Some faith bloggers are taking a second look at Rev. Wright, in light of his weekend appearances.

Pam's House Blend writes:

Wright's litany of grievances -- including a perceived attack on the black church, the conspiracy theories about the government and 9/11, or inflicting AIDS on blacks (referencing the Tuskegee experiment) -- reveal a very real thread of beliefs in a segment of the black community of a certain generation who lived under the thumb of Jim Crow and in-your-face bluntly institutionalized white privilege.

Making light of this kind of thinking diminishes the fact that it comes from an element of truth, and that white privilege, though not as boldly naked as in generations past, is alive and well. It also illuminates the lack of black cultural competence in the dominant culture.

Rev. Chuck Currie adds:

After reading over Rev. Wright's Q & A session at the press club - in which he acted far differently than he did in his PBS interview, I have to say that I agree with Rev. Hinkel's comments and those made today by Senator Obama.

My natural instinct is to want to support Rev. Wright, with whom I share a denomination. He has built a great church in Chicago that continues to do good work. But this week Rev. Wright made the issue not the gospel or the church but himself and we don't have room in this election for that. There is a war to end, a broken health care system to fix, a climate change crisis to address, and a world to reconcile.

Jeff Sharlet disagrees:

The NYT's Bob Herbert (writing in the opinion pages, at least), joins the liberal elite's outrage over Jeremiah Wright. Yes, I just said "liberal elite"; there is no other term with which to describe the big media Obama backers distressed by the fact that Wright would have the gall to defend himself from what they'll admit was essentially a massive, national, racist smear job. How dare he! Obama's trying to move us beyond race! But, as Herbert writes with indignation, "Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race." No points for the press corps here, by the way. The only justification for the anger of Herbert and Stanley (below) is their recognition, from within the belly of the media beast, is that none of their colleagues give a damn about Wright's words on race. No, they're gathered round Wright, one eye on Obama, whispering like kids in a schoolyard: "fight, fight, fight!" If they were listening, they'd be hearing that "national debate about race," the media always says it wants. But they can't hear it, can't see it; all they see is two African American man, and one of them is -- shudders of indignation among the elite, of voyeuristic joy among the media's working stiffs -- angry and cracking wise.

Not blogging at Newsweek, Richard Wolffe terms this, Sen. Obama's Sista Souljah moment.

The Rev. Anne Howard writes:

At one point, Jeremiah Wright, thrust onto the national stage by the viral spread of video clips, offered all Americans an opportunity to engage in a serious national conversation about racism. A few took the opportunity to engage in such conversations, including his former parishioner.

But that opportunity's been squandered by both the preacher and the press.

Looking at the preacher, I see a man relishing his sudden capture of the spotlights and headlines. He's so good at what he does. But what he does is not good. It's clever and cynical and self-serving.

Looking at the press, well, once again, I just see laziness: It's deadline time and thank God we don't have to worry about what the voters might be thinking. We don't have to make notes about the complexities of high gasoline prices, gas taxes, mortgage foreclosures or any other aspect of the economic realities that face American voters. War? what war? It's much easier to quote Jeremiah Wright and run a few more video clips. Cheap news.

Even the saint of all journalists, Bill Moyers, who attempted to dig to the back story on Rev. Wright, seemed not to be immune from the kind of celebrity journalism he's deplored. His interview offered some insight, but also a good deal of awe before the oracle.

I've been an advocate of Jeremiah Wright and his strong preaching, his powerful witness in the pulpit. But now that he's taken to the spotlight to grab new headlines, I do not hear a powerful witness to the liberating love of God. I do not hear "differentness" honored, but rather mocked. And I wonder if we can ever talk about American's Original Sin of slavery and racism, or if we are all still in bondage to it.

Even Anne Lamott and Stephen Colbert discuss the issue:

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Perhaps it's another example of the superficiality of our national debates that a Supreme Court Justice (Antonin Scalia) can claim that torture is not "cruel and unusual punishment" on national television and two days later hardly anyone's noticed (save Rolling Stone).

While Scalia claims he's no fan of torture, he fudges on the question of its Constitutionality claiming "defining it is going to be a nice trick."

What made this interview most "unusual," however, was Scalia's bizarre interpretation of what "punishment" means. Interrogation, it seems, doesn't qualify:

To the contrary...Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so."

"Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody…," Stahl says.

"And you say he's punishing you?" Scalia asks.

"Sure," Stahl replies.

"What's he punishing you for? You punish somebody…," Scalia says.

"Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know," Stahl says.

"It's the latter. And when he's hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he's punishing you. What’s he punishing you for?

While we certainly need to pay close attention to the words of the Constitution, I find it hard to believe this interpretation is consistent with the intent of the framers. If what really matters is the intent to "punish" rather than extract information, then a witness to terrorism could potentially be subjected to the most inhumane treatment (in order to get information about the terrorist) while the perpetrator would be spared such abuse.

(Even within Scalia's preposterous construction, torture is indeed a punishment for silence or obstruction.)

This is the same immoral reasoning behind the infamous "torture memos," which made the abuser's intent -- not his or her actions -- the benchmark for morality.

The thousands of Faithful Americans who signed a petition denouncing those memos may not be on the Supreme Court, but they know the United States has no business engaging in "cruel or unusual" behavior of any kind.

If only the government agreed.

Posted by Beth Dahlman at 02:03 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Well said Mrs. Edwards.

Even though it wasn't a sermon, I'm sure Elizabeth Edwards' OpEd in Sunday's New York Times elicited its share of hearty "amens."

While many aspects of the 2008 presidential race have been historic and inspiring, the media fixation on the superficial has not.

Edwards critiqued the "strobe light journalism, in which outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture," which has come to dominate much of the 2008 coverage, particularly in recent weeks. She (and, I suspect, most Americans) would like to learn a bit more about candidates' health care proposals and less about their bowling scores.

As Rev. Jeremiah Wright once again returns to the national scene, we're treated to yet another reminder of the murkiness surrounding the values debate in America. As with healthcare, substantive discussion of religion and religious values often falls by the wayside in the current gaffe-centric environment.

Dwelling on controversy and strategy brings us no closer to understanding how a candidate's values might affect his or her policies, nor does it give the American people a better insight into their character.

It does, however, seem to keep pundits employed and drive up view counts on YouTube.

Which brings us to Edwards' last point. If we want a "vibrant, vigorous press...we'll have to demand it."

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Part one of Oxfam's Darfur Q&A series. Mike Delaney, Oxfam's Director of humanitarian response, and Scott Stedjan, our Senior policy advisor, have both recently returned from Darfur, and in these videos they make it easy to understand what's going on there now. To learn more about Oxfam's work in Darfur, visit http://www.oxfamamerica.org/darfur

Here are some questions on what people can focus their legislators' attention.

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Our friend Robby Jones recently posted another installment of Progressive Religious Voices, his series of podcasts with faith leaders and religious scholars. The latest is a discussion of religious pluralism with Eboo Patel, who also asked Senator Clinton a question at The Compassion Forum. Eboo shares with a Robby a number of insights, including the following:

I think that we have a new line in the twenty-first century, and that new line is the faith line. And just like a lot of people thought the color line separated black and white and yellow and red, and it took a visionary like Martin Luther King, Jr. to say, “No, no, no. What the color line separates are people who want to live together as brothers and people who would perish together as fools.” I think of the faith line in the same way.

The faith line does not separate Muslims and Christians or Jews and Hindus. The faith line separates who I call religious pluralists and religious totalitarians. And the definitions of those two in my mind
are pretty clear and straightforward. A religious totalitarian is somebody who wants their way of
being, believing and belonging to dominate everything and for everyone else to suffocate. A religious
pluralist is somebody who may well believe very, very deeply in their own traditions, may even be an
exclusivist and believe that their own tradition is the only right tradition, but fundamentally believes
in a society where people from different backgrounds have the freedom and the right to live by their
own traditions and where those different groups of people can live together in equal dignity and
mutual loyalty. So pluralism has three layers, in my mind. The first layer is identity, the second layer
is relationship, and the third layer is common good. Identity, community, common good.

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FoFPL Aaron posted the following this afternoon at his outstanding homestead, Faithfully Liberal:

As you have undoubtedly noticed the faith blogosphere has been putting pressure on former Governor Mike Huckabee to come out strongly against torture with two simple questions for him. We still await an answer but I want to emphasis how important it is for Mr. Huckabee to publicly state his position on the moral/value issue.

I posed a quick question in that regard to a couple of different faith leaders and received two very well thought-out responses from Faith in Public Life Executive Director Jennifer Butler and from United Church of Christ President Rev. John Thomas.

Here’s the question that I posed to them:

As a faith leader yourself, and someone who has adamantly opposed torture, what do you believe former Governor Mike Huckabee’s role in condoning or opposing torture is in regards to his newfound leadership in the religious right?

And their responses:

Rev. Butler -

Governor Huckabee is a different type of conservative religious leader. He may be a bridge between the old guard and new guard. The old guard was led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The new guard is lead by Joel Hunter, David Gushee and Rick Warren. The emerging evangelical center, including this younger generation of evangelicals and those coming up behind them, opposes torture. They represent the future of American evangelicalism. Look for instance at this new organization, Evangelicals for Human Rights. In the coming year we will see evangelicals as well other people of faith holding Huckabee and the presidential candidates accountable on this issue—there can be no compromise. (See here for video of Dr. Gushee asking Obama about torture)

Rev. Thomas -

While Governor Huckabee represents a conservative point of view, often at odds with my own, he has demonstrated a refreshing commitment to engaging his Biblical faith with a broad array of issues, not limiting himself to a narrow “moral values” agenda. I have particularly appreciated his sensitivity to issues of poverty and the strong Biblical mandates to address poverty in our world. Although I don’t know his personal views on the current debates regarding torture, I would anticipate that he would approach this issue as he does others, namely, through his Biblical interpretive lens. In my mind, it would be hard to take the Bible seriously and find any justification for condoning torture. Were Governor Huckabee to articulate a strong Biblical case against torture, it would be enormously helpful as a means of gathering broad support from Christians across the theological and political spectrum for a ban on the use of torture.

It’s a simple concept – we should never torture and a strong coalition of faith leaders on both sides of the theological and political aisle can help end its practice.

But I would like to throw it out to you as well. Why is ending the use of torture or pressuring leaders on the issue important to you?

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A leading ethicist and a major evangelical voice at both a scholarly and popular level, Dr. David P. Gushee presented a series of lectures on the campus of Bluefield College, April 15-16. He is an authority on contemporary moral issues, especially torture.

His latest work is The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center.

He helping to organize A National Summit on Torture: Religious Faith, Torture, and our National Soul, to be held at Mercer University on September 11-12, 2008.

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As has been predicted in religion and politics news for the past few weeks, exit polls show that the Catholic vote was story of the Pennsylvania primary. After gaining ground among Catholics between Super Tuesday and the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas, Obama's support from them slipped considerably last night. Clinton's 63-36 advantage among Catholics in Ohio and 65-33 share in Texas widened to 69-31 in Pennsylvania.

Among white protestants and "other Christians," Clinton outperformed her overall margin, winning 58-42, but among protestants and other Christians as a whole, Obama had a 53-47 advantage, reflecting his continuing dominance among African Americans (89 percent of whom voted for him).

Jewish voters -- also subject to recent media attention -- broke for Clinton 57 to 43. I look forward to reading the guesses as to why.

Two things I'd like to see: white evangelical numbers and religion-age crosstabs, since there was such a contrast between older and younger voters, with Obama winning under-30's 61/39 and 30-44's 53/47 and Clinton winning 45-59's 54/46 and 60+'s 62/38. Did religious Pennsylvanians break up generationally like the population as a whole? It'd be nice to know.

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Perhaps you've heard that Catholic voters play a key role in today's Pennsylvania primary. I swear I've read that somewhere or other.

Horse-race aside, it's important to note what's important to Catholic voters. Our friends at Catholics In Alliance for the Common Good looked into that in a tracking poll released last week.

Among their findings:

The single issue that will most influence your vote -

The economy: 58%

Iraq: 18%

health care: 8%

abortion: 6%

immigration: 4%

flag lapel pin-wearing: 0%

bowling ability: 0%

("Bittergate" had not yet hatched when the poll was conducted.)

Grab the full report here.

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Interesting new poll data relayed without comment (other than calling it interesting).

A new Harris poll purporting to establish a National Happiness Index denotes a correlation between religiousity and happiness:

Religion

People who describe themselves as "very religious" are among the happiest of people. Those who say they are "very religious" come in ten points higher than America as a whole on the Happiness Index (45% compared to 35% are considered "very happy"). In contrast, just over one-quarter (28%) of people who describe themselves as "not religious" were measured at that level of happiness.

A similar difference is noted among people who say they "pray or study religion at home" on a daily basis compared to less often. Over four in ten people (43%) who engage in "daily" prayer or religious study are very happy. In comparison, just over one-quarter (28%) of people who "never" pray or study religion at home have a comparable happiness level.

Make of it what you will.

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Steven Waldman, co-founder, editor-in-chief, and CEO of Beliefnet.com, visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America."

Waldman focuses on the five founding fathers who had the most influence on religion's role in the state — Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams and Madison — and untangles their complex legacy. This event took place as part of the Authors@Google series.

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I hope Sojourners will forgive the play on their awesome campaign. I just couldn't resist.

While much of the discussion of the Papal visit has been excellent (see, for example, the New York Times' A Papal Discussion blog), I'm continually amazed by some of the beltway pundits' inane efforts to reduce the pontiff's message to simple political slogans.

Over the last eight years, George W. Bush and his allies have launched a highly successful Catholic outreach strategy, much of which consists of highlighting areas of agreement between Bush and the Catholic hierarchy, which is itself a perfectly legitimate exercise.

More nefarious, however, is the aggressive re-branding strategy launched by a few conservative operatives depicting the Republican party and Bush policies as the only "authentic" Catholic positions despite glaring disagreement on torture, the Iraq war, poverty and the environment. These important issues are either ignored or dismissed as "negotiable." Bush is referred to as the "second Catholic president," a highly partisan political event gets unironic billing as the "National Catholic Prayer Breakfast," and Dana Perino suggests that the Pope and the President share an understanding that the surge is working despite Benedict's outspoken opposition to this war in particular and preemptive war in general.

The last straw, for me, was hearing Benedict XVI referred to as an "honorary Republican." That's just plain silly. (Ditto to calling him an honorary Democrat). The Pope, and his message, simply don't fit in our conventional political boxes.

I was one of the lucky people who attended the Papal mass at Nationals Park. Being packed in a stadium with almost 50,000 people and being led in prayer by the leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide, I was overwhelmed by the sheer bigness of it all. Partisan politics seem small by comparison.

Benedict's message made his priorities clear: he is a pastor first and foremost. He addressed the sexual abuse crisis with great sensitivity and sought to give encouragement to all of us trying to live lives of grace in our local Catholic communities. Benedict doesn't shy away from engaging with public policy, but his message is always rooted in his understanding of the Gospel, not which sound bite will swing an election.

I do not agree with everything Benedict has preached or everything he wrote back when he was only Joseph Ratzinger. Like millions of my co-religionists, I do my best to reconcile the teachings of my church, my experience in community and the convictions of my conscience. I also do my best to remember the awesome responsibilities that come with being Pope.

In addition to the sex abuse crisis in the U.S., Benedict must deal with rapidly changing demographics in the global church, find a way to keep peace between those of us Catholics who would like to see more liberal policies on some key social issues and traditionalists who think Vatican II bordered on apostasy, cooperate with other religions in search of a more peaceful world, and try to alleviate the immediate suffering of many of Catholics in global south experiencing hunger, disease and frustration.

The Holy Father has a long to-do list, but boosting political parties is not on it. The next time a political pundit wants to make Pope Benedict an honorary Republican (or Democrat) they should do him the honor of listening to what he says. All of it.

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Richard Cizik is Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.

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Sunday’s Compassion Forum, organized and co-sponsored by Faith in Public Life, brought together conservative, moderate and progressive religious leaders to ask the presidential candidates pointed questions about pressing moral issues that are bridging ideological divides in the faith community. The diversity of the Forum’s board members and political supporters speaks to the unifying power of these issues.

Unfortunately, an email sent yesterday from Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins to FRC readers contained inaccuracies and mischaracterizations of the bridge-building event.

Perkins claimed that he was not invited to the Forum. In fact, Perkins was invited to attend the Forum AND the VIP reception for faith leaders held beforehand. He never responded to the invitation.

Perkins called the Compassion Forum’s board “radical.” In fact, The Compassion Forum Board of religious leaders includes numerous conservative leaders: the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, just to name a few. Moreover, as Perkins acknowledged, The Compassion Forum was endorsed by Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rick Santorum. Perkins ignored that the Forum took place at Messiah College, an evangelical college in rural Pennsylvania, and will be broadcast on the Church Communication Network (CCN) to more than 1,000 churches next Sunday.

Perkins claimed that “the bulk of last night's program was taken directly from the playbook of the Religious Left, focusing not on the issues closest to Christians' hearts but on climate change, AIDS, and global poverty.” Poll after poll shows that climate change, AIDS and global poverty are moral priorities for evangelical Christians. Moreover, Perkins' claim ignored the Forum’s extensive and thoughtful discussion of abortion. Both candidates were asked if they believed life begins at conception and Senator Obama was asked two additional questions related to abortion.

Notably, Perkins mentioned that he wrote a book with Bishop Harry Jackson arguing that many of the issues addressed at The Compassion Forum “demand the church’s attention” but that “our priority as Christians should be as those of the Founding Fathers; protect the sanctity of human life, preserve marriage, and defend religious liberty.” It is curious that Perkins invoked the Founding Fathers rather than Jesus and the prophets when staking his agenda, and that he chose to place abortion and the fight to “preserve marriage” into the American Revolution. It is also worth noting that on the same day that Perkins chose to attack The Compassion Forum, Bishop Harry Jackson chose to call the Forum “excellent”, “flawless”, and “great”.

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Only one day until the Compassion Forum. Already the pundits are opining about what this means for Americans of faith and the presidential candidates. It was not long ago that the media mostly treated the GOP as more Christian than Democrats, and forgot to talk about the interfaith diversity of the American public.

"We want to determine the Republicans' interest in addressing the needs of the vulnerable," said Joel Hunter, an influential Florida mega-pastor who supported Mike Huckabee when the Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor made his populist but failed bid for the Republican nomination.

"We also want to gauge the Democrats' interest in community and faith-based solutions and not just handing it all off to the government," said Hunter, who will also be at the event.

One of the hottest of the issues that bridge left and right, public and private sector, is domestic and international poverty. As many people have been pointing out of late, U.S. budgets are moral documents, showing our priorities. About 36.5 million Americans live in poverty and this lack of basic resources results in an even larger drain on all American well-being. By failing to address the private and public causes trapping every tenth American, the problem only infects the surrounding culture, from health care, schooling, work force to crime. This presentation was sponsored by the Catholic Campaigh for Human Development

But this extends beyond American. Islamic Relief reports that in developing countries a high percentage of the population lives in rural areas, making a living from agriculture. When floods and drought lead to crop shortages, thousands of people and animals die in the famine that follows. The death of livestock and harvest failure deprives these people of their only source of income. They aim to make a lasting difference in the lives of the poor by building the capacity of local communities to sustain themselves. IR provides training and Islamically acceptable loans enabling people to earn a better living, either by running small businesses or by seeking well-paid employment.

But beyond micro-credit and relief, Brian Swarts, of the Jubilee USA campaign writes:

The world's most impoverished countries pay more than $100 million each day in debt payments to wealthy governments and financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In countries where the majority of the population lives on less than $1 per day, this money should be spent on clean water, basic health care, and education rather than repaying some of the world's wealthiest financial institutions.

The faith community has a history of moral leadership on the debt issue. In 2000 and again in 2005, world leaders came together to cancel billions of dollars of debt in dozens of impoverished countries around the world. The money freed by debt cancellation has been directed to fight global AIDS, enroll children in school, provide clean water, and improve rural infrastructure among other poverty-focused initiatives. But there is still much more that needs to be done -- 44 impoverished countries around the world are still waiting for debt justice!

Compassion Forum question: What do you think the primary causes of persistent poverty in America are? Is it possible to entirely eradicate it? What respective roles should government, the faith community and the private sector play in ending poverty?

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As people of faith realize that their spiritual connection transcends ideology and geography, interesting combinations of voices have emerged. For example, megachurch pastor Rick Warren hosting Sen. Hillary Clinton for an HIV/AIDS conference with his Orange County congregation.

It's not sure politicians and pastors who are realigning their priorities, rock stars are doing this as well.

It can be easy to dismiss the rhetoric of these folks, especially in the faith community, a significant number of whom stood silent during the height of the American epidemic during the 80s and 90s. But here is evangelical pastor Rick Warren's website outlaying a "purpose driven" approach to caring for HIV/AIDS patients.

AIDS/HIV hits minority communities especially hard, all around the world. Because of the geographical and minority barriers, the issue often receives little Congressional attention. The Balm In Gilead operates the nation's only HIV/AIDS technical assistance center designed specifically to serve churches as well as public agencies and community-based organizations that wish to work with Black churches on AIDS issues.

Question: Is health care a human right? If so, does the U.S. have a moral obligation to address the AIDS pandemic around the world? What about other diseases? Do you think the focus on HIV/AIDS distracts from other world health concerns?

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I was down at the San Francisco Olympic protests yesterday, and while Tibet was the biggest draw, the green-shirted Save Darfur folks were a strong presence. Mix in Burma, the Vietnamese fishermen and it's pretty clear that the next U.S. president will have to take some serious leadership in addressing the human rights abuses fueled by run-away Chinese capitalism.

Here actor/activist Don Cheadle discusses the deteriorating situation in the Darfur region of Sudan at the launch event for the ENOUGH! Project in Washington DC with John Prendergast

The Save Darfur coalition has produced a 20 min. video: A Call to Action. The film provides background on the genocide in Darfur and explores what the major religions tell us about our responsibility to our brothers and sisters there.

It features interviews with Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, President Elect of the National Council of Churches USA; Bishop John Ricard, chairman of the ad-hoc committee for the Church of Africa of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; Dr. Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America; Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, M.D., Co-Pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston and founder of a humanitarian women’s group in Sudan, and Darfuri survivors of the genocide, the film implores viewers to take action and join the Save Darfur community.

On Monday, Nicholas Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, spoke as part of the Dream for Darfur: A Two-Day Academic Symposium on the World’s Darkest Olympics, an event sponsored by Ithaca College.

The Ithacan reports:

The event emphasized the role that China, Sudan’s chief diplomatic sponsor and major weapon’s provider, could play in the ending of the genocide. The speakers told of international pressure on China and the possibility of boycotting the 2008 Summer Olympics in China.

Kristof said though China would feel pressure if many nations boycott the opening and closing ceremonies, it may also lead to more problems. Kristof said his suggestion is to wait until closer to the start of the games to make a decision about boycotting.

“People … not going to the opening and closing ceremonies would be a huge embarrassment to China,” Kristof said. “My fear will be that a boycott of the opening and closing ceremonies will tend to boost Chinese nationalism, push China into a corner and create less cooperation.”

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A new exposé in Vanity Fair by British attorney Philippe Sands reveals new details about how attorney John Yoo and other high-ranking administration lawyers helped design and implement the interrogation policies seen at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons.

According to this article, "The Green Light," then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and other top officials personally visited Guantanamo in 2002, discussed interrogation techniques and witnessed interrogations.

On the 7th of February, 2002, President Bush adopted the decision that none of the detainees at Guantanamo would be able to rely on any protections under the Geneva Conventions, including the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or torture. And Doug Feith described to me how he and General Myers worked together, and that he, in particular, took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva. And I put it to him, “Isn’t the consequence of getting rid of Geneva that there’s essentially a blank page? All the constraints on abusive interrogation are gone.” And his response was, “That was precisely the point.” And I thought that was rather telling, because the administration has never owned up to the fact that the reason they dis-applied Geneva was precisely to open the door to aggressive interrogation.

According to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture: "Religious institutions are called to embody these values and to engage in these tasks because of the authority they bring to issues of morality. Religious traditions emphasize ethical behavior as a demonstration of faith in action. They also provide leadership in secular society, playing an important role in influencing issues of morality at the national, state, and local levels. Furthermore, the infrastructure they provide supports the millions of people who covet justice and peace for all of God's creation.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian, politicist, and observer of 19th century America, observed that "America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." It is important for people of faith to impress upon Americans and our leaders in Washington that America's goodness, and hence its greatness, is seriously compromised by the practice of torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments of detainees."

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One of the reasons that climate change needs to be a presidential priority is expressed best by this April 2 Daily Show piece on the complete ineffectiveness of Congressional hearings in getting the fossil fuel industry to do anything substantial.

On the other hand, calling presidential candidates to responsibility on global warming seems to be having an effect. Newsweek has an interesting article up arguing that no matter which candidate wins in November, environmental policy will be different:

The environment, which typically ranks somewhere around "regulatory reform" among voters' concerns, has emerged as a leading issue in this election cycle; last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005. "It was clear starting all the way back in Iowa and New Hampshire that this campaign would be much more about the environment," says Dave Willett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "The questions weren't 'Do you think global warming is happening?' but 'How are you going to deal with it, what's your approach?'"

This is in part due to the huge grassroots efforts by faith leaders and congregates working together in linking climate change and creation care. As the current documentary Renewal shows, Appalachian evangelicals who care about mountain top removal are connected to San Francisco-based Buddhists, Chicago Muslims, and New England Reconstructionist Jews. Perhaps beyond the candidates, the real question is what sort of climate for changing attitudes on CO2 emissions will the faithful create for their political leaders?

Key question: how will the presidential candidates mobilize industry, faith groups, the environmental community, and government together to cut 2% of CO2 emissions each year for the next 40 years?

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 05:38 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (1)

Religious leaders from across the ideological spectrum are pleased to announce today that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have both confirmed that they will participate in an unprecedented bipartisan presidential candidate forum at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on the evening of Sunday, April 13 – just nine days before the Pennsylvania primary. Senator McCain has thus far declined the invitation, which is still open.

Now more than ever, Americans motivated by faith are bridging ideological divides to address domestic and international poverty, global AIDS, climate change, abortion, genocide in Darfur, and human rights and torture. The Compassion Forum will provide the opportunity for candidates to discuss how their faith and moral convictions bear on their positions on these important issues.

The Compassion Forum is not a debate. Each candidate will participate in a separate substantive conversation. “This is an occasion to talk about the substance and not the sensationalism of religion and politics,” said moderator Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, author of American Gospel, and respected scholar on faith and American politics.

Posted by Dan at 05:45 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (4)

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Marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, The Washington Post's On Faith section has a great collection of faith leaders' personal reflections on the loss and legacy of Martin Luther King.

Rev. Sue Thistlethwaite (an FPL board member):

Dr. King’s message was so challenging to established power in the United States, power based on racial privilege, on militarism and on economic stratification, that he was killed for speaking out. It is no wonder that established power today wishes to domesticate Dr. King’s prophetic vision and co-opt it order to justify conflict.

But today of all days, today as we remember that 40 years ago Dr. King was killed for speaking out against unjust power, let us not be fooled. Dr. King was killed because he challenged racism, militarism and economic inequality. And if you are not doing the same, you have no right to claim this legacy.

Rabbie Arthur Waskow:

By noon on April 5, Washington was ablaze. It was touch and go whether 18th Street — four houses from my door — would join the flames. Just barely, our neighborhood’s interracial ties held fast.

By April 6, there was a curfew. Thousands of Blacks were being herded into jail for breaking it. But the police did not care whether whites were on the streets. So for a week, my white co-workers and I brought food, medicine, doctors from the suburbs into the schools and churches of burnt-out downtown Washington.

Eboo Patel:

King’s ultimate vision was not just about race or nation, but new relationships – between people from different backgrounds, between America and the world, between humanity and God. That is why people from every country and faith derive inspiration from his legacy, a legacy best summed up in one of King’s final books, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community: “The great new problem of mankind (is that) we have inherited ... a great ‘ world house‘ in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu ... Because we can never again live apart, we must somehow learn to live with each other in peace.”

King does not belong only to people who look like him, or pray like him or speak like him.

King belongs to people who live up to his legacy of pluralism.

Rev. Bob Edgar:

I met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a February day in 1968, when, as a seminary student, I took a long bus ride to Washington D.C. to hear him speak at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church about the connection between the cost of the war in Vietnam and its devastating impact on the poor.

His courageous words that day -- earnest, unafraid, challenging America’s moral failings without judgment or alienation -- changed my life. He inspired my political activism that came to include serving in Congress for 12 years, and now serving as the president of Common Cause.

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On the heels of yesterday's torture memo release, Vanity Fair published a wrenching, in-depth story about the genesis and evolution of America's post-9/11 torture regime. It is a deeper and darker hole than I cared to imagine, and the story does a great job of laying the facts out, and of bringing it home on a gut level:

We went through the marked-up document slowly, pausing at each blue mark. Detainee 063’s reactions were recorded with regularity. I’ll string some of them together to convey the impression:

Detainee began to cry. Visibly shaken. Very emotional. Detainee cried. Disturbed. Detainee began to cry. Detainee bit the IV tube completely in two. Started moaning. Uncomfortable. Moaning. Began crying hard spontaneously. Crying and praying. Very agitated. Yelled. Agitated and violent. Detainee spat. Detainee proclaimed his innocence. Whining. Dizzy. Forgetting things. Angry. Upset. Yelled for Allah.

The blue highlights went on and on.

Urinated on himself. Began to cry. Asked God for forgiveness. Cried. Cried. Became violent. Began to cry. Broke down and cried. Began to pray and openly cried. Cried out to Allah several times. Trembled uncontrollably.

(h/t David Kurtz at TPM)

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The torture memos have long been known to exist, but the texts themselves came out today, and they're breathtaking.

The Washington Post has them in two parts, here and here.

From the Post's report on the memos:

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

So it's okay to torture, provided that you're not doing it just to be a jerk. Also, no legal authority can prevent the President from authorizing it.

Here's another torture memo -- the National Religious Campaign Against Torture's quotes from religious leaders:

Judicial and penal institutions play a fundamental role in protecting citizens and safeguarding the common good (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2266). At the same time, they are to aid in rebuilding “social relationships disrupted by the criminal act committed” (cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 403). By their very nature, therefore, these institutions must contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders, facilitating their transition from despair to hope and from unreliability to dependability. When conditions within jails and prisons are not conducive to the process of regaining a sense of a worth and accepting its related duties, these institutions fail to achieve one of their essential ends. Public authorities must be ever vigilant in this task, eschewing any means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners. In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture “cannot be contravened under any circumstances” (Ibid., 404).
-Pope Benedict XVI

"I'm concerned that we, as a nation, are unwilling to draw the line on torture. We should be able to point to that line with pride. To cross it would be to vacate our integrity and violate the human dignity of those whom we thus choose to victimize." - Rev. William J. Byron, S.J., Research Professor, Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola College in Maryland

"The deliberate torture of one human being by another is a sin against our Creator, in whose image we all have been created. This practice should not be condoned or allowed by any government. It must be condemned by all people of faith, wherever it exists, without exception." - Archbishop Demetrios, Primate, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

"My Christian faith does not allow me to compromise on this issue. Torturing another human being, a child of God, is evil, plain and simple." - Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, president and CEO, Common Cause

"I signed 'Torture is a Moral Issue' because I understand the Christian faith to require vigorous efforts on behalf of human dignity, wherever it is threatened--friend or enemy, wartime or peacetime, my government or somebody else's government. I also understand that evangelical Christians, of which I am one, have enormous power in this culture, and I wanted to put myself clearly on record against torture precisely as an evangelical. I signed the statement because I believe that the United States has a fundamental legal and moral obligation to refrain from any form of torture even as we also have a legitimate right to self-defense. Finally, I signed the statement because I am very much concerned that torture, or acts approaching torture, are still occurring." - Dr. David P. Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics, McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

"What we must face squarely is this: whenever we torture or mistreat prisoners, we are capitulating morally to the enemy-in fact, adopting the terrorist ethic that the end justifies the means."
- Rev. Kermit D. Johnson, Chaplain (Major General), U.S. Army (ret.) ( From "Inhuman behavior: A chaplain's view of torture," The Christian Century, 4/18/06.)

"There is a special dignity in every human being that comes from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in God's one human family. It is because of this that we all feel that torture is a dehumanizing and terrible attack against human nature and the respect we owe for each other." - Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington

"In the years leading up to World War II, Karl Barth lamented that the German church wasn't awake to what was going on.'...the Church permanently finds itself in an emergency,' he said, but often is asleep at the wheel. I worry that we similarly are slipping into patterns of national behavior about which the American church is unaware, silent, or worse, complicit. I hope this statement on torture will help us wake up." - Dr. Brian McLaren, author/speaker

"The international community expresses shared moral belief through international law. International law absolutely prohibits torture, as well as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The United States was once fully in support of these international laws and the moral principles upon which they are based. We can be again." - Mary Ellen O'Connell, Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School

"All of humanity is created in the image of God. Torture is a profound violation of this principle." - Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

"The Bible teaches that all of us sin, and power corrupts especially when dealing with the weak and vulnerable--which surely includes prisoners. Biblical Christians know we need the restraint of law, and want to be law-abiding. It's not enough just to be against torture; we want the U. S. to be a law-abiding citizen of the world, respecting international law." - Dr. Glen Stassen, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theologicay Seminary

"I have heightened sensitivity to the torture issue because the central symbol of my faith is an instrument of torture. While on that torture machine Jesus cried out to God on humanity's behalf, 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.' 2000 years later, we still don't know what we are doing." - Dr. Leonard Sweet, E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism, Drew University

"The Koran clearly emphasizes the dignity of all human beings that must be maintained at all costs."
- Dr. Sayyid Syeed, National Director, Office of Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society of North America

"If we condone torture, we yield the moral high ground to our enemies and encourage anyone who hates us to stoop to using that subhuman level against us. We reap whatever we sow." - Dr. Rick Warren, Founder and Pastor,
Saddleback Church

Posted by Dan at 11:36 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

James Dobson seems to be of two minds when it comes to voting. Back on February 5, 2008, mouthpiece Laura Ingraham read a statement from the Focus on the Family founder in which he restated what he's said before, that this election presents the worst choices in his lifetime for those who care about the American family.

But on Sunday, on Hannity's America, Dobson now sounds like he's thinking about pulling the lever. Might that have something to do with McCain's outreach (John Hagee) to that crowd of late? And why is Mitt Romney not clashing with John McCain of late?

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 11:27 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (1)

Some friends of mine organized this panel discussion at the Graduate Theological Union. I thought - in light of Opening Day and all - that the questions might provoke some interesting discussion for folks who like to think about the variety of ways that faith works in public life.

• Do pastors really need to know anything about sports?
• What can sports teams and sports fans teach Christians about community?
• How do athletics serve a liturgical purpose?
• Are sports competing with church in US society? How so? Is that a bad thing?
• What sermon will you give on Super Bowl Sunday?
• How can sports and religion cooperate to bring about justice and improve people's lives?
• What are some ethical implications of the Olympic Games?

On that last question, in light of all the unrest in Tibet lately and China's role in the Darfur genocide, do lovers of sport and human freedom, have a role to "play" here too?

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 02:28 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (1)