Aaron B. O’Connell is an assistant professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and a Marine reserve officer.  His op-ed in the November 5, 2012 New York Times, titled “The Permanent Militarization of America,” warns that America has not heeded the warnings of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his famous speech regarding the “military industrial complex.”  We have become a nation of perpetual warfare, and unquestioned support of the military has become the “third rail” of politics.  He writes of his students:

Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war. Almost all think it ordinary to hear of drone strikes in Yemen or Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The recent revelation of counterterrorism bases in Africa elicits no surprise in them, nor do the military ceremonies that are now regular features at sporting events. That which is left unexamined eventually becomes invisible, and as a result, few Americans today are giving sufficient consideration to the full range of violent activities the government undertakes in their names.

Regarding the spiritual impact of militarization, Mr. O’Connell writes:

But Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower’s era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to NBC’s shameful and unreal reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution — particularly one financed by the taxpayers — should be immune from thoughtful criticism.

I began including Lord’s Day prayers for loved ones in military service shortly after 9/11.  As a child of the Viet Nam era, I wanted to be sure that, in a time of national crisis, we did not demonize those who serve in uniform.  Then came the invasion of Iraq, which I felt was unjustified.  To me, it didn’t matter that I did not support that war.  I felt it was pastorally appropriate to pray for those in danger.

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with that long list of names of military personnel we print in the bulletin every Sunday.  What began as concern for those in harm’s way has become, I fear, an endorsement of perpetual war.  I still want to pray for those in danger, but I wonder if I have unwittingly undermined the Gospel’s message of peace.

I’m open to suggestions.  Is there a better way to pray for those we love without endorsing the increasing militarization of our nation?

Normally, I steer away from so-called “Christian voter guides.”  The ones that arrive on the church doorstep unsolicited go directly into the recycling bin.  However, there are always exceptions.

Miroslav Volf, Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, has written an extremely helpful guide for Christians who vote.  He discusses Christian values, the biblical rationale for those values, and the questions that should be asked.  His paper is too long to quote in its entirety, but can be found here. These are the values Volf  thinks should guide Christians. (Everything below is excerpted from Volf’s paper).

0. Christ as the Measure of All Values

The ultimate allegiance of a Christian is to Jesus Christ, the creative Word (become flesh) who enlightens everyone, and the redeeming Lamb of God who bears the sin of the whole world. Christian ought not embrace any practice, no matter how prudent it may seem from the standpoint of national security or national competitive advantage, which conflicts with their allegiance to Christ.

1. Freedom of Religion (and Irreligion)

All people are responsible for their own lives, and they have the right to embrace a faith or way of life they deem meaningful and abandon that with which they no longer identify without suffering discrimination.

2. Education

It is important for all citizens to understand the world in which they live, to learn to reflect critically on what makes life worth living, and to acquire qualifications for jobs that increasingly require complex skills. We should strive for excellent and affordable education  for all citizens.

3. Economic Growth

Economic growth is not a value in its own right because increasing wealth and money are not values in their own right. They are means—indispensible means, but only means—to human flourishing, which consists more in righteousness than in possessions.

4. Work and Employment

Every person should have meaningful and, if employed for pay, adequately remunerated work. All able citizens should work to take care of their needs and to contribute to the well being of others and the planet.

5. Debt

As individuals and as a nation, we should live within our means and not borrow beyond what we can reasonably expect to return; we shouldn’t offload onto others, whether our contemporaries or future generations, the price of our overreaching or risk‐taking; instead, we should save so as to be able to give to others who are less fortunate then we.

6. The Poor

The poor—above all those without adequate food or shelter—deserve our special concern.

7. The Elderly

Those who are frail on account of their advanced age deserve our special help. They need adequate medical assistance, social interaction, and meaningful activities. (The humanity of a society is measured, perhaps especially, by how itmtreats those no longer capable of doing “useful” work.)

8. Unborn

Unborn human life, just like fully developed human life, deserves our respect, protection, and nurture.  (Volf acknowledges that there is a legitimate debate about the point at which life that can plausibly be deemed human begins and whether the best way to reduce abortions is to criminalize abortion or to improve the living conditions of the poor (for instance, through fighting poverty in inner cities, providing education for women, making available affordable child‐care).

9. Healthcare

All people—poor or rich—should have access to affordable basic healthcare, just as all are responsible for living in a way conducive to physical and mental health.

10. Care for Creation

We are part of God’s creation; we must seek to preserve the integrity of God’s creation as an  interdependent ecosystem; and, if possible, pass it on to the future generations improved. Above all, we should not damage creation by leading lifestyles marked by acquisitiveness and wastefulness.

11. Death Penalty

Death should never be punishment for a crime. Since out of love Christ died for every human being (“the world”), no one should rob a human being of a chance to be transformed by God’s love, and no one should put to death a human being who has been transformed by God’s love.

12. Criminal Offenders

Mere retributive punishment is an inadequate and mistaken way of dealing with offenders. We need to find creative ways to reconcile offenders to their victims and reintegrate them into the society.

13. World Hunger

Given the world’s resources, no human being should go hungry. As individuals and as a nation, we should be committed to complete eradication of hunger

14. Equality of Nations

No nation represents an exception to the requirements of justice that should govern relations between nations. America should exert its unique international power by doing what is just and should pursue its own interests in concert with other nations of the world.

15. War

War is almost never justifiable, and every successful justification has to show how a particular war is an instance of loving one’s neighbors and loving one’s enemies.

16. Torture

We should never torture. It dehumanizes both the detainee and the interrogator by violating the dignity of the one and degrading the integrity of the other, and it erodes the moral character of the nation approving it

17. Honoring Everyone

We should honor every human being and respect all faiths (without necessarily affirming them as true). As citizens, we have the right to mock another religion, but as followers of Christ, we have a moral obligation not to

18. Public Role of Religion

Every citizen—religious or not, Christian, Jew, or Muslim—has the right to bring his or her own perspectives on human flourishing and on the common good to bear upon public life and to do so on equal terms with everyone else.

19. Truthfulness

Those seeking public office should foreswear spin and contempt, being truthful with the public and civil to one another. You can “advertise” but not fabricate; you can criticize but not disrespect.

20. Character

Competence (technical expertise, including emotional intelligence), though essential, matters less than character because knowledge, though crucial, matters less than love.

Personal note: I voted on October 28 after our church sponsored “Souls the the Polls.”  Now I am free to help on Election Day.

What a strange language English is.  Today’s New York Times features an article about an injury incurred by Yankee’s third baseman Alex Rodriguez:

Rodriguez broke a bone in his left hand when he was hit by a 88-mile-per-hour pitch in the eighth inning of a loss in Seattle on Tuesday night.

The Times didn’t get it wrong.  The bone was broken, but it was the pitcher who broke it, not the owner of bone in question.  For some reason, when a player gets beaned by an fastball, we say the player “broke a bone,” when in fact he did no such thing.  That’s just the way the idiom works. Pity the non-native speaker who is trying to master the English language.

Idioms are one thing; ignorance of grammatical rules is another.  As a former high school English teacher and the son of a college English professor, I understand that language changes over time.  The rules of grammar I was taught by the formidable Miss Whitten, the unquestioned authority in  my12th-grade English class, are evolving.

Frankly, I’ll never get used to the plural pronoun in reference to the singular subject, as in “Someone left their dish on the table,” but I understand how it avoids the use of the generic masculine.  Miss Whitten, however, must be turning in her grave.

Something up with which I will not put (Sorry, Winston Churchill) is this dreadful habit of using the nominative case for the first person pronoun when it is joined to another noun or pronoun by “and,” as in “She gave the book to Jim and I,” or “Between you and I, this sentence stinks.”

People never say, “She gave to book to I,” using the nominative case.  They say, rightly, “She gave to book to me,” using the objective case.  Why, then, does adding an additional object throw people off?  I just don’t get it.  Adding more objects to the verb or the preposition doesn’t change the case.  This isn’t an example of evolving usage.  It’s an example of lazy language.

I’m not the grammar police.  I just hate to see the language mistreated.

The July 2, 2012 edition of the Christian Century features an interview with David Hollinger, professor of history at the University of California at Berkley.  Dr. Hollinger has some good things to say about “mainline” churches – what he prefers to call “ecumenical Protestants.”  When asked to comment on the standard narrative of “mainline decline,” he offers a more nuanced assessment of the “failures” of liberal Protestantism:

The ecumenical leaders achieved much more than they and their successors give them credit for. They led millions of American Protestants in directions demanded by the changing circumstances of the times and by their own theological tradition. These ecumenical leaders took a series of risks, asking their constituency to follow them in antiracist, anti-imperialist, feminist and multicultural directions that were understandably resisted by large segments of the white public, especially in the Protestant-intensive southern states.

It is true that the so-called mainstream lost numbers to churches that stood apart from or even opposed these initiatives, and ecumenical leaders simultaneously failed to persuade many of their own progeny that churches remained essential institutions in the advancement of these values.

But the fact remains that the public life of the United States moved farther in the directions advocated in 1960 by the Christian Century than in the directions then advocated by Christianity Today. It might be hyperbolic to say that ecumenists experienced a cultural victory and an organizational defeat, but there is something to that view. Ecumenists yielded much of the symbolic capital of Christianity to evangelicals, which is a significant loss. But ecumenists won much of the U.S. There are trade-offs.

As ecumenical Protestants meet the challenges of ministry in the 21^st century, we stand on the shoulders of leaders who understood the risks involved in putting their faith to work.  It is still the case that the church is called to be faithful, even at the risk of its own life.

Dr. Hollinger is not suggesting that numerical decline is something to be desired, or that the loss of members is entirely attributable to the struggle for justice.  Still, he provides a welcome perspective.

There are those who say that the mainline denominations have lost members because they departed from Biblical principles.  I think that many factors have contributed to the current situation; one of them has been faithfulness to the God revealed in the Bible.

Let’s start with three basic theological principles.

1. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24).  Theologically speaking, we human beings don’t own anything.  We’re merely stewards – caretakers – of a creation that belongs to the Creator.
2. As wonderful as the creation is, it has its limits.  We cannot exploit the earth’s resources with abandon.  When we do, we disrupt the balance God built into creation from the beginning.   That, more or less, is the lesson Adam and Eve learned when they ate the forbidden fruit.  Without limits, the whole system goes haywire.
3. Human beings are made in the image of God to live in community with one another.  The answer to the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is “Yes!”  We cannot love God without also loving our neighbors.  I cannot honor God without honoring God’s image in my neighbor.  Hence, it’s not enough for me and mine to flourish.  I must see that my neighbor flourishes as well, living in dignity, freedom, and justice.

These basic theological principles prompt a moral mandate to care for the earth not merely for our own sakes, but also  for the sake of others.  Environmental stewardship is not just a choice.  It’s  a “vocation ”  — a calling, the will of God for humankind.

As simple as these concepts are, they are easily forgotten, even by Christians, who ought to know better.

While I’m happy to see corporations jumping on the “Green” bandwagon to market their products as “sustainable,” and while I support governmental regulations to limit the unbridled exploitation of the earth’s resources, I don’t look to market forces or to regulation to get us out of the mess we’re in.  What’s required is what Christians call “repentance”  — moral realignment – a purposeful change in the way we live our lives.

That realignment must begin with communities of faith.  We can’t very well expect others to change their lives if we’re not willing to change our institutional lives first.  My own congregation came to that conclusion four years ago when we committed to reduce our “carbon footprint” to zero.

We began by retrofitting our 1950’s-era Education Building with double-paned windows and modern fluorescent fixtures.  Then we tore off the old roof and put on a new one, aligned to get the maximum benefit from the sun’s rays.

Next we installed a solar voltaic generating plant on the roof, following the example of the Unitarian Universalist Church, the first congregation in town to install solar panels.  Our 25.5 KW panels produce about 25% of our total electrical needs.  When we’re not using all the electricity the sun generates, our meter, in effect, runs backwards, and we sell the surplus back to the City.  Since it was installed, the system has avoided the production 235,580 pounds of carbon dioxide and saved enough energy to power eight homes for one year.  (For a real-time readout, click here.)

The next-to-last step was to renovate our sanctuary, built in 1838.  We replaced our venerable air conditioner with a state-of- the art system and retrofitted the entire building with the most efficient lighting systems we could find.

We did all this not to save money.  (The project cost a great deal of that!).  We did it to be better environmental stewards.  We called the project “Light from Light,” borrowing a phrase from the Nicene Creed. A final step remains. When we’ve saved enough money, we’ll modernize the HVAC system in the Education Building

Having reduced our carbon footprint, we asked a partner congregation in Frenchtown if they knew folks who needed to make their own homes more energy efficient.  When invited, we went into homes with caulking,  CFL’s,  low-flow showerheads, window film, and other accoutrements to make our neighbors’ homes more energy efficient.  In future years we plan to contribute to Sustainable Tallahassee’s Community Carbon Fund.

Other congregations are making similar life-style changes.  I applaud these efforts.  We preachers can huff and puff all we want about the need for environmental repentance, but repentance starts at home.  Unless communities of faith live out our calling to be stewards of creation in our own institutional lives, our words will be no more than “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”