Have They No Shame? Leadership and Amorality.

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.   --Jeremiah 6:14-15

It’s one of the most human and instinctive emotional responses to external stimuli.  To blush. Blushing. That’s when our cheeks turn red, when we feel ourselves flushed with warmth, when we are embarrassed by or feeling shame about something that we have done or not done. Some realization that we are wrong or made a mistake or just screwed up and so when we blush, it is our bodies way of saying, “We went too far.  We crossed the line.  We were wrong.”

Years ago, from the church pulpit one Sunday morning, I decided to make a joke about the wedding I’d officiated at the day before, to get some laughs by telling worshippers about how the wedding party was so late to the altar. But just when I’d finished my storytelling I looked down into the congregation and saw, sitting right in the pews, the newly married couple I’d just mocked. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more embarrassed and ashamed at what I’d done with my cutting words and self-serving joke making.  

And boy, did I blush.

I felt deep shame about my cheap shot. I knew immediately after the words left my mouth that I had done wrong and been hurtful to another. At coffee hour after worship, I apologized profusely to the couple and to their credit, they were gracious and kind in their forgiveness.

What a jerk I was!

But what happens when humans “do not even know how to blush,” in the words of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah? He was writing about government leaders of his day, who were bringing great suffering down upon the people by their actions, but those same leaders were completely unashamed of what they did. They did not give a damn about the pain and hurt that they caused.  They knew their actions were wrong. Yet they were so arrogant, so uncaring, so drunk with power, and so blind to the effects that their actions had upon the people, that shame was just not in their emotional vocabulary.

And certainly not blushing.

In the eleven weeks since our current President took office, it is head spinning, and overwhelming to think about all of the societal and democratic norms he has either ignored or destroyed. With strokes of his pen, he’s laid off tens of thousands of federal workers, with no clear plan, and no compassion for these folks, many of whom have given their lives to public service.  He’s threatened judges and his billionaire buddy Tommy Tesla actually posted personal information about the families of those judges online. The president jokingly (or maybe not jokingly) talks about running for a third term even though this is clearly unconstitutional. And now the president’s tariffs are singlehandedly threatening to crash the economy.

I could go on….

Yet the truth that really scares me the most about this man and the minions and sycophants he’s surrounded himself with, is that they all seemingly do know how to blush. They seem to be completely unashamed of the chaos they create, the people they hurt, the immigrants they deport without due process, the families they split apart, or the government programs they lay waste to.

No shame. No embarrassment. No blushing. None.

You see to blush, you actually need to be centered in some type of moral world view, to be led by an inner moral compass, to embrace and practice values that align with what is communally understood as good and right and true. You have to have a sense of decency in how you treat others. But if you are immoral or amoral, if naked power is more important to you than service to the nation, if your only guiding principle is to do whatever it takes to petulantly punish your enemies, if you believe that you are ALWAYS right, then of course you do not feel shame or blush.

You are without shame. 

To seek to believe in and practice a faith in God means the opposite.  To practice what we preach, folks of faith try our best to live out the values of our faith, in my faith what I’d call “Jesus” values.  Be humble. Care first for the most vulnerable and innocent and powerless.  Be gracious towards your enemies and work with them for the common good.  Recognize that wealth might buy you everything on earth, but it will never get you into heaven.  The best life is about putting others, and not yourself, at the center of everything. Love your neighbor. Treat your neighbor as you want to be treated. 

There’s lots more to this moral code but the point is that it is actually a code. A philosophically coherent way of life. A way of understanding who we are supposed to be in this God-given life and how we are supposed to treat others. And when you break this code or fall short (which we all do) we may blush, knowing what we have done is wrong. And that’s ok.

But some public “servants” right now, the people we actually entrust to care for our country and we the people? Those “leaders?” They do not even know how to blush.

And that is terrifying.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

        

 

When Dissent Is a Crime No One Is Safe From Big Brother

"But always…there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always…there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face…."          --“1984” by George Orwell

At first I could not bring myself to watch the video of Tufts University PhD student Rumeya Ozturk being arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on a neighborhood Somerville street, in the late afternoon, of Tuesday, March 25^th.  Unbeknownst to those ICE officers, the shocking encounter was captured in all its frightening reality by a nearby doorbell camera.

I just could not view images of someone being snatched off the street and then quickly taken away, for imprisonment. With no courtroom hearing to state her case. No chance to consult a lawyer or talk to a judge.  Not even a merciful moment to say goodbye to her friends.

But finally, I did watch, and it made me sick to my stomach. Made me wonder if what I was viewing was from present day America, or perhaps Germany in 1933, or Moscow or Beijing in 2025. Places and times where folks were and are regularly picked up off the street and spirited away, maybe never to be heard from again.  

In the video, Ozturk walks down the street on her way to share a meal with fellow Muslim friends, who are meeting to break their daylong fast. Ramadan is the Islamic holy month when devout Muslims fast from sunup to sundown as a religious practice, to deepen their connection to God.  But Ozturk’s journey was quickly interrupted by six ICE agents who swooped down, surrounded her, in their dark clothes and mask clad faces, and then handcuffed her and lead her away, as her cries of protest and fear rang out.

It all happened in less than one minute. Ozturk is a Turkish national who is in the United States legally with an F-1 student visa. Within hours she was flown to a detention center in southern Louisiana. Her “crime”?

At first that was not clear. ICE stonewalled all inquiries. Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar, is at Tufts studying psychology and working on her doctoral dissertation. She was one of four co-signers of a student newspaper opinion piece in early March 2024 that advocates for the university to divest from investments and actions that benefit Israel and its war against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Finally, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained the rationale behind the arrest of Ozturk and scores of other student foreign nationals. “If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus….Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa."

It’s ironic to note Rubio’s family fled an authoritarian Cuban regime to come to the United States, for freedom and the right to speak up and confront countries like Cuba where rulers rule with intimidation, fear, and violence. Ozturk’s detention increasingly feels like the norm when it comes to how our present government handles any foreigner who dares to protest, advocate, or work for any cause that angers the powers that be. 

Did or does Ozturk directly support and advocate for the terrorist work of Hamas? So far, no proof to that effect has been produced. Like many, I believe it is legitimate to deport any guest of the United States who advocates for terrorism or violence against any country or people. But is it now a punishable offense to just speak up and out? To protest peacefully? To offer a narrative that challenges the storyline being pushed by the current United States regime?

Apparently, yes.

If that is the case in our country, then I fear we will be seeing more and more images of immigrants and non-citizens being taken away, without any legal process, by anonymous, faceless, government functionaries.  As a person of faith that worries me. What other “crimes” might evoke such a swift government response? The religion you practice?  Will that get you in trouble now? The innocent people you shelter because of your religious conviction. Is that up for suspicion? Will one day someone like me get in trouble because I dare to put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard and criticize the current administration, and its cruel policies?

 As a citizen, as a child of God, as a believer in fundamental civil and human rights, Ozturk’s arrest makes me wonder and worry if anyone is really safe anymore. And that is heartbreaking. Frightening too. 

Just watch the video.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

         

Welcome Spring! We Really, REALLY, Need You Right Now

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. —Hal Borland, writer

We interrupt this crazy world to bring you….

SPRING!

This season which officially begins today never ever ceases to surprise and delight me. I’m not sure exactly why. I could not give you a detailed physiological description of what exactly happens to human bodies when the temps get warmer, and the light gets longer and the trees bloom and the flowers bud and the grass comes back so green. Smiles certainly seem to appear more spontaneously among us. Hearts beat harder and lung “huff” deeper that first time you get on the bike or go out for a run or start prepping your garden on bended knees.

That’s to be expected. We are just emerging from a long winter’s hibernation after all.    

I wonder what a psychologist might opine professionally about the diagnosis of “spring fever.” I know my soul soars a bit higher when I look up into a bright blue late March sky, one that seems to have sent packing the slate grey heavy-laden skies of deep winter. My spirit absolutely lightens and brightens just to be able to take an ice-free walk, no need to steer clear of frozen slush piles on the street. It’s all melting now, maybe even melted for good.  Yes, I know that in New England there are occasional surprise spring snowstorms.  In mid-March of 2018, a blizzard struck and upwards of 25 inches or more of snow fell here, with 17 inches recorded in Boston, and a tide so high the financial district flooded.

BRRRRRRR…..Enough of that!

Instead, let’s look ahead and look forward. Listen to the first call of the first at bat and first ball and strikes for a Red Sox player on Opening Day at Fenway Park. It’s just two weeks away. They might actually be good this year! Very soon I’ll take my mom to the Clam Box on Quincy Shore Drive in Wollaston. I’ll get a grilled hot dog and the best onion rings in western civilization.  She’ll get a cheeseburger and if it’s balmy enough we might even sit outside and look at the Boston skyline in the distance, over a blue and green expanse of the sea.

What rituals, what traditions, what events mark your opening day of spring? 

I hope that you are ready to revel in these rites of spring. Celebrate them with gusto. Enjoy them fully. For spring is a miracle, a guarantee that no matter how harsh the winter, or even the world we find ourselves living in…no matter what, the earth turns, and the sun comes back, and the resurrection season appears.

Nothing human can stop spring.  Not any executive order from the President. Not a budget cut from his minion Tommy Tesla.  Nope. Their fleeting powers pale in comparison to the Almighty, who was and is and always will be.  Kind of like the promise of spring.

I know I need spring more this year than in past years, to push back against the chaos in, and worry about, the state of our world right now. I need spring to feel the natural hope that underlies this time when the earth wakes up and seemingly, everything is new again. Anything seems possible.  Summer stands in the far distance but it is waving at us now and getting closer and closer by the day. 

Welcome spring.

Sure, we know you always come back to us, and yet, when you do appear again, God renews all of Creation. God rouses the world. God dares us to believe again, believe in renewal, believe in new life, believe in believing.  C’mon spring. We are ready.

What took you so long?

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He also teaches spiritual memoir classes. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

The Destruction of USAID: It's About Cruelty

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”― Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Russian activist, and political prisoner

The cruelty is the point. That's all I can conclude.

The heartbreaking and people breaking cuts made to a wide variety of social services paid for by Uncle Sam—these seem designed intentionally to inflict as much pain as possible, especially on the vulnerable. To wildly cut federally funded programs for folks in need with no clear blueprint or coherent plan. Just slash, slash, slash, the slashing led by a person whose only qualifications seem to be that he gave a quarter of a billion dollars to get the new president elected.  

Why else pick The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as the very first government agency to be laid waste to? USAID is, or should I say was, one of the largest, most generous, and most effective funders of humanitarian projects in the world. Let’s say that again. Humanitarian projects. That’s doing good because we decide that our country is morally called to help the less fortunate around the world.

You know, the basics of helping. Like feeding the hungry. Housing for people with substandard homes. Working to provide clean drinking water to people. Helping refugees find new homes where they can be safe and thrive. How about helping to fight endemic diseases like malaria, Ebola, tuberculosis, and bird flu? Or providing HIV/AIDs treatment to mothers and children? Started under former President George W. Bush, that program saved or extended the lives of tens of thousands of people.  USAID funded polio vaccinations reached some 400 million children.

But now that work is wiped out and the fallout is awful. For example: according to the Associated Press, 600,000 women and children in Bangladesh alone will lose access to maternal health care, and domestic violence prevention programs.

Gone. All gone. 

Terminated contracts that awarded grant money to so many lifesaving programs.  Of 6,200 contracts, 5,800 have been ended. How many lives will be lost because of this cruel and callous action? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands? Millions? Folks will die from malnutrition, disease, violence, war, and it’s all unnecessary because the money was already there and being spent to help people. To be our American compassion lived out in the world. American care in action.

It's not as if the $63.1 billion USAID 2025 budget and it’s zeroing out is going to put any kind of dent in the feds’ 2025 total budget of $6.75 trillion. USAID makes up .93 percent of that total figure.  Which tells me it is not really about sincere cost cutting or thoughtful belt tightening.

No. 

All I can surmise is that the current administration has adopted the golden rule. Not the one that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus had that right but I’m not sure his voice or teachings about kindness and mercy are being followed by many folks in power right now. Instead, they have adopted the modern golden rule: “He who has the most gold makes the rules.”   

So, a billionaire asks another billionaire to cut, cut, cut. That’s not fair nor just nor Godly nor merciful. Nope. The folks suffering under these cuts to USAID are about far away from being a billionaire plutocrat as you can get. Plutocrat meaning, “a person whose power derives from wealth.”  Which leads to a plutocracy, meaning, “a society ruled by such people of great wealth.”

When you are that far up the food chain, when your best friends are mostly other millionaires and billionaires, when the closest you get to a poor person is whizzing by them in your limo as you get a vague glimpse of them through tinted windows, well, what can we expect from these cost cutters? Do they really even have the moral imagination or decency to recognize the human damage and human pain and suffering that they are causing? I don’t think so.

It has got to be about cruelty.

If not cruelty then willful blind defiance to take any responsibility for and to face the consequences of what the budget destroyers are doing right now. Jesus’ command was pretty simple.  “Whatever you do for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.” Meaning that when we show mercy to fellow children of God, we directly reflect God’s amazing mercy. For those of us who are Christian, it means we are called in love to directly serve Christ. 

Feeding. Housing. Sheltering. Healing. Caring. Saving.

But now that’s gone. All gone. So cruel. So, so cruel.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

      

 

 

America in 2025: Defender of Liberty or Friend to Despots?

"Appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last."            --Winston Churchill

All history repeats itself, for worse, for better, for sure.

1938.  Germany, led by the fascist dictator and Nazi party founder Adolf Hitler, threatened to seize the Sudetenland, the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia.  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Germany and negotiated, acquiescing to Hitler’s demand. In return, Hitler promised that Germany had no further plans for territorial expansion. Chamberlain then infamously proclaimed in a triumphant speech, “My good friends…[I have]… returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time….Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

Less than a year later Hitler invaded and conquered Poland. Great Britain and France declared war.  World War II began, a cataclysmic conflagration that spanned six years, and plunged the globe into all out war. Hitler and his Axis allies were finally defeated in 1945. Human freedom and human liberty were defended. The United States became the de-facto partner and ally with Europe in defending against a new worldwide threat to freedom: the Soviet Union, aka Russia.

2022. The United States, sided with and helped to fund Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia which invaded and seized territory, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, many civilians. In the past week that policy has radically changed. We’ve now decided to acquiesce to the Russian dictator Putin. Vladimir Putin. The leader who regularly murders his political opponents, even on foreign soil. Putin, whose rise to power began in 1999 with the mysterious bombing of four apartment buildings, supposed terrorist events. Fear gripped that nation and laid the groundwork for Putin to seize power, and he did, ruthlessly.

Now Putin has apparently become our nation’s new best bud, a “friend” who can be trusted to be a person of peace. That is as long as Russia gets to keep the land they stole. Sound familiar? Representatives of the United States and Russia (I mean, why include Ukraine?) are meeting for talks to end the war.  To do as much as he can to prop up his pal Putin I suppose, our President now accuses the leader of Ukraine of being a dictator and also blames that innocent country for causing the war. Even though Ukraine is the victim here, not the criminal.

Is this who we’ve become in this new era in our history? An appeaser of murderous dictators? Fickle ally to Europe. Chummy with any country that strokes the ego of our appeaser in chief.

“Americans will always fight for liberty!” 

That’s the stirring sentiment of a 1943 U.S. government poster I have a framed and hanging in my living room.  It depicts three Revolutionary War soldiers standing at respectful attention as three modern day army soldiers march by, with grim determination written on their faces. They represent the fighting force that beat Hitler, and fascism, and violent dictatorial rule. Hence the hope then and now that our country will always fight for liberty.

We as a nation haven’t always gotten that ideal right.  But it is still our ideal. Our idealistic dream, in the least how we want to see ourselves, maybe even need to see ourselves.  As always being on the side of democracy and not despots, the oppressed and not the oppressor, the war-torn innocent and the not the war mongering bullies.

Which makes me wonder…is that cherished value—fighting on the side of liberty—dead? And if not dead, then seemingly on life support? What else can we conclude when our nation’s leaders abandon the country that was attacked to the country that did the attacking? The act of throwing Ukraine under the bus (or in this case a Russian tank) is immoral and obscene, and insulting to all of the American women and men who sacrificed their lives to actually defend freedom and liberty.

What does it profit a nation to gain the world but lose their soul? I guess we are about to find out. 

God help us all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

         

January 6th Pardons: It's Official. The Mob Now Rules.

Thou shalt not kill.  --Exodus 20:13* (*unless you get a pardon)

His forty-two-year life on this earth was ordinary and extraordinary, as many human lives are. Ordinary, and beautiful, in that he was a good son and good brother, a devoted boyfriend to his partner of eleven years, Sandra, and he so loved his dogs. Two dachshunds, Sparky, and Pebbles. Watching hockey too.

His was an extraordinary life, as a lifelong public servant: a soldier, a first responder. Brian Sicknick served in the New Jersey Air National Guard, deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999, and Kyrgyzstan in 2003. He was honorably discharged that year and went on to serve as a United States Capitol police officer from 2008 to 2021. 

January of 2021, with a last day of service, end of watch, January 6^th.

That day Brian, while bravely defending the Capitol building along with his fellow officers, from a mob of thousands of rioters bent on overturning the 2020 election results, was sprayed at close range in the face with pepper spray by two of those assembled “protestors”. Officer Sicknick seemed to be okay but at 10 pm that night, he collapsed and was hospitalized. The next day, he suffered two strokes, was put on life support but then died, 32 hours after the rioters violently attacked him. Months later, the D.C. medical examiner Dr. Francisco J. Diaz concluded that Sicknick died of “natural causes” but, “all that transpired played a role in his condition."

He died serving his country. The two men who assaulted him were arrested, tried, and convicted, and sentenced to jail. They were serving out their punishment until this week, when they, along with more than 1,500 other insurrectionists, were pardoned by our new President. With the stroke of a pen, the President pardoned every last one of those so called “patriots,” they who marauded through the cathedral of our democracy.  Who unrinated and defecated throughout the building.  Who so traumatized Capitol police officer Jeffrey Smith that nine days after the riots, he committed suicide. Who cost taxpayers $1.2 billion for cleanup and the hardening of that building to prevent other riots.

Brutes. Bullies. Haters. Crazies. They all walked out of jails and are now free. 

I guess this is the country we are living in now.  You can cause the death of a first responder doing their duty and defending the democratic process and you can still get away with it. Walk scot-free with bloodstained hands, none the worse for wear apparently. Go back to rioting and using violence as a political cudgel against anyone who dares to opposes you or your beloved leader.

As a citizen and a person of faith I don’t know what breaks my heart more.  The unjust, unnecessary death and suffering of all those Capitol police and D.C. police officers who tried their best to hold the line on that darkest of days in American history? The descent into government sanctioned lawlessness? Do the crime and you don’t have to pay the time!

Imagine how hurt and insulted the survivors must feel, like their loved ones’ lives meant absolutely nothing, at least not to the commander in chief and maybe not even to some of the millions who voted for him too.

And of course, my faith always tells me, “Thou shalt not kill.”  That’s religion 101. Morality and ethics for beginners. If we as a country can’t get that right then we are doomed to more chaos, more suffering and the destruction of democratic ideals and values that really makes America great.

Mob rule? That’s not America.

Or is it?

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.