Working Mothers

Do “stay-at-home moms” work? Is it real work or just pretend work?

If you want to get a stay-at-home-mom riled, ask her when she’s going to go back to work. Raising small children has to be one of the most exhausting jobs in the world. Raising three or more at a time is only for heroes. As a kid I was incredibly blessed to have a mom at home when I came back from school each day. In the late 1980s, when our first of four children came along, Carol and I decided to forego two incomes and learn to live on one. She stayed home with the kids. When I would get home, I would find a woman far more tired than I. She would rarely get a full night’s sleep.

Political lobbyist Hilary Rosen recently mocked Ann Romney as a woman “who has actually never worked a day in her life.” Moms and other child-care providers have a fair amount of experience being disrespected by men, but it came as a surprise to hear a woman do it. Mrs. Romney is the mother of five boys, and she and Mitt decided that she would stay home to raise them. It is true that the Romneys were born into wealth, but the heavy workload of tending to the physical and emotional growth of five small human beings knows no income limits.

I don’t admire the Romneys’ theological beliefs, but I have great admiration for any woman who has figured out how to get married and stay married, who braves fire from her more “liberated” sisters and delays a career in order to mother five children full-time. Some of the hardest work on earth is not done for money. It is done for love.

Mothers, this is your month. May God surround you with people who will clap and cheer for your work and sacrifice.

Two Americas

Does the phrase “Two Americas” sound familiar?

Perhaps you remember it from John Edwards’ 2004 vice-presidential campaign. Perhaps you heard echoes of that message in the “Occupy” rhetoric of the 1% and the 99%. Do you believe that there are two Americas?

Charles Murray does. One of America’s most provocative social observers, Murray’s 1984 book “Losing Ground” and 1994’s “Bell Curve” drew both intense support and intense criticism. His newest book is entitled “Coming Apart.” America has always had class distinctions, of course, but Murray argues persuasively that the upper and lower classes have grown dramatically farther apart since 1960. He borrowed the metaphoric Philadelphia neighborhoods of “Belmont” (upscale) and “Fishtown” (downscale) to represent the two Americas.

Because so much social commentary gets bogged down in race questions, Murray limited his study to white people only. There have been numerous explanations offered for America’s diverging social and financial status, such as the loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing of employment, and corporate greed. Murray’s studies led him to the conclusion that it is not external factors that cause people to rise or fall in prosperity but rather four behaviors:

• Marriage. The marriage rate in the lower classes has declined since 1960 from 85% to less than 50% (Belmont’s is still 85%). The rate of divorce for the 30-49 age group is 33% in Fishtown and 5% in Belmont. Out-of-wedlock births in college-educated women remained under 5%, while OOW births to high-school dropouts was over 60%.
• Industriousness (a.k.a. hard work).
• Honesty (a.k.a. staying out of jail).
• Religiousness. Readers of the Bible’s book of Proverbs would not be surprised to hear that prosperity is a blessing from God.

Murray observes that America’s “Fishtown” has more than doubled in size since 1960.

Do you agree with Murray that there are two diverging Americas? Do you buy his explanation of four behaviors?

ROBOCALLS

Is it just we dinosaurs who actually still have and pay for land lines that alone have to suffer? Are cell phone users exempt from this new plague?

I refer, of course, to robocalls. “Hi, this is Joyce from Cardholders Services.” You might think at first that she is calling from my card provider. Nope. Her recorded voice wants to sell me something new. “Hi, this is Kevin from the warranty service on your current vehicle.” My vehicle is long past its manufacturing warranties. Kevin just wants me to trust him and buy some paper from his virtual company. Joyce and Kevin aren’t real—if I try to talk with them they just ignore me and keep going with their pitch.

And then there’s politics. It was Wisconsin’s misfortune to be part of the presidential primary season when the outcome was still in doubt. My phone rang constantly for ten days. I fantasized that I had a financial stake in the robocall companies that pestered us all—fabulous sums must have changed hands. A governor recall election awaits in June—God help us—and then we can await the presidential general election in fall. If I cancel my land line and switch completely to cell service, will those recorded voices still be able to annoy me? AT & T, are you listening?

I am no fan of telemarketing either. I always explain politely to the nice people on the other end who are just trying to make a buck that I never buy anything from telephone solicitations and that they could send me literature if they cared to. But here’s what scares me—telemarketing and robocalls exist for one reason, and that one reason is enough—they are perceived to work. Until marketers are persuaded otherwise, the calls will continue. Apparently we Americans respond in sufficient numbers to keep the calls coming.

Perhaps you are wondering what this rant has to do with Christianity or the church. Why is this grim feature of American life worth the precious space on this blog? I’m not against every form of automated dialing. It’s nice to hear from my kid’s school if a day’s classes are going to be canceled because of snow. When Time of Grace has to change broadcast channels or broadcast times in one of our cities, automated dialing can alert viewers to the changes.

Sharing important information to people already part of a community is one thing. But the resentment that the robo-marketing calls arouse in my cold heart makes me want to do the opposite of what the “caller” wants. Your congregation, or your beloved parachurch ministry, may be tempted to use robocalls to ask for money. Here’s my plea: Don’t.

What’s your view?

Boko Haram Part II

Since writing my last blog on the mounting pressures on Christians in Nigeria, things have gotten dreadfully worse. On January 20 a series of bombs in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, left 200 dead. Two days later three bombs were detonated at Christian churches in Bauchi City in the north. Eight Christian civilians, two soldiers, and a policeman were killed by gunmen in Tafawa Balewa the same day. World magazine reports that churches in the north are canceling worship services. Boko Haram announced an ultimatum ordering all Christians to leave northern Nigeria.

This is a big deal. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest country at more than 155 million in population. One in four Africans is a Nigerian. Nigeria is the world’s seventh largest country. Its former capital Lagos is projected to have 25 million inhabitants by 2015. The country is awash in oil wealth, but that wealth has been very unevenly distributed, corruption is rampant, and ecological damage around the oil terminals on the Niger delta around Port Harcourt is horrific. President Goodluck Jonathan is a Christian himself and is under enormous pressure to restore security in the country’s northern region. Here’s one of many terrible questions: do the states of northern Nigeria even want Christians? Is Boko Haram merely acting out the secret wishes of the Muslims who live in the north?

Africa’s Christians are in for some miserable times. The West seemed to cheer Hosni Mubarak’s fall, but in last week’s elections in Egypt the two largest political parties to fill the void were the Muslim Brotherhood and the even stricter Salafist Islamic party. Islamist parties outpolled moderate secular parties by a 4 to 1 margin. Coptic Christians in Egypt have always had a somewhat precarious existence but were generally protected by Mubarak.

And how about Christians in Syria? As Syria continues slowly to tear itself apart, they are vulnerable to scapegoating and abuse as order breaks down. There are reports that over 100 have been killed in the unrest already.

Will you join me today in praying for Christians who live in majority-Islam parts of the world?

Over the last few years I have come to be amazed at the size of the expatriate Nigerian community here in Milwaukee. Just as the Jews found each other in the huge city of Rome in St. Paul’s day, these Africans are networked. Perhaps they go unnoticed during the work week, dressed in business clothes and looking like any other African Americans. But when there is a wedding, African food, music, and African dress come out. I am glad that these African Christians have come to our country and hope that they can add flavors from their culture to the American melting pot. They have always made me feel welcome at their gatherings.

I am not so cheerful about African Christians who live in Nigeria. The country, Africa’s most populous, is split in half religiously, with the southern half Christian and the northern half Muslim. As you can guess, the central part of the country has become a battle zone. A group has arisen in northern Nigeria that takes its inspiration from al-Qaeda and is committed to abolish the government of Nigeria and establish Islamic sharia law throughout the entire country. Its official name is “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” That is way too big a mouthful for most people, however, and it is known more by its nickname, “Boko Haram.” “Boko” is the Hausa word for Western education, and “Haram” is an Arabic word that means “condemned” or “forbidden.”

The group has claimed credit for a long string of terrorist attacks in various cities in the north—Madalla, Jos, Damaturu, and Gadaka, as well as the new capital of Abuja. On Christmas Day, for instance, terrorists detonated a massive bomb outside St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, packed for holiday worship with 1,000 people. The church building was badly damaged, 57 people were wounded, and 37 were killed. Estimates are that over 450 people were killed by Boko Haram attacks in 2011.

Al-ummah, the Muslim world, is seething with unrest right now all over the world. Western Christians should mute their celebrations of the so-called “Arab spring.” In our celebrity-mad culture, we seem to think that the problems in the Middle East and Africa are caused by a few tyrants and dictators. President Bush famously remarked in 2004 that a desire for freedom resides in every human heart. I’m not so sure. Who will replace Qaddafi, Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, or even Bashar Assad? Intensely Islamic parties seem like the only political organizations far enough along in their development to move into the power vacuum. It may not have been the desire for freedom that toppled the dictators, but resentment at the way these mostly secular rulers suppressed Islamic fanaticism.

The Christians in Nigeria are in for a very rough time. Do any Nigerians live near you? Will you join me today in praying for their faith and security?

Mr. Jefferson’s Religion

The moral basis for the American Revolution against the British crown is laid out in the Declaration of Independence, surely the most beloved document in American history. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” wrote Mr. Jefferson, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

One might think that Mr. Jefferson was a biblical Christian. Just as he was a radical thinker in politics, however, he felt no obligation to regard all of the Bible as sacred Scripture. The second floor of the National Museum of American History has a small room containing Jefferson’s personal Bible. Its pages have been cut up and are missing portions. Jefferson sliced out what he determined to be the actual teachings of Jesus Christ, and he pasted them into a far slimmer volume. Truly it is not difficult to be disgusted with what the church has done with its doctrines. Jefferson was two centuries closer to the savage religious wars that tore up Europe in the 1500s and 1600s.

The April 9 issue of Newsweek presents an essay by blogger Andrew Sullivan. Like Jefferson, his disgust at evangelical hardball politics and the sexual abuses of his own Catholic church has led him to embrace only a few slices of the sayings of Jesus as universal truth. He finds a hero in St. Francis of Assisi, whose poverty and nonviolence attracted enough followers to begin an entirely new monastic order. Sullivan:

“Jesus’ doctrines were the practical commandments, the truly radical ideas that immediately leap out in the simple stories he told and which he exemplified in everything he did. Not simply love one another, but love your enemy and forgive those who harm you; give up all material wealth; love the ineffable Being behind all things and know that this being is actually your truest Father, in whose image you were made. Above all, give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching. That’s why, in his final apolitical act, Jesus never defended his innocence at trial, never resisted his crucifixion, and even turned to those nailing his hands on the wood on the cross and forgave them, and loved them.”
There is considerable appeal to our generation in his words. People today are dropping out of church life as never before, all the while asserting that they are “spiritual.” It isn’t hard to find examples of hypocrisy, charlatans, and poseurs in the organized church. (On the other hand, kindly find me an example of any business or profession that hasn’t had abuse, graft, bribery, and hucksters).

But Christianity is far more than just moral philosophy. You don’t need Christ if your only goal is to encourage people to live humbly, show mercy, and be nice to everybody. It seems to me that what Sullivan is missing is the reason Christ suffered so terribly: he offered his life as a guilt offering for the sins of the world to a Judge who demanded blood. The suffering and death of Christ were not just a sweet example of a kind and decent man who was brave, but the conscious and willing surrender to the Plan laid out by his Father. He was wounded to bring us healing; he died to make us alive; he was judged so that we might be acquitted; he went to hell that we might go to heaven.

I wonder if Mr. Jefferson believed any of that. Do you?

Let’s Do the Numbers

Reporting of church membership has always been a hazy enterprise. The National Council of Churches, one of the most reliable sources of this type of information, is at the mercy of the reporting from congregations and their denominations, some of which show no change from year to year. My own tribe lists congregations whose reporting is three or more years out-of-date, and I know that other denominations struggle with timely reporting as well.

Claimed membership numbers are always somewhat suspect to me. You can claim members on your rolls that have been inactive for many years. A much more accurate measure of size would be the average number of worshipers each week, but some denominations do not or cannot provide those statistics.

The (self-reported) numbers for 2010 are out. You might be interested in knowing that the ten largest U.S. Christian bodies reported for the year 2010 in the latest yearbook of the National Council of Churches are:

A few thoughts:
1. The denominational numbers that I marked with asterisks (COGIC, NBC-USA, and NBCA) are indeed for large organizations, but the year-after-year reporting of the same membership numbers seems suspect.

2. Roman Catholics and Mormons (LDS) led the list in percentage of growth. The Catholic Church has certainly benefited from steady large-scale immigration from Latin America. Mormons are very proud to count the U.S. Senate majority leader and two Republican presidential candidates among their members.

3. The long slide in membership in the mainline Protestant denominations continues.

How many of these bumper stickers have you seen? The symbols refer to the crescent moon of Islam, pacifism, gay rights, Judaism, paganism, Taoism, and Christianity. ‘Tis a noble sentiment indeed, enshrined here in America by the First Amendment to our Constitution which guarantees our freedom of religion.

There is no such amendment or constitution in Saudi Arabia. The Reuters news agency reported that Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh, Grand Mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa (i.e. a religious decree) last week in response to a Kuwaiti lawmaker who asked if Kuwait could ban church construction in Kuwait. The sheik ruled that further church building should be banned and existing Christian houses of worship should be destroyed.

The U.S. State Department website (www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2008/108492.htm) reports that there are more than a million Roman Catholics in Saudi Arabia. Most of them are expatriate Filipinos and Indians who work there, but who do not have the citizenship of Saudi Arabia. There are also Christians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and as well a number of Christians from sub-Saharan countries who are working in the Saudi Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as foreign workers for temporary work, but does not allow them to practice their faith openly. Christians generally dare to worship only in secret within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, and religious carvings.

The Saudi Arabian Mutaween or “Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” (i.e., the religious police) prohibits the practice of any religion other than Islam. Saudi Arabia forbids religious conversion from Islam and punishes it by death. The Government does not permit non-Muslim clergy to enter the country for the purpose of conducting religious services.

Christians and other non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities. Currently there are no official churches in Saudi Arabia of any Christian denomination. There are churches for Christian minorities in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen. It is evidently the wish of the Grand Mufti that there should be none anywhere on the Arabian peninsula.

(drawing from cezl.wordpress.com )

I was attending a Rotary lunch meeting some time ago and in a Q & A session on religion in politics a Muslim woman from the audience complained bitterly about how Muslim in the United States were being profiled, which she viewed as intolerable persecution. She couldn’t understand why everyone in America couldn’t admire Islam as a religion of peace.

It could be that Christians are terrified that wherever Muslims achieve dominant political power, there will be fatwas against them. There will be not only a little profiling, but destruction of property, imprisonment, and death at the hands of either mobs or religious police.

Will you join me in praying today for all Christians on the Arabian peninsula?

+James Q. Wilson+

1931–2012

James Q. Wilson has passed at the age of 80. It’s possible you’ve never heard of him, although the issues he wrote about and taught during his decades in the classroom and in Washington probably touch your life every day.

Wilson was a social scientist who studied urban behaviors. He taught at Harvard, Boston College, Pepperdine, and UCLA at various points in his career. He was most famous for an article that he cowrote with George Kelling that appeared in 1982 in the Atlantic Monthly. Its title was “Broken Windows.” He argued persuasively that an appearance of neglect in a neighborhood breeds more neglect. When people see broken windows (or trash, graffiti, and abandoned cars, e.g.), they assume that nobody is watching and nobody cares. Thus their risk of being caught at some kind of crime or vandalism seems small.

Conversely Wilson argued that when a community relentlessly pays attention to every detail of its appearance, people who might be tempted to crime will hold back, assuming that this is a place where people care about the streets, are watching, and have police backup. New York mayor Rudy Giuliani agreed with Wilson and attacked the declining quality of life in New York City in the 1980s with a “zero tolerance” campaign. Police were instructed to crack down on “broken windows,” i.e., graffiti, squeegee men (shakedown artists preying on people trapped in stopped cars), public urination, and the plague of turnstile jumpers in the subways. New York’s crime rates dropped significantly.

Wilson’s ideas resonated also with certain urban educators. They believed that one of the main reasons so many students failed to get a decent education in public urban schools was that antisocial behaviors were allowed to run unchecked. The KIPP (“Knowledge Is Power”) schools, for instance, adopted and championed a “No Excuses” philosophy that trained teachers and staff to tolerate absolutely no student disrespect. School uniforms with traditional jackets and ties for boys and jumpers for girls came back.

Not everyone thought Wilson was a genius. Conservatives loved him, and generally liberals disliked his ideas. You can number me with his admirers. My congregation, St. Marcus, has a parish elementary school that has served children from Milwaukee’s central city for 140 years. Our administrators for the last decade have consciously sought to model our classroom management strategies on what they admired in the KIPP schools. We too have uniforms and “no excuses.” Students are not allowed to talk out of turn, use profanity, or wander around. Even eye-rolling has a consequence.
The results speak for themselves. Our hallways are quiet and orderly, the classrooms are filled with children on task and productive, and the quiet cafeteria is a joy to visit. Visitors who have experienced other urban schools are usually blown away. Our graduates suffer a significantly smaller high school dropout rate. We believe that every child can learn and seek to remove every nuisance obstacle that interferes with learning.

What’s your view? Do you view the “broken windows” theory as an excuse merely for incarcerating more people and smothering student self-expression? Or do you see it as a valuable tool in creating safe and flourishing classrooms and neighborhoods?

Uhh . . .

One of my dreads is to be trapped in a place where I have to listen to a speaker whose speech is loaded with ums, uhs, ahs, ers, well, like, y’know, ‘kay? Linguists call these “wordlets” disfluencies. I call them torture. The first 20 to 30 can be borne, but as that kind of talk drags on and I can’t get away, my inner frustration boils. You know what I, ah, like, mean, right? Don’t you find it, ah, frustrating, um, to have to pick your way through, ah, all that, like, verbal pollution, ‘kay?
I was a prisoner in a meeting once where other eye-rollers and I began to log the speaker’s ahs and ums. We quit after 500. No joke.

It’s everywhere. Some analysts say that 20% of ordinary American speech is “filler” like that. It’s horrible. It communicates mental confusion, airheadedness, doubt, and sloppy thinking. It suggests to the tormented listener that the ideas emitted by the talker are half-baked and unworthy of serious consideration.

Why do people talk like that? There are a few theories:
People are too lazy to think carefully about what their mouths are emitting.
People without a lot of public-speaking experience, and even some with experience, are jittery and nervous and have trouble simultaneously thinking and talking.
People don’t want to give up the floor while their brains are scrambling to generate more thoughts. Uh means “Don’t interrupt me.”
People’s brains can’t keep up with their mouths. They decide that they don’t want “holes” in their utterances and fill those holes with meaningless mouth noises.
People can’t hear their own uhs and ahs and don’t realize how irritating their speech is becoming.

For me this dysfunction is not just a petty personal crusade. I am on a mission from Christ to talk about his Word with people. I need to clean up my own verbal litter so that I don’t bore, frustrate, or turn off my viewers and listeners. When I write poorly, my editor will clean up after me, but it is almost impossible to clean up video disfluencies.

If you made it this far, let me thank you for listening to my rant. What kind of speaker abuse most drives you crazy? If my speech patterns need help to communicate Christ better, would you tell me?