January 22, 2008
A random moment of frustration
WHAT PART OF "I WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON" DO YOU PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND?
Thank you. I simply had to say that. I feel better now.
(Corollary: Please, for the love of God, Republicans, do not nominate Mitt Romney.)
Posted by Chuck at 11:28 AM | TrackBack
January 19, 2008
Something for me to remember as I vote
Via Josh Marshall, I came across video for this Bill Moyers commentary on Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson - which you might find interesting in the aftermath of all this Clinton/Obama flap you may have heard about:
LBJ worried that the mounting demonstrations were hardening white resistance. He had been the master of the Senate, the Great Persuader, the man who could twist your arm with such flair and flattery you thought he was actually doing you a favor by wrenching it from its socket. He reckoned that, with a little time, he could twist enough arms to end or at least neutralize the power of die-hard racists, all of them - including some of his mentors - white supremacists, who threatened to bring the government, if not the country, to its knees before they would see blacks eat at the same restaurants, go to the same schools, drink from the same fountains, or live in the same neighborhoods as whites.As the pressure intensified on each side, Johnson wanted King to wait a little longer and give him a chance to bring Congress around by hook or crook. But Martin Luther King said his people had already waited too long. He talked about the murders and the lynchings, the churches set on fire, children brutalized, the law defied, men and women humiliated, their lives exhausted, their hearts broken. LBJ listened - as intently as I ever saw him listen, he listened. And then he put his hand on Martin Luther King's shoulder, and said, in effect, "Okay. You go out there, Dr. King, and keep doing what you're doing, and make it possible for me to do the right thing."
Lyndon Johnson was no racist, but he had not been a civil rights hero, either. Now, as president, he came down on the side of civil disobedience, believing it might quicken America's conscience until the cry for justice became irresistible, enabling him to turn Congress. So King marched, and Johnson maneuvered and Congress folded.
Listen to the whole thing. I never realized Lyndon Johnson dropped "we shall overcome" in front of the combined session of Congress, for that matter.
The Moyers piece fascinated me because I couldn't help but feel like I'd heard this story before. And, upon a quick review, I found that I had - on a much lower level.
What we hear from Jesus in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is radical demands, uncompromising standards, no accommodations to our preferences, or our opinions whatsoever. What we are hearing is from God, not from the latest public opinion poll. We are hearing the voice that doesn't sound like any other voice - the voice of God telling the people of his kingdom what he expects of them.Let me tell you a story. I got this story from a Christian law professor at Yale Law School named Stephen Carter. He wrote a great book on religion and politics called God's Name In Vain. There was a hero of the Civil Rights Movement that many of you may not have ever heard of. Her name was Fannie Lou Hamer. Fannie Lou Hamer was the founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In the summer of 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the credentials of the lily-white Mississippi slate of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party offered an integrated slate of delegates, many of whom, like Mrs. Hamer, tried to register to vote in Mississippi, but were punished for it. In fact, Fannie Lou Hamer was jailed on a number of occasions and tortured in jail for doing such outrageous things as trying to register to vote.
Well, this conflict between the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the white slate of delegates selected by the Mississippi Democratic Party was threatening the Democratic National Convention. President Johnson didn't want the controversy so he sent his Vice President in waiting, Hubert Humphrey, to visit Mrs. Hamer and to try to get her to back off.
Humphrey went with his typical happy style thinking he would be talking to a normal human being. He asked Fannie Lou Hamer what she wanted. But Fannie Lou Hamer was a woman who had been taken hold of by Jesus Christ. And Fannie Lou Hamer responded by saying, "What I want is the beginning of a New Kingdom right here on earth."
Humphrey didn't know how to deal with that statement. So he tried to explain things in political terms. He wanted Fannie Lou Hamer to understand that if he and Johnson were nominated, that they would work hard for Civil Rights. So she should compromise now and not push her slate of delegates.
Here's Fannie Lou Hamer's response:
Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs for trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County. Now, if you lose this job of Vice President because you do what is right, because you help MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take the nomination this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for Civil Rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk all the time about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you.
See, the scribes and the Pharisees spoke the language of Hubert Humphrey, reasonable, practical, in-touch with current political realities. Jesus always speaks the language of Fannie Lou Hamer - radical, uncompromising, prophetic - a voice unlike any other voice. Have you heard the radical voice of Jesus lately?
There are many claims in American politics to what God's politics actually looks like. I'm not going to tell you whose are right or wrong (although, I will confess, the implication that I can't vote my ideals of what I believe this country should look like because this candidate has one kind of experience or and that candidate has another and this guy doesn't have at all, frankly is hacking me off). I will tell you that Jesus' voice is not practical. It is prophetic. It demands a light that shines for the whole world to see, not a light buried under the basket of expedience or economics.
Posted by Chuck at 02:37 PM | TrackBack
January 04, 2008
"Chuck Norris doesn't endorse, he tells America how it's gonna be"
As of right now, I don't support anybody in the presidential campaign, and even if I did, I don't think I'd publicly post on the blog. There is a whole lot that intrigues me about this campaign, though, and I think we're seeing a generational divide in this nation far more complete than we ever have, even during the Vietnam era.
But enough of all that. There's only one question I have coming out of last night, and that is: HOLY CRAP WAS THAT CHUCK NORRIS STANDING BEHIND MIKE HUCKABEE?
And the answer is: HOLY CRAP IT WAS
How in God's name did I miss this? Yes, it's a wonderful thing to be a credible Evangelical candidate in rural Iowa, but it's ANOTHER THING ENTIRELY to have Chuck Norris on your side. I'm scared now.
Of Huckabee, not of Norris.
Actually, truth be told, of both of them.
(YouTube permalinks: Huckabee's victory speech - complete with Chuck over his left shoulder - and HuckChuckFacts.)
Posted by Chuck at 11:18 AM | TrackBack
November 05, 2006
Thanks, BlogDad
I've been really struggling with how to approach the Ted Haggard conundrum. The homosexuality issue is the single most difficult issue we face as evangelical Christians, and to see it emerge so plainly - sitting so close to the election, too, right when religious conservatives need it the least - just makes me feel like I'm playing with fire just talking about it.
It's times like these when Jeff Eaton hits the home-run ball.
But seriously, Conservatives have been making this WAY harder than they should be these days. Between Congressman Foley and Evangelical WunderPastor Ted Haggard, the data points are starting to accumulate. You're not helping me with this 'opposing stupid rhetorical tricks' campaign I'm on. It's like trying to explain the problems with straw-man attacks only to have the other debate participant admit, "Well, actually I DO eat puppies, and my plans WOULD lead to the destruction of life as we know it..."So, if you're going to fight against gay marriage day in and day out, y'know... Please try to avoid the hot man lovin'. Work with me, Conservatives. Please?
Amen, and amen.
UPDATE: Ted Haggard's and Gayle Haggard's letters to New Life Church. That'll be a primary document that will beg lots of discussion in the days to come. (Hat tip: David Kuo.)
Posted by Chuck at 06:56 PM | TrackBack
October 14, 2006
(Boring political post, feel free to avoid.)
This is one of the most interesting political letters I've read pretty much ever.
Mind you, you should not be confused about its intent - it is an advertisement for FreedomWorks, a grassroots conservative/libertarian PAC and thinktank. Mind you, you should not be confused about its author, who was one of the firebrands of the Republican Revolution in 1994 (back when I was excited about the idea of being a Republican) - and one who still has those central passions still plainly in display.
But to read this kind of principled, conservative - and even Christian - takedown of how much Republicans have comprehensively gotten wrong over the past six years is stunning. Case in point:
Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism— including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties— have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of "righteousness" on others through the hammer of law.
We must avoid the temptation to use the power of government to perfect our society and its citizens. That is the same urge that drives the Left and the socialists, and I can assure you that every program or power we give government today in the name of our values can be turned against us when the day comes where a majority of Congress is hostile to us.
Again, disagree with the motivations of that statement if you will - and many of you will - but understand that there is a sea change in American political thought coming, if you can consider anything in the W era "political thought" at all. And it is not purely a rise of Democrats to overthrow a corrupt GOP - in fact, the thing that keeps me from pulling a straight Democratic ticket in November is the fact that I have never seen this sophisticated a debate about what government is and what government should be from Democrats. Ever. The Dems have never even come close. The sophistication and rigor comes broadly from conservatives and libertarians.
(Hrm. I didn't start this post with the intent to make that kind of turn, but it is how I feel, so why stop now?)
The hat tip for the above take goes to - as seems to be the pattern for these sorts of things - Andrew Sullivan's blog. Talk about a guy who you might or might not agree with - Sullivan is one of the most polarizing writers I read, who can offend in one post and tug at the heart strings in the next and argue intelligently and passionately in the next. He shoves the homosexuality issue in my face, which is at the core of so many of my deepest spirutal questions and even now (in this supposedly enlightened age and in my supposedly enlightened phase) I'm not entirely comfortable with.
But the debate - about what government is, about what faith is, about what terrorism is, about what conservatism is, about what Christianity is, about what this war is, even about who we are as the heirs of Western civilization - is there on his pages. It is all out there, it is argued fiercely, and I am exposed to more thinking from ALL corners of political thought than I would be otherwise. And it is important to see how as many people think as possible, rather than closeting ourselves into one small corner of the political spectrum and simply being comfortable there.
And that's probably the best conclusion I can come up with for this collection of thoughts, so I'll shut up.
Posted by Chuck at 07:25 AM | TrackBack
August 03, 2006
Can I be forgiven...
...for wishing this dude was my president? Because he's about a thousand times more literate than George W. Bush.
In the end, even the issue of Israel is just part of the same, wider struggle for the soul of the region. If we recognised this struggle for what it truly is, we would be at least along the first steps of the path to winning it. But a vast part of the Western opinion is not remotely near this yet.Whatever the outward manifestation at any one time - in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iraq and add to that in Afghanistan, in Kashmir, in a host of other nations including now some in Africa - it is a global fight about global values; it is about modernisation, within Islam and outside of it; it is about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs. Islamist extremism's whole strategy is based on a presumed sense of grievance that can motivate people to divide against each other. Our answer has to be a set of values strong enough to unite people with each other.
This is not just about security or military tactics. It is about hearts and minds about inspiring people, persuading them, showing them what our values at their best stand for.
Just to state it in these terms, is to underline how much we have to do. Convincing our own opinion of the nature of the battle is hard enough. But we then have to empower Moderate, Mainstream Islam to defeat Reactionary Islam. And because so much focus is now, world-wide on this issue, it is becoming itself a kind of surrogate for all the other issues the rest of the world has with the West. In other words, fail on this and across the range, everything gets harder.
I mean, you're allowed to disagree with that if you see fit. You're even allowed to loathe the tactics that have been employed in that effort if you see fit. But you can't tell me that argument isn't clearly and coherently made, and provides a compelling purpose. Which pretty well trumps, um, anything the W has said since late 2001.
Just saying. Again, if I've blasphemed, so sorry.
(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
Posted by Chuck at 12:28 AM | TrackBack
July 28, 2006
All The Governor's Men
(This is legitimately my first multi-category post, and justifiably so.)
I am currently listening to one of the most amazing things I have heard in my life. It is a unique mix of progressive history and old-time radio.
It's called All The Governor's Men, and it's the story of the contested Georgia governor's election of 1946, wrapped up in the early stirrings of civil rights ideas and the aftermath of World War II.
There is historians' comment, actual radio footage from '46, and dramatization (and some pretty brutal dramatization at that) of the times.
And they're putting this on the radio.
Not only am I totally on-board, it's even kept my eldest daughter's attention for more than just a few seconds.
I may be about to actually give some money to public radio - under the guise of Georgia Public Broadcasting - for the first time in my life. This program is worth it. More please more please more please.
(EDIT: It would be even better if the media file on the site didn't say "All The Governer's Men" - ow. Try not to let that egregious mispelling distract you. Of course, I would have more right to moan if my syntax on the parenthetical sentence above wasn't so horribly fractured.)
Posted by Chuck at 03:20 PM | TrackBack
September 17, 2005
The Market Knows All, Dr. Chuck edition
I really don't have a very strong comment here, except to read this and worry about what comes next in the Katrina-hit areas (especially in Alabama and Mississippi, where the worst-off citizens aren't in the public eye like they are in New Orleans).
Because Charley was a small Cat-4. Take those 1,500 numbers in that article and multiply them by 50. At least.
But hey, if developers come in and decide that hurricane-ravaged neighborhoods are undervalued, and are going to rebuild them uber-nice and with uber-high rents to boot, then its up to the people to decide whether they value those properties enough to rent them anymore. Such things as family history, limited resources, and no means to get schooling? Tough. There's always someone willing to come in and pay a bit more, and we're sorry if grandmothers or young families get lost in the shuffle, but That's Just The Way The Market Works.
Some days, doesn't it just feel like everything is fighting uphill?
(This post format stolen shamelessly from Jeff Eaton. Read the first installment, the second installment, and the installment in which he links me.)
Posted by Chuck at 09:55 AM | TrackBack
September 09, 2005
Best laugh-out-loud line in a month
From the blog of Democratic Leadership Council wonk Marshall Whittmann, AKA "the Bull Moose":
The Moose observes that we have reached such an extraordinary moment in our political life that the voice of sober minded reason is Newt Gingrich.
And I'm sure I disturbed the BIO 1010 class across the hall with my laugh. Because, dang it, the Moose is RIGHT.
The argument is laid out in full in this op-ed by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post. Check this thinking, it is so clear that I'm left feeling an idiot for not having thought it first:
Gingrich argues that the values debate that has divided America so sharply during the past decade is over. There's a broad consensus about most issues, and anyway people realize that the country's big problems aren't about morality but performance. "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working," Gingrich told me. "The issue is delivery." And that's true at every level -- city, state and federal.Gingrich's critique of the federal response is as devastating as that of any Democrat. "For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve," he wrote fellow Republicans this week. "The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable," and for that reason, "it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed." He observes in another memo, "While the destruction was unprecedented, it was entirely predictable."
I think that's the thing that has the populace so completely infuriated. If you even CASUALLY studied the New Orleans situation, you knew full well what peril that city was in if The Perfect Storm hit. And you know how unpredictable hurricanes can be - for crying out loud, last year we had Charley, a meandering Category 2 storm in the Gulf that suddenly took a hard right turn and made landfall as a VERY destructive Cat-4.
Memo to disaster planners: if you thought you knew, you didn't know. And people died as a result. I think I'm allowed to be embittered because of that.
For even those that were prepared, we're now in a cycle of "nobody told me I had to ask permission for that" blame-gaming where one branch of government thought another one was going to do a job, and the other thought the one was going to do the job.
Somebody get the dang job done, already.
And, with Gingrich's delivery argument, I fully expect that there's going to be some kind of groundswell of people seeing this as an issue that needs to be addressed in the next round of elections. It's one thing to be concerned with issues, but if government - particularly government that has claimed a responsiblity for making sure we are Ready for the next disaster - is so hopelessly broken as to leave literally thousands of its own citizens to die, then who is to say that the ticket to electability won't be the Ability To Get The Job Done?
Posted by Chuck at 06:07 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
September 07, 2005
Katrina Radio
If you're interested in the New Orleans latest and you're not listening to 870 AM out of New Orleans, you're missing the best news source on the PLANET, bar none. They are streaming online, and when the atmosphere is right you can pick them up, clear as a bell, all over the Southeast.
What's really been wild has been how masses of the radio broadcasters in the city have pulled together to make it so good.
Posted by Chuck at 07:11 AM | TrackBack
September 04, 2005
Katrina (D-New Orleans)
This week may have been a watershed in my personal politics.
I've never been a traditional conservative anyway. There are many things about conservatism - particularly the blind faith in the private sector as the solution for everything under the sun - that have never sat well with me. I have never voted for George W Bush, but I've never been ready to wholeheartedly support the Democratic Party either, mostly because the overwhelming sense I've gotten from the Democrats is that they are a group of bumbling incompetents who couldn't be trusted to organize a drinking game in a brewery.
And I have always had a measure of sympathy - and, at times in my life, out and out support - for the Christian Coalition and its politics. I am anti-abortion (I won't even dress that up in its "pro-life" jargon). I am a believer in faith-based charities (I might even plug one somewhere else on this site). I am, in many senses, a religious traditionalist, and so many of my friends and family fall into the general camp of "if Christianity was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it is good enough for me."
Which I can get behind. I mean, I would be able to get behind it more if it hadn't been deism that was good enough for the Founding Fathers, but that's another debate for another day.
But, if I'm going to be able to take this "compassionate conservative" president that we have and claim him as my own, then I need to have evidence of his compassionate conservatism.
And he's had his chance.
And he has blown it in the most tragically spectacular fashion possible.
The flooding of New Orleans, when the post-mortem comes down, is a disaster that every single branch of government dedicated to protect and provide for its citizens will bear blame for, from the parish and city governments to the federal government itself. So this may be about the incompetence of a Republican federal government.
But raw incompetence is one thing. It might even be forgivable.
Bald-faced lying in the face of death and destruction, for the sake of protecting political position, is something else ENTIRELY.
And what has not only affected me, but shaken much of my belief to its core, has been the shameless attempts by this administration to deny that anybody foresaw an event like this happening - when it has been predicted for YEARS. Any of us who watched the hurricane coverage when Ivan came crashing through in 2004 heard the horror stories of what would happen if that storm keyed on New Orleans, and breathed a sigh of relief when the storm passed that city by and sure disaster was averted. Do these people take me for an idiot?
It has been the persistent failure of Federal authorities to recognize even the most basic facts on the ground, even as anybody who could turn on CNN or Fox News (or even the Weather Channel, for crying out loud!) could see the desparation and the tragedy unfolding. Do these people have no conscience?
And I have had to observe both of these things in the face of the argument I have been patiently buying into for the past four years that FEMA had to be folded into the Department of Homeland Security for the cause of streamlining our response to every kind of possible calamity - terrorist or otherwise - and now all of those plans have been shown to be folly.
If you are familiar with Andrew Sullivan at all, you have your opinions of him. Many of those opinions might not be exactly polite. Many of those opinions might even be right. But I have a hard time reading this and not nodding and saying to myself "that sounds about right".
Especially after hearing the juxtaposition of Washington pols patting one another on the back and saying "job well done" while the local leaders on the ground can't get through an interview without breaking down completely.
Look, I could keep linking for DAYS here. I've been reading enough to link for days. But I have to make a point here.
I preached in church this morning. The text I preached off of, in putting the Great Commission into the context of church growth, was 1 Corinthians 9:16-23. I concentrated on the idea that Paul was willing to be selfless in how he shared the Gospel - to give up his own rights to make sure those who received the Word from him would have as many freedoms of their own as possible. "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible."
Which is how my read of the Christian faith gets, the more I try to live it. We are supposed to be - literally - public servants. We are supposed to so order our lives so that our own priorities are placed as far down the order as possible, so that Christ can be glorified.
And in this hour, when the needs of humanity are placed in front of us so starkly, I see the leadership of our federal government - a leadership that has appealed to the very faith in Christ I claim as a means to get elected - continuing persistently to preserve their self-interests in the face of death and destruction.
How can I possibly be honest in my own faith and ever support them again?
UPDATE: Here's a far better roundup on the lies and/or incompetence from the likes of Chertoff and Brown than I could ever come up with, from the blogosphere's appointed king of hurricane-blogging. Warning: don't read if you can't take repeated cussing by the righteously indignant.
Posted by Chuck at 08:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
More Billy Graham goodness
I was quite surprised at the reaction I've gotten to my Billy Graham cheerleading. It's pretty shocking how many people have been bad to dismiss Billy as "just another fundie" who falls into all of the standard hard-right traps.
I mean, how many in the Christian right do you think go into apoplexies when something like this happens?
Graham drew a big laugh from the former president -- who theatrically buried his face in his lap, then threw his head back and closed his eyes with mirth -- when he recalled once saying that Clinton should become an evangelist "and leave his wife to run the country.""Because he has all the gifts," said Graham, who used a walker but spoke in a strong voice. Graham was effusive about both Clintons, returning to them after the altar call and telling the crowd, "I love them both with all my heart."
And I've never been accused of being a Bill Clinton fan, but: Billy has a point.
And my friend Summers happily points out this piece of Texe Marrs lunacy, which is filled with so much giddiness over Graham's dealings with gays in the Christian faith that I have to wonder WHY ol' Texe is spending so much time researching gay churches. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.
But that's not what really gets me. Marrs cites an interview with Robert Schuller that supposedly proves once and for all that Billy Graham really has no interest in world evangelism (an accusation so rich in irony that I'm sure Marrs misses it in full). God bless him for bringing it to my attention, I never would have paid attention to Schuller otherwise:
Robert Schuller: "Tell me, what do you think of the future of Christianity?"
Billy Graham: "I think everybody who knows Christ, whether they're conscious of it or not, they're members of the Body of Christ...God's purpose is to call out a people for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, Buddhist world, the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ, because they've been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus...and I think they are saved, and that they are going to be in heaven with us."
Robert Schuller (overjoyed): "What I hear you saying is that it's possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life even if they've been born into darkness and never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?"
Billy Graham: "Yes it is, because I believe that. I've met people in various parts of the world...that have never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, and never heard of Jesus, but they've believed in their hearts that there was a God."
Of course, Marrs goes into apoplexies:
So, there you have it. The world's most famous evangelist teaches that no one needs Jesus to be saved and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They're already members of the Body of Christ whether they know it or not! All they have to do is believe in a God--like one of the three million Hindu gods; or perhaps the man-god whom many Buddhists worship, the Dalai Lama; or the Moslem's Allah; or perhaps the Cosmic God of the evolutionists; or the witches' horned god, Pan; or perhaps all that people must do is believe in the New Age deity--themselves--as God!
I absolutely refuse to assert that we don't need to go into the world and proclaim the good name of Jesus (of course, that requires doing good in the world, which is a subtlety missed on many but one we'll pick up another time). But let's listen closely to what Marrs is saying. Is he implying that it's impossible for someone to come to know God without hearing from human lips the name of Jesus? Is he trying to argue that no man can ever look for God himself, live his life honestly and earnestly, recieve a word from God, believe that word, and have it credited to him as righteousness?
What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about — but not before God. What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."
Better burn all the books that suggest THAT.
So, yeah, Billy Graham is most certainly NOT a fundie. I'll continue to hunt down examples if you need more convincing.
EDIT: More examples, posted today on ChristianityToday.com even.
Posted by Chuck at 10:20 AM | Comments (3)
April 13, 2005
Interest in people, not in governments
I have been reading a lot of stuff from all over the map lately about Christian reconstructionists or Christian dominionists, and when you put that side-by-side with Jeff's thinking about Christian worldview (to wit, when somebody accuses somebody else of having a "Christian worldview", more often than not they mean "really bloody conservative Republican and probably Christian as well worldview")...well, it's just about enough to completely break my brain.
Fortunately, Donald Sensing's brain doesn't break so easily. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Donald is quite possibly the best of the political bloggers right now - not necessarily always my favorite, just the best - because, even and especially from his perspective as a pastor, he can crystallize so many of these other ideas floating around that would otherwise really give me problems and cause me to stammer around going "uh, uh, uh..."
Donald starts, as any good teacher should, with definitions, and he works from there.
I’ll not repeat here what the links about North and Barton say about them except to draw a necessary distinction between Christian evangelicalism, Christian reconstructionism (aka, "dominionism") and Christian theonomy - sorry for the vocabulary lesson, but to understand present-day political Christianity you need to have it.– Evangelicalism is a theology that holds the greatest imperative for a Christian is to lead others to confess personal faith in Jesus Christ as risen Lord and savior. Its primary fealty is to Christ personally rather to his ethical propositions or moral examples. Evangelicalism insists that human sins have been fully and eternally remitted by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection by the power of God. Hence, all persons who "believe in their hearts that Jesus was raised from the dead and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord will be saved," to slightly paraphrase Saint Paul’s teaching in Romans 10.
Please NEVER FORGET THIS, kids. Evangelicalism is NOT a political philosophy. The primary interest of an evangelical Christian is NOT in overthrowing or subverting a government. It is - or it should be - in the personal health and well-being, both physical and spiritual, of people around them. A basic part and parcel of this health and well-being is the life that is centered around Jesus Christ.
For me, this is plenty radical enough. Those of us who have grown up in a super-pluralistic academic world have been conditioned not to look someone in the eye and ask "do you have Jesus in your life? Because if you don't, you need Him." But if I buy into the Bible, I do have point-blank Scripture that justifies such evangelism:
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
So I am an evangelical Christian, by pretty much any standard.
More of Sensing:
– Christian dominionism is the idea that human institutions of every stripe should be brought under the umbrella of Christian teaching and practice. Some dominionists have not necessarily included the political organs of a country, state of local government under the umbrella, believing that the civil organs of society, if managed and membered by Christians, would inevitably lead to political processes and results that mostly reflected Christian virtue, even if not perfectly. Other dominionists - of whom Barton seems one - insist that every social, civil and government body must be brought under the control of Christians without exception.Hence, dominionists see their primary role not in saving souls but in saving society’s operating organs at every level. I probably am belaboring the obvious that not just any kind of Christianity is suitable for dominion over society; you’ll have a hard time finding a dominionist among the United Methodist Church, for example (my denomination) or finding a dominionist who would include the UMC or its Wesleyan tradition as valid foundations for proper Christian dominion.
I'm not convinced that I'm not a dominionist. It does bother me that so much academic thought (and scientific thought in particular, and biological science thought even more in particular) happens outside of the influence of Christian thought. It does bother me that political decisions, particularly in secular-minded arms of public service, are made without the influence of that cliched-but-still-important question "what would Jesus do?".
But I absolutely do not go in for David Barton-style reconstructionism. (By the way, here's Barton's own biography from his WallBuilders organization, and here's a decently-journalistic summary from BeliefNet of who Barton is and how he's worked politically.) I don't believe that America was originally a Christian nation, and I don't believe that a body necessarily has to be led by Christians to be do good work (or to even do Godly work).
Probably the most-cited verse by people of a dominionist stripe (and I know, because I've cited it myself in the past) comes from 2 Chronicles 7, particularly verse 14:
When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
(Your garden-variety churchgoer, of course, forgets or doesn't pay attention to the first part of that - that God was promising to heal land from famine or plague that he ordained, which would mean either (a) he's not saying anything about politics, or (b) any political calamity on a land was ordained by Him - which opens up a huge can of worms better reserved for another time. Suffice it to say it doesn't get thought of a lot.)
(But here's the big point:) God doesn't promise that people who believe in Him will be able to gain full run of the joint. He doesn't promise that people who claim full faith in Jesus Christ will be able to run unopposed for every political office from now to eternity. He doesn't propose any means of how He will "heal their land." He just promises to do it. And part of having faith in a big, omnipotent God is having faith that when God says He'll do something, he'll take care of the details - and what you think "healing the land" may mean might have nothing to do with what HE thinks "healing the land" might mean. Because He's God, he kind of knows a lot more than you do. And a whole lot more than I do.
For completeness, here's Sensing's definition of theonomy:
– Theonomy is a very strict form of dominionism that hold that the Mosaic, Deuteronomic and Levitical codes of the first five books of the Jewish Scriptures are ideal models for the civil code of the United States, suitably modified for 21st-century circumstances in their mode of application but not their imperatives of application.
And, if you really think that all the Levitical laws regarding sexual relations need to be followed to the letter, on pain of excommunication or death, then get thee back into the New Testament, you Biblical illiterate.
In fact, the Woman At The Well story from John 4 is a key example of how Jesus confronted people considered by religious authorities to be sinful. He did not condemn, nor did he pontificate. He stated the facts of the person's condition, and he let the facts speak for themselves. Jesus was only concerned, in that moment, with how the woman responded to him. He wanted nothing more than her faith in him. The rest, I'm sure he figured, would take care of itself over time - and even if it didn't, in this moment, he had affirmed the woman's importance and had been an example for her.
Nothing Jesus accomplished involved his place in any position of authority - the religious authorities despised him, and the Roman authorities either were completely apathetic towards him or actively aided his demise, depending on how you interpret the history.
And yet Jesus quite literally changed the world, simply by interacting with ordinary people.
There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Posted by Chuck at 11:20 AM | Comments (3)
April 11, 2005
On the Cold War
When a student asked me for takes on the Cold War, I found myself in position to write a dang book.
OK, here's the thing:
I have no strong early memories of the Cold War. I mean, it was an ever-present and stuff - I grew up knowing nuclear weapons existed and Very Bad Things had been threatened before I was born. But I grew up in the 80's, in small town Florida, and everything was very self-consumed. I felt sometimes like I was the only kid around who knew who Leonid Brezhnev WAS, and stuff.
I think I had a convo with Mama on my way to church one evening (I'm pretty sure this would be around '87, I was 15 or 16) saying I was damned tired of all the church crap if we were going to hear the same Jesus-loves-us tripe all the time. I wanted deeper stuff, like what God would think about nuclear weapons or whether it would be a good idea to pray for the conversion of Communists and all that. I got pretty much brushed off, and this fed into my personal bitterness towards the church.
So, at least in my little part of the world, I felt like the cold war was met with a measure of complacency. The Russkies were always the bad guys, the Russkies were always going to be the bad guys, might as well enjoy the other stuff life had to offer, it's not like we ever really would have to face them down anyway.
The Berlin Wall came down during my freshman year of college. I was trying to survive my freshman year at Rose-Hulman, and that wasn't a mean feat, so I can't say it was as earth-shattering as actually pulling my B out of Calculus I was. But it was a rather neat thing to have happen during one's college life, and it got me a bit interested in studying the history of Soviet Russia and the Eastern Bloc - much more so than I ever was in high school, or rather, than I was encouraged to be.
One of the requirements I had as a student at Rose-Hulman was that I had to take a course on the "non-Western" world, about something outside of the Americas or Western Europe. Russia in the 20th Century qualified. I signed up for that course before I left school as a sophomore, to take it Fall term of my junior year.
That would be Fall 1991.
The attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev happened on August 18, 1991, and Boris Yeltsin effectively took over Russia in the days that followed. I got to watch that play out on CNN over the end of that summer. THAT was the thing that had me glued to the TV, way more than the Berlin Wall coming down did. That's what really felt like the end of an era, for me.
(How did the media affect my opinions? I thought Wolf Blitzer was a blowhard then, just like I think he's a blowhard now. I listened to them, but I was deciding on my own LONG before Fox News suggested I should.)
And that fall term, I got to sit in Bill Pickett's Russia in the 20th Century course and have Dr. Pickett say excitedly "Gentlemen, it's not often you get to teach a course whose curriculum is guaranteed to change as the term is going forward because of current events. This is will be one of the most exciting courses you ever take, period."
And it was.
Now, it wasn't Pickett's style to teach the course directly, to tell you what you had to learn for exams. You had to read books. Devour them. But he would always phrase introductory questions like: "Affirm or deny: The collapse of Nicholas II's monarchy was inevitable because of the dissatisfaction of the proletariat, regardless of the corruption Nicholas II surrounded himself with." And Pickett forced you to develop your own ideas, and defend them. And he NEVER let you off the hook, regardless of which side you took. It was very difficult to discern his own views in the classroom, he was so interested in picking apart what YOU thought.
So I really developed a lot of my own opinions of the Cold War after the fact, based on the heavy-duty reading I had to do for the Russia class. I think, for the most part, the Cold Warriors up to Reagan and Gorbachev were stubborn SOB's who probably could have avoided a ton of grief had they just talked to one another (excepting Stalin, who was a genuinely evil man). I think Reagan (for all his faults) and Gorbachev (for even more of his) were fundamentally decent men who saw a chance to make things a little better, were a little bit more honest with one another than anyone had been before, were a little more creative in their thinking about their own goverments and the relationship between their countries, made a little more effort to affect change in the relationship, and were completely unprepared for the avalanche of change that accompanied that effort.
And honestly, we're still trying to find our way as a nation without that major ever-present adversary, and Russia is trying to find their way period.
Posted by Chuck at 09:57 PM | Comments (5)
March 11, 2005
No one's life, limb or property is safe when a legislative body is in session
The passage of this bill is part and parcel of the reason the political affiliation best describing me these days is anti-incumbent.
I mean, this thing is getting grief from the right, the left, the middle, and the predicate (hey, Jeff, there's some more love for you). There is broad-based opposition among the public. And the thing passed the Senate 74-25.
Here's the redstaters' biggest take on the matter:
The record number of bankruptcies in America is not the fault of consumers so much as it's the fault of credit companies willing to extend credit to pretty much anyone, independent of their means or station. When I lived in Brooklyn, one of my roommates was unemployed for almost a full year. After six months of unemployment, he did an experiment and saved all the pre-approved credit offers he received. The result: in one month, this unemployed 26-year old was offered almost a hundred thousand dollars in preapproved credit. That the bankruptcy bill does zero to address this corporate malfeasance -- a major and easily-addressed cause of the bankruptcy rate -- is absurd.
In response to this, I have only one word of wisdom and advice to everyone who reads this thing:
Every time you pay a finance charge on a credit card you carry, you're giving money to the SOB's who, given the option, would be a loan shark and throw you into debtor's prision so they can line their pockets with your dough.
Pay off your credit cards. Aggressively. And, while you're at it, avoid using your check card under conditions that would require you to pay fees that would go to the big banks and the card companies. Do whatever you can so that these pricks don't get the satisfaction.
And oh yeah, as my father used to say, when your congresscritters who voted for this thing come up for reelection, "throw the bums out."
Posted by Chuck at 11:24 AM | Comments (3)