How much do you know about the religion of others?

How much do you know about your religion? How about that of others? The Pew Research Center interviewed nearly 11,000 randomly selected Americans, asking 32 questions about the Bible and Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

Questions like these were included. Which religion is associated with yoga? In the Muslim tradition, believers have a religious obligation to make a pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city at least once during their lifetime, if they are able. Which city is that?

In which religious tradition are men generally required to wear a turban in public and may carry a dagger? Which religious groups traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone?

Asked whether Peter, Paul, or Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, only 51% gave the correct answer. Fewer than one person in five identified “truth of suffering” as one of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths.

Among the more troubling results were these two. Asked the numbers of Jews in the United States, many surmised it to be half or more of the population. The correct answer is under 5%. A majority greatly overestimated the size of both the Jewish and the Muslim populations in America, which may explain some of the current fear-based politics.

Only one in four Americans know their own Constitution prohibits a religious test for holding public office, which may explain the anger when a Muslim is elected to public office and takes the oath with a hand on the Quran instead of a Bible.

The score? Jewish participants scored highest, but only knew an average of 18.7 answers to the 32 questions. The big surprise is that second place went not to Protestants or Catholics but to atheists. Those who believe there is no God landed just behind Jews with and average of 17.9/32. Agnostics followed at 17.0/32.

Evangelicals and Mainline Protestants scored 15.5 and 14.6 respectively followed by Catholics (14.0) and Mormons (13.9). Interestingly, not a single group received what would be considered a passing grade in any elementary school classroom.  

Pew researchers explored whether childhood Sunday school attendance made a difference. It made it worse. Those who attended Sunday school for seven-plus years as a child were able to answer only 9.0 of the 32 questions. Even those who attended private religious schools scored as poorly, i.e. 9.4.

The relatively higher scores among non-believers leads us to ask where and when did they learn more about religion than those who claim one? Did they become non-believers because of what they learned or because of how it was taught?

Measure your knowledge against these results? Take Pew’s shorter, 15-question quiz. Compare your knowledge with the other 10,971 randomly sampled adults. Google the Pew report, “What Americans Know About Religion."

The question left hanging is why people of faith know so little about their own beliefs and those of others. The results must be seen as a failure of faith communities to teach. Regardless, the results provide a roadmap to what does make a difference in religious knowledge, particularly in times where so many are disdainful, fearful, or dismissive of another’s religious beliefs.

The biggest difference maker? Knowing people of other faiths. The more friends that respondents have of faiths other than their own, the higher the score. It’s also true of education. Higher educational attainment is associated with a greater knowledge of faith matters, even in a society where religion is not generally taught in public schools.

But, here’s the kicker. “Those who are most knowledgeable about a religion (and are not members of that religion) tend to rate the religion’s adherents most favorably.” Higher scores “tend to be associated with warmer evaluations of most religious groups.” To know them is to like them.

So, it’s not Sunday school and sermons. They have little impact. Instead, it’s secular education and personal relationships. Save the world by moving beyond the pews and into a classroom. Get to know a Muslim, a Jew, even a Sikh and bring peace on earth, goodwill among all people.

Who hires a pilot to intentionally crash the plane?

When America’s democracy goes down in flames like a Boeing Max 8, future historians will investigate the disaster. They’ll dig through the rubble of Trump’s presidency, seeking to learn how a once great nation crashed to earth so soon after a new pilot took the controls.

This aircraft had many pilots over the years, some better than others. There were smooth flights and scary ones. Some of the pilots flew high. Others were barely able to pull the plane out of a steep dive. One was so bad his pilot’s license was revoked.

Until now, this Great American airline never hired a pilot whose intent it was to crash the plane and do as much damage as possible on the ground. That reality made it all the more important that there be courageous co-pilots on board.  

Among the ruins, investigators will eventually find what is known as the “Black Box.” These devices hold significant clues as to why a crash occurred. One poignant irony about “black boxes” is that they’re really not black at all. They’re orange. A tribute to irony.

These orange boxes were added to passenger planes to assist in uncovering the causes of crashes because most were caused by pilot error. Listening to cockpit conversations preceding a crash offered important clues when investigators were trying to understand why the tragedy occurred.

On that orange box, at the scene of the crash, investigators will discover the voices of co-pilots like Mike Enzi, John Barrasso, and Liz Cheney. They were in the cabin urging Trump on.

They didn’t crash the plane. Trump did. Most passengers didn’t want him to be the pilot. However, there was an anachronistic rule weighting votes in favor of folks flying first class. They didn’t care whether he knew how to pilot the plane. They liked him because he promised to take them where they wanted to go, the rest of the passengers be damned.

They rationalized that if there was a problem, the co-pilots would step up. Copilots Enzi, Barrasso and Cheney, among others, could tell from the start that something was wrong. Still, they didn’t open their mouths except to blame others who were nowhere near the controls.

As soon as the plane began taxiing down the runway, it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see, Trump had no idea how to fly the plane. As the aircraft picked up speed, everyone could see it was rudderless. There was never any hope the jet could stay on a straight, narrow, honest path.

Once in the air, the plane didn’t gain much altitude as it continued flying dangerously close to the tree tops, swerving first to the right and then farther to the right. Frightened passengers screamed while the pilot Tweeted reassurances as the aircraft suddenly plunged hundreds of feet. Air traffic controllers watched helplessly, issuing grim reports, all dismissed by the pilot as “fake news.”

Cheney, Enzi, and Barrasso tightened their seatbelts low around their laps, smiled villainously, and told us to settle in for the ride. They knew but didn’t warn us of the turbulence ahead.

Unlike the pilot of the Malaysian Airliner who apparently crashed his airplane intentionally some place between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur in March of 2014, Trump didn’t lock anyone out of the cockpit before deliberately crashing the plane. He wanted everyone to watch it happen.

Neither Barrasso nor Enzi knew much about flying a plane. They read Mitch McConnell’s best seller, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Crashing a Democracy.” John and Mike were satisfied to be hitchhikers and went along for the ride.

Liz Cheney knew what was going on in that cockpit. After all, her father was the greatest crash pilot in history. Dick Cheney crashed our democracy into Iraq to atone for having ignored warnings that Al Qaeda planned to crash airplanes into the Twin Towers. A good father might explain to his daughter how tough it is on one’s soul to know you could have prevented a catastrophe but didn’t.

Sunday's sermon at Highlands re: White Privilege

“The enormous race complications with which God seems about to punish this nation must increasingly claim our sober attention, study and thought.”

I found that in a 1903 book written in the aftermath of the failed Reconstruction period following the Civil War and in the early days of Jim Crow. The book, “The Souls of Black People” was written by W.E.B. Dubois. You should read it to learn about what Dubois called “the two-ness” of black people, QUOTE an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings in one dark body.”

116 years have passed since Dubois wrote those words. This nation still punishes itself with enormous race complications because we never gave the problem “our sober attention, study and thought.”

The cover of your bulletin is from the PCUSA Confession of 1967, which along with the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a few other writings, form the Constitutional documents of the Presbyterian Church called The Book of Confessions.  

People are often misled by the word “confession.” Confession is associated with admission of wrongdoing. Criminals “confess” they committed a crime. Right?

In Christian tradition, however, confession means to take a stand for what you believe. Confessions are statements of what Presbyterians believe now and what we believed at other times and in other circumstances of history.

I went to a Methodist seminary and was ordained in the Christian Church (DOC). These Confessional statements were not a part of my seminary studies. But, the more I learn about Presbyterians though, the more I think I’d like to become one.

The Confession of 1967 is the only specifically American confession in the Book of Confessions, adopted in large part because of the turbulence of the 60’s, including the “come-to-Jesus” days of the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism and environmentalism, and the divisive war in Vietnam. 

Those times challenged all faiths to revisit what they stood for. The 2^nd Vatican Council was reformulating Roman Catholic thought and practice, while Presbyterians were developing the Confession of 1967, its first new statement of faith in three centuries.

The Confession of 1967 noted God's reconciling work in Jesus Christ, that the church's mission of reconciliation is the heart of the gospel in any age, but, as its drafters wrote, the 60s generation stood in “peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.” Half a century later, it is clear that our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.

The Confession continues, “In Jesus of Nazareth true humanity was realized for all.” Were those not the words troubled Christians needed to hear as their country and their world unraveled in 1967? Are those not the words troubled Christians need to hear as our country and our world unravels in 2019?

Luke tells us Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. There is no “region between Samaria and Galilee,” just a border line visible only on a map. So, Jesus is not talking geography. He’s talking theology. He’s somewhere between two cultures; the Jews and the Samarians.

Jesus stands between people who view one another with suspicion, where the tension between ethnic and religious differences is palpable. This story is not about gratitude; it’s about attitude.

As he entered a village, 10 lepers approach him, keeping their distance as good lepers should. They holler, “Jesus, have mercy on us!” Jesus looks to where the voices are coming from, saw them, and said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” As they went, they were made clean. 

Jesus told them to do what they should do under Levitical law, go to the priest, show him you are clean; if you are, the priest will give you a clean bill of health and you will be free to re-join the community. One saw that he was healed, turned back, praised God, prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. We are told he was a Samaritan, the implication is that the other 9 were not, that they, like Jesus, are Jews.

Jesus asked, “Wait. Weren’t there 10 of you? Where are the others? None of them returned to praise God except this foreigner, who most people in my religious and social circles loathe?”

It’s easy to preach this story to be about gratitude and ingratitude and it is often preached that way. But, keep in mind the words of The Confession of 1967. “The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ.” The key word being “reconciliation.” We witness in the story of the lepers Jesus encounters in that space between two cultures as God’s work of reconciliation.

Tomorrow is Columbus Day, a holiday celebrating that day more than 500 years ago when Columbus came to the Americas. The arrival of Columbus and the Europeans who followed him was a calamity of catastrophic proportions. Over time, the population was decimated through war, disease, enslavement, forced displacement and outright murder.

White European colonizers had Christian cover, something called the “Discovery Doctrine,” the ruthless notion that land they “discovered” belonged to them, regardless that it was occupied by Native peoples who were stripped of their ancestral lands and cultural heritage through forced assimilation in brutal Christian missions and government-run boarding schools, injustices that are not ancient history but lasted well into the 20th century.

American Indians were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924 and were not given the right to vote until 1948. They were not granted religious freedom or the right to determine the welfare of children in their communities until 1978. The effects of colonization are clear today.

2019, is also the 400^th anniversary of the day the first African slaves arrived in what would become the United States. Both events happened a long time ago and yet the memory and the legacy of both events continue to plague us, as the Bible would say, to this very day.

For centuries, blacks and Native Americans were treated as lepers were treated in the time of Christ. Today, some white folks have finally figured it out. We’re the ones with leprosy. Our white privilege permits us to ignore the spots on our own skin generation upon generation.

Remember when Thomas doubted and Jesus said, “Look at my wounds”? If you doubt white privilege exists, just look at the wounds it’s left on the bodies and minds of people of color. Those wounds are evident in every aspect of life in America from criminal justice and child welfare to medical care, housing, employment, wealth distribution.

I encourage you to read the NY Times special edition called “The 1619 Project.” It will open your eyes to the extent to which the 250 years of slavery, from the day the first slaves arrived until the day Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, contaminated everything about America from its politics to it economics, its social structure, religion, and what passes for Christianity today.

I want you to hear this. The European Christians who came to the New World reconstructed Jesus into something Matthew, Mark, Luke and John could not recognize. From the day they arrived, they set out to destroy Native peoples and their culture and forced Africans into slavery and to do those things demanded they fundamentally change the nature of the God they worshipped and the Bible they read.

The atrocities of the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s redefined Christianity as they defined America and continue to define us today because we fear our white privilege is at risk if we allow Christianity to be defined by God’s work of reconciliation in Christ.

As the church needed a Confession of 1967, we need a Confession of 2019. Our schools failed to educate Americans about the atrocities perpetrated against people of color from the day Europeans Christians first came to the New World to this very day. Now, it’s up the church.

I invite, indeed, I implore you. Read a book or two about the slave experience, about Reconstruction and Jim Crow, about the Civil Rights struggle. Read “The 1619 Project” in the NY Times. Read about white privilege. If you have Netflix, watch Chelsea Handler’s documentary entitled “Hello Privilege. It’s me, Chelsea” and “Living Undocumented.”  

ON Sunday November 3, we are going to watch the documentary “White Savior: Racism in the American Church.” It’s the basis for a new Confession.

God didn’t build a border around the US so that we could protect our privilege. Enslavement of people of color and the genocide perpetrated on Indigenous Peoples is not ancient history. It is continuing history. So, what do we do? 

Here’s the ask. Ready? I’m going to ask this congregation to consider a bold move.

I’m asking you to spend the next few months praying about racism and white privilege, giving it what WEB Dubois called, “our sober attention, study and thought.” and then I am going to ask you to return the stolen land on which this church was built to its original owners.

There’s a story in 1^st Kings about Naboth’s vineyard and a king who killed Naboth so he could have the peasant’s vineyard, which the king coveted. The king was confronted afterward by a Hebrew prophet who said to him you cannot murder and reap the rewards of having done so.  

We are going to have that conversation in order that we might discern God’s will and on Martin Luther King’s birthday next January, we are going to take a congregational vote on whether we should do it. And if we determine it is God’s will, we will set out to encourage other Presbyterians and other Jesus followers to do the same thing.

And we are going to face how we benefit from the worst of our history and have a conversation about how we need to cleanse ourselves of it as much as those 10 lepers needed to be cleansed. 

Like that 10^th leper, we’ll find our way back to Christ where we can genuinely and in deep gratitude witness to God’s reconciliation. You see, it’s pretty hard to do that honestly while standing on stolen land and clinging to our white privilege. AMEN