March 2005 Archives

Mainstream Baptist

It is good to see that Republican politicians are awakening to the theocratic agenda of the Religious Right. I hope they will be able to help rank-and-file moderate Republicans wake-up. I doubt that they will be any more successful than moderate Baptists were when many of the same people took over the Southern Baptist Convention.

Prescott, in this post, had just quoted from John Danforth, former ambassador to the UN who resigned this past January

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together....
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.

Amen, well said. Speaking of thoughtful, positive Republicans: I watched the episode from Mar. 23rd that had Alan Alda, the Republican moderate candidate for President, struggling with issues of Church and Politics. Excellent episode. Alda is one good actor.

So says the Prez.

Yeah. I agree. Except, that goes for EVERYTHING, and EVERYONE, and ALL situations.

Forrest with this thought, and echoes mine:

American Bodhisattva

I can understand if people want Terri Schiavo to live, though I do not believe they understand the dire constitutional implications the Republicans’ course of action on this issue could have. I can understand if people want to go protest outside her hospice. But I cannot understand how these same people refuse to do anything about a war that is causing more children to starve in Iraq.

I honestly will never be able to comprehend how people live with such hypocrisy present in their lives.

I can even cede ground to those who think Terri should have been kept alive , just on pure faith, without regard to "measures" and "evidence", or even based on "questionable" evidence; just in the offchance that a miracle happens. BUt I also doubt that many of those same people would want their loved one kept artificially alive for 15 years; or , OK, alive just enough to "swallow" when a drop of water is placed on her tongue. I wouldn't want that, and I wouldn't want it for my wife, or kids. I would surely wait for a time, but FIFTEEN YEARS? People, ya think maybe we're overdoing this just a tad? I belive these things becuase I AM pro-Life. But there is life that is purposely being reduced to collateral damage, and the Bush administration and the Religious Right keep pointing to this and that event along the way as "vindication" somehow. The "See, what do you say now?" The invasion of and killing of Iraqis is wrong, unneccessary, and an affront to God." But look, they can vote! That's good, but the invasion and resulting deaths were inexecusable. We don't kill x number Iragis some so Y number can vote. These lives God will hold our leaders to account for. OUr leaders who easily send other people's kids to die.

It ought to be a law in Congress that no war can be approved unless any Congressman's kids of draft age are automaticaly assigned 1A status, with no choice of where to be deployed. This woudl stop the lions's share of wars. And it would force us to behave like a civilized nation, and see how it works. But how it works would be irrelevant. It would be obedience and it would be just. And then there would be no more need for the law at all after the folly of war is seen form a future, wiser vantage point.

Today I feel drained. So much anger. So much deception. So much of the vitriolics. So many people I know caught up in defending the whole mess. So many lashing out. And when they heart many of us sound concerns, they ask us "Why so negative?" That woud be similar to asking them now, after the Schiavo case is winding down, "Why so negative?" They belive an injustice has been done. I don't agree with them. My point is that there IS such a thing as real injustice. Human life IS indeed ultimately precious. And it is becuase of this that I tend to side with "the compassion of mercy" when it comes to the terminally ill, but left up to the families. Families have the right to "not let go", right or wrong. I don't know that it hurts those in vegitated states, but it certainly often extends the "life signs" longer than is needed or compassionate.

But there is such a thing as sanctity of life, especfially for those clearly in the realm of the living. People whose lives are snuffed out for no other reason than that they live in a place inconvenient for superpowers to tip toe. It's much faster and safer to bomb from above and shell from a distance. It's also much more deadly to the human situation, and this , in my faith, is anti-Jesus; heresy by hearsay. Not all "what Jesus would do". It's wrong, no matter what the reason. Lives come first. Not profits. Not the assured safety of first world nations.

Why can't they see and hear the CLEAR teaching of Jesus? LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. There's no explaining this away. Jesus didn't speak of an ethic for nations-living-in-the-real-world and anopther for individuals. What would choose? I don't believe that Bush heard God at all. I belive he heard the drums of war because it would accomplish, in some screwy way his mind works, something on the cheap while the American people were prime for it.

One could even say that Conversation IS what the Church is engaged in; and it is a constant thing. Conversation with God, conversation with the body of believers, the Church; conversation with the world, and conversation with the history of God's people, and the history of all people (and I believe that our conversations so identified can be the way to move toward ALL people being God's people....not in the sense of bringing them to a tightly defined cultural understanding ; but to bring to bear the good news of the Kingdom on any culture/people who can use a little good news.)

The word "Conversation" is the instructive paradigm I choose because I am again looking at the idea that the Cluetrain Manifesto has defined it for Business. "Marketspeak" and/oir "corporate speak" are quickly being dissed by the "customer" as inauthentic , self-serving; profit-driven attempts by the sellers to create a need with their product or service in mind. This "undercover manipulation" strategy disguised as "reaching out to the customer" and "we support you" is increasingly being recognized as self-serving, and "markets", according to the Cluetrain authors, are moving toward conversation again, with the help of the Internet and the Web.

The institutional Church has taken in many of the practices and philosophies of business, and , unfortunately, some of the distortions and inauthentic expression as described above. But for me and several scattered others, the Church is held to an even higher standard, and authenticity is an absolute requirement. People are tired of sameness; of "mass appeal"; conservative groups seek uniqueness as a form of rebellion against this "bland ecumenism" . The fault is not with ecumenism, but with Bad Ecumenism; inauthentic ecumenism; overly concerned with universal palpability rather than a focus on community; and a "community" that clearly lifts the idea of the person as of inifinite worth; and of specific giftedness, and of crucial vocation. The place where gift and call meet is vocation, and this is a key role of the Body of Christ: to enable the discovery of gifts, in a community committed to providing a place and accountability to each other.

As I will reflect over these coming days, I believe that much of this can be enabled, enhanced, and even transformed online. Many are concerned about accessibility; and the information "have-nots"; but we, the "haves", if we become convinced of the possibilities as I have, then this becomes an issue of mission; to provide resources for technological enhancement and move this information age toward a kind of commodity, at the level of something like education. Not to put mediums and resources ahead of basic education, but as logical steps toward continuing to enhance education. Not to place technological sommunication tools ahead of bnasics such as food , water, and health, but to utilize it in coordinating efforts of those among the haves to help distribute and educate the recipients of help, and provide the technology as a means of making the recipients self-sufficient; to provide them with the same tools for growth and enhancement of community.

In 1993, I went into a Doctor of Ministry program that was experimenting with a group doing most of their group dialogue online. Many of us had technology specific projects in mind for our final thesis, and mine was to explore and test case an online community as a form, resource, or enhancement/distraction from/to Church. It was to explore the social psychology of online community. Howard Rheingold had just written The Virtual Community and I was energized. I had always been an "early adopter". I had a VCR in 1980, while I was in Seminary, and lugged it's 50 or 75 pounds or whatever it was out to the car and up to Cincinnati from Louisville every weekend in the first half, to utilize it in reacting to and dialoging with the youth ministry I served while a seminary student.

I believed then (after reading The Virtual Community), and now even more so, with the growth of the Web, that online technology would expand the Church's capacity to share resources; and that one of the most precious of those resources was to host and enable and encourage conversation. I believe that the Church MUST , in every way shape or form, be working to create new spaces for dialogue; that there is something critical at stake in our recognizing that much that is holy about the Church is its calling to put people together so that Pentecost might happen amongst them. Jesus said that "the Kingdom of God is AMONG you".

So the Church is to be not only Conversation Starters, but Conversation hosts, enablers, encouragers, and evangelists for that part of the good news that suggests to us that each of us is an integral piece of the Body of Christ that is the Church.

Get a load of this one from Richard Land:

MSNBC - Transcript for March 27

And, by the way, Judge Greer has resigned his membership in the Southern Baptist Church. He was a member of a Southern Baptist Church in Clearwater, and he--they've come to a mutual agreement that he resign his membership.

So.....uh....WHY was that Mr Land? Mutual??? Are we all IDIOTS? I quickly lose my patience with people who think this BS actually works on intelligent people. WHY does one Volutarily resign CHURCH membership? Well, it's one of two ways: The sense of betrayal from the view of the resign-er, or under pressure/suggestion/judgement from the "resign-ee". The CHURCH is not a "party" to an agreement; but in this case, it has been made so by the authoritarians who have appointed themselves members of the purity police; which is par for the course in the leadership attitudes and modus operandii of the Southern Baptist Convention. To Judge Greer, I say, "knock the dust of your feet and find a real Church"; one that worships God and not Mammon/Nation/Dogma/Self.

Larry had an Easter post that is of the sort I hoped to hear on Easter morning and did not get (unless I "reinterpreted" the sermon that I heard). Leave it to the blogosphere (and of course, people who populate it and share their journey with us) to bring such hopes and thoughts my way (and our way).

A Story for Times Like These

Everything old has passed away; see, everything old has become new, Paul continues. (2 Corinthians 5:17b)

Those who believed that Jesus' ministry had ended with such finality in his crucifixion and death, report that death is not the end, after all.

There is more. Paul knows it's unexplainable and beyond proving. To believe that hope is alive and the promise is renewed, requires an act of faith.

If we believe that grief and despair give birth to hope and new life, we act like it. And if we act like it, we discover it is so. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

It's a story for times like these.

Vaugn links to this article

Will the hits ever stop coming on the scummy side of Delay? His own family, 16 years ago! He is so disgusting, so hypocritical, and so OPPOTRTUNIST, a nd apparently without much diginity at all when it comes to reverence for his OWN family's ordeal.

Sure , Delay can say he's changed his mind (I don't know that he will or would want to, or whether he will ever answer such things), but to apparently set that whole experience aside like this and negate the end of life issues HIS family faced with his Dad, and refuse that privacy that a more civilized society in his time was able to afford his family. Now he is a cheerleader, shameless, hypocrite, for a lynch mob that he would have abhorred in 1988.

DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads

A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

Jesus Politics links to the below article, which is typical, and expected. A Church speaking up for the concerns of people, especially the ones being shut out of this thing the Bush administration keeps calling a good economy and a "compassionate conservatism". These groups are under fire and targeted by the IRS (directed by whom , I wonder?), but the Republican party can ask for the membership roles of Churches for purposes of garnmering political support. Great. See the article below.

T R O Q U A ? Blog Archive ? pew. something stinks

So, let me get this straight. Black churches that advocate openly for Democrats are subject to IRS scrutiny, but Ohio churches that advocate openly for Republicans are not. Got it

This is something that must be resisted. Personally, to say that Churches with "an agenda" are "political" and not "religious" and therefore not eleigible for exempt status is CLUELESS. They have a warped view of what Church is. Politics and Life, and therefore politics and Church are NOT separable. Politics involve the publich and civic cooperation in the endeavor to support a just society. Bush's own "faith-based" principle styands or falls on this principle. If Churches cannot be involved in having a voice in the public sqaure, then their legitmacy as worthy recipients of federal funding for ministries they provide is also rendered illegal.

I often take time out from my disgust and dismay at what the Southern Baptists are doing lately, and affirm that despite all this, there remain Southern Baptists who can stand up for what is right, or refuse to be sucked in by the political maneuverings and cynical use of "family values" to keep the Religious Right placated (or in some cases, euphoric)

This Florida judge has even been asked by his Southern Baptist Church congregation to leave. Of all the most despicable, POLITICAL, callous, close-minded, arrogant, idiotic things to do. It is a CHURCH. This judge has real comapssion, and he apparently knows grandstanding when he sees it. But this Church apparently cares more for "their culture, THEIR dogma, and their relationship with the right wing than they do their people. It's a church truly in step with the Southern Baptist Convention leadership.

Yahoo! News - Schiavo Judge Attains New Fame, Infamy

Amid the pitched legal battle over Terri Schiavo that has been fought through his court, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Greer has been under the protection of armed guards, and friends say his family also is protected.

Death threats have been made against him for allowing Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube that has kept his 41-year-old wife alive for the past 15 years, and the Southern Baptist church that Greer belonged to for years has asked him to leave the congregation.

Greer — a conservative Christian and longtime Republican known for an easy manner — has become the public face of the judiciary in this internationally watched fight. But despite the mounting pressure, he has been steadfast in his rulings that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and did not want to be kept alive artificially.

"There are very few people who have shown the will to stand up to raw power," said Stetson University Law Professor Michael Allen, who has studied the Schiavo case. "He's one."

Pure hypocriasy. Very little real community. A religious country club. They ought to be ashamed, and I hope they see nothing but shame until they repent. Disgusting. Pray for these leaders of this Church, and their members who they have persuaded that this is right; for they apparently "know not what they are doing".

This story from Bruce Precott at Mainstream Baptist reminds me of the unease I felt (and that I wan't more outspoken, although I had always advocated staying) when the downtown Cincinnati Church I served as a seminarian in youth ministry began to look at what to do about their building and their location. I'll always remember how an American Baptist Urban Ministry professor (Raymond Bakke) implored us to seriously explore how we could be a Church in the city (but there was very little real consideration of it done; the only focus seemed to be , after a while, how to get out of there and move to some safer place and somewhere where growth was possible. This was to be a major turn toward decline, as it turned out.)

OBU fires PR Director

OBU's former PR Director seems to have suffered from an attack of truth-telling. He asked whether it was healthy for the community-at-large for an established, influential church to abandon an inner city. He questioned the value of spending more than ten million dollars to build new facilities in an affluent neighborhood and wondered whether it would drain scarce resources that might best be used improving the spiritual atmosphere of an impoverished neighborhood.

This, via Jesus Politics, lauds Wallis for being one of the few willing to speak the truth to power:

THAT OLD-TIME RELIGION - Los Angeles CityBeat

Jim Wallis, the left-wing evangelical preacher and peace activist, diagnosed it recently: “The Republicans virtually claim to own religion. And the Democrats still don’t seem to know how to take back the faith.” Wallis, curiously, has turned into something of a darling for the Democrats because he finds ways to articulate positions – on poverty, on the environment, on the very question of political activism – that many of them wish they had the courage to advocate themselves. And he does it in exquisitely moral terms, which makes them think he must be on to something. Wallis has been packing audiences into churches and secular auditoriums as he tours the country promoting his best-selling book God’s Politics. On the L.A. leg of his tour, a few weeks ago, he had the hardcore anti-Bush crowd – essentially, punks, civil rights activists and Pacifica radio listeners – not only sitting through a church service at All Saint’s in Beverly Hills, but lapping up his every word. What may have been troubling to the Pacifica crowd, and to many others on the secular left, is that Wallis believes religion is the key to a progressive revival in this country. What troubled them that night in Beverly Hills was not that they thought Wallis was wrong, but rather that they suspected he was entirely right. Wallis’s great hero and role model is Martin Luther King Jr., whose leadership of the civil rights movement would have been inconceivable without the support of black churches and his own sense of a religious mission. Likewise, the backbone of opposition to the Vietnam War came from radical priests who argued against the war in specifically moral terms. That’s the kind of religious politics to which Wallis wants to return.

I am so pleased to see Jim getting the recognition and garnering the support and the leadership role he has long deserved. And at this moment in political/international history, when the powers that be on this earth are in perilous hands, it is all the more crucial.

We listened to Tales from Lake Wobegon on CD from a collection I checked out from the public library. Very good way to pass the time on a 5 hour drive to Cincinnati. I am also reading The Gospel According to America by David Dark, and that, in combination with listening to the Lake Wobegon stories and Keillor's narrative poetry and humourous insights and observations about the folks in what he always affectionately refers to as "Lake Wobegon, my hometown" as he opens each story.

When we got into town and had some time to kill before Janet's parents got back home from another family event, I stopped off at the Barnes and Noble and picked up the CD version of Keillor's book Homegrown Democrat, unabridged and read by him. We'll probably listen to that on the way home.

I am often struck by how many of America's most revered story-tellers (and revered by all, Republican or Democrat or the Undecided) have become anahema to so many in the Religious Right and the Far Political Right because they dare to express some of their concerns about the tendencies of the rulers of late to be quite rigid and much less forthcoming about thier intentions, and protective of questions about how they're actually running things, and how little of what they claim to stand for seems to ghet done, and how much of what they claim to "not oppose" gets opposed. (I haven't read- or in this case, heard, Keillor's book yet, but I know from the blogs last fall that he was not exactly thrilled; and voiced concerns. His wit and his inherent humane and affectionate treatment (and with that, often poking fun at them without being condescending) makes me seek out the wisdom of such for their take on things, and how I might learn to speak witrh a less harsh (often taken for being yet another example of just that which I am accusing the Religious Right and the Bush administration of transgressing).

David Dark's A Gospel According to America is careful to point out how the "prophetic voice" need be watching their own rhetoric, and being cognizant of how easily our own voice becomes just a mirror image of abuse from the opposite point of view.

I don't view this as a clash of two opposite points of view, however. Liberal vs Conservative, Patriot vs whatever-the-opposite of-patriot-is, "with us or against us". Somewhere in between is truth. But if there is indeed truth, there's veru little chance that both sides own 50% of it, and all things are equal. David Dark offers quite a few observations of the ongoing debates, and a view of the demonization taking place in public discourse. HIGHLY recommenended, (and I'm just a bit over a third of the way through it).

Larry writes of how a personal loss in his family experience makes the current Schiavo a spectacle that should remain sacred to the family, not of public debate (my summary, not Larry's words). Read here

Some of what Larry wrote:

...if an individual cannot bear to exist in a conscious state because of excruciating pain is that a life of quality? If a person near the end of life stops eating, should we force nourishment through a feeding tube? If a person with a degenerative condition cannot communicate, recognize loved ones, display cognitive functions, think, is a that a life of quality?

But we don't have the kind of moral leadership today at the national level that can help us to conduct this important conversation. Even the Vatican let us down on this one. An editorial in L'Osservatore Romano asks, "Who can judge the dignity and sacredness of the life of a human being made in the image and likeness of God? Who can decide to pull the plug as if we were talking about a broken or out-of-order household appliance?"

Well, unfortunately, like it or not, someone is confronted with this dilemma everyday. And framing the question like this does not help them resolve their dilemma, it denigrates their profoundly moral considerations. It may even lead them to prolong life that does not "reflect the sacredness of a human being made in the image and likeness of God."

Jay offers some good considerations that many need to consider when observing the Schiavo issue and framing of the issues:

Only Wonder Understands:: Writings by Jay Voorhees

As a pastor, I sit with folks regularly who have to make decisions about the continuation of care for loved ones. These issues are never easy, for no one ever wants to be accused of giving up. Yet, every day there are persons who believe that the humane decision (and the decision that is consistent with the wishes of their broken loved one) is to stop all treatment and let nature take its course.

Letting go is hard, and we want to hold on to all possibilities for healing. I can't imagine what that is like for any parent to have to make a decision on continuing care for a child. I remember being with a family at Georgia Baptist Hospital whose loved one had been on full life support for three weeks. There was no brain function. She was effectively dead, although the heart continued to beat. Yet, they couldn't bring themselves to turn off the machines. They held out for a miraculous healing, and believed that turning off the machines represented a lack of faith in God's power to heal (a lack of faith which would "restrict" God's power in healing). At some point we were able to help them see that the machines weren't God, and that it was time to leave it all up to God's decision. The woman died within 24 hours of having life support discontinued.

The issue in this case continues to go back to what Hauerwas calls "anthropodicy." the problem that we are frankly not in control of our destinies. In a previous era Ms. Schiavo's case would not be an issue for she wouldn't be with us at all. But we think that we can control and mediate life, that science can help us control the uncontrollable. When we are faced with the reality that we are indeed frail and often out of control, we lash out in fear.

I have stayed out of this fray until now (and I don't claim to be "entering it" now, just wishing to say to the Religious Right and all of their absolute hypocrites who care nothng and do nothing for the mass of innocents dying over the past two years in Iraq, for the poor whose medical care is cut off and people like Delay won't lift a finger to help, SHUT UP!

This has become SUCH a spectacle, and enrages me as to the absolute and unabashed hypocrisy it emenates. This series of comments and links on Christianity Today's Weblog from Ted Olsen is absolutely despicable.

Weblog: Legal Efforts for Schiavo Are Finished - Christianity Today MagazineCompiled by Ted Olsen

One example:

And yet our country's courts are supporting an adulterer to starve and dehydrate his wife to death while she lies helpless.

???? Terry's system has been kept alive for 15 YEARS!! Her cerbral cortex is liquified. Michael (and I don't pretend to know anything about him, but I do know that on the surface, the fact that he has a girlfriend and two children by her is certainly NOT evidence or justification for labelling him "adulterer", unless you want to join the Taliban and help them develop stricter , inhumane, more ridiculous restrictions on their moral purity laws.

How many among these right wing hypocrites would "hold out" for 15 years while doctors have given every indication that she has no cognitive ability left? I do not fault her parents , either. It is entirely understandable that they do not want to give up hop, even after all this time. But it seems that a sane society would also understand this, as well as the needs of a man who spent all 100,000 dollars of the malpractice suit on the medical bills, clearly not being willing to pull the plug at an earlier time (or was he? Does anybody know the answer to that? I would be willing to venture out and say, "well......No.......But it's a great scandal story, right? NO? Well..........becuase we said so!" Such is the debacle. Such are the millions of unanswered questions (and the Bible is the most inconspicuously silent on this one.....for all the clarity these "Right to life" people seem to have, they have nothing to stand on, and it calls into question their own "definition" of life if they think that Life itself and Biological/Medical measurements and standards trump the quality of life. I'm not talking here about Richard Dreyfus' character in "Whose Life Is it Anyway" who was certainly conscious and quite intelligent and creative, but whose zest for life had, however questionable it was to say that he should give up, been taken from him; at least so he said. But we're not even there. No where close. 15 YEARS Folks! HOw long did Michael himself hold out hope when this all first occurred? If he held out for 1 year, I would have applauded him. I don't know all the particulars. But you know what? I don't need to. I can simply see the political opportunists here. And their own glaring hypocrisy....GLARING. Bush and his pals are seeking to cap medical malpractice suits, which have paid for keeping Terri alive, and reduce Medicaid, also which would limit the funds that Terri had available and HAVE BEEN USED.

Right to life introuduces questions of Quality of Life. Who would want to be kept alive in a vegetative state? 15 YEARS people! Just SHUT the HELL UP! It's not your business!

The case of Delay NOT rasing holy hell, in fact not lifting one of his opportunist-dripping fingers while a 6 month old was allowed to die for lack of funds, aganst the pleas of his mother, makes this all the more sickening.

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

So, Mr. Delay, can you explain that ethical system of yours that leads you to say "Mrs. Schiavo's life is not slipping away - it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism" but not go to the mat to save a 6 month old boy in your own state whose mother wanted to *choose life*?

"Blind Guides! Hypocrites all!"
---Jesus , to the hypocritical, snactiomonious religious leaders of his day

From Village Gate

So..., lets try and get this straight. It a good thing to be for "life" and "life issues."
But, its also OK to cut funds from the budget that enable these same life issues to be implimented in the actually existing world. In fact, the very funds from the very federal budget that have been paying for Terri Shiavo's care.

I have heard it said- I have said it myself- and I actually believe it to be true: Budgets are moral and spiritual documents. They reflect our highest values as a people. They reflect the area where those values gain traction in the life of our Nation.

I rest my case. Please, "Right to Life" . Open your eyes to life.

All of this (the previous posts about Peace, Jesus, and eventually the Scriptures) is form the pen (er...., the keyboard) of a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. But as you may know, I was there in the latter years before the unholy heathen secular humanists were cleansed with one stroke of the mighty SBC police-state pen (I was there 1978-81, got my MDiv in June 1981).

But what I brought into Seminary, and took with me strengthened ten or a hundred-fold, was a reverence and a dependence upon Scripture. But also an ever deepening reverence and seeking after Revelation (not as in "The Book of Revelation", but the reality of Revelation; the belief in a God who continues to and always will Reveal to humanity what is expected, what they are called to do, and how they are to achive this in communities called Church.)

When we ask the questions and pay attention to "what the Spitit is saying to the Churches" (that quote, IS from The Book Of Revelation), there is always conflict with the status quo; even the "religious status quo". The idea of Canon seems to me to be antithetical to the larger idea of Revelation. The idea that there is nothing more to be said to the Churches than has already been collected and canonized by official decree, seems to contradict the whole revelation reality. God does not have "dispensations" (but this seems to be exactly what has happened with the Scriptures. They canon is closed, and the whole process is deemed "case closed" , even though those who accept this fact most absolutely are often the very same ones who would, if this canonization process were done today, would reject the idea of an ecumenical council of ANY kind, much less a "Catholic" one. But this seems entirely lost upon the most Bible-worshipping crowd.

I feel that prophets continue to speak. I have no idea how, in today's world, where the idea of "Church" is so anti-ecumenical, anti-world, and anti-global, and no concept of anybody speaking for anybody, we could re-open the canon. So the Bible will remain "intact". I guess we are to be satisifed with "in the tradition of Scripture" to make the connection from contemporary revelation and "Biblical revelation". I'm not at all sure that one is greater than the other. I don't think it is blasphemy to suggest that God's Revelation continues.

These days, espeically in Southern Baptist Churches(though in no way exclusively), this idea of Church and Revelation has become an endangered species becuase the nature of that Revelation has become subsumed UNDER the illegitmate throne of Empire. The Messiah has been replaced with "The Book" which has become "prooftext" for the interests of empire expansion and worldwide domination, arrogance, and violence to the opponents. A living and Revealing God is a threat; an appropriated "Book" divorced from the salvation history to which it testifies, is but fodder for fueling greed-driven interests, and the details of justice and freedom to the captives is removed from the emphasis of the new "American Gospel". The Old Testamtent and the accompanying imposition of ideas foreign to those people of God, but music to the ears of those who see "Religion on a Roll" in the direction of becming partner to the Powerful; a far cry from the Prophetic Voice which Jesus recognized in these prophets of old. His first public speech called for the "acceptable year of the Lord" and that he was the fulfillment of that. Somethin quite different is happening in America, except where the "alternate reality" to which Revelation points is being recognized.

I suppose there is always EMPIRE, and always Church; at certain points in history, the way these two come together and how they contrast remains fairly consistent. Power and violence and greed vs the Kingdom that Jesus announced and into which Jesus continues to invite us.

Willima Barclay once told an illustrating story about how a little girl is questioned by a skeptic friend about "the love of God", and confronted with questions about how a loving God could order the deaths of everyone in the city in one of many Israeli army victories depiected in Scripture. The little girl replied " "That's before God became a Christian".

Now, of course, God hasn't "become a Christian". God is whom God has laways been. What HAS changed is how humanity understands God. And in Scripture, we have a definite evolution. Jesus himself quotes almost exclusively from the Psalms and the Prophets, and when he quotes the law, it is almost always in the context of some point he is making about putting "people" over the Law. "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", and when Jesus objects to the Pharisees complaints about the disciples violating some temple law by eating some grain, and Jesus appeals to how David and his men were allowed to eat the temple bread (and this debate partner insists that this shows how Jesus endorsed the use of military violence; the fact that he was using THAT particular example. Similarly, he says that the fact that Jesus did not condemn the Roman centurion , whose servant he cured, shows implicit endorsement of the soldier's job. He never answered my retort as to whether this means that Jesus approved of prostitution since he not only did not condemn the prostitute who annointed his feet, but defended her against the disciples, who did just that. If that's not "implicit endorsement" of prostitution, then neither did Jesus imply endorsement of the soldier).

The sin we all often fall prey to in reading Scripture is that Scripture often says exactly what WE WANT it to say. Garrson Keillor , in one of his Lake Wobegon stories, was talking about a "scary uncle" he had , who was an itinerant evangelist, who never married. Keillor said he never married becuase "he didn't act unless he heard God telling him IN HIS HEAR 'That's the one'. Keillor goes on to say:

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

That's exactly what has plagued the history of God's people. The prophets railed against it, Jesus did, and dissenters since, have called into question the abuse of Scripture , often by those who persecute others for their "heretical views" of Scripture (meaning, not as orthodox and therefore righteous, as theirs), and often the most accomodating to the culture andto "nationalistic" viewpoints, and assimilating that into their "Gospel"; their "canon within the canon"; their "American Bible" (which has included, throughout history such thngs as "The European Empire Conqueror's Bible", the "Slaveowner's Bible", the "Capitalist Bible" and the "America is a Great and Christian Nation Bible"

I just got a comment on a post from back in October, but still obviously relevant today.

This person, comments about "the hard truth"; implying in his message that certain words of Jesus indicate that he may have been "practical" after all (ie. "I did not come to bring peace but a sword" and "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" as hints that Jesus may allow for the state's capitulatgion to violence, for the sake of "the way it is" and "the greater good".

The poster also complains that we can't just "incorporate" the evildoer. I reply that to conclude that Jesus endorses such is the ultimate "incorporation"; the grand accomodation. In fact, I comment that Jesus is actually condemning this accomodation ; this "capitulation to the ways of the world" in the verse about "the violent take it [the kingdom] by force".

I find it absolutely clear that Jesus is saying "LOve your enemies" (since that is LITERALLY what he says. There IS NO alternate interpretation. There is no QUID PRO QUO. NO "contextualization". Love is seeking the best for the other person, the other nation, the other human being or human community. PERIOD.) Dropping bombs on everything in the area, killing tens of thousands of non-combatants, most of whom are combatants ONLY becasue their country was invaded for non-existent reasons. I do NOT side with the insurgents in the use of violence. I would that they would amass non-violently and line the streets, and "sit-in", and go to jail. We need several MLK's, Gandhi's, and CHRISTIANS.

This sounds just like a debate I have been having via email all this week with another seminary grad, Church person. A rush to justify and even sanction and baptize the whole action in Iraq as "the ultimate in love, since it will , in the end, save more lives, since Saddam was the tyrant that he was". This person, as do many other in the Religious Right, think Bush is "God's man". This debate went quickly into the authority of Scripture, since I questioned their use (and abuse) of Scripture (of course, OLd Testament scripture, with the accounts of "God commanded them to take the city and kill all that lived there" (not exact wording, since I'm not pausing here to look it up, but you get the picture. They insist that here is "PROOF POSITIVE" CLEAR endorsement of God-ordained violence and war for the sake of righteousness. They insist that "Jesus said that NOT ONE JOT OR TITTLE SHALL PASS FROM THE LAW" means that everything in the Old Testament where it says "God said" is just that. The same God who sanctioned slavery, stoning of adulterers, and even those who did anything remotely resembling work on the Sabbath.

My take on this is that in the Scriptures, we have a History , much like "A PEOPLE's History" that Zinn wrote, only it also includes the "Conqueror's History"; in other words, an ENTIRE History of God's relationship to Humanity; from the point of view of Humanity (and , in places, from God). To worshippers of the Bible; who tend to place Jesus UNDER that authority (which is authority placed in the INTERPRETER rather than the message source), to say that when the Scriptures say ANYTHING, it is law and it is non-negotiable (leaving aside the matter that WHAT they said is entirely an issue of THEIR INTERPRETATION.

I saved the entire email series from this, becasue I want to explore some of the points debated. I do not want to directly quote from the words of the other person, though, since that would feel like I was holding these points up to ridicule, knowing that much of my audience would largely side with me (there may be differences on the way we see these apparent contradictions, and the way we explain them to make sense of the Biblical narrative, but the emphasis is the smae: Jesus, and his example, and his unmistakable words. I often tell people that when the Scripture presents us with such problems, Jesus is the key to interpretation. When we have a problem with MOses telling the Israelites to stone a sabbath-breaker, we must look at the way of Jesus and either explain it in that light or simply say that Jesus , as in many other cases, simply points to a better way; the way of love; the way God has been trying to reveal to us throughout human history.

I love Scripture. I believe it to be inspired by God. But to say "inspired by God" immediately sets up a communication path: from God (not us) to Us (not God). In other words, the problem is at the receiving end. And that shows up time and time again within the Scriptures. Jesus directly challenges "An Eye for an Eye" and says it is to be like that in the Kingdom. THAT is the REAL "Hard Choice". To depart from the "ways of the world" to a way which is narrow. To recognize what Gordon Cosby calls "An Alternate Reality".

As you might could tell, I love NCAA basketball. (I am NOT in any way much of an NBA fan. I rarely watch it prior to the playoffs, and there I tend to watch only the semis and finals, but not even all of those games.

With NCAA, I watch every minute of every Kentucky game (when I don't forget when they're playing. Sometimes my brain goes on one track, like one Saturday last December I got up late, got my coffee and started blogging, and the next thing I knew my Dad was calling me and said "They had it all along". I said "What?" Then it hit me. It was about 2:00, and I had missed the entire Kentucky-Louisville game, which had been won by Kentucky on 3 three throws with a half second left (Patrick Sparks had been fouled on a three-point attempt just before the buzzer was about to sound).

Anyway, All three of my teams, my favorite (UK) and my former favorites (Louisville and Cincinnati) won their opening round games, UK and Cinci met (69-60 Kentucky, which I watched tape delayed since I was both nervous, and a bit down at the end of the day after the 2 year mark of the Iraq war, and felt that getting all excited about a basketball game would have been too strange a mix of emotions. So, feeling drained, I put in a VHS tape and went to bed at about 8:00 and kept the TV off from 7:00 on. At about 9:15, I woke up and decided to check the score ---I was thinking it would be over. But there was 7 minutes left and it was 58-55 Kentucky. So I turned it back off and waited for another 20 minutes. I saw the score flash across the top as they were already switched over to W.Va-WakeForest who were about to go into overtime.)

Kentucky plays Utah tonight. Louisville won their sweet 16 game and will play West Virginia, who beat Texas Tech. Louisville and Kentucky would only meet in the Championship game. That's what I had happening in my bracket. I had Louisville beating Illinois in the final 4, and Kentucky beating (whoops: Florida. They were a disappointment after entering the NCAA hot off an SEC tourney championship and beating Kentucky the final game of the regular season in Florida. They had risen out of the ashes from unranked to 18 as they entered the tourney with a 4 seed. So I had to pick them since they had downed Kentucky twice on consecutive Sundays. They barely won their game with 13 seed Ohio after blowing an 18 point lead in the second half. Then Villanova shut down Roberson completely, and held Walsh down as well, and Lee fouled out after scoring 20 points, and beat them by 12. Now 'Nova gets Carolina (as in North).

I was shocked that Louisville, ranked #4 in the country, would get a 4 seed. They just dominated the 1 seed, Washington, that seemingly got the seed by being the only Western team anywhere close to the elite teams. Washington is a good team (87 points a game), but Louisville was seriously disrespected. They won the game 93-79. They took over from point where it iwas 32-31 Washington, and the next time the Huskies could take a breath, it was 50-36 Louisville.

I used to be a UL fan, from 1979 until the early 90's, when I went to an SEC tourney in 93 with my Dad and brothers, and Kentucky won and went to the final four, then won the championship in 96 and 98 (and runner up in 97). I was in Louisville at Seminary 1978-81, so this is when I got hooked on Louisville (Darrell Griffith was the big star, All-American. I often wonder what he would have benefitted from the 3 pointer (not in use yet), becuase he could really light it up from outside, but he was a definite POWER GUARD as well, often faking the outside jumper and then driving and slamming it home. The three may have dissuaded him from taking the driving route as much. Who knows? When we moved to Cincinnati in 1985, the Cincinnati Bearcats were just about to hire Bob Huggins, and start their return to prominence. When they went to the final four in 92, I was really into it. They lost to the Fab Five of Michigan when the fab were all freshmen in that final four. (The fab 5 were to lose two straight championship games that year and the next--- the next year it was Kentucky they beat in the final four to get to the final, so I was no fab five fan. In 96, Cincinnati was back in the hunt, and lost to MIssisippi State, who had beaten Kentucky in the SEC tourney championship game for Kentucky's second loss of the season. If they had beaten Miss.St. and then met Syracuse (who had just beaten Louisville), they could well have beaten Syracuse and met Kentucky in the final (or Mississippi State could have met Kentucky again in the NCAA final. Syracuse and Raschid Wallace won the games though, and then Kentucky won the final.

That trio of favorite teams of mine, Louisville , Cincinnati, and Kentucky, is an absolute rarity, since all three of those teams fan bases hate the other two teams like they hate no others (at least the hatred for Kentucky is pretty rabid among Cincinnati fans and Louisville fans --- and Louisville's coach , Pittino, of course, took Kentucky to an elite 8, a final four, and 2 championship games)

Anyway, it was fun seeing Cincinnati and Kentucky play for the first time since 90. This time, there was no problem pulling for UK. I'm died in the wool now after 12 years of hard rooting. But I still relish the matchups between UK and Louisville or Cincinnati.

This article from Baptist Press highlights Mohler's arguments against A Generous Orthodoxy.

Leaders call 'Emerging Church Movement' a threat to Gospel - (BP)

Mohler charges McLaren with speaking about clear-cut issues in an unbiblical and ambiguous manner.

"A responsible theological argument must acknowledge that difficult questions demand to be answered. We are not faced with an endless array of doctrinal variants from which we can pick and choose.

Yeah, "difficult" questions that are "clear" (meaning homeosexuality as sin) and none of these difficult questions include: "How can you speak of Pro-life" and be so unashamedly pro-war, and ignore what is actually crystal clear: that Jesus told us to love our enemies.

How about that question Al? Blind leading the blind.

I don't call this "Respect For Life" , but Self-Interest, Grandstanding, and Utter Hypocrisy.
SojoMail

"The case is full of great ironies. A large part of Terri's hospice costs are paid by Medicaid, a program that the administration and conservatives in Congress would sharply reduce. Some of her other expenses have been covered by the million-dollar proceeds of a malpractice suit - the kind of suit that President Bush has fought to scale back."

So simple, so clear, and yet....what the heck are people thinking? In fact, this is a matter that truly justifies the original form of that "What the hell are they thinking? Exactly. Not as in afterlife hell. But hell as in the opposite of the Kingdom of Heaven"

The folllowing article I found via Jesus Politics

http://www.episcopalpeacefellowship.org/4-Resources/Articles/walters05.htm

The Gospel is crystal clear that Christians are not to return evil for evil. We are to work mightily in the world for justice, but we are never to use violence and coercion, the world's methods of choice. The tools Jesus commands us to take up are love, patience, nonviolent resistance, and a willingness to suffer for the sake of others. These are non-negotiable. If we rationalize them away, how can the salt retain its savor? If the Church refuses to live the Sermon on the Mount, what distinguishes her from the world?

Yet today young Christians willingly serve in the armed forces and take up the murderous weapons of war. Older, stay-at-home Christians plaster their vehicles with belligerently pro-war "Power of Pride" stickers and insist that war against terrorism is godly. Clergy even use their pulpits to defend slaughtering instead of loving and praying for those who consider themselves our enemies. Christian nonviolence is mocked as cowardly and irresponsible. Loyalty to Christ is subordinated to patriotism.

Instead, we piously talk about the unfortunately necessity to resort to arms in the protection of the innocent. And so the myth of redemptive violence is reinforced, the killing continues and our hands are bloodied.

Should we really continue to call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace? If there's one sin that Jesus loathed, it's hypocrisy. Until we repent of our willingness to accommodate to a world overtaken by fallen powers and principalities, the least we can do is find another label for ourselves.

Of course not. That would be too , well....generous. After all, orthodoxy is something one uses to narrow their brain activity and accept "the truth" as delievered to them by the theology packagers. That's not what I think of orthodoxy. I flee from orthodoxy that is neither generous nor compassionate. Mohler's work in the SDouthern Baptist Convention is a "chief mug/mouth/pen for the cleansing mentality". He took over at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after the Right Wing Tide of the denomination installed him as their theological executioner, with the aim of installing a "theological police state" regime in the place of theological education. For me, I am so thankful that I got the chance to listen at the feet of some great teachers before they all scattered to the various insititutions who stil value LEARNING.

ICTHUS: The problem of postmodernism

Do people often protest just to have something to write? So, last week Al Mohler spent the better part of the week protesting postmodernism on his (non-)blog (here, here, & here). Is this guy tired? Its not as if "postmodernism" is something that has just recently happened upon us nor is it something that really matters all that much.

This is one of the most damaging, blinding forces at work in the Church, and it has also infected the Right Wing Politics in this country (it is , to a frightening degree, a much more common occurrence among the "fundamentalist"; either of theological or political variety; that a finite set of "truths" are correct, must always be correct, and be correct in the exact sense that whoever is in authority says that it is. Liberals and Moderates, and indeed all of humanity does this; it is called pride, and the need to feel like our view of life as at least accurate. The problem is, the entire structure and content of TRUTH seems to be frantically sought and , then, when affirmed, staunchly protected, to the extent that those who question the system of logic and motivation upon which this is based, these questions are attacked as disloyal, an attack upon the revered ideas, and an indicator of disbelief.

Greater Democracy: They can NEVER be wrong

Their fear of being wrong, and thus that their tautological world view will collapse, manifests itself as extreme hubris and arrogance -- as utter certainty. They can not afford to doubt. In fact, they are terrified of doubt, complexity, contradiction, ambiguity and uncertainty, ie the modern world in all of its multi-dimensional guises.

Streak's Blog: The West Wing

I understand this is television. But it is nice to see someone else suggest that the religious right is selling out their votes for very little gain. By supporting Bush so blindly, they have invited deceit and further selling out. They have invited every dumb ass politician to get on television and quote from the bible and talk about his "deep and personal relationship with Jesus" while politically persuing profits and destruction.

I looked at the shelf of Bibles in the bookstore recently, and was paying attention to the various types of "Study Bibles"; the Schofield Reference, the Thompson Chain Rreference, the Life Application, the Women's Study Bible, and somewhere on my shelf at home there is a Serendipity Study Bible.

Why don't we have , for instance, a Sojourners Study Bible, or somethng like that? Jim wallis has often included in his speeches the story of how one of their community took a Bible and scissors and cut out the passages referring to justice and the poor. Wallis held this up and called it "The American Bible". An alternate tilte might be "The Empire Study Bible", with the same passages ignored or ommitted or "subsumed" under some complicted de-construction which ends up blessing the satus quo instead of taking a "prophet's eye" view which more often than not questions and warns the powerful about the injustices being committed and perpetuated.

This is related to my post about a month ago about "Bible Wiki"; this project of a an Alternative Study Bible could be based on an OPen Source type of collaborative; where a variety of Biblical perspectives can be collected, debated, and BLOGGED.

This is a thought worth carrying on, at least it seems so.

I'm having a debate with somneone who insists that obedience is not valid unless accomanied by "right belief"; I am objecting that the only "right belief" there is results in obedience, therefore, the OBEDIENT subject is of the proper "right belief". They are trying to insist that works that DO the Will of God are not "of the Kingdom" if the "beliver" or "doer of the work" does not recognize that they are following Scripture.

The same argument about hsitoricity. I insist that one does not have to assume that a Biblical story is historical to actually "believe" and "obey". I insist that "belief" is what I have been taught that belief meant to the pre-scientific/modernist mind: "By Life" or "What you live by". One can say "I believe in Jesus" but apart from obedience, that is NOT belief, but mere "intellectual consent to allowing others to call you a "believer".

Historicity , for me, is not the source motivation, but the end result. If a Biblical value expressed in a story is not LIVED, then it is NOT believed. This is more accurate and more imprtant than to say if I don't believe the story was a historical, objective event, then I don't "believe". Hogwash. This is to misunderstand the concept of myth and narrative. A "myth" is not a myth because it is historically true. A Myth is a myth because it has MEANING and connects to something in the human experience and the influence of one who is THE OTHER; it REVEALS something about that "meeting", and its encouragement of how that story should affect OUR OWN HISTORY. Historicity should be in the result of our response; not in the dependence upon it being a historical event.

Jesus' ressurrection , for me, is Historical. It is also mythological becuase it puts us into divine dialogue and confrontation. But the thing about myth, even if Jesus' resurrection were could be proven ahistorical, I would emerge from that knowledge still believing. It would bother me, having believed that all my life. But what I have known of that experience since my "accepting it" has shown me that what the Resurrection MEANS is still very much REAL. If I lose that, I lose it all. If I maintain the "historicity" and disengage from the resulting "belief/action/lifestyle", I've been fooling myself.

From ModBlog - smerickson.com

Lately, I have encountered among many Christians a desire to rename and re-identify themselves. This desire usually manifests itself as attempting to forge a new way between so-called, conservative Evangelicalism and Liberalism. The contexts for these terms is both theological and political. These proposals can be seen in the writings of Jim Wallis in politics or Stan Grenz or Brian McLaren in theology. Indeed, much of the so-called emergent movement can be conceived of in this fashion.

I spoke of a longing for a "Community of Hope" a couple days ago. And I always return to the Church that has made such an impression on me over the past 29 years (I remember the years becuase I was 20 when I first read the stories written of their journey (writings by Elizabeth O'Connor, a gifted writer). Their concept of Church and life together in that Church is a testimony to what is missing in nearly every other Church I have encountered. That is a commitment to each other in the quest for the discovery of gifts, the sensing of call that joins gift and need in the world, and the Church as "corporate body" that is the enabler of this; the incubator from which mission springs forth.

Alas, and sadly, this is FAR FAR from the typical Church experience, which is so dominated by "events", and real life issues are afraid to be approached in such a heavily charged political environment, where people make associations that tned toward polarizing opinion; one is a "liberal" or one is a "conservative". Various Biblical themes are associated with liberal movements, and "values" , as Jim Wallis bemoans (and rightly so), have become so narrowly defined. "MOney" has fallen off the radar of the Moral issues, as if that is none of the Church's business, and yet it so rules so many lives, and drives many to abuse others in order to gain advantage in how much of it they have. And this happens with nations as well, and I find myself lacking a community where I know that Nations and Money and Justice and gifts and call are constantly on the table, for they all deal with the stuff of life: they influence choices, determine emphasis and priorities, and lead us down paths that pull us toward darkness or else awaken us to something more real.

Where is this community? Where is the Church today? I'm so detached, becasue I'm not ATTACHED to a community such that it becomes my resource and my birthing into new calls. I work for a Church-related agency, and that is a small comfort that I am a piece in something larger, and good things are being done. But I long for my specific sense of call to online community and its advancement in the Church to become something more center stage, and to have a leadership role in that; part developer, part dreamer, part strategizer. Those various roles would mean something very exciting for me. And if there's a lot of people out there like me, with concerns and fears and passion about things and need a place to be heard and to meet with others who share some of this, we could all findsomethign very neeeded in this. And so the CHURCH MUST BE THERE. And sooner rather than later.

It may also help us dream together more effectively (by adding to the ways in which we can make contact and talk and listen) about the shape the Church should be taking, and how to determine to what we as a people are being called.

I reopened my reading of In Search of Paul, Crossan's Pauline treatment that is the companion New Testament study to his "Historical Jesus" studies.

This stood out for me tonight:
"Wherever Rome went, in brought its gods; and whomever Rome conquered, it assimilated their Gods into the Roman pantheon" (p. 57) (in Chapter 1: Jewish Faith and Pagan Society)

I am reminded once again of the dual-edged sword of Empire's conquest and subjugation of the faith of its subjects: Their gods come in and get air time; and the "highlights" of the native faith that are "twistable" are taken for a spin (ie. the use of Christian imagery for purposes of divinizing the State, and its purposes.

Bush has been as daring as they come amongst American presidents, equating the "Logos" passage in John to "The American people" (at least those who "are with us" and therefore not "against us")

I made an entry earlier about "Community of Hope", thinking of how it is better to have an alternative than simply to say no, as Jim Wallis often says. That "alternative" is the all-too-rare community in which these alternative ways of living can be modeled, and tried, and set up in spite of, and in contrast to, this sickened, materialistic, individualistic, "me-and-Jesus is it" so I don't have to woprry about how my life is no different from the rest of the world.

People cannot do this in this society without a community that has committed to that, and holds each other accountable to do this, and holds each other in their hearts and commit to a "Life Together". There is none of this in today's Church. It is non-existent as far as I can tell. I have written of how I can never be satisfied with anything less than the kind of "New Community" that the Church of the Saviour introduced me to 29 years ago. Nowhere have I seen anyone come close. And if they do, somewhere, where are the stories of such? I am both fortunate to have read and heard of such things, but I am also burdened with it, knowing how far we have travelled in opposite directions from realizing this in our Church life. I'm tired tonight, and cannot go into to what I'm talking about, but I've said such things before. I keep asking and praying when that will be found, even in some small way. Am I supposed to find a way to rediscover fire? Me? If not, then where is it? And how am I supposed to find it?

From Musings of a Young Pastor

More "culture of life" hypocrisy

We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being. That's the very least we can do for her.

- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex), regarding congressional attempts to legislatively overrule the Florida court system in order to keep Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube indefinitely

Delay, death peanalty advocate, even though evidence is mounting that people on death row should never have been there in the first place; Iraq war advocate, even though NO EVIDENCE whatsoever exists that there are ANY waepons of mass destruction. Yes, Hypocrisy at its most arrogant, smug, worst.

I started this book this past week, and this passage has much to do with my previous post, about how easily and uncritically the Religious Right accepts and even "justifies" that Bush is "God's man", based on this kind of thing:

when asked about his life as a man of prayer and the decision to go to war, nothing will sound amiss when President Bush responds with the following:
(from interview with Tom Brokaw on NBC, April 24, 2003)

I don't bring God into my life to be a political person; I ask God
for strength and guidance: I ask God to help me be a better decision. The decision about war and peace is a decision I made based upon what I thought were the best interests of the American people. I was able to step back from religion, because I have a job to do. And I, on bended knee to the good Lord, asked Him to help me to do my job in a way that's wise.

As a testimonial, this is a powerful portrait of the liberal view of religion, and it should be familiar to all of us, there is a pathos at work, and it's reflected in the way we balance our jobs with out Sunday morning faith, the way we do business, the way we often feel obliged to put our faith to the side when we're buying and selling, the way we go about being realistic. This is the struggle of vocation, of faithfulness to a job with certain demands that might not coincide with the language usually associated with religion, of a human heart in conflict with itself.

The view of God as a nonpolitical being that we can bring in for wisdom and comfort and keep respectfully separate from our business, our "job to do," is a view held by Americans across party lines, and it will often be hard to remember that it bears no resemblance to anything the Jewish Christian tradition has ever deemed orthodox. Nevertheless, it's standard procedure. And in a faithful reflection of these values, we insist that our presidents "step back from religion" while simultaneously giving lip service to everybody's own private, personal Jesus.

Throughout much of American society, getting the job done, living in the real world (the business world), and being effective will demand the seemingly supernatural ability to step back from religion, and liberalism is a carefully designed attempt to overcome these conflicts of interests.

(from page 35, The Gospel According to America)

With recommedations from Phyllis Tickle, Will Campbell, and Brian McLaren (on the back cover) , and a big one from me, David Dark has a lot to say, and says it very well.

The above quote of Bush is plush with phrases that the Religious Right themselves should be concerned about: the phrase "step aside from religion" for one. That seems to me to be a very "secular" thing to say, and indeed sounds very "clueless" to someone with anything of an intelligent faith, or one with some seblance of a cliam to be relevant. Bush's statement there seems to betray a secularlism that would have sent me far away from supporting him back in my initial, but brief fundamentalist days.

("The good Lord" is also one of those phrases that I tend to hear more often from the mouths of those outside the Church than from within).

Basically, Bush says he "Asks the Good Lord" to help him "step back from religion" where appropriate. That's reassuring.

I have had accusations of my motives being partisan in my opposition to this Iraq war. Someone pointed out to me that they recall my being upset over Iran Contra and Nicaragua, and then the first Gulf War, and "then, while Clinton was president, NOTHING".

There are two seemingly very reasonable answers. One: I did not hear much about things like the bombing of Kosovo by NATO. I no doubt read SOME things about it, but I was NOT reading much at all during the 1993-1999 period. I was unemployed for a year, I was changing jobs three times, I was moving to Nashville, I was adopting a child, and I was NOT writing or reading, even much of Sojourners. I was focusing then, when I did write, on the issue of The Church and the Web, as the Internet was coming of age. I was deeply immersed in Ecunet. I was active, but NOT politically.

Second, the issues of ethnic cleansing that was going on in Serbia/Kosovo/Bosnia made it pretty clear that some action was called for. Actions DID happen, and there WERE several groups, including Sojourners, who were critical of the inaction of the Clinton administration prior to the eventual "responses", and then of the nature of those interventions (the usual U.S. "solutions" such as air strikes, and the resulting civilian casualties.

Further, none of these "strikes" were "unprovoked"; or lacking in "reasons" for a call to international action. CLEARLY, there was no intent top deceive the public about the nature or existence of "reasons to act".

To lay that alongside Iraq today and suggest "Why weren't you outraged then?" You must be simply partisan Democrat and biased against Bush. Bullshit. That is an outrageously false comparison to this administrations' actions and deceptions in this whole Ira debacle.

There also wasn't this whole euphoria n the Church in supporting the actions of the United States. In fact, the Religious Right itslef didn't complain about Kosovo or Clinton's military decisions. Why WOULD they? To them, the most important thng was Clinton's personal morality, which undoubtedly was more detructive and tok more lives than things such as bombings.

If I had been in a Church that was faitful to the gospel, and who explored the issues of how to "speak the truth to power" as the Church must in all times, not just times of war, I would have been protesting the use of bombs to "dispel" or "discourage" the perpetrators of the "cleansings". To cause the deaths of more innocents in order to respond to the deaths of other innocents makes no sense, and is not morally acceptable, any more then that it is now as we take far more innocent Iraqi lives in retaliation for the deaths of 3000, which were outrageous enough. "Retaliation?" they might ask? Iraq was not "retaliation". But if they realized how the Bush administration had "designs" on Iraq prior to 9/11, and then rushed in immeidately, on the very next day when they put their heads together on 9/12 and Bush was asking for "evidence" on Iraq, and telling Richard Clarke to "find connections to Iraq", and that Bush had to be constantly RE-focused on Al-Quieda and Osama Bin Laden, the "retaliation" feature is pretty clear. 9/11 "made it possible" to sell the goods to the American people. And all Bush had to do is say he "asked God for guidance" and millions of American church goers bowed down to him and called him a "great Christian leader", and "annointed by God".

No, I tend to put the emphasis on "What would Jesus do?" The Religious Right folks consider that a non-sensical question when it comes to war. They've been well-trained and indoctrinated to "keep political issues" separate when it comes to opposing clear preferences of their annointed leaders.

In my previous post I spoke of how I felt a little frustrated with the "60's hippy" feel that was much more prevalent than the faith-based feel of the gathering yesterday.

I found this gathering listed on the Sojourners site by searching on my zip code, but this gathering was not what I would call "Sojourners-like", since there was no public attempt to link it to faith. Not that anyone moving from a faith-based world view would not find such a gathering affirming. But I want to see a clear message from the Churches in America. There are some, but I am somewhat disturbed that there isn't a more concerted effort among those who do express their deep concerns and sense of outrage.

The point of this, I would think, would be to make such an impact and such an outcry that there would be change in approach, policy, and even personell, that lives would be saved by beginning to reverse the destructive and misguided efforts by this administration to fulfill their neocon dream of a Pax Americana.

I have had a couple of people tell me, why complain so much? DO something positive! But these same people would not consider involvement in peace solutions to be "postive". Part of that requirement woudl be to stop resisting; stop complaining; "see the light", and work for "their kind of change" (which is hardly change at all). I suppose they would say that "evangelism" would be a worthy cause. But where and how are we to "procalim the good news?" What did Jesus say when he spoke of "proclaiming the good news?" Did he not say, immediately following his opening public announcement, that "the Spirit of the Lord is on me. becuase he has annointed me to preach good news to the poor....to release the oppressed...." Is it not "oppression" to seek to impose an ill-planned, ill-conceived, greed-motivated, "capitalist" enterprise as the "solution"; to seek to "colonize" the land of Iraq (and eventually the entire middle -east" with structures friendly to our American corporate profits?

The Religious Right scoffs at such notions. They call it "communist" and "secular humanism" since it fails to "protect" the "American way of life" that our system drills in to the heads of its subjects; Biblical notions of justice get pushed into the background and eliminated from theologies, until the theology from which it came is transformed into servants of the system. The prophets railed against this. They warned of the follies of empire; of "trusting in horses and chariots" (or in today's military realities, "bombs and tanks").

Quagmire Accomplished.

That's a sign I saw yesterday when I went down to Centennial Park to be present at just one of many vigil/march/protests held to observe 2 years of U.S. empire in Iraq.

As I hear the Religious Right yelp about "Culture of Life" and then set it next to this HUGE LIE that our country's leaders are peretuating, I lend absolutely no ceredibility to anybody who claims to view life as sacred and does not abhor what is being done in the name of "freedom and democracy". The blindness and the self-deception that it takes to belive this is absolutely scary, and makes me very afraid for the relevance of the Church in the United States.

My attendance at this rally I mention was itself somewhat unsatisfying, since it seemed to be more "60's hippes culture" than faith-based. Although I can find much more "spiritual" identification with these folks despite that, since they see things with some semblance of compassion, and an ability to see through the "patriot-speak" and read "other thinhgs" and see the myriad of reasons to put no credibility in this administration; for these reasons, I sense a definite basic philosophical identification with these folks, and consider them "closer to the Kingdom of God" than most of the Church today, who remain silent or even "approving" of the Bush administration. Because you know what? To be slient or approving is to be APART from the Kingdom of which Christ spoke and continues to call us to recognize and be participants.

The idea that if certain interpretations of Scripture are not accepted, then one does not "believe the whole Bible" is nonsense enough. Then they go on to say that Jesus' words mean nothing if the Bible is "not be believed or trusted".

Hogwash.

Jesus is the key to interpreting Scripture. Jesus' authority does not hang on a system of dogma. That was the problem that the religious leaders of his day had with Jesus. He upset their notions.

Equating "the Bible", or ANY system of theological dogma to Jesus, is to worship a false idol. It sounds nonsensical to a lot of Religious Right folks, since to them, Jesus is "a part of the Bible". Funny thing, though, Jesus never spoke of "writing these things down" while he was alive.

These people keep on referring to this "Biblical worldview" that they would absolutely abhor if they simply read a little bit of what these guys were. Their "theology" is not the least bit similar to their idea of "Biblical", so their appeal to "tradition" and "history" is ignorance. I would bet that those founding fathers would consider what groups likle this are advocating to be everything they wrote the constitution to avoid.

Here, we have a case of the Religous Right going "gaga" over the slightest usage of "God-talk", like they do with Bush, whose simplistic utterances and misued Scriptural references have most of them convinced that he is God's answer to the executive branch.

For evangelicals, a bid to 'reclaim America' | csmonitor.com

For more than 900 other Christians from across the US, the draw at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church last month was a national conference aimed at "reclaiming America for Christ." The monument stood as a potent symbol of their hopes for changing the course of the nation.

"We have God-sized problems in our country, and only God can solve them," Richard Land, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), told the group.

Their mission is not simply to save souls. The goal is to mobilize evangelical Christians for political action to return society to what they call "the biblical worldview of the Founding Fathers." Some speak of "restoring a Christian nation." Others shy from that phrase, but agree that the Bible calls them not only to evangelize, but also to transform the culture.