Searching for God in Pennsylvania

We are meaning-seeking creatures. . . . [and] fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. . . . And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. – Karen Armstrong

The azaleas are in full bloom at my home in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the winter having ended early this year with a warm front sending late-Spring conditions to the Philadelphia suburbs on the first of March. The trees are beginning to turn green again as the sun has taken a more prominent role in pushing forward the advance of an early summer. Nature has a way of transforming the soul, of causing one to reflect on the essence of creation and the meaning of the universe. For me, this has led to my search for God in Pennsylvania.

For much of my adult life, I have struggled with religion and faith. What do I believe? How deeply do I believe it? How committed am I to any one set of theological beliefs and living truths? I embrace knowledge and history, science and nature. I am a rational human being who eagerly accepts and actively participates in the modern world. And yet, there remains the quest for the divine, the search for a transcendent power that I cannot see or prove, but which in my heart I know is present, however irrational such a belief may be. Although I cannot begin to understand the revelations and manifestations of God, my quest for God is essential to my search for meaning.

I am the son of a Lutheran minister, raised in a family and household that took religion and faith seriously, yet implicitly understood Abraham Joshua Heschel’s suggestion that “[t]he road to the sacred leads through the secular.” I was neither sheltered nor walled-off from the surrounding world, and engaged humanity in all its messy, nuanced, and complex dimensions. Within the confines of my eastern Lutheran upbringing, I witnessed ministers, youth directors, and people of faith who did not shy from the social, political, and cultural dimensions of secular society. During the sixties and seventies, in my education, participation in sports, and social interactions, I experienced the humanistic world of modern America far more deeply than the insular world of church and faith. Unlike my parents, whose entire lives have evolved around the Lutheran church, its people and institutions, as the years advanced and my life progressed, I have engaged with a more expansive set of people and cultures, including friends and colleagues of many faiths, or no faith, or little regard for faith; some who viewed religion with skepticism, or worse, contempt.

I see no conflict between faith and reason. A belief in God does not require a disdain for science. A respect for scientific knowledge and advancement does not demand that one reject all belief in God. What the Greeks referred to as logos and mythos defined two different aspects of the world in which we live – the knowable and the unknowable. Logos refers to rational, pragmatic, empirical thinking and seeks to answer the question “How?” Mythos refers to the intuitive, subconscious mode of thought found in art, music, literature, and religion and seeks to answer the question “Why?” These are not mutually exclusive concepts. You can seek answers in both realms. Indeed, it is the tenuous co-existence between faith and reason, the willingness to ask questions, the constant search for truth that leads to the transcendent or the divine, a belief in God, with all its doubt and ambiguity.

To believe in God is not to reject reason, but to embrace it, to experience God’s creation in all its majesty and wonderment, the inherent beauty of the natural world, the diversity of humanity, and the emotional attachment to our souls. The more we learn, the more tools we have to better understand the magnificence of the universe and the majesty of God.

It is easy to grow frustrated with the widely shared perception of popular culture and the media that insists on viewing religion, and particularly Christianity, in its most dogmatic, narrow, and absolute form. On one extreme are those who hold religion in contempt and tend to define it in its theologically weakest expressions – Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, biblical literalism, and rigid orthodoxy – easy targets for anyone who requires rational, evidence-based thinking. On the other extreme are “Christians” who demand a literal and strict interpretation of Scripture and reject alternative readings based on historical and scientific insight which may conflict with what they perceive as the authoritative, absolute word of God. In each instance, the believer and non-believer alike present an either-or dichotomy – either believe in the bible literally or reject God altogether. It reflects the constant push for a world of black-and-white, an all or nothing mindset in which things are simpler and easier to understand, and to accept or reject.

Not surprisingly, the reality is far more complex. For me, and for the majority of people caught in between, who fall somewhere in that complex miasma of ambiguous faith and varying degrees of belief, the either-or dichotomy simply does not apply. We are instead entangled in a web of heritage, family and history that connects us to particular faith traditions and which stands a world apart from what much of the secular left and Christian right perceive religion, or Christianity, or divine authority to be.

“Religion is hard work,” writes historian Karen Armstrong in The Case for God (Knopf, 2009). “Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.” Armstrong counters the simplistic notions of faith often used by religious antagonists and religious fundamentalists alike to define religion. In a 2009 article in Foreign Policy (“Think Again: God”), Armstrong discussed the new atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens (I would also include the less scholarly Bill Maher), who have “denounced religious belief as not only retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions, strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the unsophisticated and gullible.”

Armstrong understands and has written extensively about religion’s historical shortcomings, and she has consistently challenged the mistaken theology and incorrect assertions of Christian fundamentalists. And while she has “written at length about the crusades, inquisitions, and persecutions that have scarred human history,” she rightfully notes in response to many atheists and skeptics that past abuses and desecrations do not tell the whole story.

Religion is also about the quest for transcendence, the discipline of compassion, and the endless search for meaning; it was not designed to provide us with the same kind of explanations as science, but to help us to live creatively, serenely, and kindly with the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition. As such, it continues to appeal to millions of human beings across the globe. To identify with its worst manifestations, claim that they represent the whole, and then demolish the straw dog thus set up does not seem a rational or useful way of conducting this important debate.

Failing to understand the complexity of religious life, the theological diversity within and among the many faith traditions, and how the typical practitioner views their faith and its meaning in their lives, does a great disservice to the shared humanity within us all.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 78% of Americans self-identify as Christian, yet when you hear the term “Christian” on NPR, Fox, and CNN, almost always it means “Christian right” or “Christian conservative.” Yet only one-third of American Christians are evangelicals (about 26% of Americans), and even this term includes a wide variety of Christians, such as born-again Christians, fundamentalists, and other non-denominational church goers with a diverse set of beliefs. Moreover, evangelicals include among their ranks not only political conservatives, but also a meaningful minority of political liberals (think Sojourners, Jim Wallis, and Tony Campolo). The remaining two-thirds of American Christians include Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, UCC, Methodist, etc.), and historically black Protestants (Baptist, AME, Pentecostal), with a smaller number of Mormons, Orthodox Christians, and other subgroups. As Timothy Noah of The New Republic noted recently, “To say that conservative Christians are the only Christians is like saying Hasidic Jews are the only Jews.”

Of course, very few of us really understand our own religions, their histories, traditions, and theological evolutions. Contemporary religious institutions ask little of its members, readily offering comfort while lacking the courage to challenge. Nearly a half-century ago, in “Religion in a Free Society” (The Insecurity of Freedom, First Noonday Press, 1967), Rabbi Heschel commented on the declining relevance of religion in modern life. “The trouble is that religion has become ‘religion’ – institution, dogma, ritual,” he wrote. While some people blame secular science and antireligious philosophy for religion’s descent, the blame lies mostly with institutional religion itself. “Religion declined not because it was refuted,” Heschel wrote, “but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; . . . when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Recently, I have been on a quest for finding a religious community at which I can feel comfortable – where I can learn and question and struggle without feeling judged as insufficiently committed or confused. I want a congregation that does not take a simplistic view of faith, rejects absolutes, accepts the equal validity of other faith traditions, and searches for answers to life’s most pressing questions; that strives for a just world here on Earth and is less concerned with the hereafter, and which sees the face of God in the ordinariness of everyday humanity. What I really want is a progressive Christian church with a Jewish sense of justice and history and a Buddhist sense of spirit. I’m a tough customer, I know.

In the end, however, it is really not about me, or my search for a comfortable religious home. As I walk through life’s pathways, I have learned that the search for God is an unending quest to better understand humanity and our place within it, our connection to each other, to nature, and our need to take care of all creation. “If you want to find Jesus,” the Reverend John Steinbruck, formerly of Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., used to say, “go to where the outcasts are – the sick, the homeless, the poor.” Heschel, too, reminded us that “the task of the human being is to represent the Divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God.”

The search for God, wherever that may occur and at whatever stage in life, requires an openness to the beauty of humanity in all its diversity, pain, and struggle; in the natural wonder of the universe in all its vastness; in developing genuine connections with nature and with each other. In the end, I may only satisfy my search for God, or at least the transcendence we call “God,” when I accept, in the words of Karen Armstrong, that faith “is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.” As my search continues and the struggle to understand moves forward, I know the hard work required for a life of faith and understanding has only begun.

Remembering an American Idealist and Regretting a Wasted Year

The natural idealism of youth is an idealism, alas, for which we do not always provide as many outlets as we should. --Robert Sargent Shriver (1915 - 2011)

He embodied everything good and decent and optimistic about America. Sargent Shriver, who died this month at the age of 95, was a genuine American idealist. He believed in the power of individuals to make a difference and the power of youth to transform the world. He devoted much of his life attempting to inspire a culture of service and community activism. Few Americans today really know much about Sargent Shriver. Although his intellect and political skills were formidable, he was overshadowed by his connection to the Kennedy’s; the husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he was perpetually relegated to status of brother-in-law.

In the early 1960’s, when the United States resonated with optimism and the nation’s youth felt inspired to serve, Shriver radiated all of the positive energy and spirit of JFK’s New Frontier. When a young and charismatic President Kennedy declared in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," it was Shriver who led the way. Shriver created the Peace Corps and was its first director. In its formative years, he inspired an entire generation of Americans to commit 27 months of their life in far off lands; to live among peoples and cultures that had, until then, been alien to them. Now in its fiftieth year, the Peace Corps has sent over 200,000 young people to impoverished and developing countries, building bridges literally and figuratively, teaching, learning, relating, and spreading all that is good and decent about American democracy.

Since his passing, story upon story has been told of how Shriver’s commitment and dedication, his passion for youth, and his unparalleled belief in the power of relationships helped change lives forever. He sent an army of bright, energetic young Americans on a mission of peace, armed only with smiles and a helping hand, and asked them to spread friendship and understanding throughout the world.

The Peace Corps emerged from an unformed idea articulated in a series of speeches in 1960 by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who called for the creation of a “Peace Corps of talented young people” to boost America’s attempts to win the hearts and minds of developing nations; an effort, according to Kennedy, that had been hampered by “ill-chosen, ill-equipped, and ill-briefed” ambassadors who were losing influence to the Soviet Union. Kennedy called on Shriver to transform style into substance. No one was better suited to the task. Shriver combined the organizational skills of an experienced and pragmatic businessman (he had spent several years as the manager of Merchandise Mart, part of Joseph Kennedy’s business empire) with compelling salesmanship and sincere idealism to turn Kennedy’s untested concept into a lasting legacy of success.

When the brief reign of Camelot ended and many of Kennedy’s aides and advisors left for home, Shriver stayed behind to lead the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty, a more logistically difficult and politically complex task that required immense discretion and tact. Political enemies and ideological opponents abounded. Once again, Shriver succeeded where others had failed. He built a series of institutions – Head Start, the Job Corps, VISTA, the Legal Services Corporation, and other services for the poor – that thrive to this day, making the United States a better, more compassionate country. In 1972, when George McGovern asked him to be his running mate in a losing presidential election, Shriver was the one bright spot in an otherwise regrettable year. Along the way, Shriver assisted his beloved wife of 56 years in creating the Special Olympics, a cause Eunice championed the rest of her life, and which provided opportunities for young persons with intellectual disabilities to overcome stereotypes and to be recognized for their own incredible talents and abilities.

Shriver always challenged others to work harder, to do more, and to dream bigger. Not surprisingly, the root of Shriver’s concept of service was his faith. A devout Catholic, he tried to model his life after the teachings of Jesus. He admired Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and, starting in high school and throughout his life, asked himself every day, “What have I done to improve the lot of humanity?” As Jonathan Cohn noted recently in The New Republic, “Shriver’s Catholicism was in some ways analogous to Day’s: rooted in the ethics of the Christian Gospels; dedicated to working toward peace, social justice, and redemption of suffering here on earth; and concerned especially with easing the plight of the poor and the disabled.” Always filled with good spirits and good humor, it would be difficult not to be inspired by the life and times of Robert Sargent Shriver.

One of my enduring regrets in life is the lack of vision I demonstrated at the age of 22, the time in life when one’s youthful energy, spirit of adventure, and freedom to set one’s path are at their peak. I graduated from Wittenberg University in May 1981 with plans to attend business school at Indiana University at Bloomington, where I had been accepted as a teacher’s assistant in accounting and could expect an MBA degree two years hence. For the summer, I had a job lined up in the financial accounting department of Dresser Industries in Houston, Texas, where my brother-in-law was employed in oilfield services. He had arranged what seemed at the time a great opportunity, a summer working in a real-life, good paying job at a Fortune 500 corporation. So, off to Houston I went.

It did not take long, however, before I sensed that something was missing and that I had sold myself short. Although my intellectual interests had always pointed in other directions, I was captive to conventional notions of economic security. I could feel myself heading for the life of the “Everyman” and emulating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, “Before it's all over we're gonna get a little place out in the country, and I'll raise some vegetables, a couple of chickens..." I lacked vision and, worse, the courage of my convictions. I needed more from life and work but did not know how to make it happen. How could I devote my life to something more meaningful than the pursuit of money and profit, necessary perhaps to sustain the economy, but spiritually unfulfilling? I needed more.

Three weeks before leaving for business school, I experienced an existential crisis of sorts. While I did not yet know my direction in life, I was pretty sure it should be more in tune with my passions. Law school, which more closely appealed to my interests in politics, government, and society, had until then seemed out-of-reach. As the son of a minister and a school teacher, two traditionally low paying professions that could not easily support the ever increasing tuition at U.S. law schools, I could not reasonably expect much financial assistance, especially after my parents had just put three children through college over the previous eleven years. Ever the pragmatist, my father pushed me to pursue the practical professions, accounting and business. “You need to make a living,” he would say. When I took a course in Native American Literature in college, he snorted, “What kind of a job will that get you?” Although my father’s advice was well intentioned and influenced in part by his having been raised in the Depression, it glaringly ignored his and my mother’s own paths in life, in which service to others was their calling, their raison d’être. Even then, I felt conflicted by pragmatism and idealism.

When the manager of the accounting department offered to hire me as the full-time replacement for another accountant who was leaving at the end of summer, I mustered the courage to inform my parents that I was withdrawing from business school and staying in Houston. “I want to go to law school,” I said. My parents were accepting, but skeptical, afraid that I would not follow through and would find it difficult to make the transition back to school after a year or more of reality. But this was the first truly independent decision of my young life and, given where I sat in August 1981, it was the right decision. Later that year, I was accepted into a very good law school on a full-tuition scholarship and have been very fortunate in my career opportunities. I have no regrets about the path I eventually took.

When examined from a broader, historical perspective, however, my year in Houston was uninspired. Looking back, it was a wasted year, full of idle, unproductive time in which my most creative thoughts consisted of how to get through the day until happy hour arrived. Now, as I ponder the life of Sargent Shriver and all of the young Americans he inspired to serve; as I think of all the young men and women today who serve in the military, or tutor and teach inner city kids in programs like City Year and Teach for America, or commit to a year of community service in AmeriCorps, I cannot help but wonder why I was not more thoughtful in how I chose to spend that period in my life, before I was tied down with mortgages and children and college tuition. “If a young person has any idealism at all,” Shriver once noted, “it's strongest about the time he finishes college.”

A few years after arriving in Washington, I learned of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC), a social justice ministry founded by Luther Place Church, at Thomas Circle, when it was led by the Rev. John Steinbruck, a passionate and articulate preacher of the Social Gospel. Based in part on the spirit and model of the Peace Corps, since its founding in 1979, LVC has placed young college graduates (and others) into year-long stints with homeless shelters, HIV-AIDS clinics, low-income housing agencies, immigrant aid services, and public policy advocacy on behalf of poor and low-income people in cities throughout the country. Similar to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and the Mennonite Voluntary Service, LVC was inspired, consciously or not, by the vision and practical guidance of Sargent Shriver. Although I was fortunate to have later served, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, on LVC’s Steering Committee and National Advisory Board, I have always felt somewhat cheated for having never been among the more than two thousand LVCers who devoted a year or more of their lives in selfless service to the world, and who learned more from the people and organizations they served than they could ever impart.

I know, of course, that we cannot change the past or travel back in time. Sargent Shriver, as much as anyone, would insist that we look only to the future and commit to it. But if I could have done one thing differently in my life, I would have listened more carefully to the voices of people like Sargent Shriver and his cadre of Peace Corps volunteers. And maybe, just maybe, I would have made better use of my time in the fall of 1981. Everyone I have ever known who spent time in the Peace Corps, or LVC, or many of the other outstanding service organizations, have said the same thing, “It changed my life.” I cannot answer precisely why I was so clueless and unadventurous in 1981. But a touch of the Sarge would have done me some good.

A Saint in the City: The Life, Faith, and Theology of John Steinbruck

Starting in February 2006, I began a series of conversations and correspondence with the Reverend John Steinbruck, formerly the senior pastor of Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C. I had been a member of Luther Place for several years when I lived in Washington, attracted to Steinbruck's articulate sermons and the church's emphasis on and commitment to an ideal of Christian social justice that I rarely see emulated in other churches. This essay is based on my conversations with Steinbruck, supplemented by some good old fashioned research.

To those who know him, John Steinbruck is a man of contradictions. A former Naval Chaplain with the rank of Captain, he preaches peace and protests the makers of military weaponry. The son of working class immigrant parents, he is an Ivy League educated man of letters. A faithful husband, father, and family man, he devoted his life to helping those without homes and families. A broad shouldered, husky man with a football player’s build, he possesses the gentle touch of a kind grandfather. A man of faith in an age of secularism. A preacher of the Social Gospel in an age of conservatism. A dissenter in an age of conformity. He is at once a prophetic visionary and a political pragmatist, a thoughtful intellectual and an impatient man of action.

It was not always so. In the summer of 1953, young John Steinbruck was in despair. He was a 22-year old Penn student, studying at the Wharton School of Finance, and he hated every minute of it. He did not fit into this "seminary for capitalists," as he would later call it. He was a man without direction, no sense of purpose, and casual faith. A bit of a hell-raiser, he frequented seedy bars and hustled money throwing darts and shooting pool. One afternoon, feeling down and out, having just ended a disastrous romance, he walked into a corner drug store. There, among the trashy romance novels and magazines, was a single paperback copy of Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer. The book cost him thirty-five cents. It changed his life.

In Schweitzer, Steinbruck found an embodiment of moral virtue, a role model for a life of devoted service. Schweitzer wrote that, although he had enjoyed life as a philosopher, musician, and biblical scholar, he was plagued by "the thought that I must not accept this happiness as a matter of course, but must give something in return for it." That so many people in the world were "denied that happiness by their material circumstances or their health" led Schweitzer, at the age of 30, to enroll in medical school. He would eventually build and re-build a hospital in Gabon, West Africa, and devote the remainder of his life caring to the medical needs of Africa's poor.

Steinbruck's spiritual search led him as well to Martin Wiznat, a Lutheran pastor in Philadelphia with a powerful speaking voice and a magnetism that engaged people, traits that would later be attributed to Steinbruck himself. Wiznat's theological world view was unlike any Steinbruck had ever heard. Steinbruck had been raised in the literalistic religion of his German immigrant parents, in a little known sect called the Faith Tract Mission. A pietistic movement, the Faith Tract Mission was a fundamentalist brand of Christianity that was in rebellion to the more formal, established Catholic and Lutheran churches of Europe. Steinbruck found it a religion of self-denial that encouraged a detachment from the world. Through his relationship and talks with Wiznat, Steinbruck "suddenly discovered," as he told the Washington Jewish Week in 1990, "that religion and faith could be respectable and did not require believing in three impossible things before breakfast every morning."

Wiznat saw something special in Steinbruck and remarked that God may have larger plans for him. Inspired but somewhat reluctant, Steinbruck, an industrial engineer by day, began to dabble in seminary courses by night. His continued discomfort in the world of American commerce led Steinbruck eventually to enroll full-time in the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. There, Steinbruck was taught by energetic young professors who had studied under the top theologians of Europe -- men such as John Reumann, William Lazareth, Robert Borneman, and Martin Heinecken, intellectual giants in Lutheran circles. Steinbruck learned critical thinking in biblical analysis from scholars way ahead of their time, who took seriously Schweitzer's Quest for the Historical Jesus. Although not talked about publicly, these professors raised important questions concerning aspects of doctrinal Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the resurrection, with an eye toward re-defining that which is truly fundamental to the faith. It was the beginning of Steinbruck's personal quest to engage Christianity as a worldly-wise faith tradition, one that did not shy away from the harsh realities of life here on earth; one more interested in saving lives than saving souls. “I don’t need to resort to miracles to confirm my faith,” he told me when I sat down with him a couple of years ago. “I am to deal with the realities in the world – racism, war and peace. If 45 million people have no health care, then it is my obligation to do something about it.”

In 1956, Steinbruck married Erna Guenther, the embodiment of altruism, a woman with an unending commitment to social justice. She was light years ahead of Steinbruck in her devotion to the church, and she possessed an unwavering faith. When Steinbruck met her, she was working long hours volunteering at a Lutheran settlement house in Northeast Philadelphia, where she assisted young children and displaced refugees. Years later, when the Steinbrucks had put into place a consortium of shelters and clinics servicing the homeless in Washington, D.C., while Steinbruck preached the visionary sermons on Sunday morning, it was typically Erna who worked tirelessly behind the scenes the rest of the week preparing the food, fixing the plumbing, catching the rats, and making the beds. "John Steinbruck talks it, Erna does it," was a common refrain.

Following seminary, Steinbruck became an assistant pastor at a small country church in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. It was not a good fit, and he always seemed to find himself in trouble. When he downed a few beers at a local watering hole following a church softball game, he offended the teetotalers of the congregation. When he rode his motorcycle through town in his clerical collar, he challenged the congregation’s image of a small-town pastor. When he refused to join the Lions and Rotary Clubs, he disrespected local custom. "After that," Steinbruck told the Washington Post in a magazine profile of him in 1985, "I thought it was healthier to move on."

Steinbruck thereafter sought city churches, which he believed were great arenas from which to practice his brand of theology, and which offered many opportunities for creative ministry. He found that urban churches reflected the suffering and afflictions of their surroundings -- poverty, crime, decaying neighborhoods. It was in the city that Steinbruck found his true calling, confronting the affects of racism, discrimination, homelessness, economic inequality, and the injustices of American society.

Steinbruck served for ten years in Easton, Pennsylvania, a depressed industrial town with a melting pot of cultures and ethnicity. It was the early 1960's and the civil rights movement was in its infant stages. As some of his congregants were working-class blacks, Steinbruck became sensitized to issues that most suburban pastors avoided -- racially discriminatory practices in every aspect of the community -- that required action more than prayer.

In 1968, Steinbruck befriended two similarly-minded local clergymen, Rabbi Norton Shargel and a liberal Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Francis Connolly. In an attempt to confront the racial and other injustices in American society at that time, the three men formed an interfaith coalition, which they dubbed "ProJeCt," an acronym for Protestant, Jewish, Catholic. ProJeCt quickly caught on with the congregants of each religion, and they began working together to find solutions to the problems threatening a community that was tired of divisiveness among people of faith and favored a more positive approach to solving problems. The business community and local media embraced it and, not long thereafter, ProJeCt established a youth center, an infant wellness program, a free dental clinic, and summer programs for disadvantaged kids that took them to community parks and beaches. Now 41 years later, ProJeCt remains among the most effective community organizations in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.

Through his friendship with Rabbi Shargel, Steinbruck became closely associated with the Jewish community, an association that would profoundly affect his ministry for the rest of his life. Rabbi Shargel taught Steinbruck that "as one works, struggles, with those who are strangers, we learn what pains them." Steinbruck accompanied Rabbi Shargel and Father Connolly on an interfaith trip to Israel in 1969. The Six Day War a recent memory, Steinbruck experienced first hand the positive exuberance of the Jewish homeland, its Zionist ideals of community, security, and cooperation. He also experienced its sorrow and pain. He visited Yad Vashem and the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto. He learned of thousands of years of Jewish struggle and survival, and the history of anti-Semitism that has so often tainted the Christian Church. He visited the Western Wall, walked the streets of historic Jerusalem, touched the waters of Jordan and Galilee, and experienced the celebration of life -- and constant fear of attack -- that embraces Israel's daily routine.

Always a scholar, Steinbruck was deeply influenced by the writings of Krister Stendahl, a former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, who authored a seminal work on the apostle Paul. In it, Stendahl argued that the Covenant of Sinai remained at once valid and viable, and that Christianity was historically and theologically wrong in attempting to fulfill an evangelistic "mission" to the Jewish people. Steinbruck found this work liberating, believing that the history of proselytizing among the Jews was responsible for much of their brutalization and suffering, including the Inquisition and centuries of persecution, culminating in the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the Holocaust.

Steinbruck discovered the meaning of kiddush haShem, pursuing justice at all costs, from the teachings of Seymour Siegel, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. This concept, together with the writings of other great theologians -- Dietrich Boenhoeffer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel among them -- helped Steinbruck develop a central message, which eventually would define much of his life's work. As he told the Washington Post:

We are on this planet to exemplify that light, that bread, that living water, those metaphors that Jesus used, to live out the truth in a non-violent way, simply to do justice, live justly, try, in the space over which you're responsible . . . to create an oasis . . . to which the stranger can come and find refuge.

Steinbruck would put into place this concept of biblical hospitality at Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., where he became senior pastor in 1970. Founded nearly a century before, in 1873, Luther Place was an historic, moderately sized, red stone church with a steeple located on Thomas Circle in the heart of Washington. Just five blocks from the White House – “King Herod’s Palace” as he used to call it – the church straddled an invisible border at 14th and N Streets between the halls of power, including embassies, fancy restaurants, and posh hotels, and the city's red light district, encompassing some of the nation's worst urban blight.

When Steinbruck arrived at Luther Place, he found a congregation beset with many of the problems confronting most big-city churches. The civil uprisings that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., had left scars on Washington's neighborhoods and businesses. Prostitutes and pimps, drug dealers and dope fiends loitered and lingered on the street corners. Steinbruck confronted a dying church with no sense of purpose. They owned 21,000 square feet of land, including five buildings, yet had visions only of building a parking lot. For Steinbruck, this was disgraceful. That Luther Place had so much space that was used only at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning was a violation of everything he believed and preached.

The church was renting out most of its properties on N Street, two of which were being used as houses of prostitution. One night, Steinbruck received a call at 3:00 a.m. because a pimp had thrown a young prostitute out of a third-story window. Traumatized, the congregation voted to tear down the row houses. Steinbruck thought otherwise, and under his leadership and guiding hand, a new way of thinking emerged. "All of a sudden," he recalled, "it occurred to us that the way to go was not to close up but to open up. We felt that if our space and our facilities could be used in demonic and anti-human ways, they could also be used in inspirational ways." Luther Place would become an open refuge to the “least of these” – the wandering, nomadic homeless of the nation’s capital.

By the early 1970’s, homelessness had become a huge problem in Washington, with growing numbers of mental patients released into the streets, a consequence of the de-institutionalization of mental hospitals. In response, a coalition was formed between the Community for Creative Non-Violence (led by homeless advocate Mitch Snyder), the Sojourners Community (led by the Rev. Jim Wallis), and Luther Place (led by Steinbruck) to provide shelter for those in need. Luther Place provided the space. "You don't need five years of seminary to realize that, when someone knocks on the door, you should open it," Steinbruck would later say. Inspired by Matthew 25 (“I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me”), Luther Place established an emergency shelter, first with blankets, later mattresses, sprawled on the floor of the church sanctuary. Ten bodies, then thirty, then fifty, filled the sanctuary.

Not long thereafter, Steinbruck recalled, "We made an amazing discovery – homeless people need to eat!" So Luther Place developed a food plan and prepared meals. As many of the homeless were drug and alcohol addicted, they opened a drug counseling and treatment center. As many were suffering from mental illness, with medical needs long neglected, they developed a medical clinic and provided psychiatric counseling. All of this occurred without a plan or the wherewithal to pay for it. Yet people responded. Although the CCNV eventually went its own direction, Luther Place members volunteered and a growing community of supporters eventually chipped in, including the Sojourners Community, the Catholic Worker Movement, and the Jewish community. Wesley Methodist Seminary students volunteered for overnight duty. Many others provided financial and logistical support.

Conditions were primitive at first, but in time more and more volunteers appeared and the church became instantly filled wall-to-wall each night as, in the words of Steinbruck, “the grapevine community network reached the forsaken.” Luther Place, which had been struggling to justify its existence, now could not perish for the sake of those who needed it to live. By opening its doors to the homeless and becoming a place of urban hospitality and refuge, those who presumed to save the homeless, were saved by them. "When you have a reason to live, you live," Steinbruck said.

What eventually emerged was the N Street Village, a remarkable consortium of services that help the homeless regain their self-confidence, develop life skills, and prepare, step-by-step, to return to mainstream society. Today, the N Street Village is a four-story, $16 million complex made up of shelters and clinics that offer food, clothing, housing, medical care, and social and psychiatric services to homeless women and their children. “If you want to find Jesus,” Steinbruck insists, “go to where the outcasts are -- the sick, the homeless, the poor." With prostitutes and pimps outside the church, the mentally ill homeless inside the church, Luther Place created "an integrity of the Gospel that was not planned."

Steinbruck is always careful to note that the transformation of Luther Place and the "Miracle on N Street" was not about him and he refuses to take credit for its success. In fact, there were a lot of people other than Steinbruck who were instrumental in carrying out the mission that became N Street Village – Erna Steinbruck, the lay leadership of Luther Place, its assistant pastors and administrative personnel, the members of the congregation, and the many other religious and secular organizations and individuals who provided financial and logistical support. Together, they have helped provide hope and sustenance, food and shelter, care and compassion, to thousands of homeless women and families for nearly 37 years. But none of this would have occured without Steinbruck’s vision, prodding, and ability to articulate and apply the concept of biblical hospitality, of welcoming the stranger in our midst, into the real-life, worldly mission of the church.

The Miracle on N Street is only part of the life and legacy of John Steinbruck, the man of contradictions. He would go on to lead Luther Place in many other acts of Christian social conscience -- providing sanctuary to Salvadoran refugees, and protesting the plight of Soviet Jewry, apartheid in South Africa, and the U.S. military buildup. He would be arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience, resulting in church censures and an expanding assortment of critics. He would be invited to the White House during the Camp David accords as a symbol of Christian-Jewish unity, then banished from its grounds for the next decade for trying to convince the Reagan White House to donate the leftovers from state dinners to the homeless (they refused). He would be honored as a distinguished alumnus at the seminary for capitalists, the Wharton School of Finance, where he delivered a speech called, “The Managerial Theory of Loaves and Fishes.” In all of his actions, he exemplified the ideals of Schweitzer and Bonhoeffer, King and Heschel, and inspired countless others -- those with a strong sense of faith and those on the brink of faithlessness -- to help mend and heal a broken world.

A Step Forward for Lutherans

On Friday, August 21, 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) became the largest single religious denomination in the United States to permit openly gay and lesbian persons to serve as clergy, including those ordained members presently in committed, life-long relationships. The Churchwide Assembly also approved the efforts of individual congregations to "recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships."

I am proud of the Lutheran Church for making these long-awaited policy changes, which recognize that humanity in all its diversity is affirmed by God and not to be excluded in a house of worship. The ELCA action comes on the heels of similar declarations by the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and the United Church of Christ, two traditionally liberal denominations that often lead the way in Christian social justice. The Lutheran action is particularly significant, however, given its size (at 4.8 million members it is the seventh largest denomination in the United States) and its largely Midwestern, theologically middle-of-the-road membership, as it denotes a broader trend of tolerance and acceptance gradually taking hold in mainline U.S. churches.

I remain somewhat cautious, however, because the real test may be how individual Lutherans and congregations react to the ELCA declaration. As happened with the Episcopalians, already there is dissension in the ranks, threats of division and disunity over what is fundamentally a dispute over the authority and interpretation of Scripture. Lutherans traditionally believe in the doctrine of solo scriptura – that Scripture alone is the final authority on matters of faith and morality. Because one can find biblical verses that seemingly condemn the “sin” of homosexuality, and while Jesus was silent on the subject, those who emphasize Scriptural authority have difficulty accepting any church action that, in their view, would contradict Scripture. Thus, the Rev. Richard Mahan, pastor of St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Charleston, West Virginia, told the Associated Press on Friday, "I can't believe the church I loved and served for 40 years can condone what God condemns. Nowhere in Scripture does it say homosexuality and same-sex marriage is acceptable to God. Instead, it says it is immoral and perverted." Mahan predicted that a majority of his congregation would break away from the ELCA. Others indicated they might leave as well.

More theologically liberal Christians, including many who voted for the ELCA action, believe that Scriptural interpretations should occur in light of the essential teachings of Jesus, aided by modern insight and knowledge – including the near universal recognition among the scientific community that one’s sexual orientation is biologically driven and not a matter of choice. Thus, love and acceptance of all people, black or white, gay or straight, male or female, is a defining imperative: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you . . . By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34).

There is really nothing radical in a more flexible approach to biblical interpretation, for the Bible has very little to say about homosexuality; there are perhaps a half dozen references to it in all of Scripture, and it is a relatively minor concern in comparison to, for example, economic justice. To disregard verses condemning homosexuality, or to place them in the historical context in which they were written, is no different than what Christians (and Jews in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures) do with respect to the biblical acceptance of slavery (see, e.g., Leviticus 25:44-45; Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; 4:1; Titus 2:9-10; 1 Peter 2:18-19, 1 Corinthians 7:20-24). Logically, people who think homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so, must also think that slavery is acceptable because the Bible says so. Yet I suspect that even Rev. Mahan and those opposed to the ELCA vote (approving openly gay clergy) on the authority of Scripture, would not condone slavery, although the Bible does.

I am glad that the Lutherans chose love and acceptance over ignorance and rejection, for it is only through a glowing ray of hope and love that the Church will remain relevant and valid in the future. It points the Church in the right direction, as a place of hospitality for all of humanity, and suggests openness to thinking, caring individuals who cannot accept an uncritical, inflexible view of the Bible and Scriptural authority.

I am the son of a Lutheran minister and have maintained at least one foot in the Lutheran Church my entire life, though my views on Christianity and Lutheranism are admittedly complex and, at times, contradictory. I have always felt a sense of pride in my Lutheran heritage, particularly when I see the Lutheran Church take a leadership role in advocating for social and political justice, working for peace, and committing resources to the service of others.

• I am proud of my father, who in the early 1960’s traveled to Washington, D.C., with a group of concerned clergy to lobby for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and who helped several young men achieve conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War by proposing alternative, peaceful means of service.


• I am proud of my mother, who has devoted her life to serving others, and who, at age 78, continues to feed the homeless and advocate on behalf of the poor and less fortunate, all of which is driven by her devout faith.


• I am proud of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, a privately-funded volunteer service program, which annually places over 100 young people into non-profit agencies devoted to social justice – aiding the homeless, advocating for a cleaner environment, providing mental health services to those who cannot afford it, and many other great things – and which helps in small, concrete ways to make the world a better place to live.


• Finally, I am proud of my former congregation in Washington, D.C., Luther Place Memorial Church, which under the direction of its former pastor, the Rev. John Steinbruck, became a model of Christian hospitality and service. Steinbruck was (and remains) an extremely articulate and passionate preacher of the Social Gospel who constantly reminds Christians of their obligation to care for the least of our brethren. When thousands of mentally ill homeless were released from mental hospitals as the result of legal actions in the early 1970’s, Steinbruck successfully urged Luther Place to open its doors. When Salvadoran refugees fled civil war in their homeland and sought legal sanctuary in the United States, Luther Place again opened its doors as an act of Christian conscience in direct contravention of Reagan’s Justice Department.

If the Lutheran Church were more reflective of these examples, I would feel less ambivalent about my faith. In my experience, however, many Lutheran congregations place little emphasis on social justice and rarely challenge the beliefs and value systems of its members. And although the Lutheran Church has a rich tradition of scholarship and highly respected seminaries, those who struggle with questions of doctrine or who question the language and biases of conventional liturgy, often do so alone. The views of many everyday Lutherans, including most of those opposed to the recent ELCA action, reflect a pietistic faith that proclaims an unwavering belief in the Nicene Creed, declaring that all who fail to accept orthodox church doctrine are not legitimately Christian. To me, this misses the point of what Jesus was really all about, and leads to divisiveness and dissent. I prefer a progressive Christianity that struggles with doctrine but strives for a just world over a theologically certain, one-size-fits-all version that allows no doubters or dissenters.

Nevertheless, I am proud that the Lutheran Church has taken a firm stance for justice, inclusiveness, and hospitality by declaring itself open and welcoming to all persons, gay and straight, and by allowing committed and talented ordained members of the faith, who happen to be gay or lesbian, to serve and lead individual congregations. As stated by Bishop Gary Wollersheim of the ECLA Northern Illinois Synod, "It's a matter of justice, a matter of hospitality. It's what Jesus would have us do."