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The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, friend of FPL, dean of Cleveland's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and a leader of We Believe Ohio, appeared on PBS's Newshour with Bishop Harry Jackson, Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, and Michael Cromartie to discuss Jeremiah Wright and religious community's role in a national dialogue about race. Reasonable and informative dialogue, for the most part.
On Friday, in its editorial "Wise Choice," The Richmond Times-Dispatch opines:
The University of Virginia's Miller Center for Public Affairs recently organized a debate -- sponsored in part by this newspaper -- on the role of religion in civic life. The two sides debated whether there should be any.As "Correspondent of the Day," The Rev. Pat Watkins, Executive Director of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light replies on Sunday:Several days later, 60 area religious leaders and scholars sent a letter to Gov. Tim Kaine opposing a coal-fired power plant in Wise. The letter does not come right out and say the plant would be a mortal sin, but it strongly hints in that direction: "Our rich religious traditions tell us that 'the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,' (Psalm 24:1) and call us to live out our moral responsibility to protect the earth for our children and future generations. We also are called to serve and protect the poor and the helpless and to 'love our neighbor as we love ourselves.' (Leviticus 19:18)."
Religion has played a key role in many great causes (e.g., abolition), and some less so (e.g., the nuclear-freeze movement). It forms the basis for much opposition to abortion and gay marriage -- which frequently provokes complaints that fundamentalists are trying to "impose their values" on others.
Kaine, a former missionary, opposes capital punishment for religious reasons (he nevertheless has allowed executions to proceed). He supports the proposed plant in Wise. Is the letter from religious leaders an attempt to inject religion into a realm many liberals say ought to remain entirely secular -- or a shrewd political ploy aimed at exploiting the governor's piety? And would it seem as seemly if the governor were named, say, Mike Huckabee?
The editorial, "Wise Choice," seems to bemoan the fact that religious leaders are involved in the political sphere -- in particular in protesting a new coal-fired power plant in Southwest Virginia. Its says that we are either injecting religion into a realm that should remain secular, or engaged in a "shrewd political ploy."
The truth is that we are merely concerned citizens, expressing the reasons we are concerned. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly three-fourths of Virginians are affiliated with some religious tradition. Given this, people of faith are necessarily going to be involved in Virginia's political issues.
Our faith does have a role in the public discourse, and, as citizens, we have a right and responsibility to take action on issues we see as harming our commonwealth. Dominion's proposed Wise County power plant would add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and produce approximately 70 pounds of mercury a year, a toxin that -- in teaspoon-sized quantities -- can lead to birth defects and developmental problems in children.
Dominion also would rely primarily on coal obtained through mountaintop removal, a process that heavily pollutes rivers and can lead to flooding and mudslides in Appalachian communities. The effects of this power plant will be felt by all, but especially by poorer Appalachian communities near the power plant.
As people of faith, we feel that environmental destruction and social injustice are grave moral errors. As citizens, we know that we cannot stay silent but must participate in the democratic process. And so we stand with several organizations, many secular and some religious, to oppose the Wise County power plant, and we invite all Virginia's concerned citizens to do the same.
See the press conference organized by Virginia and Washington DC religious leaders, here.
Interestingly, contra the poll that Katie Couric shares, the more recent NBC/WSJ poll shows that this has had little effect on the race.
Culture War Watch is back from an all-too-long absence. Did you miss us?
This week we'll be catching up on what's been going down with the Culture Wars while we were out.
Shocking new Development: Non-Divisive Faith and Values Discussion to Occur
Talk of religion has been all over the campaign trail this year (if you disagree, Culture War Watch extends you a warm welcome back from your cave). So news of a presidential forum to discuss these issues may not sound shocking. What sets the Compassion Forum at Messiah College (coordinated by FPL) apart, however, is the emphasis on in-depth discussion, rather than sound bites, values' impact on policy, rather than personal piety, and common-ground solutions over polarization. With endorsers ranging from Mike Huckabee to Bob Casey, it's no surprise that the Dallas Morning News called the event "hard to tag." With labels often doing more harm than good in our public debates (see the next item below) we wouldn't want it any other way.
Terms 'Pro-Life' and 'Pro-Choice' descend to New Levels of Uselessness
Perhaps no labels have figured more prominently in the culture wars than "pro-life" and "pro-choice." After years of serving to boil down the public debate on one of the most divisive issues to simple sloganeering, it looks like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" have officially jumped the shark.
Example 1) an Idaho man changes his name to Pro-Life and plans to appear on the ballot as a candidate for U.S. Senate. He has yet to explain how printing the words "Pro-Life" on an official ballot will prevent any abortions. (But if this does succeed in eliminating abortion in the state of Idaho, Culture War Watch is officially changing our name to "End all War, Stop Global Warming and Give Everybody Free Ice Cream on Tuesdays" and running for Mayor of D.C.)
Example 2) Conservatives are embracing the term "pro-choice." No, hell hasn't frozen over. They are making a heroic stand on one of the most critical issues of our time: preserving the incandescent light bulb. There's even a bumper sticker! (A fun exercise for the strong stomached is to check out World Net Daily's full line of ridiculous bumper stickers.)
This is not the Way to Solve the Trade Deficit
Family Research Council Vice President Peter Sprigg announced he wants to "export gays." In response, Culture War Watch announced a campaign supporting the export of Peter Sprigg. We hope this doesn't get us in trouble with the WTO, which will have to make a ruling on the Sprigg Tariffs that will inevitably crop up.
UPDATE: Sprigg has apologized (sort of) for his comments.
The Scorecard: The Compassion Forum is major progress for the Common Do-Gooders. Not only does it look like a great event, but it demonstrates the real hunger in this country for a substantive discussion on issues that really matter to people of faith. Add the Culture Warriors stepping in rhetorical messes of their own making, and this week is Common Do-Gooders all the way.
Behind many of the attacks on mainline churches as too liberal or too political lies the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a front organization funded by Far-Right tycoons.
Since its beginning in 1982, the Institute on Religion and Democracy has continuously undermined the United Methodist Church and other mainline Protestant denominations by attacking the character of church leaders. This organization, funded by some of the world's most powerful foundations, undermines the witness of the church by fueling controversy to its own benefit.
"Renewal or Ruin?" looks into the IRD's claim that it exists to renew the spiritual life of the church. Researchers, church leaders, and others talk about their findings and experiences with this Washington, DC organization that foments dissention in the body of Christ.
Included on the DVD are:
After condemnation ad infinitum of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's inflammatory remarks from his Chicago pulpit, we're now getting reports that he's having to cancel multiple public appearances because of security concerns.
Reports so far haven't included any specific information about the threats, but when he canceled his Houston appearances Wright cited concern for "the safety of the institution to which he has been invited; the safety of his family, which has been placed in harm’s way; and for his own safety."
To all the pundits who have so stridently condemned Wright for being divisive, incendiary, hateful or racist, I levy a challenge: Condemn threats against Wright or admit that you are a race-baiter who doesn't mind inciting violence.
Our friend Robby Jones just posted a podcast of his recent interview with Rev. Jim Forbes, who not so long ago retired from his position as pastor of New York City's historic Riverside Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered "Beyond Vietnam," one of his less appreciated but more important sermons.
Forbes puts King's critique of the three-headed beast of materialism, militarism and racism into a 21st century context and offers a profound meditation on what it means to be a progressive religious leader. A snippet:
We are exceedingly materialistic in terms of how we look at the worth of people, the way we look at power, at prestige,etc. But we are also a caring nation. We live in the tension. So we now are in a pluralistic age, but we have not been tutored in how to honor alternative or different religious perspectives, and we don’t really know how to receive the critique of religion to at least moderate our materialistic “addictions,” I think I prefer to use. I started to say “obsession,” but it seems a deeper dynamic than that. Pluralism confronts us with multiple loyalties, and yet we’ve got to live together.
Listen to the entire discussion at Robby's blog, Progressive and Religious.
Each of us mourns the Iraq war dead in our own way. From time to time I visit Faces of the Fallen, look at pictures of the deceased soldiers and read their online guestbooks at legacy.com. It would take weeks to get through all 4,000 of them.
If there were such a sight for the Iraqi victims, reading it in its entirety would require full-time focus for years (maybe even decades, depending the body-count estimate you use), and the pace of carnage would probably make catching up impossible. The carnage overwhelms the capacity for comprehension.
As we collectively turn our attention to the large, round number of American casualties, it's worth a minute to view a few one-at-a-time.
Washington Post writer and Brookings Institution fellow E. J. Dionne Jr. speaks about his new book "Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right." Speaking before an audience of Bay-area political reporters and students at UC Berkeley's Journalism School Thursday, Dionne announced that "the era of the religious right is over."
The Rev. Anne Howard writes:
Jeremiah (known now, of course, as Jeremiad) Wright preaches in a way that white preachers like me just don't dare. And we don't even know how.
Let me speak for myself: I come from a tradition of reserved Scandinavian Lutherans, and I know that no Minnesota pulpit of my childhood would countenance the kind of impassioned gospel that Rev. Wright proclaims--and certainly not about things that might be "too political".
And I also know that the churches of my adulthood, my own Episcopal church and just about any other white Protestant church, is not familiar -- to put it mildly -- with the kind of preaching we see in Jeremiah Wright. We just don't know that tradition. We just don't know how.
We are subtle and nuanced when we broach a topic that might smack of politics. When we muster the occasional guts to preach a social justice sermon, when we dare to take on, say, this five-year war, or the need for immmigration reform, or a living wage, we are very very careful and we leave lots of room for interpretation and others' views. Our version of "pastoral" often means "do not offend." That's how we've been trained, not to mention socialized.
Now, many of us would say that Rev. Wright was more than offensive with his anti-American comments, that his words were divisive and hateful. If any pollsters are paying attention, Jeremiah Wright's ratings could be even lower than George Bush's right now.
And I would say that his statement regarding the opposite of "God bless America" was both a bad choice of words and bad theology; the overarching evidence of the bible shows us a God who redeems and rescues, not a God who "damns" anybody or anything.
Still and all, my guess is that when Jesus dumped over those tables in the temple, his speech might not have been pretty.
And we need to remember that we preachers are called to preach truth to power: how do we do that? What words do we use to decry this 5-year war, our punishing neglect after Katrina, our head-in-the-sand response to climate change, the travesty of No Child Left Behind, our abandonment of our returning wounded soldiers, etc. etc. etc.
What words do we use?
For my part, I envy Jeremiah Wright and his outrageous audacity to speak stinging truth as he sees it from his unique perspective as a black pastor in white America.
Speaking the truth, we remember this Holy Week, leads to the cross.
The cross always carries a kind of irony. Brother Wright, with his outrageous and harmful choice of words, has made us face into one of the largest crosses in our American landscape, the cross of racism. Wright's harm asks the rest of us to attempt healing, to use words that can be heard, words not of blame but of contrition, conviction and courage, words that name the crosses of our day.
Only if we face into this cross, and all the crosses we continue to plant, will we move through to the hope of Easter.
Norman Lear received the America's Future Lifetime Leadership Award at the Take Back America Gala Dinner on Tuesday evening. Lear was recognized for his work as both a groundbreaking television producer and an outspoken progressive activist and benefactor. He is introduced by Iara Peng, director of Young People For, who speaks about how her faith in God drives her activism and appreciation for Mr. Lear.
No doubt scared witless of evangelical Christians' growing commitment to creation care, an illustrious group including Richard Land, Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer has sent all 100 Senators a letter claiming that evangelical Christians aren't so concerned about climate change after all, that global warming may not even exist, and that a law meant to address it would be ineffective and economically disastrous.
From the press release:
The letter concludes that claims of catastrophic, human-induced global warming are “highly questionable” and rejects proposals to “impose regulations on American energy usage” in a “vain attempt to change global average temperatures.”
The letter is backed by Frontiers of Freedom, a (tobacco-funded) nonpartisan source of (oil-funded) scientific research showing that global warming maybe isn't that big of a deal.
This on the heels of Land's concern that we are entering a period of global cooling and Perkins' contention that climate change, gay marriage, abortion and the apocalypse are birds of a feather:
Also, when you listen to Perkins and Land talk about global warming, note how they always mention Al Gore (a longer clip of the video above has Perkins throwing Gore's name around). Watch for it in the future. They will always do it. It's a sign of desperation, just about the only argument they have left.
"Well, we had a cold winter...I found a scientist who objects to the overwhelming international scientific consensus...and, uh, Al Gore!"
These guys do not speak for the evangelical community. Repeat, these guys do not speak for the evangelical community. Thank God.
A little while ago when I was rereading Barack Obama's speech, shouts and sirens drew me to my office window. Nine stories below, Capitol police pushed a cluster of maybe 100 Code Pink protesters out of the intersection of Vermont Ave. and L St.
Together, Obama's words and the sounds of protest took me back five years, when the war began.
That Sunday, I sat in a conservative white evangelical church in the impoverished Mississippi Delta -- the corner of the South that most resembles its pre-Civil Rights Movement self. As an aside during that morning's sermon, the pastor thanked the troops defending our freedom in Iraq. Many heads nodded; mine was not one. After the service I made a point of discussing it with the pastor. He was good-natured, but sincerely convicted that America's freedom was at stake. I swallowed my discomfort, mindful of and thankful for my spiritual growth under his guidance.
Unlike my church, suspicion of the motivation for war pervaded the black community in which I lived. My white churchmates seemed to think "America is good, and our government tells us the truth, and if they tell us we need to fight for our freedom, that's fine." Black neighbors and colleagues I talked to thought it was about oil and Bush was lying. Given the persistence of segregation in town, there was little interracial dialogue on the matter (as was true of anything controversial). Although we did not often share a house of worship, my black neighbors and I shared a suspicion of our government and a presumption against war.
On a Sunday soon after Shock and Awe, the sermon included a well-received, racially undertoned joke which unintentionally revealed what looked to me like a consensus of racism in the congregation. On the ride home, I told my girlfriend I had to leave the church, but at her urging I agreed to talk with the pastor before severing ties.
The following week, we visited the pastor's office and argued with him for more than an hour about race, racism and "reverse racism" in the Delta. At conversation's end we did not see eye to eye, but I sensed that he had an open heart and a desire to grow. To quote Barack Obama, "He contain[ed] within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years." I chose to stay in his fold.
Still, teaching in a segregated black school all week and going to a subtlely prejudiced white church on Sundays made for great discomfort. I could have left, but as William Faulkner said, "you dont love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."
Church continued to nourish me, but disagreements recurred. An intentional fellowship program with a black church in town warmed my soul, but occasional expressions of prejudice burned me. Although I didn't change many minds, I firmly believed that my focus on God's call for beloved community was an important part of the body of the church.
So I read Obama's words yesterday about race, church and politics with keen empathy and great admiration. Living astride the color line (as we all do to one degree or another) brings tension, misunderstanding and bitterness alongside enlightenment, growth and community. Those of us who are intentionally attuned to the problems and possibilities that come with integrated community deal with this reality on a daily basis. Obama expressed it with a thoroughness and eloquence I can envy but not approach.
I look down on the protest-induced traffic jam downtown this evening and recall what life was like on the eve of the war, then turn my gaze uptown toward the uncongested black and brown neighborhood I call home. Between the present and the past, war and peace, uptown and downtown, the white church and the black school, I see crevices created by our original sin of racism. But in rousing speeches of unity, intentional acts of community, and the faith that we can overcome, I see bridges of love that can hold all the traffic we can push across them.
Book Review:
What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?--A Guide for the Searching, the Open and the Curious, by Delwin Brown
By the Rev. Anne Howard
This is the book we’ve been waiting for.
We’ve been waiting, I say, because far too often, I’ve heard someone say “I’m a Christian, but not 'that' kind of Christian.” They can say that they are not biblical literalists, they don’t believe that God is a punishing distant monarch, they know there’s more to Jesus than Mel Gibson’s movie. In short, they don’t identify with the Christianity that dominates the public conversation.
There’s a problem here: they can say what they are not, but the question remains: So what kind of Christian are you?
One new book, Del Brown’s “What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?—A guide for the Searching, the Open and the Curious,” gives us a solution to the problem with some pithy, lucid answers.
Dean Emeritus of Pacific School of Religion and formerly the Harvey H. Potthoff Professor of Christian Theology at Iliff School of Theology, Brown writes with clarity and conviction out of his own passion that “progressive Christians join with their liberal and conservative Christian friends in rejecting the agenda of the religious right as a poisonous departure from any credible interpretation of the gospel.” It is high time, he writes, to name this poison for what it is: “a repressive political ideology disguised in Christian trappings.”
And while he is unabashed in his sense of urgency for the articulation of “the profoundly healing voice of Christianity,” he is careful not to offer the definitive script for that voice. This is one man’s version of what he calls the “family of perspectives that vigorously rejects the religious right as a distortion of the Christian faith” and he is able to articulate his own passion with remarkable humility and grace. This is indeed a healing and generous expression of Christianity.
Beginning with a brief historical overview of two strains of Christianity that progressive Christianity is not, i.e. liberal or conservative, Brown gives us a pithy seven-point answer of what it is. It’s those seven points that are stunning, because they are the solid pillars of basic systematic theology: Bible, Christ, God, Humanity, Sin, Salvation, Church.
In this systematic, Brown offers a Christianity that “charts a different course” than liberal or conservative Christianity, a course that embraces the rich diversity of the biblical narrative and the public witness of the church.
In his seven points, he retrieves the value of the bible, affirms the presence of God entwined in all of creation, and breathes life into the creeds (imagine that!) He grounds a view of humanity in the Genesis story of co-creation and the twin commandments to love God and others as ourselves.
Love is the key to his treatment of sin, and he give us a refreshing correctives on centuries of bad preaching. Sin he rightly portrays as a failure to love “loving too much or too little any part of the interconnected web of life”; and sin’s clever strategy of deception, subtle self-deception gives rise to the structures that plague our world: racism, consumerism, militarism, etc.
But there is good news: salvation. And salvation, of course, is not located on the other side of pearly gates, but available here and now in our world where God is “working through all the processes of the creation to bring it to the fullness and health made possible by love.” And we are part of the process, as the church, “the community of those who seek to serve God’s healing work in the world.”
One succinct way to express the value of this book is to point to a phrase that prefaces several positions descriptive of progressive Christianity: “There is a Christian reason for…” What follows is just that, the explicit Christian reason for, say, respecting diversity or working for economic justice or caring for the planet or making peace valuing the common good or or being open to other faith traditions.
Brown gives us reasons by taking us into the biblical record and the early church’s rendering of that narrative to offer compelling reasons that comprise a sound theology. This is what takes this book beyond one more expression of liberal ideals or a philosophical theology that would ignore the particularity of Christianity’s biblical heritage.
All of this leads to his final chapter, “Rightly Mixing Religion with Politics.” We know too much about the wrong way to do this. With six rules for bringing religion into the public square, Brown gives us a recipe for the right way, the generous way, the humble way, recognizing that “in our differences we are, together, ordering and reordering the world.”
This book will help us with the task. Don't miss it!
Many of you caught the recent news of a growing number of Southern Baptist leaders signing onto a global warming declaration. They say their church's official stance is "too timid" and call for more action on climate change. They write:
We realize that simply affirming our God-given responsibility to care for the earth will likely produce no tangible or effective results. Therefore, we pledge to find ways to curb ecological degradation through promoting biblical stewardship habits and increasing awareness in our homes, businesses where we find influence, relationships with others and in our local churches. Many of our churches do not actively preach, promote or practice biblical creation care. We urge churches to begin doing so.This statement was pioneered by Jonathan Merritt, a graduate of Liberty University. He is currently a seminarian at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, in North Carolina. Over the weekend I wrote to Jonathan asking for an interview, and he graciously agreed to share his thoughts with the Interfaith Power and Light community.
The Interview:
Interfaith Power and Light: You've mentioned an epiphany "that broke you" and changed your perspective on the environment. What triggered it?
Jonathan Merritt: I was in a theology class at Southeastern learning about the general revelation of God. My professor likened destroying creation to tearing a page out of the bible. Obviously, these two forms are not equally important, but they are equally revelation.IPL: What process did you go through in deciding to translate your personal
JM: I first began to examine my life, but I felt an inner nudge to do more. Then I sort of tore a page out of the SBC playbook. As Southern Baptists, we have learned that we can accomplish more when we cooperate together rather than blaze a trail individually.IPL: What do you have to say to other seminarians (and pastors and laypeople) who love their denominations, but also wish that their leadership would speak more prophetically to contemporary issues?
JM: This is not a call for leadership to address the issue of creation care as much as a call for "fellow Southern Baptists" and Christians everywhere. Real results will not come through resolutions; they will come through reexamination on the part of real people in real communities.
Read the rest at the Interfaith Power and Light blog.
At God's Politics, Diana Butler Bass puts Rev. Wright's sermon in perspective:
But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that "anyone with experience teaching American religion" would be able to handle the load.
Street Prophet supremo (and UCC minister), Pastor Dan writes:
This is of course part of the two-pronged effort to attack Obama's religious beliefs: smear him as a Muslim, and if not a Muslim, a member of a radical, "racist" church. It makes sense, if you think about it: it's one of the few ways conservatives have to define Obama before he defines himself.The bad news is that it works among the uninformed. The good news is that more people are becoming informed.
As for the clip itself, I didn't see anything offensive. Harsh, perhaps, but nothing to get our knickers in a knot over. Wright's point - to a congregation in one of the blackest and poorest neighborhoods in Chicago - is that Jesus understands their plight. The stuff about Obama is a tangent. So unless conservatives want to argue that Jesus didn't know anything about being poor and can't sympathize with them (an utterly un-Biblical proposition), they need to sit down, shut up, and let him have his religious freedom.
Professor Jonathan L. Walton at Religion Dispatches:
There is a difference between speaking truth to power in defense of the least of these, and scapegoating the defenseless on behalf of the status-quo. This is why it is inappropriate to compare Dr. Wright with Christian conservative voices like the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or John Hagee. The latter group turns attention away from the interests of a privileged elite-class and lays the ills of society at the door of America’s “usual suspects.” Hence, it is easy to blame racial/ethnic minorities, Islam, feminists, illegal immigrants and the homosexual agenda for events such as 9/11. It is much harder, however, to point the finger at corporate controlled government, a neo-conservative military agenda, and the capricious whims of an exit-poll obsessed administration. And this is what Dr. Wright has attempted to do on a consistent basis over the course of his thirty-six years as pastor. Unlike his conservative opposition, his critique of American society points up as his hand of compassion and justice reaches down.
The New Haven, Connecticut-based Rev. Kathleen McTigue writes on her blog Thinking Faithfully:
This week Barack Obama felt obligated to distance himself from his longtime minister at Trinity UCC, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, because of things that Wright has said about race in America. It’s too bad. Dr. Wright is widely considered one of the best preachers in the country, and he has taken Trinity from a dying inner city church to a vibrant congregation of over 8,000, with vital service missions from Chicago to Africa. Whether or not you regard his words as true or incendiary, Dr. Wright is of course not running for President himself. He’s a preacher, and for decades he’s been doing a better job at it than most ordained ministers can ever dream of.
Preaching is different from political speech not only because it’s supposed to focus on a spiritual message rather than on winning votes. It’s different because of being part of a conversation, week after week, between a minister and his or her congregation. The conversation is always particular: the reason the gospel message lives on through the centuries is that people continue to hear it according to their lives and circumstances. A preacher’s job is to help them do that, and sometimes we do it best by being provocative and shocking.
Addressing the need for free pulpits and free pews, Rev. Debra Haffner writes:
I learned in divinity school that we are to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable" when we are in the pulpit. It has never once occurred to me that I have to agree with my minister on everything he says or that anyone who comes to my services has to agree with me on anything or everything. Indeed in my tradition, we expect as many "I really disagreed with you today" as "good sermon, Reverend."But, we also have freedom on the pew. We encourage our congregants to take what they like, to leave the rest, to only believe our truths as it reflects their own. In all the reports on Reverend Wright, I haven't seen a news report that remembers to tell us that Trinity UCC has more than 6000 members and is the largest church in the UCC.
Frank Schaeffer, son of Religious Right co-founder Francis Schaeffer, on the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
.
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American
Best line: "I wouldn't call it radical, I'd call it being Black in America"
UPDATE: Obama responds to the controversy at Huffington Post.
As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
[snip]
Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
FOFPL Steve Benen brought my attention to a new poll showing that the rumors about Barack Obama being a Muslim are having their intended effect.
Thirteen percent of respondents to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released today said Obama is a Muslim, up from eight percent who held that belief in March.
(Do I need to say that the bigotry motivating the lie is even worse than the lie itself? Yes, yes I do. The bigotry is even worse than the lie itself.)
Last week, the Pew Forum's John Green (aka The Guru of Faith in Politics) said:
Most politicians, Democrat and Republican, have denounced the rumors, and so has the American Muslim community. However, they could be an important factor in the campaign nonetheless, especially if national security becomes a prominent issue in the campaign. Many Americans have negative views toward Muslims, and thus an association of Obama with Islam could raise questions about his trustworthiness, as at least some Americans believe these rumors.
I know that religion-baiting is hardly a new development in American politics, and I suppose we should have expected religion to get weaponized in this heavily religion-themed campaign, but that doesn't make it okay. Not by a long stretch. It degrades our politics, embarasses us on the world stage, and insults Muslims and all people of faith.
Report on recent news of the Vatican listing pollution as a sin + prominent Southern Baptists signing-on to a forward-looking statement on global warming. Here's the news write-ups.
Already the signatories of the Baptist declaration are getting blowback in the Southern Baptist community.
"We undertake this work because we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. That is why we are doing this. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. People of all faiths and all backgrounds deserve the chance at a future of their own choosing. That's what America believes."
-- President Bush, on Iraq, 3.11.08
Five years into the Iraq war, President Bush still doesn't get that bullets and bombs are never blessings, and that God grants the United States no special license to kill.
Fortunately, people of faith are showing that even though President Bush uses religious language to justify the Iraq war, he does not speak for them. Last Friday, Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership activists came from across the country to call for a just end to the war. Of the hundreds of participants, 42 chose to risk arrest in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience and were taken into police custody at the Hart Senate Office Building.
Befoe the demonstration proceeded to Hart, I visited the participants gathering at Upper Senate Park, young and old alike, braving the cold rain and unexpected restrictions from the Capitol police. I had the good fortune to see Rev. Jim Forbes, Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Rev. Bob Edgar exhort the crowd to believe peace is possible and to stand up for it. While they might not've had the megaphone available to the president, they did have a message that rings true to those of us who seek to stop wars rather than start them.
...and cover poverty and nonpartisanship, with nary a word about abortion or immigrants. Really.
A few nonlinear observations:
Dobbs said Jackson and Perkins come from "opposite sides of the political spectrum." That spectrum is so narrow it could pass through the eye of a needle.
Kudos to progressives for shifting the values debate to the point where Tony Perkins goes on tv to talk about poverty.
Notice how Perkins' rhetoric centers on individual choice and personal responsibility, as if poverty can be solved by the bootstrap remedy.
Jackson and Perkins seem to have learned some hard lessons about partisanship over the past couple of years.
Dobbs' mockery of the right's same-sex marriage rhetoric was kind of confusing, but at least he said it.
Right before the Academy Awards, I settled down to listen to my almost daily dose of Bloggingheads.tv, a virtual salon of substantive punditry. Instead of a debate about libertarian principles or the presidential election, I was treated to a 47 min. discussion between New York's film critic David Edelstein and Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), the maker of Taxi to the Dark Side.
So impressed was I with Mr. Gibney's grasp of American torture policy under Bush and Cheney that I selected his film over SiCKO to win Best Documentary on my party ballot. The doc won, and so did I. "What? Victory and human rights, say it ain't so, Mr. Yoo."
The room of smart guys at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs also nail the sickness that torture brings. Jared writes:
While watching Taxi to the Dark Side, I found one scene particularly disturbing. Afghan detainees are being processed by U.S. troops as they enter U.S. custody. The detainees stand in a line; their sleeves, rolled up. A U.S. solider, with Sharpie indelible marker in hand, begins to write the prisoner's ID number on his right inner forearm. Even writing this post I am having a horrible visceral reaction to this image. Marking prisoners in this way harkens back directly to the number tattoos that mark Holocaust victims. The symbolism is disgusting.
If that's not enough for you, the Washington Monthly gives America 37 leaders articulating why we must stop torturing now. National Association of Evangelicals honcho Richard Cizik lists four reasons why Christians should fight torture. He adds, "A consensus is emerging within our churches about our obligation to speak out against torture. As evangelical Christians, we have a non-negotiable responsibility to oppose a policy that is a violation of both our religious values and our national ideals."
In the same issue, Jimmy Carter writes:
"Our nation, which overcame slavery and segregation to proudly raise the banner of human rights for all to see, now finds itself condemned amid the indelible images of human degradation, perpetrated by U.S. forces in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Our government's persistent unwillingness to ban the use of torture by its own agents or to grant access to legal counsel or prospect of a proper trial to hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay emboldens those who oppose human rights elsewhere."
More and more folks of faith are speaking up on the torture issue, which is particularly significant because traditionally religion has been the most closely connected to issues of conscience and physical suffering. As the state steals the rack from the Grand Inquisitor, those who follow a higher ethic, from liberal Hollywood documentarians to evangelical moderates, are working to pull America back from the dark side.
FYI: June is Torture Awareness month. Find out how you can get involved with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture here. And join the 18,000 who have signed the statement.
FPL, Sojourners and Center for American Progress Action Fund sponsored a post-election poll in Ohio following the March 4 primary. The findings dispel the notion that hard-right wedge issue voters are the face of evangelical Christians in politics.
Among the findings:
43 percent of white evangelicals voted in the Democratic primary
Three times as many white evangelicals ranked jobs and the economy the number one issue in vote determination as ranked abortion and same-sex marriage most important. (42 percent to 14)
54 percent of white evangelicals favor a broader issue agenda that includes ending poverty, protecting the environment and tackling HIV/AIDS
Of these broader agenda Christians, 59 percent rank poverty, the environment and HIV/AIDS as more important than abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research.
The complete poll memo has graphs and more extensive findings.
The Washington Post writes:
. . .the idea is catching on: A blog, Green Lent, is devoted to the concept, and locally, Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit organization that works with area congregations to spread the sustainability gospel, is promoting a Lenten carbon fast in the D.C. area, offering pledges and tip sheets for distribution at worship services and church events.The Post also notes how evangelicals are joining in giving up carbon for lent.
The Rev. Anne Howard writes:
The phone doesn't even have to ring. Even the thought of the 3 a.m. phone call makes my pulse quicken.
We all know, even in our new day of ever-present cell phones and little BlackBeasts, that middle-of-the-night phone calls mean crisis, trouble, something that can't wait until morning.
Those calls are scary. And the name for the quickening of the pulse, the sinking sense of dread they give us is fear.
As the candidates --never mind the names-- use the ol' phone trick, (it used to be called the red phone schtick, now it's the 3 a.m. phone call) they play into our middle-of-the night dread. The name for that is fear-mongering.
In my lifetime of watching campaigns, nothing has been more consistent or effective than fear-mongering, as TV ads have rolled out mushroom clouds and Soviet tanks and crumbling Twin Towers, punctuated with a few sinister images of the foreigner moving into the neighborhood, the thief at the door.
And nothing is more enervating, more dis-empowering. Voters forget the wisdom they've gained from their daily lives -- the lessons they've learned in school rooms and church pews, at kitchen tables and back fences -- and they vote out of fear. Their own sense of empowerment evaporates. Fear replaces faith.
I want to hope that voters know how to think, and not just react when their fear buttons get pushed. I want to hope that people act out of conviction and courage and a sense that we can make a difference in our country. I want to hope that we won't see weeks and months of negative campaigning and fear-mongering.
I want to see, for once my life, faith make the difference, not fear.
Dr. Marcus Borg is a leading historical Jesus scholar, author of several books on progressive Christianity. Ms. Christine Pelosi is an attorney, a grass-roots activist and author of the recently published Campaign Boot Camp: Basic Training for Future Leaders. The conversation was sponsored by The Beatitudes Society.
Borg and Pelosi discuss the role of secular and religious progressives in the public sphere, in light of the impact of the religious right on our culture.
So last night Mike Huckabee ended a presidential campaign of literary quality. Doesn't a Southern Baptist minister who loses 100 lbs, governs a small rural state for a decade, waxes populist while peddling a crackpot regressive tax plan, denies evolution, attributes his success to divine intervention and outlasts the establishment's favorites sound like something out of a SInclair Lewis novel? Huckabee was called a theocrat and a leftist, a contender and a joke, a brilliant politician and a woeful ignoramus. Each of these characterizations rang true enought to turn Mike Huckabee into a conundrum wrapped in a contradiction who stubbornly kept winning Southern and rural states almost entirely on the backs of conservative white evangelicals. And people really liked him. I have never seen anything like Mike Huckabee.
But what did his candidacy say about faith and politics? My own hardly profound takeaway is that millions of religious conservatives showed that what they really wanted was a little affinity and authenticity. Someone like them who cares deeply about abortion and gay marriage but isn't immune to class concerns as the economy leaves them behind. More importantly, it showed that the old emperors of the religious right lack clothes. Robertson, Dobson, Perkins, Bauer, et al stood on the sidelines or backed other horses while the faithful flocked to Huckabee. People who watch closely have known this about the Right for a little while now; maybe Huckabee drove the story home for mainstream political media.
Who knew Bill Donohue was a Stephen Colbert surrogate?
Hagee's views on Catholics, Muslims, homosexuals, Jews and war are no laughing matter, of course, and nor is the media's double standard vis a vis Louis Farrakhan.
If you haven't seen it already, check out our friends at Catholics United's appeal to Sen. McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement.
As the presidential primary season winds down, The Interfaith Alliance has compiled a list of the 10 worst abuses of religion during the campaign so far.
Although I don't think that all of these instances are equally egregious, this Interfaith Alliance video does highlight a troubling trend in this presidential election. Like personality and photo ops, personal faith has often precluded a more telling discussion of policy and national spending priorities. As the League of Conservation Voters reports, out of 3201 debate questions, only 8 have dealt with global warming. And as folks of faith from all traditions note, our climate is an issue that invites serious discussion of policy and morality.
