Fear not! A Protestant Sabbath at Riverside

If there is a “Vatican” to American Protestants, that would be at 475 Riverside Dr. in New York City. There is no pope but it is the headquarters of the National Council of Churches USA. The National Council of Churches encompasses a wide spectrum of American Christianity—from Protestant, Orthodox, Evangelical, Anglican, and African-American, to historic peace churches and ethnic-language immigrant churches. They include 100,000-some local congregations and 45 million persons in the United States.

The place is next door to the interdenominational Union Theological Seminary whose existentialist faculty members spearheaded an enlightened theological reformation within the American Protestant Churches after World War II, indirectly influencing the Vatican II conclave.

Across the street is also the Riverside Church, endowed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and founded by outspoken Harry Emerson Fosdick. Among its senior ministers was a Baptist Scot, Robert McCracken, followed by Ernest T. Campbell of the pastoral counseling fame, then the anti-Vietnam War activist and former chaplain of Yale University, William Sloan Coffin Jr., and recently, an African-American Baptist scholar, James Forbes Jr.

Last Sunday, the Riverside Church installed its 6th Senior Pastor, Dr. Brad Braxton, a 40-year-old spirited biblical scholar with the physical stature of Mahatma Gandhi, the eloquence of MLK Jr., and the dogged activism of William Coffin Sloane Jr. The occasion was plagued by internal dissension over remuneration, though my first impression from the discordant behavior of two members when I attended the Sunday morning worship service indicated to me overtones of personal intolerance, if not outright racial discrimination.

The Riverside Church is officially affiliated with the American Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ USA, both congregational in polity structure (pastors are called rather than sent, the difference between Saipan Community Church and the CK Cathedral) with the UCC more open and transparent in its decision making process than the Baptist. Dr. Braxton comes from the Baptist tradition that tends to be more selectively oligarchic rather than openly democratic. The current brouhaha is a cry for more transparency on finances that unfortunately stepped outside the consultative and councilar in-house processes of the Church. Canon law has moved to civil law. The local judge sent the matter back to the Council to a scheduled congregational deliberation May 3.

Our interest, however, is not on the ecclesiastical wrangling but on the relevant message from the pulpit last Sunday. “FEAR NOT!” thundered the preacher echoing the witness of the prophet Isaiah of old to the quivering assemblies paralyzed by fear by the rivers of Babylon.

The fires heating up the contemporary malaise of fear in America eloquently encapsulated by the grief and memorial ambience of ground zero at the south end of Manhattan, is stoked by the media at any whiff of a controversy and/or a crisis.

The recognition, for instance, by the government of President Zardari of the preponderance of Taliban influence in the northwest section of Pakistan and the concurrent peace talks has sent U.S. military advisers into fits of heightened frenzy as if the Talibans are about to descend down the Indus Valley to Karachi, as well as engulf the tri-state administration of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. President Obama’s Pentagon has already conceded additional troops to Afghanistan, presumably, to allay right-wing anxieties over alleged display of weakness with the determined withdrawal from Iraq. Now the fearful public is now being played to think that the barbaric Talibans’ threat is imminent and ascending!

This frayed communal nerve was demonstrated in last Monday morning’s photo-op taken by Air Force One when it flew with fighter jet escorts over Manhattan, sending skyscraper denizens out into the streets for fear that the flying giant was out to disrupt morning coffee. No less than City Mayor Bloomberg showed more than bureaucratic chagrin over the White House faux pas in failing to adequately alert local officials and the public. Beyond the apology issued at the end of the day, a CNN anchor called for the resignation of the official concerned!

Most dramatically a sign of shattered equilibrium of the social sanity is the press coverage of the “pandemic” swine flu sweeping the globe. With the reported 140 deaths in Mexico, the press was adamant in pushing the White House to reveal what measures it has taking in the protecting the public and even the President from the intrusive virus.

An archaeologist who personally escorted President Obama in a museum tour died recently after displaying flu-like symptoms, and this obsession to know details led the White House press secretary to repeat the presidential medic’s assurances that not the President, nor any of the staff, and press personnel in the Mexico entourage have shown any symptoms that should cause any alarm. The press acted like gawking and antsy spectators at a triage! It turns out the archaeologist succumbed to pneumonia.

The 40 reported instances of suspected patients among students in NYC who recently came from Mexico and are now reportedly exhibiting flu-like symptoms has encouraged my host and I to forego any more trips to Manhattan. Never mind that only one has so far been hospitalized. I am now traveling with a surgical mask on my return to Saipan from JFK International Airport!

We have nothing to fear but fear itself, is the famous dictum of FDR. Obama’s antidote to this paralyzing epidemic taxes the nation’s soul but the highly contagious virus of fear has curtailed initiative and creativity for so long, it is time to declare once more that to be mesmerized by its shadows is but a matter of choice.

There is momentary comfort in fear when it leads us to inactivity and suspends the pressure to make choices. Fear focuses us to massage and nurse our internal state rather than to pursue and strategically respond to our external sense of duty and obligation.

FEAR NOT! Isaiah counseled. Dr. Braxton read off his litany of prophetic deeds he is committed to bring into fruition, and encouraged the Riverside congregation to not falter in making it real. If the congregation can live out of their covenant rather than their fear, you might just fulfill your divine commission. Preach it, brother! Live it! The force is with you!