Why Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim Politics Is Not Christian

Trying to sort out the contradictory voices that label themselves "Christian" can lead those outside the faith bewildered, ready to shake their heads and surrender. In this particular moment, when nominally "Christian" folks are supporting the desecration of the holy book of another faith, denouncing the President as a member of an alien religion, and supporting the expulsion of undocumented immigrants from communities across the country, I think it's time one still, small voice spoke up and said, "Uh, no."

Yesterday in church, there was the announcement of a gleaning field trip, open to all, under the auspices of The Society of St. Andrew. Seeking to help alleviate hunger, SoSA receives permission to pick up the leavings after harvest from fields, orchards, and farms, providing food at low cost to the hungry. There is Biblical precedent for this; in Deuteronomy, planters are told to leave the part of their crop they can't or won't use for the poor to glean for their food. Specifically mentioned, along with the ubiquitous widow and orphan, is "the stranger", i.e., the alien, a foreign national in the land.

Taking a step back, reading Deuteronomy as a whole, the "stranger" is seen as a particular target of national hospitality. Each time "the stranger" is mentioned, Moses (the ostensible speaker of the text), offers as his rationale the fact that "you were once strangers in Egypt." Weighted as that phrase is with history and meaning for the people poised on the brink of entering the land promised by the LORD, there is much significance here. As an alien people in Egypt, the Hebrews were not treated with special consideration and care; they were enslaved. By offering up "the stranger" as a group for whom special care and attention should be reserved, the author of Deuteronomy is reminding the people about to become the Israelites that, precisely because they were once a mistreated foreign people in a foreign land, they should take extra care to offer deference and hospitality to the alien in their midst.

In our time and place, "alien" is not univocal. Not just referring, in a semi-legal sense to a foreign national, in a broader sense the word refers to any difference, anything strange and outside what is considered the norm. In that sense, the anti-Muslim sentiment currently amok in some quarters of our land is as unChristian as the hostility toward undocumented workers.

If it were only certain passages in Deuteronomy to which I could point as the source of a Biblical injunction toward particular care and openness to those among us who are different, I think the accusation of cherry-picking and proof-texting as a criticism would be warranted. The entire Biblical witness, summed up by Jesus as the twin and related love of God and love of neighbor includes these particular injunctions within them. In other words, it isn't just Moses in Deuteronomy. It is the entire text of the Bible that witnesses to God's ordinances and commandments for hospitality and openness toward those outside our community.

I don't think it's too much to say that any other claim is erroneous.

Just . . . Wow (UPDATED)

I saw a blurb for this, so I read the whole thing.

Our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

This in insanity. Simple as that.

Of course, Newt has issues if he's reading Dinesh D'Souza anyway.

But, this . . . In-fricking-sane.

UPDATE: It isn't just me.

Obama Derangement Syndrome can take some strange people to some strange places. Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in all his pseudo-intellectual glory, has become so enveloped in his own garbage, he appears to have suffered some kind of severe head trauma.

--snip--

I care about this, not because Gingrich is a lunatic, but because Republicans and the media establishment continue to treat Gingrich as a sane, credible visionary. I think it's fair to say most reasonable people would charitably describe his attacks on America's leaders as idiocy, but the problem is, it won't make any difference.

Given the way the political establishment is "wired" for Republicans, there simply aren't any consequences for this kind of abject stupidity. In the first year of the Obama administration, the most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" was Newt Gingrich. Despite having left office more than a decade ago in disgrace, he remains a leading figure welcome in polite society.

There's literally nothing the man can say to lose his platform to spew nonsense.

One wonders when the tipping point is.

Honoring And Remembering

I don't want to pick a fight. Quite frankly, I'm tired of pointing the finger and saying, "It's all messed up because of these guys." I'm sick to death of the grousing and growling and yelling and hatred.

Today, of all days, I want to remember that we are one country. We are one people, united not by creed or color; not by birth or wealth. We are one people because we live in this great land. We are a free people. We are a giving, caring people. We are a people who feel to our depths the pain and suffering of those in need, and seek to help however and whenever possible.

Today, of all days, I do not want to hear a word against anyone. I do not want to read any words blaming some "other", some "alien", whether by dint of their country of origin, who they love, or the name they call God and how they worship that God. I want to remember that, in the midst of our shared grief, the world turned to us and offered us their hearts and help. I want to remember the men and women who rushed in to those burning teetering towers - black and white men, Jewish and Muslim and Christian men and women - even though they might have known they wouldn't make it out.

I want on this of all days for all of us to remember that we are Americans. All the ways we call ourselves American - African-American, Muslim American, WASP - only show the how great we have become. By adding all those different ways of being American together, we are stronger than if we divide ourselves by focusing on the differences.

For just one day, I do not want to hear any sour words. For this day, a day I know I shall always remember with sorrow, I want us to remember also, with pride, that we are all - all of us who call this great land our home - one people who can, indeed, be great. We can be Americans.

Let us honor those who died, those who gave their lives to save those who were dying, and those who continue to sacrifice in far away lands for our sake by putting aside our differences of the moment. For just one day, let us honor those who died by living as one people.

Hearing Other Voices

A source of my current angst regarding our country's moment of intolerance, the specter of the rest of the world seeing the darker side of our national soul as the only "real" America has led me back a couple years to the album Scarsick by the Swedish band Pain of Salvation. Dedicated to George W. Bush, the albums is a concept piece giving an outsiders view of our country. I do not consider it "anti-American"; rather, I consider it an attempted wake-up call to the United States. Hearing the voice of someone outside saying, in essence, that we can be better than we have been, is both a moment of judgment and an opportunity to redeem ourselves.

If we have the courage to hear the word.

Here's "America".

No Sense Of Responsibility

In comments, Craig offers an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, alternative to my own position that the right in general has created an atmosphere where the burning of the Q'uran becomes an acceptable act of political defiance. The reason why I am not persuaded that this is the random act of one stupid man and his flock of 50 or so followers is summed up in this post at Talking Points Memo:

Speaking just now on MSNBC James Zogby made a very good point -- and pressed Andrea Mitchell on it. His point was that sure, this Pastor Jones fool is one guy, who's managed to get worldwide attention for his stunt. But you cannot separate him, as I noted below, from the whole climate of hate speech and anti-Muslim agitation from the Newt Gingriches and the Sarah Palins and the rest of them.

At that point, Mitchell jumped in and said, wait, Palin said she disagrees with the Koran burning. To which Zogby replied, something to the effect of 'C'mon'. ANd that's just the right reply. This is the standard approach of race haters and demagogues. They keep stirring the pot, churning out demonizing rhetoric and hate speech. Then some marginal figure does something nuts and suddenly ... oh, wait, I didn't mean burn Korans. Where'd you get that idea from? We were just saying that Islam is a violent, anti-American religion and that American Muslims should stop building their mosques and focus on apologizing for 9/11 and maybe get out of America. But burn the Koran? No way.

That's a bit much.

Precisely because media figures like Gingrich and Palin and Beck are quite clear that Islam is, at heart, a religion that is antithetical to American values and political practice, it creates an atmosphere where there is more than tacit approval for outrageous acts of defiance. After all, if Islam is, indeed, a religion whose views do not conform to acceptability, why not go out of one's way to protest the mere presence of Islam, as well as the the role of that religious belief in an act of horrid terrorist violence against our country?

As with so much else in our current social and political milieu, I am quite disgusted by the whole thing. For the most part, I am concentrating on other matters in my life. I did not think it appropriate to let this particular event pass without some comment of my own (not that it's worth much).

Along with the refusal of Republicans to take responsibility for eroding our political and physical infrastructure; for refusing to go along with any proposal of the Obama Administration, to even consider them on the merits; for displaying an ignorance of economics in our current moment that is breathtaking in its potential for finishing off what they started; and for fomenting hatred and disgust toward gays and lesbians int he latter's pursuit of state recognition for their unions; in all these things plus the climate of hatred against Islam, the right and the Republican Party recognize no responsibility, feel no shame, see only an opportunity for regaining political power and control without any sense that it might be important to have a plan to get our country working again.

I mention all this because it is of a piece with our current historical moment. The Republican Party represents nihilism - nothing at all. It is only the pursuit of power for its own sake, and the sake of its wealthiest benefactors and supporters. Period. There is evidence enough for this, and the tacit approval given to the burning of the Q'uran is the final evidence that, in the end, the Republicans hold nothing of value, see no ethical problem with a particular act the direct result of which will be, in all likelihood, an outburst of anti-American violence across the Muslim world. It wasn't always like this, of course; if the Republicans were truly "conservative" in some Burkean sense, it would have some set of values upon which to rest for a plan not just for governance but for speaking out on matters of social and cultural concern. Their lack of any ethical or moral sense is now clear for all to see.

Our country may just go up in those same flames that will engulf the Q'uran on Saturday. It is that dangerous. And not a single large-name Republican has gone so far as to point this out.

Read This

Sigh. This is the kind of thing I have always sought. Not just the intelligent, thoughtful initial post, but the lengthy, occasionally funny, always intriguing, comment thread that follows. So, rather than do "my take", just click the link below, and read the whole thing.

Whoever says there is no room on the internet for serious intellectual inquiry and thoughtful back-and-forth should take a gander.


Getting the microfoundations right – some comments and a bleg by Chris Bertram on September 8, 2010

From Crooked Timber

Terrorist Propaganda

It should probably not need be said, but obviously I find the planned burning of the Holy Q'uran on Saturday by the leadership of Dove Ministries Church in Florida to be not just politically horrible, but unChristian in the extreme.

Far more than the issue of demonstrating small-minded bigotry, however, one has to wonder why so many on the right are currently playing in to the hands of Al Qaeda. All along, they have been saying the, despite our rhetoric of openness and inclusion, the United States is fundamentally hostile to Islam. Of the few things for which I can praise George W. Bush, his insistence (at least in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks) that our conflict was not with Islam was one that I found to be marvelously on target and consistent. The right, however, has decided that we are, indeed, at war with Islam. Out of ignorance and fear, we label Islam not a religion, but a cult of violence - towards women, towards dissent within its ranks, toward those of other faiths - that needs to be opposed. The right wishes to take a moment on Saturday as we remember the honored dead (including the Muslim dead) to register its visceral hatred of Islam by taking its only truly holy relic, the Holy Q'uran, and burn it. To the Muslim world, where we have tens of thousands of troops still engaged in combat, seeking to win over local populations to our good will in order to work with them to combat the forces of tyranny that seek to trample the good name of Muhammed under the feet of a murderous desire for power and control, this will only prove that ours is a fundamentally hostile country.

While I do not believe Gen. David Petraeus recent comments are kosher - any warning like the one he gave should have come from civilian commanders (up to and including the President) - his reasoning is sound.

Even if our troops were not directly intermingling with Muslim civilians thousands of miles from home, this act of stupid hatred should be condemned. Of course, condemnation is all we can do. Which is even more sad, really. For all that our troops are fighting and have been fighting to protect and even impose (!!) freedom (don't get me started on why our troops are here or there, because that would take too long), that includes, sad to say, the freedom to become propaganda for those who hate the United States and want only death for our troops, our country, and our way of life.

So, alas, we arrive at the moment where rhetoric and reality meet and create not just irony but danger. Those who insist they are burning the Q'uran as an act of defiance against those who seek us harm are only going to be fueling the fires of hatred against us, becoming recruiting poster-boys for suicide bombers and jihadi-fighters all over the Muslim world. The image of the flames engulfing the pages of the Holy book of over one billion people around the world may just spark far more death than any sane act of defiance against the real enemy.

I do hope the folks who do this understand that they will come away from those fires not just smelling of smoke and covered in ash. They will come away stinking of death and covered in the blood of Americans, including American troops.

Funny Bible Passages

And Paul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, 10said in a loud voice, ‘Stand upright on your feet.’ And the man* sprang up and began to walk. 11When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in human form!’ 12Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 13The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city,* brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.
Acts 14:9b-13

I'm not sure where to go with this particular passage. I'm still chuckling over it.

It's the pagan equivalent, in some respects, to Peter's reaction to the Transfiguration. Remember, after seeing Jesus revealed for who and what he really is, rather than realize what is happening, Peter says to Jesus, "Let's build a tent so we can stay here, us few disciples who you allowed to see it, and you and Elijah and Moses!" One is perhaps grateful that Jesus was not a violent individual, because dope-slapping Peter certainly seems appropriate in this instance.

Paul and Barnabas do a verbal dope-slap for the poor folks in Iconium. Even so, this particular passage ends thus: "18Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them." It's enough to make you tear your hair out!

In some ways, this is similar to blogging. You sit down and figure out what you want to say, say it to the best of your ability, and some commenter comes along and says something way out of left field concerning what you have just written. You patients type a response that can be summed up as, "No, sir, I didn't say x. If you look carefully, you will see quite clearly that I said y." Usually, though perhaps not always, the commenter will respond by saying, "Well, you may believe you said y, but quite clearly you said x." Wall and head then meet.

Communicating across all sorts of gaps - religious, political, social, cultural, linguistic - makes for odd moments, frustrating moments, and sometimes hilarious moments. These certainly well-meaning but misguided worshipers of the pagan deities were interpreting what they saw in light of the categories by which they interpreted the world. Nothing wrong with that at all.

We contemporary Christians experience these moments all the time. We are told we are talking about scientific stuff, psychological stuff, moral stuff, impossible stuff. We respond, quietly but firmly, that we are actually talking about living-for-God stuff. Usually, though not always, we are told (sometimes in patronizing tones, sometimes in barely controlled fury) that we are ignoramuses who have no idea what we're talking about. Head and wall meet repeatedly.

We can take it to heart that this particular type of miscommunication has Biblical precedent, and chuckle at it.

Trying On A Hat

This post by an economist on the basic issue at stake in our current recession - idle workers and idle productive capacity - is a marvelous rant. All the same, down in comments this basic structural reality is put in context.

Karl, I find your analysis interesting. However, lower capacity and lower utilization are the end result of collapsing demand. From 2000 – 2010 the U.S. has experienced two major economic (credit) bubbles. The first, was driven by the stock market and had a minor impact on the economy. The second was driven by real estate. This had a major impact on the economy. When the typical homeowner’s major wealth collapses, a major spending collapse follows.

As I understand it, the collapse in demand followed on the heels of the collapse of the collective value of real estate. As the commenter said, all that wealth just went up in smoke. People want to buy stuff, whether it's food, or little electronic gadgets, or a new lawnmower, or some trinket for the significant other. Demand is low not because people don't want to buy stuff. Demand is low because people don't have the money to buy stuff.

The various proposed solutions have been ineffective because the influx of money has not been adequate to replace the combined lost wealth from the collapse of the value of real estate. With the sudden concern over federal spending adding to the burden of decreased demand, we have the specter of what little stimulated demand may have resulted from earlier increased federal spending drying up. That is why Karl's rant about his frustration over questions such as economic stimulus and fiscal versus monetary solutions is misplaced. The whole idea behind the stimulus, as well as Pres. Obama's proposition to spend $50 billion on infrastructure projects, is to put money in people's pockets so they will say, "Hey, now I can afford that new toy for my child/replace my old car/fix the roof . . ." and people who make toys and cars and do construction will have jobs. Of course, both the initial stimulus - $800 billion - and the additional $50 billion are far too small to replace the wealth wiped out in the collapse of the mortgage bubble. Yet, the notion itself is sound.

That is why many are complaining that the sudden rise in concern over fiscal policy by Republicans (and some Democrats) is so frustrating. While it may be true that our operating budget is in the red for now, since the goal of this spending is to get people to spend stuff to put other people to work making stuff, thus getting paid, thus paying taxes, this isn't a structural deficit like the ones we had in the 1980's or under George W. Bush. Rather, they are temporary shortfalls of federal income to be offset (so goes the proposition) once the economy starts to move forward again.

So, what Karl calls "second order arguments" are central to understanding how we deal with the first order issue of idle workers unwed to idle productive capacity.

If Only . . .

This conversation between Rick Perlstein and Mark Schmitt, offered as an assessment of the first year of the Obama Presidency, limns the outline of what has emerged as the left-wing critique of Obama's failure as leader of the Democratic Party.

[W]hat I worry "being like Barack" truly means is that the knockout never comes. That the patience and the building of trust is, in fact, the end in itself. "Our Barack doesn't do mean," means, "Our Barack doesn't make the strategic choice to defeat a reactionary adversary even when that opportunity manifestly presents itself to him." This is Leadership 101, and, I fear, Obama is flunking.

The discussion seems to be hinting toward what has become the idea that Obama's "patience", his refusal to engage in soundbite politics (to "win the morning, win the afternoon" in Politico terms), and to believe that given enough time, the Republicans will string themselves, collectively, with the very long rope handed them by being patient, reticent, and thoughtful.

During the 2008 Campaign, I saw this quality and called it (before it got picked up by other larger bloggers with more readers), pace Mohammed Ali, "rope-a-dope". Perhaps, Obama believes this same strategy will work this time around. Perhaps he just doesn't care all that much whether or not the Democrats maintain control of Congress. After all, Bill Clinton was far more productive and popular as President when he had the Republican majority as foil.

Whatever may or may not be going on behind the scenes, many of us who supported Pres. Obama two years ago are wondering where the dynamic leader who offered us a vision of ourselves - and by "ourselves" I mean America - as better than we had been; as more courageous; as willing to sacrifice and work together to fix the problems we faced - has gone. The Democrats in Congress, for all their problems and limitations, would be a far better partner than a Congress led by the lachrymose John Boehner and the puffy Mitch McConnell. Unless Obama is far less intelligent than we had all thought - and he has yet to give any indication that he is - I, for one, want to say to him, "Mr. President, you seriously need to get your head out of your ass."

Even if Obama comes out this fall in full rhetorical swing and saves the bacon of the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party, the long list of "if only . . ." will still be hanging there, needing to be addressed. It isn't enough for the President to pull out all the stops, a President ex machina. We - the whole damn country - have been in dire need of his leadership, and he has, as Perlstein says quite bluntly, failed its most basic test.

The Autodidact In Me

So I just heard about this book. It offers the interesting but, to me at any rate non-controversial thesis, that monogamy in human sexual relationships is not "natural" in the way, say pair-bonding in many species that mate for life seems to be. By comparing human sexual behavior with that of one of the two most closely related primate species - the bonobo - the authors offer the notion that, in fact, having multiple partners over the course of a lifetime is far more in keeping with what is "natural" about us than is sexual monogamy.

In a column at psychologytoday.com, one of the coauthors of the study takes on "critic" Megan McArdle, who has written a "scathing" (and largely uninformed) review.

I have to admit I am intrigued by the thesis, and look forward to reading this book. Precisely because, at the current moment I am reading Helmut Thielicke's Evangelical Faith, and am dealing with the whole issue, as he puts it, of "address", the issue of the meaning of words, most especially "nature" and "natural", are forefront in my mind. How we understand these words, how we live them, is important for the sake of clearly understanding the question of address.

Furthermore, I am always open to the discoveries of new research. Even if I am not always in agreement with them, it seems to me that we Christians have a duty to have some kind of even rudimentary understanding of the way our understanding of our world has changed and continues to change.

So, kudos to Ryan and co-author Cacilda Jethá for their work.

Bullying

Started a small discussion at Facebook when I asked for thoughts on an evening program at my older daughter's school. In a couple weeks, they will be featuring an author of two books, writing on how she "survived" bullying. The new "thing", well, over the past few years, has been focusing on bullying as a serious problem in schools to be dealt with far more vigorously and self-consciously on a policy level than heretofore.

I just cannot get behind it.

First, an adult who writes not one but two books on "surviving" bullying has issues that go far beyond the result of schoolyard pranks. Seriously.

Second, in general, the larger social discussion over "bullying" muddles real distinctions among different phenomena, roughly distinguished with the labels "teasing,", "bullying", and "harassment". While they are all related to a larger, mostly unconscious, creation of a social hierarchy that even kids do to set the boundaries in the milieu of their own, somewhat separate, society, they are very different things. Yet all get tagged under the rubric "bullying", which is actually a fairly narrow phenomenon, and can be dealt with easily enough by parents, teachers, and school administrators.

Finally, I just don't think we are doing right by our children when we not only offer the chilling prospect of life-long psychological damage done by "bullying", but offer the services of state functionaries (teachers and school administrators) as intermediaries in the social world of children. While I am all for even children's social life to be more open and accommodating to difference, the reality is that it is little different from any other society. It takes time - which includes getting older - for the society of the school yard to learn to be open. Legal intervention to force an openness it might not be ready for will not create openness, but rather resentment.

This is not to say that there aren't instances where such intervention isn't warranted. On the contrary, the harassment of girls by boys and sexual and racial minorities are instances when such intervention - up to and including involving law enforcement - are necessary. That, however, isn't bullying, unless you are willing to extend that word's definition beyond recognition.

When my older daughter was in third grade, she came home sad one day. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that some kids were teasing her because she was shorter and thinner than everyone (she will be grateful for the whole thin thing in just a year or two . . .) and I told her that, the next time some dork called her "shrimp" to just say, "Well, I may be short but you're ugly and I'll grow". This adaptation of a Churchillian bon mot was not well-received, but the principle I was trying to instill, I think, is good. First, such teasing is really not worth getting one's panties in a wad. Second, it is important to push back a little. While teasing is usually done seeking some kind of response, ignoring it doesn't necessarily work; pushing back, however, is a pretty clear signal that it isn't going to be tolerated, and the particular target isn't necessarily a good one.

Giving our children the tools to function in society includes giving them a little bit of a backbone in the face of social conflict outside the boundaries of clearly defined guidelines of legally-accepted understandings of right and wrong. That, too, is a part of parenting. It isn't always easy for a parent to hear that his or her child is either the victim or perpetrator of bullying; on the other hand, giving our kids tools to deal with success with these situations is far better than turning to our schools and screaming at them to police in fine detail all the going's-on during recess.

Memo To Michael Gerson

In your latest column, you write of "[p]rotests against the construction of mosques". In Tennessee, it wasn't a "protest". It was harassment and arson.

This isn't a quirk of evangelicals and fundamentalists. Quoting someone from an ostensibly "Christian" organization (in this case, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association), has little to do with the Christian faith. You are as much a part of the problem, fuzzing the lines between specific instances - a Church in Florida seeking publicity by burning the Holy Q'uran) - with a larger phenomenon - anti-Muslim hysteria on the right that is rooted more in the usual bigotry and ignorance than in any religious ideas.

It is the fires of hate, always smoldering in this country, that are flaring up in these instances. Just call it what it is, man. That's all you need to do.

The Heart Of The Matter

President Obama is hosting face-to-face talks between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President. Listening to discussions of the President's speech last evening after an introductory dinner (that included the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan, the only Arab nations to have full relations with Israel), I heard quite a few commentators talk about how Obama was pushing hard because he sees himself as a "transformative figure". Quite beside whether those two words have any meaning, let alone how they specifically refer to Obama or Obama's view of himself, the President's approach is one I believe is long overdue.

It is really quite simple: Deal with the central issues between Israelis and Palestinians - the West Bank occupation; the status of Palestinian property confiscated after the founding of Israel in 1948; the status of Jerusalem - as well as secondary but no less important matters such as access to natural resources (most especially water) and the current blockade of Gaza.

Since, first, President Carter's successful peace negotiations between Pres. Sadat of Egypt and PM Monachem Begin of Israel in 1978, then the Oslo Accords, final agreement on these most basic and contentious issues has been postponed, although both peace processes saw themselves as constructing a framework within which larger, long-term issues and a final settlement of outstanding matters could be worked out. Both have been abandoned. The Camp David framework was rejected completely by the Reagan Administration when it came to power, leaving nothing in its place. The Oslo Accords became a tool used by Israeli hardliners to beat the late PM Yitzak Rabin with (he was assassinated by a hard-line Israeli during a peace rally), and was completely ignored by the Clinton Administration, in particular in Clinton's last-hour, personal push for a comprehensive accord in late 2000.

Rather than settle for nibbling at the edges, Obama's approach - stop dicking around and get serious - is a marvelous change. There is no way either of the parties involved can duck or hide, blame the other for failure to deal with the central bones of contention when that is all that is on the table.

On that note, let me say that one thing the Bush I Administration did that I have always admired, and wondered why it was never repeated, was carry out a threat of withholding foreign aid to Israel if it continued to build settlements on the West Bank (and, also, destroy Palestinian homes there to make room for the settlers). Then-PM Yitzak Shamir tried calling Bush's (and then Secretary of State James Baker) bluff. In a brief meeting at the White House in 1991, Bush told Rabin that the money tap was now "off". Rabin stormed out of the White House, and Washington and America, in a huff.

It is this kind of hard-line that needs to be taken. No more acrimony; no more airing of grievances, either current or ancient. The laundry list of charges and counter-charges is well-known, and recalling all of it does nothing to advance the process of negotiations. Obama is doing what Bush did, on a grander scale. He is going for the long bomb, precisely because, at this point, that is all that can be done. A final settlement will, in the end, be a boon for the two states, Israel and Palestine, as well as for the United States. No longer a running sore, the Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians will cease to function as a propaganda point.

It's Not Just The Economy, Stupid

As the discussion with Feodor suggests, I neglected an aspect of the appeal of Glenn Beck and the "Restoring Honor" rally that I should have made part of the discussion. The racial and cultural changes, based in demographic shifts, is an undercurrent of much of our contemporary moment, as it was a decade and a half ago. An aging white upper-middle class, dominant since the founding of the country, has found itself in numerical retreat demographically. The rise of popular movements granting greater social and civil rights, therefore access to power, to minorities, has offered opportunities to all sorts of folks who once stood outside the corridors of power. This whole dynamic - of a declining white power structure clinging to the last threads of its authority, by any means necessary - has has gone from a grumbling to a screeching with the Presidency of Barack Obama. While many of his supporters were and are moved in part by his place in history as our first African-American President, his detractors are even more aware of the significance. Thus, "Restoring Honor" includes "Restoring White Folk".

The so-called "culture wars" of the 1990's were at least as much about the decline of a certain version of secularized Protestant mores and the social and cultural as well as political power of white Protestants as they were about the morality of abortion, sexual morality, and the depiction of various themes in popular and fine art. Shifts in demographics have led to the gradual decline in the efficacy of appeals to these particular matters (with the exception of the general social acceptance and approval of same-sex marriages). The cultural expression of difference and its acceptance or rejection, has become far more a generational than a racial matter these days; younger whites are far more inclined to have social and cultural attitudes akin to others of their own age cohort rather than to defer to racial identity.

These shifts were bound to happen, and the reaction of the old-line power structure was predictable. Considering the violence of the southern power structure to the rather modest demands of the Civil Rights movement - there is the indelible image of spittle-flecked whites haranguing a young woman attempting to integrate the Topeka Schools; Bull Connors' dogs and fire hoses set upon a group of young people marching for voting rights for their parents - the recalcitrance of the white power structure in its dotage is understandable. Of course, the general targets now are "illegal immigrants", Muslims, and gays and lesbians.

This general cultural wariness and fear has been exacerbated by the economic malaise in which we find ourselves. I focused a bit too much on that aspect of the matter the other day to the detriment of any understanding that fills out the picture. I hope this rectifies the situation.

Strength

These two songs are the ending of Spock's Beard rock opera/concept piece Snow, about a young man whose life becomes a muddle because he is seen to be a miracle worker. Falling in love, only to be spurned, he comes close to death only to be rescued by the God he previously preached without much belief. "Wind At My Back" is a recapitulation of a theme from the end of the first act, only performed with deeper feeling because it stems from a real faith. These two pieces have served, over the years, as a way to return me to the most basic reality for me - the call of God in the midst of trouble, and that the strength for making it through comes from resting in that comfort, rather than any virtue or strength I might believe I possess.

Just wanted to share this, is all . . .

Proverbs Of Ashes

12 Your maxims are proverbs of ashes,
your defences are defences of clay. (Job 13:12)

As Job girds his loins, first against his so-called "friends" who insist that he must have done something to deserve getting crapped on by God; and second, to demand an audience before God to answer his plea, he rebukes the three who sit just outside the midden-heap, "defending" the LORD's actions.

In light on my current frustrations with (a) the pusillanimity of the Church, and (b) the exploitation of fears over our current social state by those seeking personal gain, it might be well to consider Job's budding courage in the face of the counsel of the foolish. Listening to the words of the ill-informed only muddies the waters. It is long past time for persons who believe (rather than know) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are accounted children of God through the power of the Spirit sent by the risen Christ to stand up and simply call out those who, through ignorance or a lust for power and control, would turn us from what we believe.

For someone like Glenn Beck (Glenn Beck!) to insist there is nothing "Christian" about Liberation Theology is almost unworthy of rejoinder. All the same, it would have been nice if Chris Wallace had asked Beck the liberation theology he had actually read and studied. Cone? Wilmore? Gutierrez? Boff? What about these authors is unChristian?

Beyond those questions, if he even had an answer, one should simply dismiss him. Beck is one of those people to whom Job is speaking when it is written in 13:5, "If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom!" There are others, to be sure, but this rebuke, it seems to me, is sufficient.

That part of me that continues to struggle is strengthened by the courage Job shows in telling off the counsel of the foolish, demanding his place before the Divine throne. I doubt if Job's "friends" shut up, anymore than I doubt those who claim to speak for God in our day will quiet their words of ashes and defense of clay. All the same, the Church does have the duty to make clear that, like Joshua, our House will serve the LORD.

A Word I Need To Hear

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’
John 8:31-32

Yesterday, I decided that I needed, for my own faithful sanity, to spend some time this week reflecting on the daily office. I am grateful that there is an easily accessible source for the daily lection readings.

In the past, when I have consulted this site, I have been amazed at the way some lesson has leaped off the page at me. Whether a Psalm, something from St. Paul, or one of the Gospel readings, a passage spoke to me in a way that was immediate.

Today, I am faced with the conundrum that this didn't happen.

Part of the problem is I was looking for something that would reach that place within me that is enraged by current events. I wanted something that would either dissipate or channel that anger. Instead, I got triumphalist Psalms and the beginnings of the Gentile mission in Acts; Job's apologia for God even as he sits on his midden heap covered in sores just doesn't cut it, because it is, in a way, a kind of naive faith. He hasn't challenged God yet, which would give a greater profundity and depth to his faith.

I kept returning to the passage from the Fourth Gospel, though, in particular the ending. Part of me wanted to pick it up and run with it in a particular direction, yet that just didn't feel right, so I sat and pondered the passage, and came away . . . empty.

So, I did something I realized was necessary. I prayed.

After praying, it dawned on me that I was with the crowd to whom Jesus was speaking that day when he says in verse 25, "Why do I speak to you at all?" Jesus was trying to tell these folks that he was the one they had been waiting for. They weren't getting the message they wanted, so they were all standing around saying to one another, and to him, in effect, "Huh?" This provokes Jesus to his last nerve.

That's the trouble, I think. All of us come to the Bible with baggage. Whether we are opening it for the first time, or spending time with it like an old friend, we carry our wants, our needs, our hopes, our fears with us in the desire to have our questions answered, our hopes fulfilled, our fears assuaged. Instead, we get cryptic crap like this: "I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come."(John 8:21) I will be up front - I don't want to hear this right now. I don't want a message of hope; I want a weapon I can use against others. I don't want to hear about the sacrifice I will have to make in order to be called a disciple. I want a word like a hammer to beat on those who mock the name of Christ for transient ends.

There. I said it.

Except, of course, that isn't what I really needed, I guess, because it isn't what I got. I got this passage, in particular the ending. Stripping away my pride, my self-righteousness, my vanity, I hear that I am to continue in His word to be a disciple. Before I can gird myself to oppose those who, in my estimation, drag the good name of the Church through the muck and mire, I have to hear what it takes to be a true disciple.

I need to be free of my rage, my fear, my desire to set the world aright. I need to reset my priorities, to remember that Jesus and the Kingdom he proclaimed and embodied is, in the end, God's. Not mine.

Not what I wanted to hear. Not what I want to hear. What I needed, though.

Reflections

Yesterday's rally featuring Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin speaking from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial has brought out many of the worst traits of progressives. Not just an on-going outrage at every word or phrase that doesn't quite jibe with reality; not just with every individual holding a sign that promotes some nonsense about Pres. Obama; not just the obvious reality that many who do not share the basic beliefs (such as they might be) of the rally leaders and sponsors are going to use that opportunity to advance their own agenda and get their voices heard. It is one thing to point out the obvious that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin are intelligent enough, informed enough, or committed enough to turn their obvious disdain for the Administration in to anything other than attention for themselves. It is quite another, however, to insult the tens of thousands who attended the rally, for all their varying reasons, and the perhaps millions more who watched, with sympathy, from their homes.

Think Progress was by far the worst offender in the first category. A glance at the posts yesterday, and their headlines, shows them making of the rally far more than should have been done.

Tea Partiers Rally Against Sign Bans — Except At Glenn Beck Rally

Political Rally Or Not? We Report, You Decide

Beck Rephrases His Claim President Is ‘Racist’: Meant To Say Obama Believes ‘America Is An Oppressor’

REPORT: Glenn Beck’s Philosophy Is Opposed To Everything Martin Luther King, Jr. Stood For

This lastpost title, from Friday evening, is even more outrageous for two reasons. First, it assumes, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that Beck has something as complex as a "philosophy" beyond self-aggrandizement. Second, it drags the name and honor of a revered American, Martin King, down to the level of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

Now, Beck hosting this event on the forty-seventh anniversary of the March on Washington was clearly a provocation. He managed to get Al Sharpton to take the bait; Sharpton hosted an event at the other end of the Mall. The obvious intent, to provoke some kind of solidarity between that event and this one, should have clued in anyone with intelligence and foresight to ignore it. The bait, however, was too inviting.

Beyond prompting posts and headlines that seemed to make of this event far more than it ever could have been absent left-wing outrage, we have the further spectacle of some on the left insulting not just Beck and Palin (fair game, as far as I'm concerned) but those who attended the rally as well. Consider this from Thers, posting at Fire Dog Lake:

I didn’t watch or pay any attention at all to the Developing Story of the Glenn Beck Million MOPE* March, perhaps because I’m not a superannuated paranoid Caucasian crank afflicted with an overdeveloped persecution complex and uncomfortable underpants that constrict excitingly whenever I contemplate “socialism.” Why, I’m not remotely superannuated! (The rim, it is shot, execution-style.)

It’s not, of course, that I wish to downplay the most World-Historical Significantest event in the history of doughy insane cable television lunatic hucksters yelping soppy tedious halfwit whiny bullshit to morons.

Those who attended yesterday's "Restore Honor" rally may have been morons. They may also have been political operatives seeing an opportunity to recruit volunteers. They may have been ordinary folks, like you or me, frightened by events of recent years and hearing a voice that reinforces those fears and offers the kind of validation many of us need - "You are not alone in your fears."

There is nothing moronic in being frightened by events and circumstances of recent years. It seems we are all at the mercy of forces and events beyond our control. It further seems that, no matter how hard anyone tries, the situation in our country and world - economic stagnation and violent death, a drug-fueled civil war in Mexico and a religious-fueled civil war in Iraq, the collapse of the American desire to own one's own home - there is very little any of us can do to change things. Events outpace our ability to do anything other than react. I, for one, forgive those who hear in the words of Beck and others like him, regardless of his or other's stature as anything other than self-promoting attention-seekers, the kind of reassurance we are not seeing from the corridors of power.

The March on Washington, in the midst of social and racial changes that had been over a decade in the making, reaffirmed the sense among all those of good-will that their cause was just, their goals were in line with the best of our national traditions, and that victory would come, if not tomorrow, then at some point. In seeking to alter the social landscape by granting full rights of social participation, political participation, and economic opportunity to disenfranchised African-Americans, both the leaders and marchers on that long-ago August afternoon were united not in fear, but in hope; not in resentment but in mutual upbuilding. When King spoke of justice, he spoke of it for all Americans. He saw a day when Mississippi, that most recalcitrant of southern states, would be a picnic area for little black children and little white children. He saw a day when Stone Mountain, GA - the birthplace of the Klan - would echo not with words of hate, but with the cry of freedom.

Whatever other motivations they might have, Beck and Palin offer no hope to those who hear their words. They offer no way forward. They offer no guide to get us from where we are to where we might be if we all worked together. All they offer is the counsel of fear, of division, reinforcing the latent notion that striking out in rage at the forces that keep us down as a nation is right and correct.

Had we political leaders who were more intelligent, more savvy, more wise; had we a left that wasn't so willing to be outraged by every word or phrase that come from nihilists and con-artists; had we the ability to speak a word of comfort, acknowledge the reality and ubiquity of the fear we all share, and offer a way forward, instead of a backhanded insult of disdain to those who are most afraid; had we all these things, yesterday could have been an opportunity to change the nature of our public discourse.

Instead, it continues as it has, full of bluster and hype, all meaningless. Our real problems go unaddressed. Our economy, teetering less on "double-dip recession" and more on near collapse, is not mentioned by anyone. No one seems clear eyed, confident, or willing to risk what needs to be done in order to move us forward.

If Beck and Palin can energize enough people to bring back Republican majorities in Congress (I still doubt this will happen, but anything is possible), then the country deserves the fate that awaits it. The Democrats, through their timidity, their lack of courage in the face of a political opposition that sees only the opportunity to return to power without any clear guide as to rescuing us from our current moment of national despair, will have brought the destruction upon themselves.

One wonders what might emerge from the wreckage that would ensue.

Honor

So Glenn Beck calls his little get-together a rally to restore our national honor. Please, if anyone can, tell me how our honor is restored by a carnival barker who knows absolutely nothing about anything telling a bunch of people who know even less that they aren't as stupid, puerile, racist, anti-Muslim as they have been portrayed, all the while telling them things that aren't true, that are racist, that are puerile, that are anti-Muslim.

The whole thing is a ridiculous joke. Get a bunch of people terrified of the shadow by day and the terror by night in one place, reassure them there are so many things to be afraid of, and then send them back to their separate lives reinforced in their fear and loathing of everything that is even slightly different then their own, limited, experiences.

Yeah, honor is being restored.

What Does This Mean?

Please read. When finished, please put in comments what, exactly, Broder is talking about here. Is Beck like King? Is he not like King? Are the crowds at the '63 March going to find an echo in these folks? Or perhaps a distorted, white, mirror?

I really don't understand what this column is attempting to say, other than, even nearly 50 years ago, David Broder was so important his employers wouldn't bother him while on vacation. Except when a bunch of colored people threatened to come to the nation's capital and complain that they were being treated badly. Obviously, as Broder says, a mob.

Ugh.

Hope For Healing Our Broken Nation

The signs are everywhere - our country is in deep, no question. There is inordinate attention being paid to a few voices of hate and exclusion. All the while the rest of us are told these people are representative of the rest of us, and soon we begin to believe it.

Our "leaders" seem powerless in the face of economic catastrophe and social unraveling. They look after their own, while the angry voices in the street, on the radio, on the internet, on television keep telling us that the only way to save us to exclude, to denounce, to demonize. Our President is alienating us from our traditions. Our immigrants are stealing our jobs. Our Muslims fellow-citizens are a threat.

It's not just here. As American troops leave Iraq, with that country still without a government, the low-level civil war heats up. Bombings and shootings increase, more people die, and there is literally no protection. In Afghanistan, the Taliban moves from victory to victory, leaving death and terror in their wake. Pakistan is still under water, with millions displaced and no prospect of things improving quickly.

It would be so easy to succumb to despair. It would be so easy to accept that these images and sounds, these voices and people are the only ones that count. It would be so easy to accept that our political leaders are not just fearful, but incompetent as well. It would be so easy to simply surrender, leave over this land of many other lands to those who want us to be a place we are not and can never be.

Yet, I refuse to do so. My hope does not lie in politics, our "leaders", our people, even our Constitution. My hope lies in the promise of God that, despite it all, we live under Divine Providence. The United States is greater than our present moment would indicate. While we have many faults, to be sure, we also have had moments in the past when, at its bleakest, we have managed to show ourselves better than our worst instincts. From the Founders, with their vision of a commercial Republic in which active participation was a blessing to Henry Clay's vision of a country united and growing in spite of differences through the tragic, firm gentleness of Abraham Lincoln to the compassionate noblesse oblige of Franklin Roosevelt, at those moments when all seemed lost we have had men arise who helped all of us rise to some level above the general malaise and anger. These men are indications of the possibilities that all is never lost.

I know ours will never be a perfect land. The wounds of our history - of race and the destruction of the native populations; of economic exploitation and environmental degradation; of that general human tendency to want the rest of our country to look like us, not them - run far too deep to ever be completely erased. Yet, we have certainly been better than we are now. I do not mean that phrase the way the right uses it; on the contrary, their fear- and hate-filled screeching is part of the problem, part of what could so easily lead to despair. The God in whom I believe, in whom I place my life and faith and trust, will not lead us to destruction. Certainly we have much for which to atone - our greed masked as sound economy; our bigotry masked as concern; our pride masked as concern; our hubris masked as a belief in our Divine destiny - but we still have much to offer. A chastened, more humble America would be a boon to the world.

Does Anyone Remember?

I don't think it is either naive or ridiculous to hope that a variant of James Stewart's speech during the run on the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan in It's A Wonderful Life would be a useful model for the Democrats to use as a campaign tool. On the other hand, I am so underwhelmed by the Democrats at the moment, that I really do wonder if they understand the historic opportunity they were offered in the previous national elections they won, and then pissed away.

In any event, in light of the Republican belief they will not only take over both houses of Congress but dismantle pretty much every legislative gain of the past four years (if I hear "Obamacare" one more time, I'm going to find the pollster or consultant who came up with it and punch him in the mouth) it shouldn't be too hard to remind people why they booted them out of office. Let's start with George W. Bush. Tom DeLay. Indeed, just mentioning a few names (Newt! Palin!) might serve as shorthand.

The simple reality is this - while the Democrats have stumbled badly the past six months (in particular on selling more stimulus to the American people), it was not the Democrats who created the many linked threads now wound as the rope from which our nation currently hangs. For decades we have heard that the government was the problem, that the market would solve every problem. Except, of course, when the market collapses, and the government needs to rush in and pass out checks to big banks and big businesses. Furthermore, the Obama Administration has just not done enough to explore the possibilities of further fiscal stimulus, particularly in light of the belt-tightening too many states have been forced to undergo due to legal constraints on budgeting and spending. Our current fiscal shortfall is indeed staggering when considered in and of itself. The economy is currently teetering not so much on "double-dip" as it is on near-collapse precisely because the potential gains from federal stimulus spending has been offset by the fiscal retrenchment at the state level. Demand is still low, and as the economy continues to worsen, it will go even lower.

Now is the time for bold thinking and action. None of that is happening, however, so the best we can hope for is for Democrats to remind the American people just how horrible the Republicans were, and just how much all their economic policies and principles led to our current mess, and how much their intransigence is making any attempt to make things better nearly impossible.

Of course, the distractions of gay marriage and the planned Manhattan Islamic Community Center are marvelous distractions, at least for the moment. Just as the threat of Iraq killing us all in our sleep was a wonderful distraction in mid-summer 2002 from the Enron collapse and the implications it had for the Bush Administration, some folks have found a wonderful little shiny object for everyone to look at in order to keep their eyes from the onrushing train bearing down on them.

While a holding action against ignorant nihilists regaining power is hardly a campaign slogan or tactic, precisely because it is all they currently have, I suggest the Democrats use it (although no one asked me . . .). Besides, it could be fun (Mark Foley) reminding the American (David Vitter) people just how horrible (Terri Schiavo) the Republicans were, especially in the dotage (Denny Hastert) of their reign.

Hallowed Ground

This photo is of one of many businesses within that circle of hallowed ground that protesters insist should not include a Muslim Community Center. I assume that, as a strip club serves to remind people of how sacred the bodies of the honored dead are, it has to stay. A place where people can gather to exercise, to swim, to have parties, to attend religious instruction classes, and to worship freely is an affront to the memories of the Muslims who were working in the World Trade Center that day, dying in a rain of fire and steel and glass.

Incidentally, I heard a report on NPR this morning that the anti-mosque folks, with all their red-faced hatred on full display, are feeding in to the views of extremists. So, please, continue to carry on about the community center and encourage more violence, more hatred of the United States. Play in to the hands of the terrorists by opposing nothing more than a Muslim version of a "Y".

When Hate Goes National

Mitch McConnell lied on Meet The Press yesterday. He insisted the "national debate" on the planned Islamic Center was begun by Pres. Obama. On the contrary, it was begun by the shrieking of Pam "Atlas Jugs" Geller and her google-eyed fans, most of whom wouldn't visit NYC out of fear that every New Yorker is out to kill them, con them, or give them a social disease. It makes me nuts that almost every person speaking out against the plan has no connection with Manhattan.

As far as I'm concerned this is a local issue. I am frustrated to the point of banging my head against the wall by the fact that our governor, Pat Quinn, has decided to offer his "view" on the matter. Every idiot with a mouth and an opinion seems to think it necessary to offer a view.

My mother taught me that a marvelous human virtue is minding one's own business. If something has nothing to do with you, offering your view (particularly when said offering isn't requested) is grossly impolite. That there are those who think, in the age of the internet, that the barriers that exist in the real world are somehow less important, giving tacit permission to any- and everyone to speak up and speak out on questions that have nothing to do with them. Indeed, many of those who choose to speak out believe their views have a great deal of weight - people like Newt Gingrich and Carly Fiorina. It just floors me that some person sitting in Montana or Arkansas or where ever believes that his or her view on a building project they will likely never see outside a news report on television is part of some "national conversation". Really, it's an example of the breakdown of etiquette of mammoth proportions.

Somehow, the right believes they have a winner with this one. Let them think so. I'm with Ted Olson on this, the constant screeching and spittle-spraying hate is only going to turn people off. More important, if the Republicans really believe it is their bounden duty to tell the rest of the world how to live their lives, they should remember that this whole ginned-up fake controversy is nothing more than the Terri Schiavo case writ large. That worked out really well for them.

Fear

On a very cold March day in 1933, something that had been sorely needed happened that changed this country for the better. Having won the Presidency because of the abject failure of Herbert Hoover to deal with the collapse of the nation, Franklin Roosevelt - bis legs braced so he could stand at the podium to give his first inaugural address standings - said a few things that can be most wonderfully summed up with that memorable phrase concerning fear. In doing so, Roosevelt did something that endeared him to the hearts of the American people. He told them the truth they knew in their hearts, showing that he understood what lay at the heart of the American malaise.

Not too long after, in the midst of the near-collapse of the banking industry, he did something else that was unprecedented. He got on the radio to tell them what his Administration, with authority granted by Congress, was doing to keep the banks alive. He did so not in the funereal tones of approaching apocalypse or the haughty tones of a professor. Rather, he explained the complicated nature of the bank holiday, why it was necessary, and most important what the American people needed to do to help in a way that did not insult the intelligence of the American people. In this, and many other speeches and "fire-side chats", Roosevelt showed an appreciation for a basic virtue of democracy. While economics had become quite baroque, only to become nearly unintelligible to most people by our time, Roosevelt talked about the banking crisis, and many other issues, as if he understood them; and more important, he talked about them as if it were possible the American people could understand them.

If there is a most important difference between that time and ours, between that man and our current President, it lies right there. During the campaign, Barack Obama seemed to demonstrate a visceral faith in the American people, their intelligence and insight, and to bank on the voter's trust in his willingness to work with them to make this country run again. Since assuming the Presidency, and most especially since having his first bruising battles with Congressional Republicans (and one or two recalcitrant Democrats), he has retreated behind a wall of silence, and worse, compromise. As the country continues to stagnate, he speaks of "recovery". As social and cultural issues flay nerves frayed by economic distress, he has attempted to appease those who will never be appeased, and to give pat answers on topics that need more explanation.

The American people are afraid right now. We are, many if not most of us, afraid that despite our best efforts and the President's best intentions, headed toward further dislocations and decline. Rather than rallying the American people to work together, the President has operated as if the American people, their feelings and thoughts, are secondary. "Trust me," it seems, despite all the evidence that trust no longer exists, continues to be the theme the President offers the American people.

The screeching of so much of the country on the Manhattan Islamic center project, on illegal immigration, on gay rights are symptomatic not so much of the intrinsic importance of these questions for our nation's future as they are of the knife's edge upon which the nation's emotions are balanced. We are a people terrified of pretty much everything, and this fear is being played upon by political opportunists and demagogues to undermine the possibility of making this country better, of healing our economy and social and civil and physical infrastructure.

If the President would acknowledge this fear; if he would simply tell people what they know inside is true but have yet to hear from a person in authority, things might change for him. It seems, however, that he has lost touch with that electoral base that is most important - the emotional connection with those who saw in him the promise of something new. Not "the Messiah" the loons on the right talk about; just a President who made an emotional connection concerning possibility and promise that resonated with so many Americans. This emotional connection is now gone, and with it much of the good will and forbearance the American people had for the President.

Yet, really, all he needs to do is something that hasn't happened in a generation or more. All he needs to do is, in a few speeches, let the American people know that he knows their fear. Tell them what they are afraid of, and explain, as best he can without patronizing or insulting them, what he has done and will do to address the real issues at the heart of the American fear.

I just wonder if he either can or will do it.

More On The Power Of Prayer

I've been in a serious funk/borderline depressed the past couple weeks. Not to belabor the point, a combination of factors had led to the point where I felt helpless, trapped, and alone.

The past few days, however, has seen a sea-change. I've reached clarity, separating out those things that I can control from those I cannot, and reaching a healthier, if not exactly pacific, place in my mind. While talking about it with my wife has been a huge factor, I am convinced that even more has been . . . that she told me she has been aware of my changed mood and attitude and has been praying for me. After I awoke this afternoon, and she came home, we sat and talked. It is impossible to relate how much more relaxed, more clear, I am in my mind than I have been.

Because someone was praying for me.

While immediate change is not possible, I do think that both clarity and possibility exist, at least in the near term. Being in the midst of a busy, eleven-straight-day work mini-marathon (and for those who do not work overnights, eleven days in a row will take a toll on your life and mental health, trust me) has not helped, but I am now not quite a week through it, which does help. Also, getting my old, Sunday-Thursday night schedule back helps, too (for some reason, management decided to change everyone's schedule without consulting anyone; from growls to howls, the reaction hasn't exactly been positive, so, at least for the next couple weeks I will be back on my old schedule).

While I believe that prayer is more than simply a way to "fix" our moods, to "cure" those with illness, to make our minds at ease in our bourgeois discomfort, I am nevertheless convinced that personal intervention does occur because of the prayerful please of others. I am grateful for it, and wanted to acknowledge it publicly.

Proof!

It's been hot and muggy for the past two weeks. Therefore, global warming is real.

France Does The Gypsy Switch

The Roma, more commonly referred to as "Gypsies", are among the more despised ethnic groups of Europe, for a variety of reasons. The Nazis targeted them for extermination. The communist governments of Hungary and Romania tried to eradicate them.

Now, France is shipping their Roma population back to central Europe. You gotta love those open-minded Europeans.

Sacred Ground

If I hear those two words used in reference to the World Trade Center site one more time, I'm going to scream.

Just for reference, when the US signed and ratified a treaty with the Lakota after they kicked the US Cavalry's collective butts, part of it left the Black Hills as Sacred Ground for the Lakota, which the US would honor in perpetuity. Then, gold was discovered there, and all of a sudden there were all sorts of reasons to abrogate the treaty. Today, with Mt. Rushmore there, what was sacred ground for one people is now a tourist trap for another.

So, spare me all the crocodile tears about sacred ground. It's a hole in the ground. The best way to honor the dead is to live fully and honorably not cowardly and hate-filled.

In Which I Copy And Paste An Entire Post From Another Blogger

Here it was. Now, here it is:

For me, the most depressing thing about contemporary politics is how despite everything that has transpired in reality, in Villager Years, which are like Dog Years only more gristly, it is always and forever October 2001 and George Doubleyew Shithead Reigns Eternal.

A-fucking-men.

Adding, if you detect a tad bit of anger, frustration, what-have-you, you are one hundred percent correct.

Just Asking

Has the right lost its mind on the Cordoba House? Seriously. These same Tea Party conservatives who insist they sleep with the Constitution under their pillows at night seem to forget that freedom of religion includes Muslims (of course, they also want to get rid of the constitutional clause that allows for birthright citizenship and simply repeal the 14th Amendment outright).

In the midst of all sorts of troubles needing serious attention, we're getting this kind of crap. I truly wonder about this country some days.

One Step Up, Two Back

Since the initial engagement with China in 1979, the argument that our engagement will benefit them socially and culturally has been trumpeted as part of the intangible benefits that will accrue from mutual engagement. A generation later, and most folks are still waiting for real social and cultural change.

This article offers part of the same, tired nonsense. This is not to suggest that we shouldn't have formal relations with communist China. On the contrary, ignoring them for thirty years was insanity. All the same, we shouldn't kid ourselves that a society as old and deeply averse to change, in particular change coming from outside the cultural boundaries of China, will be open to non-Chinese social and cultural norms.

Furthermore, I have always been of the opinion that we should formally recognize Taiwan as an independent nation-state, supporting their presence in the UN. Also, we should open formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, lifting the generations old embargo (the sugar lobby isn't a big fan of the open market competition from Cuban sugar). If engagement can lead to change in China, why not Cuba? After all, it isn't like the embargo has succeeded in Cuba, right?

Holding up a change in one particular practice of domestic justice in China as indicative of a sea-change is the kind of thing that people who want to see change grasp without any real thought.

The Power Of Prayer

I was truly moved and honored today when one of the older gentlemen at Cornerstone UMC came up to me and invited me to join him with a small group for prayer before the 10:30 worship service. I walked in to the prayer room, just off their worship space, not quite knowing what to expect, and was even more moved and honored after I sat down and joined with them. I came away from this short experience more moved, and even changed a little, than by any spiritual experience in recent memory.

These men sat and prayed. They prayed for this person and that person. They prayed for individuals and the church and the Church. They asked for God's presence and peace for those suffering. Most of all, what I felt in that little room, with those four other men, was a sense of the presence and the power - the real power and might and majesty - of God. The clarity of the voices lifted in prayer, the real yearning for the Spirit to descend, for the presence of God in the worship and lives of the people of Cornerstone UMC was really moving.

I don't know if this is a formal or informal thing, but I think it is the kind of thing more churches need to do. I know it meant a lot to me.

But . . But . . . I APPROVE Of Him

Shorter David Broder:
"Tom Vilsack can't be a dumb putz because I have said and continue to say wonderful things about him."

On The Messy Death Of Proposition 8

As California's Proposition 8 moves more and more noisily and messily toward that fabled and oft-mentioned dustbin of history, I wanted to discuss a sound-bite I heard on an NPR story last week. After the verdict, at a rally in support of the law, a speaker said that the courts has taken away the "civil right to vote" by invalidating it. This kind of thing, I am quite sure, resonates not only with supporters of Prop 8, but supporters of legal segregation and all sorts of other current and former discriminatory legal social structures. That's part of the problem with our system of government. We are, in the end, a Republic of laws not of human beings; a Republic, not a democracy. Direct democracy, as practiced in California is part of that state's many problems.

One of the many lessons that should have emerged from the many court battles over racial equality (but apparently need to be learned again and again) is that there is a legal limit to the lengths to which states me express their social preferences. Respect for the legal rights of others is a bar to discrimination, even those kinds of discrimination that are enacted with the full consent of the people.

As for discounting the supporter's "findings of fact", the judge was explicit that it concerned the whole question of standing, important in any legal case. Not just anyone can sue; an individual or group must show that direct harm will ensue either by a law's enactment or repeal; since there was no factual basis for the claims of harm, the judge dismissed the claims of harm and therefore standing. This bodes well moving forward. Also, it seems that an appeal can only be made by the State of California, officials of which refuse to do so, which clouds the future of any appeals process.

Official Political Prediction Post - Please Bookmark For November

I have this recurring fantasy in which, after the fall mid-term elections, I end up on this or that chat show because, unlike the professional pundits, I managed to call the election results correctly months before the elections actually occurred (a boy can dream, right?). In order to do that, though, I need to actually post those predictions, right? Well, here goes.

Both Houses of Congress will remain Democratic, with the party gaining slightly in each. Governorships are harder to call, dependent upon a different set of concerns (for example, in Illinois, corruption at the state level and state legislative inaction are as big as the moribund state of our economy), but I have a suspicion that the Democratic trend will continue (I still think that here in Illinois Gov. Quinn, as well-meaning but ineffectual governor, should have stepped aside; he didn't so, oh well).

Now, here's why I'm swimming against the general tide of opinion on this one. It's really simple and it involves a couple assumptions and a view of the electorate that, for the most part, has held pretty steady. It also comes with the caveat that political campaigns are important as well as the usual warning about unforeseen events causing massive voter shift.

First, while the voters are unhappy at the moment with the institution of Congress, they are even more unhappy with Republican Party than the Democratic Party. The Democratic leadership keeps offering up legislation that is generally popular, and the Republicans keep voting against it. While it might seem like the party has gained a certain amount of legislative leverage this way, they really haven't. They also have no plan, substantive or legislative, moving forward. They are offering nothing as an alternative except the same thing we've been hearing for decades - tax cuts and killing people in far away lands.

This leads to another assumption, before stating which, however, I need to make clear my view of the electorate. Right now, most voters aren't paying attention except to the realities that (a) the economy sucks; and (b) the parties are fighting over things that have little to do with (a). When they start paying attention, for the most part, for all that anti-incumbency seemed to dominate in primaries, the incumbency effect will certainly play in to the hands of the Democrats. Coupled with the utter lack of any agenda whatsoever on the part of the Republicans except for those Tea Party candidates who want to party like it's Berlin in 1933, the Democrats, providing they are intelligent enough to nationalize the campaign (not always a safe bet, to be sure, but still possible) should skate to comfortable margins of victory nationally.

We are at the beginning of one of those basic sea-changes in political opinion that those poli-sci types call "realignment". The 1994 Republican Congressional victory was not the beginning of a Republican trend, but the culmination of the weak but steady preference for that party that had been on-going since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968; it was, in other words, toward the end of one party's cycle of power rather than the beginning of it. Twelve years of Republican control of Congress, with the addition of eight years of George W. Bush as President, and the past two years of the Republicans in Congress opposing any- and everything the President and the Democratic leadership offered is not so much a strategy as it is a sign of desperation. They hope to keep the country screwed up so the voters will blame the party in power and turn around and vote them back in to office. Since it is clear enough which party wants to help and which party does not, combined with the general national Democratic trend, the utter vacuousness of the Republican Party ideologically (save Social Security? didn't George Bush get spanked on that back in 2005?), I think that as long as the Democrats don't do anything truly stupid (OK, again, not always a safe bet), the election results, while certainly stunning to DC insiders, will go this way.

How Not To Talk About Niebuhr

I have been thinking for quite a while about the appropriation of the name, if not the actual thought, of Reinhold Niebuhr, in our public discourse (he emerged back in the early 1990's when Hillary Clinton, then just the wife of the then Governor of Arkansas, revealed that he and his Union Theological Seminary colleague Paul Tillich had been on her reading list in high school and college) when I ran across an interview with E. J. Dionne and David Brooks (two towering theologians) by Krista Tippett on the NPR program "Speaking of Faith".

All things considered, attempting to discuss the relevance of a theologian as nuanced and complicated as Niebuhr with any journalist is a difficult proposition. In this case, considering the intellects involved, the discussion spans the gamut from A to C. It is also disappointing to consider how many serious commentators on Niebuhr there are that Ms. Tippett could have interviewed, even on a subject as relatively fluffy as whether or not Obama "gets" Niebuhr, or whether or not Niebuhr is still relevant.

Just an example of how truly stupid the discussion really is, Brooks chimes in very early by insisting that Niebuhr would opposed the then-still-a-bill stimulus package before Congress, due to his skepticism concerning the beneficial effects of social engineering. The problems with Brooks' statement are manifold, not the least of them being mischaracterizing the stimulus' goal - fiscal economic stimulus rather than social engineering - but I would prefer to focus on the way Brooks turns Niebuhr's skepticism toward social improvement on its head. For some reason, conservatives love to trot out that old bugaboo "the law of unintended consequences", which in some respects exists in germ in many of Niebuhr's statements concerning the limited benefit that comes from any attempt at social engineering via institutions. While his criticism of the then-regnant liberal belief that social tinkering might just eliminate various ills, whether they are poverty or war or ignorance, certainly seems like the kind of nonsense one reads in modern conservative writings, in fact, his position was far more nuanced.

He viewed with skepticism the seeming utopian claims of liberals concerning the efficacy of reform via social institutions (thus his first major work, a criticism from the left of social engineering and the optimism of a previous generation of liberals is entitled Moral Man and Immoral Society). Yet, he never doubted that social tinkering was not only necessary, but indeed enjoined by what he called, in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, the "love ethic", or variously the "love commandment". In other words, as Christians, we are never to succumb to the false prophecy that this or that social program, or even social organization (capitalism, communism, what-have-you) will bring in the reign of peace and justice. Yet, we are not, precisely because we are enjoined to love our neighbors unconditionally, supposed to oppose any action whatsoever. Indeed, we must strive after justice always with the understanding the results will fail to live up to the Divine justice we encounter in the resurrected Christ.

This far more nuanced approach to the question, it seems to me, shows that if Brooks has actually read Niebuhr, he has only read one book. Even then, I get the sense he really didn't understand what he was reading.

Opposing Nothing (Oopsie Fixed)

According to TPM, 68% of Americans oppose the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. So, it's probably a good thing that New York Muslims aren't going to be doing that.

Every once in a while, the American people fall for crap, but since they are opposing something that isn't going to happen, I fell a little better.

An included sidebar, as it were - AFA's insistence that no more mosques be built in the US is a bit much. Kind of like the Saudi's outlawing Christian churches, the Bible, and all that. But, then again, these are people who are immune to irony. Hatred is so much easier.

Back!

We finally got internet service at the house. Regular blogging to resume tomorrow.

I really missed the internet.

Reading Reinhold

As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I have been reading through my little collection of writings by Reinhold Niebuhr. I will admit I came to them with the intent of finding his almost total irrelevance to our current social and ethical predicaments. On the contrary, for all his faults and limitations, he is, it seems to me, a voice not heard as clearly as he should be. Nearing the end (only 20 pages left!) of The Nature and Destiny of Man: Vol. 1, Human Nature I am amazed at the depth and nuance he brings to his Christian anthropology, his assertion both of the promise of humanity and the limitations under which we all, singly and as members of social groups suffer. Indeed, I was surprised, as I read his An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, to find that he manages to turn the table on those whom he calls "moralists" (leading lights of American liberal theology in the 1920's; he singles out Shirley Jackson Case, it would seem, as an object lesson) and show how the impossibility of ever truly fulfilling what he Niebuhr calls "the love ethic" of Christianity makes it that much more relevant, not as an ideal toward which we should strive, but as an ever present source of both possibility and judgment. The final chapter of that short book alone is worth all the weeks of reading him.

After I finish the second volume, I hope to read through two longish commentaries upon Niebuhr, one by Christopher Lasch in The True and Only Heaven, the other an overview by Gary Dorrien in the second of his his three volume history of American liberal theology (it is interesting indeed, yet also quite correct, that Dorrien would lump Niebuhr in with the liberals, those of an earlier generation he treated with such disdain) in order to clarify some of my own thoughts on Niebuhr's limitations. I have benefited greatly from my reading and would commend him to any and all who are interested in a marvelously deep, nuanced approach to understanding both the promise and pitfalls of coming to terms with both sin and grace, ethics and politics, in our individual and collective life.

Christian Freedom

I have been giving a whole lot of thought in my absence from the internet to the whole concept of Christian freedom, in particular the freedom from fear. St. Paul's formula - "we are freed for freedom's sake" - applies, it seems to me, most clearly in that aspect of our collective life as the church in which we are confronted by those things that cause dread. Fear of loss of prestige, fear of loss of life, fear, indeed of fear.

Yet, of what are we to be afraid? Of death? The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has, as that same St. Paul noted, removed the sting of death. Since social prestige shouldn't even be on the list of our social wants or desires, any loss of that particular benefit is really a gain.

Yet, ours is a terrified community. We do not speak out for fear of offending some. We do not address the realities of hatred and rage for fear it will be directed upon us. We hide our many wondrous gifts under various bushels in order to keep them from being attacked by those who won't or can't understand them.

While it may sound silly, I have been giving thought to this whole thing because I have come to discover yet another television series - Supernatural - that deals with the confrontation with evil in a way that is surprising. A pair of brothers, raised as "hunters" after instances of supernatural evil, face these spirits and demons and demigods with a confidence and even bravado that is not at all forced. While they recognize that others are indeed fearful in the face of demon possession or the presence of an angry, vengeful spirit, they themselves treat these creatures as nothing more or less than opponents to be defeated. They face them without fear because they know that they can be defeated.

The Church, and the churches, far too often, do not really know that evil does not have the last word. We cower and cringe, afraid even to proclaim the Good News because someone, somewhere, might be offended, or angered, or question its validity. Yesterday, Rev. Matt Johnson gave a speech on his recent work over the past two years connecting with the tiny Methodist Church in Lithuania. Comprising six congregations with only six hundred members, the church does not yet have official status, yet is known throughout the tiny Baltic Republic as "the little church that helps people." Matt told the story of one person, named Vitas, a border guard (and national hero who fought off the attempt of the old Soviet Union in 1991 to reimpose occupation after Lithuania declared independence), who spied a small building with the cross and flame on the door. deciding, for no particular reason he could name, to visit that church, he took his young son with him the next day. Now, he is one of the six Methodist clergy in Lithuania, reaching out to those who exist outside the confines of social acceptability.

When American Christians whine about a government being anti-religious or anti-Christian, they really have no idea what they are talking about. The decades of communist oppression rendered Christianity a weak reed indeed, Jesus no more than a tortured soul promising deliverance from our troubles only in death. The hope and grace embodied in the risen Christ (in many ways part of our unique Wesleyan heritage as a people called Methodist) is something new, life-affirming, vital and constructive in a land that has suffered far too long under the brutal yoke of tyranny. From this one example alone (which could be multiplied in a variety of forms in a variety of lands) the lie to the anti-Christian, and fearful Christian ideology is given clearly enough.

We American Christians have had it so soft for so long, we really have no idea how to act in a situation in which we must preach the Word to a world whose ears have been stripped away. We flail like fish on a streambank trying to reset ourselves to a time when what we had to say resonated with those around us, failing again and again. We have forgotten that the message of faith and love and hope given flesh in the crucified and risen Christ challenges even our most self-satisfied sense of comfort, let alone the anxieties of a nation and society and culture in crisis and decline. Rather than refuse to hear of that decline, the Church has an opportunity to speak a word of peace in the midst of the turmoil that surrounds us.

Yet, we shiver and quake with dread.

Stories like Matt's give me hope that the message of the Gospel can still resound with an otherwise bourgeois, cultured people. It gives me faith to believe the Church can speak a word of peace in the midst of the turmoil of our present chaos. It assures me that the love of God for all creation is still there, even for an American Empire on the fast slide downhill, a reed to which we can cling without the illusions of national exceptionalism or the sin of our unique blessedness by the Divine.

In freedom, we can preach release to those captive by our now two-generation old lie that we Americans will be, forever, the Great Power of the world, a lie we can no longer sustain.

Yet Another Fun Week Still With No Internet

A Federal District Court tossed California's Proposition 8 out this week and with no internet access all I have are news reports on NPR. It seems that the judge not only tossed it, he didn't even acknowledge as judicial fact the facts presented by supporters of Prop 8, something that is usually unheard of. Some folks are saying this is a serious, reversible error, and that may be true.

Bully for him, though.

I swear I live on the only spot on the map where the guy in that commercial who wanders around saying, "Can you hear me now?" would get dead air.

See What Happens When I'm Away

The whole flap early this week concerning Andrew Breitbart (how did "bright" get inserted in to the name of someone so obviously dim?) and Ms Sharrod from the Agriculture Department is a marvelous example of why the Democratic Part needs to get its collective head out of its rectum, and as it is standing erect realize it has a pair of testicles, and tell Republicans, in a loud, clear voice to STFU. Obama looked bad, Vilsack needs to be canned, Breitbart should never, ever, ever be listened to by anyone other than Sean Hannity ever again, and Ms. Sharrod should tell the President, the VP, the Secretary of Agriculture, and anyone else, to kiss her beautiful black ass.

I've been reading through my moderately sized Reinhold Niebuhr section of my personal library on my enforced hiatus from the internet - Moral Man and Immoral Society, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Beyond Tragedy, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness and just started the first volume, "Human Nature", of The Nature and Destiny of Man. Who knows what will come of it.

Finally, I have a question and I am almost afraid to ask it - why is the Church so afraid? Why is it afraid to proclaim release to the captives? Why is it afraid to call out those who drag its good name through the mud? Why is it afraid of offending the ignorant and worldly powerful? Why is it afraid to answer this question? Why is it afraid to hear the voices crying in the wildernesses of Haiti and the Congo, of Myanmar and China, on the streets of the southside of Chicago and Detroit whose lives and suffering are an ongoing protest against any Christian pretensions of an easy faith and clear conscience?

Jesus was crucified, not castrated, folks. We are the body of Christ and it is time someone was the Savior's balls.

House Keeping

Well, no internet service at the new place until July 26. I'm sitting at Panera on Randall Road in Elgin at the moment.

I discovered last week, or perhaps the week before (it's been hectic so forgive my imprecision) that someone singled this blog out as violating Blogger's terms of service. Since I can still publish, etc., I don't think there's a problem, but I am curious as to whom, and why.

Anyway, I am still alive, just waiting for central Kane County, Illinois to come up to date is all. Hope your summer is going well, because my enforced vacation from the internet and all things bloggy has been more than fun. Be well, and God Bless.