Tax Supported Ministerial Students?

Well, they've hauled off from courthouse grounds yet another monument to the Ten Commandments, this time in North Carolina. While touchy Christians wrangle with each over what happened there and why, the reflective among us might consider turning our attention to a more serious church-state issue that has gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Of all things, it is about studying for the ministry at taxpayer expense.

In 1999, Joshua Davey enrolled at Northwest College, an Assemblies of God school near Seattle, on a scholarship that he thought would help him become a pastor. Unfortunately for this particular Joshua, his was not the kind of scholarship that could take him to the Promised Land. It was a "Promise Scholarship" all right, but it was funded by the State of Washington and not his church.

And that is where the trouble started. Apparently, the state's Constitution has a provision that prohibits the appropriation of public money for "religious instruction." But Joshua filed a lawsuit that eventually led to an appeals court ruling that the prohibition violates the First Amendment. It will be interesting to see if the High Court will weigh in on what Washington State's own Constitution says about religious instruction, or whether it will issue its decision on narrower grounds. I am hoping it will opt for the former.

There a lot of ways that Joshua Davey could have saved all of us a good bit of time and money. He might have chosen either to blow the whole college thing off, or to cough up the $1,125 in lost scholarship funding himself. Or, he might have stuck with his original plan to include a major in business, taken a lot of academically-oriented religion courses as electives, and left for later all the stuff "designed to induce religious faith." If I had been his advisor, I would have suggested that he at least consider going at things this latter way. And he well might have.

Frankly, though, I am glad that he rejected all three of these relatively easy ways out, and that he was courageous enough to stick with his plan to get an important issue before the country. Given the proclivity of so many in our churches to pop off at anything that even remotely resembles interference with the work of good and dedicated Christians, it can be very helpful to our understanding of religious freedom that all of us keep looking at the First Amendment from new vantage points. (Sadly, Joshua's own struggles may have weakened fatally his sense of calling to pastoral ministry; he now seems to be headed for some other line of work.)

For a long time now, the Supreme Court has been saying that schools not only can but should make available many opportunities to study religion from literary, historical, and cultural points of view. What the Court has also insisted on, though, is that religion courses have as their primary aim the advancement of learning, and not of personal faith. As someone who has spent over half a lifetime teaching religion from both a pastoral and an academic point of view, I can testify with some confidence that there is a big difference between the two, and that both our churches and our society are best served by keeping the difference firmly in mind.

As far as I can tell, most colleges and universities that offer religion courses understand that studying religion is pretty much like studying anything else. There are things to learn, questions to ask, and minds to be kept open. When a religion class cuts off questions and pressures students to make up their minds in a certain way, then it is no longer a religious studies class. It is more an exercise in indoctrination. The same thing, of course, can be said of other courses in the curriculum. But it is certainly fair to ask for a little extra vigilance when the subject matter is religion rather than, for instance, political science, sociology, or American history. (Come to think about it, though, I had some not very subtly biased profs in these areas, too, once upon a time.)

If the Supreme Court gets down and dirty with Northwest College, and finds more indoctrination than inquiry in its religion department, it will not bother me too much if the justices affirm the state's prohibition against using public monies to support it. If the Court decides instead to go after the state's Constitution, it will bother me a lot if the justices do not offer a little more clarity about what they think the differences are between religious instruction and religious indoctrination. The Joshua Davey case offers what might be their once in a lifetime opportunity to do so.

The Da Vinci Code

Recently, some fellow book-lovers kept after me to finish reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I'm grateful to them, because I found the book just as spell-binding as they did. And with them, I found in it some important questions about faith worth thinking and talking about together.

I suppose I should acknowledge straightaway that the plot-line wrapped around the faith-questions isn't for the squeamish or for the intellectually lazy. It begins with a murder, quickly opens out on several more, shows us corruption at the highest levels of the church, baits us with almost impossibly difficult puzzles, sweeps us up in frenzied chases and escapes, and teases us with lurid images of sex rituals while it instructs us on pedantic fine points of mythology, geography, and cryptography. I haven't had so much fun since the last time I taught The Book of Revelation!

The Da Vinci Code revolves around the desperate efforts of despicable churchmen to keep hidden what they take as a shocking truth about Jesus and his earliest followers which, if revealed, would undermine the credibility of the Christian faith. This allegedly long-suppressed truth is that the Jesus of history, in contrast with the Christ of later dogma, was an admired, inspired, but altogether human leader, who devoutly hoped that the leader of those who were to come after him would be Mary of Magdala, who was actually his wife and the mother of his children. Beside themselves with jealousy and rage, Jesus' male disciples seized control of the Christian movement early on, and created a church that would forevermore denigrate everything feminine about the human spirit.

There are two questions that nervous church folks have been asking ever since this novel (more about the italicizing later) first hit the bookstores and best-seller lists. One is: could there be any truth to the notion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have had more than just a casual relationship? The other is: if it ever came out that they did, would it be all over for the church as we know it?

With respect to the first question, from at least the early second century there has been widespread and well documented speculation about Jesus' relationship with women in general and Mary Magdalene in particular. And there is little to suggest that the church ever got upset enough about the speculation to censor it. With regard to Jesus and Mary, there is one especially strong argument against paying the rumors about them any heed. It is this: had there been any factual basis whatever for believing Jesus and Mary to be man and wife, the earliest Christians almost certainly would have included, and not excluded, recognition of the relationship in their preaching and teaching. It would have helped them immensely to make the point that became increasingly difficult to make in the late first century, that whatever his relationship was with God, Jesus was also very much a human being, the Word made flesh. (John 1:14)

The second question is a little harder to answer. People abandon the faith for all sorts of reasons, and none of us can say in advance what in specific would have to happen to make us doubt either own beliefs or anybody else's. Speculating about what might bring the whole church down is just that much harder. My guess it that it would be pretty hard to get a lot of people to give up on the church, all at once anyway. If priestly pedophilia, making women second-class members, and consigning conscientious non-adherents to hell haven't already provoked them to do it, then a few questions about Jesus' unique identity with God probably won't either.

Ever since Elaine Pagels' very fine book, The Gnostic Gospels, came out a quarter century ago, many thoughtful Christians have wrestled with the possibility that, hidden underneath all of the official pronouncements of church doctrine, there lies a long-suppressed tradition based on real rather than imagined historical data, and that in that tradition there is a very human Jesus to be re-discovered, whom the church has never been willing fully to acknowledge. (Pagels' more recent book, Beyond Belief, reacquaints us with this possibility.) What a great idea for some really good yarns! Second-century Christians got caught up in them with great delight. Just as many of us have gotten caught up in The Da Vinci Code. But there is a big difference between tall tales and God's own truth. Knowing the difference is what makes it possible to enjoy the former as much as we revere the latter.

Mirth and Myrrh

There they were again --- Mary, Joseph, the baby, the Big Angel with the little ones, shepherds --- in awed and hushed silence around a manger situated in a stall, because, according to the ancient text, "there was no room in the…" (It's hard to know just how to translate Luke's next word.) Then, a lone spotlight, craning heads, and down the aisle began the procession of three regal figures toward their pre-assigned places in an already crowded scene.

I loved it, as I always have. Every time I watch a Christmas Pageant, I get drawn to different characters and to different thoughts about God's power, nearness, and vulnerability. This year, it was the arrival of the Magi that got my attention, especially the third one.

As we have come to expect, the three were decked out royally, two with gifts clearly beyond the ability of poor shepherds to supply. As the prophet of old had predicted, nothing less than the wealth of nations would be brought to the new-born Messiah, gold and frankincense in particular (Isaiah 60:5-6). I guess it was okay for the early church to add the visit of wise men from the East to its documentation of Jesus' divine origins. Sometimes, though, I can't help wondering why the shepherds' "astonishing" testimony to the holy family in the stall wasn't enough glorification. After their words about being visited in the fields by "a multitude of the heavenly host," was there really a need for gifts like the Magis'?

Especially the gift of myrrh. Some gift that was. To be sure, it had its own aromatic fragrance, as the frankincense did. But it is also what would be mixed into perfume with which a woman at Bethany would anoint Jesus for death (Mark 14:3), into drugged wine Jesus would be offered at Golgotha (15:22), and even into spices with which he would be buried (John 19:39). A reminder, tradition offers, of the suffering yet to come. But why spring the reminder on us this way? Just at what was supposed to be a time of great rejoicing. God rest you, merry gentle --- people, and all that.

Apparently, Mary gave no thought to it when the myrrh first showed up; it took a later warning-dream of her husband to arouse the idea in her that something might be going wrong (Matthew 2:11,13-15). Luke put things in much the same way. During her pregnancy and for six weeks or so afterward, Mary got only good news about her first-born son. Eventually, though, there came Simeon the spoiler, telling her right on the Temple grounds themselves that her son would be rejected, and that she, too, "will be pierced to the heart." (Luke 2:34-35).

In a way, I am glad that Isaiah spoke only of the rejoicing to come at the Messiah's birth. The "suffering servant" theme he introduced separately. For the most part, Christmas Pageants have followed his lead. They help us to sing cheerfully to the Lord, and to serve him "with mirth." They keep at bay for a little while at least, the terrible truth that his son's gift of life to us comes at the cost of his own. Remember that somber, dread-full fourth verse of "We Three Kings"? "Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb." Hang back a while, your eminences; we promise to get ready for the myrrh, but in due time.

But if you still insist on showing up at next year's pageants, here's a little something I'd like for you to consider. Next time, put the dark-skinned guy among you first, not last. How about letting Balthazar carry the gold, instead of the myrrh? I know that you've been happy doing it your way since at least the sixth century, but leaving the myrrh only in the hands of a Magus whose skin color is very different from ours is really rather appalling. Not to mention always having him bring up the rear of the procession. At the risk of displeasing you even more, honorable sirs: "wise" men should know better.

For now though, I really am glad you came. And for telling everybody what you saw and heard when you got back home. It has made a big difference to your fellow Gentiles, particularly when we get to thinking that the light of the world has come only for the sake of comfort, and not also of sacrifice.