The Deathbed Confession

Confessions, if one is a reformed Christian, are the place where a church stands and makes a statement about a crisis facing the church.  Who are we, and how do we retain our integrity as God's people given a moral challenge that faces us right now?  What is it that subverts our discipleship?  What must we declare together, if we are to follow Jesus as authentically as we can?

It is, in that, a declaration intended to be both unifying and integrative.  

Like the Barmen Declaration, which challenged the usurpation of the church by the Nazi regime, or the Belhar Confession, which renounces the spiritual blight of racist segregationism from the depths of South African apartheid, most confessions rise from a condition of conflict, and give the faithful a clear vision of where the Beloved Community must stand.

They are a fierce call to integrity in life together.  It's why Presbyterians remember confessions, and why the Book of Confessions is part of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Constitution.

Our era poses plenty of challenges for the church, and so...Presbyterians being who we are...we've convened a committee to come up with a statement that speaks powerfully to where God is calling us right now.  They've done the work, and now we've been asked, by that committee, to give that confession a read.  

Then, we have been asked to sit with it a while.  Where it troubles us, reflect meaningfully on why, and then consider it some more.  When we've done that, respond.

The confession they've drafted for our consideration does not yet have a name, other than "Proposed New Confession." This doesn't quite have the ring of "Second Helvetic" or "Westminster," although it's probably already catchier than "Brief Statement."  Were I a marketer, I'd really want us to have a stronger brand identity at launch.

So how does it read?  What does it say?  What are we called to affirm, and what crisis calls us to a moment of choosing and shared witness?

The language is reflective of the academic-progressive character of the PC(USA), and marks our denomination's continued emphasis on inclusion and welcome.  It has four sections.  The first, entitled Image of the Triune God, lays out our understanding of the nature of...surprise surprise...the Triune God.  It does so in language that moves even further down the inclusive language path than the Brief Statement of Faith.  In tone and semiotic choices, it's fuzzier and more prone to poesy than other confessions, but nonetheless retains a vital and necessary core witness to the nature of our Creator. 

I particularly appreciated its Augustinian expression of the Trinity as Love, which shows some solid theological chops cast with concision and poetry.  It's in essence the same understanding of an interrelationship of love that C.S. Lewis expresses in Mere Christianity, even if it's wearing some soft flannel pajamas.  

One could quibble, I suppose, with some of the language.  Like, say, the use of the word "affection" as a wiffle-ball euphemism for "sexual orientation."  Them's ain't the same things, y'all, not by a long shot.  στοργή is not Ἔρως is not ἀγάπη, right?  

Generally speaking, it's perfectly fine.

The second section, Turning Away From God's Image, establishes the nature of the crisis.  

In four powerful paragraphs, it lays the essence of the challenge of our age.  The first three name that challenge: that humankind has once again lost itself in the thrall of wealth and power.  This love of Mammon and the sword has corrupted the witness of faith, and as a prophetic critique, it's dead on.  It stings like Amos and Micah, and delivers the sort of uppercut to heresy that would do Saint Nicolas proud.

In the final paragraphs, there's a clear naming of our deepest moral and spiritual challenge: the mutual careening towards the sabotage of our entire ecosystem.  Taken together, those paragraphs are succinct, cogent, and complete.  

But in the midst of that fierce declaration, the confession takes a detour.  There's an abrupt tonal shift, the punch is pulled, and instead we get the rote neo-Cistercian self-flagellation of the Presbyterian People's Front.  

Meaning, all of a sudden we've donned our best intersectional sackcloth, mourning our Complicity in such pressing contemporary crises as...checks notes..."manifest destiny."  What follows, if one knows generic progressive discourse, is the usual performative litany of historical wrongs.  We're colonialist, and racist, and sexist, ableist and queer-o-phobic, all of us damnable sinners, pie Crenshaw domine, dona eis requiem, whack. 

I find this both baffling and frustrating, for a variety of reasons, three of which I'll pitch out here.   

First, all of these lamentations seem to operate under the assumption that the PC(USA) is made up entirely of cisgender White men who can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower.

"We have," the Proposed New Confession intones, again and again, but that "We" is not a "We" that the church as a whole can confess together.  Sure, our demographic skew is heavily towards being the Presbyterian Home of Honkeytown, but...and I don't know if you've noticed this...that's not who all of us are now.

Can a Korean American choir director or a Ghanaian elder claim to have reviled their immigrant neighbors?  Can a historically Black church say that it has covered itself in racism's robes?  Can the women who make up a supermajority of our membership lament their complicitness in their own self-denigration?  Can the Queer folk who have fought for decades for inclusion declare themselves morally responsible for the harm inflicted upon them?  None of them can, not meaningfully.

All of these Christians are (and here I'll turn on all caps) PART OF THE (PC)USA.  They are not they.  They are us.  They are we. Yet those members of our shared fellowship are all positioned as the objects of the confession, not the ones proclaiming it.  It's an exclusionary, neosegregationist liturgy, which is jarring given the confession's stated purpose. 

Second, it just doesn't resemble the PC(USA) I've known for the entirety of my 57 years as a cradle Presbyterian.  Every Presbyterian congregation I have worshiped in, been a member of, or pastored?  None of them have lived out their lives together in a way that would justify these laments.  In the more recent cases, be it the civil rights movement, the ordination of women, the inclusion of Queer folk, or the embrace of those who live with disability?  In every one of those instances, we've fought our way through to an authentic witness, and at nontrivial cost in relationship and membership.  Saying, for example, "You took a consistent stand for women's voices, but, you know you could have done more, and you're part of The Patriarchy, so you are automatically complicit?"

I don't buy it.  I've looked at it, sat with it, thought about it, and...no.  One cannot repent for a sin they have not committed.  We have plenty of concrete and material sins to attend to, and repentance...understood from the whole witness of Scripture...just does not work that way.  Here, I'm very much aware that I'm not compliant with the demands of our particular denominational Newspeak. I still view persons as the fundamental unit of moral analysis, for example. I'm guilty of so many doubleplus ecclesiastical thoughtcrimes.  Mea culpa.

And finally, it feels, and here forgive me...Old.  Not just Old, but Old Old, in a very particular gerontological way.

The laments themselves are cast in semi-chronological order, a retelling-in-negation of the history of the Presbyterian church in this country.  They are decades out of date and centuries passed, sepia and crumbling.  None of them, not one, meaningfully reflects the PC(USA) now, or the specific crisis we inhabit.

It's almost like we don't know where we are anymore, like we can't remember what we did yesterday, or the names of the people around us.  But oh, do we remember the past, past struggles, past traumas, and past conflicts.  We remember when we mattered, back when we once shaped the direction of a nation, when our voice made a difference.  Remember at the General Assembly of 1818, when we let expediency and groupthink water down our witness, where we made a bold statement and then equivocated?  Remember when we marched at Selma?  No-one else remembers that, not anymore, but we're lost in the thrall of wouldacouldashoulda.  It's a little solipsistic, a little maudlin, and more than a little morbid.

This section reads, to be blunt, like the deathbed confession of White Liberal Christianity.  

"The Deathbed Confession?"

Do we want that to be what this is?  An end of life groan of regret at mistakes made and things left undone, croaked from dry and dying White throats as the denomination falls into the Consuming Fire?   Maybe we do.  Maybe that is what we want.  I know that's what some of y'all want.  

The time for that church is over, some folks say.  It should just cash out. Think of the things we could do with that money!  Choose any charity!  Give to the poor!  

But again,"The Deathbed Confession" has kind of a ring to it, if we're talking brand identity.

As a foundation on which to build, though, and a naming of the spiritual battle facing the church, this section might not be the best step forward.  

Because we're not dead yet.

To those who've labored long and hard over this work, in the unlikely event you find yourself reading these reflections: I recognize that some of these responses might feel uncomfortable.  But, you know, just sit with them for a little while.  And anyway, it's just one portion of one section, and y'all did ask for responses.  I mean, you did.

There's so much more to the Confession than this, though, and I'll get to that in another post.

I Feel It in The Earth

This Monday, my plan had been to begin my spring planting indoors.  I've got two grow-spaces cobbled together in my laundry room, as I took the reflective bubble-wrap from several packages and a pair of inexpensive grow-lights and created creches for my seedlings.  Basil and tomato are the plan, and all of those saved seeds from last year were to go into the soil from my compost piles.

That compost dates back from the leaf-fall the year before last, augmented with twelve months worth of coffee grounds and kitchen leavings, and then mingled up with all of the nitrogen-rich clippings from a long season of mowing.

Every year for the last decade, I've composted, and after two years of adding to it and turning it, that compost has always been...at this point in the season...a dark rich perfection.

But this year, the soil isn't soil.  It's close, but it's not completely broken down.  Large fragments of partially decomposed leaf and grass matter remained undigested by both microorganism and worm, and the resultant looser, mulchy, hay-like substrate isn't likely to work for seed starts.

It seems well enough suited to starting potatoes, and to amend some of my raised beds.  If I leave it for another four or five months, the remainder will likely have fully broken down.  But it's not there yet.

The "why" of that seems simple enough.  As I compost out in the open, rather than in a contained barrel, the historic drought that plagued this region last summer is the most likely culprit.  Though in shade and regularly pitchforked, the pile is exposed to air, and that air was devoid of moisture.  Bone-dry leaves and clippings aren't a happy home for the detritivores on whom the process relies, and so it just didn't quite happen.

I was aware of this likelihood, and probably should have soaked the pile a few times over the summer, but when a region is in drought, "I'm watering my dirt" seems an odd choice, particularly as I tend to leave my ground cover to fend for itself.

Still and all, it's yet another reminder that the systems upon which we rely for life are becoming something rather less amenable to us.  

"For the world," said Treebeard to Galadriel, "is changing."  

And though I am a short-lived human, and not a near-immortal Ent, I can feel it in the earth nonetheless.

Getting Ready for the Heat

The world is getting warmer.

There's not any question of it now, really.  I mean, sure, you can argue otherwise, but only if you never go outside.  It's not a question of whether global warming will occur, but of just how hot things are going to get.

The science is out on that particular question, although most of it points to things becoming more and more unpleasant as the years progress, with "unpleasant" meaning year after year of heat records inching up, and the equatorial regions becoming functionally uninhabitable.

Here on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, things are a little different.  Forests have made a comeback, despite all of our relentless sprawl and paving, which has helped blunt the heat in the region.  Still, it's going to get hotter.  Winters have become close to snow-free here in Virginia.  Summers have sprawled out, and grown more intense.

Which means, if we are to face this future, that we need to be thinking about ways to adapt and prepare.

That's been a consideration in my own household, as we've both reduced our consumption of fossil fuels and begun the process of preparing our house for hotter days.  We put a new roof on last year, and when we did so, we selected a lighter colored shingle.  Lighter colored shingles have a higher albedo, which means they reflect away more of the sun's energy.  It's a simple thing, but it reduces cooling demand.  Our house is nestled in the shelter of dozens of shade trees to the East, which means that by the hottest part of the day, it's in shade.  Our roof overhangs the side of our house by several feet, reducing solar load to the interior, and at 1300 finished square feet, it requires less energy to cool.

Out in the yard, I've made a shift in my garden this year, as for the first time I've planted okra. My mom being from the South and all, I'm entirely aware of the challenges of cooking okra just right, and the unpleasantness if you cook it wrong.  When I tell folks I'm growing okra, many recoil.  This is unfair, because if you fry it up just so, it's really quite delicious.  It's great batter-fried, sure, but also pan-fried with masala.  Note, again, that the key word here is "fried."  

Looking ahead to our inescapably warmer world, okra makes a whole lot of sense.  Abelmoschus esculentus is grown in tropical climes throughout the world, and is both robust, nutritious, and highly heat tolerant.   It's also purportedly quite easy to seedsave, meaning it should be a stalwart contributor to any home garden in our hotter world.  Should.  I've still not seen a crop, or saved seed, so I don't want to get ahead of myself.

It's only the fool who doesn't prepare for the most likely tomorrow, after all.

China, America, and Climate

There are things about the American response to China that make little sense to me.

On the one hand, sure, they're not a republic.  I prefer the liberties of speech, movement, and action that are for now still my birthright as an American.  As frustrating as the squabulous ruckus of democratic process might be, there's still much to be said for the protection of individual liberties.  The forcible suppression of religion and ethnic minorities is morally unworthy.  The silencing of those who hold a society to account for injustices and corruption leads only to rot and failure.

Yet most of America's beef with China seems to be economic, which is simply absurd.  Sure, the Chinese are now a global manufacturing powerhouse, supplanting the vastly weakened American industrial base.  Sure, most of that capacity once belonged to us.  But why did that happen?

Remember in 1992, when the Chinese invaded America and took all of our factories by force?

Of course not.  China didn't steal our industry.  American CEOs did.  Wall Street did.  Eager to plump up profit margins and fatten their own absurd salaries, folks like Tim Cook at Apple simply shipped America's industrial might to China.  The Chinese weren't about to say no.  I mean, why would they?  Can you blame them?  For them, it was all win, because they're playing the long game.

I mean, we know they are.  Chinese leadership isn't thinking about the outrage du jour, third quarter profits, or fretting about vacillations in poll numbers.  I mean, why would they care about poll numbers?   Ahem. 

They're looking to what they feel will benefit China not just ten years from now, or twenty five years from now, but a hundred years from now.

Which is why it's instructive to look at how they're approaching the climate crisis, and engagement with renewable energy.  

We Americans are in a reactionary cycle, pushing back against electric cars and solar and wind.  I'll admit that electric cars are a silly solution.  I mean, sure, they're quiet and fast, but dude.  Efficiency, thy name ain't "car."  Buses and trains and a functioning public transportation infrastructure are exponentially more efficient and sustainable.  Back when America was rising to its mid-twentieth century economic height, that's how we got around.  It was at least a viable option, which it is not now in America.  

The opposition to solar, wind, and other renewables?  It's borderline psychotic, and an ideological dissonance.  If you can draw power from the sun that falls on your own land, why is this a bad thing?  If the wind that rustles through your trees can light your home, why would we have beef with that?  Why would we want less efficient bulbs and toilets?  And why are we so programmed to desire large, energy-hogging homes and cars?  Since when were thrift and ingenuity problems for conservatives?

Yet here we are.

The Chinese aren't on the same course.

The Chinese are building electric cars, sure.  But they're going all in on the whole thing.   Unfettered by legal constraints or...paradoxically...environmental regulations, they're building a vast high speed rail network.  They're turning their newfound industrial might to the mass production of solar panels in unprecedented quantities, so many that industrial concerns in the West are up in arms about anti-competitive practices.  It's a battle they've already won, as 80% of the world's solar is produced in China.  They're preparing for a harsher climate.  They're also preparing for the era when fossil fuel supplies are fading.

They're not competing with us.  At this point, we're not even playing the same game.  

Do certain Americans assume this is because they're "woke?"  They're Marxist, which is why I'd rather not live in China, but the CCP is Chinese first.  China is on many levels deeply conservative, which is why...after some naive initial missteps...the communist party there has survived.

They are preparing, with the vision of a culture that spans millennia, for a future that will come.

And we are not.