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May 31, 2005
A “Christian” Crusade?
Posted by Father Jake
You may recall the furor regarding the “Christian Crusade” statements made by General William Boykin last year. Here’s just a sampling to refresh your memory;
Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious right. He allied himself with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto - Warrior Message - summons "warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world ... "
Boykin staged a travelling slide show around the country where he displayed pictures of Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army," he preached. They "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus". It was the reporting of his remarks at a revival meeting in Oregon that made them a subject of brief controversy.
Many folks probably dismissed this story as simply evidence that you can find kooks everywhere, including in a military uniform. Is General Boykin an isolated case?
Earlier this month, Captain Melinda Morton, a chaplain at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs claimed that she was fired for affirming that religious intolerance had become widespread at the Academy.
It appears that the Evangelical segment of the chaplaincy program at the Academy, as well as the administration, has slowly become more and more forceful in their message to cadets regarding appropriate religious affiliation. According to a report by a team from Yale, a chaplain told cadets during their basic training that those not born again will burn in the fires of hell, and that Jesus had “called” them to the academy as part of God’s plan for their lives. This strident message, that a good cadet is a Christian cadet, as well as widespread intimidating proselytizing by evangelical chaplains, cadets and faculty, and derogatory comments aimed at Jewish and Roman Catholic cadets, has resulted in over fifty formal complaints since 2000.
In response to the news reports regarding Captain Morton’s dismissal, the Air Force has formed a task force to look into the matter and has offered a statement on the importance of religious tolerance, as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Are these isolated cases, or is our military filling up with “Boykin Christians,” who have no qualms about using forceful tactics, including military options, in their quest to “save the world for Christ?” Are we witnessing the emergence of yet another Crusade?
One way of understanding how we got to this place is to consider the model of the Hegelian Dialectic. A primary thesis creates its opposite, an antithesis. The synthesis of these two ideas creates a new third idea, which immediately creates a new antithesis, and the cycle starts once again.
The antithesis to capitalism was communism. With the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, capitalism appeared to have established itself once and for all as the dominant idea. What was not anticipated was the emergence of a new antithesis from a source no one had expected; Islam.
More and more, it looks like what we are currently witnessing is Christianity (primarily capitalist, especially in its Protestant form) squaring off to take on Islam in a Holy War (the ultimate oxymoron).
This has been building long before 9/11. Even though many Christians may not be conscious of it, in the back of the minds of some segments of Christianity is the idea that on the last day, at the battle of Armageddon, the "good guys" will be on the side of Israel. Having identified the Israelis as the "good guys," the obvious next step is to identify the Arabs as the "bad guys." 9/11 has brought this unconscious bias into the light, to some degree, although the denial that what is really happening is a showdown between the three Abrahamic faiths continues.
How can we help diffuse these global tensions? One group that has seen the steady march towards a self-destructive Holy War and is attempting to turn it is the United Religions Initiative. Their goal is “to end religiously motivated violence and to create cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings.” There is no attempt by the URI to develop some generic, pluralistic theology. It is an attempt to encourage the religious leaders of the world to sit down together and begin to work towards common goals, such as world peace. They recognize that the root of many of the wars throughout history have been, both consciously and unconsciously, religious differences.
We can also help by gathering together and talking to one another about our hopes, our fears and our dreams. We need to develop alternative messages to those offered by the extremist theocrats that have become such a dominant voice within the Republican party and now appear to be making footholds in our military. This site, The Christian Alliance for Progress, seems to be a good place for such conversations to happen.
We must speak out against demonizing Muslims and planting images of Jesus as an avenging angel. To not challenge such militant language is to send us all rushing towards an "end time" of our own making, with the potential to destroy not only all of humanity, but this entire earth, our island home.
Peace,
Father Jake
Posted by Father Jake at 03:14 PM | Comments (13)
May 30, 2005
Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Soaring Cost of American Militarism
Posted by Public Theologian
On this Memorial Day weekend, we have this chilling recent report form Jane’s Defence Weekly. Within the next twelve months, the United States defense expenditures will surpass the combined defense expenditures for the rest of the world. Yes you read that right. You may want to take a moment and digest this because it truly is a staggering fact.
Some of the reasons for these costs:
1. The Iraq war is sucking huge amounts of resources, both human and material In addition to the 1640 Americans killed and the more than 20,000 wounded, we will have spent $250 billion by the end of the year, including $80 billion in FY 2005. As former Under Secretary of Defense and now President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz testified before Congress prior to the war, Iraqi oil was supposed to pay for all of this, but it hasn’t. In fact, it is actually the Japanese and Chinese who are paying for it right now, since they are primarily the ones who are buying our Treasury notes since the Bush tax cuts have left the nation’s coffers empty. But our grandchildren will end up paying them back--with interest. (Note: The Bush administration, in a clever accounting move, refuses to include the expenditures for the Iraq War in its tally of the national debt that it releases periodically to the public, but that accounting gimmick doesn’t mean that the taxpayer isn’t paying for this war. It just gives the administration a smaller and less embarrassing number to talk about. So the next time you hear about the annual budget deficit from an administration source, tack on about another $80 billion and you’ll have the real number.)
2. Pentagon attempts to modernize weapons and even skip the next generation of armaments that would have normally transitioned us to a higher level of technology have further pushed up expenditures. An example of this is the F/A-22 Raptro, designed in 1986 to deal with the next generation of Soviet fighters that were expected to rolling off the line right now. Originally designed to be built for $35 million, the actual cost is now $258 million, and for this we get a plane with computers from the 1990s. Would you pay $258 million for a machine that was still running the technological equivalent of Windows 3.1? Well if you’re an American taxpayer you will probably be getting at least 180 and perhaps as many as 300 of them by 2013. You may also get new helicopters, submarines and advanced unmanned aircraft. The question is this: Who are we expecting to use these advanced weapons against? The Soviets? They don’t exist any longer. Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents? They get their weapons parts from any electronics store to make their improvised explosive devices for about $50 that they can hide in something as simple and small as a Coke can. A $258 million fighter aircraft is not a lot of help against that, although a couple hundred dollars of steel plating on a Humvee would. And what is the point of arming ourselves with technology that is two generations ahead of where we are now, when the rest of the world never even caught up to where we were twenty years ago?
3. The attempt to militarize space adds a new dimension to the costs. This is most bizarre part of the whole equation, for it takes the United States “where no man has gone before.” We have been sinking tens of billions into the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or as it is popularly known “Star Wars”) since the 1980s without positive results. The Center for Defense Information says that in 2003 we spent $18 billion on this project a figure which is expected to rise to $25 billion per year by 2010. The problem that has to be solved is the equivalent of trying to stop a bullet by shooting another bullet at it. In theory it sounds great, but none of the tests have ever worked. Every bullet shot has its own exact speed and trajectory, based on a host of factors, including everything from atmospheric conditions to the size of the explosion which propels it. The responding bullet has to be instantly adjustable to any deviation in conditions or trajectory or it will miss its target—which in every test so far it has done, except for the one in which the Pentagon slowed the first bullet down, which we cannot likely expect our enemies will do for us when the time comes. Yet the Pentagon still pours money into the project. Now comes word that the Air Force is going to expand what had been a purely defensive weapons system designed to protect the United States into a system that would provide space-based offensive capabilities as well. The theory is that since the US is already so dominant in space technology that the rest of the world will not mind if we expand our hegemony completely into space. Once we control it absolutely, there will be no point in competing with us for dominance in that realm, since the US can be trusted to administer space appropriately. However the rest of the world does not see things this way. Already, less than a week after the New York Times broke the story of the new Air Force policy, which is about to be issued in a formal directive, the Russians responded with great consternation at this dramatic shift in the direction of US intentions towards the rest of the world. There has never been a new military technology in the history of the world that has been deployed that has not set off a scramble amongst those who do not have it to acquire it, and this is not likely to be the exception. So the savings that will be realized by closing bases in places like Pascagoula, Mississippi may well turn out to be pocket change in comparison to the costs of an arms race in the heavens.
The narrative thread that runs through the defense budget, which after years of decline as a percentage of GDP, has now exploded to a point beyond all reason, is that the US has become hostage to both its fears as well as to the dreams of a handful of its leaders (who are part of a group called the Project for a New American Century) that genuinely want our country to dominate the world. After 911, the candy store was flung open for business and whatever the Pentagon wanted they got, for Americans were willing to pay any price to keep itself safe. But what the American taxpayer is being asked to fund is no longer American defense, but rather American empire, which I do not believe that the citizens of this nation want but which their leaders are pushing for anyway. As with the case of the space-based weapons, the theory is that a hegemonic America will make the world safer. But this revolutionary idea is already floundering on the shoals of the conflict in Iraq. We can’t even secure the road to the Baghdad airport, much less the entire planet, much less space.
What we need is not 300 new state-of-the art fighter aircraft, but 300 Arabic translators to go through the mountains of data that we already have from terrorist sources but cannot yet understand. What we need is not a new unmanned plane but one decent man or woman at the helm of the American embassy to the UN who can regain some credibility among our allies and with the rest of the world as we seek to take the wind out of the sails of terrorists around the world. But rather than make partners with the rest of the world and use the spread of logic and reason as the best of what Americans know and do, instead we are proliferating military technology and using the tactics of a bully, which only fuels the anger in the Muslim world and which makes our allies resentful. We simply must follow another course, and soon.
Posted by Public Theologian at 07:40 PM | Comments (3)
May 27, 2005
Why Christians Should Support Stem Cell Research
Posted by Faithful Progressive
Stem cell research is very popular here in Madison, among people of faith and non-believers alike. For one thing, it was a local scientist, Dr. Jamie Thompson, who first isolated human stem cells. An editorial in our local newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal (a conservative paper that endorsed Bush), had an editorial yesterday that began as follows:
"Four years ago, when President Bush placed severe restrictions on the types of embryonic stem cell research eligible for federal funding, he made it tougher for scientists to pursue potentially life-saving medical advancements. That was a mistake. This week Congress has an opportunity to start correcting that mistake by passing legislation that would ease up on the federal funding restrictions."
The House has already done so. The Senate is likely to act soon.
I’m not surprised that there is debate about the ethics of stem cell research, but I’m surprised by the extreme positions taken by many who support the restrictions on this promising area of research. According to the absolutists on the right, neither God nor humankind is able to distinguish between a man-made 3- to 5-day-old embryo, called a blastocyst, and a human being. I think these people sell both human beings and God short, perhaps because they associate science with a secular culture that they fear and dislike.
In my own belief system, there is no inherent conflict between science and faith. As the Presbyterian Catechism succinctly puts it:
Does your confession of God as Creator contradict the findings of modern science?
No. My confession of God as Creator answers three questions: Who?, How? and Why? It affirms that (a) the triune God, who is self-sufficient, (b) called the world into being out of nothing by the creative power of God's Word (c) for the sake of sharing love and freedom. Natural science has much to teach us about the particular mechanisms and processes of nature, but it is not in a position to answer these questions about ultimate reality, which point to mysteries that science as such is not equipped to explore. Nothing basic to the Christian faith contradicts the findings of modern science, nor does anything essential to modern science contradict the Christian faith.
Dogmatic religious people have always been threatened by scientists. As Albert Einstein said, “Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.” Science is another way of understanding the complexity and beauty of creation. As a matter of ethics, medical research has particular value because it derives from our God given intellect and because its purposes are to benefit an important part of God's creation...(Continue Reading)
I don’t believe for a minute that cells that would be thrown away from fertility clinics have the same essence as real, living human beings endowed with the Spirit of their Creator. In both the law and science, we draw lines and balance competing concerns all the time. Yet the opponents of stem cell research assume it is an all-or nothing slippery slope. Somehow, they argue, using these abandoned and unwanted cells for important research will lead directly to the cloning of human beings. To me, that’s demonstrably false and insulting to our research scientists.
Some of the people involved in the stem cell debate must not know many scientists. The many that I know and work with are some of the best and most ethical people that I know. It’s absurd to think that science will take things to the extreme limits that many on the right say they will—cloning secular humanists by the busload in all of the battleground states. If anyone has those plans, they will do so whether the U.S. government supports stem cell research or not.
Further, in that repository of human wisdom known as the law, it matters very much what our intentions are. I believe, without knowing for sure, that our intentions also matter to God. Our intentions in this matter are very honorable. If we really have a culture of life we need to do what we can to advance human health. The modern Jewish and Christian traditions teach us that preserving life and promoting health are among the most precious of values. Simply put, Embryonic Stem Cell Research has the potential to Save Lives. This is one of the many reasons to support the Senate Bill set forth by our brothers and sisters in faith the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
Reasons to Support the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (S. 471/H.R. 810) include:
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Will Save Lives. Stem cell research has already provided, and holds tremendous promise to continue to provide, great progress for finding a cure or treatment for conditions including breast and prostate cancer, leukemia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injuries and Huntington’s chorea. It also holds the potential to repair and regenerate human tissues, nerve cells, and skin cells. American medicine stands on the brink of being able to drastically improve the lives and futures of more than 128 million Americans who currently suffer from debilitating diseases and conditions.
Robust, Effective and Successful Embryonic Stem Cell Research Requires Additional Stem Cell Lines. On August 9, 2001, President Bush announced he would allow for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, but only on 60 existing germ lines (i.e., self-sustaining colonies of cells derived from destroyed embryos that scientists have already begun to study). Today, however, only 21-22 of the original 60 germ lines are viable for research, and this small number of germ lines makes impossible robust research that draws on a broad diversity of genetic material in order to benefit the genetic diversity of the American population.
This legislation ensures that Stem Cell Research is Conducted Ethically and Safely. The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act would open up stem cell lines for federally-funded research ensuring that embryos used to derive stem cells were originally created for fertility treatment purposes and are in excess of clinical need; that the individuals seeking fertility treatments for whom the embryos were created have determined that the embryos will not be implanted and will otherwise be discarded; and that the individuals for whom the embryos were created have provided written consent for embryo donation.
The Mandate for Stem Cell Research is Not About Reproductive Choice . Embryos utilized for research are not fertilized nor are they ever implanted in a woman for the purpose of reproduction. As Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has noted: “I believe it's the most pro-life position to be able to help the living, especially from fertilized eggs and in vitro fertilization clinics that are going to be discarded and would die anyway.”
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Enjoys Support from a Broad Spectrum of Faith Communities . The Jewish tradition teaches us that preserving life and promoting health are among the most precious of values. Nachmanides, a Medieval Torah and Talmud scholar, taught that the practice of healing is not merely a profession, it is a mitzvah, a righteous obligation, and our tradition requires that we use all available knowledge to heal the ill, and "when one delays in doing so, it is as if he has shed blood" (Shulchan Aruch, Yorei De`ah 336:1). Additionally, embryonic stem cell research enjoys support from the Episcopal Church (USA), the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
America Strongly Supports Stem Cell Research . An Opinion Research Corporation poll in March 2005 showed that Americans' support for embryonic stem cell research grew when they were given detailed information about the research. A February 2005 poll conducted by the Civil Society Institute showed that 70% of voters back bipartisan federal legislation to promote more embryonic stem cell research.
There is broad agreement that the potential benefits of stem cell research vastly outweigh the potential risks. That's why there was bi-partisan support in the House, and that's why I support lifting the arbitrary restrictions and on stem cell research.
NOTES
The Christian Alliance for Progress is proud to announce that two more leading progressive bloggers will join us on this site. Father Jake of Father Jake Stops the World (see: his excellent recent post on Stem Cell Research), and Carlos from Jesus Politics will be joining us next week. We aim to have timely Blogs five days a week and to become a daily must-read for the moderate and progressive faith community. Though our main effort involves reclaiming our own Christian faith tradition, we welcome comments and support from people of all faith traditions and those who are searching for or without faith. This movement is building. Please join us, and tell your friends.
On a related topic, more than 4000 clergy people have signed this wonderful
Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science
Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible - the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark - convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth
Click above to endorse this link.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 02:10 AM | Comments (18)
May 23, 2005
A Theory of (Moral) Relativity
Posted by Public Theologian
I can’t remember the first time I ever heard the term “moral relativism” or the first time I saw “Truth” spelled with a capital T, but these have both become staples of right-wing rhetoric in the last few decades. I know from historical study that the charge of “moral relativism” was one that was hurled by segregationists against the “race mixers” who threatened the virginal daughters of the South with a dark sexuality. It also became part of the national political vocabulary after the decision to ban public prayer in schools seemed to many on the right to coincide with the sexual permissiveness of the 1960s, it never seeming to have dawned on these people that the lack of respect for accepted standards of private morality also coincided with the public lies of the Vietnam era by the government which led to the killing of millions of Vietnamese and more than 50,000 Americans. Since I was born into the midst of all these conflicts, the juxtaposition of moral relativism (what they stood for) with absolute Truth (what we stood for) was unquestionably part of my thought world from my very beginning.
I do, however, remember the first time that I saw behind the facade that the Religious Right had erected around the concept of moral relativism. It was the middle 1980s and the Iran-Contra scandal was all over the news. I was the campus liberal at Liberty University and had been listening for several years to the mantra from administration, faculty and fellow students regarding the dangers of not having absolute, unshakeable, non-negotiable moral standards. Such was the foundation of the Christian faith based on the unchanging Bible as well as the foundation of American democracy based on the US Constitution, as they understood things. The Moral Majority was in its hey day and Ronald Reagan worked a second job as the fourth person of the Trinity. But an amazing thing happened to the horde of gloating absolutists in whose midst I lived and studied during the Iran-Contra Affair—they all became relativists. It was incredible! You should have heard the moral justifications concocted for negotiating with our enemies, the Iranians bribing them with unlawful weapons’ sales, and then illegally siphoning off the proceeds to secret accounts for the Contras, which Congress had forbidden—and then lying about it all to Congress. Talk about an intellectual game of twister! These same people who had been preaching incessantly about the clear distinctions between the absolute moral clarity of the conservatives as compared with the ethical fuzziness of their opponents quickly reverted to their own selective relativism as the need arose. So long as it was their hero, Reagan, in office and so long as what he was doing was against the interests of the Communists, nothing he or his minions did could be considered illegal or immoral.
The roots of the relativism that the conservatives decry have their origin in a variety of academic disciplines, of which most of the absolutists are only dimly aware, the result being that they attribute relativism to a libertine—“if it feels good, do it”—mentality, which is hardly the case. Relativism in physics came about as a result of Einstein’s now-famous two theories of relativity, which demonstrated first the interrelationship between time and space and then later that matter actually had an effect on the space it was in. In a world where we had always thought that things had to be either this or that, either of the realm of space or time, it now turned out they could be both simultaneously and that our senses had been deceiving us as to the nature of reality. In linguistics, at the same time that these breakthroughs were occurring in science, it became clear that there was no absolute relation between a sign and the thing that it signified. There was no one-to-one correspondence between a word and its object to which all might make universal reference and thus ensure total, transparent understanding. Words therefore do not convey exactly what is intended by the speaker or author, but often communicate more or less than that, carrying as they do more than one possible meaning. Again, this was a complete break with the whole history of the Western philosophical understanding of the nature and function of language. Closely related to this was Freud’s insight in psychoanalysis, which was that unconscious desire often appears in language, in what we call “Freudian slips,” those things we do not mean to say but which nevertheless reveal what is foremost in our minds. Whereas the insight that there was a yawning gap of meaning that could not necessarily be bridged by language between speaker and hearer, Freud’s point was that what we may mean when we speak may not even be clear to ourselves! Most troubling of all, however, were the investigations of anthropologists, whose detailed studies of other cultures revealed very different ethical systems from that of the West as well as dissimilar patterns of ethical reasoning which informed them. This discovery undercut the popular idea that “nature’ taught humanity the proper way to live together and which exposed the reality that there was no universally valid and accepted ethical system to which all of humanity adhered. Every culture had their way of making moral sense of the world, a disturbing fact to those whose conservative politics required a stable and homogenous worldview for everyone. Most people took these new insights in stride, understanding that reality was not always what it appeared to be on the surface, and that there were multiple sides to every question but that this did not mean the end of ethics or truth and thus Western Civilization. Not so the newly ascendant Religious Right, who saw all of these developments as a coordinated assault on family, polite society and American military and economic dominance hatched by Ivy League academics and aided by a sympathetic judiciary.
The Clinton presidency brought out the moral absolutists and the big T Truth squad more so than at any other time since the rise of the Religious Right. His marital indiscretions gave them fodder for their attacks like no other public deed had ever done, for it came in the area closest to their hearts, sexuality. Coupled with the fact that Clinton was soft on gays and lesbians, as evidenced by the fact that he no longer wanted them court-martialied for simply existing within the military, the right wing came to use “moral relativist” in the 1990s as an epithet hurled with all the ferocity of a reference to someone’s mother, or an encounter between Vice President Cheney and Sen. Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor, as the case may be.
So it has been with no small amazement that I have observed the lack of moral rigor among the right-wing during the present administration, who had been all but apoplectic with rage over the stain on Monica’s blue dress but who can’t find their voice to utter a peep about the blood all over the floor at Abu Ghraib, Baghram and Guantanamo. They were sticklers for truth-telling and yelped with indignation over Clinton’s clever parsing of the verb “is” but have sat in mute silence as the lies about the war in Iraq have tumbled out week after week, nor did they say anything when the President sold us a prescription drug bill that lined the pockets of his cronies while sticking the American taxpayer with a bill that he knew would be $300 billion greater than he had let on. The champions of Absolute Truth long railed against “tax and spend Democrats” and “fiscal irresponsibility” while now they preside, in one party rule, over the greatest budget deficit the world has ever seen. The same people who scoffed when Al Gore said he did not know that funds were being raised on his behalf after his visit to a Buddhist Temple are now circling the wagons around Tom Delay, changing the rules on the House Ethics Committee and ejecting committee members even from their own party who won’t agree up front to look the other way from his slimy deals with lobbyists. In the last week we have been treated to the humorous spectacle of daily watching Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the darling of the moral absolutists, look into the camera and with a straight face declare that “every Presidential nominee deserves an up or down vote” even as his press secretary is trying to deflect questions about the sixty-one Clinton appointees for judgeships that Frist and his colleagues who are so grieved over this principle now, never managed to uphold just a couple of years ago.
What our experience since 2001 has made clear is that the nation is saddled in its leadership with a bunch of moral absolutists alright. But it turns out the only points on which they are certain is the Truth of their own position and an absolute commitment to advance it no matter what the cost to everyone else involved. Fortunately the electorate is now beginning to see the great moral divide that separates them from their leaders, as poll after poll show Congress and the President battling each other for the bottom spot in public opinion. That is undoubtedly because the good people who elected these preachers of virtue have come to realize that the preachers have none, and that the values that the voters thought they were voting for have been swept away by the stark reality found in the headlines of each day’s newspaper.
To borrow a phrase from one of the forerunners of modern moral relativism, Old Swivel Hips himself, Elvis Presley, what America could use right now is “a little less conversation” about moral relativism in public life “and a little more action.”
Posted by Public Theologian at 03:01 PM | Comments (4)
May 20, 2005
Religious McCarthyism: What’s Really at Stake in the Judicial Nomination Fight
Posted by Faithful Progressive
During this week’s debate on Bush judicial nominations, Sen. Patrick Leahy aptly described Sen. Bill Frist’s unsavory efforts to relate the rejection of a small number of Bush nominees to hostility to “people of faith.” “This kind of religious McCarthyism is fraudulent on its face,” Sen. Leahy declared. “It’s contemptible. Contemptible.” One can almost hear Sen. Frist reformulating that infamous question: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a liberal Methodist choir?”
Sen. Frist seems determined to join some infamous company. Apparently, he will stop at nothing to be the darling of the extreme Christian right. The Tennessee Senator has his eye on 2008, and he’s made the judgment that the support of religious extremists will be crucial. Sen. Frist participated in the so-called “Justice Sunday” with Tony Perkins, of The Family Research Council (formerly run by James Dobson, the Sponge Bob fan). As reported by The American Prospect, Mr. Perkins is the guy who recently said that the current conservative-dominated American judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." This type of over-heated rhetoric is typical of people who hate. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Mr. Perkins is also a well-known gay-basher who is devoted to debunking what he calls the "myth" that “People are born gay.”
On Thursday, Sen. Rick Santorum compared Democrats to "...Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying 'I'm in Paris, how dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city. It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused." On Wednesday, in a similarly shocking choice of words, Sen. Frist said on the floor of the U. S. Senate: “THE ISSUE IS NOT CLOTURE VOTES PER SE. IT'S THE PARTISAN LEADERSHIP-LED USE OF CLOTURE VOTE TO KILL, TO DEFEAT, TO ASSASSINATE THESE NOMINEES.” This tasteless rhetoric was quickly condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Joan H. Lefkow, whose family members were recently murdered. Judge Lefkow also asked lawmakers to repudiate recent "gratuitous attacks" on the judiciary by commentators such as Pat Robertson and by some members of Congress, including Rep. Tom DeLay. "In the age of mass communication, harsh rhetoric is truly dangerous,” she said. “Fostering disrespect for judges can only encourage those that are on the edge, or the fringe, to exact revenge on a judge who ruled against them." The Christian Right needs to cool down its disgraceful and violent rhetoric, as Ted Olson, well-connected Republican and Bush lawyer in the Florida election case recently argued. In a Wall St Journal Op-Ed, Olson urged right-wing extremists to "lay off our judiciary." Olson wrote that..."it is time to take a deep breath, step back, and inject a little perspective into the recent heated rhetoric about judges and the courts."
Okay, let’s get a little perspective. An overwhelming number of Bush judicial nominees have been approved. But Sen. Frist and President Bush still aren’t satisfied. What would you call someone who gets their way more than 20O times but who still gripes about the 10 or so times things didn’t go their way? The word “bully” springs to mind. If anything is certain from the Gospel message of Jesus, it’s that Christians aren’t supposed to be bullies. So it’s very odd that some on the extreme right have tried to make the connection between religious faith and the approval of Bush judicial nominees. It’s especially odd given the over-heated and violent rhetoric so many on the right seem prone to using.
Next May, Old Faithful Progressive will celebrate twenty years of practicing law. In that time, I’ve appeared before and personally known literally hundreds of judges. In my experience, it makes little difference if a good judge is politically liberal or conservative. Frankly, most judges see enough of life and of human weakness at close range that it tempers any kind of political stridency. Eventually they come to see that their own personal views must give way to become a true servant of the law and of the people. But, then again, some judges never get this: there are always those few who see everything through the lens of their own pre-existing agenda. These are the trial judges that always lead the substitution numbers: people know that the facts of their case will be contorted to suit the personal agenda of the judge. The same tendencies exist with appellate courts, and in roughly the same numbers. So far, the approval of Bush judicial nominees also roughly reflects these facts: those with an identifiable agenda have been rejected, most have been approved.
The extreme Christian Right loves to paint upbeat, homey pictures of people who underneath it all have a very dark and intolerant political agenda. As Think Progress notes, here’s how Fox News describes Bush nominee Patricia Owens: “A Sunday school teacher who graduated among the top of her law school class but angered abortion rights advocates by wanting to make it harder for minors to terminate a pregnancy is at the center of the historic storm in the U.S. Senate over the future of the federal judiciary.”
Here's another view c/o The Center for American Progress:
“In fact, in reference to one of Owen's dissents, then colleague and fellow Texas Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales went so far as to describe the decision's proposed interpretation of the law as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."
Indeed, in critiquing her nomination, The Houston Chronicle took issue not with her being "too conservative" but with the fact that "she too often contorts rulings to conform to her particular conservative outlook." As the San Antonio Express stated, "The Senate should not block a judicial nominee simply because he or she is more conservative or more liberal than the Senate's majority party.… But concerns about Owen go to the heart of what makes a good judge."
But Frist and company cynically play the faith card. Here's a link to the Top Ten Falsehoods told by Republicans about the judicial nomination battle c/o Media Matters. "Falsehood #5: Democrats oppose Bush nominees because of their faith, race, ethnicity, gender, stance on abortion, stance on parental notification ..."
This is not a fight about people of faith-- this is about populating the judiciary with people who lack a judicial temperament because of their own pre-existing political agenda. What is that agenda? Tom Delay was very explicit recently: "The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them." Writing recently in the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg summed it up well: "So there you have it, the DeLay agenda: no separation of church and state, no judicial review, no right to privacy." This agenda is not just that of Tom De Lay, but of a determined extremist group that hates contemporary American culture and our history of religious tolerance and respect for minority rights.
It seems clear that this small group want to criminalize ALL abortion and to restrict the legal rights of gay and lesbian Americans to enter into contracts to settle their own affairs. They also want to tear down the wall of separation of church and state, the wall that protects religious people from government interference.
Some Christians may support this agenda, but many more of us do not.
This isn’t what Christianity is really about. It’s about love and compassion and the pursuit of justice that flows from those values. As Christians, we are all called to follow Jesus' commandment to "Love one another as I have loved you." (John 15:12) Jesus welcomed women, tax collectors, Pharisees, and lepers at his table. His behavior indicted those who inflicted hurt on others as they piously honored the purity codes of his day. Following Jesus' example, we declare that using the popular "purity codes" of today, such as sexual orientation, to ostracize and marginalize people is immoral. Similarly, no one is "for" abortion. Most abortions are attended by an enormous amount of emotional pain. But we think the issue is effective prevention of unintended pregnancy, not criminalizing desperate pregnant women or the medical professionals who help them.
Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus is scathing in his dealings with hypocrites. We believe that Jesus would recognize the inherent hypocrisy in decreasing support for family planning or reducing access to contraception while simultaneously seeking to criminalize abortion. Such actions deny women and men access to basic help and information on family planning while, at the same time, forcing them to bear children. These policies have only raised the number of abortions in recent years.
What you can do:
What people need to do is join organizations that speak about genuine Christian values instead of wrapping an extremist political agenda in a Mc Carthyist mock-Christian flag. If you haven't already, please join our movement. Sign the Jacksonville Declaration which stands in support of the separation of church and state which activists in the religious right are trying to overturn. E-mail the signing page to your friends. We want to build a broad movement and we need to know your e-mail so that we can contact you when we need to act. Now is one time like that:
Call your Senators, tell them to reject the vote to re-structure the Senate. If they don't, it will never be the same.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 01:24 AM | Comments (3)
May 13, 2005
Me and My Buddy Jerry Falwell
Posted by Public Theologian
I agree with Jerry Falwell.
Yes, you read that correctly. Falwell had a tremendous influence on my life, as I am a graduate of his Liberty University with a BA and an MA in the History of Christian Thought. I learned a great deal about politics in my time there and came to appreciate Falwell’s position on the church’s involvement in the public square, so I actually think of him as a kind of political mentor. I had come from a largely apolitical group of independent Baptists from whom Falwell had also sprung. Most people under thirty cannot imagine apolitical fundamentalists, but from the 20s to the 70s they were quite common. In our circle Jerry was somewhat of a maverick because he advocated an engagement with the larger culture, rather than retreat from it. Whereas we had sought mostly to keep to ourselves and worked quietly to save souls for the kingdom of heaven, Falwell was out of the closet, loud and proud and in your face, telling America that people of faith were no longer going to sit by and watch the culture go whatever direction it chose...
As a young person I found his argument compelling, and more than two decades later it still resonates with me. Being a citizen in the oldest, wealthiest and most powerful democracy in the world demands from the Christian an equally matched stewardship to the task, one that understands the basic Constitutional guarantees not simply as rights but as both duties to be discharged as well as opportunities fraught with spiritual possibility for both individuals and society as well. No more could we fail to vote in local or national elections. No more could we fail to speak out on the moral issues of our day. No more would we cede the public square to shrill voices that argued for the silence of religious people on matters political.
It is out of this deep conviction that Christians have a responsibility to be politically active that I am participating in the Christian Alliance for Progress (CAP). The situation in American society over the past couple of years has increasingly alarmed me to the point where serious action is required. Who would have ever thought that our country would invade and conquer another nation that had not attacked it? Who would have imagined that the US would announce to the world that the Geneva Conventions were obsolete? Who would have thought it imaginable that the Congress would pass laws allowing government searches without warrants or notice to those being searched? Or that protections for the environment, debtors, and women seeking abortions would all be rolled back? All of this and so much more has now become commonplace in our society. Whatever else you might think about Jerry Falwell and those who share his politics, it is undeniable that they have been enormously effective and that their vision of the world is now in full flower. In short, we have been living through a kind of bloodless revolution, and we the American citizens, are its victims.
Where Jerry and I disagree is over what values should be prioritized in our national political life. Jerry has taken his stance both in the bedroom of the American family, discouraging anything he finds distasteful, and in the boardroom of American corporations, siding with the wealthy elites who fund his sexual crusades in exchange for silence when it comes to throttling the poor and the environment.
I am a committed Christian, a Presbyterian minister who believes in an orthodox theology. In our weekly prayers we ask that God’s will be done on earth most surely as it is accomplished in heaven. This is the proper basis of an Christian understanding of politics. In his ministry, Jesus showed no interest in either of the themes that characterize Jerry’s politics and it is for that reason that I am opposed to the kind of America that he seeks to create. Instead of adherence to purity laws, Jesus advocated a purity of the heart; instead of standing with the high and mighty, Jesus ate with the lowly and outcast. Embodying the teachings of Jesus in contemporary life presents a starkly different moral vision for American society than the one which has been offered to us by the reactionaries in the religious right. It is towards the ends of making real on earth the justice, righteousness and peace that exist in God’s eternal presence that we in CAP are directing our energies.
My politics are very different from Jerry’s but in addition to agreeing with him that Christians should engage the culture at every level, including the realm of politics, I also am optimistic that the tools yet available to citizens of our society can effect positive change. Decades ago, he and others like him saw that they could shift the direction and tides in American politics and create a world more to their liking. That prospect for change still exists and it is the window of opportunity which we Christian Progressives intend to take full advantage. We believe that there are millions of other like-minded people of faith who share the same sadness about the direction of our society and who are willing to do the work and make the sacrifices necessary to put our nation on a more just and equitable path. We hope that each of you will join with us in the important and crucial effort.
Posted by Public Theologian at 02:49 PM | Comments (18)
May 12, 2005
FP's Opening Thoughts: The Cavalry Has Arrived!
Posted by Faithful Progressive
When I was contacted about joining the Christian Alliance for Progress (CAP) as a Blogger for this web-site, it felt like the cavalry had arrived. Finally, here were some serious people ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work organizing progressive Christians! The organizers at CAP spoke of a new and transforming vision of our politics. They also said they wanted to reclaim the idea of what it means to be a Christian in the 21st Century. As they laid out their vision, it occurred to me that here was a way (for myself and many others) to be both a better Christian and a better citizen. I’m very excited about pursuing both goals with my new friends at CAP.
After years of sitting back and watching the public perception of Christians plummet as the intolerant and often extreme Christian right established itself, here was finally a national organization with the skills and resources to present another vision of the faith that sustains me. It's been a long time in coming--there were many moments when many of us felt terribly alone...
In 1997, Bruce Bawer wrote his wonderful book Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity. Like many other moderate and progressive Christians, I cheered that book’s ringing call for “non-legalisitc” Christians to re-claim the word “Christian’ in public life from the narrow view that had managed to associate the word with an intolerant and reactionary political agenda. However, in the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years, there was simply not a sufficient sense of urgency to create a mass movement of moderate and progressive Christians. All of that has changed. The satirical Onion headline just after the 2000 election proved very prophetic: Bush: Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over!
Sadly, the progressive Christians community did little to organize during the first four years of the Administration of George W. Bush and he was narrowly re-elected. Just after the 2004 election, Pulitzer-prize winning Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote a column Christian Left Hard to Find that stuck with me and that is probably one of the reasons I started my blog, Faithful Progressive:
Mr. Pitts wrote as follows:
"... I look at the success conservatives on the so-called Christian right have had in claiming him as their exclusive property and I wonder, where in the heck is the Christian left? Where are the people who preach - and live - the biblical values of inclusion, service, humility, sacrifice, and why haven't they coalesced into an alternative political force? Instead of a movement like that, we have an old peanut farmer building houses.
You wish there was more. You wish there were Christian people shouting from the rooftops that these other people, with their small minds and niggardly spirits, do not represent all of us. And that the faith exemplified by the politics of exclusion is not the faith the rest of us celebrate, not the faith that lifts us and settles us and makes us whole."
Since the election, I’ve made it a point to seek out other Christians who are ready to shout from the rooftops a new and revitalized Gospel message. The first person I interviewed was the Rev. Tim Simpson, who will be a regular Blogger on this site. More on Tim later. First, I want to tell you something about what other progressive Christians and others sympathetic to their efforts feel is important to for such an organization to pursue. These interviews convinced me that the Christian moderate and progressive community is alive and well and full of ideas and getting active support from people of other faith traditions. (Please note: none of these folks have as yet specifically endorsed CAP, but all are aware that their thoughts are being shared on this site)
Rev. Jennifer Kottler, Protestants for the Common Good
I have a deep commitment to justice and the common good, which my Christian faith leads me to understand can best be used in influencing public policy. I believe deeply that it will take structural change, at least changing the hearts and minds of many Americans to bring justice to our public debate. Poverty and deep economic injustices that go hand in hand with racism keep me awake at night.
Father Jake (Episcopal priest)
I think we have to stop allowing the ultra-conservatives to frame the argument. The progressive Christians need to find their voice and take the offensive position. This might mean having to challenge the secular fundamentalists as well as the biblical fundamentalists, which means being willing to be as critical of Democrats as we are of Republicans. When Democrats claim that religion is a private matter, they’re playing right into the game of the conservatives who want to make private morality the only issues that are important. Public morality, which would include war, poverty, the environment and health care, are essential issues for any Christian who knows their bible. It’s not an either/or thing. Private and public moral values need to be taught and lived. And, because of the public nature of many moral and ethical issues, we can never separate religion from politics; they are made of the same cloth.So what can we do? We can start by honing our communication skills; by proclaiming the Good News in innovative ways that will move us all toward caring action; toward becoming the healing hands of Christ in the world today.
Dr. Bruce Prescott
Mainstream Baptist Leader
The most important thing that moderate and progressive religious people can do to change things is to start standing up and speaking out on behalf of separation of church and state. Religious liberty for everyone – not just Christians – is our first freedom. It’s the first freedom because it is the bedrock foundation upon which every other form of freedom rests. It secures our right to a free conscience and protects the rights of minorities.
Ms. Jacqueline Trussell, Founder BlackandChristian.com and Harvard Divinity School Graduate
The simple answer is to pray--I do believe that prayer changes things. Whether it's Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, Lincoln or George Washington, this nation has persevered and survived through good leadership and not so good leadership. Black people, led often by Black Christians such as Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Sojourner Truth or Martin Luther King, have survived. If we, as Black folk have learned nothing else, we have learned how to survive…There is potential for great things to happen around an agenda that speaks of "uplifting the race" through social, political and economic change. What remains to be seen is how this will be implemented. The Black Church, whether Baptist, Methodist or Church of God In Christ, has always been at the forefront of any movement for change as it relates to people of African descent.
Ol Cranky of Disenchanted Forest (Progressive Jewish Blog)
Count me as one of those disenfranchised by "religious" people and the Bush Administration. I see Bush as a great divider due to what‚s been done for political expedience in the name of G-d, religion and Scripture; the relationship between the Bush Administration/Republican party and the “religious right” has created such a heated environment in which religion has been used as a weapon…Everyone who really wants some healing needs to do their share to seek out information about and initiate dialogue with those across the aisle. For my own part, I've intentionally sought out blogs of various Christian writers to things in perspective, find out what the ECs really think and, more importantly, to learn-- though, in all honesty, I still do my share of thumbing my nose at the collective "them.’
Bob of I Am a Christian Too
(ELCA Blog)
For me, my Christian faith demands my progressive politics. How can you read the gospels without believing that, as a society, we must do more to care for those in need? This phrase also makes me think of today's "Samaritans" -- the poor, gays, Africans with HIV -- as I imagine them saying "I am a Christian too", or even "I was made in the image of God too.” We need to organize, and we need to be savvy about how we present our message... I am looking for a way to organize that can give focus to this incipient progressive Christian movement, an organization that is both political and religious, that is outside and cuts across existing denominational lines, to speak for those of us that believe in progressive policies because of our religious beliefs, not despite them. We need to advocate policies in authentic, orthodox Christian language so that we can't be dismissed by the majority of Americans that are theologically orthodox. We need to take the moral high ground, but with a deep humility and respect for those that disagree, or we will be just another group of hate-mongers.
Chuck Currie
(United Church of Christ Seminarian)
Progressive Christians started organizing to impact the 2004 elections in 2003. The religious right has been busy building up their movement since the mid-1960s. We need to build from the ground up and build alliances with better established secular groups that share some of our core values. We need to think long term and to develop new leadership. The religious left folks most active in opposing the Bush policies are the same group who fought against the Vietnam war. A new generation of leaders needs to be groomed. The progressive left has a training program for activists called Wellstone Action . We need a program like that to train the religious left.
Rachel Bareblat of Velveteen Rabbi
(Jewish lay leader, liturgist, and poet)
I think the most important thing is not to let frustration sour into despair. There's always something we can do. One of my favorite quotes (from Pirke Avot, a collection of rabbinic wisdom) is "it is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither are we free to refrain from beginning it." I remind myself of that often when I'm thinking about the political sphere. I think we on the religious left need to speak up more. It's easy for the mainstream public to assume that "religious" means "on the right," and that's a fundamental misconception which will only be cleared up if we make ourselves heard.
Matt Sellers UK (British Baptist)
Our church is committed to the local community, and in particular the children, youth and disadvantaged of the area. We have many ongoing projects and the church buildings are used so much we are looking at expansion plans. Current membership of the church is about 550 and rising (probably in the top five biggest Baptist Churches in the country). I think this kind of community view of the church is becoming more prevalent up and down the country, and I'm hoping that some great long-lasting initiatives and reforms will come out of it - just like the great reforms of the 19th Century - we are beginning to see this with the Drop the Debt initiative and Fair Trade movements, and more recently the Make Poverty History initiative.
Ono Ekeh of Ono's Thoughts(Liberal Catholic Blog)
Interview forthcoming
Only time will solve this. What has to happen is for the Catholic and Christian Right to define themselves as extremists, which they are already doing. At the same time, on the left, we have to learn to be more comfortable talking about our faith…Now, while a conservative will have no problem opening up to the world the internal dynamic of his/her faith life, liberals like Kerry are uncomfortable revealing these personal details and then people assume that there are no details. I don't think liberals have to get phoney, but we have to speak honestly about faith and its place in our lives. That's how we'll take back religion.
Carlos Stouffer of Jesus Politics
(Anthology of Readings from former Southern Baptist Missionary)
I like to contrast the political Christians on the Christian Right with the political Christians on the Jesus Left. The Christian Right focuses on an orthodox and institutional interpretation of the Christian Faith whereas the Jesus Left focuses on fresh ways to honor the life and spirit of the historical Jesus. Even though some political Christian leaders are loud, I am pretty sure the vast majority of Christians in the US are not that interested or engaged in politicsAs more Christians get involved and become better informed, I think they will start to question the assumptions of these loud political Christians. I think the Christian Rightists are particularly vulnerable when Christians begin to wake up and discover what is going on in the name of Jesus.
So here we are, Mr. Pitts, and we're up on the roof and we've got a beautiful vision to share! Could this really be the group to spearhead both the reclamation of a more compassionate vision of Christian life, and to transform our political culture? I'm hoping that CAP can be instrumental in achieving both ends. That's why I'm here. I'm going to do what I can to make that happen.We'd love to hear your thoughts on how to make CAP a success.
Now, as for Rev. Tim Simpson, there is no need to for me to quote from his interview because he is here himself to share his penetrating insights with you. Some of you are no doubt familiar with his blog Public Theologian. This wonderful site had been down in recent weeks as Tim has recovered from emergency eye surgery. But it is back now and so is Tim. This is only the first day of the official opening of this site, and already we have been truly blessed.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 10:50 PM | Comments (15)
