On Being

Program Particulars
*Times indicated refer to online version of audio

(01:52–04:59) Music
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(01:55) History of the Ecumenical Movement
The word "ecumenism" comes from two Greek words: oikumene, "the inhabited world," and oikos, or "house." The ecumenical movement looks to reconcile the entire house, the whole world, of Christianity. Ecumenists cite various core precedents and imperatives toward unity, including the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon and scriptural passages such as Matthew 24:14, Luke 4:5, and Hebrews 2:5.

The origins of the modern ecumenical movement began with the World Missionary Conference of 1910 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Chaired by the American Methodist layman John R. Mott, the conference included over 1,200 representatives from Protestant denominations around the world — Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches remained absent. Previous conferences had been primarily non-ecumenical and evangelical until this meeting, which led to the founding of several ecumenical projects and agencies: the International Missionary Council in 1921, which united the network of national and regional councils that were formed after 1910; the Faith and Order Movement in Lausanne France in 1927; and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948 (listen to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's opening address to the delegates). The National Council of Churches of the USA was founded in 1950.

The First World War slowed the ecumenical movement but it was revived after World War II. Thrown together in response to Hitler's atrocities, and sometimes sharing prison cells, Catholics and Protestants found that their common faith in Jesus Christ and the sacred text of the Bible transcended the history that divided them. Some of the early leaders of the World Council of Churches had spent the war years smuggling Jews to safety. In the United States, the ecumenical vision played an important role in the civil rights movement and continues with outreach to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and followers of other faiths.

(05:31) Reference to Disciples of Christ
The Disciples of Christ originated in the 19th century with the religious revival movements of the American frontier. This branch of Protestant Christianity acknowledges the right of "dissent in love" from its followers and encourages full ecumenical engagement. A mission of witness and service to humanity is encouraged. A formative text in shaping Disciples thought is The Christian System written by Alexander Campbell in 1835. Like Calvinists, Disciples take seriously the authority of Scripture through its historical events and objective evidence; unlike Calvinists, they reject the notion of mysticism or subjective religious "experience" and miraculous conversion. Disciples reject creeds as a practice of belief and limit authority of the church, and often view theology as divisive because its grounded in opinion rather than rigorous precision of the Bible.

Rev. Albert Pennybacker was the pastor of Heights Christian Church in Shaker Heights, Ohio from 1963 until 1974. He also served as associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches until 1999 and remains active in dealing with issues of social justice and the ecumenical movement.

(06:09) Integration of Shaker Heights
Shaker Heights, Ohio was one of the few suburban cities to successfully integrate its neighborhoods and public school systems. The community actively encouraged multi-ethnic neighborhoods through housing subsidies and social programs that avoided most of the "white flight" and discriminatory blockbusting that occurred in many other U.S. cities. To this day, Shaker Heights runs a housing assistance office that works with potential homeowners to continue neighborhood integration. A 2004 special, "The Reunion," by ABC News explored the impact of the community's integration efforts and its status today.

(09:28–10:25) Music
"I'm Gonna Sit At The Welcome Table" from Sing for Freedom: Civil Rights Movement Songs, performed by Hollis Watkins

(11:55) Division Between Greek Orthodox and Episcopal Church
In 1991, the Greek Orthodox Diocese of North and South America formally suspended conversations with the Episcopal Church due to "recent developments such as the ordination of women, including one who is a practicing lesbian, and a recent article by Bishop Spong which characterized the Apostle Paul as a homosexual." After seven years, the dialogue was reopened.

(12:18) Orthodoxy and St. Vladimir's Seminary
St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary is located in Crestwood, New York and theologically educates and trains clergy and laypeople as Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Church is composed of a number of independently functioning bodies, often divided along historic and ethnic lines, that take communion with one another. The Orthodox tradition is rich in ceremony, doctrines, and creeds. Elaborate rituals and liturgies are designed to involve all of a follower's senses: vivid iconography adorns church wall, incense drifts weightlessly through the vaulted ceilings, full submersion and chrism (often a mixture of oil of olives and balsam) anoints the baptismal child, chants and creeds echo. Listen to Joan Brown Campbell describe an Orthodox ordination and the intricacies of Orthodox religious beliefs and sensibilities in more detail.

(12:38–13:45) Music
"I Have Chosen the Blissful" from Sacred Treasures: Choral Masterworks From Russia, performed by the Bulgarian Radio and Television Mixed Choir

(13:31) National Council of Churches
The National Council of Churches (NCC) is an alliance of 35 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and historic African-American member communions — totaling over 100,000 congregations and 45 million congregants. Neither the Roman Catholic Church (having 65-70 million adherents) nor most Evangelical churches formally belong to the Council, though they participate in numerous ecumenical initiatives and projects. This remains a point of contention among some member denominations such as the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The OCA has recently begun to reexamine retaining membership in the NCC and WCC in order that "ecumenical Christian relations should be sought with conservative Christian bodies."

(15:10) Reference to Jan Love
Janice Love is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of South Carolina who served on the World Council of Churches Central Committee for 13 years.

(16:24) Baptism Ritual
Baptism is the rite of admission into the Christian church that is practiced by all denominations. One Biblical precedent can be found in the gospel of Mark 1:1-11 when John the Baptist began baptizing people and later Jesus:

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Baptism represents many things: washing away of one's sins, dying with Christ, rebirth, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The age at which baptism occurs varies among communities. For example, the Roman Catholic Church considers baptism a sacrament for everyone and the divine rite is usually conferred in infancy. Baptists believe that baptism is only for those who consciously profess their faith in the Gospel — thus rejecting infant baptism. See "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry" for insight into how this sacrament and others can be essentially divisive and still shared by all Christians.

(19:34) Reference to Father Tom Hopko
Fr. Thomas Hopko is the former dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York.

(21:10) The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
The Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church is a historic Black denomination, founded by freed slaves who broke away from secessionist white Methodist Christians. After the Southern and Northern Methodists reunited in the late 20th century, they formally repented to the descendants of those Black Methodists. At its General Conference on May 12, 2000, members of the United Methodist Church adopted a constitutional amendment on racism calling for reconciliation and repentance for past injustices to the black church and called for a commitment to eliminate racism in every aspect of the church's life.

(19:57–21:00) Music
"Prelude and Fugue No 23 in F" from Shostakovich: The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, performed by Keith Jarrett

(21:33) German Theological Scholars
The Speaking of Faith program, "The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," explores this 20th-century German theologian whose life spanned the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany. His resistance of Nazi ideology, while much of the German church succumbed, offers a model of personal morality and conscience in the most troubled and immoral of times.

(22:09) History of Black Theology
Stony the Road We Trod grew out of an extended consultation among African-American biblical scholars, meeting at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota from 1986-1989. The project explored the distinctive use of the Bible as a hallmark of Black American religious and social experience, and asked what critical biblical studies might learn from the African-American experience. In addition to Thomas Hoyt, Jr., other projects participants such as Vincent Wimbush and Cain Hope Felder have continued to make a significant mark on the life of African theology and churches.

Dwight Hopkins of the University of Chicago Divinity School defines "Black theology" as the way in which "God, or the spirit of freedom, works with the oppressed black community for their full humanity." Its more formal beginnings can be traced to a group of black pastors who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times (July 31, 1966) advocating for a theological interpretation of black power. One of the most notable architects of Black theology is James Cone of Union Theological Seminary. Cone was responsible for identifying the sources of Black theology — the historical and religious experience of African Americans, the revelation of God at work in the Black experience, the witness of Scripture, the truth in Jesus Christ, and church tradition. "Its chief task," Cone wrote in his autobiography My Soul Looks Back, "is to help the church to be faithful to the task of preaching and living the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ in the world today."

(26:54) Black Theology and Feminist Theology
The struggle for equal rights for African Americans and women has been compared and contrasted through many different social and political lenses. Rosemary Reuther's essay, "Black Theology vs. Feminist Theology" (originally published in Christianity and Crisis in 1974), explores what she considers to be the two most important expressions of liberation theology to emerge from the American experience in the late 1960s:

A relevant black church must perhaps become far more integrally black if it is to address itself to this situation. It must transform itself to overcome the split between the bourgeois black church and the unchurched black masses. It must become more like the Black Muslims or the Garveyite movements in the sense of focusing on building communal structures of social cooperation by and for blacks within the black community itself. It must take the initiative, in a vast movement of new morale, in transferring resources from white society and building resources from within the black community to transform the "ghetto" from a place of deprivation to a place of positive black communal expression and development.

The symbols that the black church inherited from evangelical Christianity may be too limited for this task. It may have to reach much more toward "soul," toward symbols developed by blacks alienated from the church, and also toward the Caribbean and Africa to find a "blackness" that is not simply antiwhite but can rejoice in itself. Perhaps only Mother Africa can provide some symbols that the uprooted, stolen people cannot derive from the goodness of slavery: symbols for the soul-self, for the goodness of the body-self, for the integration of humankind in nature, the rootedness of peoplehood in the land.

(29:59–33:35) Music
"Another Green World" from Another Green World, performed by Brian Eno

(34:09–36:30) Music
"Moses: Journey" from Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone, performed by Yo-Yo Ma

(34:26) Reading of Hoyt's Letter to President Bush
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said in an address to the nation: "Poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action." Bishop Hoyt responded, telling us that this is an opportunity to address larger issues of poverty in America:

It is commendable for President Bush to apologize for the mistakes made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We welcome his pledge to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We celebrate his promise to address the injustices that were so profoundly exposed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans.

Both his apology and his promises will help us move forward as a nation. Yet, as his sisters and brothers in faith, we feel it is our duty to remind the President that an apology and promises will only go so far. Now, as a nation, we must acknowledge that this crisis has only exposed what lies just beneath the surface of prosperity and progress in this country. In America, we have a past that haunts us on every level of our existence. We now see all too clearly that a person's race and class can often determine whether or not you are left behind in the Super Dome or escorted to safety.

As we look beyond the President's welcome candor, we must now look to our government and to the private sector for a long-term change in behavior that recognizes and corrects the glaring inequities of American society in housing, jobs and wages, health care and education — the list is long and growing. Disaster relief and rescue must go beyond the flooded streets of New Orleans and reach into the desperate lives of the millions in poverty across our land — a disproportionate number of whom are African American.

Today, we stand on the threshold of what is a great opportunity. It is an opportunity to become the America that we have always dreamed of being. It is an opportunity to become the America that Martin Luther King, Jr. so vividly portrayed in his "I Have A Dream" speech more than 40 years ago. It is an opportunity to stop making empty promises, to practice what we preach, to walk what we talk. It is way beyond overdue that America treats all its citizens as full participants in the economic and educational and cultural mainstream. We may have come to America on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now.

In our rush to repair the levees and restore the neighborhoods of the Gulf Coast, let us not continue the injustices — and yes, the sins of omission and commission — of the past. Let us not continue to allow children to be left behind by under-funded school systems and inadequate healthcare. Let us not continue to allow poor people to live in neighborhoods that are environmental hazards. Let us not continue to allow honest, hardworking people to work for less than livable wages.

The Book of Nehemiah (2:18) records that the people of Israel, seeing that Jerusalem was destroyed, said, "Let us rise up and build. Then they set their hands to this good work." As the Bishop of the Fourth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church presiding over Mississippi and Louisiana and as the President of the National Council of Churches USA, I say to you: Let us rise up and build! How we respond as a nation to this crisis can be the beginning of a new era of progress, prosperity and promise for a new America that will be true to its spiritual and ethical values and worthy of its leadership among the nations.

For another perspective on analyzing and redressing poverty in America, listen to the Speaking of Faith program, "Seeing Poverty After Katrina." Here, Dr. David Hilfiker tells the story of how poverty and racial isolation came to be in cities across America and describes his practical experience in inner-city Washington D.C. living with the questions many Americans came to ask in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

(37:40) Kairotic Time
The word kairos comes from the New Testament Greek and is a concept that evokes a moment of grace and opportunity in which God issues a challenge to decisive action. Kairos does not imply chronological time, or kronos, so much as a moment of truth, a period when the mundane reaches to the sacred nature of man. This theology holds that there could be no compromise or reconciliation with evil; apartheid was evil.

During the height of Apartheid in South Africa, the church issued a formal declaration, the Kairos Document, determining that the church must provide "a response that does not give the impression of sitting on the fence but is clearly and unambiguously taking a stand." The document also states that the Kairos is "a dangerous time because, if this opportunity is missed, and allowed to pass by, the loss for the Church, for the Gospel and for all the people of South Africa will be immeasurable." Listen to Charles Villa-Vicencio tell his experiences working on the TRC Commission in "Truth and Reconciliation."

(39:07) Stories from Displacement after Katrina
This American Life produced a compelling hour of radio, "After the Flood" (September 9, 2005). This episode tells personal and surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans who would otherwise go unheard. In the third segment, listen to an 18-year-old African-American girl who lives in the Lafitte Housing projects of New Orleans.

Fox talk show host Bill O'Reilly commented: "The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school. If you don't get educated, if you don't don't develop a skill and force yourself to work hard, you'll most likely be poor. And sooner or later you'll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help. Chances are that help will not be quick in coming." Upon hearing this, she assessed O'Reilly's meaning: "Basically he said, 'If you rich, you live; you poor, you die.' I had no idea that it was a crime to be poor — and the punishment was death." Listen to "After the Flood" or download a transcript (PDF) of the program.

(39:41) "Rain on the Just and Unjust"
Hoyt recites an often-quoted phrase from the gospel of Matthew 5:43-48 (NRSV):

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

(41:57–42:46) Music
"Prelude and Fugue No 23 in F" from Shostakovich: The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, performed by Keith Jarrett

(44:22) The Status of Pell Grants
The November 2005 issue of The Atlantic provides an informative series of articles reporting on the state of higher education in the United States today. Ross Douthat in "Does Meritocracy Work?" [subscription required] reports:

Those disadvantaged students who do attend college are less and less likely to find themselves at four-year schools. Among students who receive Pell Grants—the chief need-based form of federal assistance—the share attending four-year colleges fell from 62 percent in 1974 to 45 percent in 2002; the share attending two-year schools rose from 38 percent to 55 percent.

The advantage to well-off students is particularly pronounced at private colleges and universities. Over the course of the 1990s, for instance, the average private-school grant to students from the top income quartile grew from $1,920 to $3,510, whereas the average grant to students from the lowest income quartile grew from $2,890 to $3,460. And for all the worry of the middle class over rising tuition, increases in grant dollars often outstrip increases in tuition costs for middle- and upper-income students—but not for their poorer peers. In the second half of the 1990s, a study by the Lumina Foundation (a higher-education nonprofit) found, families with incomes below $40,000 received less than seventy cents in grants for every dollar increase in private-college tuition. All other families, including the richest, received more than a dollar in aid for every dollar increase in tuition. …

The federal government, meanwhile, has used tax credits to help parents defray the cost of college—a benefit that offers little to low-income families. Pell Grants have been expanded, but the purchasing power of individual grants hasn't kept pace with rising tuition.

Overall, American financial aid has gradually moved from a grant-based to a loan-based system. In 1980, 41 percent of all financial-aid dollars were in the form of loans; today 59 percent are. In the early 1990s Congress created a now enormous "no-need" loan program; it has been a boon for upper-income students, who can more easily afford to repay debts accrued during college. At the same time, the federal government allowed families to discount home equity when assessing their financial circumstances, making many more students eligible for loans that had previously been reserved for the poorest applicants. The burdens associated with loans may be part of the reason why only 41 percent of low-income students who enter four-year colleges graduate within five years, compared with 66 percent of high-income students.

(45:11–46:24) Music
"Moses: Journey" from Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone, performed by Yo-Yo Ma

(46:44) Reference to Philip Potter
Philip Potter acted as general secretary of the World Council of Churches from 1972 to 1984.

(47:08–47:40) Music
"I See the Light" from Citi Movement, performed by the Wynton Marsalis Septet

(47:14–47:53) Music
"I See the Light" (instrumental) from Citi Movement, performed by the Wynton Marsalis Septet

(49:19) "Heaven Ain't Goin'"
The genre of the Black Spiritual has a rich and fascinating history — replete with hidden meanings and lament. Listen to Joe Carter sing and explain the subtexts of these songs in "The Legacy of the African-American Spiritual."

(49:33–52:34) Music
"I Got Shoes" from I Got Shoes, performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock