer of petition should include a submission to God's will.  When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." (Matthew 26:39, NRSV)  When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we say, "Thy will be done." 

The prayer of adoration is an expression of our love for God.  When we marvel at the beauty of nature, the wonders of the cosmos, or the elegance of mathematics we are adoring the perfect creation of God.  When we weep with joy at the birth, first steps, or first words of a child, we are adoring our life-giving God.  When we celebrate the well-lived life of our church's saints, we are adoring the everlasting nature of God.  When a tear comes to our eye as we read about people donating their kidneys to save a stranger's life because somebody did the same thing for their sibling, we are adoring the sacrificial love of God.  My personal favorite prayer of adoration?  That beautiful hymn, "How Great Thou Art."

For many people, the most difficult type of prayer is that of contrition, in which we confess our shortcomings, failures, or sins, and ask for God's forgiveness.  It is difficult for many of us to recognize our own shortcomings, much less admit them publicly.  However, we can be secure in the knowledge that God is our closest confidant, to whom we can safely tell anything.  In fact, God already knows, even before we do.  More importantly, the good news of the gospel is that God has already forgiven us. 

The last type of prayer mentioned in Google's reported definition is that of thanksgiving.  Next to prayers of petition, this is perhaps the most familiar type, given that the most common spoken prayers outside of worship are to give thanks before meals for the food and the hands that prepared it.  The name is self-explanatory:  we express our gratitude for God acting in our lives.  As familiar and obvious as this type of prayer is, most of us could probably find more opportunities to use it if we opened our eyes (and hearts) as we go through our daily business.  Did I accomplish a lot at work today?  If so, I should give thanks to God for giving me the energy, talent, and opportunity for education that prepared me for my job.  Did my child's behavior frustrate me tonight?  I should thank God that I had parents who put aside their frustration with my behavior and raised me to the best of their abilities.

These four types of prayer (petition, adoration, contrition, and thanksgiving) are not exhaustive, and various writers use different categories.  Nonetheless, I pray that thinking about different types of prayer might help you to strengthen your prayer habits and open those lines of communication with God.

Prayer Column 1: What is Prayer?

Three Sundays from now, Central Christian Church of Kettering will begin a 40-day study of Unbinding Your Heart by Martha Grace Reese.  Prayer will be a integral aspect of the study, and as the Prayer Team Coordinator, I will be writing a weekly column on this important subject.  At this point, you might be asking yourself a few questions.  You might be asking, "Well, what is prayer, anyway, really?"  Or, "How do I know if I'm praying right?"  Or, "What makes Larry Merkle such an expert about prayer?"  Only the last of these three questions has a simple answer:  "nothing!"  I am definitely not an expert on prayer, which probably brings to mind an obvious follow-up question:  "Well, then why should I bother reading this column?" 

If you are in fact, still reading, then we have something in common.  We both want to know more about prayer.  Perhaps, like me, you've wondered off and on for a long time whether or not you pray enough.  Perhaps, like me, you have sometimes asked what good it does to pray.  Perhaps, like me, you have a secret fear that you're not praying "right."  Perhaps, like me, you're willing to do whatever you can to learn about prayer.  Perhaps that even includes listening to the partially thought out musings of a fellow believer in the hope that you might glean something of use.  If any of this is true, then it is my most sincere hope (and prayer!) that you might find something in my columns that helps you in some small way to have a more fulfilling prayer life.

Let's get started, then.  This being the first column in the series, let's try to establish what it is that we're talking about.  What is prayer?  Because Google knows everything, I searched on the string "define:prayer".   The first response is, "the act of communicating with a deity (especially as a petition or in adoration or contrition or thanksgiving)."  Not bad, but a little sterile for our purposes.  Maybe we'll come back to that one later.

Instead, let's start with the answer posted in the hallway of our church building:  "Prayer is talking to God."  We certainly have plenty of examples that support this definition.  Every Sunday in worship, we hear a pastoral prayer, we pray the Lord's Prayer together, we hear prayers at the table, and we might hear other prayers.  In each case, we hear the divine being addressed ("Hey, God, we've got something to say to you, so please listen up"), and then we hear some words directed at God. 

Clearly, talking to God is an important part of prayer.  But another definition I've heard is that "Prayer is listening to God."  At this point I have to confess that I'm guilty of the sin of envy.  I am envious of people who know with certainty that they have heard God speaking to them.  Not literally -- if you have heard a disembodied voice speaking to you in the King's English telling you what to do, I believe strongly that you should at least consider sharing that fact with a medical professional.  On the other hand, I have known people who were absolutely sure that through a prayerful openness to God, they had received divine guidance in their life.  Personally, I have never experienced such certainty.  However, there have definitely been times in my life that after much prayer, reading the scriptures and interpretation, talking with fellow believers, and paying attention to the world around me I have felt confident that I understood where God's will was leading me. 

That brings me to a simple definition that incorporates both of the aspects we've identified so far:  "Prayer is talking with God."  As trite as it is, this definition captures what I believe is an absolutely essential aspect of prayer:  the conversation is not one-sided!  God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.  In our human relationships, if there is no communication, the relationship stagnates.  If we do all the talking and never stop to listen, we will eventually realize that we no longer know the other person.  If we never contribute to the conversation, we may eventually find ourselves wondering why the other person doesn't seem to understand us as well as they used to.  Communication is essential to human relationships, and so it is with our relationship with God.  Prayer is our dedicated and most reliable communication channel for the relationship. 

If we consider our last definition ("Prayer is talking with God"), it matches up pretty well with the first part of our first definition ("the act of communicating with a deity").  Next week, we'll take a look at the "petition, adoration, contrition, or thanksgiving" part of Google's definition.  By way of foreshadowing, my prayer of petition is that these musings might somehow help you to open your communication channel with God.

Re: Wake Up, America

A friend of mine, whom I love dearly, recommended an Investor's Business Daily (IBD) editorial to me yesterday. I wish that I could tell her that I share her enthusiasm for the article, but I don't think she would want me to be dishonest! :-)

The article begins with the common wisdom that a nation that does not know its history is destined to repeat it. As a preliminary to delivering its bleak news, it places the blame for the current financial crisis entirely on the "Big Government" programs of the Democrats, and in particular on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), smearing Senator Obama in passing. Next, it makes a quick aside to identify perceived foreign policy challenges facing the United States in the relatively near term. It then draws parallels between the economy over the periods of 1921-1937 and 1992-2008. Finally, it uses those perceived similarities to justify the claim that the global events of the earlier period and the years immediately following are relevant to the immediate future of the United States, and ultimately to the presidential election.

Regarding the Community Reinvestment Act, which is the favorite conservative scapegoat for the economic crisis, please refer to the reports that I link from my previous post. The key points are that the financial institutions that are affected by the CRA are statistically less likely to engage in subprime lending than those that are not (e.g. Countrywide), and that those institutions are less likely to subsequently sell those mortgages. The IBD editorial is just plain wrong in blaming the CRA for the subprime lending crisis.

The IBD editorial specifically calls out the Clinton administration, which I neither condemn nor fully excuse in the context of the financial crisis. I have read many recent assertions, including one with supporting New York Times article from September 1999, that the Clinton administration pressured Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages from low and moderate income buyers. I have no reason to doubt these assertions other than a current dearth of supporting evidence. I have no more (or less) reason to doubt that in response Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sought to achieve Clinton's goal by increasing purchases of subprime loans. Their decisions in this regard may have been predictable outcomes, but the IBD editorial's use of the word "forced" ignores the fact that loans to low and moderate income buyers are not synonymous with subprime loans. Furthermore, Clinton left office less than 16 months after the NYT article was published, after which any continuing pressure can only be blamed on some combination of the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. The IBD editorial alleges that the latter refused to pass Bush's proposals to increase regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's subprime lending in 2004, 2005, and 2006 (not mentioning that both houses of Congress were controlled by the Republicans during those years).

The article claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became "contributors to top members of Congress, including ... Obama." I searched for donors on http://www.opensecrets.org (run by the Center for Responsive Politics), and found that out of a total of $485,748,597 in contributions, Obama had received 140 from individuals employed by Fannie Mae totaling $92,799. Of those, 13 were made before the 2006 general election, totaling $10,400. I also found that 30 Freddie Mac employees had donated a total of $21,900, of which $250 was donated before the 2006 election by 1 individual. I found no contributions to Obama from either a Fannie Mae or a Freddie Mac PAC (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/pacs.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638). In my opinion, the attempt to suggest that Obama has been significantly influenced by the contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is ludicrous.

Based largely on the flawed claims above, the article concludes, "Bottom line: This whole mess was another Big Government program created, designed and run by Democrats." Simply false. In one sense there is both plenty of blame to go around and in another sense there is no single entity to blame because economics is an inherently unpredictable complex system.

Having established the principle that "A Bad Thing Happened That Was The Democrats' Fault, And By The Way Obama is a Democrat," the article lists five perceived serious foreign policy threats facing the United States over the next five years. The difficulty of accurately assessing future foreign policy challenges is on a par with the difficulty of making good investment decisions, which I hear is pretty hard these days, so I won't second guess the likelihood of predicted outcomes. However, I do take issue with the statements of some of the threats.

First, there is extremely little basis for claiming that Iran is "the leading terrorist country in the world." I'm not sure what metric would make sense in judging this type of "leadership," but one inconvenient fact for the editorialist is that Iran is a Shia nation, while Al Qaeda is a Sunni extremist movement (the fundamental distinction between the Sunni and the Shia is a not so minor "detail" that has on occasion escaped both Senator McCain and Governor Palin). In fact, Iran was extraordinarily helpful in capturing individuals who could provide intelligence to the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/07/world/main4508360.shtml). Furthermore, at the time the editorial was written, the already nuclear-armed North Korea was still listed as a terrorist nation.

Also, the article makes several speculative assumptions about Russia's intentions. It is clear that Russia claims interests related to both Georgia and Ukraine. However, it is unclear that their interests in the former extend beyond the regions of South Ossetia and and Abkhazia, both of which are important to Russia's energy exports. Likewise, Russia's interest in Ukraine is focused on the strategically important port of Sevastapol. Russia has stated that they intend to consider cooperating with Venezuela on nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The claims that Russia seeks to "re-arm Cuba and Nicaragua" are similarly overstated.

The final perceived threat listed in the article is tautologically correct, but of no practical value whatsoever: "Foolish decisions that would result in weakening our ability to defend ourselves." It has always been the case, is now the case, and will always be the case, regardless of any action that we take or fail to take, that foolish decisions could threaten the security of our nation. Now, if somebody could please pass me that magic 8-ball ...

The editorial fails to mention obvious threats such as:

- dependence on foreign oil,
- an unstable nuclear-armed Pakistan that is a growing safe haven for al Qaeda,
- a weak and weakening dollar,
- offshoring of jobs, or
- exponentially rising health care costs that are driving companies and families to bankrupty as well as sapping our military budget and social programs alike.

All of these are threats to our national security of at least the same magnitude as those listed in the editorial. Still, the article's point is that "Bad Things Can Happen In the Near Future," and that is certainly true.

The apparent justification for this article to appear in the Investor's Business Daily comes next. A chart is presented alleging similarity between the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) between August 1921 and July 1937 on the one hand and the Nasdaq Composite Index between February 1992 and the present on the other hand. At first glance, the similarity is uncanny. Both indexes begin low and follow exponential growth for approximately eight years before precipitously dropping for another two. Both then rise again to a lower peak six years later followed by a comparatively modest readjustment. The chart shows the DJIA continuing relatively flat for the following five years.

Several questions arise. First, why compare the DJIA and the Nasdaq? Perhaps comparing the DJIA over the same two periods didn't give quite as pretty a chart. More importantly, any index that experienced a large peak followed by a smaller peak six years later would appear similar, except that it would be scaled up or down and shifted up or down. This brings us to the scale of the presented graph. Not scales (plural), scale (singular). If a single scale coincidentally would suffice for both indices over the chosen periods of time, that would perhaps explain why the author(s) make the odd decision to compare the DJIA to the Nasdaq. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Over the chosen periods, the Nasdaq varied from a low of 547.84 to a maximum of 5048.62, while the DJIA varied from a low of 41.22 to a high of 381.17. The chart normalizes both indices to a starting value of 100. If the normalization consisted solely of scaling, the Nasdaq index would appear to peak at 921.55
and the DJIA would appear to peak at 924.72. Instead, the former appears to peak at 800 and the latter appears to peak at 500. The normalization thus included (at least) both scaling and translation. In other words, the only true significant similarity between the two data sets is that the peaks occurred six years apart. The rest of the apparent similarity is an artifact of the deceptive construction of the graph.

With the possibility established that the Past Economy May Predict The Future, the editorial then relates the poor German economy of the 1930's to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. The implication is that if the American and global economies follow the same trend, then The Next Really Bad Thing Will Certainly Happen. History is not that simple. There have been many periods in which the economy has been stagnant, and bad things happened during all of them. However, the vast majority of those bad things pale in comparison to Hitler's rise to power. Furthermore, bad things happen during good economic times as well. It takes a lot more than looking at a graph of an economic index to predict major historical events. After all, if it were that simple then things like major foreign policy decisions would be irrelevant, in which case the whole editorial and this response would both be moot.

Nonetheless, as an aside, let's entertain the possibility that economic indices are accurate predictors of major socio-political catastrophes. The article notes that in 1938, the point in DJIA-past time corresponding to Nasdaq-present time, Jews were sent to concentration camps. What aspect of current events most closely mimics that particular atrocity? Perhaps our own practice of incarcerating in secret prisons and denying basic human rights of "enemy combatants"? Hmmm. Perhaps the article does have a point after all.

The editorial goes on to present a number of oversimplified and distorted examples allegedly supporting the notion that "showing weakness or appeasement by negotiating with tyrants is both gullible and dangerous." For example, it's true that the construction of the Berlin Wall began shortly after a failed summit between JFK and Krushchev. However, the article presents no evidence that a better outcome would have resulted from not meeting at all.

Similarly, the description of events leading up to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran is incorrect in several respects. First, U.S. aircraft sales to Iran were not suspended until after the Islamic Revolution (according to the Imperial Iranian Air Force historical website, the aircraft orders were canceled by the Islamic regime). Second, President Carter thought very highly of the Shah. Attributing Iran's nuclear program to the actions of a President who left office 27 years ago boggles the mind. The claim that "while Carter was in office, the Soviets took over a number of countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Grenada, Mozambique, Ethiopia, South Yemen and Nicaragua" plays fast and loose with understandings of "took over," suggesting erroneously that the Soviet influence went from non-existence to dominance over a relatively short period of time. In fact, several of the listed countries either became solidly pro-Soviet before Carter's presidency or were never solidly pro-Soviet.

The article's criticism of Clinton's handling of al-Qaeda neglects the reality that before 9/11, it was essentially impossible to obtain international support for targeting terrorists within the borders of a sovereign nation. Even now, we face potential criticism for targeting terrorists within the borders of Pakistan.

The authors claim that 12 historians have conducted surveys ranking the Presidents of the United States, and that all of the surveys are "available on the Internet," but they do not name the historians or give sufficient information to locate the surveys. Also, oddly, all 12 of the surveys used by the authors allegedly agree exactly on the rankings of Presidents Reagan (6), Truman (7), Eisenhower (7), Kennedy (15), Clinton (22), and Carter (34). A Google search for "survey ranking presidents" yields about 327,000 hits. The second hit is Wikipedia, which lists results for 12 surveys conducted between 1948 and 2005. Aside from an apparent typographical error in the IBD's reporting of Eisenhower's ranking, the last survey reported by Wikipedia agrees with the IBD editorial's reported rankings. Not surprisingly, none of the other surveys reported agree with the rankings provided by the IBD editorial. Half of them occurred too early to include Clinton in the rankings, and one of them occurred to early to include any of the aforementioned presidents. The surveys that round out the top 10 Google hits are all among those reported by Wikipedia.

The authors then claim that "history shows that our very best, most productive, successful presidents were older." Unfortunately for them, using their apparently preferred Presidential ranking, a slightly negative correlation appears between favorable rankings and age. For example, the second oldest president included in the survey was James Buchanan (ranked 40 -- dead last) (William Henry Harrison was excluded because of his short tenure, along with James Garfield). The third oldest was George H. W. Bush (ranked 21). The fourth was Zachary Taylor (ranked 33). At the other extreme, the youngest president ever is Theodore Roosevelt (ranked 5). It is simply not true that "our very best, most productive, successful presidents were older."

In summary, the article is poorly researched, highly biased, and reaches incorrect conclusions.

Re: Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis?

Conservative pundits have recently placed the blame for the current U.S. financial crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. In a nutshell, this act requires lending institutions to make credit available throughout their geographic area, prohibiting them from discriminating against potential borrowers based on the neighborhood in which they live or work. It does not require them to weaken their assessment of potential borrowers' creditworthiness.

Writing in The American Prospect, Robert Gordon examines the claim that the CRA is responsible for the sub-prime crisis. He begins by tracing the genesis and evolution of this meme from the conservative economist Thomas DiLorenzo in September, 2007, to Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution just before Gordon wrote his article in April, 2008 (it has become even more widespread since then). He then offers several criticisms of the theory. They are, in essence, as follows:

- As my astute readers will have already noticed, the law was enacted a full quarter-century before the financial crisis emerged. Furthermore, if the act did pressure banks to make risky loans, then the weakening of the reporting requirements in 1995 and 2005 would have decreased that pressure, not increased it.

- The majority of the risky loans have originated from institutions that are not governed by the CRA. Gordon cites the Congressional testimony of Michael S. Barr, a University of Michigan Professor of Law.

- CRA banks have originated risky loans at a lower rate than other financial institutions. Gordon cites an address given by Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve. The law firm Traiger & Hinkley, LLP, also published a careful statistical analysis showing, among other things, that CRA banks originated fewer risky loans than other lending institutions did.

It would be convenient for the conservatives to be able to blame our current financial problems on a law championed by liberals. Unfortunately for them, the facts do not support that explanation of events.

Re: Greed in the Economy: It’s the Morality, Sinner (Part I)

In the linked blog post, Jim Wallis issues indictments for greed to those responsible for the current economic crisis. Although he states his argument in theological terms, the same conclusion can be reached easily using the principles of philosophical ethics.

The first step in Wallis' "morality play" is the "aggressive lending to potential home buyers using subprime and adjustable rate mortgages." The lenders profited by encouraging people to buy more expensive homes than they could safely afford, "knowing" that their own share of the risk was protected by the ability to foreclose the loans if (or when) the borrowers defaulted. Without going any further, we have a clear violation of Kant's Categorical Imperative, since the lenders used the unwitting borrowers as a means by which to increase their own profit.

Interestingly, this is the converse of an example that Kant uses to argue that the Categorical Imperative forbids deception. Specifically, in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, he points out that if it were morally permissible for a person to borrow money with no intention of paying it back, then nobody would ever lend money. By similar reasoning, if it were morally permissible to lend money ostensibly for some purpose while secretly planning to foreclose on the loan before the borrower's purpose is achieved, then nobody would ever borrow money (for a purpose). Perhaps it's time for all of us to give more serious thought to the biblical admonishment -- "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Without resorting to that (probably socially unimplementable) extreme, however, it is still clear that the subprime lenders engaged in unethical behavior.

Of course, this is just the first step in Wallis' "morality play."

The Professor (Humor)

You should read the linked article *first*. [My advisor recommended that I expand on this idea. First of all, "the linked article" is the Wikipedia page about the character The Professor from the popular television series Gilligan's Island. Second, the link is the title of this blog post, so click on the words "The Professor (Humor)" just above this paragraph, and then come back here and read the rest of this post.]

Decades later, it was revealed that all of The Professor's books were
actually hollowed out to hide his collection of trashy romantic novels
that he brought along for the three hour pleasure cruise. The true
source of his encyclopedic knowledge was the satellite link and web
browser (that he of course fashioned from coconuts and bananas) to
access the still highly classified Internet, World Wide Web, and
Wikipedia, all of which he had invented in his high school classroom.

These top secret tools of the military-industrial complex were
gradually made available to the public in the aftermath of the Cold
War. However, they were disguised as recent inventions, mainly to
protect Al Gore's secret identity as The Professor. Of course, the
secret was almost unveiled in 1999 when Gore nearly blew his cover
during an interview with Wolf Blitzer in which he came dangerously
close to revealing that he had actually invented the Internet.

Covering up this slip required one of the most massive disinformation
campaigns in the history of the U.S. It was organized by the genius
of disinformation Karl Rove, who asked for nothing in return except
some minor advocacy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election by
Katherine Harris (the assumed identify of Ginger) and U.S. Supreme
Court Justice William Rehnquist (actually Mr. Howell).

Re: The Best Man Turned Out To Be A Woman, by Ann Coulter

Aside from her polarizing politics, there is nothing particularly "wrong" with Gov. Palin. However, there is nothing particularly right about her, either. A conservative [pun intended] estimate of the number of conservative women with as much administrative and leadership experience as her would easily be in the thousands. I personally know dozens who are at least as qualified, and so do you.

Oh, and by the way. If you're going to compare "experience" in any kind of legitimate way instead of simple-minded rhetoric, simply managing his massive grassroots campaign organization has given Obama just as much executive experience as Gov. Palin has, if not more.

Here's the surprise (for me): this bleeding heart liberal agrees completely that Gov. Palin's daughter should be left alone. What isn't surprising to me is that Barack Obama emphatically made exactly that point to the press when they asked him about her. That is precisely the response one would expect from a man of principles.

Here's another surprise: I agree that it is sexist to consider Gov. Palin's parenting responsibilities to her detriment. If a child can be raised by only one parent while the other is serving in elected office, then it shouldn't matter whether the parent doing the raising is the mother or the father. I'm not sure that's what I call "family values," but at least it's a consistent ethic.

BTW, Republicans don't have hair plugs? People should vote for McCain because Sarah Palin once wanted to work for ESPN? Come on, Ann. Keep your "colorful" writing, but please stop insulting people's intelligence.

Folly Followup Footnote

This US News & World Report article goes into more depth about the legislative and regulatory obstacles to offshore drilling. It also cites a much lower estimate of the potential oil resources.

The Folly of Offshore Drilling

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that John McCain has been calling for offshore drilling. Barack Obama has also stated that he would support offshore drilling as a part of a compromise energy plan. Either way, it appears very unlikely that the next president will reinstate the executive order banning offshore drilling. Fortunately, the Congressional ban is still in place, and each state can also control drilling off of its own coast, so Americans are not likely to see more offshore oil rigs any time soon.

Unfortunately, the real damage of the campaign rhetoric is that it serves to reinforce the belief that the U.S. has significant untapped oil resources. According to the linked Time magazine article, this belief is just plain wrong. A few of the more salient points:

- Drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027.

- Opening up offshore areas to oil exploration might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents a gallon at most.

- The U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world's oil.

All told, the currently protected areas probably contain about 75 billion barrels of oil. In 2004, the U.S. consumed an estimated 20 million barrels a day. Thus, the only significant "positive" effect of offshore drilling would be to allow us to extend our dependence on petroleum for something less than 10 years.

The claim is that this would allow more time to invest in alternative energy research and development. This is a fallacy, though, because serious investment in alternative energy won't begin until the economic conditions are right. We are on the verge of those conditions now, but if we give the energy companies the option of continuing to make profits by doing what they are already doing for another 10 years instead of researching alternative energy, they will.

When everything is said and done, the net effect of allowing offshore drilling will be to add 10 more years worth of pollution to our environment and to pass the real problem on to yet another generation.

Farewell to a Valued Colleague

David,

Thank you for your message. I have also thought about you this year. My interviews with you played a significant role in my decision to come to Rose-Hulman, and you proved to be an extraordinary friend and colleague. I will always value the six years that I had at Rose and the many lives that I had the opportunity to influence positively.

Unfortunately, I was a bit naïve about academia when I started, but at the same time firmly convinced that I was not, and as such I didn't play the game as well as I could have. In the final analysis, though, I have almost no regrets whatsoever. I have come to realize that my priorities are in fact not perfectly aligned with a substantial fraction of the students. Like you, I am an idealist and believe that a college education should mean more than passing courses, getting a degree, and finding a good first job. Being products of their environment, many (Rose) students don't share our idealistic perspective, and as such my lack of emphasis on prompt grading was unacceptable to them. My remorse is for the state of higher education in America, not for the fact that I didn't get tenure.

I said that I had almost no regrets. I do regret that I didn't realize sooner that my tenure denial was inevitable. If I had, I would have ignored the "feedback" from Art that led me to resign my position as the Pike Chapter Advisor a year and a half earlier than I had to. That's a purely selfish consideration, because the chapter has had excellent leadership since I resigned, and by many criteria it is in the best condition it has ever been.

All of this is heartfelt, although perhaps a bit melodramatic. Our paths will cross again.

Peace and blessings,

Larry

RE: Bringing Hoosiers Relief at the Pump

Congressman Ellsworth,

I am not opposed to your initiative to temporarily suspend shipments to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves. I also enthusiastically support your statement that "It’s ridiculous for Congress to give away billions in taxpayer-funded government subsidies to companies that are making billions ... that money can be put to better use by investing in renewable energy."

Furthermore, I agree wholeheartedly with your statement that "Congress must find long-term solutions to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil," and I have a suggestion. Please lead by example by parking your truck and buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle.

Dr. Larry Merkle

I couldn't have said it better myself

I pray for the end of the cycle of fear and hatred.

My Wife's Christmas Present

True to form, two days before Christmas I still didn't have a present for my wife. In my defense, she doesn't make it easy to figure out what she wants, so I usually have to ask her outright. The downside is that there is not much surprise. The upside is that I know I'm giving her something she wants.

Bear with me now, while I take a little detour. When I was finishing my PhD program and getting ready to move from Ohio back to New Mexico, I thought that I was going to start hiking and camping again. After all, I did when I lived there as a teenager and a Boy Scout. Motivated by this fantasy, when I needed to replace my Honda Prelude, I bought a full size Chevy pickup, complete with four-wheel drive, as well as the heavy-duty towing and off-road packages. The only thing it didn't have was a CD player (this was 1995, remember). My wife went along because it fit in with her own fantasy of doing major home remodeling and additions.

The four-wheel drive turned out to be handy in the snow while I was teaching at the Air Force Academy, and you never know how many friends you have until you own a pickup, but in six years of living in the Great Southwest, I never went camping, and our home improvement activities were essentially limited to painting. On top of that, when I left the Air Force I gradually came to the realization that I had been a closet liberal the whole time I was on active duty. When all was said and done, my 12 years driving the near-perfect gas guzzler have given me a guilty conscience bordering on neurosis. And if that were not enough to motivate me to get rid of the thing, the $75 fill-ups last summer would have done it. The only thing that kept me driving it as long as I did was that I was too busy/disorganized/lazy to sell it.

Then, a few days before Christmas, the solution came to me on the way to visit my in-laws in Ohio. It was in the form of three magic words on a billboard: Donate your vehicle. What a concept! Now I didn't have to worry about figuring out what a fair price was and dealing with the whole negotiation hassle to rid myself of my albatross. I just had to pick a charitable organization, sign over the title, look forward to the tax deduction, and stop living my hypocritical secret life. True, I still had to find myself a nice little gas-efficient used car and do the whole haggling thing, but at least half of the problem was solved.

It got better though. If you're paying attention, you've noticed that so far my a story about my wife's Christmas present seems to have a lot more to do with me and my truck. Well, if you haven't guessed it by now, this year she told me that she wanted a new car -- specifically a Toyota Prius. OK, let me get this straight. I donate my truck to charity, thereby ending my 12-years of environmental sin. I "give" my wife a Christmas present with a 5-digit price tag thereby qualifying for the Outstanding Husband of the Year Award (OHYA!). And that present just happens to be a hybrid vehicle, thereby shifting my family firmly into the environmental salvation column, complete with the accompanying tax credit.

It gets even better, though. If you're keeping up with the math, you'll note that at this point in the story we've made plans to dispose of one vehicle and acquire one vehicle, thus leaving us with no net change in the number of family vehicles. Bringing it home, I get my wife's "old" car -- a 2000 Toyota Avalon. It's gas efficient, it's safe, it's comfortable, and to top it off, it's got a CD player. It's the little things in life.

BTW, if you're in the market for a new car, you should at least test drive a Prius. After all, how many cars do you turn on with their power buttons instead of starting them with their ignition switches? My wife's has all the gadgets. It's like a computer that happens to have wheels. Did I mention that the Avalon has a CD player?

Schneier on Security: What the Terrorists Want

I agree completely with Bruce Schneier when he points out that by living our lives in fear, we are giving the terrorists exactly what they want. Here are a couple of related ideas:

- The United States has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, the idea being that by negotiating we would be rewarding terrorist behavior. Unfortunately, we have rewarded the 9/11 attacks anyway by compromising our nation's principles. It would have been unthinkable for our nation to engage in domestic spying, pre-emptive war, or torture on September 10, 2001. Yet, here we are.

- Jesus taught his followers to live their lives in faith and love, not in fear and hatred. In particular he taught that we should love our enemies. However, despite having elected the most overtly religious president in decades, we have failed miserably with respect to these challenging teachings. Generations after we have passed from this life, our descendants will still be reaping the harvest from the seeds of hatred that we have sown.

Several things I don't believe

An open letter to WTWO, in response to the decision not to air the NBC production The Book of Daniel, in the context of a campaign against the production by the American Family Association.

Greetings,

I do not believe that the NBC Production The Book of Daniel was demeaning to Christians or Christianity, as claimed by the "American Family Association" (AFA). Quite the contrary. Among other things, it dramatically depicted a man with a dynamic and deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ, through which he understands that despite the limitations of his human understanding, there is nothing that can separate a person from the love of God.

I also do not believe that the campaign that the "American Family Association" is conducting against this production is in the best interests of America, families, or Christians.

First, the campaign is not in the best interests of the United States of America. A recurring theme in our nation's history is the immigration of people fleeing nations in which they were not able to speak freely about religion. This theme is both cause and consequence of the freedoms of speech and freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution, which our elected officials and military service members swear to uphold and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Second, the campaign is not in the best interests of families. As a husband and father, I relish the opportunity to discuss difficult and controversial issues at home. I like to think that I have some insights worth sharing with my wife and five year old son. I can say with certainty that I learn a lot by letting my wife poke holes in my pet philosophies, and that there is no better way for me to clarify my own thinking about a complex subject than to explain it to my son. Right now he and I have plenty to talk about with balancing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "O Come, O Come, Emanuel," but eventually I look forward to watching shows like The Book of Daniel with him and having deep discussions about them afterwards.

Third, the campaign is not in the best interests of Christians. Those who profess Christianity are called both to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and to seek continually to deepen their personal relationship with the God of Christ. The discussion of difficult contemporary issues is an outstanding opportunity for both. For example, a Christian who has seen the show could engage as an equal participant in a coffee break conversation about it, and thereby use it as an entry point to share the good news. On the other hand, a Christian who hasn't seen the production but chooses to quote the exaggerations, half-truths, and misinformation from the AFA website is sure to come off looking like a fanatic. Likewise, Christians gathered together who have the shared experience of watching the program could learn from each other by discussing its strengths and weaknesses, and thereby help each other in their faith journeys. Those gathered together who choose to discuss the program without having seen it are simply rumor-mongering.

On a final note, I also do not believe that the WTWO decision against airing the production was independent of the AFA's campaign against it, as suggested by some of Duane Lammers' statements. If he merely intended to demonstrate his independence from the network, then his choice of programming not to air seems arbitrary at best and suspiciously coincidental at worst. My speculation is that the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes, and that his statements came from the heart in the midst of a personal struggle to rationalize his decision. With that as my working assumption, I pray that he will eventually come to fully understand the process that led him to this decision. I also pray that he will realize that the decision was not in the best interests of his station, his viewers, or his community. Finally, I pray that he will experience the peace that comes from knowing that nothing we do can separate us from the love of God.

Larry Merkle
2122 N. 11th St.
Terre Haute, IN 47804

General Assembly 2005 - Part 2

I woke up early on Tuesday (not by design, I assure you) and wound up being the first delegate in the Assembly Hall for Tuesday's business session. The most anticipated moment of General Assembly (GA) was the election of Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins as the new General Minister and President (GMP) of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The election of any new GMP is a historical moment for the denomination, and this election is especially notable because of Sharon's gender, but the more important thing is that the assembly was in overwhelming agreement in her election. In fact, in what I see as a testament to the progressiveness of the denomination, very little has been said about her gender. Nobody (that I have heard about) is asking "are we ready for a female GMP?" It goes without saying that we are.

After the election, I decided that anything else that could happen in the business session would be anti-climactic, so I went to wander around the Exhibit Hall. It turns out I missed the election of our new moderators, etc., which I regret, but you can't do everything. Anyway, I didn't wander long in the Exhibit Hall before I ran into my pastor, Rebecca Zelensky, and we traded our ideas and experiences over the past couple of days. We're both very excited about expanding the Elders' role as spiritual leaders of the church. She was very interested in my idea for a residential student center. I was more than interested in the Education for Ministry program that she told me about, which is "A Program of Theological Education from a Distance" offered by The University of the South.

While JT was off at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry painting his face with Gracie (his newfound soulmate, apparently), Margaret and I went to a workshop on the future of the liberal church. It was an open forum that DisciplesWorld asked Lisa Davison to moderate. We started by trying to describe what the term "liberal" meant to us. We stated the obvious -- that it has multiple meanings and that the term has been "hijacked." Unfortunately, I don't think that we ever tried to agree on how we would use the term during the workshop, and I think that led to some miscommunication. Still, it was by far the most intellectually stimulating event of the assembly for me. I won't try to summarize the whole workshop, but I will mention a few things that we particularly important for me.

• I really appreciated Lisa's story about when and how she was called to voice her ideas more publicly. Anybody who has something to say but thinks that they can't make a difference because they are just an "ordinary person" could hear her story and be inspired to action.
• A hypothesis was put forth that because we expect our members to think for themselves, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is more appealing to older people. I responded by acknowledging that there is probably some truth in that idea, but that it is also a generalization, and that there is a real danger in focusing too much on the generalization. There are lots of spirtually-hungry young people who need to hear the message that it is possible to be a Christian and still be a critical thinker.
• A seminarian who is pastoring a new Disciples congregation identified himself as an "evangelical Disciple," and indicated that many of the workshop participants had said things that were demeaning to him. One person had referred to the Christology of some of the evening worshop sermons as "repulsive" (apparently because they included some some sort of reference to Christ being something other than totally human). I wasn't surprised to hear that that comment was offensive. However, I learned that my own use of the term "evangelical" was probably inappropriate, in that I have tended to presume that "evangelicals" are less informed regarding biblical scholarship. In my defense, I claim that the media also makes this overgeneralization, but I intend to be more careful in the future.

On Wednesday, I did not wake up early. I arrived during the debate on the resolution denouncing hate speech against homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender individuals. I was not surprised that there was some debate. The substantive part of what I heard related to the use of the term "spiritual violence." The resolution passed easily. To be completely honest, the most memorable part of the discussion for me was that Dick Hamm, a former General Minister and President, sat next to me. He mentioned that he needed to find a restaurant for a lunch meeting, and I gave him a recommendation. I hope his meeting went well.

A resolution calling on Israel to tear down the dividing wall was debated during the same business session. Emotions were high on both sides. I was left with the feeling that not enough discussion had gone into the resolution, but the resolution passed fairly easily. I found out later that there had been protesters around the convention center all week, and especially that morning calling for the defeat of the resolution. I never saw them. After the resolution passed, all of the blogs linked from the DisciplesWorld site were visited by a combative opponent of the resolution asking "what the [Disciples of Christ] are afraid of." A website that has "UCC" in its URL but apparently has no official connection to the United Church of Christ denomination denounced the resolution. The media has reported on the passage of the resolution. We must at least be talking about the right issue if we're making some people unhappy and getting attention from the New York Times.

After lunch, I finished the book Wired For Ministry, which I plan to review for DisciplesWorld. After the afternoon business session, I started Prayer for People Who Can't Sit Still, which I also plan to review.

The closing worship service included the historic installation of Sharon Watkins as our General Minister and President. I look forward to telling JT later that he was "there when." He seemed to be pretty intrigued by the laying on of hands, which is moving under normal circumstances, and somewhat hard to comprehend when it involves 5000 people. Rev. Dr. Watkins gave an uplifting sermon. The most remembered line is sure to be that "we are a church whose time has come." I believe it, and so I believe that she is the right person to lead us. There is something else, though, about that worship service, and indeed about the entire assembly, that I will never forget. Basking in the glow of the celebration of our new leadership, we celebrated the eternal leadership of Jesus Christ by sharing in communion. And for the first time, JT celebrated too.

General Assembly 2005 - Part 1

My family and I are in Portland, Oregon for the General Assembly (GA) of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). It's my second GA, but the first for the rest of my family. We came a few days early for a much-needed vacation. Besides just spending time together without any particular schedule to keep, we have enjoyed seeing Multnomah Falls, the Oregon coast, and the Oregon Zoo. We also helped the local economy by visiting Powell's Books. I simply can't describe it. And there is a reason -- I never made it out of the first room. But I still managed to spend over $150. That'll be a recurring theme.

As I write, the GA is in full swing. As a brand new elder in my congregation, I spent Saturday at the Elders' pre-assembly conference. I took a lot of notes, but the most valuable part of the day was that I feel I passed the sanity check with flying colors. I believe that my congregation has a good understanding of the role of elders as spiritual leaders, and that we are moving in the right direction in terms of making that leadership more visible to the congregation.

Charisse Gillett's message for Saturday night's opening worship service made my wife, Margaret, and me realize that we had become in unintentionally disconnected from the denomination, in that we did not share the sense of crisis that many apparently do. We decided that this is because it has been a very eventful couple of years for our congregation, and that has consumed our attention. Having had a couple of days now to reflect on Charisse's message, I now see that for us it began a process of reconnection to the denomination, and I pray that we will be able to share that with our congregation.

Sunday was a very full day. We began by worshipping at First Christian Church, one of the local congregations that so graciously invited the masses attending GA into their church home. Everything about the church was wonderful. I especially appreciated the warm welcome we recieved, the beauty of the sanctuary, the insight and eloquence of the offering message, and the fact that they handed out the sheet music for the praise songs. At my insistence, we got to the church a little after 7:30 so that we would be sure to get seats. We got the best seats in the sanctuary and got to hear the choir running through their final rehearsal.

We chose First Christian because we wanted to hear Verity Jones' sermon. She spoke on having the courage to follow God because we love God, not because we expect God to protect us. One of her sentences haunts me, because it so succinctly captures one of my greatest fears. I can't remember her exact words, but the essence is that there may come a time when we can't distinguish between patriotism and Christianity.

We got to sit with William Wagnon (Verity's husband) during the first service, while our almost 5 year-old son JT and their identically-aged daughter Gracie were reunited after having not seen each other in a year or so. We got to sit with Verity during the second service, at which Alvin Jackson preached. Both his message and his delivery were excellent, as one would expect. I will confess that his passionate style is different enough from what I am accustomed to that I was occasionally distracted from his message. Along those lines, I was amused when JT pointed at his picture and whispered to me, "that's the man that yelled."

Sunday continued with an open forum to meet Sharon Watkins, the nominee for General Minister and President. I have heard only good things about her, and I thought she answered all of the questions well -- some of them superbly. She mentioned that she will be looking for ways to take advantage of technology to facilitate better communication within the denomination. I hope to have a chance to help with that.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to a panel discussion of the events surrounding the bankruptcy and restructuring of the National Benevolent Association. I will make no attempt to summarize the discussion here, but I'll say that I thought the panel was very effective.

We took Gracie to dinner with us, so that Verity and William could go to a dinner event. She and JT were absolutely adorable together. Then I spent about $150 at the Cokesbury press booth. Margaret was giving me a hard time about how I was going to get all the books home, so one of the things I bought was a zippered shoulder bag.

Sunday night's worship was essentially a well-deserved tribute to our outgoing General Minister and President, Chris Hobgood. He came out of retirement to take the position which Dick Hamm stepped down two years early. He took the position even though he knew that it was going to be a rough couple of years for the denomination. To say that he is passionate about social justice would be a criminal understatement. I wish him shalom.

Margaret and JT were exhausted that night (JT fell asleep in his clothes in less time than it took me to undress myself). We didn't set the alarm clock, and as a result missed most of the morning sessions. We arrived in the middle of the discussion of the NBA report, but didn't really learn anything that we hadn't learned at the panel discussion.

We went to Chipotle for lunch (Margaret has to get her fix whenever we're out of Terre Haute), and then split up for the afternoon. JT went to child care, excited to play with his "girl friend." Margaret tried to go to Michael Kinnamon's workshop, but couldn't get into the overflowing room. I went to a workshop on campus ministry, which has me inspired to develop a Residential Student Center in Terre Haute.

As I was leaving the workshop hotel, two local girls who were stopped at a traffic light whistled at me, said "Boy, we like you!", told me I had nice legs, and asked me to walk in front of them. Now, either they have a fetish for overweight, pale, balding men, or they were giving me a hard time. Either way, I'm buying a bicycle when I get home.

I couldn't get into the second workshop I wanted to go to (I was late and it was apparently moved, but there was no indication where), so I spent another $100 at the Cokesbury press booth. Then I talked to Verity about writing book reviews for Disciple's World and met up with Margaret to go to the Higher Education and Leadership Ministry dinner. That gave us a chance to talk to the guys who ran the campus ministry workshop, as well as a chance to learn some Disciples of Christ trivia. Apparently, Alexander Campbell was NOT born in Scotland, but in Ireland. What's up with that?

Monday night's sermon was given by Lisa Davison, an Old Testament professor at Lexington Theological Seminary. I very much appreciated her call to embrace the unique character of the Disciples of Christ. I wish that she had said more about how we can make our voice heard over that of the less progressive voices that currently dominate.

Sorry for the (really) long post. I wanted to get "caught up" so that I can blog in closer-to-real-time for the rest of the GA.

Chose a name

I've been thinking seriously about blogging for a couple of months now. It took me a while for me to come up with a name, mostly because I haven't decided what to do when I grow up. My primary occupation is "Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering," so according to American culture, that's my identity. However, I'm also a husband, a father, a leader in my church and the campus ministry organizations in my town and my state, an advisor to a fraternity and several other campus organizations, a researcher, an officer in the Air Force Reserves, and many other things. I expect to write about many of those things at various times, and I wanted the name to reflect the eclectic nature that I anticipate for the blog.