Advent I

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. - 2 Peter 3:8-10

Advent is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ. - Thomas Merton

So it begins.  Our journey through the Christian calendar, with time now tuned to God's action for the creation so beloved God in Christ came down to live God's love with us and for us, begins not only the period where we wait for the birth of the Christ-child.  We also are called to wait and watch because the work begun with Christ so long ago continues; the end of the story is yet to come, and each moment is full of the promise of God's recreation.

 As we recall the birth of the promised Messiah, we also long for the final completion of God's Divine work in Christ through the Spirit.  We look back, of course; what else is the time before Christmas but one long season of nostalgia?  We share stories of Christmas's past, of get-togethers and presents and parties.  We remember what it was to be a child on Christmas morning, the overflowing stockings, the presents stacked underneath the tree, sometimes spilling out in to the room.  While nostalgia has been called the antithesis of real memory, it does serve us by reminding us that this is a time apart, a day removed from other days.

Yet, to be truly faithful, we should also hear the call to look ahead.  We need to remember that God's promise made human in Christ is not yet complete.  We are, all of us, a work in progress.  Advent, a time of waiting and preparation for something to come, should not just be about parties and decorating and recalling years past; just as we look forward to the celebration of the birth of the Christ child, we should also be looking forward to that moment when Christ comes to call all creation by name, remaking what was in to what it all can be in and through the Spirit, in the name of the Son to the glory of the Father.  No apocalyptic bloodlust, no chiliastic destruction of the sinful and godless, the promised return of Christ is nothing more or less than the promise to complete what has already begun in and through Christ for all creation: to make of it what God has always intended, to live and be for the Glory of God.

To be honest, however, we should not ignore than this is not some sweet feeling of peace; Scripture is filled with the words of Jesus promising a refining by fire.  To rid our lives, to rid all creation, of the sin that keeps us from full participation in the life of God in Christ through the Spirit is a painful process of death.  We die to our own needs and wants.  We die to the siren song of the delights of the flesh.  We die to the seductive whispers of the promise of power and all the glories that can come through it.  We are called even to sever those ties most dear to us: our families and friends, our spouses and children.  These, like all the rest, are temptations, empty promises of security in a world filled with unrest.  Let me be clear: the family, like the state, like work, like friendship, even the comforts of routine, can be a trap, a way to rest in peace as the world around us burns.  When God in Christ calls us, we are called to leave behind even those most dear to us.  As the world is made new around us, as we hear Christ beckoning us to join in the work of bringing that new creation more fully to life, every thing in our lives is the price we must pay.  The pain we endure when we answer with joy the call of Christ in our lives can be devastating.

This First Sunday of Advent, as we begin, again, to wait and watch, to hear the words of St. Peter in Scripture reminding us that God is patient yet persistent, we should also hear the words of St. Peter that say all things shall pass away.  All things.  God in Christ is calling us even now to live this out, and the price we pay, our own lives, is far higher than we can imagine.  As Thomas Merton reminds us, Advent is a call to begin ridding ourselves of those parts of us that have not yet been brought under the reign of Christ in our lives.  The world remade, the new creation, the promise of fellowship, these are possible in the New Heaven and New Earth that God in Christ through the Spirit is, even now, preparing for all that is.  It is, alas, not yet. Hearing the Advent words "wait" and "watch" are not only liturgical calls to prayer; they are calls to renew our vigilant work, bringing the Kingdom of God here and now, thinning the wall between our sinful time and God's promised New Creation.  This call demands we set all to one side.

Are we ready?

Connected Connectionalism: The United Methodist Church In The Age Of Social Media

The arrival of The Social Network, the quasi-libelous pseudo-biopic of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has fueled quite a bit of discussion over the limits and potential of social media in general, as well as what they may already be doing to us. I have read several of the better instances of such reflections, and concluded that they tend to be woven of authorial narcissism. Reflecting either wariness of potential control by invisible forces of which we are ignorant or openness to possibility without proper caution, these reflections, like Fincher's film, tell us far more about those who present them to us than they do both the limitation and potential of the media themselves.

As a United Methodist, one great advantage I recognized fairly early is the way social media facilitate connection. On the most mundane level, Facebook allows individuals to create a network of individuals with whom they can choose to interact, choosing the limits of that interaction, opening themselves more or less to the larger world by choice. While it does have limitations and the potential for hazard (particularly for children), this is no less true than any other way of socializing. The oft-repeated warnings that the communities created by the various networks of "friends" on Facebook can lead to the false impression of a deepening understanding; that any virtual interaction creates a set of expectations and assumptions that cannot be sustained by real-world experience; that transferring our understanding of friendship to this new form of interaction falsifies both our original ideas concerning friendship as well as the nature of our interactions on digital platforms are all important to bear in mind. They should not deter us, however, from realizing that the various networks are our creations.

Having been on Facebook for about two years now, I have seen the potential of these intentional communities of choice in any number of ways. Contrary to the dire warning presented by Zadie Smith at the close of her essay "Generation Why?" - "The Social Network is not a cruel portrait of any particular real-world person called “Mark Zuckerberg.” It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore." - is not borne out by experience. As a platform providing opportunities for interaction, it offers users the ability to create their own ways of presenting themselves; most Facebook users are familiar with the plethora of "quizzes" ("What's color reflects your personality?"; "Who were you in a past life?") that were created, by and large, by teenage girls. As Facebook is not only a tool for users, but also a tool for its investors to make money, most users are aware that the amount of information shared on Facebook should always be considered with at least one eye jaundicedly gazing at the potential for exploitation.

All the same, we have before us a tool that should be used to the fullest extent to connect us. As United Methodists, always talking about "connectionalism", we have in Facebook in particular an example of what connectionalism could really look like. We have a tool that can be used to get the Word out. We have a tool to create communities for mission work, for Bible study, even for creating worship communities on-line.

Sad to say, our usual ways of thinking and acting as "church", locally and in the connection, make us wary of tools that have the potential to grow outside the control of the authority of the denomination. The Call to Action Commission final report (.pdf), conceived in fear, seeking for solutions in methods already abandoned by the business community, utilizing a vocabulary that does not reflect our Wesleyan heritage, our tradition of profound theological reflection, or the reality that "vitality" is reflected in connection itself as much as any set of criteria open to direct statistical analysis, fails at precisely this point. Even more than its desire to focus intention on undefined "vital congregations", it ignores the social and cultural context in which we live, and how we interact.

There is potential for re-envisioning church, as well as gathering information about church, that is simply not on the radar of the authors of Call to Action - the way we are already creating new ways of being together with the digital tools we all have in our homes.

What Rhymes With Leadership?

In the report detailing the Council of Bishops' adoption of the Call to Action Steering Committee's Final Report, there is a section that should disturb any United Methodist who loves the Church and questions the underlying assumptions used by those who prepared this report.

Fred Miller, president of The Chatham Group consulting firm and a member of First United Methodist Church in Chatham, Mass., cautioned bishops that values-based organizations such as denominations often struggle with handling data that conflicts with their own values—and therefore don’t deal well with reality.

“Organizations that work really well deal with brutal facts,” he said. “Leaders don’t wait for permission to lead. At some point, it has to be done by the bishops; it can’t be done by outsiders.”

Mr. Miller, who has donated his services to coach the bishops as they process the Call to Action report, outlined characteristics of groups that make good decisions: They have clear goals, have no more than six to 10 people and are careful to hold one another accountable. By contrast, he said, the United Methodist Church depends on a law-making body of 1,000 delegates “making speeches” every four years at General Conference.

“The real problem is a [church] culture that fears change,” Mr. Miller said. And sometimes, he added, practices have to change before a culture itself will change.(link added)

Parsing this mash of consultant-speak leads to some unsettling thoughts, and some questions that need answering. On an abstract level, I would maintain that there are no such things as "brutal facts". Facts are the most ephemeral things imaginable. The figures gathered by the surveys conducted can only be used to answer the questions put to them. If the questions are wrong, the answers you get back are going to be wrong. As I see little evidence of any serious discussion of the larger social and cultural context within which the church currently exists, any statistical analysis is going to be flawed.

Second, the whole business about "leaders don't wait to lead." One would think that an exhortation such as that would be seen as a rebuke to the Council. Yet, one can ask, I think, "lead where?" Or maybe, "Lead away from what?" Perhaps part of the problem here is the vision of the Bishops as "leaders". They are, in an administrative sense, to be sure. The real leaders of our denomination, however, are the local congregations. Not the pastors under appointment, but the whole congregation - the pastors and staff, lay leadership and membership. Those are the leaders. Addressing issues of the challenges that face our denomination start there, not with the Council of Bishops. Real leaders don't keep looking over their shoulders to see if anyone is following them.

Finally, the most unsettling quote concerns the denigration of General Conference. It's nice that the Council hired a consultant who voices such disregard for our traditions and our most important large-scale institutions. More important, our tradition of openness, a kind of democratic polity that is open to all (remember, anyone can submit a petition to General Conference for consideration by one of the committees), is our greatest asset. If nothing else, it allows us, as United Methodists, to remember every four years, that all the talk about connectionalism isn't a bunch of hoo-ha. It's a very real thing, embodied in our law-making institution of General Conference.

Mistaking that quadrennial gathering for our version of leadership is a fundamental error. No one, I think, looks to General Conference for leadership. It is where we as United Methodists gather to chart a general course for our church, to be sure, but in the broadest terms because ours is a church that crosses languages and nations and ethnicities and cultural traditions.

The disdain for difference embedded in the quote concerning General Conference really bothers me, even more than the nonsense about "brutal facts" and "leadership". If this is the quality of consultation The Chatham Group offers, I'm just glad it was offered for free. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

New Life

Before I write another word of criticism of the Call to Action Steering Team's final report, I think it only fair to offer, with all due humility, an alternative vision for moving forward as a denomination.

Before I do that, though, I also think it is necessary to spell out a major error on the part of CtoA. There has certainly been a steady downward trend in membership in the United Methodist Church, and the number of incoming members has been too slow to mask the aging nature of our congregations. All the same, what the final report fails to note is these are general social and cultural trends, as well as reflective of basic statistics of our population.

The largest population cohort is the Baby Boomers, roughly speaking those born between the years 1946 and 1964. The reason our congregations are aging is our population is aging.

More broadly, younger people are not only abandoning the mainline churches. In general, all churches are seeing dwindling numbers. Even the evangelical and Pentecostal denominations that saw such massive growth two decades ago are starting to feel the effects from a general, national trend toward secularism. While we can sit and debate who is at fault, if one sees it as something worth mourning, these larger social and cultural trends - an aging population; fewer younger people who also have fewer ties to institutional churches, or religion in general - need to be admitted as major obstacles to any attempt at reform.

Keeping these facts in mind, we should nevertheless affirm as United Methodists our heritage as outlined by Albert Outler in his discussion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Keeping our eyes on Scripture, delving in to our tradition, using the gift of reason, and listening and learning to the experiences of many people offer opportunities for doing and being Church in all sorts of ways. We should also remember that we are not about our work; we are the Body of Christ, abroad in the world, living the hope that the new life in Christ brings to all of us. While we should certainly focus on building the spiritual tools of our churches for doing this work through Bible Study, reflection on the historic doctrines of the Church as well as the deep wells of our Wesleyan heritage, we should never forget that these are means to the end, not of vital congregations, but being the Body of Christ.

There is no set of metrics that determine "best practices" for making disciples. The Spirit beckons, Jesus calls whom he will, and the Kingdom will come. We need to be open to all the ways God is calling us to be a people called Methodist. Sometimes that means nurturing small communities in isolated pockets that can barely sustain themselves; sometimes that means reaching across the miles to gather together via social media or other digital platforms, creating intentional communities in which members support one another even if they have never met face-to-face. It might mean fostering within local congregations a variety of talents and gifts for outreach.

We need to see our churches not as places or worship, although we do worship there. They should be places where people come to be fed in order to be about the work of the Kingdom. Most of all, we need to remember that real reform comes from the energies and imaginations at the local level. The Call To Action Commission, whatever its merits, is the imposition upon real live congregations that will not account for the sheer variety of new life out there in our denomination.

Let Me Be Laid Aside For Thee

The peculiar genius of John Wesley lay in two, related, ideas. First and foremost, he taught that we are not Christians in isolation; only in a community of shared accountability can the Christian life be lived with both faith and integrity. Pursuant to that stated desire was the insistence on occasional meetings that Wesley referred to as Holy Conferencing. While the specifics may have changed and even become institutionalized, the principle is still alive. From the local church conference each year through the quadrennial General Conference, currently under way in Tampa, FL, we people called Methodists gather to work together to discern the Spirit's call in our collective lives. It's clunky, filled with politics either bad or horrible, and occasionally devoted to trivia, but it's a system worth preserving.

Or so I thought.

Heading in to this year's General Conference, the emphasis was obviously going to be on the Call To Action report from the Connectional Table. While there is little disagreement over the need for flexibility and change in the denomination to meet changing circumstances, the hope, as always, was CtA would be a starting point for larger discussions regarding change within the denomination. In the meantime, other matters of no less import arose that, under different circumstances, should have prompted at least as much discussion.

Last year, the Judicial Council, the denomination's highest court, upheld the right of local clergy under appointment to withhold membership in a local congregation to any individual. I've read the decision several times and I'm still scratching my head at how they arrived at it, given our history, our Discipline, and our laws.

There are eight states where same-sex marriage/civil unions are legal. In none of these eight states can a United Methodist pastor under appointment officiate without the threat of losing his or her orders. Even if the couple in question are members of the pastor's congregation. Apparently, some within the denomination, who favor local clergy discretion when it comes to keeping gays out, don't trust it enough to allow pastors to perform perfectly legal ceremonies at their discretion.

Instead of dealing with these matters, CtA and an alternative called Plan "B" died in a bitter, divisive committee fight on Saturday night. One part of the "reform", however, passed today. No longer will clergy in full connection be guaranteed an appointment. In essence, the United Methodist Church has as much as admitted that accountability - which begins from the moment an individual approaches a member of the clergy to discuss a possible call to ordained ministry - has failed. Furthermore, without any word whether this same kind of reckoning will be applied to members of the hierarchy - the District Superintendents and Bishops - I'm curious how that might work. If it is indeed the will of the General Conference that local pastors be held personally responsible for various performance metrics, why not extend that? Who, then, would be the first District Superintendent to go to his or her Bishop with a list of underperforming clergy? Wouldn't such be a blatant admission of managerial, administrative failure? As a practical matter, the whole issue is fraught; absent the whole idea of accountability, it is little more than window dressing, although as a declaration that we as a Church body no longer adhere to one of our core principles, it is still pretty disheartening.

Later on this morning's session, some changes were made to the wording of the preamble to the Book of Resolutions, declaring God's grace is available for all. Since the church, as a practical matter, ignores this, I have to wonder why such a vote is a success. As a friend on Facebook noted, that it only passed with 57% of the vote, that's a stunning statement that nearly half those sent to our denomination's highest legislating body do not accept the Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace.

I'm struggling at the moment as to what all this portends. Part of me hopes the worst is over, although one should never underestimate the stupid at things like this. My prayers for the United Methodist Church at the moment are simple enough: That we survive our best efforts to act like the crew of the Titanic first building an iceberg, then steering straight for it.

Assumptions And Prior Commitments: Reading Barth's Special Ethics I

To those who understand anything about theology, to admit I'm reading III,4 of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics in a desultory way might seem, at the very least, an odd statement.  After all, would one confess to reading Crime and Punishment in a lackadaisical fashion?  Being offhand in perusing Sense and Sensibility?  The fact is, however, it has never been easy to find snatches of time to do more than read a few pages at a time of any particular book. The benefit in regards reading Barth, however, is it gives me time to consider what I've read.  Neither casual nor concentrated reading render much in the way of genuine reflection on some works.  Plodding can be a help.

This and the next post are little more than quotes, offered to echo points I've made many times, but with Barth's inimitable style and pizzazz.  In this case, at the beginning of Section 54, on the special ethics regarding the relationship between man and woman, and especially as it relates to matters of marriage and human sexuality, Barth begins straightaway making clear there are definite theological presuppositions to what is to follow, presuppositions without which the entire enterprise of theological ethics (in this, as in any area) a hopeless muddle.  He has already made this point many times and places throughout the massive volumes he's already written.  That he finds the need to do so again can only mean, to this reader, that the point cannot be stressed enough: We don't do theology and it's related discipline of Biblical exegesis, like children who have never encountered something new.  As members of the Church, we are already in a variety of relationships - with God, with our fellow Christians, with the life and history of the Church as it has existed and will, we hope and believe, continue to exist - that determine our reading, interpretation, and understanding.  These prior realities shape must shape our reading and understanding, or we're just babbling, making of any particular passage of Scripture or doctrine of the church an idol, rather than doing our work thoughtfully, mindful of the grace we have already received and in which we are doing the work of theology.

I've made the same point many times myself over the years.  You can't read the Bible or talk about theology outside of these realities; yet, many people continue to believe they can point to various verses of the Bible, whether they have to do with human sexuality, or marriage, or social life, or whatever, and repeat them as if their meaning were simple and clear enough outside the larger framework within which they need to be considered.  Not just historical, mind you.  Historical criticism and its variants are only useful if done within the even more concise and mindful and faithful understanding that doing Christian theology means doing Christian theology; that is, doing it as people of faith.

So, anyway, without further ado, here's the Doctor from Basel on doing Christian sexual ethics as a Christian.  I will attempt, by the way, to correct the sometimes confusing tendency Barth has to reduce references to humanity and God using the male pronoun:

That [human beings live] in response to God [the] Creator was the first of these lines, and in veiw of this we have attempted in the previous section to understand the command of of as the command to fulfill this responsibility and therefore to be free before God and for [God].  A second principle with regard to {humanity's] being is now to be distinguished from the first, namely, that [humanity], in and with . . . creation, and therefore as [humanity] may exist as [humanity], is destined to be the covenant-partner of God, and that this determination characterises [humanity's] being as being in encounter with . . . fellow [human beings].  {This] ordination to be in covenant relations with God has its counterpart in the fact this . . . humanity, the special mode of [our] being, is by nature and essence a being in fellow-humanity.  And so we must view the command of God the Creator with special reference to this natural manner of [human] existence.  As God calls [us] to [God], as [God] summons [human beings] to serve [God], [God] also addresses [humanity] concerning [our] vocation to be a covenant-partner with [God], and therefore concerning this natural correspondence, concerning . . . humanity.  And that means in concrete terms that [God] directs [us] to [other people].  [God} wills that [our] being should fulfill itself in the encounter, the relationship, the togetherness of I and Thou.  [God] commands [us], invites [us] and challenges [us] not merely to allow . . . humanity as fellow humanity to be [our] nature, but to affirm and exercise it in [our] own decision, in action and omission.  [God] commands [us] to be what [we are].  But this means that [God] takes [human beings] so seriously in [our] vocation to be in covenant with [God] that [God] calls [us] to freedom in fellowship, i.e., to freedom in fellowship with others.  [God] calls [human beings] to find [ourselves] by affirming the other, to know joy by comforting the other, and self-expression by honouring the other.  We have now to understand the divine command as the call to this freedom - the invitation to humanity.  Humanity, the characteristic and essential mode of [our] being, is in its root fellow-humanity.  Humanity which is not fellow-humanity is inhumanity. For it cannot reflect but only contradict the determination of [humanity] to be God's covenant partner, nor can the God is no Deus solitarius but Deus triunus,  God in relationship, be mirrored in the homo solitarius.  As God offers [us] humanity and therefore freedom in fellowship, God summons [us] to prove and express [ourselves] as the image fo God - for as such [God] has created [us].  This is the deepest and final basis on the form of the divine command which we have not to consider.-CD, III, $, pp.116-117.

As usual with Barth, he buries the lede.  Which is why that entire paragraph had to be transcribed to demonstrate the point. 

Apparently I'm Not Alone in Not Liking Jim Wallis (Updated)

My previous post on Joe Klein was going to be longer, but I followed a link from this post at Hullabaloo and found this at Talk To Action, entitled "The Seduction of Unreason: Jim Wallis vs. the Enlightenment" by Bruce Wilson. Now, I am no booster of the Enlightenment; nor am I particularly fond of the counter-enlightenment (and I think Wilson is wrong, historically, both on the dates of the Enlightenment, and the backlash against it; Isaiah Berlin is much better). I consider myself an early post-Enlightenment thinker, looking for a different approach that is amenable to our changing times. The Enlightenment is pretty much exhausted as a well from which to draw both good and evil. I offer this merely as a footnote, commentary as it were, to position myself in a larger context. On point, allow me to quote the first paragraph from Wilson's post:

During the summer or [sic] 2005, at the beach, I read "God's Politics" and compiled a list of quotes, from the book, which I thought were noteable. I treated the quotes as logical assertions and strung them together as a narrative. The result was hard to distinguish from the rhetoric of James Dobson or arguments of the Family Research Council and, indeed, comprised what may be the central narrative animating the modern American religious right political movement: that American society and the American moral fabric have been unravelling for decades and unnamed "secularists" . . . are to blame.(emphasis added)

Wilson continues:

Wallis' claims on the alleged breakdown of American society mirror identical arguments, advanced by leaders of the Christian right . . .
--
Claims made by Jim Wallis and the American Christian right have little to do with facts, logic, reason, analysis, science, or methodical attempts to get a bearing on societal trends and hot to set public policy to push trends in desired directions.

Talk To Action is a liberal Christian blog.

Another link provided by Digby was to this piece by Frederick Clarkson entitled "Jim Wallis gets it wrong about the Religious Right". Again, I quibble a tad with some of Clarkson's points - I agree with Wallis that we are watching the Christian Right, not so much in its death throes as in its decline in power and influence. I am not suggesting they are gone yet, or that they are not still a powerful force, especially as we have a President who has, to say the least, odd views on matters Christian. I am also not saying the Christian right will disappear. It never has, nor will it ever (sorry, Democracy Lover). I am suggesting that the oft-touted, yet-to-happen decline of the political power of right-wing Christian demagogues is happening before our eyes; we need to watch and listen carefully, but it is there. The last nail in the coffin will be the final removal of Bush from the Presidency and the end of Republican hegemony in American politics.

Again, having announced these caveats, I would urge you to read both articles in full, and consider them carefully. I, too, agree with Wallis on various issues, although not on abortion. I like the fact that he has been a steadfast defender of the social dimension of the Gospel, and put that to work in his ministry. Now, though, other aspects, less . . . um . . . attractive(?) are coming out, and I think it high time to move beyond Wallis.

As a side note to all this, I think liberal and progressive Christians need to stop their whining about secular progressives. The seat at the table is ours as Americans, but all discussions around tables can become animated; let the non-Christians speak, and don't get all defensive. Our job here isn't to make converts, it's to work with others (not lead, just work with) to make the country better. We don't have a monopoly on truth or virtue, and we do have some 'splainin' to do to those who might want to ask us some questions. Just because Atrios thinks a lot of Christian rhetoric is gibberish doesn't mean he doesn't like you. He just means that a lot of Christian rhetoric is, to him, gibberish. Lighten up.

UPDATE: This post by tristero at Hullabaloo gets it all in a nutshell. Christians of all stripes are part of the American system, and are encouraged to participate. Please, however, respect the fact that others have different views, and don't be pushy, insistent, arrogant or rude (those last three words are added as a reference to some writing somwhere . . . Oh yeah! 1 Corinthians 13, where St. Paul is describing the nature of Christian love-in-action). That is part of my problem with the emergence of, and recent scribblings by, Jim Wallis. He is arrogant, rude, insisting on his own way. He seeks not to serve but to be served. He seeks not tun understand but to be understood. He seeks not the Kingdom of God, but the assertion of Wallisism in America.

Christian humility should call us to take our umps like the rest of the imperfect, sinful mortals we find around us, not relish our new-found influence with certain members of the political and media elite. Before we demand what others do as conditions for participation, listen to what they have to say to us - and understand. And agree. And remain silent until it is time to speak. Not as some strategy for dominance-through-submission, but as an honest reflection of our own recognition of the limited nature of our understanding, our heartfelt sympathy with those who find much of Christianity either nonsensical or, indeed, abhorrent, and in accordance with the command to be the servant of all.

More than anything else, this is my complaint about Wallis. So eager to be a public figure, he forgets that we have real work to do, and a real way of going about doing that work. There are others out there who understand that, and are doing it. I think we turn our eyes upon them.

Reading

There are few things that almost guarantee a yawn than reading something about method. Telling other how one does anything, from putting up a tent to reading a book, is by its very nature dull stuff. All the same, I think a few comments are in order in light of some of the comments made on yesterday's post.

It shouldn't need to be said that when we are reading the Bible, we are reading an assortment of literary styles, written over hundreds, even thousands of years, collected together in its final form over 1800 years ago, in languages that are no longer used. Except, of course, it does need to be said. It shouldn't need to be said that the people who wrote and edited these various writings carried around with them, usually without even thinking about it, all sorts of things - ideas, assumptions, mores - that are completely foreign to contemporary readers. Except, of course, it does need to be said. It shouldn't need to be said that reading and interpreting and appropriating any part of the Bible is always a provisional thing, a process that is never complete, and to be done together as a community in conversation (even heated conversation!). Except, of course, it does need to be said.

The discovery of history as a category to be applied to human society is a relatively recent invention. It was first applied as a critical tool to the Christian Scriptures in the newly invigorated Prussian University of Berlin. While it is not correct to claim, as many have, that prior to this little critical reading of Scripture existed - one need only consider the careful textual analysis the High Scholastic applied to various received texts to determine authorship to understand the error of this view - what became known, in its first incarnation, as Higher Criticism took a new approach to the Bible. While never calling in to question the inspired nature of the works under scrutiny, in treating the Biblical texts as the specific products of a specific people in a specific time and place, historical criticism put a distance between them and contemporary readers. This distance needed to be bridged through careful study, attention to revealing details, and an understanding of the many things we do not know about the authors, let alone editors and compilers, of the works. This space created both problems and opportunities for people of faith; by relativizing the textual witness, we can understand our own always partial grasp of the experience of faith and its subject. We also, of course, raise the specter of privileging one perspective over another - either that of the text, or of ourselves - in the process.

It is important to keep in mind that the historical critical method, as it grew and developed, was itself a product of certain historical forces, unstated assumptions, and specific to a time and place - a newly reformed Prussian Kingdom yearning to break free of the choke hold of the Holy Roman Empire. In the tragedy and triumph of the Napoleonic Wars, many saw the hand of God moving the give the German people a land of their own. The triumphalist philosophies of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling became reimagined and reworked in Hegel's works, which saw in History the movement away from barbarism and toward true humanity and freedom. In the 9th Symphony, Beethoven - whether he understood it or not - expressed this same sense of triumphant renewal and possibility.

Inherent, however, in all these various intellectual and artistic movements were sinister moments, minor notes among the major themes. Antisemitism is rampant in the writings of the moralists Kant and Fichte. The naked nationalism of Hegel, the inherent superiority of the German people over other nations and races is "proved" through the movement of the Idea expressed in History. The discovery of history was as much about proving the superiority of the present moment over the past as it was recognizing the simple, banal reality of temporal distance creating social and cultural difference.

Historical criticism, then, carries as much baggage as any intellectual movement, is limited in how far it can take us in to any text (Biblical or otherwise), and recognizing and acknowledging that is an important part of using it.

I always find it fascinating to read people who use the Bible to support odd ideas. Leviticus to support discrimination against gays and lesbians; the admonition that women are to give birth in pain as punishment as justification to keep anesthesia from them; St. Paul's letter to Philemon to justify slavery. What is fascinating to me is not only the lack of critical acumen involved in doing this. It is also the absence of any theological hermeneutic. The purpose of Scripture is to give to ever-new generations of the faithful an account of the original witness to who God is, by showing us how God interacts with humanity. We see a piece of that puzzle when we read the Bible. It helps us, if we are faithful and carry on the tradition of reading and figuring it out together, to fit our own piece in to the picture that is not yet finished.

It is important to recognize the limited nature of the Biblical witness. It is necessary to insist that the description of the LORD's presence and action as given in the passage from 2 Samuel quoted yesterday is socially and culturally light-years from us. It is important to call it what it is - a view of the Israelite's God, carried around on his little wooden box throne from place to place - of a piece with ancient views of deity. It might even be necessary to note that the story in question - the striking of Uzzah for daring to reach out his hand to the Ark of the Covenant - an example of a kind of magical thinking about divinity that is completely foreign to us.

Historical criticism can tell us these things. If we stop there, however, we are only telling part of the story. Unless we are willing to insist that this story, for all that it comes from a time and place and people who ways of thinking and living bear no relationship to ours, the story becomes unintelligible. It becomes historical artifact, rather than living testimony to the living God we profess in faith. The story becomes an interesting piece of historical fiction, rather than something that tells us who God is. It isn't enough to proclaim historical continuity between the faith of Israel and Judah and discipleship to Jesus Christ, if we are unwilling or unable to claim texts which are strange, or socially or morally offensive, or simply unintelligible (try reading Numbers and making sense of most of it, which is little more than a census roll, interspersed with legends and tales of the Israelite "murmuring" against God) for our living faith today.

The very different example is the way texts from Leviticus are used to justify bigotry against sexual minorities. No matter how hard pressed to justify lifting these texts above the rest, the only thing we continue to hear and read is that, having been included in the Bible, they are there for our instruction. My own view is slightly different. Yes, the texts are in the Bible, but it would seem ludicrous to lift just these couple verses and privilege them above all the others, when the church jettisoned the rest of the Levitical code almost from its founding. At the same time, it is necessary to acknowledge, in both sorrow and repentance, that they are a part of our Scriptures. We cannot ignore them. We cannot set them to one side, or explain them away. We are called to wrestle with these texts, no less than those we find more acceptable, less offensive. We cannot dodge the reality they exist as part of the Bible anymore than we can dodge the triumphal calls to military slaughter in Joshua, or the talking donkey in Judges, or Lot's wife turning to a pillar of salt.

It is never easy to make sense of the writings in the Bible. Anyone who says otherwise has never really tried. It is necessary, however, if one wishes to be faithful, to use whatever critical tools are available, to take the texts seriously as witness to the Divine life with creation. In order to make sense of who this God is whom we claim to worship, we need to be willing to refuse to privilege our own prejudices, even when we so clearly see the prejudices of others. We need not to set aside whatever we may call texts of terror. To do so, for me, betrays a fear of confronting our own faithlessness in the face of offense to our own sensibilities, sensibilities we so easily see as limited in others.

Some Thoughts on Bush's Speech Last Night (UPDATED with a link)

One of the great benefits of not having cable or satellite hook-up is I missed the speech last night. I know I could have streamed it over the 'net, but why infect my computer? The truth is, I would rather eat my own vomit that listen to anything Bush has to say. It goes down easier, after all. Of course, there was also the fact that, for the most part, there was nothing either surprising or new in the speech. Since the release of the ISG report last month, it has been clear Bush would do the exact opposite of their recommendations, and he has.

We now have the spectacle of the Unitary Executive being opposed by the American people, the Democratic Party, the Wise Old Men of Washington, and now members of his own party in the Senate, including Sam Brownback and now, it seems (according to Joe Klein's interpretation, always chancy), John Warner. Kennedy and Murtha are working on different versions of the same idea, viz., that the President has to come to Congress with details (as opposed to, say, Joe Klein's argument that it is up to those opposed to the war who have to have details) before a dime is spent on escalation. Pundits are starting to notice that a President doing what the country most explicitly says it does not want done is problematic.

The most interesting thing about the speech, noted by Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, and Talking Points Memo, was the ramping up of the verbal threats against Syria and Iran, as well as a move against an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq. Last summer, I took Arthur Silber to task for his fear that the United States would use the Israel-Lebanon war as an excuse for military action against Iran. I noted that, while such an action has been part of the Republican dreamland for a quarter century, there were too many political, diplomatic, and military logistical reasons for not doing so. It seems, however, that I overestimated Bush Administration's reliance upon reality, and it now seems we are going to do even more stupid things we should not do.

It is bad enough we have an un-democratic President acting against the wishes of the majority of the people, and even against most of his own party. It is bad enough we are to force-feed 21,500 more troops into the gaping maw of the Iraqi sinkhole, not to mention the billions of dollars for which there is no accountability (at least until Congress ramps up oversight hearings). It is bad enough Bush wants us to believe him when he says he has a new plan, when more people is not a plan, but the military equaivalent of faking a punt on fourth and forty and hoping it works. Now, it seems, the nightmare of Arthur Silber may actually come to pass, entering the real world as military action against one or perhaps two of Iraq's neighbors. The results of such insane military irresponsibility are hard to imagine, and I need to time to get a grip on the situation myself. I mean, we could turn the entire world against us, and then where will we be? This is not some kid's game Bush is playing here. There are real dangers, horrible dangers here. Not just provinding more targets for insurgent snipers and IEDs; I am talking about provoking world-wide action against the United States . . . I can't even finish this sentence because the implications of it are too horrible.

I didn't want to believe Bush would be this insane. I didn't want to believe Bush would ignore everyone and do the least productine, most harmful thing he could possibly do. I didn't want to believe Bush would threaten the US with universal condemnation. Call me naive, but I just didn't want to believe that his detachment from reality had gone so far. I fear we are entering very dangerous waters, and we need to do something to stop this before it gets out of hand.

UPDATE: Steve Clemons at The Washington Note has a partial transcript from today's hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is, ahem, less than forthcoming concerning the President's intentions towards Iran and Syria. Toward the bottom of the piece, just before the transcript of the exchange, Clemons writes:

Bush may really have pushed the escalation pedal more than any of us realize.

Indeed.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

[T]he United States is not merely dominant; it assumes imperial responsibilities and reaps the benefits that derive from them.  It is imperial in the sense that it enforces its own idea of world order in America's interest.  It presumes the right to lay down the rules of trade, commerce, security, and political legitimacy.  It assumes the burdens of global maintenance in areas that derive from the Spanish, Ottoman, British, French, Russian, and Soviet empires.  It rewards or punishes countries on the basis of their willingness to create open markets, support American military policies, and establish democratic governments.  In Iraq, the United States has erased long-standing national laws that restrict foreign investment, showing little regard for international laws that restrict the powers of occupiers.  Waging an offensive war to change the government and economic system of a sovereign country is obviously an imperial enterprise.  Doing it to consolidate one's hegemonic position and change the political culture of a sprawling, explosive multinational region halfway around the globe requires imperial ambition of a very high order. - Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs, p.224

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''  - Ron Suskind, "Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush", New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004

Debate and discussion over whether or not the United States is an Imperial power; the extent of its Imperial reach; the ability of the United States to impose its will in a variety of areas; these have been a staple of discussions on US foreign policy for decades.  Even in the teeth of the past decade's wars, the matter of the American Imperium is a source of controversy.  With the continued assertion of American military power in southwest Asia, the creation of an African Command and the introduction of American troops in to several countries in central Africa, and on-going military operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Obama Administration continues, by and large, a series of military-based foreign policies begun under his predecessor.

When we talk about the fears of American decline, at least in areas related to foreign policy, very often the discussion centers around the ability of the United States to create conditions through a combination of economic, diplomatic, and military power that are in accord with our national interests.  While all nation-states attempt to do this, only the United States currently has the ability to do so on a global scale.  A decade of war, however, with diminishing popular support, as well as strained fiscal circumstances has created a situation in which the US, unrivaled globally as a military power, finds itself increasingly strained to exert a credible threat.  This isn't through lack either of will or potential power; rather, a series of policy choices over previous decades, combined with an unwillingness on the part of policy-makers to present to the public the actual political, social, and monetary costs have all reached a breaking point for the expression and extension of US diplomatic and military power.

The differences between an American foreign policy rooted in democratic accountability and one rooted in the preferences of elites geared toward supporting corporate interests is best exemplified by the idea of what became known as the "Grand Area", the integration of western Europe and the United States in to an economic and political unit.  Noam Chomsky explains:

One obvious documentary source is the series of memoranda of the War and Peace Studies Project o the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) during [World War II].  Participants included top government planners and a fair sample of the "foreign policy elite," with close links to government, major corporations, and private foundations.  These memoranda deal with the "requirement[s] of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestioned power," foremost among them being "the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete re-armament" (1940).  In the early years of the war it was assumed that part of the world might be controlled by Germany.  Therefore, the major task was to develop "an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States within the non-German world," including plans "to secure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat to the world area essential for the security and economic prosperity of the United States and the Western Hemisphere." (the concern for the "prosperity of the Western Hemisphere" is adequately revealed by United States policies, say, in Central America and the Caribbean, before and since; this opposition to imperial prerogatives that constrain U.S. capital and access to resources is often adduced by scholarship as evidence that U.S. foreign policy is guided by "anti-imperialist" commitment.).  These areas, which are to serve the prosperity of the United States, include the Western Hemisphere, the British Empire, and the Far East, described as a natural integrated economic unity in the geopolitical analysis of the planners. . . .

The U.S.-led non-German bloc was entitled the "Grand Area" in the CFR discussions.  Actually, a U.S.-dominated Grand area was only a second-best alternative.  It was explained in June 1941 that "the Grand Area is not regarded by the Group as more desirable than a world economy, nor as an entirely satisfactory substitute."  The Grand Area was seen as a nucleus or model that could be extended, optimally, to a global economy.  It was soon recognized that with the coming defeat of Nazi Germany, at least Western Europe could be integrated into the Grand Area.  Participants in the CFR discussions recognized that "the British Empire as it existed in the past will never reappear and . . . the United States may have to take its place."  One stated frankly that the United State "must cultivate a mental view towar world settlement after this war which will able us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a a pax-Americana."  Another argued that the concept of United States security interests bust be enlarged to incorporate areas "strategically necessary for world control."  It is a pervasive theme that international trade and investment are closely related to the economic health of the United States, as is access to the resources of the Grand Area, which must be so organized as to guarantee the health and structure of the American economic, its internal structure unmodified. (Toward a New Cold War, pp. 96-97)

While there continue to be disagreements as to the extent to which the positions expressed in these documents found expression in post-WWII American foreign policy, there is little doubt about two things:

1) As a practical matter,  the first quarter-century after the end of the Second World War saw the United States replace the British Empire as the primary hegemon in a variety of places, including the Middle East, Greece and Turkey; it sought to uphold French imperialism in French Indo-China and Algeria, at one point completely funding French military efforts in southeast Asia; dictate, to a large degree, acceptable limits on domestic political activity in a variety of supposed sovereign states, from Central America through France and Italy, to China, Indonesia, and the former states of French Indo-China.

2) Even as the "facts on the ground", to quote Henry Kissinger, changed in ensuing years and decades, restricting both the freedom of action as well as the realistic application of American military and other power to support American economic interests, the US continued to act as if such constraints could be overcome through the application of some combination of economic, diplomatic, and limited military pressure.

It is often suggested Chomsky's sketch of an elitist, corporate-friendly foreign policy, constructed largely outside any constraints from public input or objection is a perfect case of "conspiracy-mongering."  On the contrary, considering the wealth of documentation, it is, rather, nothing more or less than a description of the way large institutions, both public and private, seek to craft policies that are in interests of these institutions.  The impetus to do so without popular input reached crisis levels during the later years of the American war in Vietnam, when popular protest and lack of support created what continues to be called "the Vietnam syndrome."  Again, Chomsky:

By the early 1970's it was apparent that the quarter-century of American hegemony had come to an end, though the United States remained the world's most powerful state . .  . .

The recognition of the limits of American power led to the acceptance of detente by Nixon and Kissinger.  As always, this policy adjustment is conventionally described with reference to the superpower enemy but involved the other dimensions of foreign policy discussed earlier as well.  With regard to the Third World, the Nixon Doctrine sought to enlist surrogate states to preserve stability and order regionally, notably Iran and Israel in the Middle East. . . .  Detente as well was a move towards coordinated global management: China was to be incorporate within the Western system, in a sharp reversal of policy responding to Chinese initiatives, and the Soviet Union was to be a junior partner, more or less in accordance with Stalin's concept, a policy that is held to have failed on the grounds that the Soviet Union insisted upon equality.

The domestic dimension was also relevant to the move toward detente.  Not only was the United States then limited in its capacity for intervention, but more seriously, the "Vietnam syndrome" and the "crisis of democracy" had eroded the base of domestic support for intervention.  And the ritual invocation of the Soviet drive for world domination had temporarily lost its efficacy.  The efforts of the following decade to overcome this problem  . . . [include] the Human Rights Crusade, which is taken to have been a domestic success at least: "Thanks to Presidents Ford and Carter, the task of restoring our image of ourselves as good and decent people had been accomplished before the 1980 campaign," not an easy task, given the level of understanding of U.S. policy - which has little to do with "ourselves as good and decent people" except in the fantasies that perceive foreign policy as growing out aof a pluralist consensus - that had been attained by much of the general population by the early 1970's. (Ibid., pp. 29-30) 

The conflict between elite policy preference and popular domestic discord led to a decade and more in which the exertion of American military power abroad was highly constrained, although certainly not unknown.  Each time the military acted, however, there was the general agreement that the engagements should be swift, cheap, and effective.  The rapid retreat of the United States Marine Corps after a bombing at a barracks during the early-80's occupation of Lebanon is testimony to the ongoing unwillingness of elites to face popular anger.  Thus it was that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld overruled his uniformed commanders on the size of the force for the Iraqi invasion; for the composition of the troops; for the logistics for supplying such an invasion; for applying the costs for such a massive military campaign to the annual Congressional budget system.  Indeed, the refusal of any President since Franklin Roosevelt to apply to Congress for a declaration of war before deploying American troops abroad is testimony enough to the power the US public has; were elites not fearful of popular refusal to support military action, what else explains the refusal to follow the Constitution on this matter?


The wariness of elites to come clean to the American people on the potential and actual costs of military action; a refusal to have an open, frank discussion of the expansion of American military activity; the obvious strains upon military personnel and equipment; the economic, monetary, and fiscal strains our overextended military commitments place upon a country whose elected leaders continue to refuse to govern as a nation at war, even while they act as a nation at war: All these and more demonstrate the enormous distance between elite consensus, regardless of party, and popular discontent with the management and continuation of our current, on-going military engagements.


This doesn't mean the situation is hopeless.  On the contrary, precisely because our continued pretensions to world dominance overtax our resources (unless, of course, there is a dramatic reversal of domestic policies to reflect that the US continues to be at war, such as wage-and-price controls, restrictions upon corporate and manufactures to ensure they prioritize military and support construction, or even the introduction if not of universal military service, then expanding the incentives for enlisting in the US military to create a larger pool of potential volunteers), we find ourselves in the odd position of popular discontent, expressed in any number of ways, forcing the hand of policy-makers despite their preferences.  The on-going chariness American war-planners evince in offering realistic assessments of the costs of military action already demonstrates the enormous constraints under which policy makers labor; it may yet be possible to reign in even further American adventurism without, as current nonsensical discourse has it, reverting to isolationism.


With China and India and Brazil emerging as potential world powers; with the effective control of resources less and less within the political - not to say private economic - control of the United States, we may yet see ourselves with an opportunity to admit our Imperial failings, and, like our British cousins sixty years ago, surrender global governance while remaining an important, powerful actor within a broader framework that sees the US working in concert with the European Union, India, and other large, emerging states to constrain terrorist violence, expand markets for legitimate corporate activity, as well as create structures for the regulation both of transnational capital and investment and upholding broad support for a minimal set of worker's rights.


The future is the place where the United States will make good its promise.  This future need not be one where the United States is the sole superpower; working cooperatively with other states toward achieving a whole series of goals in common interest from damage from global warming through the imposition of international law by ratifying the treaty for the International Criminal Court to creating a framework for managing global economic activity are surely things that many in the US would find as worthy of our efforts, productive for all, without the enormous waste and loss of our ongoing, largely unpopular wars.  We should be clear that this alternative is one that does not diminish either the potential for political conflict, either here or abroad; rather it is one that offers opportunities to act in the larger world without any imperial designs as dictated by elites.

 

A Charge To Keep I Have

Buried near the end of the report on the Call To Action Steering Committee's final report to the Council of Bishops is a line so precious it couldn't be auctioned at Sotheby's at any price.

Ultimately, the message and ministry of the United Methodist Church is one worth saving, Mr. Alexander said.

Mr. Alexander, for those who may not know, is the head of the United Methodist Publishing House, so perhaps he can be forgiven for thinking his meal ticket should continue.

The report is a jumble of begged questions, undefined terms, and nonsensical buzzwords that are void of any sense of the Wesleyan heritage that Mr. Alexander believes deserves saving. Two related Wesleyan notions - stewardship as part of accountable discipleship, and the covenant prayer - might have led to a whole different series of conclusions. According to "Sermon 51" we recognize in faith that nothing we have - not our souls or bodies, not our senses or limbs, not the food on our shelves in our homes, not even the wisdom we gain through education nor the money that we have to maintain our economic life - is ours. We are entrusted with them to be used according to the will of God.

God, of course, might just want to know if we have used these gifts entrusted to us in accordance with the grace bestowed upon us.

A couple things missing from that list include the denomination named "United Methodist Church" and the pews therein. We aren't supposed to worry about whether or not this denomination, or even the Wesleyan heritage, survives or not. Quite simply put - it isn't ours.

Wesley wrote and edited over the years a prayer that was used at year-end watch-night services. It has come down to us as "A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition".

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine.

So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

I would like to direct attention to one particular petition: "Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee". In other words, we covenant with God to be God's. Included in this is accepting that our services, vital at one time, may no longer be needed. It takes a brave soul to offer this prayer in full understanding that it includes accepting our own irrelevance. This is true not just for individuals, but for the entire denomination.

I do not think the survival of the denomination is at stake. At worst, one can envision a smaller, leaner United Methodist Church. Yet, even smaller, the Church could still very well be vital. It isn't about numbers, either of butts in pews or dollars in apportionments. Rather, what makes the church vital is the last gift mentioned by Wesley as that which is not ours, but something entrusted to us - the grace of God. The notion that our denomination is somehow lacking vitality because it is no longer the largest Protestant denomination in the country strikes me as odd; the idea that we need to devote the next decade to ourselves is a violation of pretty much everything John Wesley gave us as a charge to keep.

The Bush Legacy - Military Suicides

N.B.: This is a story I've been mulling over for a while. It may be incendiary to place responsibility at the feet of the Bush Administration, but I think there is justification for it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States military has contracted in size. Our military budget is larger than the entire working budgets of most countries, to be sure, but our high-tech military has high front-end costs, not just actual equipment, but R&D. I perused the 2011 DoD budget numbers the other day (the declassified portion, over 800 pages, is in multiple .pdf form) prepping for this post, and taking the position that budgets are a good indication of priorities and underlying assumptions, I got the sense that, for all the complaining so many do about the size and scope of the military budget, it reflects the general consensus of the past 20 years that a highly technical, well-trained military can be lean and effective.

Unfortunately, since the end of the Cold War, all Presidents have seen fit to use the United States military as an easy fall-back tool to achieve certain foreign policy goals. Even as the Berlin Wall was being dismantled and chuncks of concrete were being auctioned off, the US decided that an invasion of Panama was a nice short-cut to ridding itself of the thorn of Manuel Noriega. Desert Storm/Desert Shield followed the next year. Finally, as lame-duck, George H. W. Bush committed forces to Somalia. Clinton had to deal with that, plus Haiti, plus policing various Balkan truces and peace accords. There was the bombing campaign in Kosovo, which managed to achieve very little. All the while, the United States Air Force policed the No-Fly Zones established in Iraq after the first Gulf War, plus conducted a couple serious bombing raids. We lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda targets after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Navy has done a couple exercises as warnings to China, always a dangerous game. Afghanistan. Iraq, again.

This list doesn't include those deployments that were considered or demanded or otherwise part of our public debate and discussion. Right after the Rwandan genocide, there were calls for the US to send troops too police the peace there (even though the Canadian military that were present as part of a UN peacekeeping effort, castrated by UN ROE, were forced to stand by and do nothing even as the slaughter was under way). We constantly read that we "need" to send troops to Sudan to police the Darfur region. There is, under current Security Council Resolutions at the UN, good reason to send troops to Western Sahara (the African Union and I think a couple European countries are there now), enforcing Resolutions to keep Morocco at bay there.

Have I mentioned that the US nearly went to war a couple times with North Korea in the past 20 years, with 35,000 American troops on the firing line there?

So, we had this rather promiscuous use of our military, on the one hand, even as the number of persons in uniform actually shrank. We kept demanding that the service chiefs do more with less. This was raised to absurd proportions with the Iraq invasion. We invaded with about half the troops the service chiefs recommended, mostly to do police-work after the war was won. Rumsfeld's infamous dig, "You go to war with the military you have, not the military you want," was a signal to anyone who was listening that he, and his superiors (Bush and Cheney) held the services in contempt.

The gap between what was needed for occupation duty and what was available was made up in a few ways - calling up the reserves, multiple rotations in and out of combat/occupation zones, and the ready-reserve (recalling to active duty retired service members). There was a truncated debate over reinstituting a draft; Charlie Rangel, a Korean War veteran, made some speeches on the House floor, but members of the Bush Administration and Joint Chiefs balked. This debate left unaddressed the whole issue of force size in a time when the US, for all intents and purposes, was (and is) fighting a war on multiple fronts (there are two major fronts, Iraq and Afghanistan; there are troops facing combat conditions in various ways in the Philippines, Yemen, and other places as well which we probably don't know about).

The cost on our military personnel has been high. The services have been playing catch-up on addressing the issue of the emotional cost of demanding so much from so few, and they are doing more. All the same, along with suicide, we have the rise of social dysfunction among veterans - crime and various substance abuse issues, domestic violence and criminal activity in general.

In 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush was correct, to an extent, in criticizing Pres. Clinton for overextending the US military, both in terms of commitments and military action. After the September 11 attacks, when it was pretty clear there was to be a military response, Pres. Bush had the perfect opportunity to address the issue of "overextension"; the public was ready for a call to service, to be sure. Instead, we had the marvelous combination of bureaucratic parsimony and policy profligacy. And tax cuts, too.

You reap what you sow, I guess. There may well be blame to go around to all sorts of actors. All the same, going to war and carrying out an occupation on the cheap has extracted a terrible cost on our troops, one that we will be paying for years unless addressed now.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. (UPDATE, UPDATE II, UPDATE III)

A couple weeks back, a woman of my acquaintance told the following story.  She was out shopping on her own when she noticed a man glancing at her.  The man saw her notice and walked away.  A few minutes later, he walked up to her and said, "I just wanted to tell you, if you're married, your husband is a very lucky man."  She said, "I am married and we're both lucky."  The man walked away.

My first thought upon hearing this life-anecdote was, What the hell is wrong with people?  My second thought was, I hope she made sure this dude-bro didn't get her license plate number.

A few months back I wrote a short piece in which I made clear that rape-prevention begins with instilling in boys and men the most basic lesson: Don't rape.  Apparently, for some, this simple message wasn't clear enough.  As I said in the very first paragraph of that post:

I was going to avoid the story, because, honestly, how is it possible to say something on the topic of rape that isn't an easy way to make oneself look good?  Like the whole kitten-burning trap, one would think it takes zero moral imagination to speak out against rape.

Across the internet, there has been a rising chorus of women's voices speaking out against the ubiquity of online rape threats women receive when they speak out on matters related to pervasive, systemic misogyny.  Writing at Feministing, Syreeta calls this "The New Normal" and insists that it be met with ongoing publicity.  The post itself concerns both racism and misogyny, and the way they are used to silence women and people of color who have the audacity to speak out against them.

I have my own Katzenjammer Kids here who somehow believe I am full of soap on the matter of violence against women; that supporting anti-slut-shaming campaigns is somehow elitist; and that women who get raped in all probability deserve their victimization, the result of their own "poor choices" or the fact that men are nothing more than mobile penises, incapable of resisting the tiny voice from down below.

The whole point of my occasional posts on the topic of violence against women has been, and continues to be, to clarify the ways in which, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary; despite the many real and substantive gains made by women here and around the world; at the end of the day, most women most of the time spend at least part of every day dealing with men who believe it is their right to intrude upon their lives in ways big in small.  Whether the creep in the grocery store who, I am quite sure, thought his action the height of politesse, complimenting a woman he did not know on her appearance; or the daily abuse heaped upon women who dare to speak out - not just verbal but all too often physical; women live with the reality that most men most of the time assume a relationship of superiority toward women, a relationship that must be maintained even with the threats and reality of violence.

That is why rape has nothing to do with how women dress (the whole point of the anti-slut-shaming movement); it has nothing to do with the irresistible call of the penis.  It is, rather, an act of violence against women as women, done because men believe it their right and privilege just to do it.  Rape is about power, not sexual attraction.  That is why date rape and marital rape and the rape of sex workers are still struggling to be recognized as real crimes.  Everyone can sympathize when, say a child or older woman is sexually assaulted.  When a woman in college wakes up in a strange bed, realizing the cute guy at the bar slipped her a roofie and had sex with her while she was passed out; when the wife rolls over crying because her husband has forced himself on her yet again, insisting she fulfill her marital obligations; when a prostitute is dragged in to the bushes and raped, she knows her assailant is quite right that no one will believe her story because of what she does; when these things happen there are far too many voices willing to insist that what happened was not rape.  Women in such situations find few defenders and far too many willing to blame them for the actions of others.  I will say it again for the slow learners who insist I am wrong: Violence against women does not have anything to do with sex, or how women dress, or how they act, or what choices they make in their lives.

Thus the simple, necessary demand that people start teaching boys at a very young age, "Don't rape."  It does seem a no-brainer.  Yet, the growing awareness of how far we still have to go - not just here but around the world - and the rising chorus of the voices of both men and women demanding change demonstrate how far we still have to go, as well as how far we have come.  It's a message that needs to be repeated no matter how simple and clear it sounds.  It's a message that more people need to hear.  Blaming women for their own victimization only perpetuates this "new normal" that empowers men (I love the description in the Feministing piece of some doofus typing a verbal assault while ensconced in Mom's basement; it's an Internet cliche but no less true for all that) to believe it is OK to attack women verbally and physically because they have the audacity to speak out in ways that threaten these men in some way.

It will stop only when all people who understand the reality that none of this is about sex or those dirty whores and how they dress but about men terrified of the thought a woman might well have at least as much power and authority as they do.  Not just demystifying rape, but deconstructing male power, needs to be done each and every time some bit of this ugliness raises its blighted head.

UPDATE:  I knew I should have waited to read Amanda Marcotte before writing this post.

I’d like to recommend a couple of interesting pieces by Paul Mason and Lindy West, who have a point that I think bears stressing: Trolls are real people and they have an agenda outside of some vague “need for attention”. They are misogynists, and as I said during the CONvergence panel on this subject, it’s important to understand that misogynists believe they are in the right. Indeed, they are incredibly dogged and self-righteous, as Mason found out when he first decided to explore online misogyny—they get really mad when you do this, by the way, because part of their self-righteous worldview includes a belief that they should be able to push their agenda without being examined or questioned too closely.

Sounds familiar to me.  When called out for being a mansplainin' concern troll, someone heads to an online dictionary to demonstrate I'm trying to shut him down.  How dare I refuse to hear his considered words of wisdom?

Mason interviews the guys who claim they’re just in it for the “lulz” and discovers to no one’s great surprise that actually, these trolls have deep hatred and resentment of women and actually do take the mission to silence women very, very seriously. They just can’t quite admit that to themselves, because part of the identity of the misogynist is to deny that he is a misogynist—he loves women as long as they know they are subhuman sex/reproduction appliances put here to serve, so how can he hate women?!—so the amount of rationalization that goes on is astounding. 

I was once ridiculed for claiming that too many men see women as baby factories.  Imagine!  Unpossible!

 There is a sea of boiling anger out there because men are taught from a young age that women are here to serve, and then they grow up and discover that women often elect not to do that. Some misogynists—the Rick Perrys of the world—calmly react to this realization by deciding that women’s rebellion is a temporary, feminism-induced insanity, and that the proper legislative pressure plus a good dose of condescension can return them to their natural state of servitude. Some men get a sick pleasure out of stripping away the “illusion” that women are equal and violently showing them exactly how inferior they are. The online troll population has these kinds of characters in it, but the dominant class is men who don’t get the level of sexual attention they feel entitled to from women, and therefore have concocted elaborate, dogged theories about how women are broken, because they cannot ever allow that women have a right not to like them personally. (Or that if they started acting like decent people, maybe they would actually be more likeable.) All misogynists get upset when women are given attention for their talent or skills; it violates their core belief that women are here to serve. This is why writing on the internet while female means getting everything from laughably delusional men pretending to “critique” your writing while barely concealing their rage to rape and death threats. Particularly if your writing is not upholding the opinion that women are inferior servant class.

Simple, clear, plain English gets to the heart of the matter.  Every word typed denouncing feminism demonstrates just how fragile these men are, how threatening a woman actually being a human being is to their shriveled sense of self.

 That’s why it’s uncomfortable to have so many people insist that there’s an easy fix for troll targets, the “ignore the bullies and they’ll go away” fix, usually spouted by people who haven’t considered for a moment that the trolls may very well be actual people who are trying to protect and perpetuate sexism.

Which is why I don't so much ignore what my twins from different ideological poles write as point out what it is and carry on.  It enrages them, but then again that is the coin of their realm - rage that some might well see through their self-proclaimed concern for the seething mass of neurosis that it really is - and the best way to win the game is not to play.

West is right; it’s time to stop thinking of trolls as idiots who are just seeking attention, and see them for what they are: Misogynists with a political agenda. These are men that absolutely do not want to live in a society where women are treated equally, and they are obsessed with silencing the women online whose writings they rightfully fear are going to help push society in a more feminist direction. They want to harass feminists into silence. If we keep this understanding front and center and discard useless theories about “attention-seeking” or “lulz”, we can begin to have a more productive conversation about what the hell to do about the problem.

I disagree slightly; I do think attention-seeking is a huge factor.  Especially when touting one's moral and intellectual superiority.  The point, however, is well taken.  Highlight it, call it out, and remain on topic.  All part of those simple instructions: Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

UPDATE II: In case you're wondering if I'm being hyperbolic about the whole rage and violence thing, let us cruise through Wonkette to discover what hilarity a Republican Political Action Committee finds humorous:

[A] Republican superPAC, “The Hillary Project” has recycled this hilarious “Slap Hillary” game on its website. The game allows the viewer to administer a slap to a cartoon Hillary or to hear one of two brief audio clips that the producers must think are inflammatory. And as Buzzfeed notes, it was created in 2000, but the Hillary Project site “began spamming reporters to its existence Monday with the tweet ‘Have you slapped Hillary today?’” Oh, and did we mention the cartoon Hillary figure is wearing a pink pantsuit? This is cutting-edge political satire, kids.

Because nothing says "healthy" like the desire to assault someone with whom you disagree on politics, or offering others a chance to fulfill that same fantasy.

Misogyny - you're soaking in it.

UPDATE III: It isn't just adult women who deserve getting raped for their slutty clothes and poor choices.

Boy, it sure is hard to know when you can rape (or, as they say at Yale, have “nonconsensual sex” with) a kid, isn’t it? We know the Catholic Church has a hell of a time figuring it out. Like, sure, there are “laws” about how you’re not supposed to have sex with someone who does not consent to having sex with you. And there are “laws” about how a minor cannot give consent because she or he is, you know, a kid. But those are really more like suggested guidelines, aren’t they? Like, okay, yeah, you probably shouldn’t fuck a kid, but what if she’s a totally hot kid and she’s wearing make-up and she runs with a fast crowd and she’s, like, TOTALLY asking for it, you can tell, she’s got that look? Talk about a gray area!

The piece gives examples: a prison guard in Louisiana who raped a 14 year old inmate, insisting she seduced him; an English rapist who got off because the 13 year old was "egging him on";  the 11 year old gang raped, with the girl described as "dressing older" and "hanging with teenagers"; the 13 year old pressured in to sex then became pregnant, described as a "whore" by her neighbors because she became pregnant.

All of these fit neatly in to Feodor's and Art's little church-lady lecturings about poor choices and white privilege and blah-blah-blah.  The piece ends up with this bit of sage advice that Art and Feodor seem to believe is beneath them:

When can you have nonconsensual sex with someone? NEVER. Not even if she’s really hot or mature for her age. Not even if she’s wearing make-up. Not even if she has older friends. Not even if she’s “egging” you on. Not even if she’s drunk. Not even if she’s a total slutbag who has had sex with, like, a million other dudes so one more shouldn’t make a difference. Not even if you’re really horny. Not even if she only says no twice. Not even if it’s a day that ends in “y” or pigs flew by your window or you watched some porno where the chick said no but seemed to like it or your mother didn’t love you or some Republican said there are varying degrees of rape and some of it isn’t really rape or you think you can get away with it and no one will ever know.

Because if you do sex to someone who does not give you her permission to do sex to her — or cannot give you her permission because of how she is a child — you are a rapist and a bad person and if there is in fact a hell, you will burn in it. Even if a judge takes sympathy on you and the legal system lets you off the hook with a warning (or, in Yale’s case, a written reprimand). It is wrong and bad, and you are wrong and bad, and seriously, it should not be that difficult to understand that you should only fuck grown adult women (or men, whatever floats your boat, we don’t judge — UNLESS YOU’RE RAPING SOMEONE) who can and do give their consent for you to fuck them.

Politics, Religion, & Christian Pluralism - Why Fundamentalism Confuses Me So Much

Over at Faith in Public Life, there is a link to a People for the American Way article highlighting a fundraising campaign by Family Research Council.

The Family Research Council is launching a project aimed at convincing its supporters before the 2008 election that liberal politicians “are spouting God-talk” in order to “confuse people of faith” and hide their “true agenda.” Invoking the Religious Right’s recent favored phrase for its imagined constituency – as well as the “Swift Boat” campaign of 2004 – the so-called “Values Voters for Truth” campaign is an attempt to vilify liberals – and, obviously, Democratic candidates – as enemies of Christianity who are undertaking a conspiracy to “deceive and split values voters.”

From a recent fundraising letter from FRC Action:

Our relentless effort to reveal the facts about the Left’s true agenda is already under way. It will not stop until the last vote of the 2008 election has been cast. The Values Voters for Truth campaign will partner with organizations in all 50 states—and at the national level. We will mobilize values voters, engage them in the war of ideas, and keep them informed and involved.

We will rally churches to the cause. And by God’s grace, we will neutralize our opponents’ deceptive tactics.

As an example of this supposed “fraud,” the letter cites a Democratic presidential candidate who spoke of his “belief in Christ” and also supports civil unions for gay couples. Similarly, the letter warns that a candidate noting a “biblical call to feed the hungry” also voted against an anti-abortion bill. A third candidate is denounced for the “hypocrisy” of wanting to let gay couples adopt children. According to FRC, these supposed contradictions indicate that Democrats discussing their faith and values is merely “lip service,” part of a “campaign of deception” that led directly to the Democrats winning control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

I was recently invited by neil to visit his blog, an example of which is this charming piece in which the Rev. Chuck Currie is made fun of and called a heretic. In the course of the piece, neil says something about the UCC not being in favor of "sound doctrine", a phrase that means absolutely nothing to me.

Both of these pieces, one on the political front, the other on the religious front, highlight why I much prefer a liberal, pluralist approach to my faith. Indeed, I honestly don't understand fundamentalism. Even though ER and others have tried to tell me it was their reality at one time, a reality from which they are trying to escape, it is just foreign to my own experience. Intellectually I understand such things as biblical inerrancy, the necessity of asserting certain truths as absolute, and the strict moral code that usually applies to others. As a matter of existential grasping, however, it is just beyond me. My experience of the faith has always been one of opening up to more experiences, more people, more ways of living life, more ways of helping others, more ways of judging oneself and withholding judgment from others.

The exclusivity of both the socio-political branch and theological branch of fundamentalism is also something that I can consider intellectually without understanding its appeal or its relevance. The idea that only certain groups have access to Christian truth, that there is only one way to live a Christian life, that non-Christian ways obviously are excluded from being correct - again, I just don't get it. Apparently billions of people around the world are not only damned, but not fully human because they do not participate in the truth of the Christian faith.

I understand the whole in-group/out-group thing; I understand the dimension of fear and the necessity for metaphysical grounding that so many people seem to think is necessary in life. I just don't think any or all these answers add up to the reasons for fundamentalism. There is a piece missing, and I need help understanding it. Reducing this movement to psychology and sociology just doesn't fill out what is going on here. I need help understanding how and why certain people can actually believe they have access to Truth that is denied to all others.