Carey and I have become members of the Arboretum of Los Angeles County for a year. Finding a place so lush with vegetation in Southern California offers a unique breather from the asphalt and power lines. I’d hate to see their water bill, however. Here are some pictures. I’ll be posting more as the year progresses I’m sure.

“An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment,” is up on the interwebs. I’ve yet to read it, but really want to since the issue—faith and politics—is right up my alley. I hope to get to it and post on it soon.

Over at Mere Mission, Todd Hiestand asks what the announcements in our church bulletins can tell us about how missional our congregations are.

Are all your announcements about things internal? While I’m a believer that discipleship and community life stuff is important for the mission of a local body, if all of the activities, programs, etc are pointed inward, this might be a good indication that the church needs to take some intentional steps outside itself.

This is a good question, in my opinion. If bulletins tell us what is happening in the life of a congregation from week to week, I think they can give us a sense of where our focus lies. This would be a challenging and life-giving experiment for many churches, I imagine.

Matt Barber sent me this GigaOM interview with director Brad Bird regarding how he engenders a creative environment. He sounds like a fascinating manager. Bird has made some of the most original and multifaceted films in the past ten years. He doesn’t receive the attention he deserves and I think that’s because his films are animated, as if that medium is somehow deficient compared to live-action movies. But Bird’s three films, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, are testaments to his imagination and skill at inspiring people under his leadership to express their creativity. Here are a couple of their exchanges.

The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation?

Brad Bird: Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team?

Brad Bird: I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person… I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together…

What would it look like in churches if we employed similar ideas? It might be chaotic, but there is certainly something beautiful in Bird’s sense of we are stronger together than as individuals.

There has been some good discussion and debate. I thought I’d take a moment to lighten things up since it’s Friday. Over on my arts blog, I wrote about some promising developments in the film version of The Hobbit. Not the least of which is the opportunity to see Ian McKellen as Gandalf again. Here is a fantastic clip from the show Extras where he explains his acting method, using his portrayal as Gandalf as an example.

Of all the stages of grief, I find the one I have the most difficulty with is anger. Similarly, others around me seem confounded with the anger. I can appreciate denial, depression, bargaining, and acceptance as natural stages in which it is reasonable to experience without any need to seek a resolution. Anger is a different animal, however.

At its best, anger acts as an emotion or state of mind that responds reasonably to injustice, injury, or simply to things not being right. Anger often moves us to seek solutions to the problems we see. And there lies my difficulty with my anger in my grief. I’ve found myself entering cycles where I am furious at God, Death, or just the fact that my father is dead and then I am mad at myself for being so angry because the thing I want so much is impossible. What solution can come in my angry that will satisfy me? Can I bring my father back to life? I also find myself on edge and in a general state of anger. Little things that normally wouldn’t bother me or might mildly annoy me set me off on tirades.

I’m trying to learn to accept my anger—and anger without resolution in this case—as reasonable. I’m trying not to beat myself up because I want the impossible, as if I would feel better if I only didn’t want my father to come back from the dead. I come from a long line of people who bottle their emotions and so it is difficult to express my anger. Generally, I’m better at distracting myself than with dealing with my anger in the moment. Grief, however, doesn’t allow itself to be ignored.

I know I speak of the stages of grief often and please don’t read into it that I’m trying to compartmentalize mourning—I simply find the stages a helpful matrix to locate myself from time to time.

Rosa Brooks, writing in today’s Los Angeles Times offers a reasonable assessment of what to do with Jeremiah Wright, his claims, and the larger issues he has unearthed.

With multiple televised performances, Wright has now definitively proved he shares that most quintessential of all American traits: a profound desire to hog the airwaves and proclaim, “It’s all about me.” Next stop: “American Idol”!...

With a campaign message emphasizing unity and hope, the last thing Obama needs is his former pastor running around espousing views most other Americans find offensive and deluded, such as the conviction that the U.S. government started the HIV/AIDS epidemic, or the suggestion that U.S. foreign policy is little different from terrorism….

Something about our collective willingness to throw Wright under the nearest subway train strikes me as a bit too easy….

Let’s turn to Wright, the man with all the answers. Here’s what he said this week: “Based on the Tuskegee experiment and … what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.”

That’s not a completely unreasonable perspective. The Tuskegee experiment was a 40-year U.S. Public Health Service study on the effects of untreated syphilis. Who were the lucky human guinea pigs who got to experience untreated syphilis? Poor and mostly illiterate black sharecroppers in Alabama, that’s who. They were falsely informed that they had “bad blood,” not syphilis, and denied access to the necessary medicine. The study was terminated only in 1972, when an appalled researcher leaked reports to the media.

That could make you a little paranoid. And it’s not a form of paranoia Americans can afford to scoff at. As the 2005 Rand study concludes, African American distrust of the healthcare system—stemming from “well-documented cases of racial discrimination that led to substandard healthcare for African Americans”—may be “one factor contributing to the AIDS epidemic.”

In other words, if we want to score political points, we can dismiss AIDS conspiracy theories as crazy. But if we’re actually interested in ending the AIDS epidemic, we need to understand how rational people can end up believing such theories so we can persuade them to change their minds and their behavior. The same goes for most of Wright’s other seemingly far-fetched assertions….

[E]ven if it makes us queasy, we should take his theories about the world seriously enough to refute them, carefully and thoughtfully. If we truly want to move beyond the politics of division, we can’t afford to do anything less.

This past Friday I watched Bill Moyers’ interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers Journal. I thought Moyers did a more than satisfactory job in taking an appreciative approach to this Chicago clergyman whose heated comments about the United States have become quite controversial in the past few months because he was the pastor of Senator Barak Obama for twenty years. (This video is a fair example of the coverage on Wright.) Moyers let Wright locate himself theologically and explain his positions. There were times I wished Moyers would have pushed harder, but I find it is generally easier to understand someone if you do not take an antagonistic approach. The interview gave a fuller picture of Wright and his ministry. When I watched the interview, I found myself inspired by his discussion of the community development work his church has undertaken.

Bill Moyers Journal also showed longer sections of the sermons that have been most played. Wright has taken a lot of heat for his sermon in which he proclaims, “Not God bless America; God damn America!” In the larger context, we see that Wright argues that we should not put our faith in any government, but in God. “Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change… Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate—the Roman government failed. ” The danger, Wright sees, is that in the Bible God does not favor nations who do not do God’s will. God does bring curse, condemnation, and chastisement, even to God’s promised people. Wright offers a litany of powerful empires and governments that ultimately failed and therefore calls his congregation to trust in God, not in the government. As he tells Moyers in the interview:

If you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn’t bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies.

As I listened to Wright, I could sense that he falls well within the tradition of Black Liberation Theology, especially the theology James H. Cone. There are things I agree with and disagree with that school of theology. While I do not follow all of that school’s conclusions, I am challenged by it and I do think it stands firmly within orthodox Christianity. I think Wright clearly articulated in the interview with Moyers that Black Liberation Theology does not say Christianity is only for African-Americans or Africans—it says that people of African heritage do not have to give up that heritage to be Christian. It challenges my views because when I have read Cone, I wonder how can I relate to this faith as a white person? Where is the Christ that can be universally accepted? Black Liberation Theology, like all Liberation Theology, accurately argues, in my opinion, that there isn’t a “universal Christ” understood apart from our backgrounds. We all come to Christ in a specific context and those contexts have inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Liberation Theologies make the grand claim that God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible are radically and exclusively for the oppressed. While one may argue against the claim that Bible is exclusively for the oppressed, Wright articulately argued that the Bible was written by oppressed peoples. The Bible was written by Israel and the Church. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Selucids, Greeks, and Romans did not write the Bible. Israel and the Church wrote the Bible in the midst of and in response to invasion, captivity, diaspora, and simply dwelling in the midst of foreign superpowers. How does this fact challenge our reading of the texts, especially when America is the superpower?

That the media does not understand the nuance of Black Liberation Theology does not surprise me—I’m not sure I understand it completely either. As Wright says, he has different responsibilities as a pastor than Obama does as a politician. Some have jumped on Wright’s response to Moyers’ question regarding Obama distinguishing himself from Wright in his Philadelphia speech on race. Wright said to Moyers, “And so here at a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the things of God.” Larry Mantle said today on Airtalk that he found Wright’s answer dismissive and tantamount to claiming that Obama made his speech solely for political purposes. And though Obama agrees with Mantle’s assessment, I didn’t hear Wright’s statement saying that Obama’s speech was merely “political posturing.” I think Wright made the point that as a politician, one needs to unite as many people as possible to move forward as a nation. A pastor, on the other hand, is more concerned with engendering faithfulness to God than with negotiating all the allegiances and values people bring to the public square. Don Frederick writes in his blog on latimes.com concerning Wright’s press conference at the National Press Club yesterday,

Wright told his audience: “As I said to Barack Obama, if you get elected, Nov. 5 I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”...

As political analyst David Gergen summed up on CNN: “I’m sure Rev. Wright has many virtues. Loyalty to his former parishioner is not one of them.”

Wright may not help Obama get elected, but we must ask, is that his job? Would we be more comfortable if Wright went easier on America with an Obama presidency, or would we immediately call Wright a hypocrite? It seems the media has not paid attention to where Wright says his allegiance lies. Wright has clearly argued his allegiance is with God first, not with any government, or with any politician, even if that politician is a friend and former parishioner. He views his role as one that speaks truth to power. Wright seems to be getting most in trouble because he has not seen America’s sins as merely slip-ups in an otherwise beneficent history. He questions whether those sins actually are isolated incidents or are they more reflective of our character and he wonders if our nation has ever repented from them. These are fair questions, in my opinion, and require thoughtful discussion. (Actually Wright gets most in trouble because of his association with Obama. Wright has engaged in this rhetoric for decades but the national spotlight was never on him before.)

While I do not agree with many of Wright’s political conclusions or historical statements, I think he is an interesting case that Christians need to consider. Namely, he distinguishes he views his allegiance first to God and Christ, over and sometimes against his responsibilities as a citizen of the United States. Wright espouses a faith far from a civil religion that either compartmentalizes church and state or that uses religion to baptize the government. To what extent can the Christian make claims on America and vice versa?

My good friend Eddy has a funny list of “Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained For Ministry.” It made me laugh. Here are a few items:

7. Man was created before woman, obviously as a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.
6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. Their conduct at football and basketball games demonstrates this.
5. Some men are handsome, and this will distract women worshipers.

This story from the New York Times didn’t seem to get much attention in the news in the past week, but I think it is of extreme importance.

The Bush administration has failed to develop a governmentwide plan to combat terrorism in Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas, even though top American officials concede that Al Qaeda has regenerated its ability to attack the United States and has established havens in that border region, government auditors said.

That ripping sound you hear is me pulling my hair out of my head.

A PDF version of the GAO report can be found here.

Oddly enough I came across the story in watching clips from The Daily Show—still creating some of the best satirical material in the US. Their correspondent Rob Riggle comically expresses much of my frustration in his heated “analysis.”