Unfortunately the book I am currently reading is Susan Jacoby’s book “The Age of American Unreason”. The dumbing down of America primarily by Christian fundamentalists. You might say I am Awe-struck, Dumb-founded, and angry at what Americans who claim allegiance to God have wrecked on the inhabitants of this land. Genocide of Native Americans and subsequent boarding schools, the forced labor and abuse of slaves, Jim Crow incarceration laws, bullying and abuse of women, LGBTQ, anti-semitism, and disparate immigration to name a few. Redlining, unfair housing, healthcare, segregation and disparity in education all while their hand is on the Bible praising God for their good fortune while praying they might hold the infidels down.
By god they won’t want this book read in their schools.
I run a Food and Clothing Shelf at the church I attend. I am humbled as I see first hand the pains and needs of the people as a few of us do our best to help them. The frustrating thing is that this work (important as it is) is simply put: Charity. Though the corporate church is trying to advocate for policies that will change the causes and reasons for charity being needed, the church body does not, all while listening to theological sermons and feeling quite comfortable and justified in their faith?
In the book “The Road to Character” by David Brooks writes . . . the work of “Lonely Man of Faith”, which was written by Rabbi Joseph Soloveit-chik in 1965. Soloveitchik noted that there are two accounts of creation in Genesis and argued that these represent the two opposing sides of our nature, which he called Adam I and Adam II.
Brooks modernizes Soloveitchik’s categories a bit, we could say that Adam I is the career-oriented, ambitious side of our nature.
Adam I is the external, résumé Adam. Adam I wants to build, create, produce, and discover things. He wants to have high status and win victories.
Adam Il is the internal Adam. Adam II wants to embody certain moral qualities. Adam II wants to have a serene inner character, a guiet but solid sense of right and wrong not only to do good, but to be good. Adam II wants to love intimately, to sacrifice self in the service of others, to live in obedience to some transcendent truth, to have a cohesive inner soul that honors creation and one’s own possibilities.
While Adam I wants to conquer the world, Adam II wants to obey a calling to serve the world. While Adam I is creative and savors his own accomplishments, Adam II sometimes renounces worldly success and status for the sake of some sacred purpose. While Adam I asks how things work, Adam II asks why things exist, and what ultimately we are here for. While Adam I wants to venture forth, Adam II wants to return to his roots and savor the warmth of a family meal. While Adam I’s motto is “Success, Adam II experiences life as a moral drama. His motto is “Charity, love, and redemption.
Soloveitchik argued that we live in the contradiction between these two Adams. The outer, majestic Adam and the inner, humble Adam are not fully reconcilable. We are forever caught in self-confrontation. We are called to fulfill both personae, and must master the art of living forever within the tension between these two natures.
The hard part of this confrontation, I’d add, is that Adams I and II live by different logics. Adam I- the creating, building, and discovering Adam- lives by a straightforward utilitarian logic. It’s the logic of economics. Input leads to output. Effort leads to reward. Practice makes perfect. Pursue self-interest. Maximize your utility. Impress the world.
Adam II lives by an inverse logic. It’s a moral logic not an economic one. You have to give to receive You have to surrender something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave. Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself. To nurture your Adam I career, it makes sense to cultivate your strengths. To nurture your Adam II moral core, it is necessary to confront your weaknesses.
I have read books by clergy (Rev. Lenny Duncan “Dear Church,” Rev. Emmy Kugler “One Coin Found,” Marcus Borg “Convictions,” and “The Daughters of Abraham,”
read and subscribe to Sojourners Magazine,
actively listen to blogs by Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber and John Pavlovitz
and the podcast “Ultra” by Rachel Maddow,
I support the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), Human Rights Campaign, Poor People’s Campaign and Planned Parenthood,
take part in a Christian Muslim dialogues,
read the book “Solomon and the Ant” The Quran in conversation with the Bible” by David Penchansky, a Catholic theologian,
and have read countless books on advocacy that leave room for the questioning of religion (such as “The Age of American Unreason,” “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, David Truer’s book “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee,” The Relentless Business of Treaties” by Martin Case, “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGee, and “Bible and Ethics in Christian Life” by Rasmussen, Birch, Lapsley & Moe-Lobeda),
read excerpts from the “Quran” and the “First Nation Bible,”
I question the infallibility of Catholic Popes (who by the way have never dealt with pedophilia and the indulgence money handling greed in their church),
and feel there is ample room to question “Christian” male interpretations of the Bible and their secular laws.
After retiring I have traveled with our church Disaster Relief Team, worked on Habitat for Humanity projects, five years ago I started a Food & Clothing Shelf in our church building and for the past five years I’ve been administering the Food & Clothing Shelf to support the homeless and those in need.
Other good books I have read include “Waking Up White,” “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, “White Like Me, by Tim Wise, “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein, “Just Us” by Claudia Rankine and “A Good Time For The Truth” by Sun Yung Shin.
And, of course, I must mention my love of poetry which I began writing after retirement and read as oft as I find time for including: poems by favorite poets Robert Bly, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda and Seamus Heaney and a small library of poetry books by Carolyn Forche “In the Lateness of the World,” Heid E. Erdrich, “National Monuments and Little Big Bully,” Jericho Brown “The Tradition,” Ilya Kaminsky “Deaf Republic” and Amanda Gorman “Call Us What We Carry,” Freya Manfred “The Blue Dress,” Phoebe Hanson “Sacred Hearts.”
God knows my heart and can deal with it.
Until all are fed . . . and clothed,
Bob Becker