Remarks to MCCSD School Board Regarding Teacher Contract Negotiations

Here's a copy of my notes from my public comments at tonight's Mason City Community School Board Meeting, on the occasion of a very difficult and stressful teacher contract negotiation:

Good evening,

I have four children in Mason City schools, and this next year I will have one each at Hoover, Lincoln, John Adams, and Mason City High School. I also serve on three schools' PTOs (Parent-Teacher Organizations), I am a parent liaison to the John Adams Leadership Team, I serve on the School Improvement Advisory Committee, and I am a substitute paraeducator at Pinecrest Center when I have the time.

I understand that I am in a room surrounded by people, both school board members and administrators and teachers, who care very deeply about my kids, and for this, I am profoundly grateful. We have been through an awful lot together, right in this room, especially over the past few years.

I understand that a lot of this situation is the State of Iowa putting us in a truly untenable position. Obviously, with the notable exception of our own Rep. Sharon Steckman, most of Iowa's state legislators are not teachers. I look forward to a year where we don't have to dread January and the complete bloodletting of public education that the Iowa State Legislature has in store for us.

This situation is enormously painful. I don't believe there is anyone involved in this process who has malevolent intent. However, we do live in fearful and uncertain times.

I do know what it is like to have to work two, three, or even four extra jobs to make ends meet while practicing a vocation that I love--and I know there are teachers in the room and in our district who already have to do the same.

I know what it means to have to worry about the sustainability of practicing the vocation I love.

If there is any possible creative way we can ease the financial burden, not only on our teachers, but also on our district, then I hope that we will do that. We have to find a solution that is workable, because we have excellent teachers, and I do not want to lose a single one. I also want us to be able to recruit as many as we need for many more years to come.

I know that it is a terribly difficult time to be a school board, to be a school teacher, or even to be a school administrator. Let's do whatever we can to lessen the burdens we are experiencing right now. Maybe this means that we look to what other districts are trying--maybe we need to consider ideas like changing the school calendar, writing more grants for after-school clubs, or other community-based grants for supplies and other things we need. I am very willing to help however I can. I also think we need to look at ways we can increase our enrollment, and the WelcomeCorps is a good opportunity to do that in significant numbers over the next few years, which would add revenue to the district. Again, I would love to help however we can.

Thank you very much for your time.

On New Cornerstones, Old Wineskins, and Good Seeds Sown Poorly

 I have been thinking considerably about creating a co-denominational body that can provide an equitable path to ordination/ a credentialing body for people who currently face barriers due to discrimination (sex, gender identity, orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, nation of origin, etc.) in their home denomination. This might be very similar to the Extraordinary Candidacy Project in the ELCA, but with a wider and more ecumenical focus.

I believe we need to prioritize finding leaders who are more Christlike in their treatment of the poor, the hungry, the sick, those in prison, the foreigner, the outcast, and the dying. We need to prioritize leaders who care more about people's basic needs than they do about defending the institutional church-- especially in times and places where people have been harmed or abused by the institutional church.

For years in seminary and ministry, I've heard variations of the saying, 'All you need to succeed in ministry is a penis and a pulse.' Granted, this was spoken in clergy circles within a binary cisgender framework, but it has proven too painfully true for too many gifted candidates for ministry:

To borrow from the parable, sometimes these 'good seeds' were deliberately sown into the rockiest places, thrown to the birds, or thrown out altogether, so that they would have no opportunity to grow or thrive.

Meanwhile, too often, people who should not have been in ministry, but who were advanced because they occupied the preferred skin suit, have done enormous harm by preying on the people they were called to serve.

And I believe we need to create a new ecumenical movement or entity into which each mainline Protestant denomination (or at least the inclusive, diversity-welcoming congregations and leaders thereof) can begin to dismantle their 'old wineskins' and become something new.

Each mainline Protestant denomination came to this country as a White European Immigrant movement; each of these denominations got a boost due to the Baby Boom and White Flight; and none of these things are solid ground--instead they have proven to be a crumbling foundation of sand. Each mainline denomination has already begun to talk about institutional collapse, because we are in a new reality, a new world that does not in many ways resemble the world of post-WW2. (And in many ways, nor would we want to go back to that time).

The stones which were once rejected can become the New Cornerstones.

Those who were forced to be 'last, lowest, and least,' may now be called to move up.

Behold, God may yet be calling us and leading us to make all things new.

And while I think, 'who am I to dream such things?' I also am reminded--who was any Reformer to do so? And what did they go through in order to do what they did?

Give Us That Country Club Jesus

 Give us that Country-Club Jesus

and that Country-Club Gospel
with that Country-Club Commission
to bring in the people
with the 'right' pedigree.

You know the ones--
the ones who can write the big checks
for our aging building
who can park their fancy new cars
in our empty parking lot
who have nice architectural homes
in enviable neighborhoods
and fashionable clothes
and all the right connections
with all the influential people, and
whose children are magically silent
at all the right times
but they look so nice,
dressed up, picture-perfect
like accessories in the pews
and make us feel good about ourselves
and magically never have needs.

And then perhaps they'll bring
their Country-Club friends, too--
with their own big checks
for our aging building
and their own nice cars
for our empty parking lot
and their own fashionable clothes
from all the right stores
and all their right connections
to influential people
and their own magical children
to make our church look less old.

But God,
it's all going wrong:
You keep sending us people in poverty
people who are hungry
people who are homeless
and foreigners
and unwed mothers, and
people with disabilities
and people with problems
that make us feel uncomfortable
and they probably can't even afford
to donate anything for our building.

And they bring regular children
who make noise at all the wrong times
and who wiggle
and who are not in picture-perfect dress-up clothes
and who make us feel old and tired.

And God help us if they bring their friends
with their beat-up old cars
or no cars at all
and no fancy clothes
and no influential connections
and no architectural homes
in enviable neighborhoods.

They'll probably let their kids
play basketball in our parking lot
and run around on our lawn
and they might scuff the paint.
God, we really can't have that.

Jesus, why do you keep sending us
all these undesirable people?
Don't You know
this isn't going to work?
Haven't You ever attended
a Church Growth seminar?

This just isn't going to get us anywhere.
And if we welcome them in,
then maybe others of us will leave
and go to some other church
where we don't have to worry about
these things.

Le Anne Clausen de Montes, 2024

Surviving Christian Nationalism by Embracing Radical Ecumenism

 If we are going to not just survive

Christian Nationalism,

but offer Christians something

worth belonging to,

Then we must embrace a radical ecumenism,

Loudly proclaiming who we include,

because we have followed

the call of Jesus

to welcome and include

those who others

would exclude.

On Rejecting the Evil of Christian Nationalism, And All Its Empty Promises

Our next chapter in ecumenical partnership-building must be working together to reject the evil of Christian Nationalism and all its empty promises.

Our future is not in holding on to the shards of our White European immigrant squabbles, but in creating sanctuary and a society in which all people are truly, fully, and unabashedly welcome and included as a vital part of God’s Beloved Community.

What Is It about Christianity and White Nationalism?

To paraphrase Brian Zahnd, Christian Nationalism is just Nationalism, using Jesus as a mascot.

It is the same White Nationalism that we see at work in the Klan.

It is the same White Nationalism that we saw at work in the Nazis and see at work in the neo-Nazi movements.

And yet, it does seem that Christianity, and especially White Christianity, is particularly susceptible to embracing White Nationalism. It is somehow still too easy for us as White Christians--

not just in the fundamentalist, Evangelical, and nondenominational branches, but also in the mainline Protestant and Catholic branches--

to believe that Black and Brown and Asian and Indigenous people, or foreigners; people who are Muslims and Jews and Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus and people of other religious traditions; people with disabilities; people who are poor, hungry, and/ or homeless; people who are left-leaning or liberal university students or teachers, writers, artists, musicians, or community organizers or activists, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or any variety of queer--

that these people are somehow less equal and less worthy of existence on our earth; and less worthy of being treated with dignity and respect and love as our neighbors.

This susceptibility to White Nationalism persists even though it flies in the face of the Gospel of Jesus and everything Jesus taught about love of neighbors that were from widely different parts of society even in Biblical times.

There Is No Klan Jesus

 There is no Klan Jesus

waiting to whisk you off

to a Whites-Only Heaven

segregated from all the

Black and Brown Souls

you'd like to avoid

and all the Muslims and Jews

and Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus

and all the Catholics too

and all the foreigners

and all the poor

all the hungry

all the homeless

all the sick

all the people with disabilities

all the outcasts

all the leftists

But I do believe that if there is a Heaven

and there is a God who created

Black and Brown people

and Muslims and Jews

and Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus

and Catholics too

and all the foreigners

and all the poor

all the hungry

all the homeless

all the sick

all the people with disabilities

all the outcasts

all the leftists

well then, I believe

that a God who created them

loves them too,

just as much

as me or you

and that God's good Heaven

includes them all, too.

But if you insist on a Separate Place

perhaps it is there,

outside those 'Pearly Gates'...

Why Is There a Clergy Shortage?

 Why Is There a Clergy Shortage?

In the past 50 years (1974-2024) of your congregation:

Add up all the complete (12 months) years your congregation had a full time woman pastor:

(If your congregation employed more than one ordained woman pastor full time at the same time, count both, for full years of service only.

Add up all the complete years your congregation employed an LGBTQIA+ pastor full time:

Add up all the complete years your congregation employed a full time Clergyperson of Color:

Add up all the complete years your congregation employed a full time pastor with one or more disabilities:

Add up all the complete years your congregation employed a pastor full time whose first language was something other than English:

Add these numbers together and subtract from 50.

For years and years, God sent plenty of faithful servants, but they were turned away and rejected. Many who were called to serve a congregation were pushed out a short time later.

And now there are so few left.

Jesus Never Said Mary Magdalene Was "'Smokin' Hot"

Jesus never said Mary Magdalene

was "smokin' hot"

Jesus never told Mary to get back

in the kitchen with Martha

where she belonged, and

make Him a sandwich

because the men were busy

discussing Important Stuff

Jesus wanted Mary and Martha

in the same room, at the same table

and fully part of the same discussions.

Jesus never told the woman at the well

that He couldn't meet with her

unless a chaperone was present

in case He couldn't control Himself

or she made 'false accusations' later

Jesus never told women

that if they just gave their husbands

more sex, even if they were exhausted

then their husbands wouldn't divorce them.

Instead Jesus called the men out

for their divorce racket

which was really just a way for them

to get away with having an affair

Jesus never told women and girls

to cover up more

because they were so distracting

to boys and men.

In fact, Jesus told the men:

If your eyes are the reason you harass women and girls

it would be better for you to gouge them out

If your hands are the reason you grope women and girls

it would be better for you to cut your hand off

and He left the heavy implication

that if any other body parts

were causing men to 'sin,'

they could cut *those* off too

and stop blaming women and girls

So maybe we should ask more often

why are we hearing the opposite

of what Jesus said and did

in so many male-dominated churches

and "Christian" organizations today?

And maybe we should start demanding

to hear more Gospel,

more Good News,

instead.