May 2005 Archives

Will Sampson with a really good post on the way that "economics" seems to seep into the lives of Christians and churches from the world, rather than from some attempt to imagine or construct an economics based on Kingdom of God values.

Sage - willzhead

When I was in college and forming my political thought economists like von Mises and Hayek were to College Republicans what Brueggemann and Wright are to the emerging church. It is no surprise, then, that as these former CR's have grown up and come into influence within the GOP, they have been greatly influenced by this type of thought and have in turn influenced the party to think this way. As the political systems that these men have shaped have captivated the American Church much of the laissez-faire economic thinking has invaded and perverted the thinking of the Church along with it. It is, then, no surprise that the head of one of the most influential organizations within the American Church could say something so completely uninformed by the text of scripture or church history.

It is time to recapture economic thinking that flows from the pages of scripture and the positive examples of church history.

But then that would defeat the purpose of the church in the eyes of the powers that be (and I have a suspicion that Will is heading there with these questions he poses here).....and so we have yet another piece of evidence of turning the church into an instrument of government policy, and further cementing the conviction of some cynics who say that religion is the "opiate of the masses".

As long as our churches make no waves about the just-ness of our economics (and why would they, since they don't want to ruffle the feathers of their potential large contributors?)

But just as this bothers Will (and me, and Sojourners, and a lot of others, it ought to be bothering the hell out of a whole lot of us. Here is yet another area where The Church of the Saviour just flat out gets it wrong, and most of the rest of the church just plain blows it. They have "The Ministry of Money", and they talk about issues of money and what it does to us all the time. And that doesn't play well in too many other places (just a few, widely scattered, rare places....places of hope for the rest of us, but also a judgment on the refusal of the American church to grapple with the issues of money, it's tendency to corrupt, and its seeming power to convince of us of just about anything.

My updated stack/garden.

I keep putting books on Pause, pick up another, and say "I'll get back to ya'"....others I go more or less straight through. Often the references in one will get me all intrigued with another, and so it is no big surprise that this stack has Hauerwas , Yoder, and Bonhoeffer , and the inclusion of Crossan, McLaren, and Chomsky are related to issues of Empire and Church, and the proper attitude toward "orthodoxy" (obviously reference to McLaren)

Now that Eric's bookgarden.org is becoming "the place" to link to book blogging, particularly re: books of these subjects (oh, and also add the old book I brought down the night I went to see Jim Wallis-- Revive Us Again, which I mention earlier), I have been adding my trackbacks to bookgarden when I explore a topic that a particular book has inspired me to blog.

I picked up Hauerwas' Performing the Faith last November as I was seeking out material by and about Bonhoeffer, as a way of "coping" with what seemed to be the "glaring reality" of the world , post 11/2 (election). I had heard some good things about Hauerwas, and seen some of the titles of his books, and so this book by Hauerwas ABOUT Bonhomie seemed the perfect fit.

I think I must have skipped over Habeas' introduction of Bonhoeffer and his summary of Bonhomie's "political" readings of the gospel (or better, "implications" of the gospel) since I had just watched the DVD Bonhoeffer, and wanted to get straight into the theological confrontations of Kingdom vs Empire. I also had picked up Crossing's In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom, for the same reason. I picked up Performing the Faith again last night, after hearing some audio of Hauerwas talking about Bonhomie and non-violence. The reading seemed much less "bogged down" than I did in my initial reading. That was a bit over 6 months ago when I bought Performing the Faith, and I was , I suppose, not "accustomed" to Hauerwas' style yet, nor with some of the concepts such as "narrative theology" or "theology from narrative" or "theology AS narrative" (you see? I have become familiar). Anyway, I either skipped over this entirely or felt impatient to get to more of the theological rationale for political dissent (given the disgust I was feeling about the incumbent administration). I ran into the chapters on Milbank and Fletcher and Performance in the Arts , and Narrative, and felt disappointed , and maybe also a little stupid that I didn't seem to "get it". But later readings of both Bonhomie's own writings and a few of Hauerwas' books and articles over the next 6 months , and I feel much more conversant with Hauerwas, and very much in step with his view of the church ; and his recognition of Bonhomie's theological relevance to our day, and our politics, and our experience of the failure of the church in America to "be the church".

Exhibit A: p. 40-41, Performing the Faith

In 1933 he was appointed as pastor to the German church in London in hopes that such an appointment would allow him to make contacts in order to help the world understand the dangers the Nazis represented. That danger he understood to be nothing less than the "brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone"

Anyone familiar with the disdain for the truth exhibited by this White House is surely seeing in this warning of Bonhoeffer a contemporary recognition of a politic gone wrong; and the hubris of the neocons is a sobering reminder of how unchecked political expansion of a fear-induced sanctioning of questionable justification can take hold and convince an entire church that "the best interests of the nation are at stake", and that the government has a firm grasp and belief in basic Christian principles. Yes, Hitler invoked the name of God and Jesus.

This in no way is an attempt to compare Bush and Hitler; only to raise the question of how subtly ideas can change and a "mob mentality" can take hold and sanction unspeakable evil. I don't or won't compare the evil of the Holocaust with the evil of the War on Iraq, only to say that even though the Holocaust ended up being far worse in terms of human life lost; the legitimacy of sanctioning any "lesser level" of "loss" is still inexcusable for a people such as the church who are called to be, as Hauerwas names them, a "Peaceable People".

Again, another example from the satirical piece linked by Carlos mentioned earlier, and how amazingly close to ACTUAL right-wing utterances and expressions.

Why I'm joining the GOP / Leaving the left for fun and profit

I'm sure a lot of my friends reading this will ask me, "How can you sleep?" My answer will be, "Who's got time? I'm busy earning money." While they're bellyaching about rising deficits, the outsourcing of jobs and casualties in Iraq, I'll be marveling at the march of freedom in the Middle East, upticks in the GDP and the president's plan to link Social Security to the magic of the marketplace.

At BlogNashville, one person stated matter-of-factly " I think the Economy is in FANTASTIC shape", and cited some of the exact same "positive signs" as the above satirical portrayal. Of course ignoring the oft cited factors such as deficit, dollar-value, cost of living, job growth (which the right wing now points to now that job growth is FINALLY NOT dropping , so there's nowhere to go but up....so while we wait for the job growth to catch up to where it was before the Bush administration's "shutout" performance in his first term (net loss of jobs for the first time since the Depression), we have to look at market trends (which only the wealthiest, able-to-invest and pay for the best advice people can afford to enjoy these "benefits") and not to mention how much of this is being sucked up from below and reigned in from corporate tax cuts given by the Bush administration while the deficit increases, and Iraq costs continue to be unaccounted for in government figures.

The "market" is God to these folks. I call that idolatry. I also call it blindness and self-deception (encouraged by the Fox News "Experts" who are brought in to discredit the majority of non-partisan economists who notice such things-- and of course, don't forget that they very fact that these economists tell a "different story" automatically turns them into partisans. See how it works?)

More from the Leaving the left for fun and profit article.

Yeah, it's satire, but it is scary to realize how much of this is pretty spot on with the REAL attitudes of many in the Religious Right. For instance:

Why I'm joining the GOP / Leaving the left for fun and profit

As a Republican, I'll say goodbye to "old Jesus" and hello to "new Jesus. " Sure Christ started out as a liberal Jew, and look where that got him. Compassion, love and diatribes against the rich only encourage the weak and punish the most successful among us. The Jesus that Republicans worship is a muscular, decisive, pro-war crusader hard at work cleansing the world of evildoers, not, God forbid, turning the other cheek.

Compare that to this, which is an actual email from an actual Methodist Seminary graduate (name withheld):

To say that Jesus would not intervene militarily brings us right back to the point that he has, and did order military intervention all throughout the history of Israel. It was at his word that all those things happened. so I fundamentally disagree. Jesus understands that Justice requires action. You make jesus into sort of momma's boy wimp who walked around patting little kids on the head and telling them how much God loved them. Thats not the man I see in scripture as he both lead Israel through the exodus, the conquest, and ultimately will return in Glory and take the earth in a violent and sudden in-breaking of the kingdom.

Not so different, wouldn't you say?

As I read more Hauerwas and Yoder, and continue to read Sojourners and Wallis, I find myself increasingly repulsed by the deconstruction of Jesus' words into a shape that fits the current macho-American, God-fearin' and therefore fearin' no man (which means bombing the hell out of 'em--- that'll show 'em who's boss) kind of attitude.

Once again, is this the Jesus of the gospels? For all their harping on "The plain meanin' of Scripture", here's one that is hard to reconcile with that when Jesus is known to have said: "Love Your Enemies". The theological shenanigans that are employed by the Religious Right to skirt that plain and clear saying would be just the same variety that they would accuse of being "disrespectful to the TRUE and PLAIN Word of God".

With the success of Fox News, it is small wonder that "outlets" such as World News Daily have as much hearing as they do. It is an "outlet" that brings us "News" only a Christian Fundamentalist , Premillineal, Post-Rapture, Bible and Left Behind-Thumping Convert could love and/or trust. I was reminded of it by its being summoned by a commentor on Jesus Politics who calls himself "Bubba", and who has a blog defending slavery and sports a confederate flag. If I didn't know Carlos better, I'd be suspicious of Bubba, as to whether this character was really on the up and up, so stereotypically bigoted he is, and so stereotypically hardheaded in his "Interpretative methods".

Actually, I find Fox News much more of a threat to America. It is turned to by millions of Americans, and I find this extremely scary. Fox News is everything (and more) that the Right wing fears in the "liberal media conspiracy", in support of that Right wing; even worse, in support of the hubristic, dishonest, elitist apologists and reverse Robin Hoods of the neoconservatives who have turned even a secular ideal of Democracy on its head, and thus have scores of traditional (and honest, unconvinced, non-duped) conservatives running from association with them.

The very article I was reading where "Bubba" piped up with "Jesus is still the same yesterday , today, and forever", I KNEW that the comment must have come from a member of the Radical Right (even before I saw his handle "Bubba") was a satire on just this kind of macho, all-for-me, me-and-Jesus kind of bullshit. I hear it creeping into the attitudes of people normally sane. I also blame Fox for this. It's exactly what they want. They WANT people to accept this macho veneer so that their empire can gain legitimacy. If only Fox had started when I was a student in United Theological Seminary's Master of Arts in Religious Communication program (1990-91) . Then, we were observing the media's coverage of the the first Gulf War. Today, Fox News would provide us with daily and endless footage and messages to analyze. It has "made" outlets such as Media Matters into a massive undertaking.

No, it's not the "Satan worshipers" that were depicted on NBC's miniseries (and mini-theology) Revelations that are the insidious evil that seeks to destroy us and pull us away from God's kingdom. It's the "wolves in sheep's clothing"; the "Religious Ones" who call themselves agents of God who are able to deceive (isn't this also one of those "signs of the end times"?)

It seems as if its time for a sequel (or maybe a regular series on media) to Outfoxed, which I have in my media library (along with The Truth About Iraq)

Your poster child might turn on you. Kyle Williams, an amazing 15 year old intellectual, slams a couple of right wing darlings (along with a left wing one) in this article. Thing is, there's quite a few Right wingers who adore Savage and Coulter, and this admonition from a 15 year old should put them to shame.

It's no guarantee that Kyle will be able to break free from the right wing ghetto ; but articles such as this give me hope that he will eventually become fed up with their vitriolics (maybe he already is). Maybe when he completes puberty (and this is no slam on Kyle; it's amazement and wonder at the insights and reasoning skills this dude has for a 15 year old), then all those rebellious juices will cause and inspire him to move his intellect to greener pastures, and a sane home for his insightful and intricate mind. We can only pray for the young dude, that his gift won't go to waste in vitriolics like he'll be pressured into using if he stays on that side.

WorldNetDaily: Immaturity and insults
on the airwaves

This little blurb at the end of Kyle's article (link above) is an indication of how proud and excited the Right is about this young phenom. This is what inspired my post

In Kyle Williams' book, "Seen and Heard," America's youngest national columnist takes on the establishment, offering clear evidence that a leftist agenda is at work in our nation. His lively, energetic analysis of current events is both informative and entertaining and will leave readers with a better understanding of the daily attacks against traditional family values. Order your copy now in ShopNetDaily.

This site, regardless of how many people actually buy into this stuff, is nothing short of a tool only Screwtape, Wormwood, and their boss would be proud of.

WorldNetDaily: Iran plans to knock out
U.S. with 1 nuclear bomb

Iran is not only covertly developing nuclear weapons, it is already testing ballistic missiles specifically designed to destroy America's technical infrastructure, effectively neutralizing the world's lone superpower, say U.S. intelligence sources, top scientists and western missile industry experts.

This is exactly what intelligent people are afraid of from the Religious Right. Absolute irresponsible (and , yes, EVIL) presentation of "FACTS" that are designed to produce fear, and "hasten" the Armageddon. The scary thing about this administration is that this is precisely the kind of thing that they've already done once, and no doubt, will do it again, unless enough people insist that they will not stand for it anymore.

This is EVIL, not because these people are "worshiping Satan" (as in the depiction of the adversaries in the amazingly inane NBC series Revelations), but because this is how evil works. It is deception (much more on the order of The Screwtape Letters. The bad guy who wears a white hat can get away with quite a bit. And this is exactly how Bush (and his crew) accomplish their deception. By saying "Jesus changed my heart", they can enlist the full-scale support of well-meaning but unobservant Christians whose churches whip up their energies and passions by feeding them garbage like this World Net News Daily shit. Of course, we have a mainstream media outlet that also does this for them (Fox News). They'll be the first ones to broadcast such frenzy as this Iran "report" if it will serve the ends of the Bush administration and the corrupt corporate charlatan news empire of Rupert Murdoch.

(No, I'm not upset)

This via Jesus Politics

Why I'm joining the GOP / Leaving the left for fun and profit

After a lifetime voting for and working for Democratic candidates and independents, I'm finally going to make the switch and become a Republican. The reasons are many, not the least of which is age. I turned 55 recently and, having lived more than half my life, I can't afford to worry anymore about the other guy. It's time for me. As a Republican, I can now proudly -- indeed, defiantly -- pledge to never again vote for anyone who raises taxes for any reason. To hell with roads, bridges, schools, police and fire protection, Medicare, Social Security and regulation of the airwaves. President Bush has promised to give me more tax cuts even though our federal government owes trillions of dollars to its creditors. But that's someone else's problem, not mine. Republicans are about the here and now, and I'm here now. As a Republican, I can favor exploiting the environment for everything she's got. No need to worry about quaint notions like posterity and natural legacy. There are plenty of resources left for everyone, and if we don't use them, someone else will.

The whole thing, as are most of Carlos' links, is worth a read.

After seeing Wallis this week, and after hearing, over the past 4 or 5 months the many variations and versions (communicated by Wallis) of the issues covered in God's Politics, I am now watchng Cornel West respond, at a meeting at Princeton University, April 26, 2005
RealVideo: 56k 350k
Windows Media 56k 350k

from the page:
Princeton University: WebMedia - Special Events

(Later...update.....953pm CST...just finished watching it after pausing a couple times for family interactions in the house.....and wow....great connversation. I have read and even used quotations from Cornel West before, but I am so impressed with the guy. Check out the video. The Real Video is good quality, and an hour and 44 minutes. Pure gold.

Charlie Pardue has been blogging God's Politics (you can follow the posts on this via RSS and other books by using Eric's bookgarden.org

Charlie's post:
Interruptions

Wallis asks the question, "How should faith influence your politics?" in the title of this chapter, and to many (myself included) this question is a red flag. As if faith is something that merely influences your politics. This is where some in the Radical Orthodoxy camp or self-professing Hauerwasians might think Wallis is edging far too close to liberalism, where your politics are something that you choose not unlike what soft-drink you order at a restaurant and faith merely informs that decision, not unlike the nostalgic memories of hot days working on the ranch when dad would offer me a Pepsi might inform what soft-drink I order. Rest assured this "informed consumerism" is not what Wallis means.

I "got into it" with a few bloggers who have recently been critical of Wallis (I might add, they seem pretty uninformed about Wallis or what he actually believes, but still proceed to post some warnings about "theocracy from the left", which also, is NOT what Wallis is aiming for). I believe that Wallis and Sojourners are simply proceeding to both model and to speak up on the issues which they feel the American church needs to recognize (going back to the earliest works , one of which I quote from in http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/archives/004146.html">this post. Sojo history has been all about this; this constant reminding of the American church of the dangers of confusing God and the preferences of particular politics, and Wallis has been particularly critical of the tendency and apparent desire and intention of the Religious Right to do just that, and "hijack the faith".

These liberal critics are asking "how is it any better to have a liberal theocracy than a fundamentalist one?" But this very question gets to the heart of this post from Charlie, I think. For the Christian, "politics" is not an "element" of our faith to be "influenced", but an EXPRESSION of our vision for what God's kingdom will look like; what it DOES look like wherever it is "on earth" ("as it is also in heaven"; or, as it should be).

I agree with Charlie in that this is not a "choice" (and Hauerwas himself has written essays on how Christian ethics is not an issue of "making right choices", but of expressing values one gains as part of Christian community.) Where our vision of what the Kingdom requires, and the realities of what we see in the relationship between our leaders and their actual implemention of their policies; THERE we are "doing politics". It is not a matter of "imposing our Christian theology" , for we are not interested in consensual assent, but in the justice and polis into which God's prescence calls us to participate. We might as well talk about me "imposing my beliefs about family" upon members of my family. We can no more avoid telling our story (which includes and is driven by our community's narrative) than we can avoid "being ourselves". If that's "imposing", then we are all guilty.

I'll end this post with a good line from Charlie's Chapter 5 post:

if our status as follower of Jesus Christ determines what we have to say about an amendment to the United States Constitution (not a Christian document), about the American definition of Marriage (not the Christian definition), but in no way determines and shapes what we have to say about bombing people based on lies... then it is not the Christian faith, but is rather the privatized faith of American Civil Religion that gets people to the polls, but never to protests.

On this Memorial Day, American Churches are at their Nationalistic peak time. You might call it a "sweeps time" , when American Churches try to outdo one another in patriotism. I attended a Memorial Day last year in another city that just totally sickened me.

Pastor John Wright had a post earlier this week about how Churches distort the meaning of the cross by trying to equate the "sacrifice in war" to Jesus giving his life for us. But as Yoder (and one who considers himself a student of Yoder, Hauerwas) points out, the cross of Jesus , to the Christian, should mean something that calls into question the very basis of war, the justifications for war, and the "glory" of war. Indeed, Jesus allowed himself to be killed rather than to give in to the temptation which even some of his followers were advocating; hoping he would fulfill. But Jesus rejected this, and instead let the Kingdom ethic take precedence, and God, in the resurrection, defeated the powers that crucified him. The Religious powers who rejected his fulfillment of their long-awaited Messianic hopes, and the Romans, who rejected his version of Kingdom.

Yoder, in The Politics of Jesus , p. 145-146

Like everyone, he too was subject (but in his case, quite willingly) to these powers. He accepted his own status of submission. But morally he broke their rules by refusing to support them in their self-glorification; and that is why they killed him. Preaching and incorporating a greater righteousness than that of the Pharisees, and a vision of an order of social human relations more universal than the Pax Romania, he permitted the Jews to profane a holy day (refuting thereby their - - own moral pretensions) and permitted the Romans to deny their vaunted respect for law as they proceeded illegally against him. This they did in order to avoid the threat to their dominion represented by tic very fact that he existed in their midst so morally independent of their pretensions. He did not fear even death. Therefore his cross is a victory , the confirmation that he was free from the rebellious pretensions of the creaturely condition. Differing from Adam, Lucifer, and all the Powers, Jesus did "not consider being equal with God as a thing to be seized" (Phil. 2:6). His very obedience unto death is in itself not only the sign but also the firstfruits of an authentic restored humanity.

A clip from Pastor John's post is an echo of the clip from Yoder above:

Recently I've had friends such as Josh Gubser and Kyle Tau trying to think through atonement, especially substitutionary atonement so prevalent in American evangelical circles. We've gone back to read the supposed origin of this atonement theory, Anselm of Canterbury and discovered that Anselm is very different from those who have represented him. He clearly states that God did not will the Son's death, but that the Son willing took death as a result of his obedience, thus showing loyalty to God the Father over Satan, and thus re-established the rightful honor of God and the beauty of creation in obedience to God. The Son, for Anselm, saves by his faithfulness to the Father, seen in his death. It is a sacrifice for us because, in being fully human, he undoes the shame of humanity in choosing to obey Satan over God.

You might call this day (and Pastor JOhn did, in fact) the most dangerous Sunday in America, since it is the supreme temptation for Churches to "honor" the veterans by legitimizing the actions of the state in which they were participating when they died. For me, this has never been a matter of the moral choices of the combatants (although it is another matter that is taken up in other conversations). Here, it is an issue of the Church's blessing of the nationalistic mythos, and attempting to bring it in the realm of the redeemed. But it shall not be so. The resurrected Jesus has made it NOT SO.

This selection from Wallis' 1983 autobiography book, Revive Us Again: A Sojourner's Story, seemed to me to be a kind of portent to the present day dialogue, and the avenues for "flagpoles" to become noticed. This account recalls how Sojourners magazine, it's first few issues known as The Post American, brought about a "Meetup", or a discovering of kindred spirits across the nation of a theological movement fed up with the compromises and acceptance of nationalism into the Church's theology. The Post_American/Sojourners' story has been one of constant reminders of how easy it is to let our faith become "private" and neglect the call to justice and the kingdom Jesus proclaimed as having already entered into history.

We knew there had to be other people who were feeling the same things we were about the meaning of biblical faith in our time. in fact, that's why we decided to put out a publication: to articulate the new understanding of the gospel that was emerging among us and to Teach out to others who found themselves engaged in the same struggles.

Though we were hopeful about the response, we were thoroughly unprepared for the amount of mail we received. subscriptions began to pour in, and soon the shoebox we had set aside for the purpose of our record-keeping couldn't contain all the names of the new subscribers and friends we were finding around the country. We received phone calls, visits, and invitations. The post-American had sparked something.

I have sometimes likened the publication of the Past-American to the raising of a flag up a flagpole. Many people on the ground, at the grass room, were longing for an alternative to the narrow versions of Christian faith they were experiencing in their churches, but they didn't know one another. Many Of the earliest letters to us expressed people's long-held feelings of being alone in their beliefs, wondering if any other Christian like them existed. people from many places saw the Rag and met one another around the flagpole. From its first days, the magazine created an, ecumenical spirit among people, bringing together those who had never before been in relationship.

The "flagpole" has matured and grown more effective and participatory. From a print magazine to an interactive dialogue where people can "blog" God's Politics books and converse around issues. The Progressive Christian Blogring has been of inestimable worth to me in my period of estrangement from the institutional church. The blogosphere has been that "flagpole" to keep me in touch with the people who seem all too rare around here (even though I realize that there may be and most likely are others , even nearby, who perhaps will hook up with me, or I might find them, through this medium which often has allowed me to discover people (with whom I already had become acquainted) were also on a common journey with me, but we had , in this age of individualistic and isolated and "non-communal" church, were unaware of each other's journey. This is a travesty of neglect amongst churches in America, and especially among "Progressive" churches who should know better; who should know the absolute necessity of the church existing as a people on a journey; all with stories to share, and to draw upon as a source of strength and meshing of gifts and callings. Without this attention to the accountability structures, where we operate under the assumption that others want to know and even depend upon our story in order to more fully realize theirs, we are operating under the assumptions of political ideology rather than the polis of the church.

Wallis never suggests that it is enough to "gather round the flagpole", and go back home "encouraged" (although this is a necessary first step)...but the Sojourners community itself , and many other communities like it, with similar theologies and callings, recognize that the initial call to be part of God's Kingdom is to be called into a community of participants, who depend upon their commitment to this community to shape their very lives and involvements in the activity of God in the world.

Stanley Hauerwas

Al....Al, ... leave it to Al. Al here summarizes an article by some critic who outlines the favorite story of Al's, the move of American culture away from the kinds of values he espouses, and that "culture war". As a big proponent and "encourager" of exactly that, and with the intellectual hubris that he lays on thick in nearly every article he writes, Al also summons a blogger I expected him to quote: Hugh Hewitt, a proponent of blogging seemingly for the sole purpose of grinding the far right axe.

Here, though, the irony is thick (not from Al, but who he uses to make a particular point):

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

Rupert Murdoch, the founder and chairman of News Corporation (and thus of Fox News), tried to explain this to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. "What is happening right before us is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a godlike figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel," Murdoch argued. "Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle."

Al quotes Murdoch saying of young people "they certainly don't want news presented as gospel". Oh, really? Coming from the owner and manipulator extrordinaire, this is the ultimate in pretending to be against a force that you yourself have helped to create and sustain. Fox News is the ultimate of all partisan sources, and bloggers like Drudge and Hewitt are the prototypes of the kind of media manipulation that fits in so well with the Southern Baptist leadership's modus operandi (and now, politically mirrored in groups like the college Republicans like Rove and Norquist).

But wait, there's more.

Al then proceeds to sound the rally cry for bloggers to "stand up for the good old days" when we all knew what was truth (????) and things were not so ....uhhh. diverse, confusing, and dangerous.

Terry Teachout's analysis, published in the respected pages of Commentary, signals a growing awareness of the blogging revolution and what it means for America. In a strange twist of irony, the culture of Western civilization may survive through the efforts of a core of dedicated bloggers who are unwilling to see it die. The media elite will simply have to watch from a distance, scratching their heads as they watch their audience disappear and their influence dissipate. The long-term impact of the blogging revolution is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, the toppling of the mainstream media's monopoly is a cultural achievement in itself. May the revolution continue.

And Al's answer to that is obviously to swallow Fox News whole, for there is where the "Un-spun" News is; the representative of the rebellion against the favorite whipping boy of the Religious and Secular Right: that "Liberal Media".

Now I am certainly no fan of the big mainstream media. They have , like most other media outlets, appealed to the least common denominators and corporate interests of their advertisers. But Al's own "movement" is about as mainstream as it gets in the religious world, and mainstream in American Religion means sellouts to culture; and a preaching of Christ without the teachings of Christ. The fact that Mohler can quote Murdoch with a straight face (in illustration of a point about "telling it straight" and "without presenting it as gospel" reveals how sadly blind these Religious Right pundits are about their own succumbing to the "Manufacturing of Consent". They have given it gladly, and are now rallying their troops to fill the blogosphere with their online tracts to their Nationalistic gospel from which they have cut out the very words of the proclaimer of THE gospel.

Jim Wallis came to Nashville this week....I had purchased two tickets to go (Tuesday night), May 24th. I went to a little reception in the late afternoon (which is where I took the above picture), Janet met me right afterward, and we walked to the theater where Wallis was to speak, stopping for supper along the way on 21st Avenue. Wallis told of his "first conversion" , and he said his later, bigger one was "a different story for a different time". Well, it seems that Revive Us Again is that story - and so I read a couple of chapters over the past couple of nights. ("Journeys in Faith" Series edited by Robert Raines. This series featured auto-biographies of several prominent theologians. This one was Revive Us Again; A Sojourner's Story, by Jim Wallis

The Venue:

We live in a world of powers that are not our creation, and we become determined by them when we lack the ability to recognize and name the them. A Community of Character, p.10

The church is a people on a journey who insist on living consistent with the conviction that God is the lord of history. They thus refuse to resort to violence in order to secure their survival. The fact that the first task of the church is to be itself is not a rejection of the world or a withdrawal ethic, but a reminder that Christians must serve the world on their own terms; otherwise the world would have no means to know itself as the world. A Community of Character, p.10

This seems to be exactly what has happened to the Religious Right. They have forgotten what the world is , or they have allowed themselves to be persuaded that the definition of the world is what the world says it is, instead of the church. The world will suggest "enemies" to be feared, which are other than those things it wishes to keep in place, according to the wishes of those who would define the world. "Everybody knows that....." is the realities it sets forth, and phrases such as "that's war" and "regrettable but true if you want to live in the real world".

The Church's first task is to help us gain a critical perspective on those narratives that have captured our vision and lives. By doing so, the church may well help provide a paradigm of social relations otherwise thought impossible. Community of Character, p.12

On the other hand, we have those who act as if this critical perspective is some sort of blasphemy, and that the church should "jell" well with the narratives and values and ways of the society. They select a few "evils" against which to rail, and ignore the larger issues of justice which would end up challenging the position they believe is rightfully theirs.

Hauerwas often points out how if this "critical perspective" is found, then it is then when we can see what is truly possible; not on our won, but within the story which the community embodies and lives, and takes that living in an alternate direction, toward the options which are discovered only when prevailing wisdom is exposed as incomplete or deceptive.

'America's best theologian' walks pacifist road

Hauerwas believes that Christianity, to be authentic, must take a stand. In a 1991 interview, he said: "If you ask one of the crucial theological questions--why was Jesus killed?--the answer isn't 'because God wants us to love one another.' Why in the hell would anyone kill Jesus for that? That's stupid. It's not even interesting. "Why did he get killed? Because he challenged the powers that be. The church is a political institution calling people to be an alternative to the world. That's what the cross is about."

I read this from the Hauerwas Online Unofficial Internet Archive, and it occurred to me (once again) how tired I am of the many ways in which the church in America today is failing to be the church.

'America's best theologian' walks pacifist road

As with many who are committed to nonviolence, Hauerwas has found himself asked what are his alternatives to bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. "Such questions," he replies, "assume that pacifists must have an alternative foreign policy. My only response is I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better--a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill."

A Church constituted by people who want to , try to, and together, take a crack at being like Jesus, and doing something resembling what Jesus went about trying to do, and to show how "not to" do other things which are "the world's way" (like..um.... war for any old reason; war for non-reasons; war for made up reasons. War. Period. The game for people who have already lost; already given in. Already given up the battle to "give up control" and to live with the unexpected (some of that thought is from Hauerwas, particularly from The Peaceable Kingdom, and the first 16 pages of A Community of Character (which I got from Amazon Wednesday, along with The Hauerwas Reader. I still have Yoder's The Politics of Jesus on my plate, which is fine companion/matching reading with all the Hauerwas lately (and of course, I get the impetus to pick it up and read another chapter after some further reading of Hauerwas, indebted as Hauerwas often says that he is to Yoder).

The above quote from the article on Hauerwas' pacifist theology is the prime example among many of why I find little in the churches to interest me; little to invite me; little that leads me to believe that anything I am thinking , feeling, drawn toward, feeling called to, is of any use to them. I shudder to realize that I am referring to "them". How did we get here? What am I supposed to do with this?

On Harbinger's blog, when Steve wrote about how I was capturing something of what he has been feeling, several commenters asked how we are supposed to include ones who aren't ready. I often hear people raise caution about how "we're not ready" for that level of commitment yet. We aren't THERE yet. So when? Where exactly ARE we? That seems like so much excuse and rationalization for continued vicarious living in "what church could be", or supposed to be. Everything short of actually taking it out for a spin. Of believing that we are being called NOW to BE THE CHURCH. The substance of things hoped for, and evidence of things not seen (but things that by faith we must proceed ASSUMING that WE will see. In this community we WILL SEE. We need the SEEING that we can all bring to the table with the intention of being in that story.

10 Questions for Brian McLaren

Spent a good deal of time commenting and reading comments on Harbinger tonight, where some good comments came in on the discussion on the kind of church we should be looking for (or at least it started as Mike and I saw that we felt some of the same frustrations, and hopes), and others have chimed in

Good post from Will Sampson here:

willzhead: What Will You Do?

If you know of them and their reputation this should not come as a surprise. Both of them come from the scariest element of the GOP - the College Republicans. Even in my most conservative days I never joined that group. In addition to Norquist and Abramoff, whose ethical and perhaps criminal lapses are beginning to come to light, the College Republicans have produced such notable nice guys as Lee Atwater, Ralph Reed (also part of the criminal probe against Abramoff and Norquist) and Karl Rove. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the Right-Wing Republican Revolution that brought the current Congressional and Executive Administrations into power would not have happened without those five figures, all of whom began their political involvement in college.

Steve over at Harbinger expressed an identification with some of the frustrations I expressed on Pentecost Sunday, as I sat at home once again, mad at the sad state of affairs of practically all churches in the United States (here's the post:Movable Theoblogical: Pentecost Blogging, from May 15)

Thank YOU Steve, for sounding your similar frustrations. I think I originally found your Blog via a Google Hit on Church of the Saviour, which I run fairly often to see what's out there about that community. I "blame" them for most of the frustrations I have about the church of today (and I don't suppose it's really a unique problem to our time--- just really gets me as I consider the options available for my kids, and I can't really go with that a very similar copout (just like any one will do--- "keep em' off the streets, etc.) COS brought it together in such a powerful way (the Inward and Outward Journeys); the "neccessities" of a "Peaceable People" who not only model peaceable realtions, but also are entrenched in the habits and disciplines that continuously sound the call to accountability and a constant seeking of call in the context of community; and a "community" that is FAR FAR beyond the pale imitation/representation of what passes for "community" these days (as in how even corporations speak of themselves as "communities"; the churches have done scarcely better. IN fact, many of them may well do a better job of providing a "place" of relational siginificance for their people than have the churches, who more often than not, provide simply a place, as you mention, where people go and do the routine and get up and leave, duty done. It is so rare that one finds a church where nobody wants to leave; where dialogue is just brimming over everywhere one walks and amongst several clusters of people one encoutners (it is nearly always this way when I visit the Church of the Saviour related groups when I have visited D.C.)

I often think of them, and the model of CHURCH that they have lived in their communitiy's history , as one which cries out for THOSE stories to be told via the blogs and online community tools. Their Servant Leadership School, which was an outgrowth of their "School of Christian Living" (which was a major and key structure for them when they first began in 1947), could SO use a killer blog/Web community extension, so that their kind of dialogue and philosophy of Church Structure could be more fully explored (by others outside, as well as to extend the conversations already happening amongst them by connecting their people --- and as PDA and other mobile apps continue to evolve and become more pervasive and ubiquotous, the possibilities for building on their alreadfy vast and profound library of spiritual classics, reading lists, and exercises for aspiring "Churches on Mission" are legion.

Such a thing is needed because of the great gap that we see between what the church is and what it is called to be. Such models (and others like them) are sorely needed as alternatives; as "correctives" ; as HOPE that such a thing can be embodied.

Also via The Emmaus Theory, this W quote:

The Emmaus Theory

"I made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is - I'm against that. And therefore, if the bill does that, I will veto it.'' - G.W.B.

Oh really? So pitifully blind, arrogant, and callous. "Destroying life in order to save it" is wrong George? So explain Iraq to me again? Why did we do that? Why are we DOING that? Do you not see the utter lack of consciousness of your own duplicity in that statement?

The picture accompanying this post (The Madness of King George, Monday May 23) on The Emmaus Project Blog makes this exposure of Georgie's cluelessness all the more disturbing.

Found this via The Emmaus Theory, a very cool blog that I also dig...judging from what I read today (I found that this blog was linking to me via Technorati)

What letter of resignation? - Bloggermann - MSNBC.com

The Newsweek story, McClellan said, “has done damage to our image abroad and it has done damage to the credibility of the media and Newsweek in particular. People have lost lives. This report has had serious consequences.”

Whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.

via Hauerwas Online, the UnOfficial Internet Archive, comes this article from First Things by Stanley Hauerwas on the influence of John Howard Yoder upon him, after Yoder's death in 1997.

Remembering John Howard Yoder

John changed my life, and I think he ought to be held accountable for that. Reading Yoder made me a pacifist. It did so because John taught me that nonviolence was not just another "moral issue" but constitutes the heart of our worship of a crucified messiah.

Quoted by Hauerwas From John Howard Yoder:

The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

Spell check

This section from The Politics of Jesus is relevant to this debate about the extent and nature of "proper" theologically based "political" involvement (and to the critics of "involvement", it equates to "entanglement")

[Jesus]refused to concede that those in power represent an ideal, a logically proper, or even an empirically acceptable definition of what it means to be political. He did not say (as some sectarian pacifists or some pietists might, "you can have your politics and I shall do something else more important"; he said, "your definition of polis, of the social, of the wholeness of being human socially is perverted."

How could it be otherwise? Where does one draw the line? (It is not really possible, since there is no "line"). There is, instead, I think, a fluid , flexible, interlocking and interchange. Were the resisters of Nazi Germany overly "political"? The whole question seems to me to be one of "avoiding entanglement" in the sense of adopting "wordily ways" of doing politics versus the Politics that Jesus practiced, which was basically and simply, in a nutshell, to live and proclaim the presence of the Kingdom. His contemporaries certainly considered him to be "political" in that he was considered a threat to society by both religious and secular powers.

The tradition tells us that we most choose between the individual and the social.

The "ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is for face to face personal encounters; for social structures an ethic of the 'secular vocation" is needed. Faith will restore the individual's soul, and Jesus' Strong language about love for neighbor will help with this; but then how a restored person should act will be decided on grounds to which the radical personalism of Jesus does not speak.

But Jesus doesn't know anything about radical personalism. The personhood which he proclaims as a healing, forgiving call to all is integrated into the social novelty of the healing community. This is clear from the Lucan text we have read; it would be even more clear if we could read the Jesus story with a stronger sense of the Jewishness of his context and with Aunts ringing in our ears. The more we learn about the Jewishness of Jesus (from archeology and the new textual finds, as well as from growing respect for rabbinical studies on the part of Christian theologians), the more evident it becomes that he could not have been perceived by his contemporaries otherwise than as we here have portrayed him. in fact, to be fully honest we must turn the point around: the idea of Jesus as an individualist or a teacher of radical personalism, could arise only in the (Protestant, post Pietist, rationalist) context that it did; that is, in a context which, if not intentionally anti-Semitic, was at least sweepingly a-Semitic, stranger to the Jewish Jesus.
We could extend the list of traditional antimonies of which we must repent if we are to understand. Tradition tells us to choose between respect for persons and participation in the movement of history; Jesus refuses because the movement of history is personal. Between the absolute agape which lets itself be crucified and effectiveness (which it is assumed will need to be violent), the resurrection forbids us to choose, for in the light of resurrection crucified agape is not folly (as it seems to the Hellenizers to be) and weakness (as the Judaizers believe) but the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor. 1:22-25)

Pastor John comments on the appalling lack of focus on "life" as it SHOULD be defined: that is, as an issue and a reality that is above and beyond national interests. The justifications we hear about how and why this war was "justified" are completely absent of considerations for the losses of life that are non-American. This is not , as Pastor Wright says, a "culture of life". Life is the value which national interests have demoted down the list of priorities, and its been that way with empires for eons of human history. The United States is no different. Indeed, with modern technology, and media, and "Manufactured Consent" , the destruction and death unleashed is more horrendous than that of older more infamous despotic empires.

Pastor John Wright

Here again is basically an admission that policy, not intelligence, drove the the Bush decision to invade Iraq. Intelligence was then shaped around the obvious "facts" and "history" to provide a public relations rationale for the war. This is exactly the same perspective as given by the British memo released last weekend.

I think what is most disturbing to me is that both the author of the article and Feith can only think in terms of the impact of the war on the United States. The decimation of Iraq and the Iraqi people does not even appear on the moral horizon. We mustn't forget that the decimation of the Iraqi people continues. This is not the "Culture of Life" that John Paul II talked about, but rather, the "Culture of Death."

I just installed wbloggar4, but it seems to have a problem with MT 316, or at least my installation. After filling in my www.theoblogical.org and /movtyp/mt-xmlrpc.cgi and sending my name and password, I get:

w.bloggar - 1072896659

Unable to parse the XML response. Parser Reason: Invalid at the top level of the document. I am trying to connect to an MT blog (MT 3.16)

I like the interface. I like the spell check. It works well with Wordpress 1.51. What's wrong with the Movable Type connection?

vai ICTHUS, the faculty at Calvin College sent an open letter to Bush, expressing their copncerns over this "Christian" President's policies they consider to be antithetical to thier concept of the faith.

This is the kind of speaking up and admonition with which this administration needs to be bombarded, to say in no uncertain terms that there is a HUGE GAPING GAP between what is "Christian" and what this administration is carrying out.

ICTHUS: Calvin College Faculty to George Bush - NO

we see conflicts between our understanding of what Christians are called to do and many of the policies of your administration.

As Christians we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort. We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq.

As Christians we are called to lift up the hungry and impoverished. We believe your administration has taken actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor.

As Christians we are called to actions characterized by love, gentleness, and concern for the most vulnerable among us. We believe your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees.

As Christians we are called to be caretakers of God's good creation. We believe your environmental policies have harmed creation and have not promoted long-term stewardship of our natural environment.

The Nation | Blog | The Online Beat | Bill Moyers Fights Back | John Nichols

"Hear me," Moyers said, "An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight -- ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too."

Click here to read the speech in its entirety.

A video of Bill Moyer's speech is available at http://www.freepress.net/conference/audio05/freepress-closing40515.mov

An audio recording can be downloaded at http://www.freepress.net/conference/audio05/moyers.mp3

(John Nichols is a co-founder of Free Press, the national media reform network that organized the National Conference on Media Reform.)

More juicy morsels from Hauerwas' The Peaceable Kingdom:

we cannot do that which promises "results" when the means are unjust.

RESULTS. That which "works". The "real world". These kinds of statements, especially the last one, give a good indication of just the kind of distinction the Christian story has made between "the world" and "The Kingdom of God". A whole new way of thinking (actually an ancient way, but a revolutionary new one in opposition to the much newer "tradtions" and realities of our age.

Christian social ethics, therefore, is not best written from the perspective of the Secretary of State or the President, but from those who are subject to such people

This is why "secular" works such as Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and Chomsky's (and Herman's) Manufacturing Consent are important bits of history and serve to inform us about the possible distortions to which we have been subjected as "trusting subjects" of our governing powers, our news organizations, and our educational institutions. Our Christian story should (and this is often NOT the case), but SHOULD be an apriori preparation of our minds to see conflicts between the way we are taught to view reality and "the way it is" by the world and the powers that be, and the "realities" for which our narratives in the Christian tradition have forewarned us about, and , if the Church is doing its job, have prepared us to offer an alternative way of viewing this world.

Not that "proportionality" is even a Christian consideration, (since it is not a matter of 'an eye for an eye' for the Christian, but rather a putting to an end the cycle of violence by refusing to respond in kind; by refusing to buy into the sickeness of the world. Somehow, the ones who insist on the "literal obedience" to the "literal words" can easily set aside Jesus' most direct words on "love your enemies" and "do not return evil for evil".)

But even on the terms of normal "international standards of ethics", Western national powers, and the U.S. in particular, seem to be able to throw off this "burden of proof" and "standard of the worldwide community" with amazing ease of justification and rationalization.

Howard Zinn | The Scourge of Nationalism | June 2005 issue

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Via Jesus Politics

At the same time, I also hold them in my prayers (since I am a Christian and must not will the failure and continued evil of the ones who perpetuate that evil). This statement by Scalia (quoted in the linked article by Howard Zinn) is one which sickens me. What is sickening is not that this statement is, on its surface, true, but that it also justifies the visting of death upon OTHERS, which is not the world according to the Kingdom of God.

Howard Zinn | The Scourge of Nationalism | June 2005 issue

A Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, told an audience at the University of Chicago Divinity School, speaking of capital punishment: "For the believing Christian, death is no big deal."

Zinn, writing on the same theme of that in his classic A People's History of the United States, warns of the ultimate hubris that is increasing among "patriots" in this radical right administration. I don't even think this crew deserves a title as lofty as "Right-wing". They are corrupt, power-hungry, arrogant fools. They think nothing of simply changing the rules when they happen to stand in the way of their agenda.

Hauerwas clearly spells out a rebuttal to the ones (even his fans) who want to criticize the political efforts of some Christians to speak the truth to power, and then use Hauerwas' writings to defend that view. LIke Scripture itself, Hauerwas is practically impossible to summarize. The whole work must be taken into account, as does the Community from which it springs. Exhibit A:

Calling for the Church is NOT a formula for a withdrawal ethic; nor is it a self-rigtheous attempt to flee from the world's problems; rather, it is a call for the church to be a community which tries to develop the resources to standwithin the world witnessing to the peaceable kingdom and thus rightly understanding the world. The gospel is a political gospel. Christians are engaged in politics, but it is a politics of the kingdom that reveals the insufficiency of all politics based on coercion and falsehood and finds the true source of power in servanthood rather than dominion.

Leave it to the Media (and Fox in particular, who was hammering hard on this one). The "KOran flushing" incident is being reported as having been "bad reporting"; but , not excatly, as Juan Cole explains.

Informed Comment

The Pentagon has claimed that the incident did not occur. Although the corporate media are now reporting that Newsweek had "backed off" the report, that isn't true.

Newsweek explains that in response to Pentagon queries,

"On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report."

Isikoff's source, in other words, stands by his report of t