Church

Painful Lessons

/ Brant Copeland / 5 Comments

After graduating from Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) and before becoming a “divine” at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, I taught high school English and Latin in Leesville, Louisiana. I hadn’t taken a single course in education, and I didn’t have a teaching certificate, but I convinced the School Superintendent of Vernon Parish that my double major in Classics and Philosophy would suffice.  Desperate to fill out his roster, the poor guy took me on as a utility player.  

That was back in 1974.  In its wisdom, the Louisiana Legislature had banned any form of sex education in the public schools.  Teachers were forbidden to mention the “S” word or to allow the topic to be discussed in their classrooms.  

That was OK with me.  I wasn’t much older than the seniors in my Latin class and, as much as they might welcome the diversion, my ninth-grade English students had plenty on their plates learning how to write a solid paragraph.  (My goal had been to teach them how to write a convincing essay, but I lowered my sights when I realized that several of them could barely read.)  Adding sex to the curriculum would have been a bridge too far.  

The principal at Leesville High took full advantage of having a single male teacher on his staff.  He assigned me to take up tickets at sports events, to serve as an umpire for girls’ softball games, and to drive the cheerleaders’ Volkswagen minibus to away games.  In these days of hyper vigilance, it’s hard to imagine assigning a young male teacher to such tasks, but that was Louisiana in the 1970’s.  Laissez les bons temps rouler – at least when it came to athletics. 

Back in the classroom, however, more than one Big Brother was watching. In addition to keeping the topic of sex out of the classroom, we teachers also had to make sure we didn’t offend the many students who belonged to conservative Christian denominations, among them Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Church of Christ.  Some students were not allowed to celebrate birthdays.  For others it was Christmas.  And depending on the topic, many students were forbidden to attend school assemblies. 

Innocent of any instruction in educational theory or practice that might have made me more cautious, I made it through that year without getting censored or fired.  I didn’t know enough at the time to fear irate parents or lawsuit-leery administrators.  I suppose you could say my naivete kept me safe.

If I were teaching these days, naivete wouldn’t cut it.  I’d have to avoid causing my students discomfort by discussing “divisive” concepts, such as slavery, racial discrimination, and the persistent influence of white supremacy.  A bill before the Florida Legislature (SB 148) declares that a student “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”  

God forbid that white students should feel “discomfort” hearing about slave-holding founding fathers or that black students should feel “anguish” when they view newsreels of the attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. 

I used to feel a twinge of “psychological distress” every time I mounted the pulpit at First Presbyterian and looked up at the galleries where enslaved human beings looked down on their “owners.”  

I certainly don’t want the children of any race to be paralyzed by “guilt” or “anguish” for what their forebears did or suffered, but I can’t imagine how anyone can become educated without experiencing at least some discomfort.  

Without pain there can be no enlightenment.   

Memorial on Valentine’s Day

/ Brant Copeland / 3 Comments

MSDHigh

This afternoon I will take part in a memorial service at the Florida State Capitol for the 17 students slain at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School one year ago.  Here, more or less, is what I plan to say:

There was at time when February 14 meant fun, intrigue, and romance, especially a among the young.  For thousands of Americans, and particularly for the survivors of the shooting last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School, the meaning of the this day has been forever changed.

Jaclyn Corin, now a senior at MSD High, wrote in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times,

There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not reminded of the shooting. When I hear the sound of sirens or fireworks, I’m taken back to that horrific afternoon. For me, Valentine’s Day will now forever be a reminder of loss.

We gather tonight to remember the 17 lives stolen from their loved ones one year ago, the 17 people who bear physical scars from that day, and the hundreds more whose scars, though invisible, are no less real.

Experts in trauma tell us that “the body keeps the score.”  For the rest of their lives, the people affected by that bloody Valentine’s Day will be haunted by the violence inflicted by a single person armed with a weapon meant to be used on the battlefield, not in the hallways of a public school.

The memories of most Americans tend to be short.  By now, if you were not directly connected with the victims of that massacre, you might already have moved on, as did so many after a similar massacre of little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School just before the Christmas of 2012.

Indeed, if it were not for the determined activism of the students of MSD High, we might not even be gathered here on this grim anniversary.

Standing on the steps of the Old Capitol last year, those students pointed their fingers as us, the generations that preceded them, and cried “Shame.”  And they were so right do to so.  Too many of us had given up hope of any success in bringing some measure of sanity to the gun madness that has infected our culture.

Those young people “called BS” upon their parents and grandparents.  They pulled the curtain away from the unholy of holies and exposed the gods our culture worships –the gods of violence, guns, and hate.  They showed us that we had bent the knee to these idols, and sacrificed our own children on their altars.

As we pray tonight for healing and wholeness for those deep, invisible wounds borne by the victims of last Valentine’s Day, let us also repent of the idolatry that set the stage for that terrible loss.  Let us turn in a new direction and work ever harder to change not only the laws, but also the culture, that spawned the shooting at MSD High.

Let us forever banish the pernicious slogan that put “God” and “Guns” on a par with one another, for the two never did, and never will, belong together.

And, as we seek healing, from the God of love and grace, let us also repent.  Embraced by that God, let us also seek the moral courage to do what is right for our children and our children’s children.

The Idolatry of Nationalism

/ Brant Copeland / 2 Comments

John Witherspoon Satue

Statue of John Witherspoon in Paisley, Scotland

The New York Times reports that at a ceremony in Paris for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, President Emmanuel Macron of France rebuked the nationalist impulses that are reshaping the world today.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” Mr. Macron told world leaders at the ceremony. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”

I couldn’t agree more.  Love for God and neighbor is the heart of any Biblical ethic.  The prophets said this over and over in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus teaches the same in the New Testament.

The command to love God includes the prohibition of idolatry:

 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:1-5)

The Reformed Tradition is particularly sensitive to the allure of idolatry.  The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) lists as one of the tenets of reformed theology:

The recognition of the human tendency toward idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word God.

In short, nationalism is a form of idolatry, and out of idolatry flows tyranny.  When we put nation before God, it’s not long before we find ourselves bowing at the feet of tyrants. Presbyterians, of all people, should know this.

It is precisely this “recognition of the human tendency toward idolatry and tyranny” that prompted the framers to build checks and balances into the U. S. Constitution.  We can thank Presbyterian John Witherspoon of Princeton for teaching this to his student James Madison.

Merci beaucoup to the President of France for prompting the theological memory of the folks in my branch of the Christian family tree.

Vigil in Tallahassee

/ Brant Copeland / 7 Comments

CharlottesvilleLast Thursday, August 17, a vigil was held at Tallahassee’s Lake Ella to remember the victims of violence in Charlottesville and to stand for peace, justice, and inclusion.  I was honored to be asked to speak.  Here are my remarks:

Thank you for coming out on this warm evening to express our solidarity with the people of Charlottesville and our concern for the peace and welfare of our nation.

Tallahassee has a lot in common with Charlottesville.  Both are centers of higher education and both play central roles in the history of their respective states.

But we have something far more important in common with Charlottesville.

Like Charlottesville, Tallahassee is populated by human beings –
people created in the image of God,
people who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,
people who are responsible for their behavior
and for the welfare of their communities.

What happened in Charlottesville last weekend exposed an ugly and shameful aspect of our common humanity.

We saw that some of our brothers and sisters – and it’s only a few – think of themselves as superior
to people of color,
to Jews and Muslims,
to women,
and to members of the LGBTQ community.

These people fancy themselves superior, but also somehow aggrieved,  that America is becoming more and more racially, religiously, and culturally diverse.

They look at the rainbow and see storm clouds.

They see the world changing, and they would like to turn back the clock —
to a time when women knew their place,
when black lives didn’t matter,
when gay, lesbian, and transgender people hid in their closets
and feared for their jobs and even their lives.

These people feel so aggrieved that they are willing to take their Nazi banners, their clubs, their guns, and their fists to march lockstep into the past –
and they want America to march with them.

We are here tonight to say that we will not march with these folks.

We will not return hate for hate,
taunt for taunt,
blow for blow,
but we will not be silent.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.

We will not be silent.

We will not pretend that racial and religious bigotry is OK.

We will not accept the warped and twisted notion that there is a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and people who stand up for human dignity, equality, and community.

Even if that bankrupt morality should be broadcast from the Whitehouse, we will not accept it.

We will not be trumped by those who would make America small again.

So, we must pray for our enemies and stand with our friends.

We must become the nation God wants us to be.

We must live up to our highest values, and not down to our lowest instincts.

We must make America great again –
great in mercy,
great in compassion,
great in concern for neighbor.

I believe that’s what the vast majority of Americans want –
regardless of their sect or party.

I know that’s what Tallahassee wants.

May God give us strength to face up to evil,
honesty to confront the evil within our own hearts,
and grace to live up to God’s best hopes for us
– and for this world which God loves.

Top Dog

/ Brant Copeland / 10 Comments

Screenshot 2017-06-03 09.28.17As I write, I am sitting in a sunny room in my mother-in-law’s home in Edinburgh, Scotland.  (Yes, it’s not often one can put “sunny” and “Scotland” in the same sentence.)  I confess to some reluctance to leaving the house today, for that would mean facing my Scottish relatives and friends who are aghast at the behavior of the President of the United States.

I have considered wearing a bag over my head when I go out, but that probably wouldn’t work.  As soon as I opened my mouth, my accent would betray me. I might as well own up to the fact that “my” President is a profound embarrassment not only to me, but to the world.  His most recent equivalent to an upraised middle finger is his announcement that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accords.

Writing in the New York Times, David Brooks rightly points out the amoral basis upon which my President makes his decisions.

This week, two of Donald Trump’s top advisers, H. R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, wrote the following passage in The Wall Street Journal: “The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

My President never learned to sing “Jesus loves the little children – all the children of the world . . .”  He fails to grasp the fundamental concept of “neighbor” that lies at the heart of Christian ethics.

That’s why, even if he were to accept the scientific evidence for climate change, he would still reject the Paris accords on the grounds that other countries might get the better deal – might gain some advantage in the endless struggle to get ahead of their competitors.  Never mind that, historically speaking, the United States is the world’s greatest carbon polluter.  What’s important is today’s deal – today’s opportunity to win.

For that’s what the world is through my president’s eyes – a field of perpetual and brutal competition.  On the personal level, it’s “Donald first.”  On the global level, it’s “America first.”

My President has put a new spin on the concept of “American exceptionalism.”  The term used to suggest that American had a unique mission to make the world a better place – to be a “city set upon a hill,” a beacon of hope to the downtrodden and beleaguered, a nation willing to take moral leadership in the global community.  Under Mr. Trump, America doesn’t even pretend to aspire to such moral high ground.  We’re just one more dog in in a dog-eat-dog world – and a snarling, vicious one at that.

As I lead worship every Lord’s Day I pray aloud for the President of the United States.  I pray that he will be guided by the Holy Spirit and graced with wisdom, forbearance, and insight.  I will continue to make that prayer, for I truly hope that he will repent and open himself to God’s leading.

If he does, the first question he will have to struggle with is, “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus has an answer for him, but to receive it, he must have ears to hear.

Free to Differ

/ Brant Copeland / Leave a comment

Screenshot 2017-05-09 08.55.41President Trump has promised to “destroy” the so-called Johnson Amendment, which has become shorthand for a provision in the tax code that applies to all 501(c)(3) organizations. Groups that enjoy that most-favored tax status must refrain from endorsing, opposing or financially supporting political candidates.

The law makes perfect sense to me.  Organizations that benefit from what is in effect a public subsidy should not be allowed to function as partisan organizations.

Proponents of repeal of the Johnson Amendment see it as suppressing “religious liberty.”  I don’t see it that way at all.  The law simply limits groups, including churches, from being both a tax-exempt ministry and a partisan political entity.  Nothing in the law bars me, as a Christian pastor, from speaking freely about matters of faith and public policy.  I can certainly praise or criticize those who hold public office.  What I can’t do under the law is endorse candidates for office – at least not in my capacity as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church.

In many ways, this fracas is much ado about nothing.  Only rarely has the IRS gone after churches for overt partisan political activity.  Despite what fear mongers say, the IRS is not poised to pounce on preachers.

Although I have occasionally been asked to endorse candidates for office, it has always been my policy not to do so.  I suppose that, as a private citizen, I could endorse someone, but, as any pastor will tell you, a pastor is never really “off duty.”  I have never endorsed –nor will I ever endorse – anyone from the pulpit.  On the other hand, my calling to preach the Word sometimes leads me to question or praise office holders and their policies.

My Dad, who was a pastor, declined to put a political sign in the yard of the manse.  When he lived in a home not owned by the church, however, he changed his mind.  I don’t put partisan bumper stickers on my car because I use it for official functions.  I don’t want a grieving family of a differing political persuasion to follow my car in a funeral procession, resentful of my politics.  On the other hand, because I own my own home, you might see the odd political sign in the front yard (or several of them.)

This week’s edition of Time magazine recalls the almost-forgotten role that some clergy played in the abortion debate before the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe versus Wade.  Writer Gillian Frank singles out the courageous acts taken by Charles Landreth, Associate Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Tallahassee, and Florida State University Professor Leo Sandon.  The first paragraph of her article reads:

“Today I want to speak to The Challenge of the Sexual Revolution, or to The Use of the Body in Regard to Abortion,” declared the Reverend Charles Landreth on, June 6, 1971. From the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church in Tallahassee, Fla., Landreth invited those present to imagine different situations that led to a “problem pregnancy.” Landreth prodded his congregants, asking them to consider what an unwanted pregnancy and lack of access to abortion could mean to an older married woman, a young woman who had been raped or a high-school girl “scared literally to death to tell her staunch Catholic parents and therefore very tempted to run to a quack . . . ”

I recommend the article.  I also give thanks to God for servants like Charlie Landreth and Leo Sandon, who truly understand what “religious liberty” means.

Hope

/ Brant Copeland / 4 Comments

SanctuaryI try not to use this platform to post sermons.  Today, however, I thought I’d make an exception.  Below is the sermon manuscript for Sunday, June 19, 2016.  It’s not the sermon.  A sermon is an oral event which takes place in a particular context and is addressed to an assembly gathered for worship.  These are just the words of the sermon (more or less).

 

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 19, 2016
Psalms 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29

Hope

Perhaps your soul, like mine, is weary this morning.  Weary from hearing news reports about the killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last Sunday.  Weary from reading  the text messages that came from inside the club as panicked patrons pleaded for rescue and sent their final good-byes.  Weary from watching politicians who have fought so hard against equality for the LGBT community express their new-found empathy.

Weary of the pain.  Weary of the tears.  Weary of the rank hypocrisy. Weary of those who cling to the notion that the best response to all this carnage is to put more guns in the hands of more people.  Weary of the dearth of reason and common sense — in Congress, in the Florida Legislature, and in the public square.

Weary.  Soul weary.  So very, very tired.  As the psalmist says, “ . . . my soul is cast down within me.”

We bring that weariness with us into worship this morning.  We wear it like a mantel.  It becomes our prayer shawl.  The words of Psalms 42 and 43, the psalms appointed for this day, frame our lament:

             As a deer longs for flowing streams,
                   so my soul longs for you, O God,
             My soul thirsts for God,
                  for the living God.
             When shall I come and behold
                    the face of God?
              My tears have been my food
                    day and night,
               while people say to me continually,
                   “Where is your God?”

In times like these God can indeed feel far away, remote from our reality and indifferent to our cries for help.  We would do well if, like the psalmist, we were honest about those feelings.

For many of us, the church is a safe place to bring our weariness, our frustration, and our anger – even our anger toward God.  Here we are able to say to God,

            Why have you forgotten me?
            Why must I walk about mournfully
                 because of the enemy that oppresses me?

We can say this because the psalmist shows us how, because generations have said it before us.  We are not alone in lamentation.  We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  Church for us is a safe place to grieve.

Not everyone has such a safe place.

Last Sunday, over at Lake Ella, I joined a throng of people for a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of the shooting that took place early that same morning.  Over and over, speakers from the LGBT community told how the Pulse nightclub had become well known as a safe place for that community to gather.  People went there to celebrate birthdays, to announce engagements, and just to hang out with friends.  It was a setting where they didn’t feel judged or out of place.

That teeming nightclub with its loud music and throbbing lights was a kind of sanctuary for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender people.  As unlikely – even sacrilegious — as it might sound, Pulse was a kind of holy place – or if that is going too far – at least a safe place, a place of refuge from “the enemy” of which the psalmist speaks.

For so many LGBT people “the enemy” can be found at their workplace, their school, or even in their own family.  The enemy’s names are Legion, but we know some of them: homophobia, intolerance, condemnation, and bigotry.

As it turned out, Pulse was not that safe place from the onslaught of the enemy.   A man armed with a weapon that belongs on a battlefield, not a on a street in Orlando, Florida, entered that sanctuary with its loud music, pulsing lights, and mostly young, brown-skinned children of God.  The evil he carried out there is unspeakable, and its roots run deep — not only in soil of Islam, but also in the soil of Christianity.

As the vigil on Sunday ended, I conveyed to the organizers an invitation I knew you would want me to give.  “I know you want to hold tomorrow’s vigil on the steps of the Old Capitol,” I said, “but if it looks like rain, the doors of First Church are open to you.

It didn’t rain the next afternoon, but it was so hot outside, the Capitol Police were afraid a large crowd meeting under the afternoon sun would constitute a health hazard.  They declined to issue a permit, so the organizers decided to come here instead

This room was not a comfortable venue for many in the congregation last Monday  night.  For many LGBT people, the word “church” does not connote “welcome,” or “hospitality.”  It means something else. “Church” means those same enemies who broke into the Pulse nightclub last week: homophobia, intolerance, condemnation, and bigotry.

As I stood at the door, I heard one person say to another, “I thought we were supposed to be at the Old Capitol.  Why the hell are we coming to a church?

The gathering last Monday was not a worship service.  There were no prayers, no hymns, no readings from scripture.  My only role was to give a welcome.

I didn’t come to this pulpit.  I just stood down there and told the folks who had packed these pews about some of the history of this building.  I told them about Col. Richard Shine, a slave-owner and elder in this church back in the 1830’s.  The bricks in these walls were made on Col. Shine’s plantation.  The blood and sweat of slaves is mixed into these bricks and into mortar that holds these walls together.

I told them how the slaves had to sit up there in the north gallery.  Their names were entered upon the rolls of communicate members, but they weren’t allowed to sit down here with their white Presbyterian masters to share the Lord’s Supper.

“This has not always been a place of welcome and hospitality,”  I told our guests.  There are many sins of which the Gospel calls Christians to repent, not least of them being the sins of slavery and homophobia. But I wanted our guests to hear this word specifically to them at that moment of their anger and grief: In the name of Jesus Christ, you are welcome.

These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
   and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
   a multitude keeping festival.

The memory of worship in the temple at Jerusalem helped the psalmist to find some sense of equilibrium in the midst of his lamentation.  I hope that, looking back on last Monday, some of those gathered here in this place of worship might have received a similar blessing from God.

Long ago, the brand new Christians of Galatia were struggling with the question “Who are we?

Are we Jews?  Are we Gentiles?  Are we misfits?  Do we cling to the law of Moses?  Do we ignore the law?  Who are we

You are children of God, Paul wrote.  All of you – children of God through faith.  As many of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  The old categories don’t apply anymore.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer salve or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus . . .

            That good news made all the difference to those first Christians, and what was true of them is true of you and me.

The old categories don’t matter. Neither do the new ones:  Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, gay, straight, bi-sexual, transgendered.  Important as those categories are outside these walls, they don’t matter here.  Not here, where baptism tells us who we are, where grace abounds, where sins are forgiven, where we look into the gospel mirror and see only the children of God.

When I think of those people who died last Sunday at Pulse, the thought that plagues me most is this:  that some of those people died not knowing that God loves them  — that they, too, are children of God, precious and beloved.

I am haunted by the thought that you and I failed to convey to them and to the world the love and mercy of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.  We let the categories that don’t matter get in the way of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.

God will not hold this sin against us, but God does expect us to change.

The psalmist cries: . . . Why have you cast me off?   . . . Why have you forgotten me?  Where is God in all of this?

I know where God was last Sunday. God was in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, right in the midst of the terror, the pain, and the cries for help.  Named or not, summoned or not, even called by some other name, the Triune God was there, amidst God’s very own children, made in God’s very own image.

If I did not believe that, the weariness that I bring into this sanctuary today would be the death of me.  It would be the death of all of us.

The psalmist ends his lament with a question and a command, both addressed to himself:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
    my help and my God.

There is no neat and tidy way to end this sermon, just as there are no easy answers to the evils that haunt our violence-prone culture.  But there is a way forward, knowing that God in Christ will not forsake us.

Hope in God, beloved.  Remember who you are and hope in God.

 

See this article in the Tallahassee Democrat.

 

Not Helpful

/ Brant Copeland / 2 Comments

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.  So do candidates for high office.  During his recent visit to Israel, presidential candidate Mitt Romney ventured into dangerous territory.  In a speech to a Jewish audience he suggested that “cultural differences” are the reason Israelis are more successful economically than Palestinians.

Mr. Romney  also vastly understated the actual disparity between the incomes of Israelis and Palestinians.  He put the gross per capita G.D.P for Israelis at $21,000 and the gross per capita G.D.P. for Palestinians at $10,000.  According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the per capita gross domestic product for Israelis in 2009 was roughly $29,800.  The per capita gross domestic product for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza in 2008 was $2,900.

What accounts for this dramatic disparity?  I am no economist, but I think it’s fair to suggest that the history of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the trade restrictions imposed by Israel’s government have something to do with it.  One could debate whether those restrictions are justified or not, but even a non-expert like me might be forgiven for thinking that “cultural differences” don’t tell the whole story.

What concerns me most about Mr. Romney’s comments is how they feed the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jewish people are good at making money and obsessed with profit.  The corollary of this racist attitude, of course, is that Palestinians are, by nature, lazy and unproductive.  Both stereotypes are at best uncharitable and at worst dehumanizing.

I’m old enough to remember Southerners opine that “nigras” (that was the polite term back then) were incapable of higher education and high achievement.  Looking back, I shudder to think that otherwise kind, faithful Christians could believe such bunk.  I also remember a church meeting during which an elder spoke of “Jewing down” a bid from a contractor.  He was, quite properly, chastised by his brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anyone who has been to Israel has to admire way the Israelis have brought forth the abundance of the land.  I still can’t get over the sea of banana groves near the Sea of Galilee.  On the other hand, I have Christian friends who travel to Israel to help with the olive harvest because Palestinian farmers don’t have access to olive groves that have been in their families’ possession for generations.  The point is, the Israeli-Palestinian relationship is profoundly, maddeningly complicated.

I certainly don’t have the solutions.  But I am convinced that slightly-veiled racial stereotypes are not helpful.

Lord, Forgive Us Our . . .

/ Brant Copeland / 2 Comments

There are some pitfalls in this brave new world of social media.  One of them is the fact that when I make a blooper, it is exposed not only to the flock (who are used to my many shortcomings) but also to the entire World Wide Web.

For the past few weeks I have been posting this column as a blog post.  As typos go, the ones in last week’s column were real howlers.   Instead of “Pig in a Poke,” I typed “Pig in a Polk.”  As if that were not bad enough,  I left out the “l” in “public” when referring to “public policy.”   This is more than a little embarrassing.  I don’t really want to get into that particular conversation online.  I get enough unsolicited e-mail already.

I figured out how to fix the blog post, but the newsletter went out uncorrected.  I offer thanks to the many of you, both in the congregation and out there in the ether, who caught the typos and let me know about them.  Humble thanks, of course.  In the circumstances, I could hardly offer any other kind.

This puts me in mind of a young pastor in my grandparents’ church in Coahoma, Texas.  Not long after arriving in that community of cotton farmers, he offered a pastoral prayer imploring the Lord to bless the “hoers in the field.”  He hadn’t quite cottoned onto the local lingo.  Every parishioner who shook his hand after worship whispered, “It’s hoe hands, Charlie, not hoers.”

On another occasion Charlie prayed, “Lord, forgive us our falling shorts.”  Not quite the same thing as the Book of Common Worship’s “shortcomings and offences.”  I’m sure the Lord knew what Charlie was talking about, but the image evoked by his rough equivalent is likely to have left the congregation rather distracted.

Baggy pants are a fashion statement these days, but falling shorts are another matter.  (Come to think of it, the former might well contribute to the latter.)

Typographical errors, as bad as they are, are not quite so embarrassing as liturgical ones.  In by first parish I began the Easter morning liturgy by shouting “Christ is born . . . I mean . . . risen!”  It was not my proudest ministerial moment.

Humility is desirable in my line of work, but if you’re me, it’s unavoidable.

Pig in a Poke

/ Brant Copeland / 3 Comments

When I arrived to serve First Presbyterian Church of Tallahassee in 1985, Florida was coming down with a bad case of lottery fever.  Both conservative Christian groups and the liberal-leaning Florida Council of Churches opposed the establishment of a state-run lottery, even though proponents insisted that funds derived by separating fools from their money would be used to “enhance education.”

I joined Southern Baptists and Unitarians to say that the state should not encourage the something-for-nothing mentality that undergirds “gaming.”  (You can’t say “gambling” anymore.  That word has been stricken from the lexicon.)  We opposed the lottery on moral grounds.

We lost, of course.  The voters of Florida, in their infinite wisdom (or utter gullibility) took the bait.  And guess what!  The pea wasn’t under the shell after all.  Over time, the tax dollars that should have gone to education went elsewhere.  And the Governor is praised for proposing a budget increase for education that barely makes up for last year’s cut.

Meanwhile the ads for the Lottery grow increasingly surreal.  Throwing your money away on lottery tickets is not an exercise in cupidity after all.  It’s a way of “contributing” to education.

Eat your heart out, George Orwell.

The slide down the slippery slope has brought us to Gretna, a town in that is 85 per cent black and has an unemployment rate of 25 percent.  In a few days the residents of Gadsden County will get to vote on whether to allow slot machines to be added to the barrel racing and card games that are already underway at Creek Entertainment Gretna.

There’s not much doubt which way the vote will go.  The allure of jobs and new tax revenues is powerful.   My colleague, The Rev. Mr. Charles Scriven, a man of impeccable integrity, has launched an effort to defeat the slots.  Alas, the momentum is against him.

We can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  “Gaming” is probably here to stay.  The best we can do is to try to contain it as best we can.  Still, I can’t relinquish the dream of a system that uses equitably-derived tax dollars to further the public good.

“Gaming” is a social evil, no matter how many voters approve it.  It’s bad for families, bad for individuals, and bad public policy.  Dress it up anyway you want, it’s still a pig in a poke.