Are we depraved because we’re deformed? Or because we’re deprived?  Some Christians, given their understanding of original sin and our fallen nature, would hold to “deformed.”  I suspect that that’s an incorrect reading of the myth of Adam and Eve, and certainly a misunderstanding of what Jesus had to say when he called people to work for the Reign of God here on earth. It is also squarely opposed to what Buddhists hold to be the “human condition.”

Both Buddhists and Christians can agree with another line of “Officer Krupke”: “Deep down inside us there is good….There is good, there is good, there is good, good, good.”

But that “good” has been stifled by our being deprived.

Buddhists would agree. We’ been deprived.  But  of what? Buddha’s answer: Of a correct understanding of who we really are.  Ignorance, not deformity, is the fundamental problem.

Marx would agree with Buddhists that the fundamental problem is not deformity. But he differs in pinpointing what we’ve been deprived of. For Marx, and I believe for many Christians, the fundamental cause of the hatred, violence, and “depravity” affecting our world today is that so many humans have been deprived  of the material conditions necessary to live a full human life.

Terry Eagleton, with his usual clarity and precision, makes this Marxist argument in a passage from his recently published Why Marx Was Right:

If history has been so bloody, it is not because most human beings are wicked. It is because of the material pressures to which they have been submitted. Marx can thus take a realistic measure of the past without succumbing to the myth of the darkness of men’s [sic] hearts. And this is one reason why he can retain faith in the future

It is his materialism which permits him that hope. If wars, famines and genocide really did spring simply from some unchanging human depravity, then there is not the slightest reason to believe that the future will fare any better. If, however, these things have been partly the effect of unjust social systems, of which individuals are sometimes little more than functions, then it is reasonable to expect that changing that system may make for a better world.  (pp. 98-99)

So Marxists, and most Christian liberation theologians and activists, would hold that if we want to change the “depraved heart,” we first must change the “depriving system.”

Buddhists, in general, would see it differently: if you want to change the “depriving system,” you have to change the “deprived heart.”

Which comes first?

Both!

One could say much about what we Christians — especially we Christian activists or liberationists — have to learn from the Buddhist insistence that unless we spend time, lots of time, sitting under a Bodhi tree and seeking enlightenment, we’re not going to be able to really change the world and its structures.  That message came through again and again in my dialogues in Korea.  And I know I have not yet fully understood what it is telling me.

But I’m not sure whether the Buddhists I spoke with really grasped what I think is one of the DISTINCTIVE ingredients in what Jesus discovered about the Mystery he called God/Father.  It’s contained in the cross.

I recently came across a powerful expression of this distinctive message of Christianity in a book by Terry Eagleton, Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics. (Wily-Blackwell, 2009):

If God is indeed in one sense utterly other, he is also made manifest [for Christians and for the world]  in the tortured body of a reviled political criminal … The ghastly good news of the gospel is that being done to death by the state for speaking up for love and justice is the status to which we must all aspire. The message of the New Testament is that if you don’t love you are dead, and if you do, they will kill you. Here, then, is your pie in the sky and your opium of the people. It is a message scandalous alike to the civilized liberal, the militant humanist and the wide-eyed progressive.  (p. 256)

Eagleton’s statement is strong.  I would change his “the status to which we all must aspire” to “for which we all must be ready.”  Still, his (and my) understanding of the Gospel as not only calling us to have compassion and love our neighbor (that the Buddhists would readily agree with) but to also confront the systemic powers that be (the state or the economic system) and be ready to accept the uncomfortable or deadly consequences — this is a message that the Korean Buddhists I talked with found difficult to comprehend.

Which means that “the sitting Buddha” and “the crucified Christ” have a lot to learn from each other.

That’s quite an achievement.  Finding a common word about the economy between Buddhists and Christians who share few common words about “theology” (Buddhists are uncomfortable with the word, theology) will be surprising to many.  It’s an indication, I think, that religions can more easily find agreement about ethics than they can about doctrine.

In any case, our “Common Word” will soon be announced once it has been vetted by the organizations who sponsored our dialogue (the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation).

For the moment, I can offer a preview of the content of our Common Word under the slogan: “The Way to the Global Is through the Glocal.”  That’s cutesy, I know. But it contains a powerful insight.  Let me try to explain briefly.

Throughout our conference, as I tried to make clear in earlier blogs, we – both Christians and Buddhists – agreed that to understand and do something about the financial crisis that now surrounds us, we cannot talk only about personal or individual greed.   Rather, we have to recognize and grapple with the reality of structural greed. Personal greed takes on the form of structural greed, and structural greed takes on a life of its own.  So to prevent similar economic catastrophes from happening in the future, we have to deal with the greed that has become incarnated in the structures of the global economy.

But how do that?   These structures of greed are incredibly powerful, living as they do, not just in the neoliberal economic policies of Wall Street, but also in the politics of Washington, Berlin, London, Tokyo –as well as in the public media that determine how people think of their nation and its economic policies.

So it’s not very promising to start from the top of the economic, political, and media systems.  It seems impossible to start with trying to dismantle greed in its structural forms.

But that doesn’t mean that we should therefore simply start from the bottom – that is, from the level of personal greed.  Of course, we must always seek to transform individual hearts. But that is not enough to change structures.

Therefore – and this gets to the heart of our Common Word – we should focus our energies not on the structural level, nor on the personal-individual level – but on the local level.

On the grassroots level, in our local communities, at the roots of civil society we should try to create structures that will insure economic policies and practices that will promote the democratization of the economy – that will prevent economic power from being concentrated in the hands of a few, that will provide a process of checks and balances for economic transactions.

We identified four examples of such local efforts that are already taking shape in different parts of the world: local exchange and trading systems (LETS) in which trading is done in local and regional currencies, cooperative banking, decentralized energy, and localizing the production and exchange of goods necessary for basic needs such as water and food.

Such local efforts, which are based in personal values  and which try to create local structures of greater economic participation, will not remain just local.  As these local realizations of a new way of organizing the market and the production and exchange of goods increase, and especially as they network with each other, they will have a transformative effect on global structures.  They will become “glocal.”

But, at the end of the process, the Buddhists reminded us Christians, that all these efforts on the “glocal” level meant to transform the “global” level, won’t really work unless we are also continuously working on the “personal” level.  Our efforts to transform the world have to be rooted in our efforts to transform our own hearts.

As Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us:  We cannot make peace unless we are peace.

So the message of our conference is this:  As we all seek to transform our hearts from self-centeredness and expand our hearts toward compassion for others, we work on the local level, trying to create new ways of organizing our local economy that, we hope, will gradually transform the global economy.   Our focus is the local. Our goal is the global.  We act glocally.

The Christians responded to their Buddhist partners: “Yes, we certainly agree, but you can’t forget that greed can take on structural forms and become part of the very economic system of free-market capitalism.”

And so the first day of our Buddhist-Christian dialogue began.

After a good bit of back and forth, we came to a working consensus:  We have to make a distinction between individual greed and structural greed.  Though the two are very much related, there is a difference.  Getting rid of one, does not necessarily mean getting rid of the other.  I can remove all (or to be realistic, most) of my own individual greed and still be part of a greedy system that leads me to act greedily, whether I’m aware of it or not.  My heart may be full of love of others, but if I buy a pair of pants made in a sweatshop in El Salvador, I’m part of a greed-based system that is exploiting some people for personal wealth.

But at the same time, we can pass all kinds of regulatory laws that constrict the greedy actions of Wall Street, and still, greedy individuals will find ways around the laws.

A simple analogy was used: Individual greed is like the air that a greedy person blows into a balloon. The balloon represents the greedy structure or system that results from the greedy individual.  The Buddhist point is that without the greedy individual blower we would not have the “structural” greedy balloon.  But the Christians respond that sometimes, the balloon ties itself closed, as it were, and floats away from the blower. Then, even though the individual blower stops blowing, the balloon is still floating around. The balloon, even though it originated from the blower, assumes an existence of its own.

So we came to a Buddhist-Christian consensus:  to do something about the financial mess we are in, we have to try to remove, or at least reduce, both individual greed and structural greed at the same time.   To deal with only one, won’t work. It won’t really bring about any change.

This is the point that was made powerfully by one of the speakers this morning, Sulak Sivaraksa, one of the world’s leading socially-engaged Buddhists (who over the past 30 years has been  on a number of occasions either imprisoned or forced into exile because of his criticisms of economic exploitation in Thailand).

Sulak said pithily: “Without inner peace there cannot be outer peace.” That’s the Buddhists’ point: you have to work on changing your heart and attaining the peace of enlightenment before you can be an effective social activist.  But he immediately added:  “But inner peace can be achieved at the expense of outer peace.”  That’s the Christian point:  To think that we have done enough by overcoming our individual greed and attaining peace of heart is to exonerate ourselves from the necessary job of changing the greedy structures that prevent social peace.

We Buddhists and Christians are realizing that we have so much to learn from each other.

We’ve come together to talk about the financial tsunami that moved out from Wall Street in 2007 and covered most of the world. Our questions: why did it happen? And especially: What can we do about it?

We start this evening, Sunday, and will be talking and deliberating – as well as praying and meditating – together for the next four days.

This is exactly the kind of dialogue that I, with many others, have been trying to move along – dialogue based primarily on solidarity with all suffering sentient beings. In this case, the sentient beings are suffering because of economic conditions that have led to a horrible and deplorable disparity in the way the goods of the world are shared.

This is the kind of dialogue that certainly doesn’t exclude the hard work of studying and learning about each other’s traditions and the inspiring work of sharing in the spiritual-mystical treasures found in the religions of the world.  But it sets the context, or prepares the ground, for such theological and spiritual sharing by first deliberating and acting together to address eco-human suffering.

What counts most, what presses most, is, as Buddha told us, to remove suffering.  In trying to do that, we prepare for everything else.

In the following days, I’ll try to report on what happens here in Chiang Mai – how Buddhists and Christians can complement each other in addressing the immediate financial crisis and the deeper causes that brought it about.  And how this practical “dialogue of solidarity” might lead us to a deeper “dialogue of learning” and a “dialogue of spirituality.”

What a privilege it is to be here.

ARISE

Ramona directs the van driver, Martin, through the pot-holed streets of Colonia Muniz in south Texas, guiding us to a bright pink building at the community’s center.  ARISE (A Resource in Serving Equality) is painted in bold letters on a sign outside, signifying the presence of the 23 year old non-profit. In their own words:

“ARISE is a grassroots organization of women for women. It is about building on strengths and respecting the dignity of each individual. It’s about spirituality, cultural values and personal growth. It’s about connecting women with each other and strengthening the fabric of their communities. It’s about teamwork and putting personal ambition aside in favor of common goals. It’s about inspiring hope and a sense of a possibility.”

Ramona, who has been involved with ARISE since its inception, leads our group into the building to show us where the magic takes place.  The humble, un-airconditioned converted house has colorful inspirational posters, a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, photos of neighborhood residents, shelves filled with children’s books and arts supplies for classes with area children, and the crowning jewel—a huge patio with tables for hosting community events, neighborhood birthday parties, dances and BBQs.  As Ramona and her co-worker Andrea tell us about the organization, hard rain begins to pour down and the patio feels like it has curtains of water enclosing us in as we learn about this sacred work.

Ramona explains that when families arrive to this country they come with big dreams.  After a few years of struggling to make ends meet, of scraping for work, of being treated like a nobody, those dreams begin to dissolve.  For many depression sets in and they forget, or are unable to raise their children with any dreams.  Ramona thinks that many of the community’s problems are born from young people who have no sense of hope.  Frustrated, stuck, unable to imagine a better future, they get involved in gangs, drop out of school, and at worst, begin to see themselves as nobody. Ramona says that the biggest job of ARISE is to give  the community hope—to remind them to dream and  raise their children as dreamers.

Ramona Casas at ARISE Office in Colonia La Muniz

When the sky clears we begin to walk toward the house of a local family whose story we have been invited to hear.  Their yard has only this week been emptied from the water left by last month’s hurricane. Today’s rain makes the yard refill with mud, further burying the cans, wrappers, and fruit strewn across the “lawn”.  The heat and humidity are stifling as we make our way into the small living room area, crowding around the single air conditioning unit as the family gathers to talk.

The mother, “Maria Louisa” stands against the wall, with her muscular arms folded across her chest.  She is a powerful woman with a strong square jaw line and deep, almost black, eyes. She and her husband make a living harvesting grapefruit for $7.25 a case.  On a good day, if they work together, they can fill 2 cases an hour.  Using this money they have put a $5,000 down payment on their house and are working to pay the remaining mortgage. They had saved up $3,000 over the last few years to pay for their daughters’ college education.  But that money is gone now, after what the family went through last month…

Maria Louisa proudly introduces her two eldest daughters, Elizabeth (19) and Veronica (17), who are as striking as their mother and both studying at the local University.  Elizabeth is studying to be an RN but one day hopes to be a doctor.  Veronica will be starting college this fall and plans to become a teacher, a vocation inspired by the wonderful teacher who taught her English when she first arrived to this country.  Both of these young women immigrated with Maria Louisa and her husband to the U.S. 10 years ago and are un-documented.  The family’s younger daughters and son who are 5, 7, and 9 years old respectively, were all born here in the United States.  The 7 year-old daughter wanted to become a border patrol agent, but that too changed after last month…

Last month, while driving her mother to work, Elizabeth saw the flashing lights of the border patrol in her rear-view mirror.  When the agent approached the car Elizabeth asked him why she had been pulled over.  The officer did not answer.  Elizabeth repeated the question and the border patrol agent responded (I am paraphrasing) that he knew what to do when he saw a car full of people who looked like them.  He told them to get out of the car.  He did not wait for Maria Louisa to grab her younger daughter’s papers from her bag.  Maria Louisa and her four daughters were taken in for “processing” by the border patrol.

Once in custody Maria Louisa and her elder daughters were asked to sign “voluntary departure” forms stating that they were being “voluntarily” deported to Mexico.  Maria Louisa instead signed the part of the form that said she could request a hearing with a judge.  This was taken as an act of defiance—an affront to the arresting officer who began to yell at Maria Louisa. “Do you think you are special because you have been here for 10 years, do you think the judge cares?  Do you think you are special because your little girls are citizens?  Do you think you are special because your older girls are in college?  Do you think owning a house makes you special? None of this matters to the judge.”  In the retelling of the story she said that his tone was “muy golpeada” or abrupt—literally like being hit with words. He asked Elizabeth to help him convince the mother to sign but she instead told her mother not to sign the form—to hold out for a judge.  Maria Louisa continued to insist that she could not leave her young daughters, who are citizens, alone in this country—she wanted a chance to talk to the judge.

Maria Louisa held out for four more hours without signing the form, until they took her to a separate room without her daughters.  There the agent told her that if she didn’t sign the form he would call child protective services to pick up her youngest daughters.  He promised that she would never find them again.  He told her that Elizabeth would go to a women’s prison and that Victoria would end up in a juvenile detention center.  He told her that she would spend months in an immigration center awaiting processing and that in the mean time her family would be separated and it would take forever to find them all again. He told her again to sign the form and out of fear she finally complied.  Even then, after the form was signed, another officer saw the paper with her original request to see a judge along with the “voluntary departure” waiver.  This officer spoke to Maria Louisa’s detaining officer and told him that the form was no good if it had her request for a judge on it.  He tore the paper up and told her to do a new one.  She signed the form again.

The officer now asked Maria Louisa again if she had anyone for the little kids to go home with.  She knew she could not call her husband and risk his arrest too, so she decided to call ARISE to pick up her daughters.  Once the little girls had left tearfully, Maria Louisa and her daughters were deported to Mexico.  There, through a contact from ARISE, the family found a place to stay for a few days as they formulated a plan to come back.  Elizabeth recalls that she was not afraid, she knew they would get back “home”—she was pissed that it would set the family back financially, but this would not ruin her chances to become a doctor.  Maria Louisa felt more fear as she imagined crossing the border with her two beautiful teenage daughters.  She had heard stories of what happens to young women crossing the border in the hands of corrupt coyotes or at the hands of border bandits.  With this in mind she found a reputable coyote to cross the three back to the United States.  The midnight trip across the river in a little raft cost the family $2,700– almost everything she had saved for her daughters’ education.

Although this all took place six weeks ago, the after shocks are still wearing off. Maria Louisa says that her younger daughters cry each time she tries to leave the house, even to buy groceries, “They grab my legs and tell me ‘no mami, no te vayas, te agaran la migra’”(no mommy, don’t go, border patrol will get you).   The youngest, who sleeps with Victoria, wakes up almost every night with nightmares that her family is being taken away.  The 7 year-old no longer wants to become a border patrol agent.  When we asked her why she shyly answers, “hablan muy feo” (they speak in a very ugly way).  The family will have to work for years to rebuild their savings, and everyone wonders what they will do if they are caught again—but Elizabeth and Victoria must continue to take classes and Maria Louisa and her husband must take whatever work they can find.  Whenever anyone is running late, they are all thinking of the worst possible scenario, that they may not see that person again.

We ask the girls about their involvement with ARISE.  How has the organization affected their lives.  Elizabeth and Victoria have both spent dozens, possibly hundreds, of hours volunteering.   They teach classes for the little kids and help to put on events in the community.  They have participated in the myriad trainings  offered by ARISE and this connection has helped them to dream big.  These young women have no doubt that they will succeed—no matter the obstacles set before them.  Maria Louisa says that her children “van a ser alguien” (are going to be somebody).  It is clear that they already are, and that they take after their mother.

There is a hope that the family clings to, that the “Dream Act” will become law.  Both Elizabeth and Victoria are the “dreamers” that the act would cover.  They arrived here young, they were schooled in this system (this country invested many years in their education and they excelled), they have great career potential, and they want an opportunity to work, live and serve this country.  They are the embodiment of the American Dream—hard working, persistent, eyes set on a brighter future for themselves and for their family—all they need is a chance.

As we leave the house I lift my eyes to the clouded sky above Colonia Muniz.  The sun is pressing against the clouds and giving the sky a hazy brightness.  I begin to pray—for these women, for this country, for ARISE and the inspiring work they are doing here. I pray that God will continue  to bless us each with the ability to continue dreaming—imagining something better—transforming our world with grace and hope against the greatest of odds.

Texas is an interesting place. My brother even before I left New Jersey said, “Everything is big in Texas.” He is right, but Texas is also a place where particular groups have been written off and denoted as “invisible.” This is a problem for me! How can I as a Christian, a preacher, a seminarian sit back and just “watch, hear, witness” the profane treatment of what I consider G-d’s creation? We are all G-d’s creation right? With papers or without papers? Spanish or English speakers? Passport or no passport? Male or female? Young or old? Rich or poor? Aren’t we all a part of the kin-dom of G-d?

Over the past few days, my colleague, Tamara and I have been getting acclimated to our new home, work station for the next 6 weeks. Of course, we have to adjust our temperatures, but also realize how close to home separation, invisibility, supremacy mark the world that we are a part of.

It’s been uplifting over these first few days to reconnect with Rev. Ed Krueger and his wife, Ninfa, long time activists and justice workers who have put their lives on the line in order to serve women factory workers (maquiladoras) in Mexico and women here in the Valley who desire to be recognized by the US government as “citizens.”

There is a lot of hope being spread through the work of Proyecto Azteca and their Executive Director, Ann Cass, who is out in the field, in the Valley, helping families build homes with access to running water, a bathroom, electricity in the colonias. Things are happening here in the Valley perhaps not at the speed of a New York minute. But, something is happening to break open the reality of injustice and discrimination that has plagued the Valley for so long.

The first of many lessons that I have learned is that there is something about sticking with it, keeping the course, demonstrating fortitude even when conditions, government, friends and family say otherwise. “It’s not about winning, it’s about being faithful” are kernels of wisdom that Ann Cass shared with Tamara and me on Friday. These words have been haunting me over the past few days … they even came up indirectly during Mass yesterday at Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church in McAllen. How can I not be so concerned about crossing the finishing line but rather more concerned about the progress made along the journey? How can I accept the fact that standing up for those considered “less than” may mean no glory or honor but perhaps shame and shun? How can I endure the journey knowing that I maybe alone in this work to speak truth to power? How can I be satisfied in working through my call to be a justice worker? How do I remain faithful to what is right even when it hurts?

We have been called to be faithful … to be faithful to our resources that G-d has given us … to be faithful to the call of Jesus to do unto others as you would do for Jesus … to be faithful to the commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves … to be faithful to our founding document as a nation that declares that all men (women) are created equal .

We have been called to be faithful to the call, standard and expectation set for us by Jesus even in desperate and dire conditions and situations. The next few weeks that are before me provide me … Carolyn … an opportunity to demonstrate my faithfulness to the call of justice, mercy, understanding but also join with others who have made FAITHFULNESS their order of the day.

The experience of Enlightenment or Awakening for Buddhists includes the realization – not just theoretical in one’s mind, but practical in the way one finds oneself living one’s daily life – that we are part of a larger, inter-connected Reality (wisdom); and to feel this is to feel compassion both for all the other sentient beings who are part of this bigger picture as well as for ourselves.

So the Buddhist experience is one in which one feels oneself energized with a natural, spontaneous necessity to embrace the world in active, love but at the same time one knows that this inter-connecting love is already there, already going on, already complete.

When I ponder this Buddhist realization that wisdom (interconnectedness as given) and compassion (interconnectedness as embraced) are two sides of the same coin, it confirms the central Christian message of having to love and act for what Jesus called the Reign of God. This is at the heart of the Gospel: the call to love one’s neighbor, to act for justice, to “fix the world” (as Jesus’ Jewish teachers might have taught him), to keep acting so as to bring this messed up, suffering world a little closer to the ideal of God’s Reign.

Such loving action for justice is what Buddhists might recognize as compassion. But they then immediately remind Christians that such action for justice and a better world needs to be combined with the wisdom that this world, as it is, is already filled with what Christians might call the interconnected Spirit. As Jesus himself taught, the Reign of God is not only ‘still to come,’ it’s already present. In all the limitations and imperfections, in all the suffering and injustice, the Reign of God is present and taking shape. We have to fix this world, but we can do that only if we work with and in the world as it is. Only when we can accept the way it is (that’s wisdom), can we change the way it is (through compassion).

So when we Christians insist that we have to act to change the world, the Buddhists would definitely agree, but they would add that we should not make too much of a “big deal” of our action. Our actions are important in one way, but in another way, they are not. We have to act, we have to get things done, but the bigger picture is bigger than our individual actions.

Buddhism is here helping me reconnect with what I learned way back in my seminary days from St. Ignatius. He told his Jesuit brothers that they must act, but always with a “holy indifference” (sacra indifferentia). Such holy indifference can be translated nicely as equanimity – a balanced soul, or an easy-going heart.

If we are truly in touch with our Buddha-nature, if we are really “in Christ” as St. Paul puts it, we will be called to give all that we have to loving others and working for a better world, but at the end of the day, or even in the very actions themselves, we will be able to relax and know that even if our actions don’t succeed, even if people don’t respond, it’s no big deal. The bigger picture or the inter-connecting Spirit is still there, still active, still carrying on.

We are to act with all our might, but at the same time, relax. We have to be fully committed, but at the same time, we’d better not take ourselves too seriously.

On Wednesday, March 24th, communities all around the world commemorated the 30 year anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero. Instead of spending time talking about who Romero was and why his life was significant (if you are wondering, at the bottom of this post there are a number of links to give you an idea), I want to share some of his words that that feel particularly relevant in light of an event I attended this Tuesday on the Union campus entitled “People with a Mission, People with a Vision: Pentecostalism in the Borderlands.”

One of the signs of the present time is the idea of participation, the right that all persons have to participate in the construction of their own common good. For this reason, one of the most dangerous abuses of the present time is repression, the attitude that says, “Only we can govern, no one else, get rid of them.”

Everyone can contribute much that is good, and in that way trust is achieved. The common good will not be attained by excluding people. We can’t enrich the common good of our country by driving out those we don’t care for. We have to try to bring all that is good in each person and try to develop an atmosphere of trust, not with physical force, as though dealing with irrational beings, but with a moral force that draws out the good that is in everyone especially in concerned young people.

Thus, with all contributing their own interior life, their own responsibility, their own way of being, all can build the beautiful structure of the common good, the good that we construct together and that creates conditions of kindness, of trust, of freedom, of peace.

Then we can, all of us together, build the republic – the res publica, the public concern – what belongs to all of us and what we all have the duty of building.”

Óscar Romero, July 10, 1977

This “driving out” of people that Monseñor Romero speaks of happens here in the United States on a number of different levels. It happens when we detain and deport people who don’t have the documentation we deem necessary to be here. But it also happens when we decided who gets included in conversation, particularly a conversation about the common good.

Another focus on Romero’s ministry revolved around the idea of church. It is abundantly clear that for Romero, the church was a body of faithful who are committed to live out the gospel, not a building or denominational structure. This is particularly important given that who we consider the church has significant implications for how we live out our faith.

It has been my experience that often in the liberal protestant world, our noble intentions often blind us to who we see or include, or make space for, to participate as we seek to work for the common good. We miss out on seeing other communities that must be part of the conversation, and become uncomfortable with the possibility that this presence may actually change the way we have the conversation. The reality is that if we don’t work collectively towards the common good, the conversations happen separately and we are denied the opportunity to truly be the church that Romero speaks of and Jesus calls us to. Latino protestants, or rather evangelicos/as, are among those that are not engaged when we have these conversations. Because of a lack of understanding the history of evangelicos/as in the United States and internationally, as well as assumptions about their theology and culture, have deemed them to be non-participants by the predominantly white liberal protestant church.

Participating in the Borderlands Pentecostalism lecture series was an opportunity for me to engage in conversation about the common good with people of faith and religious leaders whom I too seldom engage. I am encouraged by events such as this at Union and thankful to be stretched and pushed in my understanding of the evangelico and Latino pentecostal community.

Links for further information about Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero:

Wikipedia entry on Romero

Romero Trust – for homilies and tons of other information

Feature film “Romero” starring Raúl Julia – great teaching tool!

links to articles about Romero in U.S. Catholic Magazine

This leads me to discuss my experiences within some of the mainline historical denominations in the US. I have come to accept that perhaps the most unabashedly racist institutions in our society are churches and their denominational organizations. This may be due in part to some prominent teachings that are remnants of 16th century reformation theology such as “justification by faith and grace alone,” constructs of “saint and sinner” and notions that God is able to forgive us even for sins perpetrated against others. Intentionally or not, these teachings facilitate the ability for individuals to continue hating, because, in accordance with the teachings of Luther and Calvin, the depth of human deprivation is so deep and encompassing that evil/racism is not in the sphere of human agency/volition to be confronted. Therefore thanks be to God for her grace that is freely bestowed upon the sinner exonerating him or her from all consequences of their sins.

I ask myself: Does God really have the right to forgive someone who trespasses against me, without asking for my permission? Does God have the right to forgive those who, due to ignorance or evil have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children, women and men? Does God have the authority to forgive those Christians who continue to break and destroy the self-esteem of others and dehumanize their fellow human beings simply because of the color of their skin or culture? I will leave these questions to be answered by the theologians. It seems to me that God has a perpetual public relations nightmare to address!