Real Americans are not offended by diversity.

I love hearing the sounds of other languages in a grocery store or other public venue when a family is speaking, for example, Spanish. It’s the sound of a genuine America. Spoken in a predominately English-speaking environment, where a rude stranger can be expected to tell you to go back to “where you belong,” it is also courageously honest.

Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldua said, “I am my language,” adding, “Until I take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” Americans who take pride in English should welcome others taking pride in their language.

For some inexplicable reason, that tends to anger some white Americans. A recent Pew poll concluded that nearly half of white Republicans and 18% of white Democrats become angry upon hearing someone speak a language other than English.

What’s that about? What could possibly create that sort of reaction? Paranoia? Intolerance? My guess is that before some politicians stirred animosity toward those who are different, this was not a problem.

The language other than English most likely to be heard around these parts is Spanish. Spanish has a special grace distinguishing it from and making it more dignified than English. Spanish is lyrical, almost poetic, especially when heard in public and spoken in love in a familial relationship.

As adjectives trail nouns, one gets a sense of purpose otherwise inexpressible in English. English seems intentionally designed to confuse listeners. Spanish is intentional about alleviating confusion. For example, the use of an “o” or an “a” signaling masculine or feminine informs listeners that gender is part and parcel to speaking when a precise communication is more than utilitarian. It is respectful.

Complaining about someone you don’t know, speaking a language you cannot understand betrays a narrowness of mind and experience. As the world grows smaller, second and third languages will be required for successful participation in the U.S. and international economy, politics, and travel.

Those satisfied with knowing only their own language, and yet angered when hearing another, are surrendering to a self-destructive chauvinism serving neither them nor their community.  

I am delighted the elementary school my grandchildren attend teaches them Spanish. The ability to speak another language will enable them to participate in the wonderful diversity of our nation. Thankfully, the United States has no official language. Whether sitting on a subway in New York or in the mall in Cheyenne or a dentist’s office in Laramie, you’ll hear people around you speaking Spanish, Mandarin, or a variety of other languages.

It’s the sound of freedom, a true expression of e pluribus unum. Taking offense when those around you speak a language other than English makes your world smaller than God Intended. It betrays an insecurity that is neither patriotic nor tolerant.

Remember that time when the early Jesus followers “came together” and “each heard the others speaking in their own languages” and how everything turned out well for them? It’s in the Bible.

At the Tower of Babel, God gave everyone a different language to confuse them in their effort to be God-like. Today, in order to avoid confusion and get along with one another, it matters that we know, or at the least respect one another’s language.

Heaven knows we don’t enjoy enough diversity in Wyoming. Making room for the little you do encounter doesn’t ask much.

Whether you travel anywhere else on this planet or only within Wyoming, you’ll inevitably hear people speaking other languages. It’s what God intended when God created such a wonderfully diverse world. As you encounter those who speak another language, recognize the experience as a reflection of God’s perfect intent.

If you become angry enough about a stranger speaking a language not your own that you are compelled to confront them in public, you may or may not be someone who takes an assault weapon into a Walmart to target Mexicans, but you are somewhere on that continuum.

Real Americans are not offended by diversity. They celebrate it and welcome its display.

 

trump is still president; why the optimism?

Last week I celebrated my 71^st birthday, and find myself optimistic. Given the state of affairs in this country, I’m not sure why.

It’s not easy clinging to one’s optimism, awakening each morning, finding Trump is still president. Congress is still, well, Congress. Federal courts are increasingly stacked with young, far right, ill-qualified jurists. The sacred struggle for civil rights, we thought was won decades ago, rages anew. Wars that once ended with treaties are now never-ending.

An NPR poll says 84% of Americans are angrier today than a generation ago. A Pew poll discloses most believe the economy will weaken, environmental conditions will worsen, and they expect a worse-than-9/11 terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

In spite of it all, it’s hard to shake the optimism some of us baby-boomers banked in the first decades of our American experience. Through the 50s and 60s, the country had problems but we also had reasons to be excited about the future. I’d take the experience of my 71 years anytime over that of younger Americans who are coming of age in the era of Trump.

We had JFK. The Beatles. Wolfman Jack. Martin Luther King. The hippies. They have Trump. Ted Nugent. Rush Limbaugh. Franklin Graham. The neo-Nazis. We had Walter Cronkite. They have Sean Hannity. We had science. They have Fox. We had no sense that the ideals inspiring the nation had expiration dates. We believed King’s promise that the arc of history bent toward justice.

Our generation witnessed the passage of the Clean Air and Water Acts, the Endangered Species and Wilderness Acts. Science mattered. Facts led to opinion. Now, neither facts nor science matter. Environmental challenges are dismissed as hoaxes.

We boomers were told our nation was a melting pot of different nationalities. Now we’re told welcoming “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free” poses security risks and that we should build walls to keep them out.

Our fathers and mothers defeated nationalism, risking their lives during World War II only to witness nationalism resurrected under Trump who brays proudly, “I am a nationalist.” We were convinced the antiwar movement, the civil rights and women’s movements, and youth movement of the 60s and 70s made America great. Now they dawn silly red hats saying, “Make America Great Again.”

We saw Russians beat us into outer space. JFK promised we’d put a man on the moon before the decade was out, “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” I turned 21 the year the U.S. made good on Kennedy’s commitment.

Our generation drove a crooked president out of office. We “saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it” as Senator Edward Kennedy said at his brother Bobby’s all-too-early funeral.  

I evolved from a 21-year-old skeptic into a 71-year-old optimist. In a perfect world, optimism would be the natural product of aging. Right? Bob Dylan said it. “I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.” Having those years as a basis for our faith, we find reasons to be optimistic even now.

There’s something about today’s pessimism manifesting itself among those too young to have lived through Vietnam, Watergate, the assassinations of the 60s, and celebrating how this great country survived it all and more.  

There’s ample reason for optimism. Whether it’s the Parkland kids working for gun-safety laws and courageously scolding the NRA, the young group of diverse women now in congress, or the Gay Straight Alliance at Cheyenne’s McCormick Junior High standing up to “the powers that be,” this generation is tough enough to meet today’s difficult challenges. 

Optimism is the great motivator of the young. When you reach your 70s, optimism becomes a vicarious experience. We may not be around to see America’s current ordeal resolve itself. Younger shoulders will shoulder it. As Wyoming’s great Governor Ed Herschler used to say, “I’m so old, I don’t even buy green bananas anymore.”

“the Bride of Christ has been unfaithful.”

Some conservative Christians have gone “the full Monty,” exposing themselves as they leave Jesus in the rearview mirror. Following Donald Trump, they repudiate Jesus as much as Peter, who when identified as a disciple of Jesus, loudly proclaimed, “I do not know that man.” Suppose Trump-following Christians hear the cock crow?   

Jonathan Lange, a Lutheran Pastor speaking for the Wyoming Pastor’s Network (WPN) denied the transformational power of Christ in his August 2, op-ed, “Executions teach the value of life.” Lange attempted to give religious creds to Trump’s decision to resume executions while avoiding any reference to Jesus’s teachings.

Reminds me of my favorite 20^th-century prophet, Rev. Clarence Jordan. He would have read Rev. Lange’s op-ed and considered it evidence that “the Bride of Christ has been unfaithful.”

Lange employed what theologians call eisegesis, an intentional process of scriptural interpretation starting with one’s own bias.

After the flood, Genesis 9 recounts God’s Noahic Covenant. “Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” The rainbow symbolizes the covenant, a reminder of God’s grace.” It reminds Lange of God’s vengeance, as he tortures scripture to provide Trump religious cover to take human life.

Lange disregards Paul’s reasoning (Hebrews 8) that, in Christ, God abandoned Old Testament covenants in favor of the “new covenant” based on God’s grace. Paul quotes God from Jeremiah, “I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.”

To support Trump’s decision to restart executions, the WPN spokesman circumvents God’s grace, shrugging off the Jesus part of the New Testament, with a Trump-serving reading of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

He situationally interprets Romans 13:4 to give divine authority to governments to “execute wrath on him who practices evil.” I say “situationally” because Lange probably didn’t interpret this verse the same when the government was the Obama administration.

Greek scholar David Bentley Hart says the better translation of Paul’s words recognizes the right of authorities to “exact justice” rather than to “execute wrath,” a translation that turns Lange’s opinion on its head.

Christian writer Marcus Borg suggested Paul’s advocacy for subordination to Roman authority may have been tainted by his Roman citizenship just as Lange’s views are tainted by devotion to Trump. Imagine Paul with a “Rome-Love it or Leave” sticker on his donkey’s hind end.

Regardless, Paul’s Letter to the Romans was likely written early in Nero’s Emperorship, before the 64 CE fire that destroyed much of Rome. Back then the Emperor was more tolerant of Christians. However, Nero had to blame someone for the fire. He pointed at Christians and used it as an excuse to dip them in oil and set them afire. Nero dressed Christians in “the hides of beasts” enticing vicious dogs to tear them apart. Hundreds were crucified, others set ablaze to “illuminate the night.”

Paul never meant the words Pastor Lange selected to apply to the post-fire Roman government much less authorities such as the Third Reich, North Korea, or governments like ours, who execute people without guaranteeing the death penalty will be applied only to those who are actually guilty and without regard for race.

A Wyoming Republican legislator, Jared Olsen, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “conservatives don’t trust the government to get capital punishment right.” Why should Jesus followers?

In his zeal to follow Trump, Pastor Lange fails to acknowledge that at least 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent. The exoneration rate is half that number, meaning innocent people are executed. Contrary to Lange’s op-ed, wrongful executions do not “teach the value of human life.” They teach the value of abolishing the death penalty.

Rev. Lange overlooks racial bias in meting out the death penalty. From the decision to arrest and prosecute, through jury selection and verdicts, the skin color of an accused and/or the victim plays an outsized role in deciding whether to kill the defendant.

A “full-Monty” Trump backer might overlook those injustices. A disciple of Christ cannot.