Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
Romans 5:3-5aA week ago our senator, Clair McCaskill, was in town to deliver a speech at Drury University in which she announced a new initiative to combat rape on college campuses. Rape is a problem on college campuses and so, on the one hand, it is good to hear that she is against it. But as politics goes, is there a "pro-rape" constituency? Not withstanding some of the colossally stupid things that have been said about rape by some of our other Missouri politicians, it is actually difficult to imagine that Clair was risking a lot of political capital by going on the record as being opposed to rape.
And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us,
One of my former associate ministers who took a church of her own several years ago decided that she would try and follow my lead in the media and she wrote a passionate opinion column in which she decisively announced her opposition to child abuse. That was more than ten years ago and we have yet to see the opposing article in which someone goes on record as being in favor of child abuse.
You may think that I have made a career out of tilting at windmills, but, no one can accuse me of charging a windmill that wasn't there.
But let's get back to Claire...our senator came to town to announce her opposition to rape on college campuses a scant week after she had blocked passage of the long fought for bill sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
Senator Gillibrand's bill would have removed the trial process of rape in the military from military courts where they have a backlog of over 1600 cases they have not investigated yet and many estimate that fewer than one in ten rapes are actually reported because of they horrific way these cases are handled in the military.
The case for Gillibrand's bill was bolstered just before Senator McCaskill voted against it by the news that Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair plead guilty to having repeatedly raped a woman under his command and threatening to murder her and her family if she told anyone. And that news was backed up by a sexual assault charge against Lt. Col. Joseph Morse, who is the army's chief prosecutor in military sex crimes.
I think that Clare McCaskill is a smart woman and I like her politics a whole lot more than her former political opponent, Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin. And, to be fair, I am certain that Clare is actually opposed to rape in the military, on college campuses and everywhere else...the difference is that when she had the opportunity to do something significant about it, she decided to vote with the Rand Paul's and Lindsey Graham's of the Senate to please her Ft. Leonard Wood constituency.
This banner we commissioned for our church that features the winged lion holding up a tablet that reads "Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By." The quote comes from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which he said that the Holocaust only happened because most people simply watched it happen. Genocide can only happen if the majority of the population decides not to get involved.
I had latched onto that quote many years ago, and those of you who have been in my home have seen a ceramic relief I had made for the mantle by a different artist because it expressed the core of what I believed prophetic ministry to be and it sums up what has disappointed me about my most of my experience with my denominational heritage.
There was a period of my life when I was very connected to denominational affairs.... And when I say "affairs" sometimes that's what it was. I became aware of allegations of sex crimes committed by the former General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ, William Nichols. The denomination was paying off accusers in out of court settlements and trying to hush it all up. I insisted on notifying the police and the response from the denomination was to threaten to sue me.
I reached out to members of the clergy I knew from the west coast to the east coast and not a one of them would take a stand with me against hiding these sex crimes. I emailed more than 6,000 members of clergy and not a one of them would get involved. I really couldn't believe it but even after all of the Catholic priest scandals have been in the news, when it comes right down to potentially harming your own denomination, the institution where your own pension fund rests, there is not much love of principle.
Standing idly by becomes nearly sacramental.... To commanding officers who are aware of the tens of thousands of military sexual assaults....to popes, bishops and priests who hide pedophilia to solid, salt of the earth, church going folks who don't want to shine a light on injustice, or even know too much about it.... Not enough to have to get involved.
Army officers can say to elected politicians, "We do not want to be held accountable for our misconduct." And politicians say in reply, "And we don't want to hold you responsible either." Long after this national conspiracy to hide sex crimes in the Disciples of Christ Church, I reported two incidents of embezzling.... One at the national level and one in our Springfield office of the Ozarks Lakes Area.
Both were swept under the rug. No criminal charges were ever filed, responsible parties made off with nearly a half a million dollars of donors' money between the two incidents. Nothing was done. I couldn't even get our local paper to cover the local crime... no legal charges filed, everything held in personnel files that are not subject to sunshine laws....everyone knew what happened but no one would do anything about it.
The Area Minister even kept his job. He lives in this neighborhood just over the hill from us which is why I asked to have my name put on the sign in the front yard in large block letters so that he has to see it every morning and evening that he goes passes by. Maybe everyone else gives silent consent, but I don't.
When we went downtown a couple of years ago to protest the anti-illegal immigrant measure being voted on by the city council, there were some of my old denominational peers out there carrying signs. They, like we, were protesting the inherent xenophobia behind this E-Verify movement but the irony that struck me hard that day was that they refused to get involved in huge ethical matters about which they actually had a vote.... They have a say in the management of their own denomination but when the authority was handed to them to make a decision, they voted "not present."
When it comes to telling city government how they should run the city, they are ready to speak up but in their own house, they hear no evil, see no evil and will not speak out against evil.
Albert Einstein said, "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence." If you stand up to the injustice of the world you will find that you immediately have a lot of enemies, almost every one of them, however, will reveal themselves to me mediocre, not only in intellect but in morality and in courage.
Paul wrote to the Roman church warning them that they would endure opposition... there will be suffering if you stand for anything, but if you practice, you gain endurance and that endurance will produce character and if enough people care about building character, the world will change.
But, folks, we have created a little liberal enclave for ourselves out here. We have this progressive church where we can gather with fairly consistently like minded people and we could meet out here once a week and decry the hypocrisy of politicians, priests and the corporations that own them both but, you know, that can become just another way of standing idly by. There is no substantive reward for holding informed, progressive thoughts if you hold them privately.
I printed on the cover of the bulletin this morning this delightful picture of a girl's soccer team all wearing traditional Muslim headscarves, the hijab. This is not a soccer team in Bahrain or Indonesia; this is in Aurora, Colorado.
Even though the soccer association had ruled that women could wear the hijab during games, this one referee sent the only Muslim girl on the team off the field.
Now, I've seen high school friends shave their heads in solidarity with a classmate who was undergoing chemotherapy. And that is a sacrifice and a noble gesture but it is not like there was a pro-cancer club in their school. It is a symbolic act but their hair will grow back whether their friend survives the illness or not.
But these Colorado girls deciding to identify with a Muslim team-mate... that's a bit different to me. I don't like the fact that Muslims ask women to cover up in ways that men do not have to. I think it is unfair, it is sexist, it is misogynistic.
I think that it even poses some security risk for people to be able to enter banks and airports and even stores with their identities partially or entirely hidden. I suspect that a number of these girls might feel much the same way that I do about the hijab but they put one on anyway.
They didn't wear a hijab to defend Islam. They wore it rather than stand idly by and curse the referee who was being a jerk. They wore it rather than putting their arm around the Muslim teammate after the game and telling her they were sorry for what happened to her. They were not simply opinionated about injustice, they were unwilling to passively watch it.
The Holocaust would not have happened if the people of Germany, Russia, Latvia, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Poland had not let it happen.
That story we have all heard about how the Germans ordered the Jews in Denmark to wear the star of David and the next day the king of Denmark came out wearing a star himself...that didn't happen...that's a myth. We wish the people of Europe had done something like that but they didn't.
The story about the girls in Overland High School wearing the hijab to their soccer game....that happened, and it should happen more often in more places. But you would never have the courage and self awareness to stop a holocaust if you don't practice...if you are not willing to stand up for a young girl who is being turned away from a soccer match.
Yes, I know, we can't be involved with everything that happens...we have to choose our battles. I'm just saying, if we got in the habit of standing up for justice we probably wouldn't have to do it so often anymore.
Our government, our religious institutions, our corporations have learned to depend upon our compliance, our silence, our passive indifference and so far they have been right to do so.
Howard Zinn wrote in Failure to Quit, "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."
It is a big problem that has only one solution. You have to decide that you will no longer stand idly by.
