Recently in PeaceChurch Category

Check this out from Pastor John Wright, on the continued rolling of deception to build up support for the empire's never-ending buildup toward war to achive their goals.

Pastor John Wright

It is Holy Week, but I have to alert readers to continued distortion of news material in the US press -- or at least inform you of contradictory reports. Given the distortions of material that led to selling the Iraq War, similar material is now being sown. I don't know all the data, but poll today suggests that 64% of Americans support an air attack on Iran to prevent their "development of nuclear weapons." Previous comments from the week before suggest that the Bush regime is strongly considering using nuclear weapons in the attack. God forgive us all.

But today a report is making it out to the news through the State Department. If one reads closely, one sees how the state department spins in an alarmist manner -- and how the press mindlessly repeats the State Department line -- by extracting in a distorting way what the Iranian press conference actually said.

from Juan Cole: (also via Pastor John in the same post)

Despite all the sloppy and inaccurate headlines about Iran "going nuclear," the fact is that all President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday was that it had enriched uranium to a measely 3.5 percent, using a bank of 180 centrifuges hooked up so that they "cascade."

The ability to slightly enrich uranium is not the same as the ability to build a bomb. For the latter, you need at least 80% enrichment, which in turn would require about 16,000 small centrifuges hooked up to cascade. Iran does not have 16,000 centrifuges. It seems to have 180. Iran is a good ten years away from having a bomb, and since its leaders, including Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is Islamically immoral, you have to wonder if they will ever have a bomb.

The evil in this administration, leading us ever closer to the prospect of nuclear confrontation, or further motivating those who would devise such in secret, has been allowed to grow relatively unchecked. The hubris of these guys is simply horrifying.

via jesus Politics, On this day before the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, this bit of polling turns my stomach

Go to church, back the war - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Overall, 45 percent of Protestants and 47 percent of "other Christians" thought the war was a mistake. The figure was 52 percent among Catholics, 58 percent among other religions and 62 percent among those who had no religion.

Frequency of church attendance also held sway. Overall, among those who never went to church, 62 percent said the war was a mistake. Among those who attended services once a week, the figure was 44 percent.

Republican churchgoers were the most supportive. Among those who attended services once a week, 16 percent thought the war was a mistake. The figure was 26 percent among Republicans who never attended church.
Among Democrats, 79 percent who attended church weekly said the conflict was a mistake; the figure was 81 percent among those who never attended services.

The third paragraph shows how indcotrination actually changes the "unchurched", "Neutral" opinion (kin dof like a control group). It illustrates how civil religion has replaced the teachings of Jesus ( the practicioners of this civil religion would say "clarifies" and "read Jesus correctly", which seems to be an abandoning of the "the Bible says what it says and means what it means" kind of clarity that they say is used in backing their theology, EXCEPT of course where it comes into conflict with "the real world" (which is not the world as God has proclaimed as the end and goal of history, in the Kingdom of God, but the world as defined by the powers; the empire)

Not that "polling opinions" and "stances" is what makes for faithfulness in churches. For many Christians of Democratic persuasion, opposition to Bush may easily fail to move beyond joining the political debate. In fact , it often starts and stops there.

I feel like the blame is to be found not only in the abandonment of the Jesus story as authoritative, but also in the failure to form an alternative polis; a people set apart, so that the church no longer represents an intentional community resisting the allures and the lies of culture and its ideologies (its theologies; irregardless of their claim to be "universal, non-denominational, or religion-free") Without the formative structures and habits, the "opinions" coming from churchgoers, left and right, fail to move beyond partisan politics.

Good post from AKMA:

AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Something, sometime, will make clear just how grim, how cynical, how exploitative and degraded the U.S. government’s policies have become. Evidently tens of thousands of Iraqi civilan deaths haven’t done it. Thousands of U.S. military deaths haven’t done it.

Further reflections from Tom Fox on the occasion of our remembering that for which he ended up giving his life.

Waiting In the Light: The Force of War and the Force of Peace? The Same Force Moving in the Opposite Direction?

Would it be possible to bring about the Peaceable Realm and still keep our unique modes of worship? Would it be possible to turn enough swords into plowshares to at least create the beginning of an energy reversal away from the false gods of nation, flag and ideology (gods who owe their allegiance to Satan) and towards the one true God of the Cosmos?

The negative mirror image of war can be reversed and begin to be seen as the true image of peace but it will take many, many people being willing “to turn, turn, turn till by turning, turning we come round right” (from the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts”). Only then would our world-view direct all our energy towards God and none towards Satan.

Amen Tom. It is heartening to us here that you are in the prescence of the Prince of Peace now, and know now the full truth of the many truths you glimpsed then.

We were saddened to learn that Tom Fox was confirmed dead this week. A church member at the church I attended this morning lifted this up in the prayer time, having been a classmate of Tom in college. This is from the last post on Tom's blog:

Waiting In the Light

“The ongoing difficulties faced by Fallujans are so great that words fail to properly express it.” Words from a cleric in Fallujah as he tried to explain the litany of ills that continue to afflict his city one year after the U.S.-led assault took place.

The twisted religion of Blair and Bush - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Both Judaism and Islam suffer from being religions that are synonymous with the construction of states and political power. This was recognized within Judaism by a constant tension between the prophets and the kings, with the former always calling the latter back to a true righteousness untouched by the corruption of power and avarice. Islam had a not dissimilar distinction, with the imams often limiting the political ambit of the caliphs, directing them to a properly configured vision of an Islamic polity. It is disastrous that both of these critical religious legacies have been lost to a secular politics that now has no limits

These days seem rare anymore.

Nowadays, in camps both left and right, the idea of a "City of God' is flagged as theocracy, and in its place, the "empty shrine" (as William Cavanuagh puts it) is lifted up as the place where some sort of "gentleman's agreement" is etched in the consciousness of a nation of people so that distinctions melt into a "freedom of conscience ---which the Southern Baptistsnow leadership which authoritatively has moved in to define even more specifically some "boundaries" for that "indvidual freedom" (they're quite the mess....kind of enslaved in two layers of nationalism and fundamentalism, both of which align them to an ideology such as that of the neocons).

The life and person of Christ is given back seat to the "public" agreement that Jesus was really talkling about a "peace" that we ourselves must "protect". But obviously (at least for me and many others), there is a bit of self-deception and mass hysteria in play that makes it possible to achieve the kind of self-certainty and blind allegiance exhibited by the Religious Right. The self-deception comes in accepting a cultural, nationalistic Jesus that must "censor" the words that ironically are the same words the fundamentalist, nationalistic churches refuse to take literally alongside all the other places where they insist that Jesus MUST be taken literally (resulting in some confusion on what it means to consider Jesus at all)

The following is from a conversation on a Christianity Today blog where Brian McLaren explains how he is certainly Biblical in his thinking, but that "being Biblical" doesn't always jell with the "Biblical-ness" of those who often offer the public prounouncements of what constitutes "Biblical", particularly in America.

Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question 4: McLaren's Response

Please be assured that as a pastor and as someone who loves and seeks to follow the Bible, I am aware of Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and related texts. Believe me, I have read them and prayerfully pondered them, and have read extensively on all the many sides of the issue. I understand that for many people, these verses end all dialogue and people like me must seem horribly stupid not to see what’s there so clearly to them. I wish they could understand that some of us encounter additional levels of complexity when we try honestly and faithfully to face these texts.

I agree with the above, and I also want to , and often have said to my more conservative Biblical friends that it seems "rather clear" to me that Jesus said "Love your enemies". They are often all too willing to "contextualize" and "qualify" on such sayings of Jesus, and remain quite unwilling to do so on their favorite prooftexts, unless it leads them to be able to affirm the pre-determined dogmas. I myself tend to START from the sayings of Jesus and the Gospels, and interpret the rest of Scripture from those "dogmas"; those ESSENTIALS. There is no Leviticus over Jesus for me; there's rather a reading of Leviticus in the context of a history that culminates and finds its center in Jesus as God's proclamation of his direction and lorship of history.

Here's an excellent post by Will Sampson (I quote the two closing paragraphs)

willzhead: Coretta and Sam

And so, the death of Coretta Scott King, a beautiful person and a valiant fighter for people's rights, seems to ring in the change that has happened in our culture. Samuel Alito, while "pro-life", does not believe that life should include equal voting rights for minorities or privacy from intrusion by government interests. It seems to me, unfortunately, that this is the lesson of power. It is a futile pursuit, bound to disappoint. If you try to change culture through force you will always lose; there will always be someone more powerful who has different ideas about how people should act.

This is the strength of the Christian message. Rather than following someone who commanded great armies or was a captain of industry, many of us follow one who said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." It is my hope that continued legislative losses will help the Church abandon her pursuit of power and bring her back to the radical message of Jesus. If we do that, then maybe we can start making some real change.

Amen , Will!

Eric linked to here (which I just saw again on their RSS feed) and decided to duplicate the link. I agree with Eric. Yes, Read:
Wayward Christian Soldiers - New York Times

What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

A most excellent post over at The Mundane Life of Thunder Jones: On Still Not Getting It

I think the reason is that the Bush administration prefers not to view their opponents as fellow humans who are capable of reason, discourse, and peaceful coexistence. It makes slaughter a more sensible option.

By refusing conversation, the Bush administration is continuing the horrific strategy of the Truman adminstration and requiring complete surrender (or in this case annihilation). We know how Truman got his complete surrender. His bomb killed 140,000+ people (for those keeping score, that's 50x the death toll of 9/11). What will Bush's victory cost in human lives? We know that 4 al Qaeda leaders are worth the deaths of 13 women and children

On that last note, I heard a news header at the top of the news: The Bombing in Pakistan now being called a WIN for the war on terror. Yeah. A Win. That's all that matters. Right. "That's war".

It's just not Jesus.

via Jesus Politics:

Body and Soul: No. No. No.

Peace activists are protesting plans for a military flyover at the city's annual Martin Luther King Jr. march, saying the gesture runs counter to the nonviolent beliefs of the civil rights leader.

The city's MLK Commission said the flyover by two fighter jets from Randolph Air Force Base is meant to be patriotic and an honor to King in a city with a strong military presence.

This reminds me of the veneration Pope John Paul got from "Pro-Life" people when he died. They totally ignore how he vehemently opposed and criticized the Iraq war. The Pope had a few thngs to say about the things that represent "the culture of death", a phrase which the Religious Right adoptedf and proceeded to seriously truncate it d down to abortion and euthanasia only. IN between birth and death is outside the bounds somehow. Now we have this "Civic Praise" that is so clueless as to thnk they are "honoring" MLK with a display that is inappropriate. But the plroblem of war is never considered as such by the ones who assume it as a way of life.

I am often sickened by the way the media will play up veneration and yet ignore the very things which caused even the Democratic/LBJ establishment to turn against King: the energies and emphasis he placed upon the "further works of reconcilation" to which he turned his attention after the voting Rights act of 1965: poverty and war. I have often felt that it was these latter stages that brought about the plot and the action to have him killed. He was in the midst of planning a Poor People's march, and he had been an outspoken critic of the Vietnam war. Those two were economic dynamite; challenges to savage capitalism, and it cost him his life.

Informed Comment

Concern to save US troops from creeping cynicism must be paramount:

' I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. '

In Iraq, too, virtually "none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved." Not weapons of mass destruction, not international terrorism, not Swedish style democracy, not social justice, are actually on the agenda of the present administration.

Cole concludes:

Note that Martin recognized love as the principle that all the great religions saw as the "supreme unifying principle of life," including Islam. His religious universalism might be a starting point for Americans to rethink the Islamophobia that has become so widespread.

We cannot in any simplistic way extract a template from Martin's sermon that we can apply to Iraq today. We can, however, explore his wisdom for inspiration in how to go foward, end the quagmire, and make amends for the horrors of the way we have waged this illegal war of choice.

The whole article is worth the read. It said many of the thngs I hope were said in at least some siginificant number of American Churches yesterday. I ended up visiting my parent's First Baptist Church of X , a true mega-church in the Southern Baptist Convention, and so any mention of MLK was , unsurprisingly, absent. But Martin's vision for "the end" , whish was "reconciliation", is the key point here. The insnaity of settling differences through widespread death to those unlucky enough to live in the "selected" bombing raid areas --- the outrage MLK expressed in 1967 in his Vietnam speech, is fitting to our country's leaders cholice for war today. Only a twisted culture would consider this approach to be the "way of reconciliation". Our culture, and the apostate churches who theologically justify such madness, give their allegiance instead to the "way things are" according to our culture and its "technologies of desire", not to be "the people of God" into which God calls us. This is the blockage that keeps these churches from hearing the teachings of the Holy Spirit, which is a love that transforms and transforms. We can't do that in an isolated pocket of spiritual segregation, where "spirtual matters" are segregated from the dire need for the gospel of peace and reconciliation; the Kingdom which Jesus procalimed.

Larry Hollon blogs from the Phillipines where he is with Methodist leaders, and the tales sound eerily reminiscent of Central America 20 years ago.

Perspectives

Manila--Yesterday was a long, hard day. After hearing one story after another of murder and mayhem the mind reaches a shut down. It can take in no more.

The stories are chilling.

I do not disagree with the premise of Radical Orthodoxy that there is no "natural" prediliction to truth in the world, but that all truth, and the preconditions which enable truth to be received, are from God. With Augustine, the Radical Orthodoxy credo is that "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in [God]".

That is why I have to maintain that there are those not overtly religious in their speech, nor attached to any specific overtly Christian community, that have shown an ability to respond to truth in this matter of war. They are outraged that governments consisting of a select elite have so dominated the ordering of things in terms of who gets the benefit of the vast resources, and how they are gotten, and how they are distributed. One might argue that this is simply a "radical" stance that tends to take the "contrare" position against the government. But it is also usually the case that those who characterize the dissident in this way are those who see the need to protect the machinery of the status quo, having been convinced themselves of the "neccessary" relationships of faith, patriotism, proclamation of capitalism as the Lord of History (disguised as God).

I suspect that there is a movement of the Holy Spirit "amongst the gentiles", albeit one lacking in an ecclesiology and many other elements that would accompany a fully "funded" resistance (and this is also the case in some activist churches, where they do put forth a rather robust confession and ecclesiology, and yet provide very few of the "technologies" of redirection of desire (to borrow once again from Bell's argument).

Here is a case in point, in an article by Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

After the War

Public opinion polls now show the country decisively against the war and the Bush Administration. The harsh realities have become visible. The troops will have to come home.

And while we work with increased determination to make this happen, should we not think beyond this war? Should we begin to think, even before this shameful war is over, about ending our addiction to massive violence and instead using the enormous wealth of our country for human needs? That is, should we begin to speak about ending war—not just this war or that war, but war itself? Perhaps the time has come to bring an end to war, and turn the human race onto a path of health and healing.

A group of internationally known figures, celebrated both for their talent and their dedication to human rights (Gino Strada, Paul Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gordimer, Eduardo Galeano, and others), will soon launch a worldwide campaign to enlist tens of millions of people in a movement for the renunciation of war, hoping to reach the point where governments, facing popular resistance, will find it difficult or impossible to wage war.

There is a persistent argument against such a possibility, which I have heard from people on all parts of the political spectrum: We will never do away with war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling counter to that claim is in history: We don’t find people spontaneously rushing to make war on others. What we find, rather, is that governments must make the most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war. They must entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out to young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is an opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those enticements don’t work, governments must use coercion: They must conscript young people, force them into military service, threaten them with prison if they do not comply.

This is a message that SHOULD be in the mix of the church's message, and yet , sadly, is heard more often in "Peace with Justice" groups than in churches. The poverty of the incomplete "systems" of resistance (in many cases, a system of theological justifications for affirming capitalism and national violence as sanctioned by a God of a "reasonable" faith); the absence of an outcry against the injustices of wholesale "violence in the name of justice" to be visited upon innocents who happen to be the subjects of a nation which finds itself in the crosshairs of our nation's "freedom and liberty" police (code words for the overthrow of a group which stands in the way of what our nation's leaders have deemed progress and thus "neccessary for our security") ----this woefully insufficient apparatus our American churches have constructed has made it neccessary for this lacking to burst out of the seams of the church that refused to respond and compelled the unchurched to take up the cause.

It still remains that these "secular" movements (albeit actually "religious" and theological ) are inadequate in that they adress only a small dimension (despite the gravity of the issues of war and peace) of the entire polis/society/structures for fullscale resistance and "equipping of the people of God". The churches that do a better job of addressing the Inward Journey are often light or negelctful of the social and community issues and implications and what I would consider to be the "telos" of the Inward Journey: to immerse themselves in a formative community in which the discernment of call is possible, and that the intersections of call and particular needs in the world become connected.

More from the article on war by Zinn:

War, I decided, creates, insidiously, a common morality for all sides. It poisons everyone who is engaged in it, however different they are in many ways, turns them into killers and torturers, as we are seeing now. It pretends to be concerned with toppling tyrants, and may in fact do so, but the people it kills are the victims of the tyrants. It appears to cleanse the world of evil, but that does not last, because its very nature spawns more evil. Wars, like violence in general, I concluded, is a drug. It gives a quick high, the thrill of victory, but that wears off and then comes despair.

Zinn concludes with a hopeful note of "they won't be able to deceive us again". I'm not so sure. ("us" being the nation as a whole) I expect it to continue , just as it has for centuries of Empires dominating. It seems presumptious to believe that our era is to be the one where the tide will be turned, and tyrants be absolutely defeated. As defeated as they already are, they continue to wreak havok. I remain unsure about how to articulate our role in terms of the eschaton. How much of that "reality" shows up as "observable defeat?" I know that the Christian community does not make conclusions based on conventional notions of "observable", but these are questions that were probably asked by God's people during their slavery in Egypt, and in the wilderness. I fluctuate on this, and conclude that YES, there is a place and a truth to seeing BEYOND the "observable history" to the end of history, and there IS an expectation of the transfomation of the observable. And there is the time to WAIT.

via Jesus Politics

Abortion issue & Schaeffer influence pushed evangelicals to engagement, Land says - (BP)

“I think that Southern Baptists are the most pro-life denomination at the rank-and-file level,” Land said.

HOGWASH. Bullshit. How do they get off limiting LIFE to this one issue. I am NOT pro-abortion, and not "Pro-Choice". That's because human life is sacred. It's more than a career move, or a matter of convenience. Which is exactly why war is wrong. It is a justification based on political, economic, power-grabbing issues, and justified through a "contextual revision" of history to suit the ones making the declaration of what "history" has taught us, and WHAT that history is. When it all comes down to it, nations, and particularly OUR nation, has made this kind of a cold, calculated decision for the lives of others as if they are basically NULL in value (because in a basically self-centered, ethnocentric, economic class-centric worldview, this is what constitutes 'morality'. And so the nation's people succumb to the mythology of what the state shapes its institutions to advance, and respond to theat shaping of desires in severely distorted ways. And so we often hear "That's war". "Nothing else really works". Use that same lens on Jesus, and guess what? Jesus' way "didn't work"

"Pro-life". Not on your life, Land. The Southern Baptists actually tip the scales in the direction of Pro-death; pro-war, pro-capital punishment, pro-gun, pro-USA (the leading practicioner of "savage capitalism" (another "Bell-ism" which he drew from Franz Hinkelammert).....the lines of "oppostion" seem drawn not on the measure of LIFE, but of what opponents are NOT (liberals supportr women's rights, whcih gets associated with "a woman's right to choose, and then liberals oppose war and capital punishment and criticize America at a rate far higher than do "conservatives", so they defer to the death-dealing options on those counts. The Religious Right praised John Paul II on his Pro-life stance, but they describe ONLY his stance against abortion, and omit how his pro-life sense encompassed ALL of life. (I am interested to see the treatment of this on the second episode of the TV movie that commences tomorrow night ---I'll have to see to gettting that recorded so I can see it)

Pro-life is becoming a phrase that I am growing tired of hearing abused and distorted so blindly. NOt only is pro-life a matter of NON-death, but is also geared toward "abundant life"; of a vision for life and community as God intends for his creation, and to which the church is called to advance and BE in the eyes of the world.

O'Reilly: "Every company in America should be o ... [Media Matters]

O'REILLY: What's happened is frightening. A legal assault by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] combined with the media that blatantly promotes secularism has succeeded in convincing some Americans that the words 'Merry Christmas' are inappropriate while celebrating the national holiday of Christmas.

This, of course, is nuts. Anyone offended by the words 'Merry Christmas' has problems not even St. Nicholas could solve.

Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable; more than enough reason for businesses to be screaming Merry Christmas.

Here's the
Video provided by Media Matters

Now there's a novel idea (really, not so novel....it's been almost implied for eons) : that Jesus was born in order to generate business. There's the gospel according to O'Reilly, and the "apostles" of the airwaves that pollute Christian Faith with unabashed consumerism/Americanism/free-marketism.

It's scary how easily it seems to be assumed that what the state syas it is doing, it is actually achieving. The "larger purpose"; the long-range, "real-world" matters are being taken care of by the magistrate, and it has become in our political climate

Only with the emergence of nation states, according to Giddens, are states circumscribed by borders, known lines demarcating the exclusive domain of sovereign power, especially its monopoly over the means of violence. Attempts to consolidate territory and assert sovereign control often brought about violent conflict. More importantly, borders in the nation state system include the assumption of a 'state of nature' existing between states which increases the possibility of war. Our fellow citizens are limited to all those presently living Britons, Americans, Germans, etc. The dominance of state soteriology has made it perfectly reasonable to drop cluster bombs on 'foreign' villages, and perfectly unreasonable to dispute 'religious' matters in public

Cavanuagh, Theopolitical Imagination, p. 43

There seems to be virtually no willingness to truly consider the lives of other people in other lands. All is presented to us as "neccessary for our security". "Security" is posed to us in terms of force, in terms of economics (another form of "force" or coercion), and in terms of "the way the world works". Violence is often justified as "this is the only language they understand" (which , when you look at it, seems to be proving that point about not the recipients of that violence, but of the ones using that justification.)

A simple "exchange program" where American families are transplanted into Iraq would dispel the myth of "over there" and that "behind the scenes" activity really doesn't affect us. A simple placing of "our own kind" in the jeopardy under which we have placed thousands of Iraqis would shed some light on just how much insanity we have consented to via our complicity (as a nation, and sadly, as a church).

William Cavanaugh, in Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism(TI):

Clearly Christians have to an alarming degree adopted the salvatio mythos of the state as their own, and submitted to the state's practices of binding. We submit to these practices, even give our bodies up for war, in the hope that the peace and unity promised by the state will be delivered. What I have tried to show is that the state mythos and state religio are distortions of our true hope, and that the Christian tradition provides resources for resistance.

This speaks to me this morning as I get hit early on with some samples of thecomplete adoption of the state mythos of salvation through violence. I was confronted with the French response to the youth violence as some sort of challenge to what I can only surmise is "you criticize America and therefore you must adore France, those pussies" kind of thinking. I'm not even a French citizen. In terms of nationality , I am an American citizen (which by contrast means NOTHING up against my citizenship in a People of God), and so I am attached to the "peoplehood" of this nationality as opposed to others, and so I can only compare the ways in which the "assurances" of our state as such today with the "promises" of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus.

The citizenship in the Kingdom of Godt so completely obliterates all other loyalties that any calling to account for national actions must appear as hate to those who can see no other loyalty ( despite claims that they do) , and yet that "other loyalty" is but the mythos of the state retrofitted into an emasculated gospel; a gospel devoid of resurrection, which makes it no gospel at all.

Sojo mail today contained this link and quoted this portion:

[Bishopslist] A Prayer from Bishop Will Willimon

George had an Alabama boyhood, an Alabama youth, and Alabama dreams. I pray for his mother, for his family and friends, his church, and all those for whom his death means not only the ending of his dreams, but the beginning of their lifetime of grief and loss. Lord, help us to feel some measure of their pain. Save us from offering cheap consolation or patriotic platitudes in the face of their loss. Instill in our hard hearts a determination to work with You for a government in which we shall make peace as quickly and resourcefully as we make war, a country that loves Your righteousness and justice more than our security and power.

Carlos quoted from the Nov.1 issue of Ron Sider's ePistle

What is most troubling is that the people who talk about Jesus the most are the ones who seem most willing to abandon his teachings and opt for a politics of pragmatism.

When I read stuff like this (Bush's statement, not the viewpoints of the author of this source, although I would have some arguments with his typical separation of church and state argument), I just marvel at how people on the right miss the irony and hyporcisy of it

The Democratic Daily Blog � Blog Archive � Our Holy-Roller-in-Chief

Last week in an address before the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush once again wrongly and willfully conflated Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction were found, with 9/11, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. In doing so, he decried the ‘’evil” of terrorists who misuse religion.

‘’This ideology is very different from the religion of Islam,” Bush said. ‘’This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency of totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”

Bush added, ‘’Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.”

The bolded area is what I mean. Huh? And this is not what we are doing HOW? It's EXACTLY what Iraq is about. EXACTLY. What a bold faced deceiver. What a misuer of religion. And then there's Bush's "Sometimes you got to step aside from religion when you've got a job to do". That's not just "an unfortunate use of words" as some on the right have said in order to obscure the light this sheds on Bush's depth of spirituality. This points to a shallow, secularist view of "religion" as a "useful tool" to get what you want.

Now we learn this weekend that lawmakers are now pushing for further cuts in programs for the poor in ordser to defray the cost of Katrina relief. All the while, tax cuts for millionaires are being increased from 100,000 dollars to 120, 000. Shameful. Hypocritical. EVIL. But then, what else can we expect from this crew? They've already shown us their absolute belief in the spreading of EMPIRE.

It is a day when so many in our churches will feel compelled to address somehow the topic of the attack four years ago. I did not go anywhere today. I was up super late, got up late, had some physical difficulties that took even more time this morning, and also, hidden away in all of those "external reasons" for not going to church , there is the urge I had to stay away today. So frustrated am I at the seeming inability, unwillingness, or refusal to acknowledge the truth of the cross, that the church in America exhibits today, that I am apalled and embarassed.

The call of the Christian to "accept" death rather than "deal death" , for whatever "just cause" (and the "just" definition is , in itself, inaccurate if one includes all the people of the world; all those silently considered as "expendable" such that we do not acknowledge that our country deals in thew currency of the "culture of death", and those who seem fond of using that term are themselves quick to defend the acceptance of a nation-state's taking upon itself the mantle of "inifinte justice" (a name they first ascribed and then quickly withdrew under immediate protest, but telling in ithat this was the intiial idea that leapt forth as a name for our "mission" after 9/11.

That this has not been an occasion for churches (except for those who are , well, the exception) to speak the truth about war and the idea that "justice" is ours to impose, is an opportunity lost. It is a lost opportunity; a call that has gone unheeded to be a light to the nations (that is, the church is that light, not "our nation" among the others who "do not see the light as we do"). There will be more in the days ahead on this, but I am not of a mind or have no urge to write. I simply long for an experience of having a community to which I can do nothing else but "be there" and to anticipate being confronted with truth. From where does such a people and such a time to come?

This post from James KA Smith on the distorrted priorities of "police" protection.

Fors Clavigera: Above All, Save the Merchandise

In the face of al-Quaeda's attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, the White House's admonition was clear: "Shop." The one thing the enemy won't destroy is our freedom to go the mall.

And now, in the wake of a national tragedy, we find a similarly ridiculous focus on the market and merchandise.

Walmart, stolen cars. "Precious" property placed over the danger to human lives as people are killed and remain in danger in the streets of New Orleans

This post, The Gutless Pacifist: Hiroshima and Nagasaki has a comment by Cory that has this phrase in it:

the price is never too high for other people to pay

I think of this often when I hear people use that phrase "paying the price"; when I hear Bush say it , and realizing that not only does he not qualify on the basis of milatary heroism (as contradictory as that term often is), nor , more importantly, on the basis of who we are "causing" to "pay that price". And the "benefits" we reap is that "way of life" which I have sickened of hearing. Bush implored us to "not let the terrorists win" by "shopping , going on vacations". That's indicative of "our way of life". Our vacations and shopping for the lives of Iraqis, and the victims of the conflict our government has stirred.

To borrow from Ronald Reagan's famous quip: "There you go again"

James KA Smith has some kind of bone to pick with Sojourners. I hate to see it, since everything else Jamie says I seem to be in total agreement, and even become convinced of a few things. But in the following quote from an absolutely outstanding article, I wonder where he's coming from.

RCA: Perspectives: As We See It: How to Get Your Hands Dirty

On the other hand, "progressive," Sojourners-type activists disparage the ecclesial- centric politics of Stanley Hauerwas and others as "purist" and "quietist"--as if committing to the church as polis is a way of staying "clean." On the matter of "dirty hands," then, Sojourners' Jim Wallis and National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard are on the same continuum: both think that getting one's hands dirty means getting into bed with the state. (I promise not to run with the metaphor.)

I haven't heard any of that, and if I did, why are they being classified as "Sojourners-types"? Actually, Sojourners has quite an extensive ecclesiology, one which sounds a lot like what Smith himself is involved with as he describes in his article on the "Emergent Church as bourgeios" to which I linked on Saturday.

And then, Smith says: "both [Jim Wallis and Ted Haggard] think that getting one's hands dirty means getting into bed with the state."

Once again, I don't hear Wallis EVER advicating violence. The closes he ever comes is when he advocates a "police" approach to fighting terrorism (which is aslo what Hauerwas seems to suggest in his post 9/11 talks as well.) So, I say, "there you go again".

(Smith's blog post : Jim Wallis: Constaninian of the Left? is the background for this, from which I have challenged that accusation, or question, or "rhetorical" device; whatever it is, it seemed to me at the time to be a bit too biting for one who seems to believe in the types of works of mercy that with which Wallis and Sojourners have been involved and spearheaded and organized over the years. The worst tone of that article was his accusation "Wallis has ended up just a humanist".

The editor of Zion's Herald, whose blog I just found via Untied Methodist (no, not a typo), describes some of the hate email he got after he sent an article to an email list of Zion's Herald

FaithWriter

a quote from one:

"You people make me sick, you do not represent God, you only represent yourself. I wonder how many tears God has shed because you all are too lazy to do what is right . . . How embarrassing you and your fellow so-called Christians are to the United States of America."

How sad that somoene on a list sent to church folks can make such a statement that so blatantly reveals such a fundamental missing of the entire point: Christians are to be concerned about not being an embarassment to God, and the question of whether we are emabarassing to "the United States of America" is an insult to faith. The loyalty to a global faith which is beyond nationality is one which reduces to absolute insiginificance any thought of what "America" thinks of us. An "America" that considers itself above those loyalties is not even an America I want.

BTW, the article had to do with the Iraq war and what to do AFTER the mistake has been made. But to suggest that this was a mistake (a bit of an understatement) is taken to be such a "sacrilige"; which offends me becuase "scaralige" is to defame God. Criticizing "America" is not on the same level. But this is the abaondoning of the truth that nationalism represents. The religion which exudes from nationalism is , by nature of its ultimate allegiance and rush to "defend its honor" above all else (including the sanctity of human life), idolatrous.

I just read the introduction to "A Better Hope", and so the above quoted section of the email is frustrating, and brought about the rant, but somethng very basic in me. (BTW, Hauerwas writes such great Intros to his books. The first chapter is "On Being An American and a Christian")

I was glad to find Untied Methodist, and also the link to the to the ZH editor's blog....becuase it just so happened that I received a copy just this week, and wondered where it came from,. and I may have gotten one of these issues a couple months ago. Maybe it was sent as a sample to a Sojourners mailing list, but there's a lot of Methodist people writing for it.

BTW, the above mentioned mag, Zion's Herald, had an interview with Hauerwas in Jan. 2002 (read it here)

Interruptions: Acceptable losses?

how many people would be satisfied with a justice system where 9 out of 10 people excecuted were not guilty? And yet in modern warfare 90% of casualties are civilian.

I'm with Charlie on this one (among other things), and this thought I just read on his blog is a good question to put to the majority of people who think they are "just war" advocates (but really have no idea what "just war" really is, but it's a good phrase to rationalize the atrocities of war, most of which they don't "recognize" as legit anyway). Like that would be persuasive to them; the "separation" they invoke in those cases between ideas of justice and assumptions they've accepted about the "special case, "long-term" utilitarian "morality" of war is one of the most sophisticated exercises of denial and self-deception that you'll ever see)

In the end, the final question is "how 'acceptable' would we find such arguments and talk about 'long-term' and 'utilitarian considerations' if the 'sacrafices' were our own families, our own neighborhoods and houses, our own 'land'? My thought is that there would be quite a few more 'dissenters'.

I have often brought up this thought here: there was an episode of the "Twilight Zone" movie where a bifoted individual with a big mouth was spouting racial epitaths in a bar, and a couple of black men nearby asked him to show some respect, and he refused, so the men threw him out of the bar. On the outside, as he brushed himself off, he found himself in Nazi Germany and was being hunted and was shot; then he was a shot as a VietCong, and was , again, being loaded into a train bound for a concentration camp. Often I have thought that many Americans need a dose of experience from the side of the victims of American imperialism; of Iraqi families, Vietnamese peasants, El Savadorian families and agrarian communties struggling to survive, Japanese inhabitants of Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki, or any one of dozens of other Japanese cities where tens of thousands in each were eliminated by bombing campaigns, or Native Americans during the onslaught of Western settlers who took the land, makig promise after promise that they apparently never intended to keep.

Whatever happened to actually taking to heart the command: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?" Is this what we would wish upon ourselves? Is this where we would wish to find ourselves?

Charlie points to an article that Eric found by Brent Laytham, author of God Is Not: Religious, Nice, One of Us, an American, a Capitalist , which Charlie has just read.

Interruptions: Loyalty Oath

I thought of Patrick Miller's recent pamphlet on the first commandment. In The God You Have he differentiates between loyalty to others and obedience to God. Loyalty, he says, may appropriately be given to spouse, family, neighbor or country. It roots in and expands on the fifth commandment. Obedience, on the other hand, belongs to God and God alone. It is rooted in the absolutely fundamental claim of the first commandment. First commandment first; obedience before, beneath and beyond every loyalty. The problem with Miller's categories is that, in Caesar's hands, they can too easily become a distinction without a difference. In the U.S. there is assumed to be a smooth fit between discipleship and killing. That assumption, held so easily and unreflectively, trespasses against our obedience to God alone. I wonder whether my questioner understands that for descendants of Jeremiah and followers of Jesus, obedience to God may require us to refuse the state's claim to our loyalty. Does the Department of Defense grant that my fundamental obligation is not loyalty to country but obedience to God? I doubt it. In such circumstances, where Caesar cannot distinguish between our proper subjection and our ultimate allegiance, it may be best to say bluntly, "A loyal American? Of course not. I'm a Christian!"

This last point from the above: "In such circumstances, where Caesar cannot distinguish between our proper subjection and our ultimate allegiance, it may be best to say bluntly, "A loyal American? Of course not. I'm a Christian!" is close to what I see Bonhoeffer doing in Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime, and as they , for Bonhoeffer, show some pretty clear signs of abuse of power from the get-go.

This is where I can make the most direct and appropriate link between our situation today as BushWorld impinges upon this quesiton of loyalty. For sure, the levels of evil cannot be equated, but "level" is not what interests me so much as the question of ultimate allegiance. Ultimate allegiance to God requires a refusal to cede that allegiance to any encroachment by the state. I picked up Bonhoeffer back in post Nov.2 becuase I wanted to know something more about how this political awareness dawned upon him. No matter what the extent of evil that propogates, the tragedy of six million Jews, added to the other millions of civilian casualties during World War II, simply does not negate nor render inconsequential the tragedy of Iraq, the tragedy of Bush's aggressive tipping of the economic balance or "full-steam ahead" capitulation to the whims of corporate America is simply not "covered" by appealing to "well, that was so much worse, there's no comparison". JUst as obedience was called for in Nazi Germany, so obedience is called for in a Bush America (and surely, in America under "other than Bush", which has never really operated as a nation truly "under God". I had just typed, "never truly been a nation under God", but I changed it to "never really operated as" , since it is actually true that America is "under God", but BEING under God and living as such are two entirely different things. God IS the ultimate author and soveriegn over history. America and ALL nations are truly "under God", and it is the curch that is called to witness to that fact by her life.

Bears repeating....over and over and over again until enough people get it:

The Gutless Pacifist: How Much is Too Much... For Other People?

If we are naieve enough to believe that war is actually about saving people, how many murders of the people we are obstenibly trying to save are acceptable in order to save them? And of course, this question is couched in the understanding that this only applies to people other than ourselves. I mean, it would naturally be totally unacceptable to have yourself or your family murdered in order to "protect" your nation, be it your domestic police (eg: London) or an invading army (eg: the atomic bombings of Japan).

Of course, the latter part I have used in many an argument, and rarely does anybody ever consider that this is exactly the way they "omit" from their circle of reasoning. Do unto others AS YOU WOULD HAVE them do unto you. Not that hard to understand, but seemingly very diffcult to get through some very stubborn filters of assumptions we've assimilated from the world.

As long as it's some "other" group of people, preferrably in some OTHER country, and on some OTHER continent, then it makes "perfect sense". Well of course they're expendable. Go for it.