December 2004 Archives

This is a strange request for me, but I am dead tired today, and have been working on and banging my head against this for too long today, and I need to get this done.

I have a form that has a drop down list of church denominations fed from a database (except for one hard coded option). I want a document.write method to happen if the selection is "UMC". The sample code is below

<select name="selDenom" onchange="GetDenomSel(document.form.selDenom.options[document.form.selDenom.selectedIndex].value);"> <option value="UMC"<United Methodist>/option>
<% While (NOT rsGetDenom.EOF) %>
<option value="<%=(rsGetDenom.Fields.Item("denList").Value)%>" <%If (Not isNull((rsGetDenom.Fields.Item("denList").Value))) Then If (CStr(rsGetDenom.Fields.Item("denList").Value) = CStr((rsGetDenom.Fields.Item("denList").Value))) Then Response.Write("SELECTED") : Response.Write("")%> ><%=(rsGetDenom.Fields.Item("den").Value)%></option>

<% rsGetDenom.MoveNext() Wend If (rsGetDenom.CursorType > 0) Then rsGetDenom.MoveFirst Else rsGetDenom.Requery End If %>
</select> </p> <p>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript"> if (document.form.selDenom.options[document.form.selDenom.selectedIndex].value) = 'UMC') {document.writeln('UMC selected')} else {document.writeln('UMC NOT selected')}

</script>

The data items are simply additoonal items for the Options in the select list. The javascript to pull the value of the selected item , to see if it is "UMC", is what I cannot seem to get to work and fire off the document.writeln.

This is like a desperation stab ih the dark in case some of you out there are javascript gurus (I am not , obviously). I'd like to be able to use inline javascript, but can use functions. Any ideas? I would be grateful.

ICTHUS reminds me of a James Carroll article that I read last week, and the way we've "evolved" Christmas. Indeed, to make it complimentary to the very thing that it originaly opposed in the first place: empire. Not that "opposition" to ANYTHING was its message, but that the consequences and effects of the new kingdom were inevitable to "challenge" the grand claims and idolatrous philosophies and policies of the Roman Empire.

The Politics of the Christmas Story

Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption.

On Christmas day I called Bush's message that day "BS", not because I felt his content was wrong, but becuase he invoked the values without much of any kind of record to back it up. His policies (or whoever's policies they are) are ANYTHING but. His pronouncements wreak of hypocrisy and are thus, mere sentiment.

The Carroll article I link to here talks about Herod as a Roman puppet, and I immediately draw the parallel to Bush as the "front man" for the neocon dream of worldwide dominance and economic paradise achieved through , well......imperialism. They call it "freedom and liberty", but it is basically "lording it over the earth", and thus, EMPIRE.

The alternatives of the Christian community have been abandoned in the world of war. The Church, as it so often has since the days of Constantine, simply caves and accomodates and , in some cases, justifies through manipulation of theological arguments, the policies of their government as "God-led".

The following is helpful fodder for refelection on the idea that there is an alternative that has been largely abandoned; indeed, even "forgotten" and pushed to the periphery as the world of violence has desensitized us and pushed us toward the "acceptance" of this as truth and "the way things are"; and so we say "That's war", as if this is not approachable from an ethiocal framework, much less a radical ethic; a "nonsense" ethic such as that of Jesus ("nonsense" as the world sees it).

One often hears those in the Religious Right rant about "worldliness", and yet seem totially blind to the invasion of this sickness in to their own theology. This , to me, is the most dangerous and blasphemous worldliness, becuase it tunrs a blind eye to the most destructive violence; the most murderous violence, and the forsaking of the "value of life" itself. And yet the Church somehow finds a way to continue to be clueless and abandon the way of peace that Jesus proclaimed, and had proclaimed by the announcers of his birth (he shall be called "Emmanuel, Prince of Peace, Mighty God". This is sung over and over, and yet we miss it completely. When I say we, I am talking about the "American" aspect and the "Church" aspect, in which both I claim membership and citizenship, but am deeply troubled about the way in which each have forsaken their deepest roots and ultimate meaning.

In the Face of War, Sojourners Magazine/January 2005

Pacifists argue the nonexceptional rejection of killing violence and do so on both ethical-prudential and theological grounds. The ethical-prudential argument is that lethal violence is self-defeating for society in the long run and usually the short run as well. It breeds relationships that generate estrangement, work from grudges and promote revenge, dehumanize the parties involved, and issue in further violence, which then tends to spiral and escalate. The theological argument is that Christians are called to a community whose way of life should not include killing any whom God regards as unqualifiedly precious and for whom God suffers in patient love; and there is no one for whom this is not the case. God is never glorified by our violence and our humanity is never honored through it.

Sojourners magazine has, for decades, spoken of faith and politics in the same veign; one cannot be "separated" from the other, becuase in their concept and understanding of the gospel, there is no such distinction, except to insist that to attempt to keep them apart is a form of heresy. I would say that it is a SOCIAL GNOSTICISM.

What's Next?, Sojourners Magazine/January 2005

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne covered our "God is not a Republican or a Democrat" campaign as a real sign of hope. Days after the election, he said, "What’s required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are ‘moral values’ and that war and peace are ‘life issues.’

Life, and all that affects it, are moral and theological issues. The gospels, and also Paul, write with the challenges of living in the shadow of empire in mind.

Today, we have the challenges of living IN AND UNDER Empire in the United States. That challenge is heightened with the rise to power of the neoconservatives, and their alarmingly effective media blitz campaigns, and their "pundits" who have become darlings of the airwaves, as they feed on the fears and bigotries and greed of their listeners, encouraging their audiences to fear those who do not fit their own social strata, and to stir up a war against liberalism (which is increasingly defined as "those who disagree with us").

I heard this on the news today, and the first thing that came to my mind was "Counterfeit". PHONY. The President whose policies are the exact oppostite of compassion for ANYTHING except the corporate cronies who prop him up in helping them build their corporate empire. This Christmas, of all times, he is still, and always has been since he took office, on the side rather of the ANTI-CHRIST; the forces of greed and lust for power who are blind to the needs or lives of the rest of the world, and sneer at any who would disagree with them.

The Globe and Mail: Bush calls for compassion in Christmas message

"Many of our fellow Americans still suffer from the effects of illness or poverty, others fight cruel addictions, or cope with division in their families, or grieve the loss of a loved one," he said in his weekly radio address.

Bill Moyers sees a lot of things very clearly, and articulates it as so few can or ever have.

On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

My own take on this is that there are only a few who really believe the things that Moyers describes later in this article (like the Rapture stuff). The visible leaders are actually simply using these people, and feigning support for their theologies, to garner votes, by simply mouthing the key phrases that signal they're "IN". And the Christian Right buys it , lock, stock and barrel. The neocons are out for power, and they see some easy prey, and they hold some things in common: a zeal for totalitarianism (akin to authoritarianism; which seeks a fanatic zeal for authority that they give willingly for some simple promises of security and prosperity). These neocons care nothing for the people they claim to be standing up for. They care even less for their simplistic theology, except for the ease with which they can appropriate it for their own materialistic ends.

I keep asking when I hear people talk about Barak Obama's youth or inexperience, "So what did Bush have when he ran?" One term as governor. Before that, nada. A "Business" career that exuded incompetence and corruption. A "previous life" of avoiding anything that would be "hard work", inclusing serving in Vietnam, and even his "cush duties" in the National Guard (he went AWOL on that , too).

Obama has been all about public service. He SMOKES Bush in both experience and knowledge. In electing Bush, people obviously don't care about experience or competency.

Brad reflects on "Church Growth" strategies which tend toward marketing.

A Jewish God-fearer in a room full of Christians: What structure have we?

many have traded in community for business corporations, at least in structure. I often wonder if instead of formulas for getting more people to Church buildings, what would happen if we had books, conferences, classes, and the like that taught psychology, healthy social skills, humanities, ethics, creativity, and personal as well as interpersonal development? It would seem that "ministry" has become something that is done to people instead of for them. Somewhere along the way, focus shifted from genuinly loving and knowing people to herding them.

Yep. To be sure. It is the failure of "Christian community" in our Churches. It is not community at all, except in the most generally social, "society" type of way. It is not the alternative life that the Church was designed to be, and called to be. People simply are not KNOWN as they want and need to be. But it seems many in the Churches are not even aware of a better way, so programmed we are for the "event experience".

Brad goes on to talk about the neccessity for the Church to discover its mission by discovering the gifts that its memebers bring to the table, and we do not do this by ignoring the actual journeys of persons. I get sick of heearing what I call "fortune cookie" sermons where there is nothing specific proclaimed to the present world we live in. It is a very general, "one size fits all" general beating around the bush talk. This "general ethic" is a sign, I think, of the abandonment of true community; of accountability to each other for our journeys as individulas, so that we might have SOME CLUE about what we are about. If we are limited to what I call "Church slogans" which come across as MARKETING hype that most can identify as phony or surface, then we are no longer in the Church as the humans that we are, but like cats being "herded" (Brad used the term "herding them")

Here, it seems the Cluetrain Manifesto is instructive for us again. Get to know the people, and have them know each other. They recognize, as people do when dealing with marketing hype, that it is "corporate speak" and not really interested in them as people. The Church has its own "Church speak", which, when taken with the usual absence of an emphasis on and a living out of a true relatedness and accountability, we recognize it as hype and not truly expressive of our deepest passions.

The previous article makes several references to Honeycutt's successor, Al Mohler, and his constant dragging of the Seminary in Louisville into the theological dark ages with him and all his "takeover-witch-hunt" cronies in the leadership of the SBC in the 80's.

Ethics Daily continues:

After Garland’s firing, Mohler and the seminary trustees launched a study to determine whether the seminary could maintain a social work school. Eventually, the trustees and Mohler concluded that the tenets of the social work profession were incompatible with the core beliefs of the seminary.

I had Roy Honeycutt for the introductory Old Testament course my opening semester, but he soon had to step into the Seminary President position when McCall went down. The rest of the semester we got to have Eric Rust, who was an Ethics/Old Testament professor in semi-retirmement (and a crusty old codger he was , too, but good)

Carlos points out that Honeycutt had taken the Seminary in directions that Mohler and his ilk could not stand (like "Social Work". Imagine that. Training people to minister by seeking to uphold the less fortunate. Heresy! And for Mohler, obviously irrelevant to his concept of God).

Carlos (at Jesus Politics) points to an article on Ethics Daily remembering Roy Honeycutt, former President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (which he became while I was an MDiv student there in 1980 when Duke McCall became unable to continue just before his death).

Welcome to Ethics Daily.com!

The seminary’s position on women in ministry changed abruptly after Honeycutt’s retirement in 1993. In a news conference shortly after his election, Honeycutt’s successor, Al Mohler, stated opposition to women serving as pastors of congregations.

Mohler’s comments drew criticism from seminary alumni and other supporters of women in ministry. Yet the new president held firm to his position and the seminary began requiring that new professors oppose women serving in pastoral leadership.

Scalise, Davis and Lambert left the seminary just prior to Honeycutt’s retirement or shortly after Mohler’s inauguration. Marshall resigned after Mohler threatened to bring charges that she was teaching outside the seminary’s confessional statement, The Abstract of Principles.

The issue of women serving as pastors later led to the firing of the social work dean and the demise of the social work school, then the nation’s only accredited social work school housed within a theological seminary.

Vaughn at ICTHUS talks about the setup of a Progressive Christian Network (like a progressive Blogs 4 God--- (btw, I noticed there has been an almost complete cessation of links to my entries at Blogs4God since the political sesaon, when I really turned up the heat and the expression of disgust, even my sense that not only is Bush "not Christian", but participating, in the name of "freedom and liberty" and even in the name of Jesus, in the gravest and most despicable evil this country has EVER known.)

Anyway, this would certainly be a welcome addition to the blogosphere, and a step further in creating some Christian community online where the breadth of the reach is literally worldwide (with the exception, of course, of the "information have-nots, which could become more of a "theological issue", behind the obvious higher priorities of working for narrowng the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the areas of basic safety, food, health, education.)

This is one of those things that seems like a wonderful vision to begin pondering at Christmas, when we Christians supposedly refelect on what it means to truly have PEACE ON EARTH and GOODWILL TOWARD HUMANITY. If it is really true that "Jesus is the Reasonh for the Season", then it must mean a bit more than putting up a sign in your yard -- especially having it replace the Bush/Cheney signs you had up all autumn, when such an endorsement displays a clear endorsement of his most visible policy: The War in Iraq, and the propensity to be totally deceived by "wolves in sheeps clothing".

This is a matter of a deeper importance than I believe most "non-techies" realize, since it is bringing to the fore the dialogue amongst world Christians, and seeking to create a more truly aware world Christian community. To the Religious Right in theis country, most of the "other Christians" in the world are a part of the worldwide liberal conspiracy, and all that anti-europe sentiment that arose here the moment countries stood up and opposed our actions in Iraq.

Let's give this a s erious look. Vaughn apparently already has.

ICTHUS: Progressive Christian Bloggers Network

This would be a very open and loose network - no theological creeds or doctrinal statements, no dues or obligation, and it would be nice to have a diversity of (non-?)traditions represented. But if you identify with a more progressive Christianity, rooted in a politics of Jesus and the cross, or if you increasingly find your self to be a "resident alien" living in country that thinks its God's gift to the world, you probably know who you are, you probably blog about these things, and it might be good to network together. Perhaps some good could come out of this. Such a network would be "free" to join but perhaps bloggers could pimp a link back to the Network website.

HarperCollins.com

God's Politics
Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

by Jim Wallis

How far should we go to understand each other’s points of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross.
--Bono, lead singer of U2
Jim Wallis is an inspiration to me– for his witness of faith and his engagement with politics.
--Bill Moyers
Jim Wallis is compelling, provocative, and inspirational, with faith that can move mountains and can certainly move people and communities.
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Wallis at his usual passionate and brilliant self: he will move you to examine your conscience and search your soul.
--E.J. Dionne, author of Stand Up Fight Back and Why Americans Hate Politics
Jim Wallis is the major prophetic evangelical Christian voice in the country.
--Cornel West, author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters

A very simple and profound question. Kind of close to considering "What would God have me do unto Iraq?" Could it be maybe something like "What you would have Iraq do unto you?". Is this KIND-OF what Jesus meant? No. It's EXACTLY what he meant. Do unto others AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. The question below posed by Juan Cole is at its core a key theological question in light of The Golden Rule.

Informed Comment : 09/01/2004 - 09/30/2004

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation?

OK, so Bush is with the ones who want to Ban Christmas. He actually said "Happy Holidays". The nerve.

WorldNetDaily: Bush White House's Christ-less Christmas

While President Bush was re-elected last month in an election victory many attributed to an outpouring of support by evangelical Christians impressed with his candid outspokenness about his faith, some Americans notice the White House website lacks even a single mention of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated by hundreds of millions worldwide Dec. 25. (found here via here)
Eric noticed this here yesterday, and then I saw it again today here

You know where all this leads? To the suggestion to all the "culture war mongers", including Bill O'Reilly: SHUT UP.

Forrest with some outstanding reflection:

American Bodhisattva

Generally speaking, Christians today are fighting the meaningless battles and forsaking the real ones. They’re focusing on preserving the roots of the artificial birthday they’ve created for Christ, but ignore the killing of their own Sudanese brothers and sisters, as well as the fact that their brethren in Iraq are fleeing the country due to the instability that the pre-emptive American war and following incompetence has created.

Macromedia article I just found sound like a good way to try some PHP stuff, and play with a blog tool at the same time. (I may not get to it until after Christmas, however)

Macromedia - Developer Center : Building a Blog with Dreamweaver, PHP, and MySQL – Part 1: Creating the Basic Application

Building a Blog with Dreamweaver, PHP, and MySQL

But wait, there's more from Al. Does he ACTUALLY think that the inclusion or exclusion of the word "Christ" from public displays is removing the "proclamation of truth"? HOw about the representation of Christ as a cheerleader for the nationalistic triumphalism of a neo-conservative coup that has led millions astray? The "Truth" represented there is divorced from the alternate reality Christ proclaimed.

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

The logic is clear--Christmas has become a threat to those Americans who now claim a right never to be confronted with Christian truth, never to see Christian symbolism, and never to have to hear "Merry Christmas."
Who knew that--in America of all places--singing Christmas carols and wishing strangers "Merry Christmas" could become a form of civil disobedience? This Christmas, Christians should determine to be cultural subversives, spreading "Merry Christmas" and Christmas blessings, even to those who expect the political correctness police to show up at any minute. We cannot take this sitting down. When candy canes are ruled out of bounds in Plano, Texas, we are obviously in big trouble.

Yeah, Al, lett's take that message down to Iraq while you're at it. "Christmas blessings" in the form of bombs and fire and tens of thousands of civilians DEAD, but "God bless you, and God's peace be upon you in the most blessed of seasons". I can receive NO theological insights other than what NOT to accept coming from this direction.

Now, it is time to leave this distrurbig matter of the failures of the American Church at Christmas, and seek some recognition , understanding, and hope for the experience of Christmas via a waiting upon God for the confirmation of the peace of Emmanuel.

Further reading in Mohler's rant on "Attacks on Christmas" yields this gem:

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

The question: Has the quest for inclusiveness gone so far down the road of sensitivity that children might be forgiven for not knowing what holiday many Americans will celebrate on Dec. 25?"

How about having some clue about WHO Jesus is or what he taught? Is this maybe important enough to explore? But this question, which seems it would be the most obvious (like, "What is the MEANING of Christmas that is under attack?

The ATTACK comes from the rantings of Christians who celebrate a Christless Christmas. A Christmas fresh off the election of the most detrermined war-seeker this office has ever seen. And this one sought out a war based on profit, power, and erection of blatant flasehoods and paranoia over 9/11. He participated in deceiving the masses.

Children will certainly know WHAT holiday it is, but it is not the secular humanists who take Christ out of Christmas. It is the ones who most often use name "Jesus" on their lips, and bessesh us all to "leave the Christ in Christmas", and then strip the observance of the actual Christ and replace it with obervance and worship of WORDS and equate it with nationalism. They certainly see the "holiday" Al, but amidst all the lights and yard signs, the actual observance and proclamation of the hope of the world in the peace of Christ (You know, "Peace on Earth , Goodwill toward all?") where can they find the Christ?

I see the signs in the yards (the same yards that had two Bush signs apiece). I see the article (raised to my attentinon by ICTHUS) by Al MOhler bemoaning the "attack on Christmas", and I think to myself, as a foaming at the mouth fundamentalist more concerned with his brand and concept of orthodoxy than he is with the actual gospel and the life of Jesus, he has no clue what Christmas is about, or who Christ is. Sorry Al, but your selliing out to the culture, which you often accuse the "liberals" of doing. But you see, Al, the difference is, many of those same "liberals" actually have as their primary goal in life to "live as Jesus lived"; to walk "In His Steps".

So this Christmas season, what does it ACTUALLY mean to say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season"? I'm sure it means much more than the narcissistic utterances of the "Praise Teams" mouthing "Jesus, Jesus". There's a name ofr Jesus that we sing about during this season, and it is a Biblical proclamation for all time and all people: He shall be called EMMANUEL; which means, God with us". Prince of Peace.

How utterly irrelevant and guilty of "neutering Christmas" can we get? To decorate out houses with lights and put up yard signs that say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" right after taking down their Bush?Cheney yard signs, which basically announces to the world that "Here lives peoiple who call themselves Christians who see no connection between international policy and their faith? And if they say they do, and that Bush is "being led by God" are in full-fledged self-deception. Might I even say, perhaps this could alos qualify as "being deceived" also by the "Principalities and Powers"?

The "Culture of Death" that Al Mohler so often describes and villifies is never more fully embodied in reality and particated in by the Church than in this Christmas season. The calling upon the name of Christ in this context, as "an ally in this cause" is blasphemous. Our own forces dole out massi8ve death tolls on the population of a country we presume to be "liberating".

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

By now, most Christians have noticed the marginalization of Christmas during the commercial holiday season. Just a few years ago, the concern of many Christians was expressed in the motto, "Keep Christ in Christmas." These days, Christmas has itself become the issue, as some public schools have been purged of all Christmas symbols and the words "Merry Christmas" are now characterized as discriminatory and intolerant.

Christmas "Symbols" Al? Is it not important and neccessary to pay heed to the TRUTHS of Christmas? That the "way of Christ" is "the reason for the season"? I shake my head at the utter blindness; the failure of the Church in America to see what is, and also to BE the communicators of truth to power, and not the betraying capitulators to power that they have been , and nowhere more obvious and glaring than in the Southern Baptist Church leadership.

This week, I hope to be more reflective of these things (the HOPE and the alternate reality of "The Way" which is alternate to the way of the world, and the "culture of death" and "Keep Christ in Christmas" which those who use this term have reshaped to fit their theology which has become beholden to cultural forces rather than the gospel.

Forrest with some points about "The Season" and how American Christians are, in droves, totally ignoring how the Peace has been shattered by the nation its backers like to call a "Christian Nation".

American Bodhisattva

In general, Americans are more worried about their Christmas shopping than they are about the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. We care more about seeing the latest action movie than ensuring that the our children and grandchildren will inherit a clean, inhabitable earth. We fail to see that our insistence on immediately killing terrorists via any means possible is fueling hatred towards our nation, resulting in more terrorism than we started with.

I have long thought that it isn't particularly "Christian" to equate certain dogmas and certain levels of "accomodating lifestyle" with Christianity itself. Like the "prayer in schools" thing. A publicly said, school "sanctioned" prayer is not what I think Jesus had in mind when he said "when you pray, go into your closet......" A mjor piece of the idea of prayer for me is the idea that this is a depth level communication. Words help the prayER; they help OUR SIDE of the conversation. God communicates back to us with "groanings too deep for words" (Paul put it that way).

Southern Baptists imply by their separating from the Baptist World Alliance that their "unfettered support" for the military and for Bush is their "Christian belief" (when I would suggest that it is entirely otherwise--- simply a capitulation to culture for which they develop an entire "Biblically based" apologetic.

Jesus Politics

The idea is to intimidate and marginalize anyone who objects to their efforts to impose the most conservative of Christian dogma on public policy. If you're against their views, you don't have a differing opinion — you're anti-Christian (even if you are a Christian).

via Jesus Politics

MyQuest: A Former Republican Against Bush

Ultimately, for me, the election of 2004 is not merely a matter of policy. I find it impossible to imagine how a "good" Republican or a "good" conservative could support this administration for re-election. But what I cannot imagine is how anyone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus of Christ could vote for George W. Bush. I will borrow the apocalyptic hyperbole of this administration. The choice in 2004 is a choice for evil or a choice to resist evil.

Amen Scott. about it taking 10 years to persuade you, I might surmise it may have helped to have been under Bush in Texas and getting a 6 year head start on seeing what he can accomplish (and tear down, and funnel to the top-dogs). Don't think I also don't give credit to some honest, faithful, Baptist upbringing and an atmosphere conducive to honest spirituality. That used to be more prevalent in the Southern Baptist Church. Now it is a rarity, expecially since so many of the people who want to follow Christ without hindrance have joined CBF Churches, or other denominations.

Thanks for the post Scott.

A quote from Hitler that stands as an example of what should be obvious to all: That "not everyone who says Lord Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven". Obvious , and yet it seems to be all that so many in the Christian Right need to become convinced that Bush is annointed of God because he offers such deep theological insights such as "Jesus is my favorite philosopher" and transformed the American people into the word of God by saying , of the American people "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can not extinguish it". No matter! He quoted the Bible! He says "Christ changed my heart". He must be sent from God. So ,read on, and see if this guy sounds "Christian". Sounds a scary bit like Bush, actually.

Jesus Politics: Hitler Jesus Politics

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. . . As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." (Munich, April 12, 1922)

I just looked at the MSNBC video again (here (choose Iraqis on the Run when it loads in the list), and one of the interviewed said "The Iraqis are SOMEHOW assocaiating Christians with the American occupation." Well ,DUH! Of course they would. An embarassingly and disgustingly high number of American "Christians" support the war. How hypocritical to be dismayed by their associating Christians with the American military when we do the same with Islam over a much much smaller minority within the Islamic world.

They have every logical reason to associate Christians with the quagmire and the destructyion and the death. The thing is, our actions in Iraq, much less the reasons given for it, are no more Christian than the actions of Al_queida or the insurgents are Islam. I abhor and oppose violence under all but the most defensive and protective circumstances, and never based upon the theories of "what might happen". Actual human lives are worth infinitely more than the theories of "what might happen"; and in this case, most of us know just how wrong those turned out to be.

The news that thousands of Iraqi Christians are leaving Iraq raises yet another serious issue for American Christians. That Iraqis associate Christians with the occupation. Some would say that they oppose Christians. I would say it is the "American Church" and how a much larger majority of that American Church is approving of this deadly and unholy and violent occupation. This depressing and scary sizeable portion of American Chrisatianity is much, much larger than the minority of Islams which are represented in an equally deadly and blasphemous group of Iraqis who oppose the occupation with the same means. Violence begets violence. It's a lesson seemingly never learned by the wise in this world. Our nation's leaders have engaged a massive violent backlash (and even at that, wielded against a place among the LEAST likely to be the home of Al-Queida and its supporters. Even if they were among the leading suspects, this approach is NOT of God. It betrays the very Chrsit who said LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. Do you hear him? Blasphemers! Deceived of Satan! You are NOT doing the Will of God, but blaspheming the name of God.)

On TACTICAL grounds, this is a disaster. Our leaders are not only selfish and self-centered in their broadscale bombing (in order to "shock and awe" by killing and maiming tens of thousands, all on the pretense that this is "fighting terrorism"). This is not what I would call LOVING OUR ENEMIES. They are not even our enemies (the people of Iraq). Terrorists are not "scared" by this. They grow and have been created BECAUSE of this. This very thing. The hubris exhibited by these American leaders and the culture which we present to them as the "chosen culture"; they don't hate our "way of life" asnd our "freedom"; they hate the values they see acted upon them; that of infringement, coercion, death, and indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of innocents. Like Hitler, Bush and his administration are killing them all because they want something that they could not not really tell us , since they know that woudl be unacceptable to the American people. And so they deceived us. And God is NOT deceived.

I don't pretend to know ALL of the right moves we should have taken since 9/11. But I suspected, from 9/11 on, that this administration would react in a way unaccceptable to those who call themselevs followers of Christ. He , who claims that "Christ changed my heart", has destroyed that pretense before all who know the way of peace that Jesus represents, and if we were to ask only the very simple question (simple on its face, NOT in its implementation); What would Jesus do? I am sickened when I see cars with "WWJD?" alongside of "Bush/Cheney 2004", for they have erected two incompatible philosophies: love for our neighbors and for God, alongside the evils of this world's deceptions that violence solves problems. Shame on you, Church of America.

Comments below include more info

I was struck by a statement in the Movie documentary Bonhoeffer( I bought it on DVD about a month ago, right after the election---- highly recommended) , about how the German Church really "needed" a new infusion of pride and sense of involvement (it had been increasingly irrelevant--- Bonhoefer had observed that the masses were abandoning the Church in droves, and only the bourgeoise remained). Hitler's rise also included many "enticements" to the Church for it to be given national legitimacy, which made it very tempting (and many took the bait) to heap loyalty and devotion upon Hitler's government, and Hitler kept throwing out the crumbs of how the Almighty is "working in the background of the German people" , and behind them in their cause.

I thought of how similar that is to the Religious Right today. The conservative portions of the Church (and this is certainly the case in the Southern Baptist Church's transformation into a largely fundamentalist approach, one which also includes one of the more nationalistic leadership body of leadership in theis country. Richard Land is the guy we see on many panels and highly quoted when the media seeks out statements of religious leaders concerning controversial Bush administration actions. The conservatives of the Southern Baptist Convention had long felt marginalized by the leadership of the Convention up through the 1970's , and in the late 1970's, a federal judge named Paul Pressler and some seminiary professors like Paige Patterson began to make waves and start a movement with the clear intent of "taking over" the denomination. With the rise of the Moral majority and the Reagan bandwagon on which Churches were encouraged to jump upon, this Southern Baptist movement picked up steam and the leadership positions within the denomination at many levels began to be transformed, with State Convention presidents, seminaries, and Mission Boards and Sunday School Boards and Publishers under the Southern Baptist umbrella became the scenes of a massive "cleansing" of those who were not of the fundamentalistic, authoritarian, "get the liberals out" and "purge them" kind of approach. There was an air of "you condescended to us for too long, now you're going to pay" kind of swagger (which is similar to the way the Bush administration basically rid itself of all vestiges and carryovers and hand me downs of the Clinton administration (one of them being the Clinton-Gore administration's interest and concern with Al-Quieda. They'll deny it now, of course, but the bush administration never took Al-Queida seriously, and basically ignored Richard Clarke's warnings. The phrase was often heard in White House discussions: "That was a Clinton thing".

The Church of America (the Religious Right) seems to be of the same ilk; cut from the same cloth. Part of the mantra of the Religious Right is a palpable disdain for "anything that smells liberal". I recall that when Sojourners came out with its "God is not a Republican or a Democrat" statement of faith, I heard many conservative Church folks comment "It sure sounds Democrat to me" (referring to references in the statement like "the oppressed" and "inclusiveness" and "seeking peace" (oh , that last one; those "peaceniks" that are "America haters". This is the major reason given by the Southern Baptist leaders for their withdrawing the denomination from the Baptist World Alliance. "Too anti-American". That was FIRST on their list. It's like saying "Jesus wouldn't DARE criticize us; we are pure, and the rest of the world better see the truth, of which we are the choice of God on earth to relay to the rest of them"

Nationalism , and the accompanying hysteria around it, complete with "blessings of the Church", we are tryuly seeing a case of what was depicted in Jewish history where various kings had their "court prophets" who told them what they wanted to hear, and then there were the prophets whose message was uncomfortable, confronting, and , well, "prophetic".

Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary in New York, has an article in the latest Sojourners, that is available online. Some highlights below

In the Face of War, Sojourners Magazine/January 2005

In a U.S.-dominated world bent on seeing how far the logic of a neo-liberal economy can be the logic of society itself, this is a huge arena critical to the reconciliation of structured enemies.

peacemaking’s attention to the forces of the global economy and to threats to global and local life systems is mandatory.

Just as "pacifism" is wrongly taken by some to mean "passive non-resistance," so "just war" is wrongly taken to be about justifying war.

The peace ethic of non-pacifist churches has focused too long on deadly force and its threat (when and where deadly force is justified and how it might justly be conducted). This makes the exception to the norm - controlled violence - the agenda itself!

For Christian pacifist paradigms, following Jesus as "premeditated reconciliation" would be more accurate than "nonviolence."

Pacifist practices are not just a firewall for containing conflict. They are the evangelical practices these traditions see as a whole way of life. Just peacemaking is the hard task of developing these as civic practices and not only ecclesial ones.

Now before anybody says "Bush and Hitler? Com'on!!!", I'm not in any way putting Bush on a level with Hitler. I simply think that Bush has committed a crime against humanity, regardless of the amount of cognizance he really has about the real impact of what he's allowed to happen, or what he's been complicit in, or what he has allowed himself to be convinced of (yeah, I did just end several phrases with a preposition). He's been a major cog in an evil regime that has caused , unneccessarily, from even many "worldly standards", the deaths of tens of thousands, most of them Iraqis who may well have hated Hueseein more than we do. But hey, as they say "That's war". Again, that phrase makes me sick; sick to realize how many people who call themselves Christians will adopt into their ethic.

Clarence Jordan (a Greek Scholar who graduated in the 40's from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) said that "blaspheme" meant , literally, to pass the gas and say God did it. "Blas" meaning bodily gas, and "Pheme" meaning name, taken together create to "create a stink of the name", or , similar to "take the name in vain"; the only people who take the name in vain are those who HAVE taken the name. Jordan said he could say "Buddha-damn" all day and never take the name of Buddha in vain, because he has never taken on the name of Buddha. People who claim to be Christians are the ones guilty of this. I and all of us have blasphemed many a time , not with our LIPS, but with our LIVES (another quip of Jordan's). (I'll have to blog some on Jordan real soon....he founded Koininia Farm in Americus, Georgia, and was the place where Millard Fuller went seeking after what God would have him do, and led to Habitat for Humanity. My youth group was introduced to Jordan by Mel Doughty, our Youth Minister, via the Cotton Patch New Testament (which Jordan translated)

I found this article illuminating, and I also want to blog a bit of Bonhoeffer again in the morning whenever I decide to get up. Right now, I'm gonna go watch "Terminal" on DVD.

Essay: The fatal legend of preemptive war

Adolf Hitler quickly capitalized on their hurt pride. Like many demagogues, Hitler stirred his audience with patriotic phrases about “freedom” and “democracy.” He thought in absolutes, leaving no room for dialogue. He regarded history as a struggle between good and evil. He declared it was his messianic mission to defend the Germans against the Jews. In so doing, he was “fighting for the work of the Lord.”
Hitler hammered the theme of German exceptionalism. German cultural values were superior to all others, he said. He encouraged the nation to avoid multilateralism. He argued against the League of Nations and lashed out at journalists for “licking France’s boots.”
Hitler spelled out his strategy in Mein Kampf, a book deserving notoriety not only for its racist diatribes but also for its cynical rules for manipulating the public. Among other things, Hitler advises his supporters to repeat slogans over and over “until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by that slogan.”
While most Western political leaders ignored Mein Kampf, Winston Churchill took it seriously. He realized that the bestselling book unveiled a strategic plan for reshaping Europe in the Nazi image.
The world woke up after it was too late.
The Bush Doctrine, spelled out in the National Security Strategy released by the White House Sept. 17, 2002, and in administration speeches and statements, also has attracted little attention. It should be taken seriously. The similarities to the ideas that took hold in Germany and culminated in World War II suggest the dangers in the policy pursued by the White House. Of course, history never repeats itself exactly, and many circumstances may arise to avert the United States from continuing down the road that Germany followed in the 20th century.

Preemptive war is at the center of the ideology, but the Bush White House goes beyond that, claiming that the United States has the duty, indeed the moral obligation, to violate the rights of sovereign nations and to change their rulers as the American government sees fit. The aim is to shape the world in America’s image.

While I hold a belief that Christians and Churches themselves determine the "Christian" portion of "Christian Nation", it is also flatly untrue that "our founding fathers rested this nation on Christian principles." If the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and their most influential writers (like Thomas Paine) were to be gathered together today in front of a panel of likes of Ashcroft, Falwell, Ralph Reed, and the like, they would be branded as the most liberal of the liberals.

The link below (found via Eric) cites several of the "founding fathers", and outlines the feeling many of them had for the Christianity of Colonial America. Many of them expressed outright disdain. It seems that perhaps the Religious Right Leaders of today may well have even more reason to REBEL against the "founding fathers" than tho actually use a mythological assesment of their "Christian principles".

Ms. Magazine | Fighting Words for a Secular America: Ashcroft & Friends vs. George Washington & the Framers

the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli — initiated by George Washington and signed into law by John Adams — proclaims: “The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion.”

I suspect that the same may be true for the present canon we have that we refer to as The Bible. The fact that a Catholic council (an "ecumenical council") met and decided on what books should be the "official canon" would be held in deep skepticism by those in today's Religious Right climate. Many of them hold both Catholics and Ecumenicism in contempt (especially the latter), and this "decision" on the Canon would not, in any way , shape, or form, be "acceptable" as a "measure" and as a "communal decision". But that's all ancient history, and the Religious Right has very little sense of history; in fact, they seem unable to disntinguish tradition and its mythologies from history, and thus, the Bible and the process of the canonization is never questioned. It is, as they say, "as God willed". And yet, if that decision were up for a vote today, they would be blocking it and preventing it. What of "God's will" then? The present Religious Right seems incapable of appreciating the very ecumenical and communal nature of the establishment of traditions of the faith.

ICTHUS analyzes an argument FOR war put forth by James Schall, a Jesuit professor of government at Georgetown University. I agree with the analysis Vaughn gives, which is, basically, that there is little of Jesus in the bottom line. It's basically an underwriting of the present policies, which is rampant in American Christianity. It serves as example of the trumping of Jesus by "rationality" and a view of "the way it is" as put forth by the Prevailing philosophical climate.

ICTHUS: When War is not the answer

What Schall argues for is indeed being played out in the foreign policy of the United States in Iraq. In this sense, Schall is getting what he argues for. What is perhaps most disturbing is that Schall is a member of the Society of Jesus of the Catholic Church and neither Jesus nor the Church seem determinative for his convictions or his way of being in the world. Rather, his account only serves to underwrite an old social order that is now passing away ?“ behold the new has come.

At least, enough of them and enough of the power structure refuse to tell the Aemrican people the truth, and so we are lied to, given a rosy picture, in spite of everyone's insistence that "we're not trying to sugar-coat anything". That is exactly the pattern of this administration. Yesterday, the head security offcier in Iraq told us exactly what the Bush administration has been desperately attempting to deny and to give us instead, that "sugar-coating". And somehow, an eery denial and out-of-touch-with-reality defense of this administration continues, buttressed by right wing media, Churches (those that call themselves that), and to a disgusting extent, the mainstream media, to whom giving the news has become a political maneuver, and so they pass on the propagandadized versions as "balance" and "fairness", and repeatedly in so doing, aid in the deception of the American people, and effectively re-elect Bush again. Do they really think that a second Bush term will enable them to more effectively serve. It most certainly will not, especially given the lack of backbone and integrity they've shown over the past 4 years, a nd in their failures to report how tens of thousands of Florida voters were purged from the voter registration roles, and how a full recount, which is what the Supreme Court stopped, woudl have, under any standard, resulted in the election of Gore. My mind resists the temptation to imagine how many things could have been different had that happened, becuase it is too painful to emerge from that daydream and realize what we have instead, and what failures of this administration are yet to be revealed, a nd what the consequences of those might be.

James Carroll , as usual, is excellent in this article:

Afraid To Look in the Moral Abyss

The performance of US intelligence has been consistent: Its strategic failures caused the war, and its tactical ignorance of the enemy is losing the war....

But it takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery, and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the "coalition" is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement.
The war itself is the American war crime. But that is lost in the "normalcy" of the news.
On the other side, it is the proliferation of suicide-bombing that has come to seem normal. Soldiers commonly risk their lives for nation, honor, or buddy -- but they will not kill themselves with forethought, in large numbers, except for the most transcendent of reasons. The United States has given itself an enemy that shows by its central tactic that it is fighting for God.
Americans, meanwhile, are so confused about religion that we have just been through an election in which "religious values" were defined as key, but precisely in ways that kept the war out of the discussion. America's purpose in Iraq is a compound of such deflection, self-deception, half-measures, and shallow thinking. The opposition, meanwhile, is absolute and unblinking. That difference partly answers the question with which this column began, but mainly we avert our eyes because the war is a moral abyss. If we dare to look, as Nietzsche said, the abyss stares back.

This weekend , Bush referenced how the terrorists want to "kill innocent life".....

How ironic that we are outpacing them by 10 to 1 in innocent life toll. Of course, we don't WANT to do so, but it is "regrettable". Hogwash. Hyprocrisy. EVIL. That's what evil is. It is sel;f-deception; it is the lenghts to which someone will go to get what they think is rightfully theirs, and then enlist God in that very process that one travels when they forske the love of God in the first place.

Until this nation forsakes the Satanic and evil call to war, and the tendency toward immediately jumping to it and calling it "last resort", this nation will not find healing.

I'll keep saying this like a broken record becuase the gospel requires us to pursue the way and life of Jesus: War is NOT the answer. Violence begets violence.

AP Wire | 04/28/2004 | Bush: Fallujah Getting Back to 'Normal'

Bush said those attacking coalition forces "want to kill innocent life to try to get us to quit and we're not going to." The president added that he reassured Prime Minister Goran Persson that June 30 was a "solid date."

From the previous linked article from Chris Hedges (via Jesus Politics)

The New York Review of Books: On War

We are losing the war in Iraq. There has been a steady increase in the assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces. The attacks over the past year have risen from about twenty a day to approximately 120. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens' expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies told to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, we will not so much defeat dictators like Saddam Hussein as become them.

Things like this send me into a fit of rage and grief about the absolute cluelessness and abandonment of the Church in America. The same clueless people who failed to do just a bit of homework to balance what they are being spoon-fed by the Bush administration (with the mainstream media perfectly willing to be complicit in the endeavor, and squelch any criticism or simply "REPORTING THE NEWS"), these same people also call themeselves Christians. If they want to be "clueless Christians" and find out at the end of time how complicit they were in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents, then they are proceeding just fine. Bush the other day said something about "those who kill innocent people", and I seethed with disgust over this man whose shallowness defies any pretension to "Christ changed my heart", and whose power position makes him indeed a dangrous and unholy man.

It doesn't take Satanic rituals and pitchforks and horns to make one an instrument of Satan. Just deception, and darkness, and hubris, and the power with which it comes and which absolutely corrupts.

I really don't know what to do about the Church. I'll have to spend the next three Sunday s before Christmas back downtown in a Church where I know there are a large group of people who deplore this war and this president for not being intelligent enough and compassionate enough to see the capacity for destruction which his position entails. I myself think he is an intellectual pawn in the plans of an evil, neoconservative regime, which runs far deeper into the back rooms than the oval office can contain.

These thoughts and this type of stance within the Christian tradition may be seen as extreme, but I see an extreme of evil being perpetuated upon our nation, and usually sane and intelligent people are swept up in the mass deception. Think of it. Perhaps a HUNDRED THOUSAND dead, and more than half and perhaps 2/3 of these are women and children. Shame on you George W. Bush. Shame on you Republican party. Shame on you , Church in America. Just change your name from the Church of Jesus Christ to the Church of America and cut out the pretense. The Church can only be found now in the underground. The Church in the open has gonme completely astray. Accept Christ and change. He stands at the door of the Church and knocks, asking the people to let him come in and transform humanity. Transfomrmative possibilities are ever present, but Christ must be let into the process.

The New York Review of Books: On War

the scenes in the hospital corridors in The Fall of Baghdad are a reminder that this war, despite the assurances of the Bush administration, was neither clean nor precise. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been wounded and killed. Anderson, by focusing on a few victims, including two children, helps to counter the glib excuses for the war. He stands in a hospital looking at the body of a small child killed by American bombs, and the image alone mocks all those who promoted the war on humanitarian grounds:
--------------------------------------
"Before the cloth covered her, I saw that the girl was covered in blood. Her brother looked as though he were sleeping. But they both were dead. Their mother was there, beside herself with grief. She was the woman I had heard wailing and hitting the walls. Then almost all the onlookers around the mother, including the doctors and nurses, broke down and cried. I was overcome and went outside and sat down. I wept. The children's father was sitting a few feet away from me, disconsolately sobbing into his arms."

Joyce Hollyday ( aformer Sojourner community member) writes in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Hard to fathom exclusion of ad promoting inclusion | ajc.com

Some of us Christians in America don't see how you can follow Jesus and exclude some of God's children from the circle of grace. We don't understand how you can care for the poor and gut the programs that sustain them. We don't see how you can claim the label "pro life" and ardently support the death penalty and war. We don't know how you can love your enemies and bomb them.
For us, there is far more to "moral values" than most current commentary acknowledges. For us, following Jesus means we are called to mirror his compassion for the poor, his inclusion of the marginalized, his pursuit of peace and his proclamations of justice. Those of us in the United Church of Christ would like to spread that message. It's a shame that NBC and CBS won't let us be heard.

Rev. Joyce Hollyday, an associate conference minister for the Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ, is a co-pastor of Circle of Mercy congregation in Asheville, N.C.

I've not felt much like blogging today.....went to church and videotaped our daughter Kelli in a Christimas play. But spent the rest of the time staring and thinking about things like what Juan Cole talks about below, and wondering how in the world the Church got to this point. Well, I sort of know....it happens when the Church wants to be "acceptable" and then when the Church ceases to be the Church so that people have to flock to such phenomenon as some nationalistic crusade, and so atrocities like this, far from us, are quite "acceptable".

Advent is not off to a great start. Still looking for some miraculous ray of hope. It seems that this Christmas, it will remain very much an eschatological hope.

Informed Comment

The use of air power in Iraq has been among the more troubling policies in the post-Saddam period. It appears to be the case, from the Lancet survey, that between 40,000 and 100,000 excess deaths have occurred among Iraqi civlians since the war began, and 85 percent of those deaths were because of US aerial bombardment (these statistics were gathered excluding Fallujah, lest it skew the national averages). That is between 34,000 and 85,000 Iraqis killed by US bombing, most of them civilians. Jeffrey Sachs and Tom Engelhardt are among the few American observers who even seem to be noticing the phenomenon.

The war extends to those who would provide evidence for its true costs. I recall the soldier who called Seymour Hersh in tears about a military slaughter of Iraqi civilians guarding a local business, a group of Iraqis his unit had recently befreinded while they camped and awaited new orders. Hersh told him to serve his time and keep quiet unless he wanted a bullet in the back. This is a war on the truth as well, when that truth does not serve the political ends of the ill-conceived and mass-deceived nature of this war.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

Seems like more and more are connecting to Al Mohler's blog as a source of "blog fodder"....add Icthus to the list. Myself, as a former Southern Baptist and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I've been wincing at Mohler-isms for 10 years (or whenever it was I first started seeing things written by him) ....and blogged quite a few times since the start of my blog and named the Category "Baptist"...even though that's sort of an affront to real Baptists to classify Mohler as such, since Baptists supposedly belioeve in sole competency, and Mohler's SBC seems to abhor this idea and prefer a "totalitarian and authoritarian regime" approach to theology.

ICTHUS

I can always count on certain people to provide fodder to blog about. So leave it to our good friend Al Mohler to bless us so immensely. Al is very worried these days. It seems that hell-fire and damnation

Yep, Vaughn. He certainly does get going on the slightest little thing, and tends to ignore the biger things (like actual death, like in Iraq, all happening on the pretxt, now proven false --- except to the supporters, of course---- while he drones on ioncessantly about a "culture of death" without including war in that picture, since the SBC is the biggest visible denominational supporter)

INteresting , found via http://www.vaughnthompson.com/ichthus/archives/2004/12/open_source_chu.php

Knowtown...: December 2004 Archives

the closed ecclesial communities that I have experienced (no doubt there are many great communities out there so I am not commenting on them) believe that the community will be better when I simply become willing to accept what they give me. Once I get on board with the pastor’s vision and operate by his rules than I can be seen as a team player and valuable member. The only contribution I am expected to make is to keep funding the vision. So it is my observation that closed source systems create consumer-users while open source systems create committed contributors.

Carlos at Jesus Politics posts another Al Mohler "heresy" gem

In this case, an example of precisely what Bonhoeffer faced in his German Church, a Church rapidly descending into nationalistic irrelevance to the cause of Christ. Indeed, an idolatry of the state. Mohler and his fellow Southern Baptist Convention leaders exemplify a neutering of the gospel, and the construction of an Anerican apologetic, complete with invokings of the "Almighty" reminiscent of Hitler and scores of previous empires down through history. It has never been more clear that the world is being threatened by the fundamentalist mind set, not only that of Muslim extremists, but by American neocons who have enlisted an apostate Church in their cause. Personal piety and individualistic morality falls far down on the list of sincs in the context of the death of thousands (3 thousand in New York and D.C., followed by another 50 to 100 thousand in Iraq, and who knows how many more in Afganistan. And the Iraq debacle continues to appear to be no match for the evil determiniation of this administration to dogmatically pursue its goals of econmomic nirvana in seizing control of oil and buiilding pipelines, and "opening up new markets" in places where we seem to be killing people for the purpose of "securing the area" for establishing businesses (I mean, "Democracy"). All the while, Halliburton has lost a third of the "assets" with which it was cahrged with safeguarding. I wonder how long the American government wouold tolerate such massive failure to deliver from "other contractors"? And still, Bush exudes resolve. For along time now to some of us, it looks very much like self-delusion, or extreme weakenss in playing the "puppet" of some other more "hidden", corecive force or group whose influence determines the shots. And this is all conducted under what is somehow being constued by a bare majority of people in this country as serving the country.

God forgive us. As Bonhoeffer wojuld put it, "only in and through the Church " are we to give and receive forgiveness. But to have this, we must BE the Church, and not simply seek the survival of soemthing that SEEMS to be the Church.

This , from Weblosky, on a guy, George Tenet, whose INtelligence Agencies were unable to send photos from one place to another, presumes to expound on the fine points of Internet security. Here we have a scary case of knowing just enough to be dangerous (where the knowledge here is in "who you know" rather than WHAT you know....and the absolute poverty of the inteliigence agancies technological support is staggering and inexusable, and was at the root of the absolute ineptness of this country's agencies to collaboare on ANYTHING. Pitiful.

Weblogsky: Tenet calls for an end to "free and open" Internet

George Tenet calls for new Internet security measures - just what those are are't specified in this article, which quotes him as saying "I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability, but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."

the Washington Times Article

In Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer began to write more emphatically about his "bitterness against the Churches for their not having checked in any siginificant way the evils perpretated by nazism." (from A Testament to Freedom, p.40

"Bonhoeffer had come to see in religion a form of culture, turned in on itself, conscious of clerical privilege, and bent on its own survival in the derstruction of war." (p. 41)

"Religion" , when it separates itself from faith, which is real only in life and devotion to Christ, most clearly defined for Bonhoefer in the Sermon on the Mount. While faith can certainly advocate a religious lifestyle, there are "religiosities" which exude a culture other than that of one driven by the core of the Christian faith, and yet seek to maintain their association with Christianity by re-emphasizing OTHER things. Bonhoeffer often asked questions like "Who is Christ for us today?"

It is indeed ironic that so many "devotional" Christians today are so enthsed about Bonhoeffer's writings, and yet are also many of the same at the forefront of Bush administration support and affirmation of the "faith-based" values of this administration, and urging all Christians to support this president. The Iraq war alone would be cuase enough for Bonhoefer to make the same kind of calls to the American Church to "be the Church" as he had to make for Germany.

"I should like to speak to God", he wrote, "not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not indeath and guilt but in life and goodnerss....God is beyond in the midst of our life. The Church sttands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village" (Letter and Papers from Prison, p.282)

Thanksgiving weekend, I visited Larry at OSG and found several booksby and about Bonhoefer , including the title of this post, subtitled "Essential Writings of German pastor and theologian who joined the resistance against Hitler and was executed in 1945". The Editor's introduction is inspiring in itself.

re: Fano, August 1934:

"Peace on earth is not a problem," he said, "but a commandment given at Christ's coming." He attacked those attempts to soften that command by interjections in favor of national security and legitimate defense needs.

I found these words of Bonhoeffers' extremely relevant to today. Although the circumstances are not of such extremity of evil, neither was it perceived to be as such at the time. People refused to believe that such could be the case. While I do not see the present tendencies leading to murders of the scale of the Holocaust, I see a different type of pressure emerging, one which is economic, social. political, and like in Bonhoefer's case, VERY much a SPIRITUAL issue. Even one in which the very soul of the American Church is at stake. While some lend their "theological support" and offer various "Biblical supports", others avoid support but choose silence out of a desire to maintain "agreement" and focus on "common ground". But where Christ and even faithful Church history seem most clear, to focus on issues of "commonality" while allowing insidious advances to break form the way of Jesus and construct systems of justification and capitulation to nationalist interests, is to suggest that our common ground in Christ rests upon selective aspects of Christ, while ignoring the more demanding and counter-cultural calls to stand up for the opppresed, oppose violence and war as a means to an end instead of "defense at last resort". Even "defense at last resort leaves open the easy out of claiming to "exhausted alternatives" when these "attempts" were but a formality leading to the pursuit of a predetermined goal (the overthrow, occupation, and imperial establishment of a "democracy" which is but a cover for opportunism (which is having an increasingly hard time maintaining the myth of the "greatest good" sought by this campaign.

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