December 6, 2012
Thursday
For almost 15 years, I have attended a Thursday morning study group composed of women from the Lutheran congregation of which I am a member. It’s called Faith with Friends. We meet from September to late May, and being part of it is so important to me that I miss is only when I am out of town at a writer’s residency (2007 in Wyoming and 2009 in Georgia), when I have some unavoidable interruption of my regular routine, such as jury duty or that time I broke my leg in two places and had to have surgery.
The congregation is led by a married couple, both ordained. Pastor Cathy facilitates Faith with Friends. She plans the lessons, chooses materials, and leads discussion. We have examined the various forms of prayer, the different creeds used throughout the Church’s history, written our spiritual autobiographies, studied Lutheran history, watched films, and read and discussed books. We have prayed together for ourselves and those we love. We’ve had preschoolers play under the table while we met, welcomed newborns, sighed when someone moved away or left the group because she got a full-time job. We’ve buried three faithful attendees.
Today, in honor of the feast day of St. Nicholas, we studied the lore surrounding him. He was born a Greek in the third century of the Common Era, in what is modern-day Turkey. Religious from an early age, he became the Bishop of Myra and participated in the Council of Nicaea, and became a signer of the Nicene Creed. Many stories concerning his good deeds arose, some attaining mythic status. The one most associated with him is his effort to provide dowries for the three daughters of a poor merchant by throwing bags of gold through their window, some of which landed in stockings or shoes that were hung by the chimney, or maybe he threw the bags down the chimney, or something. His transformation into Santa Claus was the topic we tackled this morning.
Cathy showed us a video that appeared originally as the December 11, 2009 episode of The 700 Club, a live news and discussion program that is The Today Show or the Good Morning America of the Christian Broadcasting Network. It should be noted here that the fundamentalist slant of the CBN is decidedly different from the theology preached and practiced at Tree of Life Lutheran Church. Although you will find a range of political and social philosophies among our members, most of us are on the liberal side. And it should be further noted that if you lined us all up in the order in which we place ourselves in that range, I’d be at the far end of the liberal side, perhaps separated by a few degrees even from the next person closer to the center, and no one beyond me.
The video segment we saw today featured William Bennett, the Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan. He’s conservative, generally taking positions that oppose affirmative action and multicultural education, favoring instead a traditional curriculum based on Western culture and school vouchers. In 2009 he had just come out with a book entitled The True Saint Nicholas, and he was on the program to promote it, and to talk about Saint Nicholas.
The conversation we saw between Bennett and the host, Gordon Robertson, was pleasant and informative. It really didn’t tell us much that we were not already familiar with, but it was engaging, bringing out the human personality of the real Nicholas of Myra and grounding us in the historical milieu he inhabited. Eventually, Bennett talked about the battle that erupted in the 11th century between Italian and Turkish factions over control of the bones of St. Nicholas. As Bennett put it, “. . .  I’ll tell you, you find difficulty with Muslims throughout the history of the west. The Baryons [Italians of Bari] went and rescued the bones, because they were afraid they would be destroyed or despoiled by these Muslim marauders.”
On hearing that, I raised my eyebrows. Cathy’s face changed — I think perhaps she’d done only a cursory review of the video, and really, shouldn’t you be able to trust a man who preaches about virtue? The clip was nearly finished (I’ve seen it in full and grabbed the quotation from a printed transcript), and Cathy said, “Well, that’s enough of that,” and we moved on to the next piece, a discussion of how to be a department store Santa Claus.
In recent months I have become aware of a severe anti-Muslim slant among some of my conservative friends, particularly those who posted frequently to Facebook during the U.S. presidential election. It was disheartening to me, raised to believe that all men are brothers, that we must learn to live together in harmony. In the past few days my conservative friends have been promoting a book called The Joy of Hate, by Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld. It’s an attack on “liberal hypocrisies” such as concern for equal rights for gay people or a sensitivity to religious and cultural differences, as it seeks to expose “the idiocy of open-mindedness,” which should be replaced by “smart intolerance.”
I don’t know if anyone else at Faith with Friends was as uncomfortable with Bennett’s denouncing of “Muslim marauders.” For all I know, there are among my Thursday morning companions some who hate and fear Muslims, or others who are not like us. But I have to say, that I was happy that the leader of my group, and my congregation, seemed as troubled as I was.