in general terms the idea of divine grace can mean the entire movement of God toward the world. that is, christian theology says that God has declared himself for the world, for its continuation. God desires the world to flourish. God has good-will toward the world.

but, what does this mean in a world of religious fundamentalists and atom bombs and freeze dried foods and nano technology and islamic terrorists and pedophile priests and on and on?

bonhoeffer says that God has allowed himself to be pushed out of the modern world, but i wonder. actually, it seems that God, or at least the word "God" is the hot topic and the coinage of the realm today. someone has wisely said that, while 20th century violence was secular (nazism, fascism, communism), the 21st century will be the time of religious violence. it would appear to be so.

but, in a way this makes bonhoeffer's statement even more poignant because it’s the old view of God that has been lost, this view of a benevolent God that actually has good-will toward the world. it is this view that has been pushed aside & in its place we have thor, the god of war.

much is lost here, not the least of which is the view of God that offers the good news that God's concern for the world was so great, that he became part of that world in the christ.

those who hold a supreme sovereignist theology would have us believe that God controls the world without the inflection of the human voice. this is nonsense. humans are responsible for this mess we are in not God. humans have given up on humanity, not God. humans have lost trust and hope and a willingness to listen to the point of view of another, not God. humans have given up on the God of good-will, and in his place we rely on politics and money and possessions and elite power. smoke and mirrors.

said another way, we are free to make choices that have good-will toward the world, or we can destroy the whole thing. we are free and we are responsible. this is God's greatest gift of grace to us.

what must be remembered, however, is that, while we are free to make choices, choices that shape the world, God is free as well. God is free to allow himself to be pushed out of the world (and out of our lives) for which he has good-will. we can have it either way.

Tags: grace

this one's for fun...

Tags: music

Tags: video, music

a couple links bumped into each other this week that need comment. first, this friday bill maher's satire film, religulous, hits theaters, and it is sure to be a "borat" type success. i've commented on the bill maher and the film before, but we should be ready for the onslaught of derision. and, from the clips i've seen as previews, he picked the most ridiculous examples of wacky-religion to showcase.

second, robert parham of ethicsdaily.com wrote an editorial on the new atheists (go here), tying the rise of atheism with the crack-up of fundamentalism. one statement was especially to the point:

"Fundamentalists are seen as the God-believers who soil the public square. They are symbols of intolerance and violence. They are intolerant of those inside and outside their faith traditions, those who prioritize a competing set of values. They reject those who see gradations of gray in what should be a world of absolutes—black and white, light and darkness. Diversity and ambiguity are not virtues for fundamentalists."

i weary of trying to explain to questioners why, "we're not like that." but all such explanations are really to no avail. and i guess, by now most of us are used to being painted by the same broad brush.

the genuine response must be to act. that is, to offer threadbare theology in the face to such withering criticism will do nothing but further our demise. said another way, to argue is to lose. our only defense is to participate in the continuing incarnation of that first century carpenter, who loved those who despised him.

this, of course, has nothing to do with a romantic view of the world -- us against them, where we condescend to toss a little help over the wall. no, we are all of us hip-deep in the blood of others, no romance there. and while we argue among ourselves over who has the greatest influence, the most bodies on sunday, the most political clout, or the most cutting-edge ministry, the culture disintegrates before our eyes. children still eat lead paint; they are still bitten by rats and abused by relatives and religionists.

the time for talk is over, and unless and until the church -- and i mean all flavors and versions -- acts credibly toward the watching world, we should just shut-up and take our lumps. we've gottem coming...

Tags: atheism

look, the question is: does true spirituality consist of what we do -- externally acting in the name of the christ, or does it consist in what we think -- internally relating to the christ?

this is not a new question. is faith to be done or thought?

for the most part, my tradition comes down on the side of thinking. we are very much a "people of the book," which means we prize knowledge as the primary mark of spirituality, as in "wow, she really knows the bible!"

i am coming to the conclusion that this may be wrong-headed, and that in fact this part of our dna may have contributed to our current inaction and failure of nerve in the face of the post-modern/post-christian context.

bonhoeffer leaves little doubt where he comes down on this question, especially in his latter writings such as the letters and papers from prison. for him, religion asks, "how can I find a gracious god," but christians in a world come of age ask, "lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" (martin marty about bonhoeffer), or take what Heinz Zahmt wrote in a tribute ten years after Bonhoeffer's death in Flossenbürgy: "there have been martyrs who called the world to the church...bonhoeffer is a martyr who called the church to the world."

bonhoeffer himself said:

"she [the church] must tell men, whatever their calling, what it means to live in christ, to exist for others." (lpfp)

"The Christian, unlike the devotees of the salvation myths, does not need a last refuge in the eternal from earthly tasks and difficulties. But like Christ himself ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") he must drink the earthly cup to the lees, and only in his doing that is the crucified and risen Lord with him, and he crucified and risen with Christ. This world must not be prematurely written off. In this the Old and New Testaments are at one. Myths of salvation arise from human experiences of the boundary situation. Christ takes hold of a man in the center of his life." (lpfp)

"In what way are we in a religionless and secular sense Christians, in what way are we the Ekklesia, "Those who are called forth," not conceiving of ourselves religiously as specially favoured, but as wholly belonging to the world? Then Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, in deed and in truth the Lord of the world." (lpfp)

"Is it not true to say that individualistic concern for personal salvation has almost completely left us all? Are we not really under the impression that there are more important things than bothering about such a matter? . . . Is there any concern in the Old Testament about saving one's soul at all? . . . It is not with the next world that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved and set subject to laws and atoned for and made new. What is above the world is, in the Gospel, intended to exist for this world. . . . "(lpfp)

Tags: bonhoeffer

in baptist life, at least this baptists' life, there are few icons as large as will campbell.

i'm sure such a designation would not please him.

campbell, who is both an baptist pastor and an activist (and a noted author as well), recently participated in a video for the baptist center for ethics on racism and the church.

i've put a short clip of campbell's interview below. it is well worth thinking through:

Tags: racism

ok. so, the issue of rich christians in an age of hunger continues, and in fact becomes even more poignant today with the current economic crisis on wall street, and the movement toward bail-out.

what is the christian's response to this current greedfest and the prospective trashing of the future of all, all but the most wealthy?

first: repent.
i think those of us who claim allegiance to the christ must repent. certainly, unless we are a wall street tycoon, we are not the cause of the current problem facing the u.s. economy, but as followers of the jesus-way, our calling to be kingdom people compels us to a wise, compassionate use of our accumulated wealth. if this is not occurring in our families and in our churches, then we are not faithful followers of the christ, no matter what else we are.

second: untangle.
we must untangle ourselves from the seduction of possessions and this ongoing captivity to culture. somehow, we must get beyond the next fix of acquiring more stuff (surely by now we know that heaping more things to ourselves will not satisfy), thus making us more like the christ and less like a consumer.

third: grow gratitude.
finally, we must somehow grow are heart of gratitude. that is, we must become thankful for what we have & we must learn how to be satisfied with what we have.

some links for follow-up:
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Evangelicals For Social Action
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Tags: poverty

september 20-26
this weeks political cartoons

Tags: cartoons

Dizzy Gillespie
Birks' Works

Tags: jazz

ronald sider has written other books besides rich christian in an age of hunger, the most important of which is churches that make a difference: reaching your community with good news and good works.

in this work sider talks about the holistic church, writing:

the holistic church integrates discipleship, evangelism and social action...

the holistic church works toward spiritual and social transformation

the holistic church supports a spectrum of social action that includes charity, compassion, community development, public policy, and justice advocacy, addressing both individual and systemic sources of human problems

in the holistic church ministry is seen as fundamentally relational, seeking to develop long-term relationships with ministry recipients and welcoming them into the church fellowship

in the holistic church mission is viewed as both local and global in scope. (page 16)


i think a strong argument could be made that, with the death of christendom (institutional demise), the subsequent loss of cultural position (marginalization) and failure of our cultural props (plausibility structure), the church in the west has lost its foundation and mission.

but here, in sider's holistic church, we find it all again. if we could somehow learn that the gospel is not about us, that the ministry of the gospel sends us into the streets, to the poor, to the left-out, locked-out and knocked-out, if we could get beyond our market capitalism and political aspirations, maybe we could still earn a hearing from our people.

but this takes work. it takes sacrifice. we can't build the multi-million dollar edifice to our empire. no, the phallic symbols of our potency -- buildings, crowds, tv time -- must be offered on the altar to the desperately needy.

Tags: poverty

on occasion i receive responses to what i write or the videos i produce. it doesn’t happen very often, but when it does i am always interested in what viewers and readers are thinking.

i recently received a response to my newest video, Bonhoeffer and the Loss of God, which included several further email exchanges. i thought i would share a couple paragraphs from one on those posts that came from a unique perspective:

"I've walked through countries in which 99.999% of the people "vote" for the current leader (if you know what I mean). I've walked through countries where the people believe the blood of an albino will cure any disease, and the blood of a lion will make them invincible to bullets. I've walked through countries in where I've met pastors who couldn't put all of their worldly possessions inside the trunk of a Volkswagen, yet you cold never erase the joy from their heart. I come home and see the Church try to raise 25,000 dollars for a new sign to put out in front of the building, and I wonder about the Bible College in the middle of a muslim dominated country that is equipping new pastors for 80 dollars a month.

"I come home and I watch people complain about the price of gas, not even realizing for every one of them, there are 1o more who don't even have clean drinking water. I come home and watch people throw away so much food, and never even try to work 2 days on what some people have to survive on. There's a reason "Garri" is such a popular food in Nigeria. I come home and watch families act like the only reason they have to talk to each other is because they just happen to live under the same roof. And this is just a small part of how much I've seen and how much my eyes have been opened."



the above came to me as i was working through an article i found on theOOZE entitled, why christians suck. the upshot of this article is similar to the email i received, calling us, as christians, to respond to the needs of the poor. tom davis authored this article and he writes: “Outside of a tiny minority of Christians, we have become a self-centered group of priggish snobs.”

ouch!

he goes on to write:

Here are the facts:

Eighty-five percent of young people outside the church who have had connection to Christians believe present-day Christianity is hypocritical. Inside the church, forty-seven percent of young people believe the same thing.

And why wouldn't they? We’re pretty stingy with our money:

- 80 percent of the world’s evangelical wealth is in North America.
- Giving by churchgoers was higher during the Great Depression than it is today.
- Christians give an average of $13.31/week to their local church.
- Only 9 percent of “born-again” adults reported tithing in 2004.

And let's take a peek in on our neighbors:

- More than 1 billion people live in absolute poverty.
- 500 million people are at the edge of starvation.
- 200 million children are being exploited as laborers.
- Half of the human beings on the planet live on less than $2/day.
- 1.5 billion people do not have enough money to buy food.

pretty potent stuff, both of them. all this reminded me of a book i read 25 years ago called, rich christian in a age of hunger. this book, by ronald j. sider, is described on the CBD website like this:

“When Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger first appeared twenty-eight years ago, it shook readers to the core. Informed about the issues of world hunger and poverty, they could no longer ignore the plight of their global neighbors. This thoroughly revised edition of Sider's best-selling book outlines the progress that has been made in the last three decades, and the work that is still left to do. Every day 30,000 children still die of starvation and preventable diseases, and 1.2 billion people live in relentless, unrelieved poverty worldwide.

Why is there still so much poverty? Conservatives blame sinful individual choices and laziness. Liberals condemn economic and social structures. Who is right? Who is wrong? Both, according to Sider, who explains poverty's complex causes in this new edition and offers concrete, practical proposals for change.”

more next time...

Tags: poverty

i've been reading many posts of late concerning the labels emergent and emerging when used to describe the church. because i have discussed this somewhat before, and since it is not totally germane to today's thoughts, i would suggest if you're not familiar with the terms you could go here and here and here.

for our purposes today, i would only say that with the pending death of christendom, and the final disintegration of the christian consensus as the world view of the west, the church (at least the protestant version of it) is in steep transition, some would even say decline.

but here's the question: transition to what?

some would say that the emergent church is the new church emerging, the church-next. some would argue that the missional church movement (go here) is more to the point (my sympathies lie more with these ideas), but i say that we are a far way from home, and we have miles to go before we sleep.

said another way, we simply have no idea what the new ekklesia will look like. further, this transition will take so many years that most of us will only be part of the transition and not the final result. that is, it will not be complete in our life time.

having said that, notice just some of the profound movement:

VIEW OF GOD
sovereign & immutable ----------> open & responsive to us

VIEW OF CHURCH
solid & institutional -------------> fluid & a movement

CHURCH GROWTH
large is better ------------------> small is a must

VIEW OF THE BIBLE
inerrant & scientific -------------> authoritative & non-scientific

VIEW OF ATONEMENT
substitutionary & victorious -------> representative & identification

VIEW OF EVANGELISM
programatic -------------------> relational


and all of this in just the last few years...the times they are a changin'

Tags: missional

USAToday carried an interesting article last week concerning the future of mega churches.

it was entitled:

As their numbers stall, mega churches seek 'seekers'
By Cathy Lynn Grossman

the main ideas of the article were these:

mega churches are experiencing:

* Growth Decline
* Church as Spectators
* Unchurch remaining untouched

the article quoted philip goff, director of the center for the study of religion and american culture at indiana university in indianapolis, "The mega church story is not really about growth, it's about shifting allegiances. People want to feel good about who they already are. If church is too challenging or not entertaining, they'll move on."

besides cutting to the very heart of discipleship -- spectator are not disciples -- the most troubling idea here is that, like most other churches, these large churches are not reaching new people either. instead, they are merely moving members from smaller churches to larger ones because their programming is slick and demand for commitment is low.

william chadwick has studied this in his book, stealing sheep. He calls it transfer growth.

if this is true, then it may be that the that the smaller churches have given all they could give for the cause of the mega churches.

of course, the deeper issue here is that, if the church-going populations remains 30% year after year, and if the churches are not, in fact, reaching new people only people moving to a new team (for a player not to be named later), then is is not true that christendom is dying?

Tags: christendom

today I want to share the jazz/big band playing of Bernard “Bunny” Berigan. He was born in the midwest in 1908 and died at the age of thirty-three from complications of alcoholism. He worked as a trumpeter for several of the big bands of his era, and later he started his own band, but it met with little success. today i am featuring his theme song, "i can't get started." he sings on this one too, and it is quite a treat. i've included the personnel as well as the lyric below.

i was introduced to berigan, and “i can’t get started,” through the jack lemmon film, save the tiger (here). this certainly was lemmon’s best performance, for which he won an academy award, but it also may be one of the best performances by a man in any role. highly recommended.




I CAN'T GET STARTED
(Duke / Gershwin)
Bunny Berigan

I've flown around the world in a plane
I've settled revolutions in Spain
And the North Pole I have charted
Still I can't get started with you

On the golf course, I'm under par
Metro Goldwyn have asked me to star
I've got a house, a showplace
Still I can't get no place with you

'Cause you're so supreme
Lyrics I write of you, I dream
Dream day and night of you
And I scheme just for the sight of you
Baby, what good does it do?

I've been consulted by Franklin D
Greta Garbo has had me to tea
Still I'm broken-hearted

'Cause I can't get started with you

Musicians: Bunny Berigan (trumpet, vocals), George Wettling (drums), Georgie Auld (tenor sax), Irving Goodman, Steve Lipkins (trumpets), Al George, Sonny Lee (trombone); Mike Doty, Joe Dixon (clarinet, alto sax); Clyde Rounds, (tenor sax), Joe Lippman (piano), Tom Morgan (guitar), Hank Wayland (bass). Composed by Vernon Duke & Ira Gershwin.
Recorded: New York, August 7, 1937

Tags: jazz, music

HERE are some links from this week:

1. Jeremiah Owyang, author of the Web Strategy blog, links us to this youtube video that is interactive!



2. Dan Kimball blog, Vintage Faith, shares this music video that is an absolute scream:



3. Heidi Renee's blog, Redemption Junkie, links us to a Pew Research study that, interestingly enough, shows that southern evangelicals support torture.

4. Scott Bailey's blog, Scotteriology, links us to a bizarre youtube video that is called the "worst worship ever." WARNING: This is very painful:

Tags: links

I have just screened the 1960 Stanley Kramer film, Inherit the Wind. I have viewed it many times. In the ways one usually makes a judgement about a movie, this is a very good film.

You will probably recall that this is the motion picture version of the stage play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee that depicts the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, held in Tennessee, circa 1925. Taking much dramatic license, the film portrays that real-life trial which pitted the brilliant lawyer Clarence Darrow, who was defending a young high schoolteacher accused of presenting evolution, against Williams Jennings Bryan, the fundamentalist icon who prosecuted him.



But the film, while good, it is also a sad, brutal affair. It vividly tackles such questions as freedom of thought, freedom of speech and the deplorable mindset of religious bigotry, but it also quite honestly (and surprisingly) presents the angst found in an a-moral modernity through the caustic cynicism of the H.L Mencken character (Gene Kelly’s portrayal of the cynic is astounding).

The point I would emphasize here is that this film is a metaphor for the now historic and blatant challenge to Western Christian fundamentalism not only by Hollywood, but by the ongoing Enlightenment worldview as well. That is, this film cannot be viewed without sensing the stiff challenge to the literalist mindset of post-reformation fundamentalism, for, the question is: In a pluralistic society should a literalistic religious worldview, which is both pre-scientific and pre-modern, have a place at the table?

Clearly, Kramer’s answer is no. He says no to the bigoted, no to the back-water and no to the provincial, and he goes out of his way to make this point by portraying the religious as unwashed, fat, gluttonous, bigoted, deceitful and cowardly.

Is this fair?

Of course, my initial impulse in response to the film is to defend the religious no matter what their stripe, but early on I found my heart was not in it. All too often this caricature is just too accurate. All too often this is the mentality of the religious fundamentalist. Having been stung by their ways, I know whereof I speak.

Digging deeper here, the religious fundamentalist, historically, have feared the blurring changes of modernity -- even as they embraced its benefits -- because those changes leave them surrounded on an ever-shrinking cultural island. They were afraid because they had no social tools for translating the strange world of the Bible (Karl Barth) into the new scientific world of intricate explanations, other than saying the same things more loudly and with more contempt.

Simply put, the fundamentalist instinctively feared what they knew would displace them from the safety-net of the familiar and the biblical.

What were they to do, for instance, with the scientific dating that argued convincingly for the old age of the earth? How was that to be squared with the Bible? Here, as elsewhere, the learning of modern science clearly and openly defied their understanding and interpretation of the Bible’s account of reality.

For them, much was at stake here. If they were to absorb this new scientific account of reality it first meant they had to somehow accommodate the new worldview, but this accommodation required a grave, radical shift away from the literal Bible, and this shift would ultimately drive them toward a new kind of world-navigation and world-building exercise that had never been asked of them. Accommodation did not fit their worldview. It rather felt rather like the glue that held the universe together no longer had the strength to be an adhesive. Accommodation was considered defeat.

So, this confrontation of worldviews left the fundamentalist with few options. They could stay where they were or face acute, cognitive displacement. In the end they decided to ride out this cognitive hurricane and hope for the best. What tipped the scales in this decision, I suggest, was that they finally sensed that what was at stake was actually much more than cognitive displacement. What they sensed is that a turn toward the Enlightenment was a turn toward a profound cognitive upheaval. Should anyone be surprised then, that the response has been one long temper-tantrum of both anger and hate?

The film, probably inadvertently, also hints at what is actually the key question facing American society today, and it’s not a religious question. Instead, it is the idea of class. Kramer looks down his nose at most of the hoi polloi as if he is cleaning their smelly muck off his shoes. This film comes to us from an elitists point of view, and it asks the same question the upper-class continually asks: How do we escape this rabble of rubes? How can we divest ourselves of their plaster-of-paris ashtrays, polyester leisure suits, beer swollen bellies, Craftsman tools, midwestern morals and slaughter-house religion?

This is important because what the religious so often describe as the clash of cultures (the culture wars), and what the politicians so often use as wedge issues, in reality is nothing more than the conflict of class – the haves against the have-nots, the sophisticated against the unsophisticated, the upper-class against the lower middle-class, the purveyors of knowledge against the owners of business. Remember this: it is from class and not so much from Holy Writ that we grow our view of race, gender and politics. (Peter Berger)

I also think it is important to realize that this foregoing description is instructive for an even more important reason. That is, it points directly to a further decisive moment that will eventually face not only the fundamentalist church, but the protestant church in general. Namely, the final death of Christendom. Simply put: How is the post-modern church going to survive in a culture where even its own members no longer comprehend the dialect or vocabulary of Christianity?

To put a fine point on this, Jesus was, after all, from Nazareth of Judea and not Nazareth of Pennsylvania. Or, to put an even finer point on this, since Jesus is unacquainted with our medicine, our technology, our social structures and our institutions – what then does he have to say to us, and how are we supposed to translate what he says into our day, so that we can hear him again? How do his pastoral sermons about farmers and lost sheep translate with density into the happenings of world-wide-web, instant cellular communication, microwaves, global positioning systems, holocausts, freeze-dried mystery meats, Viagra and holograms?

We are now very close to Bonhoeffer’s famous question: Who is Jesus for us today?

But, notice carefully, the question was not how to relate the pre-modern Bible to a post-modern culture outside the walls of the church. This was a difficult question, the one posed in the film, but it is not the most difficult question. No, the most compelling source of resistance to protestant dogma, especially in its fundamentalist form, occurs from within the walls of the church, and it is this new reality that will eventually cut to the very fiber of what it means to in fact be Christian.

In short: How are we going to relate this ancient Bible to the coming crop of post-modern church members, that is to say, our children?

Remember, in the film, it was the high school students who stood by their teacher, not because they necessarily believed in Darwin’s theory, but rather because they believed in their instructor. Likewise, the church’s post-modern young people will be standing by cultural minorities like gays for the same reason, and the church’s worldview be damned! In the post-christian world relationship trumps doctrine.

Put still another way, even though an entire generation of post-modern children are growing-up in the church, they are not growing with the church. The church’s stilted and awkward teachings on science, history, race, divorce, gender, the corporate elite, the environment and sexual orientation means nothing to these young members. They tolerate it while they are at home, but when they discard the nest, as they inevitably will, they will discard these teachings as well because they have been socialized into a radically different view of the world than that of their parents and that of older christendomed church members. So, the question is: Will the Bible mean anything to them, anything but a feeble, vapid memory?

Tags: fundamentalism

Tags: bonhoeffer

ok. so, let's continue thinking-through some of the ideas found in bonhoeffer's letters and papers from prison (LPFP), by quoting a seminal passage from a letter he wrote to his friend eberhard bethge on 16, july, 1944.

[i know it may be a temptation to skip this extended quote; please don't do so.]

"and we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in a world etsi deus non daretur [as if there is not god]. and this is just what we do recognize -- before god! god himself compels us to recognize it. so our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of the situation before god. god would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. the god who is with us is the god who forsakes us (mark 15:34). the god who lets us live in the world without a working hypothesis of god, is the god before whom we stand continually. before god and with god we live without god. god lets himself be pushed out of the world on to a cross. he is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8:17 makes it quite clear thatchrist helps us, not by virtue of omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering ." (LPFP, page 360-361)

there is much here. the language is dense and thick, and bonhoeffer's shortened life only gives us a weak and irregular pulse on his full thought.

having said that, let's unpack some ideas that flow from this paragraph:

* people in the world come of age get along quite well without the god-hypothesis...

* the god-hypothesis basically means that god is in control of the world, that god is the answer in morals, politics, or science. bonhoeffer thinks this must be discarded by
christians because it already has been discarded in the world come of age...

* since people have chosen to push the god-hypothesis out of the world, and god has allowed this to occur, people must now take full responsibility for the world. thecavalry is
not on the way...

* christians must now see that the way to god is the way of the cross -- the way of weakness and humility...

more on these ideas to come...

Tags: bonhoeffer

Song: AUTUMN LEAVES
PERSONNEL: Cannonball Adderly (alto sax), Miles Davis (trumpet), Hank Jones (piano), Sam Jones (bass), Art Blakey (drums).

Tags: jazz music

Denominational Un-Fundamentalist Activities Committee

August 18,

Pete Seeker, Defendant

A Subcommittee of the Committee on Un-Fundamentalist Activities met at 10 a.m., in room 1703 of the Joseph McCarthy Denominational Building, Pre-Tribulation Square, Atlanta Georgia, the Honorable O’Chuck O’Sullivan (Chairman) presiding.

Committee members present: Representatives O’Sullivan, Marrick Deadletter, and Michael Coopenjoke .

Staff members present: W. Wellcris, Jr., Counsel; Gerald Wellfall and Darby Scholfield, Investigators; and James King, Sr., Chief Clerk.

[BEGIN TRANS]

MR. WELCRIS: When and where were you born, Mr. Seeker?

MR. SEEKER: I was born in New York in 1954.

MR.WELLCRIS: What is your profession or occupation?

MR. SEEKER: Well, I have worked at many things, and my main profession is a pastor of a small Baptist church in the heartland. It’s the First Baptist Church of Walden Pond

MR. WELLCRIS: Has Walden Pond been your headquarters for a considerable period of time?

MR. SEEGER: Well, I live there.

MR. WELLCRIS: The Committee has information obtained in part from the Baptist Free Thought Journal (BFTJ) indicating that, over a period of time, especially since December, you took part in a number of their