Meanderings, 1 April 2023

Good morning!

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Thank you LeBron:

AKRON, Ohio — When LeBron James was in grade school, he wondered why the maps in his classrooms showed Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus, but not Akron. Now, 20 years into his NBA career, James is building a whole world in his hometown 40 minutes south of Cleveland, an audacious community revitalization project rooted in education while encompassing everything from housing and health care to job training and a laundry.

James started with a tutoring and college scholarship program in 2011. That led to the ballyhooed opening of the I Promise School in 2018, a public school for third through eighth graders with an extensive support program funded by The LeBron James Family Foundation.

Nearly a half-decade later, the school remains. But what James, his foundation and supporters across the city have come to understand is that success in the classroom is about so much more than the actual classroom.

“It really looks like the LeBron James Family Foundation is looking at all the factors outside of school that affect students the most. Income, housing, trauma and developing really thoughtful strategies to address them using the school as the foundation for that work,” said Megan Gallagher, whose research focuses on education and housing for the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “When I think about the different models across the United States, what this looks like is that they started out with a plan to educate children. And then, at each layer, they began to understand what it would take. Now they’re [getting] those resources.”

“Family matters quite a bit. Community, housing and safety matters, too,” said Brett Theodos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute concentrating on economic development. “People who don’t have sufficient housing stability can move through schools in ways that don’t help. It’s all connected, and it all matters.”

Here in Akron, James isn’t trying to carry a team to an NBA championship. He’s locked in a far more difficult campaign to create a better future for this city’s children. 

The RNS article about the Nashville shootings is worth your reading:

The Rev. Mike Glenn, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church, one of the largest congregations in the area, said that in Nashville, there’s often a veneer of Jesus painted over everything.

But that veneer of Jesus doesn’t change people on the inside or give them the moral and spiritual foundation to deal with crises or tragedies or hard situations.

“When things get hard, you flip back not to your training in Christ but to the world,” he said. “You handle things the way John Wick would. Or you handle it the way Clint Eastwood would.”

Glenn said the gospel message contradicts the way the world around us operates. But he fears that his fellow evangelical Christians have lost faith in that gospel. Which will make it hard for folks in Nashville and the South to work together to respond to gun violence.

“The gospel message is that you never respond to evil with more evil,” he said. “You know, you don’t overcome hate with more hate. You bless those who curse you. The first response of a Christian to anybody is love. And love is not this warm feeling toward you. It’s that I’m actively going to seek your best and want to take action so that your life is the best.”

Justice as an apologetic:

I recently read Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Bryan is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. In his book, he recounts the tragic, devastating, almost unthinkable injustice done to Walter McMillian, who served six years on death row, often in solitary confinement, for a murder he did not commit. 

In the years Bryan fought to overturn the wrongful conviction and free Walter from death row (which he successfully did in 1993), he learned how one instance of injustice “burdens an entire community…[and how] everyone in the poor, black community…expressed hopelessness. This one massive miscarriage of justice had afflicted the whole community with despair.”

It’s a tragic story, but I noticed that Bryan’s life and work yielded an opposite effect too. Many people, especially young people, find in Bryan’s work a powerful apologetic, a reason to believe in God and to follow Jesus. Bryan is a light on a hill, and many seekers find spiritual warmth and illumination in him. 

We see the same dynamic in the life of Jesus. When he healed someone, or freed someone from the terror of a demon, there was a direct, concrete and specific good. But this goodness always spread so that great crowds of people heard and witnessed the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in and through Jesus.

Jesus led his disciples down to the shore of the lake. Large crowds followed him from Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. People came from Idumea, as well as other places east of the Jordan River. They also came from the region around the towns of Tyre and Sidon. All of these crowds came because they had heard what Jesus was doing.

Mark 3:7-8 (CEV) 

50 years later?

MIAMI (AP) — More than 50 years after the orca known as Lolita was captured for public display, plans are in place to return her from the Miami Seaquarium to her home waters in the Pacific Northwest, where a nearly century-old, endangered killer whale believed to be her mother still swims.

An unlikely coalition involving the theme park’s owner, an animal rights group and an NFL owner-philanthropist announded the agreement during a news conference Thursday.

“I’m excited to be a part of Lolita’s journey to freedom,” Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said. “I know Lolita wants to get to free waters.”

Lolita, also known as Tokitae, was about 4 years old when she was captured in Puget Sound in summer 1970, during a time of deadly orca roundups. She spent decades performing for paying crowds before falling ill.

Last year the Miami Seaquarium announced it would no longer stage shows with her, under an agreement with federal regulators. Lolita — now 57 years old and 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) — currently lives in a tank that measures 80 feet by 35 feet (24 meters by 11 meters) and is 20 feet (6 meters) deep.

The orca believed to be her mother, called Ocean Sun, continues to swim free with other members of their clan — known as L pod — and is estimated to be more than 90 years old. That has given advocates of her release optimism that Tokitae could still maybe have a long life in the wild.

“It’s a step toward restoring our natural environment, fixing what we’ve messed up with exploitation and development,” said Howard Garrett, president of the board of the advocacy group Orca Network, based on Washington state’s Whidbey Island. “I think she’ll be excited and relieved to be home — it’s her old neighborhood.”

Florida and tenure for professors:

Florida’s state university system is making major changes to long-time tenure protections, meaning that established professors would have to undergo a review every five years to determine the faculty members’ “productivity.”

However, Florida-based professors and other advocates say that the new rule, approved by the Florida Board of Governors Wednesday, could hurt academic freedom and impact a faculty members’ livelihood.

The issue of Florida’s five-year post-tenure evaluations, among other changes to the state’s universities, is getting nationwide criticism from multiple organizations, including American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association and a dozen others.

Faculty in other states are even voicing their opposition to Florida’s new higher education policies, such as the University of Rhode Island Faculty Senate and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York.

“Over the past two years, Florida elected officials have attacked the independence and integrity of the state’s public higher education institutions…introducing a requirement for five-year post-tenure reviews, they have undermined tenure and academic freedom,” the Professional Staff Congress said in a written statement.

The American Association of University Professors explains that tenure serves as a “safeguard” for a professor’s academic freedom.

“A tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation,” the AAUP explains on its website.

It continues: “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.”

But new rules adopted Wednesday by the Florida Board of Governors tasks each university board of trustees to adopt policies that evaluate tenured professors on a handful of unified goals from a statewide standpoint.

The rule adoption is due to a new law from the 2022 legislative session, which was pushed by then-Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., who added in a last-minute amendment calling for the 5-year tenure review. Then Sen. Ray Rodrigues was a co-sponsor. Diaz is now the Florida Education Commissioner. Rodrigues is the Chancellor of the university system.

Under this new rule, faculty are to be evaluated on “productivity,” “meeting the responsibilities and expectations associated with assigned duties,” and “compliance with state laws, Board of Governors’ regulations, and university regulations and policies.”

The chief academic officer of the university, often referred to as the ‘provost,’ would make the final call on a professor’s performance, according to the rule.

Guns and the church as an alternative society:

Another shooting. Another news headline of innocent people, children, for crying out loud, gunned down. Another trip around the outrage cycle as disbelief, grief, and exasperation find ways to be released/expressed/placated. What are we to do?

The social media feeds are filled with suggestions. And, amid all the reductionism and avoidance, there are glimmers of truth. Laws need to protect people. And, yes, robust policy alone will not unbury us from this political death we call American politics. And, as is customary for a mediating theologian, I find myself on both sides. I strongly believe we should outlaw assault weapons, but I’m acutely aware that lawbreakers will always break laws. I’m also aware that if tragedy likes this were to come to my community, I would be on the side demanding change. I’m a hypocrite, but I’m attempting to be a compassionate one.

Scripture would call me to lament. I don’t do it well. Lament seems far too passive, but it doesn’t need to be. Lament recognizes powerlessness, but it also marshalls what few reserves we actually have. The paradox of lament is that only God can repair the savage brokenness of our society. And God has given us his Spirit to be the change we want to see. I am simultaneously powerless and empowered when I declare, “The world is a broken place.”

This righteous anger that rises up as we confront our brokenness can be a good thing. But let us never allow our critique of the world to be but a scapegoat for our culpability. There is no objective "me" separated from "them." Such perspectives do not take the systemic nature of sin seriously enough.

As a lover of the church, I must challenge those of her body who use their religious perspectives as an ultimate trump (no pun intended) card on world events. How do we expect to challenge the divisiveness of the world when we remain just as divided as it is? The stunted imagination of the world always leads to violence. Compromise, conversation, and compassion take deeper commitments than the knee-jerk responses were accustomed to. The church is equipped by the Spirit to have sanctified imaginations to bear witness to alternative possibilities. You’ll first need to stop looking to Donald Trump or Joe Biden to fulfill the messianic hope that is ours in Christ Jesus.