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Mary Rider goes to jail joyfully

Friday, August 8th, 2008

Guest blog entry from Patrick O’Neill

Note from Bill Samuel: I know Mary Rider from Consistent Life, of which we are both Board members.

My wife, Mary Rider, a mother of eight children, received a 15-day jail sentence for praying during a North Carolina execution.

Mary, cofounder of the Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker House in Garner, N.C., was sentenced to 15 days in the Wake County Jail on August 7, stemming from her August 18, 2006 arrest for trespass during a protest of the execution of Sammy Flippen at Raleigh’s Central Prison.

Mary and three others attempted to symbolically enter the prison to stop the execution. At a police line, the four knelt in prayer in the driveway where witnesses enter the prison.

Mary, 48, who has six children age 14 or less, was sentenced to jail after telling Wake County Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan that her conscience would not allow her to pay a $100 fine and $130 court costs into a system that oppressed the poor and carried out executions in her name. A social worker, Mary told the judge she would agree to perform community service in lieu of the fine and court costs.

The judge, a firm and cold man, who frequently undercut Mary’s attempts to defend herself based on Catholic Moral Teaching and the First Amendment, seemed to take personally Mary’s conviction that the “judicial system” is racist and oppressive.

“Ms. Rider has stated that the judicial system is one too flawed and too imperfect,” Morgan said. “I am a member of this system.”

By agreeing to give Mary community service, he was in a sense validating her criticisms of the system, Morgan said.

“It’s easy to open your wallet, pay that money and walk out of court,” Mary’s pro bono lawyer, Tim Vanderweert, told the judge. “It’s much more difficult to perform community service.”

In the course of the three-day jury trial, Morgan did not allow expert witness – renowned Constitutional law professor Dan Pollitt – to testify to the jury as to why Mary’s actions in trying to stop Sammy’s execution were legally valid under the Constitution. Doing so “would invade the providence of the jury,” Morgan said.

He also limited the testimony of Duke Divinity School professor of Christian ethics Stanley Hauerwas, who tried to make the case that Mary’s actions in defense of life were justified by Papal decree and Church teaching.

“I am a Christian theologian, and the subject of theology is God,” Hauerwas told the court. “Catholic moral teaching is the longest tradition of Church history. Since Christians are a people who worship a person who died at the hands of the state, that being capital punishment, Christianity’s relationship to the state is at the heart of what Catholic ethics is about … Christians are not allowed to give their ultimate loyalties to the state.”

In her testimony, Mary shared a story about a time she was called to jury duty at age 18 in Eastern North Carolina. Although she was not selected to sit for the capital murder trial, Mary, who is also a mitigation specialist, said she was surprised to learn that only jurors who supported the death penalty could be seated.

“The only people in the jury are those who believe firmly in the death penalty,” Mary said. “It seems like you’re stacking the cards against the defendant already.”

The judge instructed the jury to only consider the question of whether Mary trespassed or not. Although the jurors were out more than an hour, those initially opposed to conviction were won over. One juror told me after the verdict that since they didn’t get to hear Prof. Pollitt, they were unable to acquit her.

In her sentencing, Mary read the story from Acts when Peter said he “must obey God and not men.”

“I am choosing to suffer for my faith and fidelity to Jesus,” Mary told the judge. “Spending time in jail for me would be an honor. Rather than a deterrent, it would be a privilege to encourage others to do the same.”

The judge said he had no choice but to sentence Mary to 15 days. The jailers placed handcuffs on Mary as her children openly sobbed on the front row of the gallery.

“You’re lucky to have a wife like that, and you’re lucky to have a mother like that,” Professor Pollitt told me and my daughter, Veronica.

Indeed we are.

Mary is expected to be in the Wake County Jail until Aug. 21. To write her:

     Mary Rider
     Wake County Jail
     P.O. Box 2419
     Raleigh, NC 27602

or at her home address:

     124 Perdue St.
     Garner N.C. 27529

FUM – A Friendly Proposal

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

I served on the General Board and on the Executive Committee of Friends United Meeting (FUM), the largest of the several associations of Friends (Quakers) in the world, from 1990 until 1993. I am not currently involved in the FUM organizational structure, nor am I now a member of a constituent meeting, but I have retained a lively interest in FUM.

For a couple of decades, there has been controversy within and outside FUM over its position on marriage and the proper use of sexuality, particularly as it relates to personnel decisions. In 1991, based on earlier decisions, the following language was incorporated into the FUM Personnel Handbook:

Friends United Meeting affirms the civil rights of all people. Staff and volunteer appointments are made without regard to sexual orientation. It is expected that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, understood to be confined to one man and one woman.

Since that time, there has been increasing discussion in certain parts of the Society of Friends about same-gender relationships, and some Quaker bodies have moved towards holding marriages or ceremonies of commitment for same-gender couples. The five FUM yearly meetings which are also members of Friends General Conference (FGC), an association with a somewhat different Quaker perspective, have all moved in that direction to varying degrees, and in all of them there is considerable uneasiness with FUM’s position on this issue. However, most other FUM yearly meetings both in North America and in other parts of the world have maintained positions consistent with that of FUM. Over half of FUM’s membership is in Kenya, and Kenyan Friends have been particularly vehement in support of the FUM position on marriage and sexual intercourse.

There has been considerable friction between the five dually affiliated yearly meetings and the rest of FUM. However, in listening to some of the dialogue and reading some related documents, I find considerable desire among many Friends on both sides of the issue to find ways to continue to work together.

I am suggesting that recognition of certain facts and principles may show the way to making a modest step that could ease tensions:

  1. The understanding of marriage has such wide support within FUM that it needs to be understood that FUM is not going to change that basic understanding in the imminent future.
  2. Many Friends who are not in unity with FUM’s position on this do see great value in much of the work of FUM.
  3. There are a number of testimonies and principles held by FUM Friends, but living in accord with most of them is not stated in such direct and absolute terms in the personnel policies of FUM.
  4. While some Friends think FUM requires agreement with the policy in order to be a staff member of FUM, that is not part of the policy and FUM has been willing to hire people for important positions who did not personally agree with the policy.

I think the feeling that FUM has dug in its heels has helped inflame tensions among those Friends who disagree with the policy. I wonder if FUM couldn’t slightly recast its policy in the hopes that this would make it easier for the dialogue to continue, and for the FUM family to unite in support of the programs of FUM. I am thinking of a minute along the lines of this:

Friends United Meeting reaffirms it position as an organization that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, understood as being between one man and one woman, while recognizing that not all Friends within FUM are united on that position. FUM also reaffirms the civil rights of all people, and its policy of making staff and volunteer appointments without regard to sexual orientation. It is vital that all persons appointed to staff and volunteer postions in FUM understand and accept that this is the current policy of FUM, whether or not they are personally in full agreement with it. Those responsible for selecting persons for positions with FUM should be sensitive to whether applicants live in accord with FUM’s policy. Where applicants are not committed to living in full accord with FUM’s current position on this matter, those responsible for selection should consider that in the full context of the person’s overall commitment to the programs of FUM and Friends’ testimonies as understood by FUM, and the specific needs for the position under consideration.

I don’t know whether or not Friends will find this suggestion helpful, but I felt led to offer it. Anyone may reprint and distribute this blog entry or portions thereof without obtaining further permission from me. Should any efforts be made to move along the lines suggested, I would appreciate knowing about it.

Reflections After a Water Emergency

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

On Sunday evening, a 48-inch water main in our area broke. Our water authority gots lots of calls from people with no water or very low water pressure, but it took several hours to find the break since it was in park land down a ravine.

They then imposed mandatory water restrictions – no outside watering, no laundry, no dish washing, etc. They also issued a boil water advisory to last at least three days. Residents were advised to boil water (or use bottled water) used for drinking, preparing or cooking food, cleaning dishes, brushing teeth, etc.

All restaurants – several hundred – in the area were ordered to close, and other businesses (groceries, convenience stores, etc.) selling prepared food were prohibited from selling food prepared after the incident. On the first day, government offices in the area closed. A number of camps and schools also closed.

By late Monday, they had isolated the pipes in the area of the break, and restored water service to the area and lifted the mandatory water restrictions. Restoration did not depend upon repairs, which will take longer. They even had to build a small road in order to get equipment down to the site.

Results from the first round of water testing became available Tuesday evening. None of the samples had any bacterial contamination. Good news, but the State requires two successive rounds of testing with no findings of contamination before a boil water advisory can be lifted. The State and County did decide to allow restaurants to re-open, but under a rather severe set of requirements with tap water, unless boiled, not usable for cooking, cleaning of table services or anything else, hand washing, etc.

On Wednesday evening, the second round of water testing confirmed the absence of bacterial contamination, and the boil water advisory was lifted. The water emergency was over.

All this was quite an inconvenience. But we ourselves never completely lost water. And we use bottled water for drinking, so that was not an issue.

This incident caused me to reflect on our privileged status. Most of the time, we have ample clean water for all purposes, right in our own home. So many do not.

Our situation at the height of our water emergency was much better than the every day situation of a substantial portion of the world’s population. They would be so grateful to be able to live under that kind of situation.

More than one billion people in the world today lack access to safe drinking water – not for a brief interlude due to a water main break but every day year round. And 2.6 billion lack access to improved sanitation. Each year, 1.8 million children die from diarrhea, mostly as a result of drinking contaminated water. Even many who do have access to reasonably safe drinking water have to haul it by hand some distance from their homes.

There is a vast difference in the lives of those of us who live in the world’s more affluent nations in reasonable comfort, and billions who live in poverty. Our status is not due to us being better or more moral than those in poverty. It is a matter of circumstance. Causes of the misery of so many include greed, wars, economic exploitation, and racism. Our profligate lifestyles definitely contribute to the problem.

What are some of the lessons I take away from this?

  1. Be thankful for my many blessings.
  2. Consider the implications of my lifestyle, and how that might change.
  3. Be in prayer for those facing extremely difficult life circumstances.
  4. Use some of my relatively abundant material resources to help those in need.
  5. Work to change national priorities away from militarism towards meeting human needs and increasing equity.

Day of Prayer for Permanent Peace

Monday, May 26th, 2008

In respect for their devotion to America, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved on May 11, 1950, as amended (64 Stat. 158), has requested the President to issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period on that day when the people of the United States might unite in prayer. [From the President’s 2008 Memorial Day Proclamation]

Memorial Day (today) is a major holiday in the United States. But listening to the news on radio and television, and perusing the daily newspaper, one rarely finds any reference to the official purpose of the holiday “as a day of prayer for permanent peace.” Instead, it is often twisted into a day for glorifying war.

The idea of Memorial Day originated during the Civil War when a group of women buried the dead from both sides of the war and planted flowers on the graves both of the fallen who had fought on their side and those who had fought on the other side. These women who had lost sons, husbands, brothers and others dear to them were moved to make this gesture of reconciliation and of recognition of the horror war imposes on both sides.

Sadly, we continue to live in a world of war. The United States is engaged in two hot (albeit undeclared) wars, and has garrisons in hundreds of countries across the globe. More than half of the discretionary budget of the United States is devoted to military-related purposes, and all three Senators running for President of the United States are calling for even greater spending for the machinery of death.

Meanwhile, across the globe, there are armed conflicts within a number of nations, some of them involving forces from outside the country of conflict. The tragedy of war not only directly causes many deaths and injuries, of civilians as well as combatants, but also results in hunger, homelessness, disease, environmental degradation, and enormous waste of resources that could have been used for good.

Many war veterans have recognized that they need to respond to their own experience of the horrors of war with a commitment to work to end war. See, for example, Vietnam veteran Mac Bica’s On This Memorial Day commentary.

I urge everyone to use this Memorial Day for its stated purpose, and pray for permanent peace. And may your prayers move you to action to end the madness of war.

Personally, I pledge this election year Memorial Day not to vote for any Presidential or Congressional candidate who does not stand for major reductions in the military budget and a change in America’s aggressive posture towards the rest of the world.

An Evangelical Manifesto

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

On May 7, a group of prominent evangelical leaders issued An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment. It was developed by a Steering Committee of 9, including the President of Fuller Theological Seminary and the Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, as well as one of my favorite writers and a leader in the Renovaré movement, Dallas Willard. In addition, there were 75 Charter Signatories, including many very prominent names in evangelical circles – conservative, moderate and liberal. Hundreds more have also signed. So this is a very important document.

The document is the latest development in a growing movement in recent years to rescue Evangelicalism (the Manifesto insists on this capitalization, and I am following their lead in this commentary) from the narrow stereotype of a bunch of fundamentalist conservative Republicans whose concerns are mostly limited to a couple of very controversial issues. Another prominent landmark in this movement was the 2004 statement by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility. Much credit for these promising developments should be given to evangelicals who have been actively laboring for many years for a broad agenda of social issues such as Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action and Jim Wallis of Sojourners (both Charter Signatories of the Manifesto).

The Manifesto asserts three major mandates for Evangelicals:

  1. We Must Reaffirm Our Identity
  2. We Must Reform Our Own Behavior
  3. We Must Rethink Our Place in Public Life

The wording of these mandates sounds like a call by the signatories to the Evangelical movement; an internal document for those who identify themselves as Evangelical. And it is that, and very rightly so. But it also serves an important function of speaking to those outside the Evangelical community to rectify misimpressions of what Evangelicalism is about. I feel it does a good job of speaking to both of these audiences.

I want to highlight some key elements of this landmark Manifesto (I can only here identify a few; the Manifesto is 20 pages and I encourage you to read the entire document for yourself), and offer some comments on them:

  • In reaffirming Evangelical identity, the Manifesto provides a useful definition: Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. Personally, I can wholeheartedly identify with that definition.
  • It notes that Evangelicalism should be distinguished from two opposite tendencies to which Protestantism has been prone: liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism. This is in fact its historical place, but developments in the last half century came to blur the lines between Evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and I think this point is important. [Side Note: While insisting that Evangelical and its derivatives be capitalized, they don’t extend the same courtesy to fundamentalists.] Again, personally I have sought to distinguish my own faith understanding from either of these tendencies, although I have done it outside of mainstream Evangelicalism.
  • It reiterates the concept of sola scriptura and the “supreme authority of the Bible.” This is well in keeping with Evangelical tradition. Personally, I believe this contradicts the centrality of Jesus Christ and is in conflict with their own definition of Evangelicals. This is a major reason why I consider myself evangelical but not an Evangelical. This is not the place to go into depth on this issue, and I plan a separate post addressing it.
  • The second mandate the Manifesto identifies really constitutes confession and repentance. This is very healthy. It does an excellent job of identifying major areas where Evangelicals have often gone in the wrong direction.
  • In the third mandate of the Manifesto, it does a good job of identifying “two equal and opposite errors” of privatizing faith and of politicizing faith. It correctly calls for engagement with politics, but avoiding identification with party or partisan ideology. I appreciate its call to a civil public square — a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too. This sets the proper balance.
  • It addresses a key historical issue for the Church in stating, We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. I think the truth is more mixed, and the Manifesto itself is somewhat weak in its argument in this section. It follows that statement by noting While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war . . . This is a factual observation (and putting the two on an equal plane is a step forward, as pacifists often don’t get much respect), but it is somewhat ironic as the Just War Theory is itself a Constantinian development. In this respect, the Manifesto may represent an important step forward, but also illustrates that there is some distance still to go.
  • Importantly, it shares with the earlier landmark NAE Call a call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics.

While I am not 100% in unity with the Manifesto, I heartily welcome it as an important and positive contribution to the Church finding its way to more truly be the Body of Jesus Christ.

Subscribe to this blog

Monday, May 12th, 2008

You can now get email notifications of posts to this blog.

This is permanently available through the Subscribe page noted on the right column. The email option on the Subscribe button towards the bottom part of the right column is not the same. It instead subscribes you to a Daily Headlines service and includes this blog. That button is probably better used for feeds to various services you might use.

Everything Must Change

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Everything Must Change CoverLast year I was provided a pre-publication copy of Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope by Brian D. McLaren (Thomas Nelson, 2007, 327 pages). The goal was to read it and publish a review of it on my blog before the publication date. I knew that was ambitious, and in fact I didn’t finish it before then. All I got on my blog was a post on the amahoro story in the second chapter. I did finish the book months ago, but only now am I getting around to publishing a review of it.

This book follows on Brian’s previous book, The Secret Message of Jesus, which will give you a leg up in reading this book, but Everything Must Change can certainly be understood without having read The Secret Message first. The key point, reiterated in Chapter 1, is that Jesus’ message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven’s blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead is about God’s will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven. (p. 4) The things that churches often spend their energy talking and disputing about actually serve as weapons of mass distraction (p. 21), keeping Christians from focusing on the really important matters.

Brian seeks to answer two basic questions:

  1. What are the biggest problems in the world?
  2. What does Jesus have to say about these global problems?

Brian did extensive research to determine what the most important issues are. He found that the experts have different ways of categorizing the world’s problems, but mostly come up with similar lists. Brian grouped the issues into three deep dysfunctions that would be agreed upon by many secular experts, plus a fourth which he feels is the leverage point through which we can reverse the first three. He names them each as a crisis:

  1. Prosperity Crisis – our unsustainable global economy that fails to respect environmental limits;
  2. Equity Crisis – the growing gap between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor;
  3. Security Crisis – the danger of cataclysmic war; and
  4. Spirituality Crisis – the failure of the world’s religions to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the first three crises.

Brian maintains that our global systems have become a suicide machine reprogramming the systems to destroy those they should serve. He’s not maintaining that this is some sort of secret conspiracy, but rather the consequences of attitudes and decisions over the centuries.

Brian doesn’t just expect you to take his analysis on faith. He outlines the crises, and provides sources you can use to explore the issues in greater depth.

This may sound like all doom and gloom, but as a follower of Jesus, Brian is a man of hope. He is confident that Jesus has provided the pattern for a way forward, and that Christians can make a real difference if they understand the framing story Jesus tried to show us and seek to live in accordance with it. The last part of the book he calls The Revolution of Hope, and it provides starting points for a way forward.

Brian is a great writer, and the book is much easier to read than one might expect for a tome on the world’s greatest problems. He weaves in a lot of personal stories that are very illuminating. I’m not saying there aren’t parts that are heavy going, but it is written so that it can be understood by people without a lot of degrees or specialized knowledge.

As harsh as Brian’s analysis sounds, actually he deliberately tries to be gentle with people who may be exploring some of these ideas for the first time. One consequence is that he doesn’t always carry things through to their logical conclusion, because he thinks many folks aren’t quite ready for that. For those in the Peace Church tradition, this happens notably when he makes a good case for the peace position of Jesus, but then fails to follow through, and allows for both the pacifist and just war positions.

But any quibbles I have with the book are minor. I believe that Brian has correctly diagnosed the major global issues, correctly described how Jesus’ life and message speaks to them, and helpfully provided some steps on moving forward to addressing the issues. I wholeheartedly recommend that every Christian – and every other person with a deep concern for the global situation – read this book. I also encourage the formation of small groups to discuss the book together, as I feel this sort of engagement with one another is very helpful. Brian helpfully provides discussion questions after each chapter, which can be used as the basis for small group discussion.

Welcome to my new blog

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

I have had a Bravenet blog for several years, to which I have posted sporadically. At the time I started it, I kept my personal Web files in space provided by my Web service provider.

Last year, I needed to upgrade my hosting account at HostNexus (outstanding customer service, excellent reliability, reasonable prices) because my sites had outgrown my old plan. With the new plan came a free domain. Thus began BillSamuel.net, the new place to put my personal Web files. I realized then that it might be best to have a blog directly on this domain, but I didn’t get around to actually doing it until now.

HostNexus offers WordPress, one of the most popular blog formats, in its programs repository with simple one-button installation. So I installed it. Then I realized it was an old version. So I upgraded to the current version, which is very easy with the simple 3-step guide provided on the WordPress site.

So I now have this spiffy new blog. I hope you will visit it frequently, and feel free to add your comments to my posts. I can’t promise to post any more regularly than in the past My old blog will remain available, so if there are any nuggets of wisdom there, they are still available.