It Is Not Just the Politicians

In the last blog post, I described the exploitation of Jesus Christ by politicians to secure electoral advantage.  I wanted to be fair and note that I don't by any means believe only politicians exploit the Son of Man for earthly gain.  I'm a former corporate lawyer and professor of business law.  One of my points of consternation is when Jesus's name is exploited in the marketplace.

Sometimes it is subtle.  Maybe someone uses the ichthys (or "Christian fish") symbol in their marketing.  I did not used to think that was too bad.  But I began to ponder what they were really trying to communicate with such marketing.  I believe it is something along the lines of "I'm a Christian, so buy from me."  In other words, they are trying to gain an advantage in the marketplace through invocation of Jesus.

The advantage chiefly comes through one of two main forms.  On the one hand, it appeals to other Christians to do business within the community: "You're like me, so I'll buy from you."  But that is not appropriate.  Christianity is not a ticket to an elite country club.  The salt of the earth is not supposed to just hang out with other salt.  We're charged to go out into the world. 

Further, the appeal to stick within the community can have bigoted overtones.  Historically, it has been charged that such appeals are anti-Semitic.  As our Lord was Jewish, and as there is a long, violent history of Christian anti-Semitism, we need to be particularly wary of that.  But in the modern era, encouragement to give preferential business treatment to other Christians can be seen as bigotry against entrepreneurs of different faiths--Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, etc.  We're to be known by our love, not our bigotry and exclusion.

The other way entrepreneurs try to gain an advantage through invocation of the ichthys or other Christian references is to use it as a means to vouch for their business scruples.  In other words, "I'm a Christian, so you can trust me."  In general, my husband is a lot more skeptical and less trusting than I am.  When someone uses symbols or words to express their Christian faith in order to gain someone's trust, alarm bells go off in his brain.  Over the years, I've come to respect this hesitancy of his. 

Some good friends of ours seem to put great emphasis on the Christian label in the way that my husband never would.  That label seems to be one of the reasons they first were drawn to be our friends because at first blush we don't actually have all that much in common.  Though they put a lot of emphasis on the Christian label, I am often puzzled by their faith.  They go to church only very sporadically and never pray before meals, their home doesn't seem to have any evidence of faith, and they often say things that seem to express deeply held secular values in conflict with the Gospel.  Yet, the Christian label means a lot to them.  So much that a while back they entered into a business deal with a man largely based on his representation that he was a Christian.  To them, this meant trustworthiness.  Invoking the label "Christian" was a like a code for "I'm the right kind of person to do business with."  Had my husband been in their shoes, such a representation in that context would have been a huge red flag.  And it turns out, for good reason.  The business deal quickly went bad.  The man had hidden the fact that he was a wanted felon.  There was evidence of illegal drug use, domestic violence and other awful things.  Eventually the man skipped town to evade the police, leaving our friends with a horrible mess to clean up.

Beyond such subtle use of symbols, these days other businesses may use their faith in perhaps more obvious ways.

Chick-fil-A is a high profile example.  The private corporation's CEO, S. Truett Cathy, is a Southern Baptist and that faith has been important in the corporate culture.  Their official statement of corporate purpose includes the goal: "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us.  To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."  In line with his faith, Mr. Cathy has made sure that the company's restaurants are closed on Sundays, which is unusual in the American market place.  To be clear, I personally don't believe the decision was made in order to exploit Jesus to gain an advantage in the marketplace.  However, I do believe that an advantage is nonetheless achieved in this way.  I myself know a lot of folks who favor the restaurant for this business decision, as well as other indicia of being a "Christian business."

Another high profile example is Hobby Lobby, whose website describes the business with a lot of religious references: http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/our_company.cfm.  Of four commitments listed, the first is "[h]onoring the Lord in all we do by operating in a manner consistent with biblical principles."  The website also indicates it is closed on Sundays.  However, the business has gain attention recently because it has sued over regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare").  Specifically, the company objects to required coverage of emergency contraceptives (a.k.a. the "morning after-pill"). 

Personally, I respect very much those who value the sanctity of life, and I deeply admire those who would potentially sacrifice financially to be true to their deepest values.  However, the pragmatic attorney side of me is skeptical about this particular lawsuit. 

The reality is that the "morning after pill" is used in just a small number of cases.  Unlike birth control pills or condoms, most women will never use the "morning after pill" because it only works in limited contexts.  It can be taken up to five days after unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy from happening.  Specifically, the pill prevents ovaries from releasing an egg.  If it does not leave the ovary, an egg cannot be fertilized by sperm.  The "morning after pill" is thus appropriately labeled "contraception," and not "abortion." Unlike the former, the latter removes a fertilized egg from a woman's body.  Although there is disagreement over when human life begins, the earliest definition is fertilization of an egg by a sperm.  No one asserts that an unfertilized egg or a solo sperm is equivalent to a human being.

Further, with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, most Christians would not assert that there is a moral imperative to allow an egg to be released from an ovary such that fertilization might occur.  As a former Catholic, I can vouch that even most practicing Catholics disagree with this official teaching.  Indeed, when my husband and I went through the church's marriage preparation classes, the couple teaching the course professed bewilderment over that teaching and indicated they had not followed it in planning their own family.  This was quite telling as the wife taught in the church's parochial school, the couple were active and well-respected in the church, and they were close friends with the pastor.  These were not casual mass attenders, but the lay backbone of the church.

It is important to note that because of its limited utility, the "morning after pill" is typically intended to be used when a woman's primary contraceptive fails (e.g., a condom breaks) or in the case of rape.  Even many people who are opposed to abortion would allow an exception in the case of rape. 

Due to these circumstances, I myself wonder about the sincerity of the Hobby Lobby lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act.  Perhaps I am wrong, but my suspicion is that the company is raising the issue of religious freedom as a ruse to avoid having to provide costly health insurance to its employees.  Indeed, I've known a number of fans of the store who've been sympathetic to the corporation's position because of the invocation of religious freedom.  These same folks would likely not be as sympathetic if the issue were framed in a different way, e.g., eating into corporate profits to provide health care to workers.

Europeans and Bigotry

I wanted to follow up a bit more on the previous post.

I have traveled throughout and even lived for a school year in Europe.  As a student, I have studied its languages, its literature and its art.  Later in my life, I have worked with Europeans in professional settings.  For several decades, I have had close personal friends who are from Europe.  Though I don’t purport to be an expert, I do know something about the cultural attitudes of Europeans.

In my experience, Europeans are not exactly highly evolved on gender issues.  I mention this because Americans often view Europe as highly progressive on social issues, so this is counterintuitive to many of my countrymen and women.  After all, Europe has outlawed the death penalty and has provided universal health care.  European nations have been leaders in providing legal recognition of same sex unions.  And the people of Europe have high levels of literacy and education. But in my experience, we Americans sometimes overestimate how progressive Europeans actually are. 

From an American perspective, I’ve often been shocked—and at times simply horrified--by bigoted things that I’ve heard come out of the mouths of modern Europeans  in casual conversations.  A number of specific examples come to mind, but frankly I don’t feel comfortable repeating them in a public forum.  To an American audience, such comments would be viewed as inflammatory and very hurtful.  They are simply not the sorts of things that are said in polite company in the United States. 

And I’ve been surprised because such comments have typically come from well-educated, young, otherwise progressive Europeans.  I’ve also heard such shocking things come out of the mouths of Hitler-era Germans, but sadly one might expect that more readily.  Such comments are akin to hearing the bigoted things that I’ve heard from my own white relatives who grew up in the Jim Crow South. 

The sorts of bigoted comments of Europeans that I’m referencing have primarily been disparaging of people of color, especially people of African, Asian or Middle Eastern heritage who have migrated to Europe for economic or political reasons.  But I’ve also witnessed a good deal of stereotypical attitudes on gender and a lack of sensitivity on gender equality issues.  In my experience, women are often viewed in sexualized terms by others and even themselves. 

 

1 Corinthians 12:12

Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many.

The Reason for the Debate on Oral Contraceptives

Some politicians have tried to win points with religious conservatives by trying to frame this issue of employer mandated coverage of oral contraceptives as an Obama administration war against people of faith.   This is an incredible distortion of reality.  Shame on them.  I’m not sure why politicians making such assertions haven’t experienced tremendous, rapid growth of their olfactory organs.

Let’s call a spade a spade.  I’ve listened to the debate carefully, and I have not yet identified any religious group other than the Roman Catholic Church that objects to the provision of oral contraceptives as part of an employer provided health plan.  Despite following the debate carefully, I have never heard of any other Christian denomination or any other non-Christian religion opposed to the secular law in question.  If there is another faith group who is also opposed, please let me know.

Perhaps it is politically incorrect, but the media doesn’t seem to be noting the reality of the debate’s genesis.  That failure subtly implies that many people of faith—many Christians, for example—also are opposed to birth control.  That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  The current debate centers around an issue of Catholic teaching that is now having secular policy implications. 

And let’s be clear about who in the Catholic Church is opposing this employer mandate.  Strangely, that is not getting much media attention either.  It is the hierarchy, not the members of the Church, who are opposing the employer mandate in question.  This is an extremely significant point, but members of other Christian denominations and other religions may not immediately recognize why. 

Unlike many religious institutions, the Roman Catholic Church is monarchical and undemocratic in terms of its decision-making structure.  This is not a criticism, it is a fact.  What I mean in using these adjectives is that Catholics in the pews don’t vote to determine the bishop of their diocese, or the members of the College of Cardinals or other Church groups that set policy.  Those decisions are made by the Pope in Vatican City.  But he also is not elected by the Catholics in the pews. 

As women are banned from the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church, women’s voices are simply not present when policy is decided by Church leaders.  Moreover, women’s voices are not even indirectly heard because the decision-makers are men who are barred from marriage.  Thus, the decision-makers do not even have the benefit of insight from a wife (or daughter).

These facts are important to recognize because when the Church hierarchy speaks out against the employer mandate in question, it is very unlikely that they are speaking for many American Catholic lay people.  There are several reasons to have such doubt.

First, despite some cruel accusations to the contrary, the Catholic Church is not a cult.  As I have mentioned previously, I was a Catholic most of my Christian walk.  My fellow parishioners and I did not just blindly follow what the priests and other ordained leaders told us.  We had minds of our own and we used them.

Second, it has been well-documented that the overwhelming majority of American Catholics reject the Church’s teaching on birth control.  For example, the link below takes you to a report indicating that 98% of sexually active American Catholic women have used contraceptives that the Church hierarchy has deemed to be incompatible with Church teaching.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/14/us-most-catholic-women-us-use-birth-cont-idUSTRE73D4SZ20110414

Such data certainly is consistent with my own experience as a devout Catholic.  I have had countless Catholic friends who just shake their heads in disbelief at that teaching and ignore it without a second thought.  Significantly, these have been friends who agree with and follow the Church’s teachings on other issues.  For example, these friends tend to be very strongly against induced abortions.  (Perhaps because they are so strongly opposed to abortion, they take the prevention of pregnancy very seriously.)

I was particularly struck by this disconnect between the Church hierarchy and its parishioners many years ago when my husband and I were in pre-marriage classes at our home parish to prepare for a sacramental wedding.  The class met for several weeks to discuss various topics of great importance to a strong marriage (e.g., finances, child rearing, division of household chores).  During the last class of the series, the topic for our discussion was the role of sex in marriage.  That topic was part of the official curriculum for the course.

The course my then-fiancé and I took was taught by a long-married couple.  They were pillars of the parish and active in a variety of ministries.  They were close to the church’s pastor.  The wife was even a teacher at the parish school.

Though this couple had been leaders in the parish’s pre-marriage education program for a long time and had prepared countless couples for sacramental marriage, I was stunned when they began the last class by admitting they had never understood the Church’s teaching on contraception.  Indeed, they even strongly insinuated they had used artificial family planning to space their children’s births. 

The couple teaching the class asked if anyone else could explain the Church’s teaching on contraception.  In a group of over thirty people, I was the only one who raised her hand.  I had actually studied the Church’s teaching and tried to explain it neutrally to the group.  It was almost comical because people just stared blankly at the explanation.  No one expressed any reaction.  Though we had openly discussed a number of personal subjects with the group, and many of us had shared very personal struggles, no one wanted to try to discuss the Church’s teaching on contraceptives.  After hearing the Church’s rationale for prohibiting artificial family planning, I got the strong sense everyone was just thinking: “That’s nuts.”  Everyone was polite and quiet until someone changed the subject to a less awkward topic.

Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

Acts 10:38

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Young Asian American Missionaries in the People’s Republic of China

Our family is biracial.  My husband and I are European American and our children are Asian American.  Our kids were born in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).   Consequently, in the last ten years, we have traveled to the PRC several times. 

While in the PRC, I have been to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  I have stayed in high-rise Western-style hotels, shopped at large malls, and eaten in nice restaurants in large cities.  I have even eaten at a sparkling KFC in Beijing and had kosher take-out in Guangzhou.  Those are all impressive aspects of the PRC.  They give the impression of affluence and modernity.  They seem familiar to those of us from the West.  But I have also been privileged to be able to travel to more remote areas of the PRC that are rarely visited by Westerners. 

In the United States, we currently seem to think of the PRC as an economic powerhouse.  In reality, the PRC has a staggering population and relatively scarce natural resources.  The country has a lot of land, but much of it is so rugged that it is not habitable by humans or productive for human needs.  As a result, there is still a tremendous amount of poverty in the PRC. 

When you drive away from the large modern cities, things look much different in the countryside and in smaller towns.  There can be long stretches of road before there is any place to get clean drinking water or to go to the restroom.  When you do find a restroom in such outposts, it may just be a stinky hole in the ground with lots of flies.

I have visited the orphanage where one of my daughters spent part of her infancy.  It was a powerfully moving experience.  The orphanage facility was very humble and quite dreary.  The lives of the children there were bleak.  Without family or an opportunity for a decent education, their futures were uncertain; they are vulnerable.   Because of the plight of the children, I spent much of my visit at the orphanage with tears streaming down my cheeks.  I couldn’t seem to get them to stop.  What I witnessed was pretty overwhelming.

On a happier note, I have also had the fascinating opportunity to worship at a Christian church in the PRC.  It was a small, crumbling Catholic church built by European missionaries in another century.  I could not understand precisely what was said when I was at the church, but the Catholic mass is pretty standard world-wide, so I definitely caught the gist.  And some of the songs had familiar tunes though the lyrics were sung (with great gusto by the congregants) in a Chinese dialect.  Later I also had occasion to visit several times with the church’s priest, who called himself “Father Tom.”  His English was not that strong, and my Chinese is non-existent, so I had a hard time understanding him.  But when we asked about freedom of worship, he seemed to indicate there was no problem whatsoever.  My American friends and I were quite skeptical of this assertion.

In truth, the officially Communist nation persecutes various religious groups.  Foreign missionaries are not welcomed at the present time and many Christians have gone underground. 

Our family has some American friends who currently live in the PRC.  Because the husband was a Christian pastor until a few years ago, it was tricky for them to get a visa though he is now employed by a secular company in a non-religious position.  The family has to be very careful to not proselytize openly.  They are also very cognizant that they are being monitored and have warned friends in the U.S. against explicitly discussing Christianity or missions in their communications.  The family has known other Westerners who have been expelled for suspected missionary work.

With that background, I came across an interesting report about clandestine mission work in the PRC by a group of young Asian Americans.  The report apparently ran on Current TV, the progressive news channel founded by Al Gore.  I don’t regularly watch that channel; I came across the report on the internet.  The link below contains a video of the report.

http://current.com/groups/on-current-tv/76272742_china-missionaries.htm

I admire the passion of the young idealistic Christians in the video.  They are risking a lot to proselytize in the PRC.  They must be careful and creative.  But they apparently traveled so far and work under tough conditions because they have a great deal of love for the people they serve in rural China.

I also like this particular news report because it demonstrates that missionaries are not all of European heritage.  White missionaries are the ones who traditionally have garnered the most attention in the media.  In prior posts, I’ve also mentioned that most of the people, whom I’ve personally known to do mission work, were Anglo Americans.  But the reality is that Americans from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds make sacrifices to do important work as missionaries.  It is nice to see those contributions recognized.

Luke 24:47

…and that a change of hearts and lives and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all nations, starting at Jerusalem.