Strange attack on the shepherd of a poor flock

Migrant workers in Mexico have a guardian angel. His name is Alejandro Solalinde. Rev. Solalinde runs a shelter for migrant workers, who have to run a deadly gauntlet of drug gangs and corrupt police. He has achieved considerable notoriety for his willingness to call out publicly the drug lords and corrupt cops.

The Rev. Alejandro Solalinde has become well known in Mexico after enduring death threats for publicly denouncing drug gangs and police who rob and kidnap Central American migrants crossing Mexico to reach the United States.

Solalinde is disobeying corrupt authorities and powerfully demonstrating the love of God for marginalized people. You might think he would be a hero in the Catholic Church. He is engaged in nonviolent struggle against violent people to protect poor farm workers that have to risk their lives to earn a living. He is even willing to risk his own life to show the strength of God's love. Given the murderous rampage by the drug cartels, death threats are promises rather than idle threats.

But Solalinde's diocese said he is simply being asked to start operating within the normal parish structure, and run his migrant shelter more like a church ministry and less like a lone activist's non-governmental organization.

Thou shall not offend the powerful. Thou shall not risk retaliation against the people and property of the Church. Thou shall not get involved in political controversies (unless you are a bishop and the controversy involves sex rather than violence). Thou shall not attract too much attention.

He also said the bishop had said he was grabbing too much attention; Solalinde has practically become the public face of Mexico's migrant protection movement.

Interesting doctrine. Not Christ-like, but interesting none the less.

The diocese is reassigning Solalinde to parish ministry. He is being given a new flock, kept out of the public eye, and under tight control by the bishop.

"I know how to fight against the drug cartels, and corrupt officials and police, I know how to fight all of them, but I can't fight the church," Solalinde said. "If the church asks me to do this, the church is going to achieve what all the other forces haven't, which is to get me to leave, to leave the flock defenseless so they do what they want with them."

The question becomes who do we serve. Are we guided by the Holy Spirit or religious bureaucracy? Do we speak truth to power or wait for religious authorities to decide which powers to follow without question?

The bishop argues that Solalinde serves the diocese and can only continue to serve migrant workers if he does it quietly, within the confines of the parish facilities, and also handles a mountain of administrative tasks.

It is interesting that liberation theology was deemed unfit because it advocated Marxism, political solutions to social justice, and violence against oppressive governments. Solalinde is not promoting Marxism, political ideology, or violence against anyone. He was only guilty of challenging the corrupt authority and making the Church a potential target of retribution. Maybe we should call that obedient theology. Obedience to religious authorities is the same as obedience to God according to this theology.

Obedient theology sounds like cowering to authority in the name of Christ. The Holy Spirit does not fraternize with the riffraff. The chain of command is Christ to the Holy Spirit to specially anointed church leaders then down to pastors, then lay leaders, and finally the washed and chosen. Disobedience to church authority will get you publicly rebuked and forced to complete re-education in the fine points of orthodox doctrine.

Jesus said obey God and did not obey the religious authorities of His day. He also spent his time among the marginalized. Obedient theology did not come from the Christ. It came from men with an inflated sense of their own importance in the eyes of God.

Religious belief on the decline

Jesus described the foundations for faith as loving God and loving others. It is clear that at least one of those pillars is crumbling across the world. A recent Gallup survey found a sharp decline in belief in God in many countries, with one of the biggest declines found in Ireland.

Catholicism was once so all-pervading in Irish life that it seemed a definition of Irishness: but now, according to a survey by the pollsters Red C, the Irish are losing their faith quicker than most: seven years ago, 69% of Irish people described themselves as "religious": this has now fallen more than 20 points to 47%.

The decline in Ireland was attributed to the sexual abuse scandal by priests and greater prosperity. The publication of the Ryan Commission report in 2009 laid bare the scope of sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church in Ireland. No doubt, it left a nasty taste in the mouths of the faithful, particularly since the Church did little to stop the abuse before it became public knowledge. As for prosperity, Ireland's gains were wiped out in the global recession in 2008 and yet to recover. The youth of the nation have been particularly hard hit by the recession. Perhaps the survey results should be broken down by age group since the youth were victimized by the priests and the economic collapse.

Ireland was far from alone in losing its religion. There was a 9% drop in religious belief across world between surveys in 2005 and 2012. Religiosity, at least in 2012, was inversely correlated with wealth.

RELIGIOSITY IS HIGHER AMONG THE POOR: People in bottom income groups are 17% more religious than those in top income groups. It is interesting that Religiosity declines as worldly prosperity of individuals rises. While the results for nations as a whole are mixed, individual respondents within a country show a revealing pattern. If citizens of each of the 57 countries are grouped into five groups, from the relatively poor to relatively rich in their own countries, the richer you get, the less religious you define yourself.

What was it Jesus said about worshipping God and Mammon? Perhaps the rich fall prey to the idolatry of individualism. They overlook the fact that privilege begets more privilege. Their ego starts believing that they are gods, never mind all the poor sods they trampled on the way to the top.

Political grand pundit Ross Douthat has decided that anyone deviating from religious orthodoxy is a heretic. That is odd since the dominant religion in Ireland is Roman Catholicism. So much for the intelligence of political pundits.

Perhaps the real problem is people who claim to believe in God but treat others badly. In other words, they say they love God but fail to love other people. No one can claim to understand God. God defies our senses and our comprehension. Yet no one claim not to understand the suffering of other people. We all have suffered a few slings and arrows in our lives. The suffering of others is all too visible if we are willing to open our eyes, ears, and hearts. The hypocrisy of professing faith in God while failing to love others as Jesus instructed is true heresy. And maybe that is why more people are having trouble seeing faith in God as a force for good in a crowded world.

As Christians, we are called to witness God's love. That means reflecting the love of God in how we treat others. No one will take our faith seriously otherwise.

Texas loves vengeance

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:19-21)

Many politicians in Texas profess their faith in Christ and call themselves "pro-life." Perhaps their reading of scripture is faulty. Jesus explicitly rejected the idea of an "eye for an eye" for His followers (Matthew 5:38-42). Perhaps their faith is not strong enough to overcome their lust for punishment and revenge. How else can one explain the state executing a mentally challenged man with an IQ of 61? It is even harder to call it justice when his accomplice was given life and there was no independent evidence that definitely established which of the two was responsible for murder.

His accomplice in the crime, Terry Lewis, was given life in prison with the possibility of parole, after Lewis's wife testified that Wilson confessed to pulling the trigger. No forensic evidence or eyewitness testimony established the identity of the shooter.

Texas needed to a life for life. And they had to work exceptionally hard for their vengeance in this case.

In 2002, the Supreme Court prohibited the execution of the mentally retarded, declaring it cruel and unusual punishment forbidden under the Constitution's 8th Amendment. Those with diminished mental capacity, the court ruled, are less culpable for their crimes than those with normal intellects. The reasoning was nearly identical to the legal argument the court embraced in forbidding the execution of juvenile offenders.

Yes, they exercised their rights to take a life of a man that sucked his thumb into his 20s and never held a job. It is interesting how so many people claim to interpret scripture literally and then do the exact opposite of the New Testament foundation of their faith.

It all boils down to consensus for capital punishment.

In 2004, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in a 21-page effort to establish guidelines for determining mental retardation in capital cases, alluded to Small as a character most Texans would be unlikely to execute. "But," the court reasoned, "does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental retardation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?"

Just to be on the safe side, Texas used an expert that argues for adding a few points to intelligence scores to blacks to correct for "ethnic environment." Viola. That pesky 61 now exceeds the state cut-off for mental retardation with the ethnic correction.

Apparently, Christians in Texas are not troubled by the state's frequent use of capital punishment, including cases of intellectually limited or mentally ill offenders. The only opposition to this execution I could find in searching news sites in Texas was from human rights organizations.

A man stood up and pleaded for help

It was a typical Sunday worship service. We sang, listened, prayed, and shared communion together. However, something strange happened during the public call for prayer requests. A man stood up in the back of the church. A stranger. 

The man began his story by saying that he had just been released from prison and was trying to put his life in order. He admitted that substance abuse and theft to support his habits had gotten him into trouble. During his most recent incarceration, he decided to change his life. He became a Christian, worked hard to free himself from addiction, and was released on parole early for good behavior.

"What I need most is a job. No one seems to want to hire me and I am desperate. I done some bad things, but I want to put that behind me. Just I am not sure what to do now. Please, I will do anything. It does not matter what." 

As I listened to his request, my heart sank. There are very few small business owners in the congregation and none that I knew of that were looking to hire. As desperate as this man was for help, I was doubtful that anyone in the audience was in a position to give him what he needed most. 

I was planning to at least introduce myself and tell him I much I appreciated his courage in sharing his story. Unfortunately, before I could reach him, I was trapped in the aisle greeting friends in the congregation. As I scanned the back of the church, he was nowhere to be seen. He was also not in the fellowship hall. He was simply gone. 

That was weeks ago, but I cannot get the man out of my mind. I felt as powerless to help him as he did to help himself. There have always been folks at the margins of our society, but their numbers are growing and many are determined to eliminate what little government safety net exists for them. Yet, our congregation and many others as well lack the resources to pick up the slack. 

The fact that this man still haunts my thoughts is a pretty good indication that I was meant to be touched by his circumstances. As much as I hear the Lord urging me to do something to help, the unanswered question is what. His face and story will no doubt continue to haunt me until I can answer that question.

Hey, did you get your fill of crappy chicken?

Let me get this straight. Christians came out in large numbers to support a fast food chain and its billionaire owners over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to get married. What a truly remarkable feat! Nothing short of a miracle!!

Former Baptist minister, former Arkansas governor, and now millionaire Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee used the power of his overpaid megaphone to run the successful impromptu public relations campaign. He sure knows how to whip people into a frenzy.

“People are outraged that someone who expresses a view that is shared by most of the country is being bullied by hate speech and intolerance from the militant gay groups that are trying to disenfranchise his right to a personal opinion,” Huckabee told Religion News Service in an email.

Yeeeehaw! Militant homosexuals. Bullying. Hate speech. Intolerance. Way to go, Mike. You completely flipped the script on those gays. Fox News does not pay you the big bucks for nothing.

Seminaries, culture war celebrities like Sarah Palin, and more than a few big name evangelists got into the act. And the circus was a huge success.

"While we don't release exact sales numbers, we can confirm reports that it was a record-setting day," Steve Robinson, Chick-fil-A's executive vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

At least one location had to close early after nearly selling out of chicken. At others, lines snaked around buildings and patrons waited upwards of two hours to snag their chicken sandwiches and show their support for Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's comments supporting traditional marriage.

While y'all were eating junk food for culture war and billionaires, you blissfully ignored the fact that food pantries across the country cannot keep up with demand. With nearly 16% of Americans living in poverty, food pantries have been struggling to help people in need. Here is a smattering of stories that appeared on the same day as the Huckabee outrage-a-thon.

Arizona:

The shelves at United Food Bank are not stocked like they used to be.

With kids out of school, higher utility bills and donors away on vacation, the Mesa food bank has trouble filling the high demand for food in the summer.

Pennsylvania:

Pastor James Roth said there is not enough food to go around at the Manheim Food Bank at Zion Evangelical Church. About half the shelves are empty.

"It's a sad day," Roth said. "You can see the holes that are here. All we can give is basically an emergency supply. It gets awful tough."

Florida:

The Food Bank of Manatee County is asking for the public's help.

Donations are down and due to large cuts in federal funding, many of the foodbank shelves are bare.

South Carolina:

Facing five more weeks of high demand before the end of summer, Harvest Hope is experiencing drastic food shortages and is looking for means to increase food inventory.

In June the food bank saw an average of 325 families a day at the Emergency Food Pantries on Shop Road and on 12th Street in Cayce and provided food for over 6,820 families during the month. This is an increase of more than 800 families over June of 2011.

And the good news stories related to the growing ranks of the hungry in America come from grocery stores, restaurants, farmers, and other links in the food chain stepping up their donations. Volunteers at our local food bank spends many hours each week picking up donations from local stores for distribution. Even with all those food donations, we cannot keep with the need in the community.

I do have a few less charitable thoughts. First, I cannot help but wonder what we could do if all the energy, emotion, and **money** that went into Huckabee's ridiculous hullabaloo went into helping those in real need. Second, there are Christians that are persecuted in other parts of the world, but what passes for persecution in America is a joke. Lord, forgive me for what I am thinking about the people caught up in the culture war feeding frenzy.

Destroying mountains and streams

Too many in America think God is stupid. Out of one side of their mouth, they pretend to revere God as creator. Out of the other side, they allow that creation to be destroyed for greed. But if your heart is truly guided by the Holy Spirit, you know with certainty that the Lord is never ever fooled with double talk.

The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small — and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” Revelation 11:18

Nowhere is the flagrant hypocrisy better seen than in Appalachia. The most profitable form of coal mining (mountaintop removal) is to dynamite mountain tops, dump the rock into valleys, and use massive dragline cranes to extract coal seams a few feet thick. So far, 550 mountains have been reduced to rubble, more than one million acres of forest have been destroyed, and more than 2000 miles of streams have been buried. People living near these destroyed mountains are poor and suffer from high rates of cancer.



A new study from researchers at Duke and Baylor adds more to our understanding of the damage being done to God's creation to service greed. They took water samples from over 233 streams and correlated levels of minerals and metals with proximity to mountaintop removal sites. While all coal formations contain these potential toxic substances, surface mines dump the rock waste into streams, allowing for much greater contamination than from underground mines.

"Our analysis suggests that mining only five percent of the land surface is degrading between 22 percent and 32 percent of the region's rivers."

My family comes in part from Pikeville in the heart of the eastern Kentucky coal fields. To give you a sense of the scope of how mountaintop removal is creating wanton destruction throughout Appalachia, put Pikeville, Kentucky in Google and click on the Google map. Now zoom out three clicks. You will see many grey and brown scars all over the green. Those are mountaintop removal mining sites.

The growth of one malignant mountaintop removal mine site over 20 years can be seen in this series of NASA satellite photos. Now imagine that same destruction over 550 sites and you can get a sense of the scope across the region.

Some say this destruction creates jobs. This is mostly a lie. You can get as much coal from a few hundred workers using explosives and massive machines as you can get from 50,000 miners underground. It is about profit margin, not job creation. It is about greed.

Some say this destruction benefits the surrounding communities. This is another lie. Poverty is just as great in the areas around these mines as before they arrived. The profits do not trickle down, only the poisons, filth, and rock. The pittance these companies pay in taxes makes little difference in the lives of people living nearby.

Some say the destruction is necessary for lower energy costs. Another lie. More and more of the coal from these sites is exported to China and India. This is high BTU coal, also known as metallurgic grade coal. It is most valuable for manufacturing steel. The same coal can be mined underground with far less damage to the environment, but it is cheaper to destroy mountains and forests where people are too poor to stop it.

Some say the sites will be reclaimed and restored. Another lie. When mining sites are no longer profitable, the companies pack up and leave the mess. There are tens of thousands of abandoned mining sites all over the country that have not been restored over the past century. Most of those are much smaller in scope than the destruction created by mountaintop removal mines. Throwing a little dirt and grass seed on scarred earth does not restore mountains, forests, and streams.

And never mind the pollution that comes from burning coal, whether for electricity or manufacturing. Never mind the piles of toxic coal ash. Forget about greenhouse gases, mercury, soot, and sulfurous compounds released in the air. Keep your eyes on the profit and all will be well say the ones that claim control over God's creation.

But people love lies. My God, they love lies. Just remember, the father of all lies is Satan.

“The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.”  Isaiah 24: 4-6

It is amazing the damage a few corrupt politicians and corporations can do to God's creation. Their evil is plain to see. They are well-dressed vipers and experts liars. Death, destruction, and disease follows in their wake. Only a fool would be blinded to their evil.

Less obvious are the forked tongue people of faith that claim to revere God as creator but do nothing to protect that creation. The Lord is not blind.

It is interesting that the destruction of forests, mountains, and rivers is featured so prominently in the apocalyptic images found in Revelation 8: 7-11.

The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water — the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.

Explosions. Hail of rock. Forests destroyed. Mountains destroyed and pushed into waters below. Poisoned streams. Seems a little too familiar.

The appeal of ritual

It is hard to deny the appeal of rituals. They are an integral part of worship practices of many religions. The longer we participate in a particular set of rituals, the more comfort and strength we seem to derive from them. Athletes often develop personal rituals before a big game that they believe enhances their performance while breaking the ritual risks disaster on the field.

It turns out that our response to rituals is very much a part of our cognitive plumbing, so to speak. A series of studies by University of Texas psychologists delve into how we perceive rituals.

Rituals pose a cognitive paradox: although widely used to treat problems, rituals are causally opaque (i.e., they lack a causal explanation for their effects). How is the efficacy of ritual action evaluated in the absence of causal information? To examine this question using ecologically valid content, three studies (N = 162) were conducted in Brazil, a cultural context in which rituals called simpatias are used to treat a great variety of problems ranging from asthma to infidelity. Using content from existing simpatias, experimental simpatias were designed to manipulate the kinds of information that influences perceptions of efficacy. A fourth study (N = 68) with identical stimuli was conducted with a US sample to assess the generalizability of the findings across two different cultural contexts. The results provide evidence that information reflecting intuitive causal principles (i.e., repetition of procedures, number of procedural steps) and transcendental influence (i.e., presence of religious icons) affects how people evaluate ritual efficacy.

What is intriguing about this research is that it shows a clear cognitive bias for rituals that have many steps and are repeated regularly over a long period of time. The researchers also found that rituals performed in a religious context with icons enhance feelings of meaning and efficacy.

I am sure our agnostic or atheist friends will gladly lump all ritualist practices together as superstitious behavior. However, these rituals serve far more complex purposes than some false sense of controlling the world. It is more about meaning, but discussing liturgy with people antagonistic to faith is difficult, to say the very least.

This study gives me a better appreciation of why people have such strong feelings of affinity for the liturgical practices they have grown up with or practiced for many years. Any change in the rituals is likely to produce discomfort and even disorientation, particularly for complex practices repeated frequently over time.

The importance of rituals to religious observance makes sense in light of the research. Since the presence of God defies our five senses, rituals performed in the context of icons helps foster a sense of personal connection to the sacred. Sharing rituals with others also creates a bond and sense of community.

One problem with liturgical rituals is that we are prone to feel that ours are superior to those practiced by others. The impulse is understandable. If we find something meaningful and emotionally gratifying, then people who do not follow the exact same practices must be doing it incorrectly. Even if our core beliefs are essentially the same, the temptation to engage in tribal identification based on practice is considerable.

The scriptures provide potent warnings about the relative importance of ritual. Rituals are accorded much less value than treatment of others and mindfulness of God in Hosea 6:6:

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Jesus picks up those same themes. He rebukes the Pharisees for questioning why He is socializing with outcasts in Matthew 9:13:

But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Jesus uses the same words to rebuke the Pharisees for condemning the disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath in Matthew 12:1-7. And in response to religious teacher that asks Jesus about the most important commandments in Mark 12:28-33, He closes with a contrast with ritual.

To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Christ did not dismiss rituals and there is no denying the psychological rewards that can come from their practice. The moral of the story, however, is that it is our common bond in Christ that carries more weight than any differences in our liturgy and practice. Rituals are good, but loving God and each other are far more important.