Staff Standpoint

Tell me a bit about what you do here at EWU with United Ministries.

I'm in my 13th year out here as campus pastor for United Ministries, part time. I also pastor Bethany Presbyterian Church in Spokane part time.

How did you get into the ministry?

Well, I first thought about it when I was in Junior High. I just kept learning about life and finally got a job as a youth director right out of college, which really confirmed my call to ministry. I went from there to seminary, then on to pastor in California and then I got a chance to come back up here.

Do you feel like EWU is a spiritually active campus?

In a certain way. I think that there's a lot of mythology around church and state information that really isn't true. You can have spiritual discussions in a state school, that's not the question, but a lot of the spirituality that I see on campus is pretty one-dimensional. That's not to say that it's bad, but it doesn't tend to go very deep or have a lot of maturity, in my opinion. That might piss some people off, but it's true.

There's not a very deep awareness of the big picture, but that's always the tension in theology. Is it kind of a shallow thing or does it have a deeper structure? Even in the biblical text that's wrestled with - do we go to deep structure or do we keep it cute?

What is Holy Grounds?

It meets once a week on Thursday evenings and it's a coffeehouse forum where we bring different ideas to the table. I bring professors, people from the community or somebody who has some expertise and then we talk about it. It's my belief that the ethic of Christianity is the more interesting thing and not just blind adherence.

What does that bumper sticker say? "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it." That, to me, is the anathema of the theological process. I think we need to have forums and discourse; to not be afraid to ask important questions. So, that's what we do here. It's kind of cool, it's a great event. Plus all the coffee you can drink.

What are some of the most common questions students ask you to help them with?

"Why do Christians hate so many people?" That's a huge issue. "Why do they hate gays, why do they hate liberals? Why do Christians hate?"

And what do you tell them?

I tell them that some Christians hate, and some Christians think gays are bad, but clearly not all Christians. In fact, the majority of Christians are not haters. But those are the biggest questions.

Another huge question is trying to understand the deeper structure of the biblical texts because, again, it's been so shallow and childish that it's basically just giving propaganda. Students are smarter than that and they want to ask and understand the deeper structure stuff. So, that's kind of what I try to engage in dialogue about.

What do you say to people who distrust religion as an institution?

The first thing I say is that that I understand what you mean. Quite frankly, religion is guilty of, in my opinion, huge sin in not dealing with the complexities and struggles of the modern world. I remind people that it was a conservative evangelical (you could call him that) in the Jewish community that shot Rabin. It was a radical Buddhist that did the sarin gassing of the Tokyo subway. It's crazy Hindus in Kashmir shooting people and it's Christians basically killing anything that they don't like. They either do it physically or verbally, killing people they don't like.

I don't value any of that and so I don't tend to dialogue with people who want to justify that position because it's not worth my time.

Students are asking really important questions about theology and some of them are Atheists, Agnostics, Pagans. I have no fear or disrespect for them. They're asking good questions. I try to honor them and they honor me and we have good conversations.

What is your best nugget of advice for students who may be struggling to find a spiritual path?

Look for depth and not convenience. If you're being manipulated, that's probably not good theology. If you are being told that one particular way of seeing things is the only way of seeing things, you're being told a lie. I could keep going on that forever, because that's often what happens.

That's been the difficulty in American faith history; that we are so hopelessly childish in how we see out spirituality. I just keep trying to get people to engage it on a more mature level. I think the nation and the world is really yearning for that right now.

We've gone through a dark period of really ridiculous junk and I think the world paradigm is shifting. What I call Hallmark Card theology isn't helping the world anymore. It might make people feel good and they might go, "Awwww," but that's not good theology.

Speaking of Hallmark, Christmas is on its way. It seems like every year it gets earlier with merchandise popping up in the stores. Do you feel like Christmas has become a commodity? If so, why do you think this has happened?

Oh absolutely, because there's money to be made. We live in America and it's all about money. It's interesting to me that most religion has something to do with money and the manipulation of stuff to make money. I mean, go into a Christian bookstore and tell me that it's not about money.

The interesting thing about Christmas is that it wasn't even observed in the Church for centuries. The main holiday of the Christian liturgical year was always Easter. It told the story, the core of what Christianity is about, which is the power of life over death. And especially in a time of oppression, like during the Roman occupation, that was pretty good news to people.

Christmas wasn't even a gleam in anybody's eye in the early part of our own country. If you look at the history, you weren't even allowed to do anything around Christmas unless it was done in the church. Now Christmas has become something else. Americans are whores to money and that's what's killing us - it's all about money.

I saw Christmas stuff in the store in September while I was getting school supplies for an after school program - In early September. I mean, we're proud of the fact that business makes over half its income (or something like that) during Christmas time. Why are we proud of that?

The twelve days of Christmas were the twelve days between Christmas and epiphany. That's really what the twelve days of Christmas is. Like the whole "Partridge in a Pear Tree" song; on day one you gave one gift, on day two you gave two gifts, on day three you gave three gifts, all the way up through the twelve days of Christmas. And it wasn't this orgy of capitalism that it's turned into; it was a thoughtful gifting every day for twelve days. What happened?

When you turn it into a money making event, you instantly lose integrity. Christianity has seen all of its holidays turn into money makers for businesses and that just sickens me.

So what do you do to take it back?

Well, at our church we do alternative gift-giving. I even have elementary, junior high and senior high aged kids involved in this. We give money to programs like Bread for the World or the Heifer Project. The Heifer Project is a faith-based organization that, if you give ten dollars, for instance, they'll give three hens to a village someplace. That has really caught on in my congregation. We also do gift giving to some of the needs in Spokane, like the YWCA battered women's shelter.

My congregation is very intentional about thinking up different ways of approaching gift giving at the holiday as opposed to just turning it into, well, I keep using the phrase because it's so accurate, a capitalist orgy.

Christmas was not designed, nothing in faith should be designed for the sake of profit, and yet in America, everything we do is based on profit. We've turned it into profit. I think that's tragic and we lose our ethic and integrity when we do that. But then again, if your faith is shallow and you don't really get it, then it makes perfect sense.

Anything else to add?

Yeah, I think that, in a way, this has something to do with the election. I hope that America will begin to see itself differently. It is my prayer as a Christian that the age of macho swaggering, videogame fantasy strength is over and that we would begin to engage the world with far more integrity in ways that are going to be more empowering. I hope the election helps people with that.

I've heard the paranoia, by a lot of Christians, that, "Oh no, this man is a Muslim, terrorist, black-supremacist, un-American, Marxist socialist. All of the slime that was put out for this guy - that comes out of a pretty psychotic mind.

My question is this: How do we engage a portion of our country that has literally turned reality into psychotic ranting? Where's the love of Christ in that? Where is hope? Where is grace? Where is community? Where is the holy commonwealth when you're ranting in a psychotic way in the name of Jesus? What's that doing for us or, as Dr. Phil would ask, "So how's that working out?"

So, the Christmas thing, in kind of an interesting way, connects with the election. If it becomes only about our stuff and our image, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably not a good enough reason. In fact, that's probably pretty stupid and shallow. It's disconnected from the depth of our faith, where I think it ought to be.