LINK BETWEEN THE BLOG ENTRIES

My friend Linda Eastwood was not able to post a comment in my blog, but she sent me an e-mail and therefore I can share her comment in this way. And please, if you who are reading this now have a comment, but have the same difficulty, please send me an e-mail. You will find my e-mail if you look at my complete profile. And I will delight in posting your comment here as a new entry, even if and specially if you disagree with me.

Linda wrote: "I like what you've posted, and will probably some day follow your suggestion that Providence St. Mel school's mission statement would be a great "sending forth" from church worship. (Did you hear the sung version of this on their web-site? It's great!).

"I also noted the link between your blog entries. You present challenges to 'status quo' assumptions, whether of the expected failure of inner-city kids to excel, or the assumption that children automatically do best with heterosexual couples. And you celebrate that US Christians (many, but no all, I can promise you!) seem so open in using their faith, in the 'public square', as the basis from which to issue these and other 'challenges to the status quo'.

"Is it possible to argue 'from faith' and still be open to correction? Sure - not just possible but vital. Our argument may be based on faith, but it isn't in itself our faith, and proving our argument wrong doesn't prove our faith wrong. (We can be more than a bit pig-headed at times over equating argument and faith, but then that's another 'status quo' that needs challenging!) The world is better off for a dialogue - a broad conversation - of various arguments from Christian faith, from other faiths, from none."

Thank you Linda for your suggestive comments.

THE PROVIDENCE EFFECT

I visited Garfield Park in the west side of Chicago with a group of classmates from the English Language Course for international students at McCormick Theological Seminary and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. It was a weekday in the beginning of August this year and we tried to interview people we met there and who where trying to fish in one of the lakes.

Most of them were African Americans. Some of them didn't want to be disturbed. The guys who agreed to talk with us had only sad stories to share.

Stories of unemployment. Stories of broken relationships with girlfriends because they were unable to contribute to the support of a home. Stories of guys who didn't want to be a burden to their adult children. Stories of guys trying to sell illegal DVDs without being discovered by a cop who would confiscate their stock. And stories of lack of fish even when they needed to purchase a fishing license.

What we didn't know that day was that only a few blocks from where we were interviewing those guys is Providence St. Mel School (http://www.psm.k12.il.us/) located, on 119 S. Central Park Blvd. And this school has a totally different story to tell. A story of hope and success.
I met that story last Sunday when I went to the cinema and saw the documentary "The Providence Effect" (http://www.providenceeffect.com/), directed by Rollin Binzer.

Providence St. Mel is a non for profit independent school serving mostly African American students of the impoverished west side of Chicago.
In the middle of this distressing world which I only saw a very little part of the day I visited Garfield Park with my classmates, in the middle of this world Providence St. Mel is a haven where "children can feel free to learn and prosper", as the president of the school Paul J. Adam III says it on school's webpage. The academic standard is strong. The disciplinary codes are strict. They don't accept excuses. Students are encouraged to work hard and the families must be committed.
The results are amazing: every year 100% of the school's senior class is accepted for four years colleges and universities.

What I really was taken with was the school's mission statement, which is repeated so many times in the documentary that I nearly have learned it by heart. Students recite it every day, from the first day in the kindergarten to the last day in high school. This mission statement repeated every day by the students is a decisive clue to explain the success of the school. Here you have it. Providence St. Mel's mission statement:

At Providence St. Mel, we believe. We believe in the creation of inspired lives produced by the miracle of hard work. We are not frightened by the challenges of reality, but believe that we can change our conception of this world and our place within it. So we work, plan, build, and dream - in that order. We believe that one must earn the right to dream. Our talent, discipline, and integrity will be our contribution to a new world. Because we believe that we can take this place, this time, and this people, and make a better place, a better time, and a better people.
With God's help, we will either find a way or make one.

I will suggest the committees of the Senate and the House at the beginning of every session about Health Care Reform and the Senate and the House at the beginning of every floor debate about Health Care, to recite this mission statement only replacing "Providence St. Mel" with the rightful words.
The same will I suggest to the delegates to the U.N. Climate Change Conference who will be meeting later this year in Copenhagen.
And finally I will suggest the same to our lazy churches, that in the moment of the sending when worship is finishing, that also we in this moment recite this mission statement.

Perhaps a Health Care reform will be passed and everybody in this country will be able to contract an affordable insurance.
Perhaps the U.N. Climate Conference will persuade all the countries to take serious action in this matter which concerns the survival of our planet.
Perhaps our witness as Christians will be more manifest.

Involved in the fray of the world

Another good friend from Minnesota, Anita C. Hill, co-pastor at St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church, also visited my blog and wrote a response. She sent it directly to me and I will now share it with you:

"Blessings on your blogging experiment in public theology. From my theological perspective, our faith compels us into political discourse, and even more so, into political action. Actions that aim to revise policies so that the little ones (the anawim) of our society are lifted up and cared for.

''As an example, advocacy as people of faith in the great health care debate currently underway in the United States requires the input of people of faith. As part of Isaiah, a faith based community organizing institution and part of the Gamaliel Foundation (headquartered in Chicago), 13 members of the congregation I serve traveled to Washington, DC to advocate for health care coverage for everyone in America. Most recently, phone calls and letters have supported public option helth insurance as an option in the steps being taken toward reform.

"Yes, I do believe we can and must bring the best of our faith traditions to bear on the matters that hamper the masses from living the abundant life in the realm of God here and now.

"Might we find the need to revise our approaches, rethink theologically, compromise to get something through our political systems? Yes to all of these.

"Even so, I view political engagement as part of our calling as people of faith. For me as a Christian, how can I claim to follow Jesus without getting involved in the fray of the world and current situations of pain, oppression, racialization of opportunity, and economic inequalities?"

Children born of heterosexual couples

A good friend from St. Paul, Minnesota, Marilyn McGowan, wanted to post a comment to my last posting, but couldn't figure out what they wanted for her profile. Therefore she sent it directly to me and I will now share it with you:

"In this society, there are far too many children born of heterosexual couples who are in no position to offer care and nurturing of their offspring. Many who become parents are no more than children themselves, most often not married nor intending to marry each other. They lack the skills to parent a child as many have not had positive parental role models in their own lives. Many of these "couples" come out of a cycle of violence in their upbringing and therefore are not prepared to establish a healthy marriage, nor assume the role of a nurturing parent. As a result children born into these situations suffer the consequences of violence and neglect."

Let's "air out" the public square

One of the courses I'm taking is called "Frontier Questions in Queer Ethics" and I want to share with you the words with which our professor Theodore W. Jennings started our class last monday. I didn't record his words, so I will not be able to quote him literally, but his words were approximately the followings:
"In this class we will not argue in favor of homosexuality as an acceptable way of life. This is something we will take for granted. It is on the contrary heterosexuality which should defend itself in view of the failures of so many marriages which end in divorce and so many nuclear families which don't give their members and specially the children the emotional support they are supposed to offer them.
"It is right that only a couple formed by a man and a woman can engender children in the traditional way. But even when we know that this is not the only way of engendering children nowadays, I would argue that bring more children into the world is not the most pressing need we have in most of the countries of this world.
"And furthermore. Even when every child needs a home, I would say that all the statistics about children abuse show that the nuclear family is the most dangerous place for the upbringing of children."
Provocative words? Definitely. Exaggerated? Perhaps. But to reverse the way in which we normally think was for me very illuminating.
Therefore I want to make a proposal, at least for a certain extent of time. That we agree on asking the majorities, rather than the minorities, to be who have to justify themselves in their ways of life. And that nobody will criticize others without looking first at their own faults.
What do you think? Would it not allow the public square to "air out"?

Welcome to my blog

I wanted to come to the United States.
I'm fascinated by the fact that in this country you can turn up in the public square and advocate for your cause from your religious faith, that is, your religious faith is not only something reserved to your private life. And nobody will think that you are crazy for doing that. To argue for your ideas in the public square from your religious faith is as legitimate as doing it from other kind of convictions.
My impression is that it is indeed better to state clearly which is your faith if you have a faith and you are advocating for something in the public square.
I will continue observing how people in this country relate their religious faith to their public life, and I will use my blog to make comments on my observations and on what surprises me and to ask questions I want to discuss with you.
And the first question I have is if this practice of advocating for your causes in the public square from your religious faith really promotes the discussion. Can you argue from your faith and at the same time concede that you can be wrong? Can you argue from your faith and at the same time be open to be corrected?
Everywhere in this country I have been met with great hospitality and interest, not only in my own story and my own country, but also interest in my observations about this country, maybe because the stranger's eyes sometimes can view things which otherwise would not catch your attention. So I'm not afraid of being impertinent, but please tell me if this nevertheless should be the case.
Welcome to my blog!