November 2004 Archives

Yesterday on the way back home we heard a Prarie Home Companion Show with Garrison Keillor, talking about the Thanksgiving table at his house growing up. This clip , at about the 3:50 mark (but the whole thing is worth hearing)...about the Sanctified Brethren dogmas of the faith of many of his family members, and the place that prompted this post:

"For some people the threshhold of the Lord's will is lower than for other people. Some people, they just look at something they like and they hear the Lord telling them to go do that"

Start the clip at about 3:45 and hear the whole context. Pretty funny. I'll have to go back and listen to more of Garrison Keillor. I'd heard so much about the Lake Wobegon stories, and heard bits and pieces, and read some of Keillors' remarks from his recent book Home Grown Democrat

From A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Deitrich Bonhoeffer (Editor's Introduction, p. 11)

"Given the Gospel's insistence on universal brotherhood and sisterhood in Jesus Christ, Bonhoeffer began to see for the first time the absurdity of Christians killing people for the sake of national pride or territorial ambitions."

Kind of seems obvious , "given the Gospels" and "Given" the very words and life of Jesus, doesn't it? And yet, Christians by the millions find some way around this. It usually boils down to "kill or be killed", which is why "pre-emption" seems attractive to those who would maintain some theological integrity alongside their cultural mores. I secretly maintain a distinction when I refer to "Christian". There is the "cultural" Christian (a member of that society's popular Church) and there are Christians that need know qualifier, since they actually follow Christ. I can find all kinds of room for including a whole lot of theological play, except where it comes to the willingness to toss out at least a tendency to non-violence, and taking seriously "love your enemies" and "love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself".

MSNBC - Transcript for Nov. 28

Transcript for Nov. 28
GUESTS: Former Gov. Tom Kean, (R-N.J.), Chair, 9-11 Commission; Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, (D-Ind.), Vice Chair, 9-11 Commission; Dr. Jerry Falwell, The Faith and Values Coalition; Dr. Richard Land, President, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention; Reverend Al Sharpton, National Action Network; Reverend Jim Wallis, Convener, Call to Renewal, Editor, Sojourners Magazine

SojoMail

Speaking of recent atrocities on both sides of the "War on Terror", David Batstone says:

scenarios must be treated as crimes against humanity, and not justified as "what happens in a war." U.S. military and government officials are quick to label enemy atrocities as "terrorism," yet consistently scapegoat a few "bad apples" as solely responsible for American atrocities.

I heard Father JOhn Dominic Crossan on NPR on Wednesday night. It got me pumped to continue my reading of In Search of Paul
NPR : Fresh Air from WHYY for Wednesday, November 24, 2004

His new book is In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom. Crossan looks at the life of Paul, and describes how the most important Christian value is justice. Crossan is professor emeritus of De Paul University, and is considered by some to be the foremost scholar of historical Jesus.

This , from comments by a German reader on Daily KOS:

Daily Kos :: Four more years... of what?

a newly confident President Bush, who described his future method of handling allies with this memorable formula: ,,I will reach out to others and explain why I make the decisions I make."

He might as well say,
"I'll reach out across the aisle, and grab 'em by the nuts, and say , this is what it is". Actually, I'd Like to hear you EXPLAIN the decisions you made. We all know your real reasons won't play, even amongst the most hardened conservatives.

I wrote several days ago, and I'll say it again: Thomas Frank asks "What's the Matter with Kansas?" in his book by that title. Amazon editorial: "According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically."

And I ask: What's the Matter with US? (Double meaning: US as in we, and US as in U.S.) It's a malady affecting the whole lot of us. It's utterly amazing how little attention is payed to the actual experts (other than the "payed 'experts'" like the two sides of a court case will find expert testimony to support their case), how little attention is payed to the actual policies, or how easy it is to HIDE matters of policy that affect all of us. The media , in my opinion, and many others, is the sellout here, and for me, the Church as well. If the media would simply point us to the supporting or conflicting evidence, or if the Church would simply preach the gospel and seek God, they would have eyes to see, and ears to hear.

ICTHUS: More thoughts on Christ and Culture

There is no "Christianity" apart from a "Church". That is to say adamantly that to be a "Christian" is to be a part of a people.

That seems to be the missing first step, especially today, in this Age of Empire, when the Church prefers to be something other than the Church, and remain silent as the Nationalistic Religions fill the airwaves and the halls of Churches with talk of "morals" that include not much morality, and make shambles of it by approving of the war machine and the sacredness of the "cause".

But aside from the war question, and the lack of contrary voices, there is the abandonment of any serious attempt to "get at" the living of community, and in showing much interest at all in the treasure source that waits to be tapped by our getting serious about truly becoming responsible for one another's journeys in a real and personal way. My friends in the blog world know SO MUCH more of me than people in my face to face world, and I feel this most acutely when I sit bathed in its absence in the Church. I am "bathed" because I experience this absence of shared story most acutely there, in various activities and obeservances, and often might be seen visibly shaking my head as I ask myself "How did we become such a culturally captive Church? How did we become a place where the last subject you might expect a to be the topic of a convseration that you happen upon to be something to do with what ministry is or what Christian community is. It's usually filled with the same niceties one would hear anywhere else. And this is sad, and it is infuriating. I can blame Church of the Saviour for that deep dissatisfaction on my part. I keep looking for that type of determination to keep listening with one another for God, and to find the call of God often in the midst of our sharing hourneys, and EXPECTING that others will want to know where we've been this week on this journey.

ICTHUS: More thoughts on Christ and Culture

So if we're having a discussion about politics and it doesn't include practical discussions of loving your enemy (I mean really, non-violently), my guess is that the conversation is wrong-headed to begin with. Because this new reality of the Kingdom of God has already begun (even if not not yet fully realized), it is not the job of the Christian to transform the world or the culture through means of power. This is powerful work that has already been done by God through the cross (and this is really Good News!).
So I raise the question of "being in charge" as a means to encourage Christians to reclaim their distinctly Christian imagination and identity by living by a different set of practices than those of coercive power.

I just heard on a Trinity Broadcast (I am watching it via a link from Sojourners.com

The new book is titled: How the Right Gets it Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get It. I will certainly have that one on my watch list. Catchy and on-target title.

This great line from Michael Keaton in Night Shift (I watched this for the first time on my honeymoon in our room one night) seems to also fit the Bush White House , in light of this story:

WASHINGTON (AP) - One-third of President George W. Bush's top 2000 fundraisers or their spouses were appointed to positions in his first administration, from ambassadorships in Europe to seats on policy-setting boards, an Associated Press review found.

At least 57 contributors or their spouses were named to agency positions, advisory or decision-making committees and boards or to U.S. delegations.

from here

So, screw the idea that the nation's agency positions go to people who have demonstrated commitment to the safeguarding of public trusts like environment, health and safety, food and drug, economy, and on and on. The responsibilities go to those who can tow the line , and feed the mouths of the poverty stricken corporations who always just wanted those "restrictive" regulations lifted.

Eric has a post about the ire of the Right being directed toward Kevin Sites for DARING to simply report what he saw.

Eric's Tasty Morsels of Thought - Seeping Hatred Toward Kevin Sites

Eric says in his post: Only in today's climate raw facts can and are seen as partisan tools.

I guess that's what comes from being a part of the "reality-based" community.

Kevin Sites' blog is here

This seems to me to be sound advice for ANY denomination, or the Church at large.

U-C: What I See: On theological blindspots

Often, the "moderates" seem to call us to another place that I find equally unfulfilling. Somehow, moderate too often seems to mean that we simply agree not to talk about the things about which we disagree "for the sake of the church." That seems unsatisfying to me, because the question it leads me to is "so what?". If we all are expected to sell-out on what we believe, then what is the point of being together.

However, I believe that there is a "third way." That would be to simply go about the work of being church as consistently and faithfully as we can - together. Some of my thinking on this has been shaped by rereading Stanley Hauerwas' book "Resident Aliens" this summer. In other ways, my thinking is shaped by my training in conflict resolution work and peacemaking.

Carlos of Jesus Politics (from whom I got this link) asks, in his post pointing to this article: "Can you imagine the president of the Southern Baptist Convention writing like this?".

No, I cannot. The time was, when that was what one expected.

Back to the gist of it: Peace in the Church is more than the absence of conflict. It has more to do, I think , with things like what Hauerwas calls "BEING" the Church (which is what he probably emphasizes in Resident Aliens, mentioned in the above article, which I 'll aslo have to add to my reading list). BEING the Church means being about being responsive to call. And there's plenty for everybody to do. This is why there are Churches. To collaborate with God's activity , all of us, and to offer up our own gifts to the cause.

I was just reading a WIRED article (Dec. 2004) on the "Gross National Happiness", the point of which is that the measure of a country's well-being may well be the sense of fulfillment and purpose experienced by its people. The same goes for the Church.

...Nor do I know if it is liberal or conservative to claim that the first social task of the church is to be the church, which entails being a community capable of being a critic to every human pretension

Hauerwas certainly makes it clear that there are certain things that "makes the Church the Church", so clearly expressed in the
"the first social task of the church is to be the church"

BE the Church. The "difference"; the unique community that lives under a different ethic from that of the world; where ethics of empire and ethics of "common sense" (the latter of which will fall prey to the prevailing intellectual structures and assumptions). The war question is one that seems to have become so assimilated into the "assumed order" of things, implied in such phrases as "That's war", which makes my blood boil and also saddens my heart when I hear it repeated by Christians. Here is where I find the biggest hurdle to an ecumenicism that seeks a cross-discipinary agreement and an affirmation of a "common faith" in Christ. Well, in terms of making the claim to follow Chirst, I guess it can be said that we share that stated goal. But when it comes to the changing of heart that derives from Christ, the war question remains difficult to reconcile with the call of Christ. Here is where "being a critic to every human pretension" is most glaringly absent in what passes as "Church". Live nativities and put lucks aside, the Church is being the Church when it places itself in the the role of being critic of the human habits which run contrary to the ethic of a Community which calls itself the Body of Christ.

Vaughn also indicates that he sees a coming disappointment among the most theocratic of the Religious Right, that this Bush administration actually DOESN'T champion what THEY think he does. He is USING them and incorporating some of their talking points in order to feign alliance, but the Neocons are NOT the bastions of spiritual attentiveness as they have allowed themselves to believe.

The problem, I think, is that the Religius Right has allowed themselves to go all "ga ga" at every little pious phrase that Bush so carefully includes in his stump speeches. There seems to be a tendency for piety over policy. I have often maintained that Bush woulod lose a signigificant portion of his "evangelical" advantage if they but knew the actual policies which they have employed, all the while talking an apparently different story (one which is more "digestable", and thus less likely to cast doubt on the discrepency between what they SAY and what they DO.

ICTHUS

Evangelicals will no doubt find themselves frustrated and disillusioned by the politics of the nation state. And along the way, they will have traded their distinctly "Christian" identity and witness for something alien to the politics of Jesus.

Vaughn Thompson over at ICTHUS just chimed in on my previous post and reminded me of "Babylon" as an empire worthy of list. Definitely. In fact, one of my favorite passages that expresses the sense of "sojourner" and "exile" is the one where the Psalmist asks:

By the waters of Babylon , we sat down and wept. How can we sing the Lor'd song in a strange/foreign land?" Ken Medema's song ("By the Waters of Babylon") further impresses upon my consciousness the sense of exile and yet community that we ,as Christians, must strive to rwalize today , as Jesus calls us to a faithful witness in the face of an aggressive and destructive empire.

The following post, and this particular section, from IcThus's blog, echoes the theme that Hauerwas was exploring when he said "Ethics IS Theology".
ICTHUS

Christians are those people whose reflections on its life start with theology and ministry in the Church (its who we are and what we do), move to hermeneutical description, and then speak to the world. Mind you, this is not the linear process that english composition makes it out to be, but let me be clear that a perceived epistemological crisis should not set the agenda for theology!
So, Memorandum to all you Emergering folks who are planting really hip churches:
Do "Faithful" theology and stop talking about postmodernism as if it mattered. Live your reconciled church life as you should, read the Bible, care for orphans and widows, and do distinctly "Church" things, speaking in Christian parlance.

Who Will Roll Away the Stone?, Sojourners Magazine/April 1994

Happy are they who have reached the end of the road we seek to tread, who are astonished to discover the by no means self-evident truth that grace is costly just because it is the grace of God in Jesus Christ....Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, Mary, Mary, and Salome went to Jesus’ tomb
(Mark 16:2).
Sooner or later, those who have tried to follow Jesus find ourselves weary and broken like the Galilean women, on our way to bury him. It is the morning we awake to that unconsolable, aching emptiness that comes only from hope crushed. This dawn does not bring a new day, only the numb duty of last respects.

After the previous post, I looked back at my bookshelf and saw two books I got several years ago (10 years) by Ched Meyers. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus and Who Will Roll Away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians

This , form the back cover, connects it to the reading I've embarked upon that started with Hauerwas and Yoder, and the viewing of the Bonhoeffer DVD:

As a sequel to Binding the Strong Man, Who Will Roll Away the Stone? brings Myers' study of the gospel of Mark full circle. The first book provided a compelling reading of Mark's gospel as a manual of radical discipleship in the ancient Roman empire. Who Will Roll Away the Stone? picks up and extends the, gospel's challenge specifically to those living in the contemporary imperial context.

More:

More Hauerwas, from the intro to The Peaceable Kingdom:
The reader will find this work to be as much about theology as about ethics. One of its major concerns is to show why Christian ethics is a mode of theology. Indeed, to begin by asking what is the relation between theology and ethics is to have already made a mistake. Christian convictions are by nature meant to form and illumine lives. Since I hold that ethics is theology, in this book I sometimes treat issues, such as the authority of Scripture or the relation of reason and revelation, that are generally reserved for systematic or philosophical theology. I cannot pretend to provide an adequate account or analysis here of these, and other, complex issues, but I hope I say enough to show that such issues cannot be avoided if Christian ethics is at the heart of the theological enterprise.

The disconnect in our enlightenment mindset between orthodoxy and orthopraxis is a culprit in the process leading to a modern day gnosticism that makes theology irrelevant to ethics of practice. This is no clearer for me in the nature of the Christian Right and its "blessings" conferred on national interests as articulated and carried out by the Bush administration (and , to be "fair", by numerous other examples of EMPIRE throughout history, like Rome, Greece, Nazi Germany, and the U.S.)

This is a major motivation for me to focus my reading and reflecting now upon the theological insights and traditions which have been offered as faithful sytnaces toward the realities of empire. The book, In Search of Paul, in including this emphasis in the subtitle: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, will no doubt lead me to others (as it already has, like Hauerwas and Yoder, and probably a renewed interest in catching up with the writings of James Carroll , whose book Crusade is among my "devotional books" that I often read a couple chapters at a time. His earlier book, Constantine's Sword, woudl seem likely to be a future addition to my list.

From the Introduction, where Hauerwas seems to be answering directly my previous complaint with the approach he takes in Performing the Faith (which, by the way, is certainly not a bad nor an uninteresting book. It simply didn't live up to my expectation going in that this would be a thorough reflection on Bonhoeffer -- I actually got the book at Borders' when I was there to find the Bonoefer DVD).

Of course I believe that theology involves a systematic display and analysis of Christian convictions and their relation to one another. Moreover, I think the theologian must try to show through the analysis of such relations in what sense Christian convictions can claim to be true. While I do not claim to have "pulled it all together" in this book, I try to make more explicit than I have in the past the conceptual foundation underlying the suggestions I have made about how theology, and in particular Christian ethics, should be done.

For those acquainted with my past work, I suspect the most surprising development in this book will be the emphasis I place on nonviolence. Many have viewed my pacifism with a good deal of suspicion, seeing it as just one of my peculiarities. Such an interpretation is not unjust, since I have not written in a manner that exposes its centrality. I hope this book will help make clear why it is so methodologically crucial as I try to show why a position of nonviolence entails, for example, a different understanding of the significance of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection than that offered in other forms of Christian ethics. Indeed, nonviolence is not just one implication among others that can be drawn from our Christian beliefs; it is at the very heart of our understanding of God.

No sooner than I written my previous post where I talk about "diplomacy" that I read this in Peaceable Kingdom:

I hope to show such a stance is not just an option for a few, but incumbent on all Christians who seek to live faithfully in the kingdom made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Nonviolence is not one among other behavioral implications that can be drawn fromthe gospel but is integral to the shape of Christian convictions.

Yes. Very Integral. I just asked my wife Janet if we might visit Edgehill tomorrow morning. I need to be, during Advent of all times, in a place where the litany and the aim of Christian worship is to observe the call to peace, praying for peace, and contemplating what God is calling us to do to PROMOTE peace and collaborate on GETTING the message through.

Carlos over at Jesus Politics links to this Lakoff article, which I have excerpted a choice chunk:

Jesus Politics: Our Moral Values are Better

link to Common Dreams
(article from The Nation)
By talking to their base, they are activating their base model in swing voters. When liberals move to the right, they are shooting themselves in both feet: They alienate their base and they activate the other side's models in the swing voters, thus helping the other side.

The only way to trump their moral values is with our own more traditional and more patriotic moral values. Proclaim them and live them, and we will find that there are many more than 55 million of us.

Rather than say "our Values are better", I prefer to say "They are real" and "To be lived". Ethics involve ACTION rather than (or in addition to) mere intellectual assent and the embodiment of "ideas" in a dogma. DO unto others as YOU would have them DO unto you". All action.

I like this, from the same book as below (The Peacable Kingdom):

Alternative accounts are mentioned only as a means of clarifying my own position. As a result the book may be said to be decidedly "one-sided" for an introduction. My only defense is that I know no other way it can be done. As I try to show throughout, there is no way to do Christian ethics neutrally, since there is no agreement on what Christian ethics is or how it should be done' that does not involve substantial theological and philosophical disagreements. Therefore I have not tried to write a text in the mode of William Frankena's Ethics. Rather this "introduction" is closer to Bernard Williams's Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, since, like him, I make no attempt to offer an account of what makes ethics ethics

Amen. Go for it Stanley. I'm all ears/eyes.

During this past election, I got so weary of the calls for "diplomacy" amongst Christians. Not that this would be undesirable, if only it were done faithfully. But much of what I hear as examples of how to do this are more compromise than arrival at some righteous , "peaceful" summit. I use the term "peaceful" there in jest of the idea that there is , at bottom, no real conflict when we all reach that quintessential Christian position. I do believe there IS a Christian stance, although it requires much attention to the knowledge that we are always on a journey and incomplete. But there does come a point where Christians abandon the radical stances of Jesus and his "love your enemies" ethic, and his obvious and clear call for us to "do unto the least of these" on behalf of himself.

Let's pay attention to the call to true Peace, which the Religious Right would have us believe is an ethic that exists only "in their hearts", with no distinct call for that ethic of peace to impinge upon this world. That's what I call a practical heresy.

I broke out the OmniPage Pro 9 software that I got long ago with my now defunct Canon Scanner (it gave out after about 18 months, and now I have an HP scanner that Larry gave me to do some OSG work.....which is, one of those deals we never got to......for another day, hopefully soon) Now, it was to OCR a page of The Peaceable Kingdom to put forth aas something that addresses my problem with the first of Hauerwas' books that I bought, Performing The Faith, on the fact that it was too much comparative analysis and not enough Non-violence and Bonhoeffer.

While this book is meant to be a primer or introduction to Christian ethics which I hope can be used both in introductory courses in college and by adult study groups, I am not providing a survey of what various ethicists think on current issues in the field. Nor will I offer any extensive analysis of past and current figures in Christian ethics. Instead this book is an introduction in the sense that it attempts to present one straightforward account of a Christian ethic.
from the Introduction of The Peacable Kingdom

Sounds like exactly what I was exp[ecting from Performing The Faith. Cool.

David Sanger writes in the NY Times of how the fears about Bush's hawkish staff leading to further involvement may be premature:

The New York Times > Week in Review > Hawk Sightings Could Be Premature

A lot has happened since, not least a terror attack on American soil that profoundly changed the President's world view, and with it Ms. Rice's. But just as it proved unwise to draw a straight line then between what the president-elect was saying and how he would act, it may be equally risky to race to the certainty - as many in Washington did last week - that a second Bush administration, unrestrained by the caution of Colin Powell, will lead the United States into an unending series of confrontations with the world, starting with bellicose approaches to controlling the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

While I can only hope they would "see the light", this administration doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that they will learn much at all. I disagree with Sanger when he says: "a terror attack on American soil that profoundly changed the President's world view". I don't believe that was so much a change as it was an opportunity to "push through" the radical agenda of the neoconservatives. Bush's appointments since the election only serve to serve fair warning that they STILL don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks (ie, Appointing an advocate of Abu-Ghraib-type torture, and then "promoting" someone who was a pretty imept National Security Advisor, and who obviously "sticks it out" with the President (thus her reward) through their attempts to keep secret from the American people what they're really up to. NOW did a piece on her ineptitude and how this appointment shows that loyalty over effectiveness drives the White House.

Really long, three 10-hour days in a row at work (I'm not required to, nor did anybody ask me; it's just when I feel I'm dragging in my speed of development, I'll stick around longer to get it punched out.

So now, I'm looking forward to a sleep-in morning, and a chance to review the blogosphere more closely, and read a bit in the books I have in my pile to read

In Search of Paul (Crossan)
The Peacable Kingdom (Hauerwas -- just got delivered yesterday)
A Generous Orthodoxy (McLaren) (I'm on p. 115)
The Politics of Jesus (Yoder) (Read First Chapter and Preface in the past couple of days)

Performing the Faith is set aside until I read the other Hauerwas book (it got very dense for me about half way through, and it also has a chapter on Yoder that looks like I would benefit from reading Yoder first. It was a bit of a disappointment that there was so little actual Bonhoeffer in it. I read something that hinted at that, but decided that Hauerwas's subject of non-violence would make it bearable, but it got terribly bogged down in comparing this theologian with that one. A bit more of an academic approach than I had expected. Right now, I'm after some theological meat for our day, and for these times that call out for a Confessing Church.

Interesting, and I'll have to say, somewhat encouraging, even though that would mean hardships on all of us, it needs to be done to say to the U.S.: You are not an island, and not untouchable. Live and learn.

The Role of Boycotts in the Fight for Peace

Sporadic and spontaneous boycotts, local in form, have been taking place in cities throughout the globe. National Public Radio (U.S.) reports that thousands of Europeans, repulsed by the election of Bush, are refusing to buy American goods. One placard in a Paris window says: "Promote peace. Don't buy American." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Europe is simmering. "You're going to see American profits disappear. American corporations are going to be in big trouble. It's going to be a mantra not to buy American. All our major manufacturers are reporting major slowdowns in Europe. You're going to see the dollar disappear."
The boycott is spreading. Greenpeace is already involved in a boycott against Exxon-Esso and Mobil Oil. Fermiamo La Guerre, a coalition of peace groups in Italy, called for a boycott of Esso when the U.S. invasion commenced. Sales of Pepsi and Coca Cola have plummeted in the Mideast during the occupation, and Islamic nations are creating alternative cola drinks called Zam Zam and Mecca Cola. Iran banned ads for U.S.-manufactured goods. South African protesters in Cape Town demanded that Denel, a South African contractor, cancel all its contracts to supply military components to the U.S. war machine. The people of South Africa are well aware of the power of boycotts. As South Africa Indymedia put it: We must "take aim at the only thing that can bring Bush to his knees—the American economy."

In the capital of Pakistan, the bustling Jehangir restaurant has taken U.S. soft drinks off the menu. "We only serve Pakistani drinks," one waiter said in an interview with Inter Press Service. "We don't serve Pepsi or Coca-Cola or any other American soft drinks anymore." Fast-food chains—Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken—are under a boycott in Pakistan. As one member of the Islamist Party said: "We must stop buying anything American or British. We must hurt American interests as much as possible."

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Powell's Departure, Disappointing Tenure

I do not now and have never understood the adulation heaped upon Colin Powell. With the exception of the Powell Doctrine (which he's been happy enough to jettison for two Bushes), his actions demonstrate that he's not an independent thinker, wants to be a team player for the military and the Republicans as opposed to working for the good of the country, and he has remarkably little sense of history. Powell never would have achieved high rank and office if it hadn't been for the racial integration of the military and yet he publicly refused a direct order from Bill Clinton to integrate gays.
The man is not spineless, but he's no progressive, no matter how far left he may have been in the Bush administration. When push came to shove he lied to the UN the same way he lied about Vietnam.

Really unbelievable. How on earth the American people stand for this is beyond me. Pompus, self-righteous, and criminal, Delay is a modern day decendant of the Pharisees (but that might be unfair to the Pharisees....the ones that Jesus railed against are the group where Delay came from)

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

In the modern GOP, power trumps the rule of law. The ends justify the (illegal) means. And in case anyone wonders why that rule existed in the first place:
House Republicans in 1993 -- trying to underscore the ethics problems of Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), then-chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- adopted the rule that requires a party leader to surrender his or her post if indicted by any grand jury, federal or state.
(Via the DCCC blog.)

This article by Ron Sider bothers me, because it could be used by the people with whom Sider most likely has many difficulties, and seems to "excuse" by his omission of mentioning it, the almost defiant and advesarial position so many "evangelicals" take AGAINST doing much at all for the poor, or working dilegently for peace.

I see Sider's point, and I agree, as does Jim Wallis, that the Democrats need to be much more forthcoming about their "spirituality" and theology. But I also don't want to give them any room to frame the "values debate" so narrowly. Let's exemplify this by actually talking more broadly (and , yes, INCLUDE talk and action regarding these issues that the Religious Right think they "own"....which is, I suppose, what Sider's point is here......so......maybe this was a good article for me to both affirm and challenge me. To affirm my belief in the much broader arena of Christian ethics and how it touches and integrates with ALL of life, inlcuding the political (which, by nature, is involved in the conversation about society and how best to ACHIEVE a civil community).

Anyway....

I hold Sider in very high esteem as a Christian ethicist and theologian. His "Rich Christians in an Age Of Hunger" and books on the Nuclear Peril were eye openers for me back in the 70's. He is also the President of Evangelicals for Social Action , which , for me, is testimony to the fact that the Religious Right really doesn't deserve to use the title "Evangelical".

Read the Sider e-newsletter article below:

US PR/puppet/PM Allawi gives us the BS, as told by this post from Juan Cole

Informed Comment

Now Allawi wants to deny that residents of a city that has been invaded and crushed managed to escape without a scratch unless they were active guerrillas. Col. Mike Shupp joined in this vaudeville act, denying that there was a humanitarian crisis in Fallujah or that there was a need for Red Crescent aid.

I mentioned earlier how this will be a rough Christmas , considering all the Christians singing "Peace on Earth" and then doing absolutely nothing to indicate they actually believe it or intend to be faithful to it, and wondering what might happen as we slide further and further into quagmire. But it may be, that the situation might just mean a deeper meanng and impact of Christ, as the hope of humanity in this dark time. Bonhoeffer seemed to have found something in his final days. What will God's prescence and word be for us, exiled Christians?

There is a sense in which I feel that I cannot cout myself among the faithful, since I am often struck with my own self-centered driven-ness that makes it all too easy to neglect my family, my own spiritual nourishment, actually hearing the word of God or hear a call to join in some work that God is doing. So there is a whole bunch of saving/re-saving/transformation that needs doing all throughout my personhood. I have to feel that all of that is also tied to the human family, and the hope of community in the world, and the expression of that in the Body of Christ somewhere. And that a new resistance and call to repentance can fall over us as a nation; and that we don't let our leaders off the hook from truly being leaders. Part of me feels that nothing short of "regime change" will solve this. That some truth arises that throws light on those who have worked in darkness, and sought to deceive for some personal gain.

O Come O Come Emmanuel.

Josh points to this cool aggregation of Blog News from Left, Center, and Right:

THE DAOU REPORT

Sorry Everybody

Some of us — hopefully most of us — are trying to understand and appreciate the effect our recent election will have on you, the citizens of the rest of the world.

The picture above is one of the tame ones, although the eyes of this child should shoot heart-wrenching pain into those who look on them, especially any parent with a little one about this age.

I am sure that this will be the most painful Christmas/Advent Season I have ever experienced, including the past two "unemployed" ones. The Prince of Peace looks down on the city of Fallujah, not far on a worldwide scale from the city of Jerusalem for which he wept. These are horrific (these pictures on this site). Christians and all others who believe that peace should and can happen should protest in mass. Come on American Christians. Have some balls, some conviction, and some faithfulness to this Jesus whose name you invoke.

Fallujah in Pictures

the intro to these pictures:

most americans have not seen images like these.

i do not doubt my countrymen's decency, and neither should you. i don't know what to do about this mess, but I know the answer is not more violence. if you look at these pictures and want more war you are not looking hard enough.

This is when I'm going to become quite unforgiving of this American Church that has forsaken the prince of peace tro turn a blind eye, or in some heretical cases, to SUPPORT this mess; this EVIL. People who perpetuate this and LEAD this terrible plan (or lack thereof) are directly involved in EVIL. There's no diplomatic way to put this.

Daily Kos :: Winning hearts and minds

KOS' comments on this article
It is the civilians, starting with King George, who put these men into this morass of his own making, who deserve the real blame. The people who deserve to be brought up on charges are safe and sound in DC.

I have menetioned these guys several times before. I met Robert Parham and Cliff Vaughn last year (I visited their offices here in Nashville in the summer of 2002). At that time, I was looking for some work to do, and checked with them to see what they thought of blogging. Since then, I have been the beneficiary of their truly Baptist vision, which is all the more important as the quintessential "non-Baptists/anti-baptists", the Southern Baptists, have become more and more infamous for their what Parham calls their "anti-everything". It is refreshing to hear about true "moral values" from these contributors to a more healthy and wholistic (and "holistic") Christian Ethic, and to do it with a clear defense of the integrity of the historic Baptist faith, which is , I am under obligation to say, as a former Southern Baptist (maybe, a "true Southern Baptist" at heart; something OTHER than what they have become, after their bringing me up in the faith, and hosting me through Theological Studies at their flagship seminary, Southern Baptist Theologival Seminary in Louisville , MDiv. 1978-81)

Robert Parham wrote some great editorial

Welcome to Ethics Daily.com!

As heirs of the rich Baptist tradition of Henlee Barnette, T. B. Maston, Martin King and Clarence Jordan, we are required to offer a prophetic edge in the context of a conservative community. We, too, must stay rooted where God has planted us and speak forcefully for an authentic biblical faith which desires the creation of a loving community.

These Baptist forefathers always offered a forceful social critique, articulated an alternative vision and gave a compelling invitation for membership.

Faithfulness to their legacy necessitates that we embrace their approach and emulate their prudent courage.

My personal request to readers is that you follow this series each day, forwarding these editorials to your friends and get their feedback. I ask that you spend time thinking about how we collectively hammer out a new public witness and what you can contribute to this journey.

Just ordered from Amazon:

1 "The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics"
Stanley Hauerwas; Paperback; $13.00

1 "The Politics of Jesus"
John Howard Yoder; Paperback; $13.60

This is a good debunker of the moral superiority of the "Red States"

The New York Times > Week in Review > To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts

Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.
The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.

Ho ho ha ha ......oh no! Say it ain't so Red States!

I like this. Good use of THEIR arguments for a "mandate" by saying Bush had more votes than anyone in history. Kerry was second. That kind of takes the wind out of the sails right there. Then, there's this gem:

WorkingForChange-Echoing Bush's line won't help Democrats

More Americans voted against Mr. Bush than any other Presidential candidate in the nation's history

KOS points to an article about some of the stuff in Patriot Act II, and "Dissenting Bloggers Beware":

Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

Purging the intelligence community of those disloyal to the president? Purging liberal Democrats? Scared yet? You should be. Bush likes to operate in secret. Information is the enemy. Write your senator. Write your congressmen. Write all your newspapers. If Bush is intent on behaving this way, do not let him do it in the dark

MSNBC -

Oh and by the way: how come the “Kerry’s winning” part of the election night exit polling is presumed to have been wrong, or tampered with, but the “Moral Values” part of the same polling is graded flawless, and marks the dawn of a new American century?

I have been thinking this morning about how I want to devote some time to continuing the work, as a "pro-bona", volunteer work to do "on the side" of my full time job. The skills between the two are "interchangeable" (one can draw on and improve the other, and ideas discovered in one can be transferred to the other). The pro-bona work, of course, is Old Saint George. When I started my present job in April of this year, we went to Cincinnati during the school spring break, and I did some wrap up stuff. But since then, there seems to have been very little done to advance this, and actually put it into action, so it's sat there. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to a lot of other basic survival stuff like paying the bills, keeping the vision of The Great Good Place for Community and Spiritual Renewal alive and circulating.

So what else is new? Am I going to have to , like, start my own Church? That sounds wrong: MY own? Let me say that again: Should I "sound a call" (how I would do that, with nobody to "sound it: to?)

BTW, "Sound a call" is a Church of the Saviour concept (at least its the only community I know that actually looks at the process of CALL and constantly explores it as an issue not just for professional clergy, but as a spiritual/personal inheritance to which ALL of us must respond. God calls ALL of us; EACH of us to a certain task at a particular time. This is how The Church of the Saviour operates and continues to "send forth" people into "Needed" areas and contexts where the Good News can have an impact (which excludes hardly ANYTHING).

US, as in "us" as a nation, or as in "U.S."

I've heard a lot about this book, and the premise, encapsulated in a couple of quotes below, seems to be relevant to the rest of the country. The obsession with "values" (I call it "obsession" becuase it ignores the value-laden "other" issues (of which there are thousands) that are left off of the table. Sojourners does the best job of any Christian publication I know of in exploring the "values" inherent in most of the rest of life, and also, how soem of these other issues like econmomics and socail "safety-net" structures so neglected, ignored, and even attacked by conservative Christians as unneccessary and even harmful, actually have a bigger impact on the trends of some of those very "moral issues" like abortion (see the Stassen study discussion)

It's time that Christians used a little of their intelligence to make a broader sweep of the feasability of the President's economic plans ,because they will find that an alarmingly growing number of economist, liberal and conservative alike, are VERY concerned about the irresponsible economic policies of the Bush administration. They all say that the Bush economy is playing Russian Roulette with our economic future, and if something is not done to pay attention to the debt, we're in for VERY undesirrable results. And this is from an increasing number of conservative economists.

What's the Matter with Kansas?, by Thomas Frank

From the above review:

Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where's the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism -- the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat -- and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders' "values" and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

From Amazon.com:

This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

I meant to get to the point, in my previous posts about how much I appreciate the Al Franken show, that it is a kind of surrogate community for me. I do have the blogosphere, and the blogging friends I have gained in the past two years, but here is a different aspect: a voice, and all the great guests he has on the show every day. Just about EVERY book I read over the past 4 and a half months has had the author interviewed by Al Franken.

I also enjoy Katherine Lansford, who interjects and often guides the interview along. The long and short of it is that these conversations are extremely valuable to me. And the comic relief and jokes throughout as Al breaks into his various voices, is just fun, along with the weightiness of the topics.

Now why in the hell can't the Church do things like this, and have not only that but the relation of this to Scripture and our Christian tradition, and implications for the Church. I hear more about just these aspects on the Al Franken show itself (via his interviews with various progressive Christians like Campolo, Jim Wallis, etc. than in any Church I have been to.

I wish I could live in Washington DC and be able to go to The Potter's House, a ministry of the Church of the Saviour, and sit and talk with people who have devoted their lives to the Church and working with society and the people who need help, and are also smart, and reflective, and compassionate, and Christian. Why can't the Church BE that? Why doesn't it provide that? Where the Church is being the Church, it does. I need to find that.

Good food for thought on the woes of our "Way of Life"; spun by the Bush administration as one of our core values, it is a roundabout way of encouraging irresponsible consumption, which breeds irresponsible plundering other nations to "ensure" our ability to continue to plunder. The Right has swallowed the Bush "science" that "the earrth is going to be fine"; that we can't harm it. Meanwhile, the polar ice caps have melted at a rate that exceeds even the prior warnings, which many of these same people who tout "common sense science" refused to believe even then.

Materialistic Madness

We went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq saying we're promoting freedom, democracy, and the American way of life. It is a lie to promote the American way of life as it is at this moment. The great Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson, said in his 2002 book "The Future of Life" that if the rest of the world were to actually live like we do, it would take four planet Earths. Our promise is a recipe for mass extinction of animals and plants, massive wars by humans over scare resources. Do we not invite more terrorism against the United States by entities who will increasingly say we are stealing their energy, food, air, and water?
We all participate in this lie, Republican, Democrat, and independent, rich, middle class, and even a fair number of the poor. Somewhere on the checklist of big car, huge house, thundering television, wasted food, lights left on, packrat possessions, and paper thrown away, we can pencil in our share of the madness.

The previous discussions about Keillor have brought to mind how this has been going on , on a much smaller scale, within the Church for 25 years, starting with the beginnings of the conservative backlash (which apparently had begun several years before that, given how they had built an apparently strong coalition by the time of the 1979 SBC Convention). Paul Pressler, Paige Patterson, and other fundamentalist leaders "successfully" garbbed control of the leadership positions of the SBC, and embarked upon a 20 year campaign to "cleanse" the denomination.

A fellow Chritian found via Technorati links:

The Lord, The Blues, and the Art of Being Smooth

But those damned Christians came out to “vote their values” and wound up with Bush for four more years. God where will that take us? I trust you. I do.

What do I do now? I will go on promoting biblical values here, bring social justice by my own hand where I can, and continue to engage system.

Chris is an Assembliesof God pastor. I'm impressed. Assemblies of God, in my book (an din this case, my inaccurate book) usually fall in line with the Religious Right. But , as the case often is, where people listen to God, dissent and alternative is always a possibility. I can say the same for Southern Baptists too. After all, it WAS (and probably still is) very possible to emerge from that in ways that subvert the mainstream (although, when I grew up in it, it was amuch more diverse and affirming community than it is now).

Anyway, thanks fore the link Chris! And thank you for that post eletion reflection.

The following comment under the GetReligion: And the healing has begun post, puts rather bluntly and may well be counted in the "not conducive to healing" category. But this is where it gets sticky. Is "healing" a matter of muting dissent and "playing nice?" While there is certainly sound advice in truly desiring to approach this in a reconciliatory fashion, at what point do we "close the conversation"? In the Church, I contend, we CANNOT. If it is to be a finally decisive point, and I think that must lie in the rejection of the "love of violence" and "attachment to war" by the ones who would follow Christ. I don't mean , neccessarily, to adopt a pacifist position (although I tend to do that), but AT LEAST, to LEAN also in that direction. Sadly, the Church as a whole today is failing to say that. It is not sounding concern over the propensity and tendency and "desirability" of war as are the Nati onalistic Christians who seem more attuned to Bush and politics than the Jesus whom they claim to follow.

This is certainly repititious , but it is also to be seen as a litany tied to the gospel; an attempt to live a mythos that is an opertaing principle (see earlier Hauerwas quotes on this)

As a lifelong Christian, a descendant of many preachers and a former religion journalist, I didn't find a thing wrong with Keillor's introduction, nor did I feel any dissonance between it and his gospel singing.
The fact of the matter is that some so-called Christians who are among George W. Bush's strongest supporters also are exactly the kind of so-called Christians who give Christianity a bad name. They need to come to Jesus, and I mean that literally.

Jesus Politics: The Cross of Jesus and the United States of America

Heresy results. If that is devisive, then so be it. It is a betrayal of Jesus. Blasphemy. Click to the above post to see the picture.

And BTW, in case you can't tell, the Blog who shows this picture knows the irony and the sacrilege of it.

In my post earlier today, I link to this post that KI found via Jesus Politics, and I received a comment from the author of that post, to which I offered a reply. I just went back and re-read that post of his, and felt compelled to coment on this:

GetReligion: And the healing has begun

From a comment on this post by Dan
Keillor especially speaks to those who, like himself and many of his characters, grew up with some form of traditional religion and then, in the tumult and angst of the 60s, lost or rejected their faith. GK may ridicule his generation for filling the blanks with unitarianism, buddhism-lite, and ketchup, but that's where he and his target audience finds itself. They are perpetually drawn to world-weary now nostalgic, now hostile remembrances of the town or neighborhood where everyone went to church together.

I'm not so sure that Keillor has REJECTED his faith, but "dissents" from the usual conclusions drawn by those who shaped him, or sought to shape him. I find in his account of the present political scene, nothing to dissuade me from the sense I had of him PREVIOUSLY of an insightful teller of stories who has a keen sense for the fabric of people's lives. Sadly, much of the tone of the Religious Right seems to attack the "humanist leanings" and declare anythign not overtly religious and religious in THEIR sense, as some kind of monstrous evil attached to some evil liberal plot.

It may well be seen by the Religious Right as "an attack on Christians and Christianity" , but I think it's appropriate to sound voices of dissent that say instead, "there are some very clear mandates of the Gospel" which are being thouroughly ignored and downplayed by the distortions (and for me, the "compromising hersies") of the Religious Right. For them, they seem more upset at challenges of Bush than "challenges" to Scripture --- but of course, they don't see any conflict with Bush and Scripture--- they assign him propehtic status.

Hauerwas, p. 100:

Patient listening and attentiveness are skills that are exercised, honed, and refined in Christian community.

But alas, the opposite often seems to eb the case. Far from being, as Hauerwas put it just prior to the above snippet,

Christians are called upon to recognize time aright, to attune themselves to a time that is God's time. The context in which this attunement occurs is properly called worship.

I find this, rather, to be a stark blow to the "idea of worship" I see in the Churches today, a program that does ot lend itself to "lifting" me out of Chronos and into Kairos; but rather, force me to remove myself from the public gathering which is supposedly "corporately seeking God's prescence" and resist what seems to be an invitaiton to "escape" rather than "over-accept" and "accept as gift" and "see time transformed" by its juxtaposition with "Kairos time" or God's time.

via Hauerwas, from Tom Wright in The New Testament and the People of God

The Church can overaccept the pressing secular demands by outnarrating them -- fitting them into a much larger story, one which begins at creation and ends with the eschaton, where the main character is God, and where the definitive event is Jesus Christ

(Also discussed Samuel Wells, Transforming Fate)

Hauerwas:
If overacceptance names the posture of creative openness to all givens as potential gifts, then "reincorporation" designates a profound awareness of the end of the story that, precisely becuase it is an eschatological awareness, commits Christians to a kind of patience and hope that will not foreclose on the end of the story but will search instead for ways to keep it going

This is extraordinary. I must keep reading. It seems that it may end up being a valuable "stance" and "expectation" and "posture" for faithful Christians in this "Post 11/2" era. (on post 11/2, see my previous post from yesterday

From Hauerwas' Performing the Faith, an insight from Milbank, Theology and Social Theory:

Becuase the various stoic-liberal-nihilist tendencies of secular reason are themselves finally a mythos, which means that they canot be refuted by argument but only out-narrated, if we can persuade people that Christianity offers a much better story, adopting an argumentative rather than a rhetorical mode is not only futile, but deeply compromising. Perhaps better thaat all arguments we have to make depend on the rhetorical force of the narrative that forms us.

This makes sense. It fits the often perplexing situation we perceive in the Church today, and how so many otherwise intelligent people can be so seemingly ouright hostile to "contary" notions. It is a mythos, and it seems that Rove and the Bush-spinners are quite adept at this; at this "mythos-spinning". I was thinking about how The Church of the Saviour is a community where story is paramount, and that you rarely hear of public denunciations of the Bush administration coming from that community, regardless of how many areas there are where they work with and among the victims of this administration's policies (or neglect). They follow an alternative story, and they don't seem to be boged down and "paralyzed" by the frustration of this election's results, as devastating as it will most probably be to their ongoing work. Gordon Cosby often speaks of an "alternate reality" under which they live and work. This seems like it is closely related to this idea of operational mythos.

This, as

Over at Jesus Politics, (I like his "About Me" description: My interest in Jesus goes back to when I was born in Brazil where my parents were Southern Baptist missionaries. Jesus Politics is an anthology of readings and some commentary related to the political influence of Christianity from the Christian Right to the Jesus Left.)
links today to the link below, where Garrsion Keillor is talking about "born-again Christians" in jest, but the blogger who quotes him says, after the quote, comments and I feel compelled to respond.

GetReligion: And the healing has begun

Keillor joked that he will work with other citizens for a constitutional amendments that denies the vote to born-again Christians, which met with vigorous applause and cheers. This is the closest Keillor came to explaining his understanding of born-again Christians who vote:
If you feel that war in the Middle East is simply prophecy fulfilled, if you believe that tribulation and suffering are just the natural conditions of life, if you believe that higher education is vanity, unnecessary, there is only one book that one need to read, if you feel that unemployment is simply is God's way of making you more dependent o