February 2005 Archives

Were it not for the needed dissent ; or even , because of it, there is what Jim Wallis talks about: "It's one thing to say No, but even better to have an alternative". If there were a host of Churches stirring up their members to stnad up for their faith and say no to war, there is still the call to BE an alternative. To be involved in creating and supporting those alternatives.

I see that there are Churches who do not join in the nationalistic fervor; and a smaller number who actively voice that dissent. But even at that point, there remains the matter of being the kind of community that can sustain an energized and committed community that is dedicated to reconciliation and peace not only in protest but in alternative actions to address the world at the point of need. There is still no communal structure to Churches to sustain mission. People are not being heard, and not being enabled by their Churches to discover and implement their call. No place to use their gifts.

I have written several times about the Church of the Saviour in Washinton DC, and how their "Journey Inward, Journey Outward" ecclesiology has driven their mission for Christ since 1947 when they were founded. The idea that this is a community charged with the call to be Christ and proclaim Christ and do this at the point hwere the world's need meets the Kingdom of God, and to nurture and sustain its body of members in that endeavor; this is where the Church so often falls flat. It has become SUCH a PROGRAM. It is an EVENT rather than a life. It is less a shared celebration and more a solitary "reflection time", and people find themselves disoconnected.

Just seeing this long road ahead, and that all these years have gone by and I still find myself looking down that same long road feeling no closer to wherever, that in itself is tiring, and deflating. But the fact that I write this is some indication that perhaps this will, at the least, help me articulate it and stay with it, and at best, make a connection to someone who might find something for their own journey, or to discover that there may be something in common and sense that maybe my call is not something solitary. My call has somethgn to do with integrating a local, face to face (ftf) community of Christ, with some online "extensions" to the ftf community, so that our story could be told, and through that, the Jesus story for our time, and for our place. But the commitment to a life together as a Christian community, in a serious and accountable way, as if this community and this call "means something" and has priority and importance such that our lives will never be the same. I long for this Church; for this community, who se aim is to particpate in the Kingdom, and find our place in it.

This link to a letter from the SBC's International Mission Board, informing those who had refused to sign of their impending termination. This is old news (2002), but continues to be the operating procedure and attitude of those in power at the Southern Baptist Convention. These are not "servant" leaders, but dictators of the religious sort; the Pharisees from whom Jesus got so much flack and supicion about his "qualifications" to be saying he was "from God". Jesus is still being questioned and opposed today byu the descendants of these legalists. Add to that the spiritual scourge of nationalistic militarism run amuck, and you have a deadly force of religious fundamentalism even more deadly than the Muslim fundamentalistic theocratic zealots. But here in this country, the percentage of our population complicit in this heresy outnumbers tyhe support for Islamic fundamentalistic violence in the Muslim world. "With great power comes great responsibility"
(that's from "Spiderman", but nonetheless profoundly true).

Related to that, with great influence and power, comes the danger that the consequences are far more wide-reacfhing, and far more igniting of far greater consequences. The power and wealth and reach of the United State's actions make this "complicity of the Churches" (and the Southern Baptists lead the way as the largest Protestant body in the United States)all the more dangerous, damaging, and destructive of Christian mission and witness across the world. Shame on you , Southern Baptist Convention! Repent and hear the gospel. And I'm serious about that. You need to receive Christ, and not the cultural counterfeit you have constructed in his stead.

Rankin Letter

Dear ___,

You are among a small handful of missionary personnel who are continuing to struggle with my request earlier this year to affirm the current Baptist Faith and Message. Or perhaps you are among those who have already decided not to respond to this request to assure the Southern Baptist Convention of our continuing doctrinal accountability. .....

(read on at the above link)

Today, as I expressed above, that authoritarian doctrinal arrogance has become aligned with the very real evils engulfing our nation at this time. NOt only are American Southern Baptists now being held accountable to the theological whims of narrow minded fundamentalists, but also expected to the tow the line in nationalistic idolatry, and to blend that with their "faith" which is quickly losing its "Christ" and becming an arm of the principalities; of EMPIRE. The empire is doing its job on the American Church, and they have succumbed to an a alarming extent.

This makes it very lonely. Oh yes, there are the fellow Progressive Christian bloggers, Sojourners, and friends , now dispersed across the country; but I need a local fellowship. To found/start such as thing myself makes me tired just thinking about it. Perhaps such fatigue can be overcome. Perhaps if I saw some glimpse that someting new could arise; or some possibilities could be "started". More later....

Stand with Christ

"Stand With Christ explores and explains the history, problems and biblical judgment of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message revision and its uses as a force of control, internal purification, and conformity."

In his foreword, Walter Shurden has this to say:

"This is a book by Baptists. Most Baptists, especially Baptists of the South, will readily recognize the writers -- Russell Dilday, Keith Parks, James Dunn, Catherine Allen, Charles Wade, David Currie, Charles Deweese, John Pierce, Kenneth Massey, Bruce Prescott, Earl Martin, and editor Robert O'Brien.

Marinated in the Baptist tradition of a free and responsible conscience, each of these writers carries a sterling Baptist portfolio. They deserve to be heard. They should be heeded.

"This is also a book about Baptists. Specifically, it is a book about the Southern Baptist Convention and its deliberate, but unbaptistic, move toward creedalism."

Here's a link to a book, sold by Smith and Helwys, the publishing arm of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, on how the present Southern Baptist Leadership, and their "founders", betrayed the gospel by inventing a new one, based on a lot of "old religion" and fundamentalistic politics that put personal and "sectarian" gain over the ethic of Christ.

The Betrayal of Southern Baptist Missionaries

The current leaders of the SBC have led Southern Baptists away from sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Merritt proposes strategies for churches that would free them from the control of the current leaders and restore them to freedom in Christ and unity in fellowship, service and missions.

John W. Merritt served as a Southern Baptist missionary for 34 years. He is retired and lives with his wife, Elizabeth near Asheville, North Carolina. They have three sons and two grandchildren.

No pun intended (as in "Army Boots"). This Southern Baptist Church is participating in the abomination of desolation. (the story source here) I found this intitial link via Mike James, and then saw that it had created discussion on Daily Kos

With the Southern Baptists tendency to "kick out" Churches who they consider to be "renegade" (ie. the Churches that show a tendency to accept gays as members ands , horrors, ministers.) Now here, we have a Church involved in the worship of the military. But will there be trouble from the Southern Baptsit Convention? I don't think so.

Just another indication of the way the Southern Baptists-- (again, not all, but certainly their leadership of the denomination, and a disturbing majority of their Churches and members--- dare I say 99%? It seems so--- have forsaken the Christ of Scripture for a cultural faith, that places national loyalty before loyalty to a God who is the creator of THE WORLD. The fact that I have to write this, and suggest that this is blasphemy pure and simple only underscores how blinded the Southern Baptists have become. That this kind of thing is not a source of outrage among Southern Baptists (the leadership , I mean. Surely, there will be scores of offended Southern Baptists, but many of those will urge us to "take it with a grain of salt"; that it's simply nationalistic enthusiasm taken a bit too far.

No. Absolutely not. It's the natural growth of an unchecked move toward a betrayal of the faith. This Porter Memorial Baptist Church is already there.

If I believed that to be gay was a sin (which I'm not convinced of*), I insist that it is in no way, shape , or form, something with the destructive power and spiritual corruption of the kind of military force shown by this administration in this war on Iraq, (and really not such a large departure from other episodes in religious history, beginning with the era of bombing of civilians in WW2).

* Read on for further comments on this (and some further observations about the "selective interpretations" that allow the Church to focus on these "side issues" while ignoring the larger issues of peace)

Mike James, in Thrown to the Wolves links to this, another in a long line of stories from people rounded up with no evidence and no due process, all in the name of the "war on terror", and so we instead create a new terror:

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Thrown to the Wolves

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."

This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.

From Joan Chissiter, an infuriating story, but one I didn't hear here, but the rest of the world isn't in a country led by empire thugs turning a blind eye, and doing all they can to keep things like this out of the news:

What the Rest of the World Watched on Inauguration Day

There are 54 million people in Iraq. Over half of them are under the age of 15. Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children. We are killing children. The children are our enemy. And we are defeating them.

"I'll tell you why I voted for George Bush," a friend of mine said. "I voted for George Bush because he had the courage to do what Al Gore and John Kerry would never have done."

I've been thinking about that one.

Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Sadam Hussein is still alive. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still alive. Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah are burning. But my government has the courage to kill children or their parents. And I'm supposed to be impressed.

Right to life. Respect for life. SANCTITY of life. The Religious Right should be ashamed for keeping their vision so insanely and tragically narrow, and to think for one moment that a President--- who so clearly WANTS war ("I'm a War president") despite what he says, all his actions show that war is his "manly option", and selfish, nationalist, economic interests come first , defended by deadly force--- that this president is a "man of God", I shudder at what has happened to the image of Jesus as the Word made flesh. This is NOT what Jesus would do, or is calling us to do. We MUST not participate in EVIL, for that is what this is, plain and simple.

In Iraq, for every dead U.S. soldier, there are 14 other deaths, 93 percent of them are civilian. But those things happen in war, the story says. It's all for a greater good, we have to remember. It's all to free them. It's all being done to spread "liberty."

I also shudder when I hear Bush talk of "freedom and liberty". The hollow-ness of those words from his mouth.

More and more, prominent evangelicals (like Ron Sider) are questioning the sincerity of "Compassionate Conservatism". At some point, it becomes "Selfish Blindness" , as Christians dig in and entrench themselves in defending an adminstration whose leaders call upon the name of God, but are now showing how very little they really care about the priorities of Jesus or the prophets before him.

beliefnet: The State of the Union on Poverty by Ron Sider--Bush faith-based compassion conservativism government poor

The number of Americans in poverty has jumped by more than a million every year from 2001-2003. We have millions of Americans working full-time all year round without earning enough to escape poverty. At $5.15 per hour, the minimum wage is not enough to enable a parent with children to even get close to escaping poverty. Forty-five million Americans lack health insurance–and the number keeps growing each year. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee health insurance to all its people.

Bruce Prescott of Mainstream Baptist has an astute observation of the "backroom strategizing" that Southern Baptists fell victim to in the 80's and 90's (and no doubt started in the 60's and 70's), and how this same scenario and some of the same people are involved in the Council for National Policy, (a group written on by Sarah Posner -- Secret Society --which Jesus Politics linked to , and to which Bruce Prescott refers below:

Mainstream Baptist

Baptists are very familiar with the effectiveness of secretive cabals that set the priorities and agenda for political takeovers. We've been facing one for twenty-five years in the Southern Baptist Convention. Many of the same players are in the Council for National Policy which has been orchestrating the right-wing political takeover of our country.

Oh yes. We remember. I still grieve for it (what the SBC once was and could have been).

Mohler with his clueless ranting about Dean, and what he thinks of him.

I often like using Mohler as a punching bag, since he so accurately typifies the head-in-the-sand, fundamentalistic blindness of the Religious Right. His view of Dean is no exception.

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

"Howard Dean's energy and passion will add to the political discourse in this country, and he will be a strong leader for his party." That comment came from Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a statement congratulating former Vermont governor Howard Dean on his unanimous election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. What Mr. Mehlman could not say is that his party is relishing the opportunity to watch the Democrats self-destruct under their hyperventilating new chairman.

First of all, the "hyperventialting" reference is clue enough to know that the Religous Right has no interest in learning the truth behind absolutely dirty media tricks and distortions such as that to which Dean fell victim. We all know the "Dean Scream", but a disgustingly low number of people realize how that came about.

It was after the Iowa primary, and the media played over and over, the Dean concession speech for Iowa, where he used a crowd noise suppressing mike, so we coudldn't hear how loud the crowd was, getting louder and louder so that Dean had to yell at the top of his voice to hear himself. The recordings make him sound a bit overworked. Jane Pauley admitted this in an interview in the following weeks. But did the networks apologize, or "expose" their distorti ons? NO.

Of course, even if they had, the Religious Right and their idols, the GOP, wouldn't care, just as Fox doesn't care. They'll continue to run with it, as if all those "facts" and "actual contexts" are not relevant. They want to paint Dean as a crazy. OK then. But we'll take them with a grain of salt, and anticipate how surprisewd they're going to be when this "nobody", this "loony" eats their lunch.

Dean's past should not be forgotten, and his legacy as an ardent and radical proponent of abortion must not go unnoticed.

More Mohler denial of what he can't see, due to his BLack-White view of things. He, Mohler, denies that Dean is anything but a 'proponent" of abortion becuase he, Mohler, doesn't understand anything but us vs them.

Mohler does the same to a statement by Ted Kennedy:

Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized--the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old . . . When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.

Mohler:

That remarkable statement, made in 1971, was uttered by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Of course, that was many years and an entire moral universe ago. Sen. Kennedy is now a staunch defender of abortion at every stage and in virtually every context.

Yeah, REMARKABLE! Huh? Al! What the hell are you talking about? I suppose it's "remarkable" to Mohler because for him, "respect for life" is first and foremost an abortion issue. Never mind that his denomination's leaders and himself are backing one of world's most immoral wars, killing tens of thousands of not only civilians, but infant civilians, and UNBORN civilians. They're PEOPLE, Al, you arrogant , blind, clueles hypocrite! I am so sick of your smugness. YOU promote more of the "culture of death" that you so narrowly define than Clinton, Dean, or any present Democrat has ever done.

Here's MOhler's closing comment:

The Democrats may try to talk "values," but until they reclaim the value of human life from conception until natural death, they do not deserve to be taken seriously.

Did you actually say "conpception to natural death"? Does respect for life extend , after all , to all humans? Does the war based on lies have a kind of imooral and "disrespect for life" implied in it? Do you and your denominational fundamentalist, nationalistic cronies back and even PROMOTE this war? Shame on you. You blaspheme life. In the end, you show NO RESPECT.

Who needs to take WHO seriously? You omit all post-birth "life respect" issues, and you expect to be taken seriously? I take you seriously as a threat to Christendom, giving the faith a bad name.

The Christian view of human nature and of sin suggests that we are fallible creatures and thus not good at empire. We cannot be trusted with domination, becoming too easily corrupted by its power and too often succumbing to repression in defending it

This is Jim Wallis, from his book God's Politics. Not only are human beings not good at Empire, the Church doesn't exactly have a good record when they give it a crack (ie. The Crusades, various "conquests" giving God the credit (Columbus vs the Natives of the New World).

In fact, the Church is often instructed to resist empire altoghether, and instead, side with the victims of those empires (and their leaders who invoke The Almighty in their cause).

David Batstone writes on a friend of his that went missing last October, and a co-worker of that friend who was gunned down, and for what?

SojoMail

Kirk was ready to blow the whistle on a kickback scheme that involved business operatives and a U.S. Army officer, according to the article.

Sage - Informed Comment

It is absolutely outrageous that Chalabi blames US policies for the guerrilla war. He was the one who pushed for punitive policies toward the ex-Baathists and for dissolving the Iraqi military, and he and his Neoconservative cronies in the Pentagon bear a great deal of the responsibility for the mess in Iraq today.

By the way, it seems pretty obvious that aside from Stephanopoulos, a lot of television news leaders are trying to dump the Iraq story. Despite massive bombings and loss of life on Ashura in Iraq on Saturday, there is so far relatively little about it on the Sunday afternoon talking heads shows.

Jesus Politics points to this article at the Baptist Studies Bulletin about another former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Professor I had, Glenn Hinson.

Hinson is reviewing a book , A Pilgrimage of Faith: My Story, by Henlee Hulix Barnette, an ethics professor and theologian whom I wrote a paper on while taking Baptist Theologians in Historical Perspective (I had requested Clarence Jordan as my topic, but got assigned Barnette since there were more than one person requesting Jordan; the assignments of "second choices" were done by selecting "those who would be close to the first choice". I got to interview Barnette during the course of writing that paper.)

But this is a most Accurate one-sentence depiction of the theological approach of the Southern Baptist Convention's educational apparatus: Shut Down Searching. Shut it DOWN. This is why all of the former Professors of mine in 1980 who are not retired are teaching somewhere else. This is why Al Mohler is installed as President. This is why I have to tell people when I tell them where I went to school that it was "pre-takeover"; when Southern Baptists weres still a mainline denomination (meaning, for all the problems of mainlines, there is a common thread: diversity).

Jesus Politics: E. Glenn Hinson on Henlee Barnette

A Pilgrimage of Faith is an inspiring story, but it has some very sad parts. Perhaps the most grievous for someone who has been privileged to share a considerable stretch in Henlee Barnette’s pilgrimage is what has happened to the people who brought Henlee Barnette to a vital Christian faith, nurtured him, ordained him, and sustained him in his ministry. Where will prophets come from in a denomination which has shut down searching? Among his final petitions as he finished his autobiography was this: “Let me die thinking. I have always had a hunger to know more. Here we see things ‘through a glass darkly.’ No one has all this truth.”

From the Bush Tapes article being discussed on the blogosphere these past few days. The quote below, the "on the other hand" Bush throws in there, is the ultimate in obscuring the truth. Excuse me, WHO has disgraced the nation? Do you think much of the world cares as much as the Right Wing in this country about Clinton's sexual escapades. I don't admire or excuse it in any way. But in terms of consequences upon the world; in terms of its far-reaching efects on security of the world, it does not amount to squat. What DOES have far-reaching and damaging effects and consequences, is the neoconservative, "market-driven" (not driven by anything resembling Christian values derived from the Christian faith as contained in THE BIBLE --- as in NOT the Bible of the Religious Right---), American Empire driven actions and policies of an administration that has taken narcissim, hubris, and arrogance to a new level. THIS is what disgraces a nation. This is what HAS disgraced our nation. THE CHURCH worldwide has denounced the United Satets government. The Confessing Church IN the United States has denounced this government. But they don't give a shit. They remind me of the South African government , responding to the worldwide criticism of apartheid: "We don't care a damn" they said. Bush adn Cheney don't care a damn. Their entire histories show that.

The New York Times > Washington > In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President

He even expressed a hint of sympathy for his Democratic predecessor.

"I don't like it either," Mr. Bush said of the Clinton investigations. "But on the other hand, I think he has disgraced the nation."

Like hell. I fully expect that Karl Rove was on retainer by many of these groups who engaged in "The Hunting of the President" as Joe Connason describes it. To place the full focus on matters of personal morality in order to obscure the outright worldwide violent and murderous actions that they intended to achive once in office, is how they win over the Religious Right, and then proceed to screw 99.9% of them (the people who support the Religious Right) by remaking the government into a portal for the adoption of pro-rich, pro-Corporate policies at a rate of turnover unprecedented in our history.

Yes, Democrats are also a part of the American Empire, and serve the interests of the ruling elites. I simply believe that the neocons have found a way to sell a system that does less "buffering" between the classes. The Howard Zinn theory he advances in "A People's History" is that the U.S. government has constructed this two party system that advances this notion of two almost diametrically opposed platforms, and give the illusion that the government is ultimately interested in the good of the whole. They enlist "buffers" between the ruling classes and the lower classes, and the middle. They enlist thier "interpreters" and PR people who sell varying levels of compromise, to avoid rebellions and "cool their jets". I believe that this Bush administration has managed to find a formula that succeeds in selling their systematic dismantling of the protections and compromises of the past by more "liberal" administrations, and sell this as "a better America".

I can't be more recommending of Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It has helped me to separate myself from identifying too much of my hopes in "Democratic Party" agendas and start from Biblical vision itself, which pre-dates Democratic or Republican or American, and knew far back in human history about the tendencies toward Empire that overtake successful republics.

As a People of God who are charged with Proclaiming a Kingdom of God; we have another way. It is not beholden to "Capitalism" or "Communism", and seeks to lift up those things in either or both which are compatible with justice; and lay the way more clear for the realization of the Biblical vision.

Here's another 2 or 3 "slightly minor" budget slip-ins that amount to , oh, just over a TRILLION dollars. Is the American public really this stupid? How can they EXCUSE this "tad bit" of obscuring the bare-bones facts (ie. what the programs actually cost).

I am a Christian Too » Bush’s Immoral Budget

To meet its claimed target of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the new budget omits the cost of the war in Iraq; the cost of the president’s proposed private accounts for Social Security; and the cost of correcting the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting growing numbers of middle-class taxpayers rather than the rich it is intended for.

To make its already unaffordable tax cuts permanent, the administration wants to change the budget-scoring rules so that the cuts show up on the score card as cost-free. In fact, making them permanent would cost $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years…

Kuo points out how the support for Bush gets garnered among those who find comfort in his talk of Compassionate Conservativism, and then that seems to do it for them. No further "political capital" is required to be spent. The money is suddenly unavailable when it comes time to deliver the goods. And the supporters keep referring to the "faith-based intitiatives" as indicators of how serious Bush is. If only they realized the difference between campaign and policy. The Bush administration knows that the details aren't what win the day for them. The fact that his supporters can keep cheering and lauding him for Compassionate Conservatism is the evidence that the administration needs that they don't have to put their money where their mouth is.

David Kuo on why Bush's faith-based initiative has floundered -- Beliefnet.com

...over time it became clearer that the White House didn't have to expend any political capital for pro-poor legislation. The initiative powerfully appealed to both conservative Christians and urban faith leaders - regardless of how much money was bei ng appropriated.

From EJ Dionne of the Washington Post:

WorkingForChange-Remember compassionate conservatism?

Kuo's approach, then and now, was to criticize liberals for failing to see the promise of religiously based social action and to criticize conservatives for indifference to the poor. For Kuo, compassionate conservatism was not a political ploy. On the contrary, he was hoping its rise would encourage a serious dialogue across the lines of party and ideology about what a serious commitment to lifting up the poor would look like.

When I asked Kuo in 1998 to write an essay for a little book I edited on community and civil society, his title was characteristic: "Poverty 101: What Liberals and Conservatives Can Learn from Each Other."

To this day, Kuo speaks warmly of the president he served. "No one who knows him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and compassion of his heart," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet. In a phone conversation, Kuo insisted that his essay was not anti-Bush, but "in support of what Governor Bush said in 1999."

I too thought Bush's words about Compassionate Conservatism sounded good. It was when I saw who he was talking about appointing to his cabinet that I lost my postive vibes. And then I began to look at some of the Texas policies, and I got a clue about what kind of a politican he was. The Orwellian nature of his talk vs actual policy implementation and funding was a bad sign, and he has continued in that tradition.

Further, there are volumes of testimony from people like Kuo, and Diulio before him, and Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson, Paul O'Neill, and even Colin Powell and Chrsitine Todd-Whitman, who heard the constant disparaging and cynical remarks about "the poor people stuff" and things like "pick a faith-based initiative, any initiative". The experiences of the "experts" which the cabinet used only when they agreed with them; and when they didn't tow the line, they soon found themselves excluded. Paul O'Neill as Secretary of the Treausury found himself slated to lead only a small discussion group and included in NONE of the major talks in a major economic summit put on by the White House, and the major dialogue was carried out by only those whose who stayed "on message". Dionne goes on:

"From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants," Kuo wrote in his essay on Beliefnet.com. "It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.'"

People keep on defending this by saying "every administration has turnover of personell" and "that's only one person" (which they use for each and every one as the numbers mount of people tired of being PR people instead of actually having their expertise taken seriously and intergrated into the way policy is determined.

This article explores still yet another Bush staffer who finds out via experience that the talk is mostly just that. Diulio found that out (Bush's first "Faith-Based Initiative Czar"), who provided the widely circulated quote that , "in the Bush administration, there was an almost complete absence of a policy apparatus". Put your money where your mouth is or SHUT IT. Anything less is pomposity and manipulation for political purposes. This seems to be, as Diulio's quote indicates, the modu operandi of the Bush white house. All Politics, very little if any "policy apparatus". And you have Bush himself, being "not much hof a reader"; basically, a "front-man" (and not a very effective one for doing anything else than preaching to the choir). The policies consist largely of a set of long-held, radical right, neoconservative "aims" that they have dreamt about all these years, and now they're all abuzz at how they now have an "opportunity" to dismantle the things that always disturbed them (or, red this way: things that always "irritated" their corporate frineds and kept them from the kind of "free-market reign" ---which is read by them to mean: the market will take care of it; we can do what we want; the market "benefits" from that will make us all richer. This is the driving motivation and philosophy; a PR campaign for describing the great heist of the non-upper classes by the elite, and describing it terms of "democracy and freedom" and "ownership".

David Kuo on why Bush's faith-based initiative has floundered -- Beliefnet.com

"It is not enough to call for volunteerism. Without more support and resources, both private and public, we are asking them to make bricks without straw."

I received a comment a few days ago from a guy who said he had written something on the Religious Right I might find interesting. It was interesting. It was an insider's look. Good reading, and I have some comments.

Dignan's 75 Year Plan: Inside the "Religious Right"

I would die for the fact that Jesus truly died and was resurrected. However, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong about political issues.

That's about half right. I think that what we die for is not a particular scientific/historic claim (although I myself believe strongly in the resurrection as history), I also feel that what we are called to die for is not what stance we have on that, but how we RESPOND to the life Jesus lived and calls us to follow in his steps. Someone who DOES NOT belive in the historical resurrection, but LIVES as Jesus taught is more Christian than one who "believes all the right stuff" and yet does not DO SO. I cannot stress that enough. You do NOT "believe" by intellectual assent, but by life decisions and how you live. People object that this is WORKS theology. You bet. It is a requirement of faith. It is the instigator, the affirmer, and the fruits of faith. It is RESPONDING to the call. Do the theology , and learn the theology of all that after all that.

As for the ability/willingness to be "open to the possibility that I am wrong about political issues", that certainly is somethig we'd like to see. Somehow, the Southern Baptists got along quite well for several years, until the dogmas about orthodoxy and what "prerequisites" had to be accepted in ordser to be "counted amongst the true believers" took hold as certain reactive fundamentalist elements took power, and brought with them a dogmatic insistence on the virtues of Republicanism over Democratism. Prior to that, even as I learned of The Church of the Saviour, Clarence Jordan, and entered Southern Seminary in 1978, I had never encountered any "leanings" amongst Church folks toward one party or the other.

Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority began to draw the inferences, and my Seminary profs began to react, and to point to the deeper dimenisons of "morality" and ethivs, such as war and peace, poverty, and the social issues around abortion. Glen Stassen opened my eyes to a lot of this, but the way had been prepared by Clarence Jordan and Gordon Cosby (and the Church of the Saviour) to the social justice issues in the faith. In 1984, I began to learn of the Sanctuary Movement, which arose in response to issues around the
El Salvador, Nicaragua, (Central America) civil wars. Churches had become involved in providing sanctuary to immigrants from these countries whom the United States was denying entry , maintaining that they were not suffering real persecution.

For people to whose patriotism kept them from giving legitimacy to the stories of missionaries about the situation in Central America, there was insistence that the viewpoint of our government leaders was the righteous argument, and that people who sided with the people with whom they served (such as missionaries to these Central American countries who began to speak out against the policies of our government) , these people were communisit sympathizers.

I wonder what this seemingly more open, more rational, more tolerant "Religious Right" person thinks of in regard to the almost fanatical need of the Religious Right to defend the milatarism of the United Satets, particularly post 9/11 and the Iraq scandal (for to me, and many Christians, this war IS a scandal, even more so than many other wars that are mostly wrong as well). He doesn't mention this issue, and yet I find this the biggest point of division between myself and the Religious Right. I feel it in the absolute sense of disgust and sadness I feel when I see a sign in a yard over the Holidays that say "Jesus is the Reason For the Season" alongside "Bush/Cheney" signs, and realize that this is nearly always the case: that the majority of Religious Right Supporters almost have to sign on to the militaristic agenda, since Christians who eschew violence and war would not see much common ground with an allegiance so blind that it enables them to go to fantastic lengths to theologically justify how this fits with a Jesus ethic; or is somehow consistent with "what would Jesus do?". The absence of that whole argument from that story really bothers me.

Carlos at Jesus Politics had a post about what American Christians define as "persecution" these days. This was prompted by the a missionary in the Amazon , Dorothy Stang, who was shot to death this week.

It reminds me of something Clarence Jordan used to say about "making a public profession of faith". He said, "It isn't when the organ is playing softly and you go up front and tell the preacher "I take Jesus as Lord". That isn't when you take him as Lord. It's when the crowd is shouting 'Kill him! Kill that damn Nig--r!', and you place your body between him and them and say "He's a man for whom Christ died!" that's when you're making a public profession of faith."

This line works in IE 6 and Firefox

window.opener.location.reload(theURL);

what it does is reload the page that opned the popup , and the variable named "theURL" includes a few additonal querystring parameters. Netscape 7 does not load the "theURL" , but simply reloads the otriginal. Using (theURL, true) doesn't work either. Why ?

I have been typing so badly lately; I need a spell checker for my blogging. I use either IE6+ or Firefox 1.0 (trying to use Firefox and Sage more and more....I like Firefox/Sage's RSS reader.) But my blog entries are getting mistyped a lot; and I am embarassed when my references to blogs that have trackback show my mispellings, so that I cannot say Whoops, and correct it. Any suggestions? MOst hits on spell checkers are for browsers; any easy to install MT plugins?

Nick Lewis told me in comments under yesterdays's post that John Dear wrote Pharisee Nation, which I had missed (it was right there, under the title, but somehow I missed it. Maybe because it was a third link removed (from Vaughn to Nick, to John)

NOw here's a great no-contest. MOhler vs McLaren. MOhler makes himself and his empire of holier-than-thou and certainly "a lot smarter-than-thou" out to be the gaurdians of truth; and again is amazingly clueless.

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

McLaren intends to be provocative, explaining that this reflects his "belief that clarity is sometimes overrated, and that shock, obscurity, playfulness, and intrigue (carefully articulated) often stimulate more thought than clarity."

McLaren is also honest about the fact that he lacks any formal theological education. As a matter of fact, he seems rather proud of this fact, insinuating that formal theological education is likely to trap persons in a habit of trying to determine right belief.

This author's purpose is transparent and consistent. Embracing the worldview of the postmodern age, he embraces relativism at the cost of clarity in matters of truth and intends to redefine Christianity for this new age, largely in terms of an eccentric mixture of elements he would take from virtually every theological position and variant.

This quote, from a blog praised by IcThus, the original pointer to this Mohler piece, (the blog is called Nick Lewis: The Blog)

I can't get over the audacity and the hypocrisy of what Bush said to an exclsuive dinner event: "Some people call you the elite; I call you my base". For al the talk of anti-elitism and "common Americanism", this exposes the underbelly and the heart of this cultural strategy to build a "base" that includes not only those elite (in fact, an agenda DETERMINED by them) but also those to whom they seek to drain every resource from under their noses and from their lives, and into the coffers of those in the "base" at the very top, and make them glad and proud to do it. It fits so eerily the picture painted by A People's History of the United States, which identified time again throughout history how the ruling classes erect social and cultural "buffers" between themselves and the struggles of the majority, and use them to enlist even those on the lower rungs by convincing them that they will benefit.

I have never seen the deception taken to such an extreme. 'Course, I only have a view of the last 25 years, since my Seminary days. But the strategy seems to be to simply repeat phrases, introduce threats, and talk about "common sense", and then apply energy to masking the actual implemtation of those "promises", which are often the very opposite of the "mythology" they represent.

Gone is the idea within the Church that moneyed interests will seek to build up an ideology around it, and enlist the support of the Churches. They simply hear and adopt. They trust Bush to use "common sense" and implement a "Clear Skies" policy, while he does just the opposite, and all of this is easily accessible from the actual facts about what measures are taken (or in this case, removed) and the actual lowering of standards; and their deepest supporters actually adopt the idea that to help the coroprations pollute us and endanger our health is to make more money available to those polluters so they can "pass those savings on to us", and that the real dangersous abuses will be avoided by "smart companies" with "common sense" because "the market" will keep them in line.

What a mass deception. What a prime example of being dragged into darkness, and led astray by wolves in sheep's clothing.

These thoughts from Glenn Stassen, who I had for Christian Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1979, on how far the Southern Baptists have gone in becoming a nationalist Church (at least when Righwing politics is in charge)

found this link via Jesus Politics

Greg Moses: Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

Used to be a time, Stassen reminds us, when he could teach Southern Baptist seminary students and argue that there are two kinds of religion: authoritarian and compassionate. And he could of course encourage them toward the compassionate kind. But these days the Southern Baptists won't hear it anymore. In fact, says Stassen, the Baptists have become the new KGB, the secret police of the 21st Century. Don't call them, they'll call you. Reagan and Gorbachev were two people Stassen could work with, but the Southern Baptists today? They are impossible.

The "Southern Baptists won't hear it anymore" is what is despicable and disgusting to me; it's true. They WON'T HEAR IT. Say anything crtitical of the Bush administration and they take it as a theological affront and an invitation to culture war. I can no longer hope to have any constructive talk about politics and faith with certain folks. They won't budge on anything that varies from , say, Fox News views of reality.

More from the article by GREG MOSES, saying that we can DO something starting with a very few people. Problem is, around here, there's NOBODY else that I can find who are as upset as I am; who want to stand up in Church and say "there is definitely another way".

Greg Moses: Taking Jesus Back from the Hijackers

But the people are simply brainwashed argues another questioner. What can be done until the whole bunch have been completely re-educated? In every church, answers Stassen, a small group can get to work right away. It only takes a few people to call regular meetings, talk about just peacemaking, invite speakers, communicate with other peace groups, and this kind of activity makes a difference. These few people can begin the process of taking Jesus back from those who have hijacked him.

At least not solely so. This post from Vaughn is a great one, and so true. I saw an episode of ER this week where Carrie Weaver was talking to her new found Mother, and she was trying to break the news about her being gay, and when the mother started spputing Bible verses, you could see Carrie's horror; not at the verses, but at the recognition that she was about to come face to face with a culturally instilled "dogma" of many "Christians" today, and you could see her confidence melt. I can see lots of Religous Right folks identifying this as an "anti-Christian bias" , but it seems to me like simmply a matter of identifying a culture being perpetuated in our Church today; this is a perfect example of what Vaughn talks about in this post

ICTHUS: Confessions of a street evangelist

"Evangelism--the sharing of the 'good news'--can no longer happen on the street. It's sad, but true. Christians have so screwed with their name that it's become impossible for them to share a message apart from cultural connections that ruin that message. The motivation of the message could be perfect--it doesn't matter. The message that is received by a target, isn't the message that the sender intends to send."

There's some truth there, but I think that even this is not the issue. I'm wondering if we somehow have got the wrong message. The "Good News" is that God has reconciled the world to Himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ. The "Good News" is that people are free to love one another, countries are free to have peaceful relations, and indeed, the old is passing away, and new things have begun. I'm not quite sure where the immaterial "soul" gets into this picture, but I tend to think (from a pragmatic perspective) that the true power of a new creation is better shown than spoken.

Yes, Christians have indeed "screwed with the name", and Clarence Jordan would call this blasphemy (the literal meaning of the word: "to give the name a bad odor" blas (to pass gas) - pheme (name)

I am still getting Trackback Pings, even though I set all my entries entry_allow_pings column to 0 (every one of them), and rebuilt the individual archive pages. Is there another step I need to take to keep the pings out?

I just picked up a bargain book from Barnes and Noble (Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers) for 5 bucks, and then I finally got my copy from the library I had put on hold (Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America)

I just noticed that the font in my quotation boxes changes if the quote runs more than one paragraph. Why is this?

Here's the CSS:
blockquote {
margin: 9px;
background-color:#CCCCCC;
padding-top: 9px;
padding-right: 9px;
padding-left: 9px;
padding-bottom: 9px; }

and there's this section:
.content blockquote {
line-height: 150%;
}

There are p tags inside these blockquote sections (the gray backgrounds) where the font changes, so apparently the p tag is over-riding the font type and size for the blockquote. Is there a global way --like something I can do in my CSS file, to circumvent this p tag resetting of the blockquote font type and size?

I was watching the West Wing last night, and I had previously heard that Christopher Lloyd was going to have a guest appearance. They introduced him in the story as Lawrence Lessig, and I did a double take, wondering if that's what they had said. Then when they introduced him to the president, Bartlett says "The Future Of Ideas?", and I said "Hah! It is him". I read The Future Of Ideas in the summer of 03, and have been reading from Lessig's blog ever since. That was fun. I love that show.

Lawrence Lessig: West Wing Lessons

Lots of speculation and fantastic praise about the West Wing gig. It was a hoot to watch. But in two seconds (I'm late for a meeting) let me put this in perspective.

The story is based (loosely) upon a true story. I was involved in the drafting of one early version of the Georgian constitution. But the story ended up in the West Wing because I told the story to my students in Constitutional Law at Harvard, and a current writer for the West Wing was in that class.

And so is "fame" made: My story is on the West Wing because I was at Harvard -- not because the brilliance of my intervention had been noted and reviewed, but because I was teaching talented kids who would prove to be important.

In the latest issue of Sojourners magazine, Jim Wallis asks what other "religious names" can we give to Bush's actual implementation of his rhetoric of "freedom and liberty":

The Bush Doctrine, Sojourners Magazine/March 2005

The Bush doctrine means new threats toward Syria, Iran, and any other regime that doesn’t toe the U.S. line. Even democratic reformers in those countries worry about becoming new victims of the U.S. mission. Ugly Saudi despots rich in oil and friendships with the Bush family likely will be exempt while the civilian populations of other repressive regimes will suffer most from U.S. military action. There has still been almost no serious media discussion of tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush foreign policy has a different religious name than just freedom. In its prosecution of pre-emptive war, the equation of God’s purposes with U.S. interests, and the neglect of global economic justice, there are other words that come to mind - such as hypocrisy, pride, and even idolatry. And many opponents of the Bush administration’s war policies, here and abroad, will frame their dissent in the name of other religious values - words such as integrity, humility, and peacemaking.

I would add the BIG one: EVIL. No other word for it, and no reason to refuse to name it. It's EVIL. EVIL is darkness, deception, death, and greed. EVIL is separation of persons from their true potential as servants of God; that which keeps us from being a light in that darkness. People scoff whwn I use that word, but there's no avoiding it.

I picked this up last night. I had to return A People's History to the library last night (only half way through). I'll be ordering it (A People's History) from Amazon in the next couple days.

Chris commented on my last post, and I thought that might be the best thing to do for now. I don't get very many TB's anyway, and the ones I have gotten are still able to be read...just no new ones for a while.

This is horrible. I'm getting 20-30 spam Trackbacks a day. Anybody know a good preventative tool, maybe one that also hits back and reports as many of these as possible to ISP's etc. This is disgusting.

From a guy who actually knows something about Islam and Iraqis, Juan Cole, about the kind of Iraq is being assembled; it's not what the Bushies want, and so they are just saying they're getting what they want. Par for the course.

Informed Comment

...the main goal of political Islam in the past few decades hasn't been clerical rule. It has been the replacement of civil law with shariah or Islamic canon law. This was done by the non-clerical government of Sudan, e.g. And that is where Iraq is headed. The only question is how wideranging the substitution will be. Will it just be personal status law (marriage, divorce, inheritance, alimony, etc.), or will it be in commercial law and other spheres of society?

Even as Cheney was pooh-poohing the notion of Iraqi theocracy, Sistani's close colleague Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Ishaq al-Fayyad said, "We warn officials against a separation of the state and religion." Then Sistani's spokesman came out and said that the Grand Ayatollah Sistani "wants the source of legislation to be Islam."

A lot of Americans believe whatever Cheney says, though I cannot for the life of me understand why, since he lies to them relentlessly. He is the one who tried to link Saddam and al-Qaeda operationally. He even once said he knew exactly where Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were. Most people will only remember that Cheney said there wouldn't be an Iraqi theocracy, but won't bother to actually read the newspapers on Monday to see the news I'm reporting below.

Mike James offers up a list of why NO, the event of Iraqis getting to vote was unequivocally NOT WORTH IT:

Maikimo.net › Weblog › Twenty-nine pieces of silver
The one which stuck with me was the last one on the list of 12:

not only not cared for our own poor, widows, and orphans, but instead enthusiastically created more elsewhere

Someone told me they thought the Iraqi vote was "complete and utter vindication" of Bush. To that I say, Blasphemer! It is a vindication of NOTHING , except that bad things happen to good people, and bad people get the spoils (but only for a while, and then they will know and their sin will be exposed as death.) Justice will ultimately prevail, and the ones who have deceived many, and have followed the path of greed and pride will fall. Count on it. The creator of the universe has proclaimed it.

And so I suspect that it is from the perspective of the "victims" and the oppressed where we have a more accurate picture of the history of Empires, and this comes from no less than the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures themselves. The Jewish people have experienced BOTH sides; oppressor and oppressed. The later stages of Old Testament history featured those "dissidents" who questioned the wisdom and the policies of the Jewish monarchs, and were often sent in to exile, or politically marginalized.

While it is no sure connection to God to take all as truth from the perspective of just any "victim", it is the tendency of human history to move toward entrenchment of power by the wealthy interests, and to seek to protect those interests by stealth operation (under the radar of the public, even by circumventing the information process and releasing their own philosophies in "sheep's clothing".

Events in these past 4 years, and the responses of this government to trying afterath days of 9/11, has certainly awakened me to the dangers, and the pitfalls, and alerted me to the possibility of how evil can grow , and build up a system of justification to back it up and build public support, and actually drag the world toward and into the "darkness" that is so often witnessed in Scriptures, and against which the prophets announced: "The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light".

MIke James posted this during last week:

Maikimo.net › Reading › Bible considered harmful (to conservative views)

Zeke L observes in a comment to advisorjim — and expands on the idea elsewhere — that

The bible is one of the worst offenders in terms of turning people liberal.

My experience is similar.

Seymour Hersh told Jon Stewart that he sees his New Yorker articles as a kind of alterative history of today's "history makings" of this administration. His first big splash/revelation was the MaiLai massacre. Howard Zinn wrote the voluminous A People's History of the United States, and the companion Voices of A People's History (the latter, obviously , he EDITED)

These two guys are like partners as I see it in the alternative voice that the Church should be embodying. Regardless of what one thinks about the underlying ethic which drives them to devote energies to such hsitories and revelations, the truth telling that I see there (and even also in Jon Stewart's efforts to illuminate the absurdities of this administration, as well as the blatant lies) are seemingly cut from the same cloth of seeking after the truth of how people treat one another, and how they seek to "sell" that treatment; or "hide" that treatment when it is OBVIOUS that such treatment, if known, would be "unsellable", and a basis for enough revolt to remove them from power by democratic means.

My dream for these next 4 years would be that things will be exposed, somehow, by someone, with some nasty details to reveal; something which lays so bare the evil of this administration in any one of several areas of governing. Before the election, I prayed for "a Woodward and Bernstein" to be raised up to blow the lid off of this criminal regime, a regime which has no God before it other than the false Gods of capitalism, propserity, greed, and use a disguised version of these draped in the flag and in many cases, the Bible. And I find that impossible to accept. The shriller the claims of the Religious Right become about Bush being "God's man" for this time, the deeper becomes the darkness enveloping this nation which blindly follows, and all the more deeper the betrayal of Christ by those who attach this to their theo-political hopes. It is an idol that fits all the descriptions of the Beast in Revelation. I don't believe , as many Christians do, in a SINGLE Anti-Christ, but that there are numerous incarnations of that figure throughoput history, This is the nature and intent, I believe, of all or most apocalyptic material in the Bible. It is ,and always has been, the end times. The battle between good and evil is constantly being played out. Sorry, Left Behind folks, but your Biblical hermeneutic on EndTimes is a bit warped. The battles of such cosmic significance are to be applied to the everyday in which we find ourselves living. Evil Empires continue to do their thing,. and to enlist the body of belivers in their causes, and the U.S. is no exception. A "People's History" continues with "THIS People of the United States" ; THIS people in the Year 2005, in a post 11/2 world where the aims are domination over reconciliation; violent "nation-building" over internationl justice and collaboration, and paranoid warnings about seditious talk as if dissent from Government is dissent from God, and the idea that suggests that all one need do is to "speak of God" and God automatically blesses the ones who call upon that name.

I watched The Fog of War last night, and read somke more of A People's History (I'm up to the end of World War I now, about half way through the book), and I read a couple of selections in Voices of a People's History, and then I watched a few Daily Show video archives of Stewart's depiction of the State of the Union Speech, re-watched the interview with Howard Zinn about the Voices of a People's History book, and watched the interview with Seymour Hersh after Hersh wrote the article about the neocons intentions to "liberate" Iran. Hersh described his series of articles in The New Yorker as " a kind of alternative history ", and I thought, how very "Zinn like" (which is a good thing in my book; and in my THEOLOGY). This thing about Christians beng "good citizens" is only in the theocratic , Constantinian sense of Christianity. In the ACTUAL salvation history of God's people, empires such as the United States, their claims to "civilzation", "freedom" and "democracy" notwithstanding, the history is one of resistance, conflict, prophetic voice, martyrdom, and "speaking the truth to power".

This group in the White House today often call upon certain images of freedom in American history which their political fathers adamantly opposed. Bush said :

When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.

The gall of this neocon laying any semblance of a claim to be on the side of a fight for freedom that his own heroes, like Goldwater, who adamantly opposed it as it was happening. (Civil rights, desegregation, etc.) I saw Goldwater condemning McNamara in his acceptance speech at the RNC in 1964, for not being tough enough in his response to Vietnam. Goldwater wanted to bomb the hell out of them (which Johnson later did; he wasn't gonna have any accusations of being "soft" hurled in his direction. He'll show them) This hero of the conservative stalwarts (and many attribute the bounceback by conservatives to the bitter defeat they experienced in the election of 1964, and led to the "anything goes" tactics of the Republican party such as the Watergate scandals. ) Place these guys (this neocon White House) in that day and they are staunch and brutal segregationsists in 1964, and who knows what happens.

This post by NJL over at Icthus is one of the best blog entires I've ever read. It's one of the best pieces I have ever read. It is absolutely right. It is absolutely a needed message. This country, more now than in many many decades, is sick with violence, revenge, culturally induced glofification of it, and being inundated with it every day by the leadership of this country, who have chosen to live by it.

MLK knew this. He saw it in the Vietnam conflict, not to mention the brutal tactics used to subjugate his black brothers and sisters. I have never forgotten the words he spoke at Riverside Church in 1967: :

A Nation that continues to spend more money , year after year, on programs of military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.

Read this article. the message of it is to the Church: wake up and BE the CHURCH. Confront this mess.

ICTHUS: Building a Culture of Peace

The recent celebrations of Martin Luther King have caused me to reflect on a problem that grew in King's mind during his ministry. Facing the violent opposition to the civil rights movement, King became convinced that America had a fundamental issue with violence that needed to be healed. This led him to speak out against the war in Vietnam, not merely opposing an unjust war but rebuking America's way of looking at the world, it's arrogant heroification of itself and other-ization of the world that fed into its violent nature. King predicted that if America did not confront its ethic of violence, which it would not if the church did not lead it, then it would continue to fight such wars for generations to come.

And so it has. And so it is spiraling out of control, led by a group who have obviously strayed far from the path of the pursuit of justice, but use the jargon to cover their destruction in the name of the most narcissisitic United States we have seen in a couple of centuries.

I just heard General Meyers on CSPan say :
Zarkawri, who is absolutely amoral, will do anything , kill anybody, to see that his view of the world is upheld....."

I just shook my head and asked "So how is he different from this administration?" since this is excatly how we could describe our business in Iraq.

Wolfowitz also just mentioned something about The Duelfer Report, and siad "which almost noone has read", all in speaking of Saddam's continued security apparatus as being responsible for much of the insurgency....

Imhofe (Republican from some southern state) keeps mentioning their belief in connections between Al-Quieda and Iraq......Wolfowitz says that "Duelfer Report, which almost nobody has read..." actually contains some things that supposedly vindicate their invasion of Iraq???!! (apparently you are either blind or have not yourself, or are just plain self-deceived, Mr. Wolfowitz)....the Duelfer Report blows out of the water, Mr. Imhofe, and Mr. Wolfowitz, your out-of-touch with reailty (he's on the media now--- telling us all lies; helping the enemy, blah blah blah.)
Meyer just said "If we could just beam in any of these men, to tell you what they are seeing". This is a bluff; to feign truth to what they are claiming. I said "Do it right now, buddy". Bring em' in. You do NOT want this."

Below is some summary of the Duelfer Report's findings, which baaically blew away the Administration's claims, but which they still tried to use to claim that they had somehow been right to go to Iraq. The report included some puzzling assertions in it, given the complete lack of actual evidence to support the claims:

I would have much rather watched an episode of West Wing last night. A fictional story. Better that than the fictional State of the Union the listeners will hear about. Because you see, nothing that man has to say has much relationship to reality, except to further confirm his real aims: which is to present a mirage of democracy to adoring fans, and stick it to them all throughout the final 4 years just like he did in the first 4.

MyDD :: Democrats Tuning Bush Out

That Bush is a real uniter. Count me among the many who were unable to watch

Me too, Chris.

Jesus Politics points to a Robert Parham piece on a "Separation-Fundamentalist", Bary Lynn, lumping Jim Wallis with James Dobson, as if both constitute an equal threat to the public discourse. I think not.

Welcome to Ethics Daily.com!

Lynn said, “Elected officials should make decisions based on the public good, not private religious belief.”

After a slight tip of his hat to the role of religious debate in the public square, Lynn said, “Our nation’s laws must be rooted in constitutional values and reasoned analysis, not someone’s personal take on Scripture.”

While both Dobson, a religious-right leader, and Wallis, a religious-left leader, do take their faith into the public square, that’s where their similarities end. In fact, they differ at two distinct points.

First, Wallis reads a big Bible that speaks to him about both personal morality and social issues. Dobson has a small Bible that serves as a proof-text to speak mostly against gays and abortion.

Second, Wallis gives a Christian witness in the public square to values and directions that shape public policy. Dobson seeks control of the Republican Party in order to run the state and implement his theocratic goals. The former wants to influence; the latter wants to control.

Lumping Wallis and Dobson together is misleading.

The Republican "morality police" hold forth a personal preference Bible, that makes very little , if ANY demands on the authors. Wallis holds forth a prophetic Bible which lets noone off the hook. It is equally confrontive to people in power of either major party, or any other party.

In looking up links on Jacques Ellul (inspired by comments by nukebird in this post

Jesus Radicals

The library contains radical and subversive writings by several prominent Christian theologians.The work here reflects the alien nature of following Christ, and being a people in exile, "living out of control". These theologians are challenging the standard reading of the bible and Christ presented in todays mainstream establishments. Their writings are uncompromising and threatening to the cheap theology characteristic of the North American Church.

Includes works from :

william cavanaugh
jacques ellul
richard gregg
stanley hauerwas
george hunsinger
jean laserre
martin luther king jr.
carolyn marvin
david mccarthy matzko
john milbank<