Friendship With Job
Over the past 27 years my employment has been on the fringe of the academy. This has given me a ringside seat to hear scores of lectures and talks on a variety of subjects. Most memorable include John Stott in the lounge of an inner-city YMCA in Chicago in the winter of 1979 as I recall; in the fall of '82, Os Guinness in an oak-paneled room at the University of Chicago with a nimble-minded 22-year-old John Stackhouse in the back corner asking all the hard questions; Elie Wiesel at the University of MA sometime in the early 1980s (I still kick myself for not going to hear Mother Teresa during this time); John Lukacs in the fall of '99 addressing the history department at UBC on Hitler; Jean Bethke Elshtain in 2001 in Denver at the American Academy of Religion; Richard John Neuhaus at Robson Square here in Vancouver in the fall of 2000; and Desmond Tutu at UBC in the spring of '04 when he completely stole the show on a platform that included the Dali Lama.
Here at Regent I’ve also heard some outstanding lectures. Most memorable was Tom Wright one summer evening in '93 when he spoke in a jam-packed Regent chapel on the topic of “Who Was Jesus?” Others include Neil Postman on modernity in the winter of 2000; Ralph C. Wood on Tolkien in the summer of '03; Steve Stockman on Bono and U2 in the summer of '05; and just last month Alan Jacobs on C.S. Lewis.
When I think back I can’t remember much of what was said. Rather, I remember the speaker and the electric atmosphere of the audience. (I am also reminded that in deciding to be a bookseller rather than an academic I made a good choice. In a public forum I have a hard enough time trying to spit out a question let alone trying to give a lecture.)
There is one particular talk, which I haven’t mentioned, of which I do remember something of what was said. I think it was in the winter of '79, in a cold and dark church basement on LaSalle St. in Chicago. The speaker was Marjorie Branch, the principal of an all black, inner-city Chicago school. At some point in the talk Marjorie said something like this:
The small audience was stunned. I’m sure some of us almost wet our pants. Here we were, Sojourner/Other Side types, mostly white male, young radical seminarians, who had left white suburbia to learn to minister in the inner-city. Now we were being told that what we left behind was what was needed for poor black kids. One of us, a guy by the name of Roy from Minneapolis who ended up going to medical school, spluttered some kind of a protest but for the most part we said nothing. You see, Marjorie was a Rosa Parks of the Chicago evangelical community. She and her brother had forced the issue of white racism to a head in the early 60s at Moody Church, where they were the first blacks to be received into membership at that historic evangelical establishment. What could we say?
(I am reminded of another incident during the Chicago winter of '79, the year of the Blizzard of '79. One crisp morning I came out of my apartment to find my little Honda at the top of a giant snow mound. I was stunned by the sight, as were all who saw it, including the tow truck driver who refused, for liability reasons, to pull it down. I was at a loss as to how it got up there until I saw the note on my windshield that I still possess. It said,
Big Al thought he owned a parking spot on the street in front of the apartment. I called the police, and the officer who came shook his head and, not knowing what to do, said to me, “Well if I were you I would smash his window, toss a flare in and torch his truck." I protested that he might come after me with a baseball bat, and to that he said, “Well, wait until you move out of town.” Sounds like a Prairie Home Companion story but it really did happen!)
In my five years in Chicago I learned much from the radical evangelical (and sometimes not-so-evangelical) movement. I particularly respect those who have stayed in the city for the long haul to work with the poor. Most are not known outside of their places of ministry. Jim Wallis and Ron Sider, inner-city Christians who are known, are genuine Christian statesmen who I deeply respect for their integrity and commitment. As I was reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, it was the writing of Sider and Wallis that I turned to see what Christians were saying about globalization. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, now in its 5th edition, has been enormously influential. Growing up in Ontario it was Sider’s book that most opened my eyes to see the poverty that existed in other parts of the world. At the end of the book Sider has a very powerful prayer. He writes:
These are soul-penetrating words. And yet when Sider and Wallis leave aside critique and move to what needs to be done I find their writings, and radical Christian writings in general, less than satisfying. Sider in particular is now more accepting of global free markets but there is still an unreality that I sense in Rich Christians. How exactly would life expectancy in Somalia, where currently 20% of children die before the age of 5, be extended to 70 years? I can’t imagine it without massive changes in infrastructure which, beyond good government, would require huge amounts of concrete, hydrocarbons, asphalt roads, electricity, cell-phone networks, medical labs and equipment, and everything that full-scale modernity requires. Sure, there can be local adaptations and small-scale enterprise funded by micro-loans, but there is no significant bypassing of modernity in order to get to extended life expectancies and a generally improved quality of life for peoples that are mired in extreme poverty.
Differences among Christians concerning this subject are illustrated in Globalization and the Good, edited by Peter Heslam (Eerdmans, 2004). Hands-on business practitioners such as Shell’s Clive Mather and economist Brian Griffiths are side-by-side with Jim Wallis and Cambridge theologian Timothy Gorringe. While all espouse a Christian witness in the world, Wallis and Gorringe put the accent on a prophetic witness which is less than satisfying when it comes to the question of what steps need to be taken in order to end extreme poverty in a world of 6 billion people. The London School of Economics social thinker, Bernice Martin, levels trenchant criticism on Gorringe when, in a review of another of his works, she writes:
Tough words on a subject where there are no easy answers and where Christians will continue to disagree with each other vigorously.
This year under the Christmas tree was a package with my name on it, and in it was a copy of The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, a book my son says every household should have a copy of. I enjoyed (not the right word) reading it and will try to write about it soon alongside some comments about Bono being named a “Person of the Year.” I do write this all as one who is conscious of the fact that writing about global poverty automatically makes one fall into the category of being “one of Job’s friends.”
Nonetheless . . . whatever one's perspective, the words from a song on the recent U2 How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, has something to say to us all:
"Yahweh"
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean…
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-U2
Bill Reimer
January 2, 2006
bookblog@regent-college.edu
By the way, a Google search tells me that Marjorie Branch is still watching out for “her kids” as at least until recently she was the Chicago representative of the nine member Illinois State Board of Education. Also, Regent has recordings of some of the lectures I mentioned: Wright RG2265J, Neuhaus RG3042, Lukas RGCD2043A, RGCD3309J, Stockman RGCD3509E, Jacobs RGCD3534E. That’s global capitalism for you!
www.regentbookstore.com
Here at Regent I’ve also heard some outstanding lectures. Most memorable was Tom Wright one summer evening in '93 when he spoke in a jam-packed Regent chapel on the topic of “Who Was Jesus?” Others include Neil Postman on modernity in the winter of 2000; Ralph C. Wood on Tolkien in the summer of '03; Steve Stockman on Bono and U2 in the summer of '05; and just last month Alan Jacobs on C.S. Lewis.
When I think back I can’t remember much of what was said. Rather, I remember the speaker and the electric atmosphere of the audience. (I am also reminded that in deciding to be a bookseller rather than an academic I made a good choice. In a public forum I have a hard enough time trying to spit out a question let alone trying to give a lecture.)
There is one particular talk, which I haven’t mentioned, of which I do remember something of what was said. I think it was in the winter of '79, in a cold and dark church basement on LaSalle St. in Chicago. The speaker was Marjorie Branch, the principal of an all black, inner-city Chicago school. At some point in the talk Marjorie said something like this:
Now I want middle-class white values for my kids. This means good schools, good neighborhoods, police protection, good parks, and two-parent families.
The small audience was stunned. I’m sure some of us almost wet our pants. Here we were, Sojourner/Other Side types, mostly white male, young radical seminarians, who had left white suburbia to learn to minister in the inner-city. Now we were being told that what we left behind was what was needed for poor black kids. One of us, a guy by the name of Roy from Minneapolis who ended up going to medical school, spluttered some kind of a protest but for the most part we said nothing. You see, Marjorie was a Rosa Parks of the Chicago evangelical community. She and her brother had forced the issue of white racism to a head in the early 60s at Moody Church, where they were the first blacks to be received into membership at that historic evangelical establishment. What could we say?
(I am reminded of another incident during the Chicago winter of '79, the year of the Blizzard of '79. One crisp morning I came out of my apartment to find my little Honda at the top of a giant snow mound. I was stunned by the sight, as were all who saw it, including the tow truck driver who refused, for liability reasons, to pull it down. I was at a loss as to how it got up there until I saw the note on my windshield that I still possess. It said,
Next time I put you in lake.
[signed] Big Al
p.s. Me and my 4x4
Big Al thought he owned a parking spot on the street in front of the apartment. I called the police, and the officer who came shook his head and, not knowing what to do, said to me, “Well if I were you I would smash his window, toss a flare in and torch his truck." I protested that he might come after me with a baseball bat, and to that he said, “Well, wait until you move out of town.” Sounds like a Prairie Home Companion story but it really did happen!)
In my five years in Chicago I learned much from the radical evangelical (and sometimes not-so-evangelical) movement. I particularly respect those who have stayed in the city for the long haul to work with the poor. Most are not known outside of their places of ministry. Jim Wallis and Ron Sider, inner-city Christians who are known, are genuine Christian statesmen who I deeply respect for their integrity and commitment. As I was reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, it was the writing of Sider and Wallis that I turned to see what Christians were saying about globalization. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, now in its 5th edition, has been enormously influential. Growing up in Ontario it was Sider’s book that most opened my eyes to see the poverty that existed in other parts of the world. At the end of the book Sider has a very powerful prayer. He writes:
If you want to be a member of God’s generous minority, I invite you to do one simple thing each day. It will only take a minute, but it might change your life. Daily, stop, for a moment, look into the face of Jesus Christ, and whisper softly, “Lord Jesus, teach my heart to share your love for the poor."
These are soul-penetrating words. And yet when Sider and Wallis leave aside critique and move to what needs to be done I find their writings, and radical Christian writings in general, less than satisfying. Sider in particular is now more accepting of global free markets but there is still an unreality that I sense in Rich Christians. How exactly would life expectancy in Somalia, where currently 20% of children die before the age of 5, be extended to 70 years? I can’t imagine it without massive changes in infrastructure which, beyond good government, would require huge amounts of concrete, hydrocarbons, asphalt roads, electricity, cell-phone networks, medical labs and equipment, and everything that full-scale modernity requires. Sure, there can be local adaptations and small-scale enterprise funded by micro-loans, but there is no significant bypassing of modernity in order to get to extended life expectancies and a generally improved quality of life for peoples that are mired in extreme poverty.
Differences among Christians concerning this subject are illustrated in Globalization and the Good, edited by Peter Heslam (Eerdmans, 2004). Hands-on business practitioners such as Shell’s Clive Mather and economist Brian Griffiths are side-by-side with Jim Wallis and Cambridge theologian Timothy Gorringe. While all espouse a Christian witness in the world, Wallis and Gorringe put the accent on a prophetic witness which is less than satisfying when it comes to the question of what steps need to be taken in order to end extreme poverty in a world of 6 billion people. The London School of Economics social thinker, Bernice Martin, levels trenchant criticism on Gorringe when, in a review of another of his works, she writes:
There is little by way of specific programme or policy beyond reference to “protest” and the construction of “concrete utopias or “counterhegemonies” alternative to the “global dominance of the market.” There is certainly no assessment of the eclipse of liberation theology or of the reason why the “poor” of the South themselves seem to prefer the Pentecostal option. But the empirical world impinges little upon the text; apart from a brief excursus on the gross facts of inequality, the argument stays at the level of theoretical abstraction.
Times Literary Supplement, July 15, 2005, p. 26
Tough words on a subject where there are no easy answers and where Christians will continue to disagree with each other vigorously.
This year under the Christmas tree was a package with my name on it, and in it was a copy of The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, a book my son says every household should have a copy of. I enjoyed (not the right word) reading it and will try to write about it soon alongside some comments about Bono being named a “Person of the Year.” I do write this all as one who is conscious of the fact that writing about global poverty automatically makes one fall into the category of being “one of Job’s friends.”
Nonetheless . . . whatever one's perspective, the words from a song on the recent U2 How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, has something to say to us all:
"Yahweh"
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean…
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
-U2
Bill Reimer
January 2, 2006
bookblog@regent-college.edu
By the way, a Google search tells me that Marjorie Branch is still watching out for “her kids” as at least until recently she was the Chicago representative of the nine member Illinois State Board of Education. Also, Regent has recordings of some of the lectures I mentioned: Wright RG2265J, Neuhaus RG3042, Lukas RGCD2043A, RGCD3309J, Stockman RGCD3509E, Jacobs RGCD3534E. That’s global capitalism for you!
www.regentbookstore.com
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