Some Sunday in the late 1920s, a sober-faced church-school teacher looked down into my eyes and intoned “Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” (1 Corinthians 10:12) Yesterday, at age 90, I had my first fall from loss of balance: I thought I was standing, but the truth is that I was falling. The Scripture was morally right, and my senior-exercise trainer was physically right.

The metaphor from our two-leggedness hit me as I read our question: “What does the Elliott Spitzer scandal say about our public and private morality? Should he have resigned?”

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The Question: How should Barack Obama have responded to inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Are you responsible for what your spiritual leader says from the pulpit?

Jeremiah Wright and I are retired clergy in America’s most liberal Christian denomination, and “inflammatory” remarks can be clipped from our archives depending on what the clipper wants to burn up. Currently, what the Wright clippers want to burn up is a former parishioner, who is said to be guilty of inflammation by association.

1. NONinflammatory speech gets nothing burned up, nothing cauterized, nothing welded. From Public Speaking 101 in 1935, I remember this: “Start Slow: Speak Low: Rise Higher: CATCH FIRE!” Without such oratory, nothing changes in religion or politics. “Tongues of flame” are associated with the birth of the Christian Church (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-4). From Wright, Obama caught the fire of the Gospel and became what he is today, a devout and faithful Christian.

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Jesus didn’t die (says Islam, it was somebody else); Jesus died and stayed dead (says Judaism); Jesus died but didn’t stay dead (says Christianity).

That’s the negative way to put the truth of Easter: Jesus didn’t stay dead. The person known as “Jesus bar Joseph” was known not only before but after his death and burial. They knew him before, and afterward they recognized him as the same embodied self (though with some additional powers). They included not just his intimates, but “more than five hundreds brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive” (1 Corinthians 15:6 New Revised Standard Version). Beyond that earliest New Testament account, all four Gospels have post-resurrection, simple and complex interactions between Jesus and his disciples.

Now to the “Resurrection Faith” question: “Do you have to believe the resurrection is literally true – that Jesus came back to life in his body – to be a Christian?”

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When Ashley Montagu came out with his “The Natural Superiority of Women” (1952), I asked him whether it would have been more scientific to write on “The Mutual Superiority of the Sexes.” We had just had a debate in which he opposed my “God is love” to his “Love is god.” He was a feisty character, with a preference for inflammatory utterance. In the debate, I objected that he left God out; in the conversation, I objected that he left men out. They are related: the natural superiority/inferiority of the sexes is a divine design.

Photo your average man alongside your average woman and what do you see? Only the natural superiority of the male, in size and musculature – a superiority decreasingly functional to the protection and control of women and children as societies become more complex. / Since the female is naturally superior in the perception and manipulation of human relations, female power increases with the complexity of society. / As the imbalance increases, desperate males increase their battering of females. / As the muscular battering is visible (though female internal wounding of males is not), social and legal sanctions against it increase. / As society sees men as at least potential batters, male dignity declines in the public mind.

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