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August 31, 2006
The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right
Posted by Jesus Politics
Rev. Mel White of Soulforce is releasing a new book in September with the title, "Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right". In the preface, White writes about the reasons why he wrote his book. Some excerpts from the preface:
On July 1, 1999, Matthew and Tyler Williams broke into the country home of Gary Matson and Winfield Scott Mowder, a well known and much loved northern California couple. The Williams brothers tortured and killed these two innocent men for one reason and one reason alone: they were gay. The men's nude bodies were found the next day riddled with bullets. Investigators determined that the Williams brothers had stood on chairs at the end of the bed and "blasted away at the gay men."i
When Sally Williams asked her son, Matthew, why he had killed "the two homos," his answer was recorded by prison officials: "I had to obey God's law rather than man's law. I didn't want to do this. I felt I was supposed to...I have followed a higher law...I see a lot of parallels between this and a lot of other incidents in the Old Testament...They threw our Savior in jail...Our forefathers have been in prison a lot. Prophets...Christ...My brother and I are incarcerated for our work in cleansing a sick society...I just plan to defend myself from the Scriptures."ii [ ]
Compared to the horror of Matthew Sheperd's execution felt by millions around the world, few people even noticed the life and death of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder let alone the suicide of Matthew Williams or Tyler William's sentence to life in prison. And yet this untold story of four wasted lives is just one more smoking gun found at the scene of another crime caused directly by fundamentalist Christian leaders whose obsessive anti-homosexual campaign leads to tragic consequences they will not admit.[ ]
Go back a few paragraphs and re-read the words Matthew Williams used to defend his heinous crime. This Bible-based fear and loathing of homosexuals was shaped in William's mind -- just as it is being shaped in the minds of tens of millions of Americans -- by the anti-homosexual teachings of the radio and television fundavangelists, the Southern Baptists, Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints (Mormons), fundamentalist leaders in every Protestant denomination and priests, bishops, and cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, especially Benedict XVI, whose antigay obsession has led to the current inquisition against innocent gay priests and seminarians. To young Williams, if homosexuals are such a "threat to the family, to the church and to the nation," it only seemed natural to eliminate that threat.[ ]
Fundamentalism, like a mutating virus, infects and sickens Christianity -- especially evangelical Christianity -- on a regular basis and the plague that follows infects and sickens the nation as well. Contaminated evangelical preachers and famous evangelical "personalities" are particularly contagious, especially those with powerful media ministries. Professional clergy and committed lay leaders who have also been infected by fundamentalism seem helpless in recognizing the symptoms let alone in treating the disease.[ ]
I also hope I can persuade you that the struggle for "gay rights" is the next stage in the broader struggle for civil rights in this country. Consciously or unconsciously, fundamentalist Christians are using their anti-homosexual campaign to test how much intolerance the American people will tolerate. The intolerance must end. By working to achieve liberty and justice for gay and lesbian Americans, we are actually working to achieve liberty and justice for all Americans. This is the time to rediscover our own progressive moral values, reclaim the spiritual high ground, and resist those who demean and dehumanize any of God's children. This is not just a struggle to win civil rights for gay Americans. It is a struggle against fundamentalist Christianity (to use their words) "for the heart and soul of the nation." It is a struggle we dare not lose.
Posted by Jesus Politics at 05:30 AM | Comments (54)
August 28, 2006
Millennium Development, Poverty, and War
Posted by de sententia
The United Nations has drafted and adopted a series of goals for development around the world. The goals, which focus on eradicating extreme hunger, acheiving universal primary education, promoting gender equity, reducing child mortality, and several other worthy topics, has been agreed to by every country around the world. 2015 is given as a target date for meeting the goals, and the needs of the world's poorest. So what happens when a country is beset by war?
Lebanon serves as the perfect example. Lebanon, you may recall, struggled for fifteen years under civil war from 1975 to 1990. Although Beirut was laid to ruin, most of the fighting was centered in the south. When the war ended, Lebanon sputtered forward with development. For the last fifteen years, Lebanon has been rebuilding its war torn economy and was considered on the road to meeting the Millennium Development Goals. All that Lebanon was able to achieve in meeting the goals was wiped out in less than 30 days of fighting. Damages are estimated to be at least $15 billion. The bombing, which damaged the water and sewer systems, has made clean water a precious commodity that few can afford. Israel, which still maintains a blockade of Lebanon's borders and ports, has made the relief supplies into Lebanon trickle in in small amounts. The villages of Southern Lebanon are the hardest hit. War only increases the troubles of the poor.
In more prosperous communities, the effect is the same. Merchants in Beirut suffer from the closing of the Beirut airport, and the lack of tourist dollars. The fisherman sit idly by as a giant oil slick darkens Lebanon's coast and threatens their economic well being. Lebanon, which was struggling under a mountain of debt before, will only struggle more.
The long term damage is not only felt in economic terms. Two weeks after the cease fire, the fighting may have stopped but cluster bombs still litter the land. Unicef reports that children have been killed, while the BBC simply notes that many have been injured.
War makes poverty flourish, and afflicts the poor more than any other group. To those in the Middle East, arguments on whether Israel was justified in attacking Lebanon mean little. They see and feel the poverty and destruction created, and curse their oppressors. And who should step in to supply the people of Lebanon with aid and support? Iran and Hezbollah. The Israeli defense minister has noted that Israel's blockade of aid to Lebanon has only increased support for Hezbollah. 'When your enemies are hungry, feed them.' We can continue to look at war in one dimensional terms, or we can start to recognize the poverty and destruction that we create when we wage war. Creating poverty is not only contrary to the UN Millennium Development Goals, but it is also contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Posted by de sententia at 04:27 PM | Comments (4)
August 25, 2006
Billy Graham at 87: More Humility and Tolerance
Posted by Faithful Progressive
The life of the spirit has been fundamental to the life of human beings since we evolved from other primates. The German novelist Herman Hesse writes that, throughout time, in many religions and traditions, there has been a pattern in human spiritual development. "We begin our spiritual journey hopefully, in the innocence of youth, but gradually become aware of our own limitations, many of us try to compensate through good works that ultimately still leave us unfulfilled. Finally, if we are lucky, we move into a period of “grace and release to a new, higher kind of irresponsibility, or to put it briefly: to faith.”
This process seems to be at work in the life of Rev. Billy Graham. As the Christian Post reports, in a recent Newsweek interview he is quoted as saying, “The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally,” he said. The preacher now thinks that both left- and right-wing movers and shakers have gone too far by blowing minor issues out of all proportion. He feels they have ignored the core issues of the gospel such as making the love for God and for other people a priority.
As the Newsweek story notes, A unifying theme of Graham's new thinking is humility. He is sure and certain of his faith in Jesus as the way to salvation. When asked whether he believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people, though, Graham says: "Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won't ... I don't want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have."
Further, he has come to appreciate the mystery of God's grace, which can not be reduced to writing and strict literalism. As Newsweek relates: Graham spends hours now with his Bible, at once savoring and reconsidering old stories and old lessons."I'm not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord," Graham says in the current issue of Newsweek. "This is a little difference in my thinking through the years. There are things that I just don't understand."
Not surprisingly, this vision of humility, tolerance, and faith in God is very threatening to those on the Religious Right--who gain power by setting themselves up as the ultimate authority on God's mysterious grace. See for example, this self righteous diatribe: Billy Graham's apostasy
There have been many times when I have disagreed with Rev. Graham--but I am deeply impressed by his faith, and even more so that it has continued to grow well into his 80's. God's grace is a mystery, but it is something beautiful to behold.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 12:35 PM | Comments (32)
August 24, 2006
Beyond Marriage
Posted by Jesus Politics
The Beyond Marriage movement is an interesting development in the context of the struggle for the legitimization of same-sex marriage. Many progressive Christians, Christian groups and at least one denomination (United Church of Christ) have given full support for marriage equality. The Beyond Marriage statement, however, questions this support and raises some important issues.
Although this movement doesn't appear to have originated with explicit religious endorsement, it should be noted that a good number of people of faith have already signed on to the statement. Some excerpts from the full statement:
We, the undersigned – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers – seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.[ ]
To have our government define as “legitimate families” only those households with couples in conjugal relationships does a tremendous disservice to the many other ways in which people actually construct their families, kinship networks, households, and relationships. For example, who among us seriously will argue that the following kinds of households are less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy? [ ]
LGBT movement strategies must be sufficiently prophetic, visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right’s powerful and effective use of “wedge” politics – the strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another.
Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.
Moreover, as we all know, the Right has successfully embedded “stealth” language into many anti-LGBT marriage amendments and initiatives, creating a framework for dismantling domestic partner benefit plans and other forms of household recognition (for queers and heterosexual people alike). Movement resources are drained by defensive struggles to address the Right’s issue-by-issue assaults. Our strategies must engage these issues head-on, for the long term, from a position of vision and strength. [ ]
So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world. Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance.
We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.
Posted by Jesus Politics at 05:34 AM | Comments (16)
August 22, 2006
Evolution and Religion: Do They Conflict?
Posted by mainstreambaptist
By Dr. Bruce Prescott, Mainstream Baptist
Evolution and religion: Do they conflict? Not necessarily. Whether evolution conflicts with religion depends upon the context in which the theory of evolution is presented. When evolution is discussed within the context of scientific inquiry and experimentation, there is no conflict. When evolution is discussed within the context of philosophical and religious inquiry, conflicts may arise – but such conflict is neither necessary nor inevitable.
Let me talk first about evolution in the context of scientific inquiry and experimentation. Modern science explores the universe and the world of nature. When it conducts its explorations, it “suspends” or “brackets out” questions about the ultimate nature and meaning of reality. It deals only with aspects of reality that are subject to experimentation and verification. This “methodological” naturalism is proper and good and it has proven very effective in unlocking the mysteries of the physical universe.
For me, as a person of faith, the chief virtue of this “naturalistic” scientific method is that it let’s God be God. As a “born again,” evangelical Christian I believe that everything that the scientist studies was created by God. That means the material universe is not ultimate reality. God created it, transcends it and exists beyond it. God is not part of the “furniture” of the universe. God is not an “object” that can be observed, tested, manipulated or controlled by any conceivable experiment. Science, therefore, can say nothing about God. It has no competence to pass judgment on God – either to prove or disprove his existence. The “methodological” naturalism of modern scientific inquiry means that science is necessarily neutral in regard to the religious and metaphysical questions that deal with the ultimate meaning and significance of reality. Those questions are outside the sphere of its methodology.
Whenever conflicts arise between evolution and religion, they arise where evolution is discussed in the context of philosophical and religious inquiry. Religion does not “bracket out” questions about the ultimate nature, meaning and significance of reality -- it makes them central. Unfortunately, there is no agreed upon methodology by which philosophers, theologians and people of faith determine the answers they give to these questions. In the field of religion there is a wide variety of interpretations about the meaning and significance of evolution.
There are Fundamentalist Christians who interpret evolution as an attack upon their faith. There are Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants and Catholics who interpret evolution as the process by which a sovereign, loving, and personal God chose to exercise a constant and continuous creative power and providence. There are liberal Christians who interpret evolution as the process by which God is spelling himself out in the world process or developing his being through cosmic time.
There are also atheists, some of them scientists, who interpret evolution to mean that faith in God is superfluous or superstitious. These atheistic “metaphysical” naturalists are making a faith statement that science can neither prove nor disprove. Such people are nowhere near as numerous or as influential as some people think. Many, if not most, scientists are people of deep religious faith who use scientific methodology in the laboratory and in their scientific work but remove the “brackets” in their private philosophical and religious lives. When they remove the "brackets," most see no conflict between their faith and science.
Common to all these interpretations is adherence to some basic premise or organizing principle that is accepted by faith. As long as people are free to choose where they place their faith, a conflict of "interpretations" is inevitable. Conflicts of "interpretation" will end only in the eschaton – when the “perfect comes” and the “partial” will be done away (1 Cor. 13:8-13).
Every conflict between evolution and religion boils down to a debate over religious and philosophical "interpretations." Science cannot resolve these issues. Resolving these debates requires open dialogue between people of faith. What we are doing today is a good beginning in this direction.
As one participant in this dialogue, I would like to express some personal beliefs and opinions and share a little about the journey that I have made as a Christian in regard to opinions about evolution.
I grew up in an Independent, Fundamental Baptist church. Those are the Baptists that think Southern Baptists are liberals. I grew up believing what I was told about evolution by people that I trusted – and they told me that evolution was an attack upon God, the Bible and everything holy. They indoctrinated me in creation science and taught me all the standard arguments for proving the existence of God.
I have since grown out of that kind of faith – not because someone convinced me that evolution was true, but because I came to realize that the God they wanted me to worship was too small.
There are at least two things that led me to this conclusion.
First, I found that my mentors did not know how to distinguish the inspired and revealed truths of the Bible from their private interpretations of the Bible. For people who take the Bible seriously, the question is not whether the account in the book of Genesis is inspired and true – the question is what kind of truth does it reveal and how should we interpret it. For those of us who are Protestants, there are no infallible interpretations of scripture. There are just interpretations that are better than others at taking into account all that we know about God and the universe.
Second, I found that my mentors were limiting God in at least two ways.
First, they imposed finite human understandings of time on God. The question is not whether God could create life forms in an instant. God is free and able to create in any way that is pleasing to Him. Burger King may be bound to let you “have it your way,” but God is not.
Science indicates that God created the universe and life in processes that took billions of years. Why should that be surprising? God lives in eternity. It is mortal men with their short life spans who are impressed by billions of years of cosmic time, God isn’t. He transcends time. A thousand years is like a day to him (2 Peter 3:8).
I decided that interpretations that insist that the earth had to be created 6000 years ago are inadequate for more than scientific reasons, they are inadequate because they are overly anthropomorphic for theological reasons.
The second way of limiting God is also anthropomorphic – by anthropomorphic I mean making God in the image of man, rather than letting God be God – the second way limits God by insisting that He must create human beings in a way that completely distinguishes us from the rest of God’s creation. The question is not whether God could do so. He could do it that way if he wanted to, but he is not bound to do it that way.
Science indicates that we share most of our genetic structure with primates. What violence does that do to the Christian understanding of man? God is not an organism. He does not have a genetic structure. God is Spirit. The image of God in man does not refer to our physical form or body; it refers to our spirit. Our uniqueness is in our spiritual capacity to enter loving relationship with a God who loves us.
Theologically, it makes no difference whether God decided to form our physical bodies through long stages of biological development or by a special creative act.
Ultimately, I’ve learned to be cautious about what many of my well meaning but misguided preachers and mentors taught me about faith and science. Now I try to remember a few simple principles:
1) Live by faith.
2) Don’t limit God.
3) Don’t tie faith too closely with any scientific view.
4) Exercise interpretive humility in both science and religion.
In the end it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, that matters.
God is the only one whose view of the world is final and complete and He’s the only one who has all the answers.
Posted by mainstreambaptist at 06:59 PM | Comments (259)
August 21, 2006
Basic Principles of the Just War Tradition
Posted by ChristianAlliance
by Michael the Leveller
Regular readers of my Levellers blog know that I have been asked to argue the biblical case for gospel nonviolence or "Christian pacifism." I have done this many times in other places, so one thing I am doing is going back to my files rather than attempt to recreate the wheel. However, before I get started, I find it necessary to remind many of the principles of Just War Theory. Despite the fact that this has been the semi-official ethic of Western civilization regarding war and peace for about 1600 years, and despite the fact that the majority of Western Christians since Augustine have considered themselves adherents of JWT, there seems to be a woeful ignorance about the basics of this tradition, even among the seminary trained. Further, it seems that few pastors of non-pacifist churches discuss these principles with parishioners, leaving them without the information and without forming them in the moral virtues it would take to make this a serious moral force in the world.
I consider gospel nonviolence to be a calling for Christians, not necessarily for nation-states. My criticisms of particular wars or lost opportunities for peace are usually rooted in the common Just War vocabulary that forms the basis of much international law, relevant portions of the U.S. military's Uniform Code of Military Justice, etc.--in short, the moral standards claimed by the mainstream Western world. So, it looks like this pacifist will have to give some remedial Just War instruction--even if only to avoid misunderstanding.
The principles below were hammered out over time. They were forged by major influential moral thinkers (e.g., St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Hugo Grotius, etc.) with an assumption that nations will make war. This ethic attempts to tame war and have it fought more morally than otherwise--sometimes to great success, but not at other periods of history. The overarching premise is a moral presumption against war: War is a terrible evil. It should be morally very difficult to justify going to war and the conduct of the war must be fought within very tight guidelines. General Sherman famously remarked that "War is hell," but, if so, the major premise of JWT is that there must rules even in hell.
As the Just War Tradition has developed, it has been distilled into seven (7) principles: five (5) that judge whether a decision to go to war is morally justifiable (ius ad bellum) and two (2) to guide just conduct in waging the war (ius in bello). There is also a corollary that we will discuss at the end of this review.
IS THIS WAR MORALLY JUSTIFIED? Ius ad bellum Principles:
Legitimate Authority: According to JWT, not just anyone can decide to go to war. The decision must be made by a legally recognized authority. In ancient times, this was the emperor or king. In the U.S., the constitutional right and duty to declare war is given to Congress alone (Art. I), even though the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and has the authority to negotiate peace. The purpose of the Constitutional Framers was to make it more difficult for the nation to go to war. A major legal question of the current Iraq war/occupation is whether or not this requirement was met by the Congressional resolution that authorized Pres. Bush to use all necessary force to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction (never found). Some say "yes," but others believe that a formal declaration of war must be issued by Congress, that the Constitution does not allow this "passing of the buck" to the Executive Branch. Many Just War thinkers insist on a formal Declaration of War, not just to fulfill a legal requirement for the U.S., but because this has historically served as a last opportunity to sue for peace before the battle begins. Since the creation of the United Nations and the signing of its Charter, it has also usually been contended that, unless attacked or under immediate threat of attack, member nations have surrendered the right to declare war unilaterally. The legal authority in all cases except immediate attack or threat is then the UN Security Council. Member nations may not unilaterally presume to enforce Security Counsel resolutions by force.
Just Cause: A war may not be fought for national pride or to expand territory, etc., but only for a just cause, such as resistance to aggression by means of attack or threat of attack. In extreme cases, such as attempts at genocide, a war may be justifiable to prevent an incredible violation of human rights, such as when North Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Because war is so horrible, however, the bar is very high for justifications to invade a sovereign nation for any other reason than to resist aggression. This is the only principle with which most Americans and American Christians seem familiar (although they too easily think that the national cause must always be authomatically just--an idea that is anathema to this tradition). When asked whether war X or Y is just, they will point to the presence or absence of a Just Cause--and forget about the other principles.
Just Intent: The aims of the war must be just and limited: to restore peace and justice, not vengeance. The classic example where this was violated was WWI. The desire of the Allies (especially France) to punish and humiliate Germany was unjust and sowed the seeds for the rise of Naziism. Over the years, Just War theorists have been very conservative at this point--generally disapproving of overly grand war aims such as militarily spreading democracy throughout theMiddle Eeast. International law reflects such conservatism. (Note: This also puts severe restraints upon an occupying power--it may not profit economically by the war, but must protect and restore the health of the occupied country.)
Last Resort: All other means to resolve the dispute must have been tried and shown to fail, before one may justifiably unleash the dogs of war. I will have more to say about this in a future post on the practices of the developing ethic of "just peacemaking."
Reasonable Chance of Success: A war must not be initiated or continued if there is no reasonable chance of success. This is counter-intuitive to the American penchant for admiring underdogs who "go down fighting." But it is based on the concept that it is unjust to ask citizens and soldiers to go through the horrors of war--no matter how just the cause--if it appears that said war is likely to end without achieving the aims of the war or, even worse, in a crushing defeat.
All 5 of the principles of ius ad bellum must be met before JWT believes it morally justifiable to go to war. One can have a clearly just cause and just intent, but if one has not met the other requirements, especially last resort, then going to war is unjust.
ARE WE WAGING THIS WAR JUSTLY? ius in bello Principles or Just Means:
The Principle of Discrimination: Those waging the war must (a) honor noncombatant or civilian immunity. Thus, noncombatants may not be directly targetted. As modern war has grown more destructive, this rule has tightened to say that those waging war must take extra care to minimize civilian deaths--even at greater risk to one's own soldiers. Any tactic or weapon that makes discrimination between combatant and noncombtant impossible or difficult, is thereby forbidden. (The classic examples here are nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, but this judgment has also been made about landmines, bombing civilian cities or infrastructure, etc.) Noncombatant immunity also means that prisoners captured in war must be treated humanely. They are like chess pieces removed from the board--they may be interrogated, but not tortured or treated inhumanely. (b) Military forces limit themselves to military targets, refraining from looting, massacres, rapes and other atrocities, and all forms of wanton violence. Most war crimes trials result from violations of these principles of discrimination--and "the other side started it" is never a justifiable excuse.
The Principle of Proportionality. [This principle is also used in judging "reasonable chance of success" in the decision of whether or not to go to war.] Wars are violent. People are killed and both property and the land are destroyed. This principle says that war's violence and destruction must be restrained by the norm of proportionality: The war's harm must not exceeed the good accomplished. This applies both to the war as a whole, and to particular tactics or weapons. There can be no "destroying the village to save the village" nonsense.
Selective Conscientious Objection: The corollary of the Just War tradition is that people, including those already in the military, will refuse to serve in an unjust war--no matter the cost to themselves, even prison. Recent examples include the Israeli refuseniks who have resisted serving in the occupied territories of Palestine and several military members in the current Iraq war, such as Lt. Ehren Watada. (Thanks to "Marty on the Homefront" for posting that video of Lt. Watada's speech at the annual meeting of Veterans for Peace.)
The churches which claim to embrace JWT are failing their members by not teaching them these principles and not preparing those of their members who choose military service for the possibility of needing to become a conscientious objector to a particular war. On the battlefield, soldiers may have to refuse an order which violates discrimination or proportionality--even at risk of field court martial and summary execution. This is extraordinarily difficult. Even though the Uniform Code of Military Justice explains to recruits the difference between "lawful" and "unlawful" orders, the ethos is (in some senses must be) one in which it is extraordinarily difficult to question orders. The same is true of all other armies of other nations. So, churches that fail to form in their members the moral character that would make such integrity and bravery possible are not really preparing them to be soldiers in the Just War tradition, but to be uncritical nationalists and militarists instead.
At its best, JWT is a high and difficult moral code. But there are limits to it that even non-pacifists have noted. In future posts, I will discuss those limits and the practices of "just peacemaking." I will also, with that out of the way, make the case for Christian pacifism/gospel nonviolence.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 01:56 PM | Comments (10)
My Neighbor
Posted by de sententia
My neighbor is dying from cancer. She was diagnosed about a month ago, a very bad form of thyroid cancer, and is undergoing chemo now. She's married, in her late forties, and has a twelve year old son with Down's Syndrome. The prognosis is not good.
Its hard for me to write this, as I often try and put myself in another person's shoes, to see life from their perspective. I know how much I love my own children, and I know how hard it would be. The whole focus of my neighbor's life right now is setting up the care that her son will need for the rest of his life. Knowing that she is dying, she still is focused on life. Not her own, but the life of someone else.
My neighbor who is dying from cancer does not have the type of family support that others have. At Page 132, The Old Man has been describing his wife's struggle with lung cancer, and what jumps out at me is that he is there, holding his wife's hand, through appointments, rounds of chemo, thick and thin. My neighbor who is dying from cancer does not have the same type of support. There is no doubt that my neighbor's spouse loves her dearly, but at times, she faces the battle alone. Whether her husband is unable or unwilling to take the time is irrelevant. There are tradeoffs in life, and setting up the long term care for a child with Down's can come at a very high cost.
In the US, our health care system is broken, if it ever was in existance. An estimated 50 million US citizens lack basis health care insurance, and with the cost sky rocketing, many people stay in work situations tha they otherwise might leave, if it were not for the insurance benefits. Businesses, particularly small businesses, are crumbling under the weight of health care costs as well. Funny, but insurance companies seem to be very profitable, and I wonder why that is.
In truth, as a result of the tenuous insurance coverage, or outright lack of coverage alltogether, we are forced to amkes ome difficultcesicsions. We are forced to decide whether we will stand beside our loved one in a time of need, or remain loyal to our employer in order to provide our loved one with health insurance. Life should not be filled with these choices.
Even though her husband is not with her at these countless sppointments, my neighbor is alone. Our neighbors have banded together, and we supply meals for our dying friend, rides to and from the hospital for chemo appointments, groceries for the week, and a shoulder to cry on. I think of the many, many, people who do not have the same support network.
My neighbor is dying from cancer. She faces some very difficult decisions as she plans for the future for a child who will not know all that she has done. Her husband has faced some very difficult decisions as well, being forced to choose between staying with his loved one as she dies, or heading off to work to pay for his loved one's treatment. It should not have to be that way. In the greatest nation, in one of the most prosperous nations, we should not have to choose between spending time with a loved one who is dying, and spending time with our employer to ensure that our loved one receives the care that she deserves. It is time to change the system so that we are not forced to makes this choice.
Posted by de sententia at 05:46 AM | Comments (3)
August 18, 2006
Bounding the War on Terrorism: Military Expert Rejected Bush/Cheney/Lieberman View
Posted by Faithful Progressive
Last week we wrote about the disgrace of the Cheney/Lieberman attacks on sensible Ned Lamont and others who reject the appalling course President Bush has set in both Iraq and the boundless War or Terrorism. FP is about 320 pages into the stunning book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks. As the New York Times review recounted, "he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive."
The book also reminded me of this fanatastic and serious critique of the Bush/Lieberman support for the failed policies of the Administration. Bounding the Global War on Terrorism, by Dr. Jeffrey Record. The author examines three features of the war on terrorism as currently defined and conducted: (1) the administration's postulation of the terrorist threat, (2) the scope and feasibility of U.S. war aims, and (3) the war's political, fiscal, and military sustainability. He believes that the war on terrorism--as opposed to the campaign against al-Qaeda--lacks strategic clarity, embraces unrealistic objectives, and may not be sustainable over the long haul. He calls for downsizing the scope of the war on terrorism to reflect concrete U.S. security interests and the limits of American military power.
Here's an excerpt, which was cited in Fiasco by Thomas Ricks.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. Government declared a global war on terrorism (GWOT). The nature and parameters of that war, however, remain frustratingly unclear. The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, and national scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat to the United States. Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein�s Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat.
This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action. The result has been an unnecessary preventive war of choice against a deterred Iraq that has created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al-Qaeda. The war against Iraq was not integral to the GWOT, but rather a detour from it. Additionally, most of the GWOT�s declared objectives, which include the destruction of al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organizations, the transformation of Iraq into a prosperous, stable democracy, the democratization of the rest of the autocratic Middle East, the eradication of terrorism as a means of irregular warfare, and the (forcible, if necessary) termination of WMD proliferation to real and potential enemies worldwide, are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a hopeless quest for absolute security. As such, the GWOT�s goals are also politically, fiscally, and militarily unsustainable.
The blog Back to Iraq wrote an excellent summary,
Army War College slams Global War on Terror plan:
Record recommends:
1. Deconflate the threat, by treating rogue states (such as the former Iraq) as separate from terrorist organizations and separate those groups that are at war with the U.S., such as al Qaeda, from those that are not, such as Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Record makes the point that al Qaeda is undeterrable while North Korea, for the moment, is. By lumping all groups and rouge states together as "terrorism," the United States will make enemies of those groups with which it has no quarrel. "Terrorism may be a horrendous means to any end, but do the Basque E.T.A. and the Tamil Tigers really threaten the United States?" he writes
2. Substitute credible deterrence for preventative war as a means of dealing with rogue states' attempts to acquire WMD. By this, he means shift the focus from stopping rogue states from acquiring WMD to deterring rogue states from using WMD. Iraq was deterrable; Saddam was deterred from using chemical and/or biological weapons in the 199s Gulf War in no small part because Secretary of State James Baker threatened the use of tactical nukes. A policy of preventive war encourages acquisition of WMD, anyway, as rogue states -- such as North Korea -- decide they have to arm up to deter the United States. Besides, using preemptive, preventative war as the overall tool in the foreign policy toolkit places too many strains and stresses on the military and intelligence agencies to be exact. The failure to find WMD in Iraq is Exhibit A here.
3. Refocus the GWOT on al Qaeda, its allies and defense of the American homeland. Hands up, who attacked the U.S. on 9/11? Right, al Qaeda and _not_ a rouge state. Who is still conducting terror attacks against U.S. interests around the globe? Al Qaeda again. "The war against Iraq was a detour from, not an integral component of, the war on terrorism." And spend more money and effort on homeland security. First responders are "woefully undertrained and underfunded":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000418.php#000418 to the tune of approximately $98.4 billion. How much as Operation Iraqi Freedom cost? About $150 billion has already been authorized and requested.
4. Find some other way other than war to effect regime change in rogue states. It's expensive, risky and ties down 100,000+ American troops, creating a huge drag on the armed forces. Iran, North Korea and Syria have little reason to fear the 82nd is about to occupy the presidential palaces in Tehran, Pyongyang or Damascus. They're too busy in Iraq!
5. Settle for stability rather than democracy in Iraq and international control rather than American control. Democracy in Iraq would be great. I'm all for it. But Record thinks that lowered expectations in Iraq would be better if the transition to democracy turns into a messy, chaotic and violent affair, which it might if the Kurds keep "pushing hard for Kirkuk.":http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/11/MNG5047PP01.DTL
While it would truly suck to have an Egyptian-style autocracy, the United States may have to settle for that if democracy leads to a government hostile to American security requirements. This one is -- and should be -- a bitter pill to swallow. I hope it's not a necessary one.
6. More troops, more peacekeeping and more nation-building. Record notes that Americans seem to have forgotten Clausewitz's dictum that war is an extension of politics and instead seem to substitute war for politics. The American vision of war posits the enemy as "target sets"; if one destroys enough of the target set, the enemy will surrender and American goals will be achieved. He quotes Frederick A. Kagan as saying that this vision ignores the importance of "how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what the enemy's country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying." Troops must do more than break things and kill people. They must secure population centers and infrastructure, keep the civilian populace safe and prevent humanitarian disasters. And that takes a lot of boots on the ground. It also takes a realization by the U.S. military that regime change is inextricably tied to nation-building and peacekeeping, and that those must be factored into initial planning for war. "The only hope for success in the extension of politics that war is to restore the human element to the transformation process."
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 08:55 PM | Comments (2)
August 17, 2006
Cracks in the Wall
Posted by Jesus Politics
Sara Robinson, filling in for David Neiwert on the Orcinus blog, has been writing a series of posts that may be of interest to progressive Christians. Sara is exploring the fundamentalist or authoritarian mind and reflecting on ways progressives could respond to it. This is a difficult and sensitive terrain, but it is good to see these sorts of discussions happening.
We need to stop this. We have gone on too long assuming that our right-wing opponents are, in all times and places, unchangeable and unchanging. Yes, their arguments are confoundingly short on evidence and fact. Yes, their logic loops are closed up so tight as to be frustratingly impervious to reason. Yes, they absolutely do mean to do us -- and our democracy -- grievous harm.
Here's the good news. That Great Wall that separates our little reality-based community from The Fantasyland Next Door is not a monolith. Nor are the inmates of that Otherworld necessarily locked in there for all time and eternity. There's evidence -- from scientists, from experience, from history -- that there are cracks in that wall. They are small and subtle, to be sure (that's why nobody's ever noticed them before): at this point, they are mere hairlines, faint traces that are hard to spot without a good flashlight in the hands of someone who knows where to look. But, as someone who's spent much of her life pacing one side or the other of this wall, I am here to tell you: there are places where it fails. People do cross it, and survive to tell the tale. And, rather than continue to wallow in our frustration, it's high time we mapped those cracks, find effective ways to widen them, and eventually exploit them to help both afflicted individuals and our larger culture break through the insanity.
It will be slow, thoughtful, methodical work. What I'm offering here is just an opening tour of the rockwork, an explanation of where the cracks are and why they formed. At first, actual opportunities to exploit these weaknesses will be small and fleeting. But my hope is, with time and practice, we'll get more observant, and more creative, and more adroit in taking advantage of them when they appear. That's the goal of this series.
For the past five years, I've been a member of a large and busy online community of former fundamentalists. Through years of discussion, we've learned a lot from each other about how and why people become fundamentalists -- and also how and why they find themselves inspired to leave authoritarian religion behind. We've noticed patterns in the various ways people are seduced into fundamentalism; and also a predictable progression in the steps they go through in the agonizing months and years after enlightenment dawns. We've also discovered that we seem to fall into readily-identifiable subgroups, and that each of these subgroups wanders down somewhat different paths and uses different techniques as they approach the wall, determinedly hoist themselves over it, and then set about coming to terms with life here on the reality-based side. [ ]
We must never, ever underestimate what it costs these people to let go of the beliefs that have sustained them. Leaving the safety of the authoritarian belief system is a three-to-five year process. Externally, it always means the loss of your community; and often the loss of jobs, homes, marriages, and blood relatives as well. Internally, it requires sifting through every assumption you've ever made about how the world works, and your place within it; and demands that you finally take the very emotional and intellectual risks that the entire edifice was designed to protect you from. You have to learn, maybe for the first time, to face down fear and live with ambiguity. On the scale of relative trauma, it's right up there with a divorce after a long marriage; and it requires about the same amount and kind of grieving.
Over the years, I've talked to scores of former fundies about the moment that the light first sparked. Through their stories, I've discerned a few patterns, most of which map very neatly onto John Dean's list of traits for authoritarian followers. What follows is far from science; it's more akin to clinical experience, or a scouting report from the front on battlefield conditions.
The experiences described by people who've left authoritarian religious systems point to possible ways we might convince individual authoritarians (of whatever type) to at least take a peek over onto our side of the Wall. This installment talks about some of the ways we can create the conditions that will encourage individual authoritarians to come take that look. [ ]
If we're serious about reducing the number of authoritarians in our midst, we need to greatly increase the number and frequency of our engagements with them. As noted in Part II, are very literal thinkers, and capable of tremendous loyalty. An RWA (right wing authoritarian) who knows just one gay person, up close and personal, often finds that their sense of loyalty will force them to resist their leaders' generalizations of gays as evil. The more contact they have with the demonized Other, the greater the cognitive dissonance grows, and the more their accepted authorities are discredited.
We need to actively start creating ways for the authoritarians in our midst to make contact with people outside of their cocooned communities. The means and methods are many; but this is perhaps the most important work we can do. Start by committing random acts of kindness (just to mess with their assumptions, if nothing else). They need to see us as trustworthy allies, valuable contributors to their own well-being -- and perhaps, in time, friends.
Posted by Jesus Politics at 05:54 PM | Comments (5)
August 15, 2006
David and Goliath
Posted by ChristianAlliance
by R. Johnson
"The Arabic word 'hamas' means zeal, but flip it on its head to 'samah' and it stands for tolerance. Sometimes you just have to look at things in a different way." Prince El Hassan bin Talal, brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan, moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, president of the Club of Rome, and president of the Arab Thought Forum.
I find it interesting when the stories of the Bible are interwoven into current events. It helps "frame" the issues in the minds of those familiar with the story, making an issue more understandable. Dr. Martin Luther King used Biblical references in his speech quite effectively. Others have tried desperately to imitate Dr. King’s rhetorical tools. Take James Dobson. When Dobson adopts the frame, however, it is to color our thinking about an issue. Dobson recently described Israel as David taking on Goliath in this war in Lebanon. A curious analogy, to say the least. There was a time when the analogy might apply, but those days are long gone. With the US supplying it weapons, and an arms industry that flourishes, and by portraying itself as a dove surrounded by countries with hostile intent, it is well armed. Israel now has nuclear weapons. Israel now has the best arms that money can buy. It flies drones over Lebanon, uses the latest military hardware, and fires 'precision guided bombs' at selected targets. Hezbollah, on the other hand, fires World War II era rockets with no guidance or control systems, rockets that are known for their low accuracy. Israel has invaded Lebanon, yet in the minds of those like James Dobson, Israel faces complete annihilation.
Maybe that is why evangelicals have largely remained silent instead of speaking out against violence in the Middle East. In our mind, either Dobson has been very persuasive, or we simply see this as David against Goliath.
But in the Biblical story, it was Goliath who was armed to the teeth. In the Biblical story, it was the Philistines and Goliath who were the daunting military power of the day. David nearly fell with the weight of the military armor that was placed upon him. In comparison to Goliath, he was unarmed and unprotected. The weapon he chose, a mere sling shot, was more like a Katyusha rocket than a precision guided bomb, dropped from an F18 screaming across the sky. Hardly the analogy of Israel and Hezbollah today.
Regardless of whether we see this as "David and Goliath", many see Israel as the victim in this latest battle. That frame of reference speaks volumes about the level of influence the religious right has in the United States today. That frame of reference speaks volumes of how far progressive Christians must go in the US to end the monologue dominated by the religious right. In an era where "Christians United for Israel" is viewed as a broker of power in our nation's capital, voices of reason are drowned out. "Good" Christians support Israel and "bad" Christians 'harm this nation by voicing their criticism of Israel', or so we are told. I think of the Old Testament prophets... They must have been some really 'bad' followers of the religion of their day, too.
Meanwhile, the Israeli ambassador is heaping fuel on the fire, 'reminding' anyone who cares to ask that the Lebanese city of Tyre supplied the cedar trees that were used to build the temple of Jerusalem. To the Lebanese people, Israel is now destroying the cedars of Lebanon. To the Christian Zionists, its a chance to rebuild the temple and bring about a second coming.
If you accept the frame that those like James Dobson place upon the struggle in the Middle East, you will undoubtedly find yourself supporting Israel. In the mind of James Dobson and Christian Zionists, Israel can do no wrong. If memory serves, the Bible is filled with examples of where Israel strayed from God's teachings. Why should we think Israel is any more 'perfect' today?
I wonder what God thinks of these people, who act like Goliath and see themselves as David.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 02:01 AM | Comments (25)
From Bystanders to Perpetrators
Posted by ChristianAlliance
By Dr. Bruce Prescott, Mainstream Baptist
On March 13, 1964 thirty-eight people heard screams, looked out their bedroom windows, and watched the murder of a lone, defenseless twenty-eight year old woman. None of the witnesses in a quiet, respectable, middle-class neighborhood in Queens, NY did anything to try to stop the series of three brutal attacks that ended the life of Catherine Genovese.
When asked why they failed to call the police to come to her assistance, the witnesses said they "didn't know her," or they were "afraid, " or they were "too tired," or mostly, they "didn't want to get involved."
As the details became known, a sense of moral outrage swept across the county. The outrage was directed at the witnesses and it made a deep impression upon me as a twelve-year-old boy.
Newsmen said it didn't matter that they "didn't know her." She was a human being and needed assistance. They should have done something.
Preachers said it was sinful and wrong for the witnesses to say, "I didn't want to get involved." At such a time, there is no valid excuse for not getting involved enough to pick up a phone, call the police, call an ambulance or do something to let her know that someone cared enough to come to her aid.
Everyone said it was absolutely evil for them to close their windows, pull down their shades and let her bleed to death.
In the eyes of many, the apathetic reactions of the witnesses made them as guilty of murder as the perpetrator. Any bystander that witnessed such a crime and failed to act to help the victim could not be considered blameless.
In the Southern Baptist circles in which I grew up, most people explained the behavior of the witnesses by suggesting that they were in need of salvation. Didn't John the Apostle ask how the love of God could abide in a heart that closes itself against a brother in need? (1 John 3:17)
The thought that Christians could close their eyes, turn their heads and sit on their hands when an innocent person was under attack was inconceivable.
I grew up believing that all Christians possessed a Spirit of boldness that endowed them with a special sensitivity for the needs of others and gave them the courage to face whatever danger they met when confronting evil and injustice.
As I grew older, I learned how naïve such a belief can be.
Few of us are confronted by evil of the magnitude that faced those thirty-eight witnesses. In this fallen world, however, all of us are eyewitnesses to various forms of violence and suffering. None of us are exempt from the necessity of reacting to violence and responding to its victims. It tests our faith and measures the depths of our spirits.
Many Christians, however, fail this test miserably.
The ease with which failure comes became apparent to me while I was a student in seminary. At the time, I was working for a large, national retail chain. After a shake-up in management, a lot of things changed in the internal operations of the store. Most evident was the extreme pressure under which many second-level managers seemed to be working.
I soon discovered that the new manager had been instructing them individually, one by one, to break accepted policies and procedures and, at times, commit criminal acts (a very small scale microcosm of Enron or Worldcom). He was so bold as to boast to a bookkeeper, "I'm crooked. I'm as crooked as a dog's hind leg, but the auditors will never catch me!"
Every one of the managers had a mortgage, car payments, families and careers that were in jeopardy. They could do what was right and lose their jobs. Or, they could follow orders, keep their jobs, and pray for mercy on judgment day.
A few of the managers quit. Most reluctantly complied. Some followed orders without question.
To my surprise, the second-level manager who thrived the most under the new "crooked" management, was a faithful, church-going Southern Baptist deacon. He was far from being an innocent bystander to a crime. His actions aided and abetted the perpetrator.
The deacon's collaboration, cover-up, and rationalizations for complying with the new boss's illegal demands served to isolate the honest managers from those who were wavering under the pressure of temptation. When a pious Baptist deacon can justify following orders to engage in "white collar" criminal activities, it is hard to expect others to focus on anything but their immediate self-interest. In the end, such a focus did not serve them well.
Ultimately, the "crooked" manager was investigated and terminated. Those who followed his orders lost opportunity for further advancement or were demoted. The number of lives diminished and careers lost was greatly magnified by the witness and example of a respected Baptist deacon who readily compromised his character to preserve his paycheck.
The honest managers lost something also, but they preserved something more important -- a clear conscience. They lost well-paid jobs, gave up long-tenured and promising careers, and struggled to find employment that could sustain their families. In the end, however, they retained their personal integrity and found other ways to make a living. The greater deficit was sustained by the company that lost their services.
Even before I graduated from Seminary I could see that Baptists as a people were about to face their own test of character. The Southern Baptist Convention was coming under "new" management. That new management dealt with people more ruthlessly than the "crooked" manager at the retail store in which I had once worked.
How would Baptists respond to this test of character?
When I graduated from Seminary, that question had not yet been answered. There was still hope that Baptists would rise up and oppose the slanderous lies, crooked procedures and character assassinations that gave the "new" managers control of the institutions and assets of the SBC. Along with others in the Mainstream Baptist Network, I did my best to raise a "Hue and Cry" and arouse opposition to the Fundamentalist takeover. Some people responded. Many more yawned, pulled down their shades, and left us bleeding on the streets of New Orleans (1990). Ask them why and they'll tell you, "It would be divisive," or " I was afraid," or "I didn't know them, " or "I was tired of fighting," or mostly, "I didn't want to get involved." All valid excuses, they think, come judgment day.
Many of those who left us bleeding on the streets were administrators, educators, missionaries and ministers. People whose paycheck or careers depended on taking orders from whoever managed the SBC. All had mortgages, car payments, families and careers that were on the line.
Most thought they could "lay low," "just do what you're told," and "don't do anything to attract attention to yourself" - all the prudent things I once heard retail managers whisper to each other. But, one by one, institution by institution, agency by agency, person by person, the new managers issued orders testing the integrity and character of those who served Southern Baptists.
Some quit. Some were forced to resign. Some tried to partially comply and were fired. Some, as adroitly as a deacon I once knew, followed orders without question. How many of these are secretly praying for mercy on judgment day, God only knows.
Meanwhile, some wounded Baptists got up off the street in New Orleans and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). On the mend from the mugging they took in the SBC, they desired nothing more than to peaceably leave the SBC and create a place where they could serve the Lord without being molested by Fundamentalism.
The healthy, defiant presence of CBF posed a threat to the new managers of the SBC. A slave revolt was the last thing these heirs of the Old South could abide. Determined to make an example of anyone and everyone desiring leave from their dominion, the new managers ordered all the forces of the SBC under their command -- literally, all the resources of the denomination -- to attack and destroy the CBF.
The result has been a barrage of propaganda. Some of it cheap and anonymously produced (the stock in trade of Fundamentalists). Recently, however, now that dollars donated for missions are paying for it, most of the propaganda is bylined and printed on slick paper with four color processing. No expense has been spared to fabricate a veneer of legitimacy for the whispered lies, the shameless slandering, and the closed-door character assassinations being committed by word-of-mouth on the Baptist grapevine.
Like Catherine Genovese, who tried to flee her attacker only to be chased down by her assailant, the more CBF Baptists tried to withdraw from the SBC, the more violently and frenetically the SBC attacked them. Like Catherine, who was stabbed several times in the back, many a Baptist pastor can relate how the most lethal blows come from behind.
Like the thirty-eight witnesses in New York, Baptists across the country have heard repeated pleas for help and have stopped their ears, closed their eyes, and ignored the wounds of fellow Baptists - even those of their own pastors.
Like the thirty-eight in New York, Baptist bystanders expect the routine of their own lives to proceed without interruption. Any outrage expressed against their apathy catches them completely by surprise.
Viewing themselves from the perspective of a single night in their own small neighborhood, thirty-eight New Yorkers thought their cold-heartedness would escape unnoticed. By the light of day, however, many in the broader community held them as guilty as the perpetrator. None considered them blameless. Neither should Baptist bystanders expect to be considered blameless in the eyes of generations who literally surrendered their lives rather than betray their understanding of the gospel and the church.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 01:58 AM | Comments (6)
Guys Gone Wild: War, Nation-making and Boobies
Posted by ChristianAlliance
By Ding
My mind is a soup, so bear with me.
Lately, two articles have become linked in my head: one, the recent LA Times Magazine article about the sleazy Girls Gone Wild mogul, Joe Francis, who has issues with coercing/forcing young women into sex and exhibitionism and two, the continuing narrative about the American soldiers who gang raped a girl, killed her, set her body on fire and killed three other members of her family to cover their rape/murder (which I describe in stark terms because they are stark actions. Let’s not be squeamish when we’re talking about these things.)
(And if you Google ‘Steven D. Green’ you can read the news stories on this case.)
On the surface, these stories bear no relation to one another: one is a slightly distasteful domestic story of an entrepreneur who seizes his capitalist moment and cashes in on our culture’s desire for celebrity and sex. The other is at the center of a larger global narrative of nation-making, democracy, terror, and military might. But if we scrape the surface, we’ll see these stories are not so different, after all. Both highlight masculine aggression, the ideological equation of libidinal release with cultural/capital supremacy, and both see such supremacy happening at the expense of women and their bodies. In these narratives, women are not merely objects, they are channels through which our men establish their identities. Female bodies are what predatory men need to fix their hypermasculine identities.
What does it take to create a Joe Francis or Private Steven D. Green? The acceptance of aggression as within suitable boundaries of human behavior. The LA Times piece opens with Francis assaulting the reporter over the hood of a car, her hands crushed behind her, her body pinned underneath Francis while surrounded by an acquiescent crowd of his bodyguards, male onlookers and armed law enforcement who realize too late that what they’re looking at isn’t a joke. Later, in addition to Francis’ own verbal and physical abuse of the reporter, Hoffman relates incidents of Francis verbally, physically and legally forcing women to his will. (That’s what his videos are all about: the moment a young girl must have her will bent to that of Francis, his camera man and to the implicit threat of the inevitable circle of drunk, aggressive men demanding to see her breasts.) And in Iraq, you have a group of men in a high combat area, all of them heavily armed, who’ve been fighting and see no end to the fighting; you have Private Green who’s on record saying “I want to kill and hurt a lot of Iraqis.”
You also need a cultural mindset that justifies whatever feeds a sense of supremacy, of over-weening masculine Privilege. Francis actually says it:
“I hate to get too deep and philosophical here, but only the guys with the
greatest sexual appetites are the ones who are the most driven and most
successful.”
This ‘drive to succeed’ will inevitably permit him to create a world that’s saturated with his view of sex and commercial exchange. The soldier’s success is a little more complicated; while there is individual motivation to avenge fellow soldiers’ deaths (the reports concentrate on testimony of the unit taking on heavy casualties and members of the unit being under combat stress, leading to Green’s confessed desire to kill Iraqis), there is a national motivation to ‘stay the course’, to be resolved in the face of any brutality, either inflicted or endured. At stake is national pride. Our vision of the world is so monumental, we cannot flinch; we cannot relent. In our national discourse, our soldiers are like gladiators, the ones carrying democracy at the point of a gun. ‘My country, right or wrong.’ Isn’t that the phrase?
But we also see what happens in such an atmosphere of masculine privilege: the brutality at Guantanamo Bay and the cruelty at Abu Ghraib (whose events were also highly sexualized.) And what is war but a nation giving itself permission to be its most brutal, its most desensitized? We saw what happened in Cambodia during covert operations during the Vietnam war, what happened in the central part of Africa during the tribal purges, what happened in Bosnia and Serbia – nationalist fervor manifesting itself in the systematic rape of women.
And so, to finish creating a Joe Francis and a Private Green, you need the body of a woman. It’s helpful if the woman is rendered helpless, by alcohol, by her age, by the fact our country has invaded hers. It’s also useful if she’s seen as Other (gendered Other, racially Other, nationally Other, politically Other). For Francis, what’s important is that the young woman is merely a tool for his own gratification. (Women who approach him to appear in his videos ‘sadden’ him.) She has no agency, no right to her own body; she’s just a pair of breasts. She’s worth nothing more than a t-shirt or baseball cap, though her image makes him a mogul. For Private Green and his fellow soldiers, the 14-yr old Abeer Qasim Hamza was just an Iraqi. Worthless. An object. This girl was a receptacle for their rage, fear and hatred that, through their act of violating her, allows them to become a picture of American manhood.
Before the NYTimes changed the headline to ‘GI Tells Why He Testified in Rape-Murder Inquiry’ it read ‘Iraq Incident was Fueled by Whiskey, GI Says.’ What a cop out. Whiskey may have given the soldiers dutch courage, but that narrative is not about boys getting a little bit out of control, like their frat went on a pantie raid. Let's readjust our lens a little bit. I see the guys who surround Joe Francis – the cameramen, the club owners, the bodyguards, the cops, the bystanders, the producers, the guys who buy the fracking tapes – then I see the soldiers who went on that raid on that Iraqi house and I cannot help but see them in the same way: predators.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 01:50 AM | Comments (7)
August 14, 2006
Reclaiming Prophetic Faith
Posted by ChristianAlliance
By Michael L. Westmoreland-White, Ph.D
Surveying the global scene as a student of religion, I want to argue that religious conviction comes in three very broad types. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are not all that helpful here and so I won't use them. Instead, I will compare "authoritarian," "mystical/ecstatic" and "prophetic" forms of religion. I am most familiar with the way these types play out in Christianity, but I think I see these rival forms in all the major religions--at least as far as I am familiar with them. Let me compare these different forms of religion more thoroughly.
The "mystic," or "ecstatic" form of religious faith is centered in joyous, enraptured delight with God or the sacred, experienced more or less directly and powerfully. The mystic is "God-drunk," and this form of religious experience is focused on God or the sacred almost to the exclusion of all else. The mystic may or may not have a community of faith, which may have various degrees of organization, but the mystic or ecstatic form of religion does not really require much institutional structure. Some in this type are solitary, and others live, work, and worship among similarly-minded folks.
Examples of this type of religion abound. In Christianity, they range from the medieval mystics (e.g., Dame Julian of Norwich; St. Teresa of Avila; St. John of the Cross; Bernard Clairvaux, etc.), to the early Quakers, to modern Pentecostals. In Judaism, some strands of the Chassidics and those who study the Kabala fall here. In Islam, the Sufis are the most obvious example of this form of religion.
Because of the intense otherworldliness of the mystical/ecstatic forms of religious faith, it can lead to neglect of matters of compassion and social justice here on earth. Others have used ecstatic religion to keep oppressed persons satisfied with the status quo. "Don't worry about segregation because there's a better world awaiting beyond the grave." "Christians don't need to worry about global warming or other ecological threats because Jesus is coming back soon and this old world will be destroyed for a new heavens and earth anyway." We've all seen this kind of thing.
But mystics are not necessarily "so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good," as my mother used to put it. Take, for instance, the Pentecostal movement that turned 100 this past April. Pentecostals are "ecstatics" if anyone is. But that first generation or so of Pentecostals were also social radicals. They were racially integrated during the deepest part of "Jim Crow" America. The earliest Pentecostals often had women evangelists and ministers. They were almost all pacifists and experienced persecution for refusing to fight in the First World War. They worked primarily, in those days, with and among the poor. Pentecostalism lost its social radicalism soon enough (although there is a movement to renew it called the Pentecostal & Charismatic Peace Fellowship), but its early years show that mystic/ecstatic religion isn't automatically or inevitably socially conservative. Mystics like St. Francis of Assisi or contemplatives like Thomas Merton show that such a combination of ecstatic religion and social radicalism comes in many different traditions.
The second form of religious faith is the "authoritarian." This is the villain of our day. It shows up among Muslim fanatics, Jewish ultra-nationalists, and Christian fundamentalists. When authoritarian religion attaches to powerful nationalist or imperialist forces, it becomes deadly to more than just its followers, but to everyone within its reach. Authoritarian religion is dangerous and is the plague of our era.
Authoritarian religion is hierarchical in its institutional form--even if the tradition was for a low-church, laity-centered polity. Power flows from the top down--and doesn't flow very far. An institutional hierarchy does necessarily promote authoritarianism and this is not an indictment aimed only at those faiths with bishops or other hierarchs. Sunni Islam is supposedly radically democratic in structure, but Hamas (a Sunni movement) is certainly authoritarian. So are the pastors of most mega-churches in evangelical Protestantism. But there is no denying that hierarchies make things easier for authoritarianism to take hold and that institutional structures which do not greatly emphasize a clergy/laity split and which trust the grassroots to be able to be led by the Spirit of God and /our human conscience are harder places for authoritarianism to get a toehold. Authoritarians like hierarchies, preferably with 'strong father' figures in charge who simply tell the faithful what to believe and how to act and expect instant obedience.
Authoritarian religion is concerned with rules and regulations to a very high degree, seeing sacred Scriptures primarily as a rulebook. Its ethics are focused on purity concerns, dividing the righteous from the wicked very sharply. With control and purity as the bywords, sexual issues take center stage in ethical concern: women are relegated to lesser status, and those whose sexual orientation doesn't fit a very narrow "norm" are objects of revulsion, discrimination, and fear.
By nature, this form of religion is exclusionary. Orthodoxy ("right teaching") is defined very narrowly. Differences of opinion are tolerated, if at all, on only a very narrow range of topics and only within a small degree. Thus, adherents in an authoritarian religion will have impassioned debates over distinctions that outsiders have a hard time telling apart.
No matter how much the official doctrine of this form of religion speaks of "grace," "mercy," "forgiveness," or "eternal security," the underlying ethos is one of fear: fear of heresy, fear of breaking the rules, fear of science, fear of social change, fear of other religions, fear of forms of its own religion which are NOT authoritarian, fear of secularism, fear--ultimately--of God. (A person I know who holds to this form of religion has created clothing with the slogan, "I Fear God" and cannot figure out why they won't sell!)
It is clear to me that the U.S. Religious Right, composed of Protestant Fundamentalists and the far-right fringe of U.S. Catholics, is a form of authoritarian religion. That is why its political allies are profoundly anti-democratic and engage in the politics of fear and secrecy. A democratic republic with separation of powers, checks and balances, real participation by the people is too messy. So, more and more power is invested in the Executive, laws are changed to allow more secret decisions, the legislature is turned into a rubber stamp for the Executive, and steps are taken to undermine an independent judiciary. The forms of voting are still allowed, although all kinds of tricks are used to disenfranchise groups likely to vote for another agenda. But real power is invested in plutocratic oligarchy.
Media consolidation erodes that check on power concentration as well. Every time a speed bump on the road to total domination is met, the masses of true believers in the dominant form of authoritarian religion (the "Christian" Right in this case) are mobilized through a manufactured threat (fear again). Though they control most forms of public life, they constantly are told that they are persecuted victims who MUST rise up and defeat law x or pass law y in order to avoid the downfall of civilization or the end of the world. Objectively, they hold more power than any other group in the nation, but one would never know that to hear the language of victimization, discrimination, and persecution which characterizes their discourse.
By contrast, prophetic faith is non-hierarchical in nature, striving for a discipleship of equals and servant leadership. Power is shared widely and tends to flow from the people to leaders. If the institutions are structured in hierarchical ways, prophets or prophetic figures appear on the edges of the faith community, outside the usual structures. The role of the prophet is to hold up a mirror to the faith community and the society in which it lives, to measure devotion to God, to justice, to mercy and compassion, and to bluntly say where all these fall short.
Prophetic faith may have a place for rules, but they are hardly the center of its understanding of the life of faith. Sacred Scriptures are not seen primarily as rulebooks, but as visions of the character of God and God's purposes in the world--at least in monotheistic religions. The ethics of this type of faith redefines purity and holiness in terms of "compassionate justice" for the vulnerable, marginalized, or powerless.
By its nature, this type of faith is inclusive--it may warn of judgment against those who are violent or unjust to the powerless, but it seeks the redemption even of the oppressor. Orthopraxy ("right practice") takes precedence over orthodoxy and both are defined in terms that allow for disagreements, dialogue, disputes, uncertainties, and ambiguity. The focus of prophetic faith is on justice for the neighbor, not on the righteousness of one's self. Its major concerns are compassion, justice, peacemaking, the common good, care for the creation, empowering others. Sexual issues are not ignored, but do not dominate ethical concern. Even then, what counts is justice, right-relatedness, dignity, covenant faithfulness, and nonviolence in sexual matters, not purity concerns. The underlying ethos is not fear but joy--the joy of empowered service.
When this form of religion enters the political sphere, it does so to promote the common good. It may be motivated by the particularities of its own faith, but it offers arguments that can be understood by those of other faiths or no faith. It seeks to respect the adversary, no matter how much it must denounce particular actions, policies, attitudes, etc. In pluralistic democracies, prophetic faith will also seek to respect everyone's religious liberty, rather than demanding special treatment for its followers or seeking to use the power of the state to enforce its mandates.
This form of religion has been marginalized in recent decades in the U.S., but it is clear that this was the form of religion which motivated the abolitionists, the first generation feminists and suffragists, the Social Gospel, the Catholic Worker movement, the church-based Black Freedom ("Civil Rights") movement, the Liberation theologies of Latin America with their Base Communities, the church-based struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and much of the gospel-motivated peace movement. All these and more are forms of prophetic faith. So is the Jewish Renewal movement and so is the Muslim Peace Fellowship, and the movement for "Engaged Buddhism." These are places where the prophetic spirit breaking through existing authoritarianisms, not in the name of secularism or a rival religion, but in the name of a more authentic version of the faith in question.
That concern for "authenticity," is why terms like "liberal," and "conservative," are not adequate. Yes, prophets may emphasize change and revision: "Behold, I will do a new thing," God says in Isaiah 43:19 (cf. Rev. 21:5) and Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount can contrast what "you have heard of old," with what "I say unto you." This openness to newness is at the heart of the current United Church of Christ campaign, "God is Still Speaking." But prophets also often reach behind current traditionalisms for even older inspiration and bring that forward for renewal. The biblical prophets constantly upheld the spirit of Torah against current corruptions. Their battle cry might be paraphrased, "You have heard it said of old, AND GOD INSISTS!!" When Dorothy Day led the Catholic Worker folk to challenge her church's institutional siding with the rich, she confronted bishops not only with Scripture, but also the traditional moral teaching of the church—pointing out that charging interest was condemned in the catechism itself! During the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (c. 1979-1994), the non-fundamentalist resistance continued to insist that dictator pastors, creedalism, the denomination telling local churches whether or not they could ordain women or sexual minorities (ordination is a strictly local church affair in most of Baptist history), and much else were monumental BETRAYALS of historic Baptist faith, rather than a return to traditional orthodoxy. And so it goes, mutis mutandis, in other traditions. Prophetic faith is often steeped in the tradition, even as it opposes all dead traditionalisms.
It is easier to motivate people by fear than hope in the short run. Thus, today, authoritarian religion is dominant in the U.S.--if not in numbers of adherents, surely in social and political power. But people grow tired of fear mongers and tyrants, even religious tyrants. Theocracies never last.
I believe there is a hunger abroad in the land today for prophetic faith. If we work to paint a vision of justice, compassion, creation-care, and peacemaking, motivated by a spirituality of nonviolence, people will respond. The authoritarian religious tyrants and their political allies will begin to lose influence. Of course, this means that people who hold to prophetic faith will have to share it, to get over their squeamishness about evangelism (rooted in the bad models they've seen from the authoritarian types) and bear witness to their alternative spirituality at every opportunity. I hope there is a renewal of the prophetic in every faith tradition, but I am most concerned about Christianity, and especially the unhealthy state of the churches in contemporary North America. We need to reclaim prophetic faith and we need to be bold in sharing it
An African-American Pentecostal student at a Mennonite college was full of praise for the faculty and students and the way they lived their faith in service. Asked if he had any criticism at all, he responded, "I wish they would preach what they practice more!" Let us proclaim and practice a prophetic faith--the world is hungry for it.
Michael L. Westmoreland-White, Ph.D. is a former soldier converted to gospel nonviolence and a former academic theologian who is currently a peace educator and independent scholar. His weblog, Levellers (http://www.anabaptist418.blogspot.com), seeks to renew prophetic Christianity for 21st C. America.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 01:14 PM | Comments (5)
August 12, 2006
In the Name of Peace: Responding to the New Pro-War McCarthyism
Posted by Faithful Progressive
Most Americans believe the Iraq War was a mistake. However, due to blatant efforts to confuse and mislead, some Americans still associate the war in Iraq with 9/11 and the war against al-Qaeda. Desperate supporters of the President's failed policy are stooping to levels of political trash talk that can only be described as a New McCarthyism.. Here are three examples and some well-considered replies from the past week alone.
MCCARTHYIST EXAMPLE #1.) Vice Preident Dick Cheney as quoted in the Washington Post:The vice president suggested that Lamont's victory might encourage "the al-Qaida types" who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."
He portrayed the Democratic Party as preferring that the United States "retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home." (snip)...
(Sen Harry) Reid took issue with the vice president's comments, saying, "This situation isn't going well and anyone that suggests that the people of Connecticut are somehow supporting terrorists, I don't think that's credible and that's what Cheney suggested."
Reply c/o Boston Globe By Robert Kuttner :
There are really several different policy challenges and debates here. If you disentangle them, it adds up to a stunning indictment of Bush.
Did Al Qaeda have any connection to Saddam Hussein? (No.)
Was Bush's Iraq war a debilitating diversion of attention and resources from the more important ongoing battle against Al Qaeda? (Yes.)
Did Bush spend most of 2001 blowing off warnings about Al Qaeda, shutting out people like national security official Richard Clarke who actually knew something about terrorism, and ignoring escalating warnings of a plot in progress? (Yes.)
Has the Iraq war made America a more effective force for stability and against militant Islamism? (No.)
Did Bush's grand strategy advance the cause of Middle East democracy and civility? (No.)
Does Bush's larger design for the Middle East make Israel more secure? (No.)
Can we have effective levels of surveillance against terrorism and still remain a constitutional democracy with liberties for law-abiding Americans? (Yes -- but this administration is needlessly jeopardizing those liberties, and bungling intelligence operations despite expanded resources.)
Does Bush's contempt for government impede his administration's ability to use government to promote national security? (Yes.)
With hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims increasingly disgusted and alienated by Bush's policy, can't we just settle this thing once and for all, with an Armageddon to take out Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda, in one fell swoop? (No!)
This argument isn't about who supports terrorists. It's about the right strategy for protecting America. And ever since this president took office, his policies have set back that cause.
Undaunted, the right will be relentlessly pounding one story: Republicans will keep you safe, Democrats won't. Meanwhile, the far right allied with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will be pounding Bush to widen the war and compound the damage.
Reply 2c/o Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
(Russ) Feingold's reaction to Tuesday's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut, where incumbent Joe Lieberman fell to challenger Ned Lamont.
"Among the most significant election results in recent years," Feingold judged. He said Lamont's win showed "the American people's enormous frustration with our policy in Iraq."
To Randy from Oregon, Feingold called the war "a mistake" in the "larger fight against those terrorists who attacked us on 9-11."
The senator added: "The phony arguments for going into the war in Iraq are now being matched by the phony arguments to stay in Iraq, and the public realizes the administration is trying to deceive them again."
Reply three: In fact, as Juan Cole notes: "Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas said the administration's "poor management" in Iraq "has created a rallying cry for international terrorists" and "diverted our focus, our military and more than $US300 billion from the war on terrorism." Pryor said US ports, borders and chemical plants remain unsecured, emergency personnel lack critical resources and the military, including the National Guard, was stretched. "It's time for Washington to be tough and smart about the threats we face," he said. "Americans deserve real security, not just leaders who talk tough but fail to deliver." '
MCCARTHYIST EXAMPLE # 2.) From the Washington Post: Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, who lost Tuesday's Democratic primary and is now running as an independent, said the antiwar views of primary winner Ned Lamont would be "taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England."
Reply: MARK SHIELDS: I mean, that is -- that isn't beyond the pale. I mean, that's just unacceptable. That is objectionable and unacceptable language, and it is totally alien to the Joe Lieberman that most of us have known and liked. I mean, it was -- it sounded like the desperate words of a desperate man who was really, you know, at the end of his rope.
Reply 2 from NY Times article :
“Senator Lieberman is sounding more and more like President Bush every day,” said Steve McMahon, a Democratic consultant. “He’s trying to demonstrate strength, but the risk is that he comes across as desperate.”
Gary L. Rose, a professor of politics at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., said he, too, was surprised that Mr. Lieberman would link anti-Western terrorists and Iraq, noting that many Democratic leaders separate those issues.
“Connecting the war on terror and the war in Iraq has been a Republican view mostly, and I think a lot of Connecticut voters don’t see a true link there,” Mr. Rose said.
Mr. Lamont hesitated when he was asked if Mr. Lieberman’s criticisms were beyond the bounds of acceptable political combat.
“To try to score political points on every international issue ——” Mr. Lamont said, before stopping himself. Then he added, “Why do I have to say anything?”
MCCARTHYIST EXAMPLE #3.) The President of the United States, quoted in AFP. The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.
Reply: c/o Reuters
We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter-productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group."We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims," he told a news conference in Washington. "We urge him (Bush) and we urge other public officials to restrain themselves.
Reply 2 Wikipedia
A number of academics, however, disagree with the use of the term fascism in this context. Roger Griffin believes it stretches the term fascist too far to apply the term 'fascism' to "so-called fundamentalist or terrorist forms of traditional religion (i.e. scripture or sacred text based with a strong sense of orthodoxy or orthodoxies rooted in traditional institutions and teachings)." He does, however, concede that the United States has seen the emergence of hybrids of political religion and fascism in such phenomena as the Nation of Islam and Christian Identity, and that Bin Laden's al Qaeda network may represent such a hybrid. He is unhappy with the term 'clerical fascism,' though, since he says that "in this case we are rather dealing with a variety of 'fascistized clericalism.'"
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 02:52 PM | Comments (2)
August 10, 2006
Our Mutual Love of Christ
Posted by Jesus Politics
Dr. Bruce Prescott, of the always very informative and insightful Mainstream Baptist blog, has a link to the article, "Conservative Christian Evangelicals take friendly fire from Ken Connor" by Bill Berkowitz. The article takes a close look at the writings of Ken Connor. Connor is representative of a new wave of evangelical political activists who are becoming more critical of the Christian Right.
An excerpt from the article:
Connor's early-July column entitled "Come Let Us Reason Together" -- which later in the month appeared in the Washington Times -- recognized that the "Christian left" was finally "making its voice heard," and suggested that conservative evangelicals "should not be afraid to engage the evangelical left's ideas in a spirit of love. It would be a mistake, as we begin this dialogue, to view these men and women as ‘political enemies' rather than fellow members of the body of Christ. From the outset, we should insist that our discussions be grounded in our mutual love of Christ rather than our differing political commitments. Let Christ be the foundation upon which we all stand."
Many liberal evangelicals claim that the church, in its political thinking, has neglected a major aspect of Christ's concern: the poor and vulnerable. Their most cherished phrase is "social justice", and they say we conservatives have neglected it. Again, let's not dismiss this criticism out of hand. As I have written in the past, the Bible is unequivocal about our responsibility toward the poor. As Christians, we should not be shy about discussing our responsibility toward the "least of these," and we should think creatively about different ways in which we can serve them.
Connor pointed out that "The emergence of a progressive evangelical movement affords a wonderful opportunity to foster a public discussion about the role of faith in civic life. Sometimes, it must be admitted, we get lazy in our political thinking. We know that at some point we thought through the reasons behind our positions, but maybe that was years ago. It is always helpful to remember why we believe what we believe, reviewing our old arguments to see if they are still strong. Even worse, sometimes we allow others in the 'conservative coalition' to do our political thinking for us, even when they come from very secular starting points. Liberal evangelicals help us because they share our foundational commitment to Christ, yet they see political questions in a different light. As we actively dialogue with them about our political positions, hopefully both sides will benefit. Most importantly, let us pray that Christ will be glorified in the way we conduct our conversation."
Connor has also weighed in on corporate malfeasance and greed. In his column titled "Pierced With Many Sorrows: Greed and Corporate Corruption," Connor pointed out that the Center for a Just Society is a "strong supporter of the capitalist economic system ... [and] the value of free markets." But "when capitalism is unrestrained by moral scruples the result is often rapacious greed...Sweat shops, child labor, unsafe workplaces, exploitation of the poor, dangerous products -- all are manifestations of a form of economic Darwinism that measures success solely in economic terms.
Make no mistake, Ken Connor is conservative to the core -- he represented Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case, and headed up Florida Right to Life, opposes embryonic stem cell research and has campaigned for a robust conservative judiciary. In taking on Tom DeLay, rapacious corporations, the GOP's recent legislative strategy, and recognizing that an emerging evangelical left is worthy of being dealt with in a civil and measured manner, however, Connor strays from the GOP's traditional talking points. In this period where the shrill paranoid style of Ann Coulter and the know-nothingness of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity reign supreme amongst conservatives, whether Connor's kinder, gentler and more thoughtful approach has legs remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, don't expect Connor to get invited to speak at the FRC's first annual "Washington Briefing: Values Voter Summit" in late September.
Posted by Jesus Politics at 05:35 PM | Comments (5)
August 06, 2006
First Freedom First
Posted by ChristianAlliance
By Dr. Bruce Prescott, Mainstream Baptist
Americans United and the Interfaith Alliance have combined forces to encourage all Americans to put "First Freedom First."
As James Madison circulated his Memorial and Remonstrance with petitions to gather support for Thomas Jefferson's Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, the First Freedom First organization is circulating a petition to get signatures from citizens who are interested in safeguarding separation of church and state and preserving religious liberty for all Americans.
Here are links to a couple brief videos (about 90 seconds) that discuss our concern for Democracy Not Theocracy and End of Life Care.
I encourage all moderate and progressive Christians to sign the petition, tell your friends, encourage them to sign it, and host a house party to discuss this issue.
Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists are already planning house parties in Norman and Oklahoma City.
This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist weblog.
Posted by ChristianAlliance at 11:25 PM | Comments (7)
"Morality is Not on Israel's Side"
Posted by ChristianAlliance
By: R. Johnson
I would love to be writing about the many things that bring joy to my life: my wife and children; answers to prayer; the beautiful northwest. I am blessed in many ways. Maybe it is because of how much I appreciate theses things that leads me to write about the Middle East. Families are being torn apart. Borders mean nothing, as there are casualties on both sides of the border. Far too many of these casualties, however, are in Lebanon.
Today, Qana is again in the news. Qana is said to be the sight of Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana of Galilee. I think of the families, the children of Qana, who would have been there, celebrating with Christ. Today, it needs another miracle. On Sunday morning, Israeli missiles hit several buildings in Qana, killing at least 56 people. Thirty four were said to be children.
Thirty four children. I think of the families, the children of Qana.
This is not the first time that Qana has made the news. In 1996, in what many call the Qana Massacre, Israelis shelled a refugee camp, killing over 100 people. In the 1996 attacks, Israel swore that it was an accident, but as a UN investigation into the killing disclosed, it was 'unlikely' that the shelling was an accident. Funny how one moment we describe the ‘precision’ of military strikes, we see video footage of laser guided missiles hitting moving vehicles, and we still think of ‘accidents’ that hit refugee camps.
In Sunday’s bombing, Israel has blamed Hezbollah for the deaths. What twisted logic.
As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting noted last week, the three leading US papers have blamed Hezbollah, and Hezbollah alone, for the most recent round of violence. This tit-for-tat has been ongoing for some time, and to say that 'Hezbollah started it' is to ignore Israel's own culpability. To even suggest that Israel may bear responsibility, however, is to open oneself to claims of 'anti-semitism.' Leave it to an Israeli to best describe what we all should recognize. The author, Ze'ev Maoz, is a professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, who notes that no one can claim to have morality on their side in this war.
Morality is Not on Israel's Side.
There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.
This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.
Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, we dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, while wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothing to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.
In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each occasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103 civilians. The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not make the operation any more moral.
On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as "negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course, forbidden to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the international community. That is true. What we are forgetting is that ever since our withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conducted photo-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace. While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are border violations. Here too, morality is not on our side.
So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli? The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages, alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.
Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations, bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically harming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal - namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and no less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of bringing about a prisoner exchange.
There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves a competition as to who is more miserable. Each side tries to persuade the world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign, the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous. If we want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?) policy on the assumption that the international environment is going to buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out of ignorance or hypocrisy, then fine. But in terms of our own national soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage, and we have no special status.
Amen.Posted by ChristianAlliance at 10:52 PM | Comments (17)
August 05, 2006
"Have you no sense of decency, sirs?" GOP Plays at Being for Rise in Minimum Wage
Posted by Faithful Progressive
I received this e-mail from Protestants for the Common Good Executive Director Alexander Sharp on Friday:
In a public hearing in June, 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy slandered a young partner in a Boston law firm. The firm's senior partner, Joseph Welch, who was presiding over the hearing, cried out, nearly weeping, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" This nationally televised moment turned the American people against McCarthy, who died shortly thereafter.
Who can predict what triggers a public outcry -- a national sense of shame? It happened in 1961 when Michael Harrington in The Other America opened our eyes to poverty in the United States. A growing sense of concern -- if not shame -- over the plight of low income workers and families contributed to the passage of the Living Wage Ordinance in Chicago last week. Opponents tried to cast this vote as solely a union-driven effort. In fact, the coalition pressing for the ordinance was comprised of many groups, including religious leaders and community organizations. The importance of a living wage was popular in neighborhoods throughout the city.
What has happened in Congress over this past week might just become a similar turning point for the American public. Income inequality has been growing for two decades even as the national minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour for 10 years. Last Friday, after several false starts, the U.S. House finally passed a bill raising the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour over three years.
But there was a catch -- one that should offend our sense of decency. The bill tied the minimum wage to elimination of the estate tax. It stipulated that we can address the needs of individuals working 40 hours a week with pay of $5.15 per hour, or $10,700 per year, only if we allow very wealthy parents -- those with estates valued at $5 million or more ($10 million for couples) -- to pass these assets on to their children tax-free. In simpler language, working poor people should not be allowed to earn enough to live on unless we reduce the tax burden on the very rich.
Has it come to this? Do we see what we are doing?
"Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
who have eyes, but do not see,
who have ears, but do not hear.
Do you not fear me? Says the Lord.
Do you not tremble before me? (Jeremiah 5:21-22)
The bill was voted down late yesterday evening. When it is reintroduced in September, perhaps we will find a Joseph Welch in the U.S. Senate who can seize the moment and break through to the conscience of the American people. This time around, we are grateful to our Illinois Senators, Richard Durbin and Barack Obama, for voting against this cynical and shameful bill.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at 01:59 PM | Comments (31)
August 03, 2006
Conservative Christians Gone Ooze-y
Posted by Jesus Politics
Spencer Burke, together with Barry Taylor, are authors of the new book, A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity. Spencer Burke is also the founder of the website, TheOOZE. Burke came from a conservative evangelical background and was a pastor at a mega-church in Southern California. Burke's story and writing are hopeful signs that not all is settled in conservative Christian America. The Christian Right may be losing some of its influence and we have a growing number of people like Spencer Burke to thank for this.
Some excerpts from The Story of TheOOZE:
I used to be a pastor. More than that, I was a pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine, California-a bona fide mega church with a 25-acre property and a $7.8 million dollar budget.
By most accounts, Mariners is a great American success story. Founded in 1963 by a few families in a Newport Beach living room, the church has become one of the fastest growing congregations in the country. Each weekend, some 4,500 adults pass through its doors, with nearly 10,000 people attending its services and midweek activities. The church has everything a modern evangelical pastor could want. Great people, great programs and great pay. The only problem is, I'm not a modern evangelical pastor. [ ]
I read all the right books, went to all the right conferences and said all the right things. For years, I played by the rules and tried hard not to think too much about the lingering questions in my soul. Doubt, after all, was dangerous. Who knew where it might lead? During my time at Mariners, however, I grew tired of keeping up appearances. After 18 years in ministry, the evangelical package had started to unwrap itself. [ ]
Eventually, I knew something had to give. When the pain of staying at Mariners began to seem worse than the pain of leaving, I submitted my resignation. I pac