Pope Francis and the Wayward Focus of American Christianity

This right here is why I really, really like Pope Francis:

He was asked about a blog post in the Economist magazine that said he sounded like a Leninist when he criticised capitalism and called for radical economic reform.
“I can only say that the communists have stolen our flag. The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the centre of the Gospel,” he said, citing Biblical passages about the need to help the poor, the sick and the needy.
“Communists say that all this is communism. Sure, twenty centuries later. So when they speak, one can say to them: ‘but then you are Christian’,” he said, laughing.

© 2014 Aleteia Image Department, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio

The Green family, good doctrinaire Catholics that they are, could really take a good lesson from Francis on focus. Because Francis really gets where our energies as Christians need to be turned primarily.

Also, I love his willingness to challenge long-hold ideas about how Christians and Catholics are supposed to think about the world. Can you imagine John Paul II or Benedict saying anything about Communism that wasn't centered around a scathing denouncement?

Elizabeth Stoker Bruening captures the conservative American Christian's relationship with politics and theology:

You don’t have to do much googling to find hand-wringing over whether or not Pope Francis is a Marxist, Leninist, communist — or some other permutation of politically charged bad guy. These accusations are never meant to argue seriously; they’re smears, they’re an attempt to take a claim that is radical and domesticate it, make it familiar and digestible to an audience that doesn’t want to deal with a disrupted political narrative. It is quite flatly uncomfortable to imagine politics to be the province of Christian ethics, and economics at that; it is troubling to think the eye of God peers into the market, where some other invisible hand is usually the preferred deity. It is easier to pretend Pope Francis’ ethical analyses of economics aren’t religious, that they’re purely of a secular vein of prima facie rejected political orders still coasting along in collective middle American nightmares on the bad fumes of the Cold War. The Pope is a Marxist! isn’t the whole narrative, it’s just a metonymy; the narrative is: The Pope is a Marxist because he claims poverty is injustice and that it can be corrected in part through state activity, and we all know this Marxist diagnosis is unChristian and unAmerican and wrong.

Absolutely right. The major sickness of American Christianity, summed up in one paragraph.

On Hobby Lobby and the Ongoing War on Women

I have a lot of thoughts about the Hobby Lobby ruling yesterday, most of them centered on the ridiculously wrong medical science behind the Green family's case and the absolutely insane idea that my employer has any right to say what I do with my earned benefits once it leaves their bank account. Not to mention the heartbreak I feel for the 14% of women in this country who use birth control and IUDs for purposes other than contraception, mostly life-threatening medical conditions, who now have to hope and pray  that their right to a healthy and long life doesn't violate their employer's "religious liberty." It's disgusting.

© 2012 Nicholas Eckhart, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

But, I want to focus on another issue that has gained more relevance for me since this ruling yesterday morning. Let me explain it this way: when I go to a job interview, that interviewer is generally only evaluating my previous work experience, my strengths and weaknesses, and my background. My race or gender isn't even thought of in any way. When I go to the doctor, no one questions the decisions I make with my doctor in any way. When I make a decision to work long hours despite having two kids, no one considers me a bad or deficient parent, or worries about my kids being abandoned.

The point is, as a white man in America, my identity never plays a role in the decisions and privileges I get in life. I never have to worry about any other consideration. I'm very lucky in that way.

And I'm also in a vast minority. Because, as a white Christian male, I am the only demographic in America that doesn't deal with inherent systematic bias in life. The Hobby Lobby decision is just another point of evidence in that contention.

When I purchase health insurance through an employer, I never have to wonder if everything I select will be paid for. I can get any medical service I deem necessary. If I want a vasectomy (eliminating my own ability to reproduce) I know my employer will pay for it via my insurance, no harm no foul. When I go down to my local M.D. to get the procedure done, I will not have protesters standing in front of me crying for all the little unborn babies never getting a chance at life because of my choice.

Women don't get that kind of freedom. Their health choices are always open for questioning and criticism. Their ability to make reproductive choices is the most hotly contested political issue of the last half-century. And now, they have to wonder if the health care they thought they were signing up for access to will still be there when they need it.

Not to mention, their ability to land jobs is tied to whether or not they are pregnant, are likely to become pregnant, or have children at home. Their ability to do a job is questioned by those who wonder if they are "tough enough" or "have thick enough skin" to "Run with the big boys." Their mothering skills are questioned if they have the gall to pursue higher education or spend a few more minutes at the office.

And I have even mentioned that the career I have chosen, that of ministry, isn't even open to a huge number of women in this country? Whereas I can become a minster in any denomination that I feel I belong to, women have to limit that choice. I heard a young women recently tell a story, with tears in her eyes, about how she was just a little child when she heard her newly-ordained brother preach in the local Southern Baptist church. At that moment, she felt a calling on her life, a passion to follow her brother and become a representative of the church in this world. And instead of open arms and pride, her family rejected her calling and told her she was wrong and sinful for feeling a calling from God, because she is a woman. Thank God she has found a new home in the UMC where she is welcome to follow her calling.

As Christians, we shoulder a large load of blame in the oppression and degradation of women. For too long, we told women they were too dirty and broken to be a representative of God to others, among other pursuits and dreams. Even if many of our churches have opened their pulpits to women, many others, including the two largest Christian denominations in the United States, still refuse to do so, for no other good reason than they are women, and the old men running these churches are scared too death of a woman having any authority against them in any way.

There is only one way to live a Christians, and this is with radical love, acceptance, and equality. Yesterday's ruling, and more importantly the attitude it engenders and perpetuates toward women, is anything but Christian in nature.

The war on women in America is alive and well. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to the world around them.