One of things that surprised me is how hard it is to spend $3 Trillion. I pooped out at $2,999,836,227,804.90. That last Trillion was hard to get through!

How would you spend 3 Trillion Dollars? Universal Health Care? Fund Amtrak? Fight AIDS? Buy more bags of Gummi Bears than you could ever hope to eat in a lifetime?

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

I listened to media coverage yesterday afternoon and I wonder whether we have in some sense neutered Brother Martin by canonizing him into the hallowed halls of the American metanarrative. He was radical. He was divisive. He was outspoken. In light of the Jeremiah Wright flap, I had to laugh when NPR mentioned that Martin was working on a sermon titled “Why America May Go to Hell” at the time of his assassination. Yet, when I often hear Martin’s name invoked, he sounds so inoffensive. As if the issues he dealt with are safely in the past.

For me, the Civil Rights Movement embodies the paradox of the Church’s response to social justice. On the one hand, the Movement embodies the potential of the Church to struggle to bring forth the Kingdom of God and Sermon on the Mount. Yet those on the other side who supported Jim Crow and oppression were considered “good Christians.”

I care deeply about the Church and it pains me when we fall short of the Kingdom. I’ve not been to the mountaintop, but I dream of it.

This was a quick conversation in passing, so I didn’t really have my wits about me to respond. These are both caring, intelligent people who care deeply about social justice issues. Yet, for some reason, they don’t consider queers a persecuted group. I realize that I also don’t know yet enough about the history of this issue to be really comfortable about a response. However, after more reflection and conversation, I do have a couple of responses / observations –

• I don’t think that my colleague’s response is really about “trivializing racism.” It’s about not defining the queer experience as a social justice issue. As soon as LGBT is defined as a social justice issue, then the Mennonite Church is on the wrong side of the issue. As long as we can keep this just about Scripture and not how Scripture has been used to persecute or block access to institutions, then the Mennonites can have it both ways — we can advocate for social justice and keep the gays out.
• As I was preparing this post, I glanced at Willard Swartley’s chapter of “cultural analysis” (his term, not mine) in Homosexuality: Biblical Interpretation and Moral Discernment . One of the things that bothered me about the chapter is that he imposes this narrative on queer experience that has little to do with the little I know. Swartley basically argues that homosexuality is a result of the 1960’s sexual revolution and a culture of individualism, urban dynamics and materialistic values. He mentions Woodstock as the embodiment of the sexual revolution, but no mention of Stonewall or ACT UP. I think my colleagues and much of the Church buy into the same type of narrative. How do I respond to this?
• Is white privilege the only privilege we are allowed to talk about? What about sexism or the power imbalances between the Western churches and the churches of the Global South? Or do these conversations also “trivialize racism?”
• What is the level of oppression a group needs to receive before we take it seriously?
• As I previously stated, I don’t know enough about the history of queer experience to really respond to the claim that gays haven’t really suffered, but have only had their freedoms limited. Can anyone provide some resources, particularly about the American situation pre-1960?

My reservations with the book are not so much what Mark Gornik writes, but what he didn’t write about. Gornik describes three historical periods of development for inner city neighborhoods — the Segregated Inner City, the Post-Industrial Inner City and the Global Inner City. However, I think we may have entered a fourth stage, the Gentrified Inner City.

To Live in Peace was published in 2002, just as the so-called “Baltimore Renaissance” came into full swing. Until the crash of the housing market, some of Baltimore’s inner city communities were in the midst of rapid gentrification and redevelopment — Inner Harbor, Pig Town, Fells Point, Patterson Park, Dundalk and Canton all experienced a demographic shift as the yuppies moved in and property values rose. I live in a tiny row house in Fells Point, a traditionally blue-collar neighborhood now transformed into a tourist attraction with boutiques and condos. My landlord purchased the property for about $50,000 in the mid-80’s. Last time I looked at the tax records, the property was valued over $300,000. The vast amount of development in Baltimore City over the past decade has not been in the realm of affordable and middle-class housing, but luxury condos, hotels, a new conference center and expensive office space. The urban wasteland around Johns Hopkins University Hospital is being cleared away to make room for hospital expansion and a new biology research park.

The problem with all this growth is that the poor are being driven out of the city and (ironically) into the suburbs. I am concerned that we are facing a future of revitalized urban centers surrounded by poor suburban communities. In some ways, this is worse than the current situation — the car-centric nature of the suburbs may add additional burdens to the poor. However, Gornik doesn’t address this problem, in To Live in Peace, the revitalized neighborhood does not lead to additional displacement.

So my question is — are churches involved in urban ministry and revitalization ultimately a solution or part of the problem? Are we victims of our own success? A neighborhood that improves due to revitalization becomes more attractive to private developers. These developers begin to build not affordable housing, but luxury housing that drives up property values. First the neighborhood becomes unaffordable for lower-class renters and then the higher taxes drive out the property owners.

As far as I can tell, Sandtown has not experienced this yet. As part of the “Outer Harbor,” it’s too far from the water to attract the yuppies, but I wonder that if the housing market had not collapsed, whether it would be a matter of time before rising property values displaced the community.

Am I correct or wrong about this? What can we do to bring stability to a revitalized neighborhood?

So recently YAR has had introductions from the The Reluctant Christian and The Impossible Anabaptist. So in the spirit of things, allow me to introduce myself as The Unexpected Pastor (To Be). I say “unexpected” because I never expected that I eventually would work on my MDiv at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. I never expected that I would want to be pastor. And in the darkest days of my disbelief and disorientation, I never thought I would want to be a Christian. However, since I graduated from Goshen College six years ago, I’ve had these quiet tugs pull me into this direction. Is this God? Is this insanity? Is this proof that God has a sense of humor?

I live with my wife Maegan and the expected Baby Yoder in Baltimore. We attend North Baltimore Mennonite Church, which currently is experiencing a lot of change since our pastor retired at the end of December. I feel change is a good thing — we needed to shake up status quo. There are good people in this community, but there are a lot of problems and divisions as well. Like a lot of urban Mennonite churches, there is broad theological/political diversity in the congregation and we have to somehow find a way to get along together.

What else? I grew up in Berlin, Germany and Evanston, IL. I am an alum of Reba Place Church and was there from 1988 to 1995. Reba’s has had a significant impact on me and what I feel churches should strive for. We attended Reba’s 50th Anniversary last summer and I it felt good to reconnect with Reba’s vision.

I can be ornery and contrary. One of the things that I struggle with at EMS are the subtle pressures to conform to particular views on faith and the broader Christian church. I find that the seminary tends to underplay some of the “yucky” parts of Christian history — historical developments in faith movements and Church politics are taken on as face value. There is little attempt to problematize the checkered Christian legacy.

For example, my prof in my missions class, acknowledges the role that missions played in Western Imperialism, but I am not sure how it informs the material we are working through.

I find that the basic assumption at seminary is that the Church is “good” and the Bible is “good.” While I believe that aspects of the Church and Bible are “good,” they are also complicated and contradictory. The Church has hurt and abused; the Bible is not a perfect text. We need to find ways to acknowledge the bad or destructive aspects of both and hold them in tension with the “good.” I am concerned about power dynamics and hope that my ministry can help serve as a corrective to historical abuses of religious power.

Finally, according to my Meyers-Briggs personality test, I have a “fascination with the profane.” You’ve been warned.

I look forward to the future discussions.