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January 26th, 2007
06:42 pm - so it's about time to post another ridiculously long article....
This wonderful article is from: http://www.crosscurrents.org/CompoloSpring2005.htm
ON EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION
An Interview with Tony Campolo by Shane Claiborne
Tony Campolo is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church and professor emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. Shane Claiborne is a founder of the Simple Way Community in Philadelphia and a prominent Christian activist.
Introductory Remarks (Shane Claiborne)
I grew up around people who looked like me and thought like me, insulated from anyone that made me uncomfortable or challenged my assumptions. I cannot remember meeting anyone Jewish or Muslim growing up, and distinctly remember (much to my chagrin) being swayed from dating a lovely Catholic girl because she prayed to Mary. And then I went to Eastern College. I studied sociology with Tony. I met Jesus on the streets of Philadelphia, in his most distressing disguises. I was surrounded by people who stretched my vision of what it means to be Christian. In one of the evening sociology classes (which, as usual, flowed over until nearly midnight), I can remember hearing Tony say, "Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and doing something incredibly daring with your life." Since then the Christian adventure has taken me to the extremes of wealth and poverty, from a ten-week stint in Calcutta working alongside Mother Teresa to a year spent in the verdant Chicago suburbs at the evangelical mega-church, Willow Creek. Most recently, I was led to Iraq as part of an interfaith peace team during the war. So I hold Tony responsible for much of this, as the Lover he has introduced me to and the Gospel he has taught me have wrecked my life and gotten me in a lot of trouble.
When a devout Muslim brother asked Tony and I to have this cross-generational dialogue about interreligious cooperation for an interfaith publication, we jumped on it. In an age when religious extremists of all faiths have perverted the conceptions of what our traditions teach, there seems to be another thing stirring. Many of us are refusing to allow the media and twisted images of our faith to define us. And though words like "evangelical" are up for grabs, we still consider it an important adjective to reclaim and an important community to restructure. Tony tackles many of these issues in more detail in his newest book Speaking My Mind.
Before we get started it seems critical to note that the word "evangelion" from which we derive our words "evangelical" and "evangelism" are ancient words that predated Jesus. They were words Jesus takes from the imperial lexicon and spins on their head. For instance, in 6 BC there was a saying inscribed around the Roman Empire that read: "Augustus has been sent to us as Savior. . . the birthday of the god Augustus has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel" ("evangelion"). The early evangelists were announcing another Gospel, proclaiming an allegiance to another Emperor and another Kingdom. When people ask me if I am an evangelical, I must make sure we have a proper understanding of the word. If by evangelical we mean one who spreads the Good News that there is another Kingdom and another Emperor, another economy and peace than Rome's, another Savior than Caesar . . . then, yes I am an evangelical." So here we sit down together and have a cross-generational conversation on inter-religious cooperation, as evangelical Christians.
Shane Claiborne: Well, we've been asked to consider the possibility of evangelical Christians cooperating with people of different faiths. The place to begin seems to properly define what we mean by "evangelical." I offered my definition above. What's yours?
Tony Campolo: An evangelical is someone who believes the doctrines of the Apostle's Creed. That outlines exactly what we believe in detail. Secondly, an evangelical has a very high view of scripture though not necessarily inerrancy. And the third thing—we believe that salvation comes by being personally involved with a living resurrected Jesus. So I've defined evangelical in those three terms. There is a doctrinal statement, so that there is some content to what we believe. There is a source of truth, Scripture. And there is a personal relationship with Jesus.
SC: There are many evangelicals who find themselves lost amidst the current political climate. They find themselves outside the narrow issues that define conservatives and estranged from the shallow spirituality that marks liberals. Many seem to be thirsty for Christian social justice and peacemaking but cannot find a Christian community that is consistently pro-life, or that looks at war and injustice as spiritual issues.
TC: As we think about all of this we have to be aware of what has happened in this last election. Evangelicalism getting wedded to the any political party is like ice cream mixing with horse manure. It's not going to hurt the horse manure (i.e. the republican party, and I would say the Democrat Party is also horse manure so don't get the wrong idea), but it sure will mess up the ice cream.
SC: President Bush uses political and spiritual language interchangeably, referring to the ideals of America as the Light of the world that the darkness cannot overcome. He invokes God's blessing on a nation that has stepped far from the things that God blesses in the Beatitudes. I've met many evangelicals, particularly military families, who find their national and spiritual allegiance in conflict. I have met parents who lost their kids speak their anger that their children died thinking this was God's will. I have met soldiers who have knelt at the altar to ask forgiveness for what they did in Iraq. Recently I was talking to a woman who was very upset as I spoke about Iraq. She said she just wanted Muslim people to come to know the grace and love of Jesus. I told her I want the same thing. The question is how does that happen, and are we getting closer to that? What can we learn from the blood-stained pages of history—Constantine, the crusades, the Inquisition, the martyrs. Do you see evangelicals getting closer or further from interfaith dialogue?
TC: Evangelicalism is heading for a split. I think that the last election aggravated a significant minority of the evangelical community, believing that they did not want to come across as anti-gay, anti-women, anti-environment, pro war, pro capital punishment, and anti-Islam. There is going to be one segment of evangelicalism, just like there is one segment in Islam that is not going to be interested in dialogue. But there are other evangelicals who will want to talk and establish a common commitment to a goodness with Islamic people and Jewish people particularly.
SC: When I was in Iraq, I heard folks call our leaders "Christian extremists", mirroring the language we hear of "Muslim extremists". One woman said, "Everyone is declaring war in the name of God and asking God's blessing. What kind of God is this?" What became clear, is that what is at stake here is not just the reputation of America, but the reputation and identity of Christians, and that is dangerous.
TC: What has happened now is that evangelicals have emerged from this election with an incredible triumphalism in the life of the Christian evangelical community. They think they have a right to control America. God won. They won and they are now going to make this into the Christian nation they think it was supposed to be. Then you get Jerry Falwell making that statement about 'The only answer is to bomb all the terrorists off the face of the earth in the name of the Lord.'
It's scary. Because if this is defined as a Christian nation, than the Muslims have every right to assume that what is happening in Iraq is Christian, and this is a regeneration of the crusades. And it's being broadcast that way by Al Jazeera and media networks in other parts of the world. That's why I am saying that evangelicalism has to be challenged. That triumphalism has to be challenged, we cannot allow that to go unchecked. And right now they own the microphone. They have the radio stations. They have the television stations. They are in fact saying this is the agenda. And we have to fight against that.
SC: Both Muslims and Christians are very evangelical in the sense of desiring others to come to faith in their God. When we talk about inter-religious cooperation, does that mean that we need to stop trying to convert each other?
TC: We don't have to give up trying to convert each other. What we have to do is show respect to one another. And to speak to each other with a sense that even if people don't convert, they are God's people, God loves them, and we do not make the judgment of who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.
I think that what we all have to do is leave judgment up to God. The Muslim community is very evangelistic, however what Muslims will not do is condemn Jews and Christians to Hell if in fact they do not accept Islam.
SC: That seems like a healthy distinction—between converting and condemning. One of the barriers seems to be the assumption that we have the truth and folks who experience things differently will all go to Hell. How do we unashamedly maintain a healthy desire for others to experience the love of God as we have experienced it without condemning others who experience God differently?
TC: Islam is much more gracious towards evangelical Christians who are faithful to the New Testament, than Christians are towards Islamic people who are faithful to the Koran. The Islamic faith will ask, "Are you faithful to the book that you have?" Mohammad was very understanding that there was great truth in Christianity. He differed with us in that he felt he had a more complete truth, and Islam would hold to that, but Mohammad contended that we would ultimately be judged in terms of the truth that we had at our disposal.
I think there are Muslim brothers and sisters who are willing to say, "You live up to the truth as you understand it. I will live up to the truth as I understand it, and we will leave it up to God on judgment day."
There is much in Christianity that would suggest exactly the same thing, particularly Romans the 2nd chapter, where the apostle Paul says "What do we say of those who do not accept the law of God," and I would add "as we understand it," "and are faithful to all the things that God calls us to do—will God not have to make room for them?" He asks that as a rhetorical question, leaving the reader with the obvious sense—"but of course." So I think that the apostle Paul would be a lot more generous towards Islamic people than most of my evangelical brothers and sisters are. If both sides are willing to live up to the truth as they perceive it and if both sides are willing to say we are not going to compromise what we believe but we are convinced that in the end the other side will have a chance to respond in a positive manner to what we believe. I think we can live together in peace and without attacking each other and without condemning each other.
Catholicism would say that at the moment of death every person is confronted in that split moment with Christ and is given the opportunity of saying yes or no. To say otherwise is to say God has got to be a pretty unfair deity, to condemn three quarters of the human race to hell without them ever having a chance.
I've got to believe that Jesus is the only Savior but being a Christian is not the only way to be saved. A student at Princeton once asked Protestant theologian Karl Barth, "Do you think that other religions can be valid avenues to God and His salvation?" Barth answered, "No! No religion can provide a valid avenue to God and His salvation. Not even the Christian religion. Only Jesus Christ can serve as mediator to God."
SC: When it comes to living out the Biblical vision of justice and peace, there are times when I feel like I have more in common with folks of other religions than I do with some other evangelicals. I have often found that while we may not agree theologically, we have a similar vision for how God calls us to live. Can we work together in service and action, even though we disagree theologically?
TC: I used to do this television show "Hashing It Out" with Steve Brown. One day a friend in his seminary said, "How can you be friends with people like the Campolos, especially Peggy, when you know what she believes about homosexuality?" Steve's answer was, "Peggy is wrong in the head but right in the heart. You on the other hand are right in the head and wrong in the heart. And if I have to make a choice I would much rather prefer someone who is right in the heart and wrong in the head."
That's a powerful statement but I think that's where most of us would go. Now Muslims do not believe that Jesus died on the cross. So we have a difference there. We kid ourselves if we pretend that we all believe the same thing. What we have to do is say that we believe different things. But there is so much goodness in the Islamic community, it cannot be ignored. Those who write off Islamic people are making a serious mistake. And vice-versa, Islamic people who write off Christians are making a serious mistake. But I would have to say they are less inclined to do that than we are to write them off.
SC: When I was in India working in Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying, there was a young man who had been there volunteering for quite some time. He rarely talked, just went from bed to bed caring for the dying men. One day on the train ride home he gently said to me that he wanted to share a confession. He went on to explain that he was not a Christian, and often had a tendency to question the mixed motives of evangelical Christians who came to volunteer. He said he was never sure why they were there, if it was because they truly loved the dying, or because they were commanded to, or because they wanted to convert the dying . . . Then he asked me, "When you care for the dying is it because you love them, or because you love God?" A good question. I thought for a while, and then I replied, “Yes, both. In fact, they are indistinguishable to me. I cannot tell where the one begins and the other ends. As I love the dying I am loving Christ, and how I love God is by loving my neighbor." He smiled. As I thought afterward, I wondered about the difference between how this atheist so gently touches and cares for the dying, and the way I cared for them. Could he be caring for Christ without knowing it? Dorothy Day said, "The only true atheist is the one who denies God's image in the face of the poor." Were both our hands the hands of God?
TC: When it comes to what is ultimately important, the Muslim community's sense of commitment to the poor is exactly in tune with where Jesus is in the 25th chapter of Matthew. That is the description of judgment day. And if that is the description of judgment day what can I say to an Islamic brother who has fed the hungry, and clothed the naked? You say, "But he hasn't a personal relationship with Christ." I would argue with that. And I would say from a Christian perspective, in as much as you did it to the least of these you did it unto Christ. You did have a personal relationship with Christ, you just didn't know it. And Jesus himself says: "On that day there will be many people who will say, when did we have this wonderful relationship with you, we don't even know who you are. . . " "Well, you didn't know it was me, but when you did it to the least of these it was doing it to me."
SC: The Scriptures are filled with God choosing the most unlikely places to dwell. God uses the brothel owner Rahab, the pagan nation of Assyria, the adulteress king David, the zealots and tax collectors, even old Balaam's donkey as instruments of the Kingdom. It seems that Jesus is constantly extending the boundaries of grace and enlarging our vision of the Family of God, telling stories where Samaritan heretics and Syro-phoenician outsiders are invited into the Kingdom. We can see this in Peter's second conversion when he realized that God's grace is even extended to the Gentiles. Jesus' own image of the eternal banquet says that the guests the King invited are all preoccupied with the concerns of this world, and commands the servant to go into the alleys and margins to bring in whoever will come. How do we leave room for the surprises that could await us in the afterlife, without compromising our beliefs?
TC: I don't think you have to compromise as a Christian the belief that Jesus is the only Savior but what I do think we have to say is that the grace of God extends way beyond the limitations of my religious group. And I think that the Muslims have to say, as they do say, that the grace of Allah extends beyond the Islamic community. The community is supposed to be faithful to its beliefs and convictions or else it has no core. On the other hand it has got to be more loving towards those who are outside.
Our Muslim brothers and sisters can say Islam is the only true faith but we are not convinced that only Muslims enjoy salvation. I contend that there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ, but I am not convinced that the grace of God does not go further than the Christian community.
SC: There is a discomfort when I hear Gandhi's whisper that the religions are one tree with many branches, and I can appreciate the fact that our faiths trace their roots back to the same dysfunctional family of Abraham and Sarah. But in many interreligious gatherings I have experienced the feeling that we are forced to walk on eggshells in a shallow murky spirituality that does not honor the distinctiveness of each tradition. This universalism, in its attempt to honor every tradition I often merely creates a culture where their beauty and distinctiveness are lost.
TC: I think we have to maintain our theological differences. We don't have any integrity if we don't. We end up with this mishmash in which we say, 'Well, in the end, we all believe in the same God'. Maybe we do, but we don't define God in the same way. We don't come to God in the same manner. And each of us makes exclusivist claims, and we have to recognize that. We cannot allow our theologies to separate us, and we cannot allow our theologies to get watered down lest we lose our integrity.
SC: Can you share a recent example of where we have seen inter-religious cooperation at its best, with evangelicals at the table?
TC: Jimmy Carter, who is certainly evangelical, wrote a book called The Seed of Abraham, pointing out that Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all trace back to Abraham and have a certain commonality between them. I look at how Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin were able to cross the line. You should know that what led up to the Camp David accord was that fact that Jimmy Carter knew the Bible very well. And he was able to bring Sadat and Begin into agreement by showing that the Sinai was never promised to Abraham in the Hebrew Scriptures. They could agree on that. He was able to point out things in the Koran that called for peace with the Jews. That whole Camp David Accord was built on Biblical and Quranic teaching. It should be noted that Anwar Sadat had hoped that there might be on Mt. Zion three places of worship: a Jewish place, Islamic place, and a Christian place. My wife sent him a letter saying that is what we need, here's a ten dollar contribution—let it be the first towards the establishment of this new foundation. He wrote back a lovely letter which she has framed.
SC: Community seems to form most naturally during times of struggle. Most of the times I have felt deeply connected to people of other faiths were during times where our survival required interdependence. I remember when our peace team was leaving Iraq, in the middle of the bombing. The car I was in had a bad accident, all of us were injured, planes were still flying over. And the first car of Iraqi civilians stopped. Waving a white sheet at the planes overhead, risking their lives, they drove us into the nearest town called Rutba. The doctors and townspeople gathered. One of the doctors was pleading, "Why, why, why is your country doing this?" He said that they could not take us into the hospital, because three days before the bombs hit their hospital, the children's ward. In the same breath he said, "But we will take care of you. Because here, in Rutba, it does not matter if you are American or Iraqi, Christian or Muslim. We take care of you as our friends." And they did, they set up a little shanty clinic outside the bombed out hospital, and they literally saved my friend's life. These are the times when I think cooperation and community are inevitable.
TC: Peter Arnett used to be with CNN. I know him and I met him in an airport in Chicago, and I said, "Peter so glad to see you, I'm running out of stories. Tell me a story." He said, "I've got one . . . I'm in the West bank, a bomb goes off and bodies are blown through the air. The Israeli troops seal off the whole area. A man comes running up to me with a bloody little girl in his arms, and says, 'You are press, you can get us out of here. If I don't get her into a hospital then immediately she's going to die. You can get us out of here. You are press'. Peter said, "I put them in the back seat and threw a blanket over them."
And I did get through the lines. As I rushed towards Tel Aviv in the car, I could hear him in the back seat, as he rocked this little girl in his arms whispering, "Go faster, oh God help him to go faster. God help him to go faster. Then he starts moaning, I'm losing her! I'm losing her! Oh God I'm losing her, I'm losing her!" Peter said by the time I got to the hospital I was emotionally drained. They took the little girl into the operating room, and the two of us sat down on a bench in the waiting room, exhausted. We must have sat there a half hour, silent, exhausted from the emotion. The doctor came out and said, "I'm sorry. She's dead." This man dissolved in tears. I put my arm around him and said, I'm not married. I don't have any children. I don't know what it's like to lose a daughter. The man snapped his head back and said, "My daughter? That little girl is not my child. I'm an Israeli settler, she's a Muslim girl. But maybe the time has come for us to recognize every child as our child."
What can we learn about that kind of spirituality that can help us find common ground? No theological statements were made, no compromising beliefs, no attempts to come to a common denominator. And yet, a kind of spiritual oneness.
That's the place where we come together, in common need and common suffering, as we reach out to one another in love, leaving judgment in the hands of God, sharing out of our own faith. I mean the last thing we are asking in those times is—is your theology the same as mine?—and vice-versa. All of the sudden in the hour of suffering there is a commonality. And that's where we meet. It's in mystical spirituality and in communal mutuality that's where we come together.
SC: You also note in your book the encounter of Francis of Assisi and the Muslim Sultan during the thirteenth century, again in a moment of crisis, when they came together across major religious divides and had a mystical unity; the Sultan became known for his kindness and Francis used the Muslim horn given him to call the Christian brothers to prayer. These are human encounters that we do not naturally have when we are conditioned to see each other as enemies or outsiders. As you mention in the book, MacDonald says, “Theologians have done more to hide the gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries." Rarely are people converted by force or words, but through intimate encounters. Perhaps one of the best things we can do is stop talking with our mouths and cross the chasm between us with our lives. Maybe we will even find a mystical union of the Spirit as Francis did.
TC: Speaking of Francis, here's a wonderful story. I got to meet the head of the Franciscan order. I met him in Washington. He said let me tell you an interesting story. He told me about one of their gatherings, where they bring the brothers of the Franciscan order together for a time of fellowship. About eight years ago they held it in Thailand and out of courtesy, they really felt they needed to show some graciousness to the Buddhists, because they were in a Buddhist country. So they got Buddhist theologians together and Franciscan theologians together and sent them off for three days to talk and see if they could find common ground. They also took Buddhist and Franciscan monastics and sent them off together to pray with each other. On the fourth day they all reassembled. The theologians were fighting with each other, arguing with each other, contending there was no common ground between them. The monastics that had gone off praying together, came back hugging each other. In a mystical relationship with God, there is a coming together of people where theology is left behind and in this spirituality they found a commonality.
It seems to me that when we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say, it's a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of the Christians that I hear. In other words if we are looking for common ground, can we find it in mystical spirituality, even if we cannot theologically agree, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences?
So we make sure we don't compromise what we believe. But we also make sure that in mystical spirituality we find a kind of oneness that we leave judgment of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell in the hands of God and just preach the truth as we understand it.
SC: And that is very liberating, to trust that the work of conversion is not up to us but to the Spirit, and not contingent on our own persistence, technological ingenuity, or church growth tactics. It really is liberating to leave that in the hands of the Spirit, and continue to live in a way that magnetizes people to God. Rabbi Michael Lerner says that we not only need to decode some of the violent threads of Christian thought, but we also must re-credit the ancient Jewishness of Jesus. He points to the many places that our faith traditions intersect, namely in calling us to work for justice and peace and reconciliation. Lerner says, "People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race. It is only this resurrection of hope that can save us from a new wave of global hatred."
TC: Michael and I got arrested together. A few years back, Jim Wallis organized this demonstration in opposition to the welfare bill that was passed, and forty of us got arrested. Michael Lerner chose to get arrested with us. Were you there?
SC: No, back then I still thought good Christians didn't go to jail. Now I know better.
TC: So we got arrested, and they put us all on a bus and they took us to the police station. We're all on the bus at the police station for quite a while, because they are processing us one by one. We are all giving testimonies of how this works into our Christian faith. Finally John Engel from a missionary organization called Beyond Borders looks over and says, "Michael how do you feel about all this highly evangelical talk?" Michael says, "Oh, I don't like it when I am with liberals who just compromise everything they believe to make me feel good. I think that the way we are going to have peace and brotherhood is if you go to the core of what you believe, and I go to the core of what I believe. And when we get to the core and live it with true love and true peace, there will be a coming together in spite of our differences." That is a very powerful statement. He did not feel the least offended. What offended him was liberals who try to say there are no differences between us.
SC: Mother Teresa used to say, "It is very fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not so fashionable to talk to the poor." I think the same could be said today of inter-religious cooperation. Many of us talk about Jewish and Muslim folks but few of us talk to them, or have friends that do not share our faith. The fellow who asked us to do this interview is a Muslim whose friendship has been such a gift, to hear how his Muslim faith drives him to love, and to share how my faith has driven me. And I must say, the Muslims I know are very interested in seeing another face of Christianity than that which they have encountered in the popular media. And that makes for a safer world, when we remove the layers that separate us from seeing the sacredness in every person, the image of God in them. We may still want them to experience the love and grace of Jesus, but how else will that happen but from seeing it in our lives? And it makes it harder for us to simply condemn them to Hell.
TC: Rather than making theological statements, we need to tell each other our stories. Jesus would tell stories and then say, "what do you make of this story?" One more story.
In the city of Toledo, right in the middle of Spain in the year 1000, when the Inquisition was in high gear. Jews, Catholics, and Muslims in this little city had learned to live together and respect one another and love one another, and protect one another. And the Catholics would not let the Inquisition come in and hurt their Muslim or Jewish brothers and vice-versa the Muslims would not let the invading Muslim troops do anything to hurt the Catholics and Jews. They had found among each other a commonality and a common spirituality that was really quite remarkable. There is a book written on Toledo holding it up as the fact that here was a place where it happened. So let it never be forgotten that there was once a spot in Toledo.
You might conclude with the that little song we always sang at communion:
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above. . .
There is a fellowship of kindred minds and you can't deny it. And this is why C.S. Lewis asks the question, "Once I am connected with such a person in love: Could I possible enjoy heaven without him?"
SC: That's a good word. TC: Yes, a real good word.
Copyright of Cross Currents is the property of Association for Religion & Intellectual Life and its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Source: Cross Currents, Spring 2005, Vol. 55, No 1.
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March 3rd, 2006
08:38 am - Food for thought.
A co-worker directed me to this article, and it's worth the read. Here's the link http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002837780_ricksteves02.html or just keep reading. I've shamelessly copy/pasted it below... : )
The real threat to U.S. security
By Rick Steves
Special to The Times
The greatest risk to our society today is not Islamo-fascist terrorism, but the people who use that term to scare us. As the human, fiscal and ecological damage caused by our nation's economic priorities grows, it's becoming clear that we're addicted to more than oil — we're addicted to military spending, too.
The United States spends as much on its military as the rest of humanity combined: more than $400 billion annually (not including the hundreds of billions of dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). These military expenses are "off limits" as we sharpen our collective pencils to find $39 billion to cut from domestic programs. And yet, despite our already huge military expenditures, these days it's hard to get elected without promising even more military spending.
Recently, San Francisco Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval appeared on the Fox News program "Hannity & Colmes." Frustrated by our government's budget priorities, Sandoval suggested America would be better off without a military. Instead, he said, "we should invest our money in our kids." Right-wing pundits pounced on these statements, and even many prominent Democrats distanced themselves from Sandoval.
Should we abolish the American military altogether? Of course not. But daydream with me for just a moment: What if we gradually scaled down military spending, chose not to rush off to foreign wars based on questionable motives, and began to take the name of our "Department of Defense" literally?
Let's be honest: Is there anyone out there who would actually want to — or, more importantly, be able to — invade the United States? Consider today's biggest perceived threat, al-Qaida. Do Osama bin Laden and his gang want to ride into Washington, D.C., take over our government, and turn us into an Islamo-fascist nation? Or — as his recent offer of a "truce" suggests — do they instead want dignity for the Palestinians, Christian armies out of sacred Muslim territory, and freedom for the Arab world to control its own natural resources?
"We do not negotiate with terrorists," our administration gravely informs us. But forcing our interests on the ever-more-volatile Middle East doesn't seem to be helping much, either. Isn't it ironic that this planet's most overtly "Christian" nation is feverishly pounding plowshares into swords?
So let's try something different. Imagine if we required our military to manage with a budget no bigger than all the militaries of our hemisphere combined: That's Canada — $15 billion; Mexico — $6 billion; everyone from there to Tierra del Fuego — about $16 billion. Round the total up to $40 billion. Add to that a healthy sum to support the United Nations and our allies in their peacekeeping work (say $60 billion a year). Grand total: $100 billion.
That saves more than $300 billion a year ($400 billion less $100 billion), which we could use to tackle not "Islamo-fascism," but more-fundamental concerns: dependence on oil, both foreign and domestic; a skyrocketing debt that allows other nations (such as China and Saudi Arabia) to gain economic and political leverage over our homeland; progressively violent weather and a rising sea caused by global warming; and a lower class that's chronically in need of affordable housing, good education and reliable health care. We could even let the wealthy keep their tax cuts.
And what if we decided that, rather than being outvoted routinely in the U.N. 140-4 on Cuba, Israel, torture, the international court, and issues of desperate importance to the developing world (such as global warming, land mines, debt relief and AIDS), we believed it was good for our "homeland security" interests to be supported by the U.N. 140-4? Instead of being at odds with the rest of the world, we could join the family of nations in dealing with the pressing problems that confront us all.
I have many friends in Europe named "Frankie" or "Johnny" who were born in the late 1940s. Every time I see them, I'm reminded that there was a time when our allies in Europe gave their children Yankee names in gratitude for what America meant to them. This can happen once again across the world: America can become a superpower in a positive sense — so appreciated that other nations would fund their militaries to protect us.
The prospect of al-Qaida attacks is frightening. But America is being held hostage not by a man in a cave, but by clever people with a different agenda. They use Osama bin Laden to scare us — even terrorize us — into funding an agenda that's weakening our country.
It's time for patriots to stand up to fear-mongering and broaden our definition of "sanctity of life" and "homeland security." It's time for some courage and eloquence on the left. And it's time for our electorate to wake up and see the real threats to our for-the-time-being-still-great nation. If we rose to this challenge, I think we could report that "the state of our union is strong" — and it would be true.
Edmonds-based travel writer Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) produces and hosts the public-television series "Rick Steves' Europe" and the public-radio show "Travel with Rick Steves."
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January 13th, 2006
04:55 pm - Hi. : )
Yesterday I went to Yoga class after work. I've never been to Yoga before, but Carrie convinced Julie and I to do it with her; so last night marked the beginning of my 6 week excursion at the Green Lake Community Center. After Yoga Julie and I "scooted" to Town Hall to hear Jared Diamond speak -- her parents were saving us seats. It was an extremely Seattle evening-- and it is still raining, and I like it here! (I felt the need to end on a positive -- really it's the start of a three day weekend and I'm really tired -- and rambling!) Nice. ; )
Current Music: "More Music From Northern Exposure"
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December 6th, 2005
09:22 am - Hey!
Hey! --Here I am up-dating. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to me. Everyone should research the Global AIDS crisis.
More later?
~K
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September 14th, 2005
12:26 pm - I'm Horrible!
I forgot to give my favorite mid-west doctoral student credit for sending me the article! Leah is my path to enlightenment.
L-dogg: Thanks!!!
~K
Current Music: Jazzzzzz
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September 12th, 2005
03:51 pm - 9/11 And The Sport of God: The best thing I've read all year
Well, maybe not all year, but it is very VERY good. This article is also very, VERY VERY long (6 full single spaced pages when printed, don't say I didn't warn you), but I still think it is well worth it; --at least to generate your own bout of critical thinking and internal dialog. Truly no pressure to read it, but if you are interested and have the time; I do recommend it!
(If you do read it let me know what you think?) : )
the link is: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0909-36.htm
or you can just read my previous entry, I cut/pasted the whole article as a post.
--So thoughtful and provocative. How do I apply this call to act in my life?
~K
Current Music: Paul Simon: "You're the One" album
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03:50 pm - 9/11 And The Sport of God
Published on Friday, September 9, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
9/11 And The Sport of God
by Bill Moyers
This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America.
At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do.
My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others. "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience. Baptists there were a "pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding to their belief in that great democracy of faith - the priesthood of all believers. For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they were fined, flogged, and exiled. In 1651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, "that must free the soul."
Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights "a haven for the cause of conscience." No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would "the loathsome combination of church and state" - as Thomas Jefferson described it - be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable. The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed "soul freedom."
It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is an appropriate time to think about it.
Four years ago this week, the poet's prophetic metaphor became real again and "the great dark birds of history" plunged into our lives.
They came in the name of God. They came bent on murder and martyrdom. It was as if they rode to earth on the fierce breath of Allah himself, for the sacred scriptures that had nurtured these murderous young men are steeped in images of a violent and vengeful God who wills life for the faithful and horrific torment for unbelievers.
Yes, the Koran speaks of mercy and compassion and calls for ethical living. But such passages are no match for the ferocity of instruction found there for waging war for God's sake. The scholar Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer carefully traces this trail of holy violence in his important book, Is Religion Killing Us? [Trinity Press International. 2003]. He highlights many of the verses in the Koran that the Islamic terrorists could have had in their hearts and on their lips four years ago as they moved toward their gruesome rendezvous. As I read some of them, close your eyes and recall the scenes of that bright September morning which began in the bright sun under a blue sky:
"Those who believe Fight in the cause of Allah, and Those who reject Faith Fight in the cause of Evil."(4:76)
"So We sent against them A furious Wind through days of disaster, that
We might Give them a taste of a Penalty of humiliation In this Life; but
The Penalty of the Hereafter will be More Humiliating still: And they
Will find No help." (41:16)
"Then watch thou For the Day That the sky will Bring forth a kind Of smoke (or mist) Plainly visible, Enveloping the people: This will be a Penalty
Grievous." (44:10-11)
"Did the people of the towns Feel Secure against the coming Of Our
Wrath by night While they were asleep? Or else did they feel
Secure against its coming in Broad daylight while they Played
About (carefree)? Did they then feel secure Against the Plan of
Allah? - But no one can feel Secure from the Plan of Allah,
except those (Doomed) to ruin." (7:97-99)
So the holy warriors came - an airborne death cult, their sights on God's enemies: regular folks, starting the day's routine. One minute they're pulling off their jackets, shaking Sweet n' Low into their coffee, adjusting the height of their chair or a picture of a child or sweetheart or spouse in a frame on their desk, booting up their computer - and in the next, they are engulfed by a horrendous cataclysm. God's will. Poof!
But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure their work. It is also the number of the living - the survivors - taken hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our heads - deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working to bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said "the human heart is the first home of democracy." Fill that heart with fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to its foundations.
In the days leading up to 9/11 our daughter and husband adopted their first baby. On the morning of September 11th our son-in-law passed through the shadow of the World Trade Center toward his office a few blocks up the street. He arrived as the horrors erupted. He saw the flames, the falling bodies, the devastation. His building was evacuated and for long awful moments he couldn't reach his wife, our daughter, to say he was okay. Even after they connected it wasn't until the next morning that he was able to make it home. Throughout that fearful night our daughter was alone with their new baby. Later she told us that for weeks thereafter she would lie awake at night, wondering where and when it might happen again, going to the computer at three in the morning to check out what she could about bioterrorism, germ warfare, anthrax and the vulnerability of children. The terrorists had violated a mother's deepest space.
Who was not vulnerable? That morning Judith and I made it to our office at Channel Thirteen on West 33rd Street just after the second plane struck. Our building was evacuated although the two of us remained with other colleagues to do what we could to keep the station on the air. The next day it was evacuated again because of a bomb scare at the Empire State Building nearby. We had just ended a live broadcast for PBS when security officers swept through and ordered everyone out. This time we left. As we were making our way down the stairs I took Judith's arm and was struck by the thought: Is this the last time I'll touch her? Could what we had begun together a half century ago end here on this dim, bare staircase? I forced the thought from my mind, willed it away, but in the early hours of morning, as I sat at the window of our apartment looking out at the sky, the sinister intruder crept back.
Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and every imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.
They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what's in God's mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.
So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only the horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, and sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it makes life worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take it from us.
But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic. And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of journalists. He wrote: "The theologians may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian [read: journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings."
The other side of the story:
Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson-Pallmayer points out, God's violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a deep and troubling pathology "so pervasive, vindictive, and destructive" that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.
For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet; stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage; families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people struggling desperately to survive.
Now transport those current scenes from our newspapers and television back to the first Book of the Bible - the Book of Genesis. They bring to life what we rarely imagine so graphically when we read of the great flood that devastated the known world. If you read the Bible as literally true, as fundamentalists do, this flood was ordered by God. "And God said to Noah, 'I have determined to make an end of all flesh... behold, I will destroy them with the earth." (6:5-13). "I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die." (6:17-19) Noah and his family are the only humans spared - they were, after all, God's chosen. But for everyone else: "... the waters prevailed so mightily... that all the high mountains....were covered....And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts...and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died...." (7:17-23).
The flood is merely Act One. Read on: This God first "hardens the heart of Pharaoh" to make sure the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the plea of Moses to let his people go. Then because Pharaoh's heart is hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so people cannot drink its water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied with the results, God sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture them; rains hail and fire and thunder on them destroys the trees and plants of the field until nothing green remains; orders every first-born child to be slaughtered, from the first-born of Pharaoh right on down to "the first-born of the maidservant behind the mill." An equal-murderous God, you might say. The massacre continues until "there is not a house where one was not dead." While the Egyptian families mourn their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God's thirst for blood is satisfied, God pauses to rest - and boasts: "I have made sport of the Egyptians."
Violence: the sport of God. God, the progenitor of shock and awe.
And that's just Act II. As the story unfolds women and children are hacked to death on God's order; unborn infants are ripped from their mother's wombs; cities are leveled - their women killed if they have had sex, the virgins taken at God's command for the pleasure of his holy warriors. When his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives God is furious and sends Moses back to rebuke them and tell them to finish the job. One tribe after another falls to God-ordered genocide: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites - names so ancient they have disappeared into the mists as fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, infants in arms, shepherds, threshers, carpenters, merchants, housewives - living human beings, flesh and blood: "And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them...(and) your eyes shall not pity them."
So it is written - in the Holy Bible.
Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the blood-soaked trail of God's sport, decreed that anything that disagrees with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the literal Biblical sense of God "is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason" and that we must therefore read the scriptures through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature (as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel's God of love [See The God of Evil , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]
I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know that the "violence-of-God" tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over and at home consider the "sacred texts" to be literally God's word on all matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage - that God slaughters.
Millions believe it.
Let's go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God's punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda "of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians" not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way (The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now - disgusted with a decadent America - "God almighty is lifting his protection from us." Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn't think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations - the terrorists were meant to be God's wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a "fierce Judeo-Christian campaign" against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance "to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him."
Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a "holy war" as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors "to the spiritual warfare for souls." After Boykin had led Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: "I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol." Now Boykin was going about evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as "a Christian nation" battling Satan and that America's Muslim adversaries will be defeated "only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, "was not elected by a majority of the voters - he was appointed by God." Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn't surprising that despite his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the President's Faith-Based Initiative for "relief work" on the Gulf Coast.)
We can't wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly: "This is a problem we can't walk away from." We're talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what's on God's mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement.
True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals - this very seminary is part of that tradition; it's the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical religious right has succeeded in taking over one of America's great political parties - the country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is - and they are driving American politics, using God as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.
What's also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists, and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance - their loathing of other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge - has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power. They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers as ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ (the "Christograph") on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners of his legions and routed his rivals in Rome. Never mind that the Emperor himself was never baptized into the faith; it served him well enough to make the God worshipped by Christians his most important ally and turn the Sign of Christ into the one imperial symbol most widely recognized and feared from east to west.
Let's take a brief detour to Ohio and I'll show you what I am talking about. In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project has been launched to identify and train thousands of "Patriot Pastors" to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press reports, the leader of the movement - the senior pastor of a large church in suburban Columbus - casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic clash between "the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell." The fear and loathing in his message is palpable: He denounces public schools that won't teach creationism, require teachers to read the Bible in class, or allow children to pray. He rails against the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America and prevent school kids from learning that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist." He links abortion to children who murder their parents. He blasts the "pagan left" for trying to redefine marriage. He declares that "homosexual rights" will bring "a flood of demonic oppression." On his church website you read that "Reclaiming the teaching of our Christian heritage among America's youth is paramount to a sense of national destiny that God has invested into this nation."
One of the prominent allies of the Ohio Restoration Project is a popular televangelist in Columbus who heads a $40 million-a-year ministry that is accessible worldwide via 1,400 TV stations and cable affiliates. Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a "Christocrat" - a gladiator for God marching against "the very hordes of hell in our society" - he nonetheless has been spotted with so many Republican politicians in Washington and elsewhere that he has been publicly described as a"spiritual advisor" to the party. The journalist Marley Greiner has been following his ministry for the organization, FreePress. She writes that because he considers the separation of church and state to be "a lie perpetrated on Americans - especially believers in Jesus Christ" - he identifies himself as a "wall builder" and "wall buster." As a wall builder he will "restore Godly presence in government and culture; as a wall buster he will tear down the church-state wall." He sees the Christian church as a sleeping giant that has the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. The giant is stirring. At a rally in July he proclaimed to a packed house: "Let the Revolution begin!" And the congregation roared back: "Let the Revolution begin!"
(The Revolution's first goal, by the way, is to elect as governor next year the current Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election process in 2004 year when a surge in Christian voters narrowly carried George Bush to victory. As General Boykin suggested of President Bush's anointment, this fellow has acknowledged that "God wanted him as secretary of state during 2004" because it was such a critical election. Now he is criss-crossing Ohio meeting with Patriot Pastors and their congregations proclaiming that "America is at its best when God is at its center.") [For the complete stories from which this information has been extracted, see: "An evening with Rod Parsley, by Marley Greiner, FreePress, July 20, 2005; Patriot Pastors," Marilyn Warfield, Cleveland Jewish News, July 29, 2005; "Ohio televangelist has plenty of influence, but he wants more", Ted Wendling, Religion News Service, Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2005; "Shaping Politics from the pulpits," Susan Page, USA Today , Aug. 3, 2005; "Religion and Politics Should Be Mixed Says Ohio Secretary of State," WTOL-TV Toledo, October 29, 2004].
The Ohio Restoration Project is spreading. In one month alone last year in the president's home state of Texas, a single Baptist preacher added 2000 "Patriot Pastors" to the rolls. On his website he now encourages pastors to "speak out on the great moral issues of our day...to restore and reclaim America for Christ."
Alas, these "great moral issues" do not include building a moral economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners - people who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year one million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of Americans has dropped almost nine percent.
None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political power they have cut a deal with America's richest class and their partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to "starve" the government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and larger tax cuts for the rich.
How else to explain the vacuum in their "great moral issues" of the plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)
This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but revealing. The radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America's governing party. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don't believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on they are crusading for a government "of, by, and for the people" in favor of one based on Biblical authority.
This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know what it means. Behind their malicious attacks on the courts ("vermin in black robes," as one of their talk show allies recently put it,) is a fierce longing to hold judges accountable for interpreting the Constitution according to standards of biblical revelation as fundamentalists define it. To get those judges they needed a party beholden to them. So the Grand Old Party - the GOP - has become God's Own Party, its ranks made up of God's Own People "marching as to war."
Go now to the website of an organization called America 21 (http://www.america21.us/Home.cfm ). There, on a red, white, and blue home page, you find praise for President Bush's agenda - including his effort to phase out Social Security and protect corporations from law suits by aggrieved citizens. On the same home page is a reminder that "There are 7,177 hours until our next National Election....ENLIST NOW." Now click again and you will read a summons calling Christian pastors "to lead God's people in the turning that can save America from our enemies." Under the headline "Remember - Repent - Return" language reminiscent of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell reminds you that "one of the unmistakable lessons [of 9/11] is that America has lost the full measure of God's hedge of protection. When we ask ourselves why, the scriptures remind us that ancient Israel was invaded by its foreign enemy, Babylon, in 586 B.C. ....(and) Jerusalem was destroyed by another invading foreign power in 70 A.D. .... Psalm 106:37 says that these judgments of God ...were because of Israel's idolatry. Israel, the apple of God's eye, was destroyed ... because the people failed... to repent." If America is to avoid a similar fate, the warning continues, we must "remember the legacy of our heritage under God and our covenant with Him and, in the words of II Chronicles 7:14: 'Turn from our wicked ways.'"
Just what does this have to do with the president's political agenda praised on the home page? Well, squint and look at the fine print at the bottom of the site. It reads: America21 is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to educate, engage and mobilize Christians to influence national policy at every level. Founded in 1989 by a multi-denominational group of pastors and businessmen, it is dedicated to being a catalyst for revival and reform of the culture and the government ." (emphasis added).
The corporate, political and religious right converge here, led by a president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is the most powerful fundamentalist in American history.
What are the stakes? In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that "the attack against reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade." To save the American Dream, "we desperately need to reaffirm the principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their "separate realities' or to wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest."
That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.
It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they're talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them - the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America "a safe haven for the cause of conscience."
As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies - political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies - cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don't fight fair; "Robert's Rules of Order" is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front - and especially freedom of conscience - never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: "When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means...being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind."
Christian realists aren't afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, "Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it?" we have to take that love where the action is. Or the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.
Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. Moyers also serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
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August 31st, 2005
July 6th, 2005
09:51 am - Letters to myself.
I started to write a letter to myself on paper, and it just hit me; I could just do this here on line. It was a mild epiphany. --I really like the word epiphany. Basically my message to myself is this; Follow Through.
Apply for the job, make a dentist appointment, the to do list goes on. Yes, DO YOUR TO DO LIST. The crux of the matter is this; enable yourself to do that which you find to be exciting and good. First and foremost continue to live with Christ's love and grace in the center of all things; be diligent. This communion propels you forward. --Quit dragging your feet of clay!
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June 21st, 2005
08:51 am - I'm still not exactly sure what I am trying to do here.
It's inevitable. The post on "what are blogs for." Here it is, it's already been done thousands of times over. I wonder if sociologists will study these in a few years.
Today I execute an event that Marcia planned, it's been clunky so far and I am looking forward to the end of this day. (Batman at the IMAX!)
the genius of another:
After years of expensive education,
a car full of books and anticipation,
I’m an expert on Shakespeare and that’s a hell of a lot but the world don't need scholars as much as I thought.
Maybe I'll go travelling for a year,
finding myself or start a career.
I could work for the poor though I’m hungry for fame
we all seem so different but we're just the same.
Maybe I'll go to the gym, so I don't get fat,
aren't things more easy with a tight six pack?
Who knows the answers? Who do you trust?
I can't even separate love from lust.
Maybe I’ll move back home and pay off my loans,
working nine to five answering phones.
Don't make me live for my friday nights,
drinking eight pints and getting in fights.
I don't want to get up, just let me lie in,
leave me alone, I'm a twenty something.
Maybe I'll just fall in love that could solve it all,
philosophers say that that’s enough,
there surely must be more. Ooooh
Love ain’t the answer nor is work,
the truth eludes me so much it hurts.
But I’m still having fun and I guess that's the key,
I'm a twenty something and I'll keep being me.
I’m a twenty something.
Let me lie in, Leave me alone.
I’m a twenty something.
--TWENTY SOMETHING, by jamie cullum
(I know the answer, but love the song.)
Wish me luck, it's going to be a day!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) pensive
Current Music: Frontin' by Jamie Cullum -- I LOVE it.
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June 10th, 2005
June 7th, 2005
01:39 pm - Life is funny
How original Kendra. The po-mo-musings guy is in love. it's sweet, funny, and a bit futile.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) complacent
Current Music: Sting
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June 6th, 2005
10:51 am - Soooo Cold!
It is so cold in my office. guh! This morning I though I'd be over dressed in nylons, a long skirt, and a wool cardigan, but I was so wrong. I am freezing! It's raining outside. (I like that.) The thermostat says it is 70 degrees in here. --it's lying. Okay, time to do some address labels...
COLD!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) cold
Current Music: Eddie from Ohio
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June 1st, 2005
08:23 am - back to the grind
So I am back at work in Seattle, so I'll make this short. I flew all day yesterday after being voluntarily bumped from my late Monday night flight, (a free ticket and another night at home, --I'm not complaining!) Yesterday on the moving sidewalk I had a fun chat with an engineer who was going home after his college (Devry) reunion at "the lake." He was nice and headed to Oakland. The night before Gavin H was on the flight I was suppose to take; he was down visiting his brother, and we had a short good chat. I also kept bumping in to the mom and daughter who had been bumped off my same flight, and on the Las Vegas layover I had lunch at Burger King with British Tom who was headed home. It is heartwarming to know there are people out there! Airports are so fascinating, --talk about an extensive cross-section of geographic regions represented.
I digress.
Back to work!
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May 29th, 2005
02:15 am - live journal
"this is the beginning of my live journal" (quoth Isaac) He's helping me set it up....
Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: 2 a.m. TV
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kendraallison's journal