BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
11 July 2025
11 June 2016
Sermon on Paul, Silas, and the Prayers of My Mother 17MAI16
PRAYER, politics, compassion, faith, Christianity, judging and forgiveness, they are all in here and this is worth the time reading.
Sermon on Paul, Silas, and the Prayers of My Mother
May 17, 2016 by
(click above to listen along)
When my big sister was 6 she prayed and prayed every night for a baby sister. My mother Peggy had what is called RH factor , which there was no treatment for in the 60’s like there is now. Her blood created anti-bodies against the blood of her babies and it grew worse with each subsequent pregnancy. Peggy had beat the odds with 2 healthy babies and was told she could not have another – also she was on birth control…so every night when my big sister Barbara prayed and prayed for a baby sister my mom was like, “yeah…keep praying”. And then despite the odds and despite the birth control, Peggy got pregnant with me. And despite the odds and despite what every Doctor said, she gave birth to me. And despite the odds and despite fact that the nurses told her not to try and breastfeed me, since I wasn’t going to live and if I did she would only make me more sick, yes despite this all my mother nursed me and while she did she prayed and she sang hymns. When they finally took me home, they basically handed me to my big sister and was like, “here”.
At times I really believe that the only reason I am alive is the prayers and hymn singing of these two women. It is one of those things I believe and yet cannot fully explain.
I don’t think it’s my own faith or prayer that has in anyway saved me…but it is the faith and prayer of others.
Don’t mistake me, I would never suggest that if we pray hard enough we can keep our loved ones from dying. There’s a difference between thinking we can be like God and seeing in retrospect the way God has used the prayers of others to help and save us. But just because we don’t get to decide the effect prayer has in the world does not mean that prayer has no effect in the world. And this week I keep thinking about how perhaps we are being held in prayer, protected by prayer, and loved through the prayers of others in ways we don’t even perceive.
Prayer plays an interesting role in the divine jailbreak story we just heard from Acts, because it sort of feels like something out of a comic book – as if Paul and Silas have obtained superhero levels of faith. Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound and Spiderman has heightened senses but Paul and Silas can cause earthquakes that free them from prison just by praying and singing hymns.
I really really really want to see myself in Paul and Silas kind of in the same way that I realy really want to see myself in Wonder Woman. I want to think of myself as having that kind of super-hero faith. The kind that, were I falsely accused, stripped of my clothing, severely beaten with rods, thrown into the depths of a first century jail cell and shackled, that I too would respond not by crying like a baby or being immobilized with fear and hatred but like Paul and Silas I would respond in the dark of night by praying and singing hymns. I’ve not been in that particular situation or anything vaguely like it and maybe in true hardship I would surprise myself, but given how I respond to even minor irritations, that super hero response feels unlikely.
Because if I’m honest I have to admit that if I pull a muscle and can’t work out for two weeks or even if I just run out of coffee at home, I lose faith.
I’ve never known what to do with messages that tell me to “just pray and have more faith and everything will be fine”. Because those kinds of messages never make me have more faith. They make me have more guilt for not having more faith. And then I just feel more stuck in this feeling of spiritual inadequacy.
My own spiritual inadequacy was in full force this week as I struggled in this campaign season to see the humanity in my ideological “other”. Along with much of the country I feel hopelessly shackled to my own beliefs and ideology and world view – a prisoner with everyone else in this culture war. I found this week that my own ability to access the better part of myself, the part that can see the other side as also bearing the image of God, I found this week that I am so filled with vitriol when I hear certain political figures speak that I can even feel it in my body. Basically if my only hope is my own stingy heart or my own mortal level of faith then I am hopeless.
And then I was tagged in a youtube video.
It was Thursday night and I was standing in the kitchen of a friend’s house when I saw a link to a video featuring a middle aged white guy in a goatee and a trucker hat – apparently a guy named Larry had made a video message to me.
Absolutely sure he was yet another arrogant conservative who felt the need to mansplain to me why I’m a dangerous heretic and not a real pastor I braced myself for a fight. Had I known what was really on this video I would have instead prepared my heart and not my fists.
Instead, I stood in my friend’s kitchen and listened to this self-described “former Marine, Biker, gun-toting, NRA member, conservative Republican” say how Pastor Reagan’s beautiful Sermon on Thomas made him cry….it tore him apart. He thanked us for helping to peel away the callauses on his heart and helping to make him love.
Larry is exactly the kind of person who all week I was feeling spiritually inadequate to love or even see as a brother in any way. And yet it was HIS faith, HIS broken and healed heart, HIS love that gave me the heart and faith I lacked. I didn’t create if for myself and yet there it was.
So, as someone who is not unfamiliar with the feeling of spiritual inadequacy, which character do I really relate to in the story of Paul and Silas in prison? It’s not really Paul and Silas at all, it’s the other prisoners. Verses 25-26 tell us: About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’schains were unfastened.
Everyone’s chains were unfastened. Not just the ones praying and singing. But everyone.
I love that it was only Paul and Silas who prayed and sang hymns and yet it was all the prisoners who were freed. Like somehow the faith of 2 was sufficient for the whole group. And later the belief of the jailer was enough for his entire household to experience salvation.
I relate to being in the dark. I relate to feeling shackled to certain ways of thinking and feeling and acting. I relate to not being able to free myself and yet still experiencing freedom. In other words, I relate to relying on the faith of others, the songs of others, the prayers of others.
So many of us have felt tortured by not knowing if we have enough faith or the right kind of faith. I’ve said this before but perhaps it bears repeating: faith is never given in sufficient quantities to individuals…it’s given in sufficient quantities to communities. Because this thing isn’t an individual competition, it’s a team sport.
God has provided in us all the faith sufficient for our freedom. We just have to take turns being the ones being lowered through the roof to Jesus and being the ones doing the lowering.
There’s enough. There’s enough faith. There’s enough love. There’s enough hymn singing. There’s enough freedom.
And for we who bear the name Christian prayer and love and faith and hymns are our birthright. Even if we don’t always know how to pray and we love poorly and have little faith and don’t like all the hymns…even then all of this is ours just as it has been the birthright of all the people I’d God for millennia. Even when we don’t have enough of our own, there is enough.
Even Jesus’ prayers for us surround us. As weird as that sounds.
Our Gospel reading is of Jesus’ prayer at the end of his ministry on Earth. He prays to the Father not just for his disciples, but for those who will believe as a result of his disciples’ testimony – um, if you’re doing the math at home….that means us. All that stuff we heard about Jesus praying that we be one with him and the father – that’s what all of this is. When we sing hymns we join our voices to those who have sung before us – Paul and Silas in prison and the early Christians in the upper room, and the dessert fathers and mothers escaping persecution and medieval monks carrying the tradition, and the civil rights marchers trudging the path of faith and resistance and Peggy in that hospital rocking chair and us together here tonight.
There is just so much prayer and faith surrounding us all the time and effecting us in ways we don’t even know and for this abundance in the face of my own insufficiency, for your faith and prayer and song which unshackles me over and over and for the God who made it all possible, I give thanks. Amen.
19 February 2016
09 January 2016
The states people really want to move to — and those they don’t 9JAN16
I moved to Virginia in the Spring of 1986, live in NOVA / Northern Virginia, and due to cultural and political factors can't see myself moving any farther South now or when I retire in about 8 years. I may change my mind if the flow of Yankees and immigration brings a political shift in the politics of the South, but really, I need to live somewhere there is a change of seasons. Of course, depending on how well we address climate change I may have to retire to Canada. I am a lover of maps, this from the +Washington Post .....
The states people really want to move to — and those they don’t
New census data shows the trend accelerating back to its pre-recession pace. Florida, which actually lost more domestic movers than it gained right after the housing bubble burst, picked up about 200,000 net new movers between 2014 and 2015 (this number includes people who move between states, not immigration into the United States from abroad). Illinois, meanwhile, had a net loss of about 105,000 residents, its largest one-year population leak in the 21st century.
The District of Columbia, perched between the North and South, has been a winner, too.
The other big gains over the past year were Texas (170,000 new migrants), Colorado (54,00o), and Arizona and South Carolina (both with more than 45,000 each). Not a single state in the Northeast or Midwest gained domestic movers over the last year.
Several long-term trends dating as far back as the 1960s are behind this larger pattern. The rise of air conditioning and interstate highways have made once-sleepy (and sweltering) Southern cities more appealing. And, over the same time, the decline of industrial jobs in the Midwest and Northeast have pushed people out. Cheap housing during the boom years also drove growth in states such as Arizona and Nevada.
For states like New York, domestic migration losses are offset by new immigration from abroad. But for many places in the Rust Belt, these shifts will mean more empty houses and "shrinking cities," and less political might.
Emily Badger is a reporter for Wonkblog covering urban policy. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic Cities.
Darla
makes graphics that tell stories at the intersection of business and
politics (especially when there are maps involved). Before joining the
Post, she worked at the Tampa Bay Times and graduated from the Missouri
School of Journalism.
23 September 2014
These Are the Regions Where Americans Are Most Likely to Favor Secession & These Places Really, Really Want to Secede From Their States 23SEP14&7NOV13
INTERESTING, and of all the places I'd have no problem saying good-bye to it would be Texas. There is just something about that state. I have family I love there, have been all over the state, but there are a lot of really ignorant people in Texas, a lot of really ignorant laws and policies and there seems to be an underlying simmering of right wing racist fanaticism just waiting to explode. I could see Texas becoming the "christian sharia" center of the Western Hemisphere. Oh well, just my ramblings. Check this out from +Mother Jones .....
Inspired
by the events surrounding the recent Scottish independence referendum, a
new poll reveals an alarming number of Americans think a similar
splintering of the union is a fine idea.
The poll, organized by Reuters, found that 23.9 percent of Americans would favor their state seceding from the rest of the country. Residents of the Southwest and the Rockies were the most likely to voice support, polling at 34 percent and 25 percent respectively. A plurality of would-be secessionists reported an annual income of $25,000 or less.
A shock to no one, more Republicans than Democrats want to break free.
Among reasons for secession, a disillusionment with Washington, coupled with a strong hatred for Obamacare ranked high. All this despite the fact these Americans are in need of healthcare expansion the most and studies continue to show states that have embraced the Affordable Care Act have seen the sharpest drop in uninsured rates.
Texas in particular, which has a history of secessionist sentiment and makes up a large portion of the Southwest, is the one determined state that might actually have a chance at surviving without the American whole. But let's keep in mind Texas has relied heavily on their much deplored Washington.
But don't be too concerned. The same poll found 53.3 percent understand secession is a no good, bad idea.
| Tue Sep. 23, 2014 1:40 PM EDT
The poll, organized by Reuters, found that 23.9 percent of Americans would favor their state seceding from the rest of the country. Residents of the Southwest and the Rockies were the most likely to voice support, polling at 34 percent and 25 percent respectively. A plurality of would-be secessionists reported an annual income of $25,000 or less.
A shock to no one, more Republicans than Democrats want to break free.
Among reasons for secession, a disillusionment with Washington, coupled with a strong hatred for Obamacare ranked high. All this despite the fact these Americans are in need of healthcare expansion the most and studies continue to show states that have embraced the Affordable Care Act have seen the sharpest drop in uninsured rates.
Texas in particular, which has a history of secessionist sentiment and makes up a large portion of the Southwest, is the one determined state that might actually have a chance at surviving without the American whole. But let's keep in mind Texas has relied heavily on their much deplored Washington.
Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched."Texas has everything we need. We have the manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don't need them," one Texan still told Reuters.
But don't be too concerned. The same poll found 53.3 percent understand secession is a no good, bad idea.
If You Liked This, You Might Also Like...
Rand Paul Doubles Down on Support for GOP Senate Candidate Who Rallied With Secessionists
Despite Greg Brannon's extreme views, on Monday, the Kentucky Senator offered his fundraising help."NO." Scotland Will Not Leave the United Kingdom
The 307-year-old Union will survive.-
| Thu Nov. 7, 2013 7:00 AM ESTWhile most Americans went to the polls on Tuesday with nothing more than the fate of some politicians and a few ballot measures at stake, residents of 11 counties in Colorado got to decide whether or not they want to secede and form their own state. (Majorities in five counties said yes.)
Current Colorado residents aren't the only ones itching to add more stars to the American flag, even though the process is next to impossible—after obtaining local approval, a breakaway region must also get the okay from its home state's legislature, and then Congress.
While other parts of the country have their eyes on total independence from the United States, these four regions have a more modest goal: becoming the country's 51st state.
North Colorado
Tired of the liberal bent in Denver, officials in the state's rural (and redder) northern region got secession on the ballot. A recent state law that doubled renewable energy requirements for suppliers in rural areas was the "last straw," according to Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway, who told ABC News, "I think [this is] just one more example of the disconnect happening in the state of Colorado…it isn't a Democrat or a Republican thing." If all 11 counties were to secede, the resulting state would have a population of a little more than 350,000—slightly more people than live in Tampa, Florida. Its largest city would be Greeley, whose mayor recently penned a column arguing that, despite widespread perceptions to the contrary, it no longer smells like cattle.
Jefferson
Another rural offshoot, Jefferson would combine some of the northernmost counties of California with some of the southernmost in Oregon to form a new state dedicated to free markets and limited government. Officials in two California counties recently voted in favor of the movement, whose website contains quotes from Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and Mahatma Gandhi along with a link to The Jeffersons theme song. The effort isn't particularly new—Jefferson first tried declaring itself a new state back in 1941, though the attack on Pearl Harbor led activists to abandon the cause.
Western Maryland
Nearly 62 percent of Marylanders went for Obama last year, and the state has had only one Republican governor since Spiro Agnew left office in 1969. For residents of the state's more conservative counties, then, it's easy to feel disenfranchised from "the dominant ruling class," as statehood advocate Scott Strzelczyk puts it. And that's left him looking for a way out: "If you think you have a long list of grievances and it's been going on for decades, and you can't get it resolved, ultimately this is what you have to do," Strzelczyk told the Washington Post in September. "Otherwise you are trapped." The so-called Western Maryland Initiative has never been tested at the ballot, and is still in the honeymoon phase of secession planning, which includes designing T-shirts and voting on a state flag.
Baja Arizona
Not every potential breakaway state is a conservative redoubt in waiting. After the Republican-controlled Legislature passed bills allowing police to arrest and detain someone if there's a "reasonable suspicion" that the suspect is an illegal immigrant and eliminating organ transplant coverage for Medicaid recipients, liberals in southern Pima County circulated a petition for statehood. (With nearly 1 million residents, the county—home to Tucson—is still more populous than six existing US states.) Baja drew support from both sides of the aisle, too: The county Republican chair told the Arizona Daily Star that secession would make him a state GOP leader. "I'm all for a promotion," he said.
Colorado: David Benbennick/Wikimedia Commons; Jefferson: National Atlas/Wikimedia Commons; Maryland: Tom/Wikimedia Commons; Arizona: The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin/Wikimedia Commons
01 November 2012
Religious Consistency and Hypocrisy: Election 2012 & od's Politics Blog Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne: A Conversation About Politics 1NOV&29OKT12
JIM WALLIS is spot on in this commentary on religion and politics and the 2012 US elections. This from Sojourners, followed by a fascinating excerpt from Red Letter Christians by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne...
Most people in America, whether they are religious or not, prefer consistency in the faith community to hypocrisy. One of the reasons the fastest growing demographic in religious affiliation surveys is now “none of the above” is that too many people see more religious hypocrisy than consistency.
Religion is not, at its core, politically partisan. But too often religion becomes a political tool; we see that on both sides of the aisle. That does not mean people of faith shouldn’t have strong convictions or feelings about political issues or shouldn’t vote one way or another; or that there is a moral equivalency between the political parties and it doesn’t matter which way we vote. Elections are important, and people of faith should be voting as citizens and by their most basic values.
But let’s be clear: On Nov. 6, neither a Republican nor Democratic victory will bring in the kingdom of God.
Elections can sometimes, however, set a framework for what can or can’t be done for the things we believe in. And there are important differences between the candidates at every level up and down the ballots we will cast next week. But people of faith — and their leaders — should be more prophetic than partisan d
In this election, I’ve heard a lot of talk about “biblical principles” or the importance of voting according to a “Christian worldview.” Unfortunately, those words are normally followed by talking points that sound a lot more like a party platform than words you could imagine Jesus speaking. The Sermon on the Mount, when read next to campaign speeches, reads as almost a direct refutation of everything politics values in our world today. Matthew 25 sounds like an example of what NOT to say if you want to run for elected office.
With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about poverty — and with freeing the poor and oppressed as central components of the gospel's “good news" — shouldn’t we consider how the election will affect the poor and oppressed? Or ask how we should treat the millions of undocumented immigrants among us, who clearly fit the biblical category of “the stranger?” In both cases, how we treat “the least of these,” Jesus says in the 25th chapter of Matthew, is how we treat him. Doesn’t our voting have something to do with that? Many of us Christians are “pro-life,” but aren’t the nearly 20,000 children around the world who die every day of utterly preventable hunger and disease just as much a “sanctity-of-life” issue as the approximately 3,000 abortions that occurred in our country today?
A very prominent conservative Catholic lamented to me last week how his side mostly cares about children before they are born and the liberals care more about kids afterward. Where is the consistency here? And does the Bible only talk about sex and marriage, or also about social justice?
Then there is the care of God’s creation, or the resolution of the world’s inevitable conflicts without the horrible failures and human costs of our endless wars. Aren’t Christians supposed to be peacemakers? We were reminded this week of the stark reality that while God created the physical world to be good, it is also dangerous. And our failure to be good stewards of that which God made is resulting in the increasing severity of storms and devastating changes in other weather patterns.
Don’t all those issues involve biblical values too?
It has been sad to see some prominent conservative evangelical leaders say that the biblical principles in this election really only concern abortion and gay marriage, and all other issues are negotiable. Such election-year pronouncements sound more like an attempt to baptize a political party than to think critically from a moral tradition.
Our votes in elections are always about making imperfect choices, and no one’s eternal salvation is on the line by the decisions they make in the voting booth.
I have been clear from the start of the Republican primary campaign that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism should not be a factor in this election. A candidate’s theology and religious doctrines should not be an issue. But his or her moral compass should be, and so should how their religious and moral convictions affect their policy decisions. The Mormonism of Republican Mitt Romney and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid should not disqualify them for public office. To many, their faithful adherence to their religious tradition is a positive.
But neither the National Council of Churches nor the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Council of Churches nor the World Evangelical Alliance have ever been willing to accept the Mormon Church into the traditional body of Christian churches. So why did some conservative religious leaders suddenly seem to change their own position on Mormonism once Romney won the Republican nomination, and scrubbed articles from their websites that described Mormonism as an unbiblical “cult?” Would they have made those theological shifts about another person's religion if that person was a Democrat? Are our concerns really about religion and biblical values, or do they just reflect our ideological political preferences?
Christians can and will be voting in different ways in this election in response to different prudential judgments about how to best express their biblical values. But please, let us stop suggesting that "biblical values" only involve certain issues or can only be interpreted in one partisan way or another.
This is not a one-way street. Those who are politically progressive need to ask themselves: have I been consistent with the values that I profess? On war — specifically the use of drones? Poverty? The environment? Do I make excuses for my candidate on the issues I care about just because I voted for him or her?
It’s important to have a dose of humility and recognize that we all have the capacity to be inconsistent. But let’s not use that as an excuse to remain that way. Let people see our religious consistency on the issues, not our political hypocrisy at election time, by assigning ultimate biblical values to our different political choices.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. His forthcoming book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good, is set to release in early 2013. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.
TONY CAMPOLO:
Shane, I have a question to ask that may make you squirm a little bit.
From hearing you talk and reading your books, you often seem to suggest
that Christians not participate in the political process, and that
political activism is somewhat futile. Have I understood your position
correctly?
SHANE CLAIBORNE: The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.
So to answer the question, I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.
Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can pass good laws, but no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do. We can’t wait on politicians to change the world. We can’t wait on governments to legislate love. And we don’t let policies define how we treat people; how we treat people shapes our policies.
TONY CAMPOLO: So you are not calling for noninvolvement in politics. Instead, you are warning Christians not to put their trust totally in political powers. You are calling them to exercise an ongoing involvement with the political process, to constantly speak truth to power in those places where power seems to be asserting itself in ways that are contrary to the will of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: Our goal is to seek first the kingdom of God. What would it look like if Jesus were in charge of my block, of our city, of our country, our world? That’s what we get to imagine when we dream dreams of the kingdom on earth. And we get some pretty good glimpses of what that looks like from the Gospels: the poor are blessed and the rich are sent away empty, the mighty are cast from their thrones, the lowly are lifted, the peacemakers and the meek are blessed, and the proud-hearted are scattered (Luke 1:51–53).
And we’ll work with anyone who wants to work with us as we try to get to the kingdom—whether that looks like reducing poverty or eliminating abortions, doing something meaningful for the environment, changing bad laws, or trying to make sure the most vulnerable are cared for.
But we do have a peculiar way in which we hope. When I see posters with Barack Obama’s name with the word hope under it, I cringe. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus.
So when it comes to voting, I look at it not as a place to put our hope but a battle with the principalities and powers of this world. Voting is damage control. We try to decrease the amount of damage being done by those powers. And for the Christian, voting is not something we do every four years. We vote every day. We vote by how we spend money and what causes we support. We vote by how much gas we use and what products we buy. We align ourselves with things all the time. We pledge allegiance every day with our lives. The question is, Do those things line up with the upside-down kingdom of our God—where the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers are declared “blessed”?
TONY CAMPOLO: We have talked about taxes, about funding the empire, and how people often quote to me the verse that gives Jesus’ thoughts on whether we should pay. In that passage of Scripture, you recall, Jesus requested a coin and then asked, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” When the answer given was that it was “Caesar’s,” he said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” (Mark 12:13–17). Tell me how you interpret that in the context of the kingdom of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: There are two occasions when the authorities interrogated Jesus regarding taxes. On one occasion, he borrowed a coin. (The fact that he did not have one is significant.) He asked the interrogators whose image was on that coin, and then said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). On the other occasion, he instructed Peter to go catch a fish, telling him the fish would have a four-drachma coin in its mouth for the tax collectors (Matthew 17:27). (Try that on Tax Day!)
In both instances, Jesus is asked a straightforward, yes-or-no question: “Do you pay taxes?” In both cases, his response subverts the question, going deeper to challenge its basic assumptions. He doesn’t dodge the questions; he transcends them. He forces his listeners, taxpayers and tax collectors, to ponder. To what, exactly, does Caesar have a right? What has Caesar’s image, and what has God’s image? What is Caesar’s, and what is God’s?
I am particularly fond of the fish stunt. It is as though Jesus is winking at Caesar, saying, “Oh, Caesar can have his coins . . . I made the fish.” Caesar can have his silly metals; after all he can keep making more of them even if they aren’t worth a dime. But coins have no life in them. Human life is branded with the image of God, and Caesar does not own that. In a nation where such a high percentage of taxes go to military and hence ultimately to death-dealing pursuits, this teaching should give every tax-paying Christian long and troubled pause. Once we’ve given to God what is God’s, there isn’t a lot left over for Caesar.
TONY CAMPOLO: Jesus seems to be saying that though Caesar’s image is on the coin, you have to decide whether it belongs to Caesar or whether it belongs to God. Jesus is asking, “Are you going to use your money the way Caesar wants it to be used, or do you want it to be used the way God wants it to be used?” He’s throwing the decision back on those religious leaders who are trying to trap him with their questions. Each of them will have to decide whether the money in question ultimately belongs to Caesar or should it be used the way God wants it to be used. When there is conflict between what God requires and the demands of the government, each of us has an important decision to make concerning taxes.
We have talked a little bit about taxes and military spending. Now here is a related question that I am asked regularly: “Where in the Bible can you find any justification for the government taxing us and then using our money to help poor people?” My questioners go on to say, “I agree with you that Jesus calls upon us to respond to the needs of the poor, but isn’t this the task of the church? It doesn’t tell me in the Bible that it’s the task of the government to take care of poor people.” Of course, they don’t mention the fact that the church isn’t doing it. What’s more, they don’t acknowledge that the needs of the poor are so massive that the church doesn’t have the financial resources to meet those needs.
While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers’ money and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does. My task as a citizen is to get the government to do more good and less inefficient and wasteful work. There is no question in my mind that God is bigger than the church and that the church will be used in God’s endeavors, but not only the church. In God’s work in the world, all principalities, all powers, all dominions, and all thrones will be used (Ephesians 1:19–23).
If
you go to the book of Colossians, you will find that all the
principalities and powers were created by God and for God’s purposes in
the world (Colossians 1:16–17). It is the task of government, which is
one of those principalities and powers, to do the will of God every bit
as much as it is the task of the institutional church to do the will of
God. Insofar as the church fails to do the will of God, I am called upon
to help it discover and to do the will of God; and I am called upon to
help the government to do the same. Not only am I supposed to challenge
the government to do God’s will but I am to do the same for other
powers. Included in these principalities and powers are corporate
structures such as labor unions, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Apple, and
Walmart. I have to ask all these suprahuman entities if they are
functioning in accord with the will of God, because they are imposing
themselves on people and influencing their everyday lives.
If a government that is able to deliver massive numbers of people in Africa from poverty fails to do so, then Christians should challenge that government to do the will of God, especially when the government of our own country has taken 40 percent of the world’s resources in order to make possible our affluent, middle-class lifestyle, despite the fact that we make up only 5 percent of the world’s population.
Consider the AIDS crisis in Africa, which President George W. Bush addressed with a commitment of $19 billion. Our people should lend support to such an effort. This is not a Democratic thing, nor is it a Republican thing. It’s the thing that God calls the government to do in order to bring good to all humanity. Governments are created, says Romans 13, to do good for their citizens, and we have the right to resist governments when they don’t do what is good for their people. We also have the responsibility to encourage governments when they do act in ways that are good.
In Matthew 25:31–46, we read that God will judge the nations in accord with how each nation cared for the poor, cared for those in prison, and how well they accepted aliens. Please note that God holds nations, not just the church, responsible for caring for the poor. That passage of Scripture should answer those who question whether or not there is a national responsibility to care for those who are needy.
Given the times in which we live and the vast needs of the poor in both America and the world, the good that should be done for those who are impoverished requires that church and state work alongside each other to achieve this. My hope is that Red Letter Christians work together toward that end.
Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University. Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.This article is excerpted from Tony and Shane's new book Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/29/tony-campolo-and-shane-claiborne-conversation-about-politics/?continue
Most people in America, whether they are religious or not, prefer consistency in the faith community to hypocrisy. One of the reasons the fastest growing demographic in religious affiliation surveys is now “none of the above” is that too many people see more religious hypocrisy than consistency.
Religion is not, at its core, politically partisan. But too often religion becomes a political tool; we see that on both sides of the aisle. That does not mean people of faith shouldn’t have strong convictions or feelings about political issues or shouldn’t vote one way or another; or that there is a moral equivalency between the political parties and it doesn’t matter which way we vote. Elections are important, and people of faith should be voting as citizens and by their most basic values.
But let’s be clear: On Nov. 6, neither a Republican nor Democratic victory will bring in the kingdom of God.
Elections can sometimes, however, set a framework for what can or can’t be done for the things we believe in. And there are important differences between the candidates at every level up and down the ballots we will cast next week. But people of faith — and their leaders — should be more prophetic than partisan d
In this election, I’ve heard a lot of talk about “biblical principles” or the importance of voting according to a “Christian worldview.” Unfortunately, those words are normally followed by talking points that sound a lot more like a party platform than words you could imagine Jesus speaking. The Sermon on the Mount, when read next to campaign speeches, reads as almost a direct refutation of everything politics values in our world today. Matthew 25 sounds like an example of what NOT to say if you want to run for elected office.
With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about poverty — and with freeing the poor and oppressed as central components of the gospel's “good news" — shouldn’t we consider how the election will affect the poor and oppressed? Or ask how we should treat the millions of undocumented immigrants among us, who clearly fit the biblical category of “the stranger?” In both cases, how we treat “the least of these,” Jesus says in the 25th chapter of Matthew, is how we treat him. Doesn’t our voting have something to do with that? Many of us Christians are “pro-life,” but aren’t the nearly 20,000 children around the world who die every day of utterly preventable hunger and disease just as much a “sanctity-of-life” issue as the approximately 3,000 abortions that occurred in our country today?
A very prominent conservative Catholic lamented to me last week how his side mostly cares about children before they are born and the liberals care more about kids afterward. Where is the consistency here? And does the Bible only talk about sex and marriage, or also about social justice?
Then there is the care of God’s creation, or the resolution of the world’s inevitable conflicts without the horrible failures and human costs of our endless wars. Aren’t Christians supposed to be peacemakers? We were reminded this week of the stark reality that while God created the physical world to be good, it is also dangerous. And our failure to be good stewards of that which God made is resulting in the increasing severity of storms and devastating changes in other weather patterns.
Don’t all those issues involve biblical values too?
It has been sad to see some prominent conservative evangelical leaders say that the biblical principles in this election really only concern abortion and gay marriage, and all other issues are negotiable. Such election-year pronouncements sound more like an attempt to baptize a political party than to think critically from a moral tradition.
Our votes in elections are always about making imperfect choices, and no one’s eternal salvation is on the line by the decisions they make in the voting booth.
I have been clear from the start of the Republican primary campaign that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism should not be a factor in this election. A candidate’s theology and religious doctrines should not be an issue. But his or her moral compass should be, and so should how their religious and moral convictions affect their policy decisions. The Mormonism of Republican Mitt Romney and Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid should not disqualify them for public office. To many, their faithful adherence to their religious tradition is a positive.
But neither the National Council of Churches nor the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Council of Churches nor the World Evangelical Alliance have ever been willing to accept the Mormon Church into the traditional body of Christian churches. So why did some conservative religious leaders suddenly seem to change their own position on Mormonism once Romney won the Republican nomination, and scrubbed articles from their websites that described Mormonism as an unbiblical “cult?” Would they have made those theological shifts about another person's religion if that person was a Democrat? Are our concerns really about religion and biblical values, or do they just reflect our ideological political preferences?
Christians can and will be voting in different ways in this election in response to different prudential judgments about how to best express their biblical values. But please, let us stop suggesting that "biblical values" only involve certain issues or can only be interpreted in one partisan way or another.
This is not a one-way street. Those who are politically progressive need to ask themselves: have I been consistent with the values that I profess? On war — specifically the use of drones? Poverty? The environment? Do I make excuses for my candidate on the issues I care about just because I voted for him or her?
It’s important to have a dose of humility and recognize that we all have the capacity to be inconsistent. But let’s not use that as an excuse to remain that way. Let people see our religious consistency on the issues, not our political hypocrisy at election time, by assigning ultimate biblical values to our different political choices.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. His forthcoming book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good, is set to release in early 2013. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.
Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne: A Conversation About Politics
Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo. Photo courtesy of the authors.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.
To be nonpartisan doesn’t mean we’re nonpolitical. —Shane ClaiborneThe early Christians felt a deep collision with the empire in which they lived, and with politics as usual. They carelessly crossed party lines and built subversive friendships. And we should do that too. To be nonpartisan doesn’t mean we’re nonpolitical. We should refuse to get sucked into political camps and insist on pulling the best out of all of them. That’s what Jesus did—challenge the worst of each camp and pull out the best of each. That’s why we see Essenes, Zealots, Herodians, Pharisees, and Sadducees all following Jesus and even joining his movement. But they had to become new creations. They had to let go of some things. Jesus challenged the tax-collecting system of Rome and the sword of the Zealots.
So to answer the question, I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.
Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can pass good laws, but no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do. We can’t wait on politicians to change the world. We can’t wait on governments to legislate love. And we don’t let policies define how we treat people; how we treat people shapes our policies.
TONY CAMPOLO: So you are not calling for noninvolvement in politics. Instead, you are warning Christians not to put their trust totally in political powers. You are calling them to exercise an ongoing involvement with the political process, to constantly speak truth to power in those places where power seems to be asserting itself in ways that are contrary to the will of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: Our goal is to seek first the kingdom of God. What would it look like if Jesus were in charge of my block, of our city, of our country, our world? That’s what we get to imagine when we dream dreams of the kingdom on earth. And we get some pretty good glimpses of what that looks like from the Gospels: the poor are blessed and the rich are sent away empty, the mighty are cast from their thrones, the lowly are lifted, the peacemakers and the meek are blessed, and the proud-hearted are scattered (Luke 1:51–53).
And we’ll work with anyone who wants to work with us as we try to get to the kingdom—whether that looks like reducing poverty or eliminating abortions, doing something meaningful for the environment, changing bad laws, or trying to make sure the most vulnerable are cared for.
But we do have a peculiar way in which we hope. When I see posters with Barack Obama’s name with the word hope under it, I cringe. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus.
So when it comes to voting, I look at it not as a place to put our hope but a battle with the principalities and powers of this world. Voting is damage control. We try to decrease the amount of damage being done by those powers. And for the Christian, voting is not something we do every four years. We vote every day. We vote by how we spend money and what causes we support. We vote by how much gas we use and what products we buy. We align ourselves with things all the time. We pledge allegiance every day with our lives. The question is, Do those things line up with the upside-down kingdom of our God—where the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers are declared “blessed”?
TONY CAMPOLO: We have talked about taxes, about funding the empire, and how people often quote to me the verse that gives Jesus’ thoughts on whether we should pay. In that passage of Scripture, you recall, Jesus requested a coin and then asked, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” When the answer given was that it was “Caesar’s,” he said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” (Mark 12:13–17). Tell me how you interpret that in the context of the kingdom of God.
SHANE CLAIBORNE: There are two occasions when the authorities interrogated Jesus regarding taxes. On one occasion, he borrowed a coin. (The fact that he did not have one is significant.) He asked the interrogators whose image was on that coin, and then said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). On the other occasion, he instructed Peter to go catch a fish, telling him the fish would have a four-drachma coin in its mouth for the tax collectors (Matthew 17:27). (Try that on Tax Day!)
We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus. —Shane ClaiborneBoth of these stories are usually interpreted as proof that Christians must simply submit to the authorities and give Caesar whatever he asks of us (notably with little regard of whether Caesar is a dictator or elected, evil or benevolent). But it seems Jesus has got something more clever up his sleeve.
In both instances, Jesus is asked a straightforward, yes-or-no question: “Do you pay taxes?” In both cases, his response subverts the question, going deeper to challenge its basic assumptions. He doesn’t dodge the questions; he transcends them. He forces his listeners, taxpayers and tax collectors, to ponder. To what, exactly, does Caesar have a right? What has Caesar’s image, and what has God’s image? What is Caesar’s, and what is God’s?
I am particularly fond of the fish stunt. It is as though Jesus is winking at Caesar, saying, “Oh, Caesar can have his coins . . . I made the fish.” Caesar can have his silly metals; after all he can keep making more of them even if they aren’t worth a dime. But coins have no life in them. Human life is branded with the image of God, and Caesar does not own that. In a nation where such a high percentage of taxes go to military and hence ultimately to death-dealing pursuits, this teaching should give every tax-paying Christian long and troubled pause. Once we’ve given to God what is God’s, there isn’t a lot left over for Caesar.
TONY CAMPOLO: Jesus seems to be saying that though Caesar’s image is on the coin, you have to decide whether it belongs to Caesar or whether it belongs to God. Jesus is asking, “Are you going to use your money the way Caesar wants it to be used, or do you want it to be used the way God wants it to be used?” He’s throwing the decision back on those religious leaders who are trying to trap him with their questions. Each of them will have to decide whether the money in question ultimately belongs to Caesar or should it be used the way God wants it to be used. When there is conflict between what God requires and the demands of the government, each of us has an important decision to make concerning taxes.
We have talked a little bit about taxes and military spending. Now here is a related question that I am asked regularly: “Where in the Bible can you find any justification for the government taxing us and then using our money to help poor people?” My questioners go on to say, “I agree with you that Jesus calls upon us to respond to the needs of the poor, but isn’t this the task of the church? It doesn’t tell me in the Bible that it’s the task of the government to take care of poor people.” Of course, they don’t mention the fact that the church isn’t doing it. What’s more, they don’t acknowledge that the needs of the poor are so massive that the church doesn’t have the financial resources to meet those needs.
While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers’ money and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does. My task as a citizen is to get the government to do more good and less inefficient and wasteful work. There is no question in my mind that God is bigger than the church and that the church will be used in God’s endeavors, but not only the church. In God’s work in the world, all principalities, all powers, all dominions, and all thrones will be used (Ephesians 1:19–23).
In God’s work in the world, all principalities, all powers, all dominions, and all thrones will be used. —Tony Campolo
If
you go to the book of Colossians, you will find that all the
principalities and powers were created by God and for God’s purposes in
the world (Colossians 1:16–17). It is the task of government, which is
one of those principalities and powers, to do the will of God every bit
as much as it is the task of the institutional church to do the will of
God. Insofar as the church fails to do the will of God, I am called upon
to help it discover and to do the will of God; and I am called upon to
help the government to do the same. Not only am I supposed to challenge
the government to do God’s will but I am to do the same for other
powers. Included in these principalities and powers are corporate
structures such as labor unions, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Apple, and
Walmart. I have to ask all these suprahuman entities if they are
functioning in accord with the will of God, because they are imposing
themselves on people and influencing their everyday lives.If a government that is able to deliver massive numbers of people in Africa from poverty fails to do so, then Christians should challenge that government to do the will of God, especially when the government of our own country has taken 40 percent of the world’s resources in order to make possible our affluent, middle-class lifestyle, despite the fact that we make up only 5 percent of the world’s population.
Consider the AIDS crisis in Africa, which President George W. Bush addressed with a commitment of $19 billion. Our people should lend support to such an effort. This is not a Democratic thing, nor is it a Republican thing. It’s the thing that God calls the government to do in order to bring good to all humanity. Governments are created, says Romans 13, to do good for their citizens, and we have the right to resist governments when they don’t do what is good for their people. We also have the responsibility to encourage governments when they do act in ways that are good.
In Matthew 25:31–46, we read that God will judge the nations in accord with how each nation cared for the poor, cared for those in prison, and how well they accepted aliens. Please note that God holds nations, not just the church, responsible for caring for the poor. That passage of Scripture should answer those who question whether or not there is a national responsibility to care for those who are needy.
Given the times in which we live and the vast needs of the poor in both America and the world, the good that should be done for those who are impoverished requires that church and state work alongside each other to achieve this. My hope is that Red Letter Christians work together toward that end.
Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University. Shane Claiborne is a Red Letter Christian and a founding partner of The Simple Way community, a radical faith community that lives among and serves the homeless in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is the co-author, with Chris Haw, of Jesus for President.This article is excerpted from Tony and Shane's new book Red Letter Revolution: What If Jesus Really Meant What He Said.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/29/tony-campolo-and-shane-claiborne-conversation-about-politics/?continue
21 October 2012
05 October 2012
What Your Beer Says About Your Politics 27SEP12
ME? Guinness, microbrews like Fat Tire or Port City or Flying Dog, various German imports, Red Stripe. I can be a beer snot. My politics? Christian Socialist, and I do vote, haven't missed an election yet....
Credit: Tracey Robinson, NMRPP
Americans who most often drink Dos Equis are in the middle-of-the-road while drinkers of Heineken's flagship brand are strongly Democratic. Samuel Adams drinkers are strongly Republican, and more likely to vote.
Beer has a long and storied place in American presidential history and politics.
George Washington famously brewed it. James Madison purportedly sought to create a cabinet-level Secretary of Beer. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped make it legal to produce and sell (again) by championing legislation repealing Prohibition. Upon signing the bill, he reportedly said, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."
As you may have heard, our current president likes his beer, too. Earlier this month, the Obama White House released two official recipes of its own in a blog post entitled "Ale to the Chief."
Of course, this savvy election-year move was not the first time Obama has played the "beer card." In 2009, he famously hosted a "Beer Summit" at the White House to help quell racial tensions.
Beer is also a staple on the presidential campaign trail, with candidates often visiting pubs to show they understand the common man. Similarly, pollsters sometimes ask the question, "Who would you rather have a beer with?" to gauge which candidate has the likeability edge.
Last week, beer poured into presidential politics in an
unprecedented way when the beverage's most famous personality - the Most
Interesting Man in the World - hosted an Obama fundraiser. You've
likely seen him in ads for Mexican beer Dos Equis. His real name is Jonathan Goldsmith.
Some Dos Equis fans were not happy about the fundraiser and expressed their displeasure on the beer's Facebook page, according to Ad Age.
"Mr. Goldsmith's opinions and views are strictly his own, and do not represent those of Dos Equis," said Heineken USA, which imports Dos Equis, in a statement seeking to head off political blow-back.
Clearly, the Most Interesting Man in the World, who "once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels," has created an awkward moment for the brewing company.
Should Heineken be worried about damage to one of its flagship brands?
Based on the partisanship of beer drinkers, they are wise to be in damage control mode.
We've analyzed Scarborough Research data, which includes 200,000 interviews with American adults, to determine the politics of beer drinkers.
As the bubble chart shows, Dos Equis is a bipartisan brew - Republicans and Democrats both like to drink it. So Mr. Goldsmith's public foray into the 2012 race could alienate a large share of Dos Equis fans.
Ironically, this is in contrast to its corporate sister Heineken, which as it turns out is the most Democratic beer of all. On the other hand, Republicans love their Coors Light and favor Sam Adams, which is brewed just a few miles away from Romney campaign headquarters and whose namesake was an original tea partier.
Dos Equis is not the first - and won't be the last - brand to find itself in a political pickle. From Chick-fil-A to Susan G. Komen to the pizza owner who recently hugged the president, the fallout depends on media coverage, the brand's response, and the political values of its customers.
We continue to advise big brands - who spend millions on consumer research - to make the investment to know where their fans stand politically and to put in safeguards to mitigate a political firestorm.
That being said, the best advice we can give: Stay nonpartisan, my friends.
Will Feltus is the Senior Vice President for media research and planning at National Media in Alexandria, Virginia. Mike Shannon is a partner at the consulting firm Vianovo in Austin, Texas.
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2012/09/the-politics-of-3.php
Credit: Tracey Robinson, NMRPP
Americans who most often drink Dos Equis are in the middle-of-the-road while drinkers of Heineken's flagship brand are strongly Democratic. Samuel Adams drinkers are strongly Republican, and more likely to vote.
Beer has a long and storied place in American presidential history and politics.
George Washington famously brewed it. James Madison purportedly sought to create a cabinet-level Secretary of Beer. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped make it legal to produce and sell (again) by championing legislation repealing Prohibition. Upon signing the bill, he reportedly said, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."
As you may have heard, our current president likes his beer, too. Earlier this month, the Obama White House released two official recipes of its own in a blog post entitled "Ale to the Chief."
Of course, this savvy election-year move was not the first time Obama has played the "beer card." In 2009, he famously hosted a "Beer Summit" at the White House to help quell racial tensions.
Beer is also a staple on the presidential campaign trail, with candidates often visiting pubs to show they understand the common man. Similarly, pollsters sometimes ask the question, "Who would you rather have a beer with?" to gauge which candidate has the likeability edge.
Some Dos Equis fans were not happy about the fundraiser and expressed their displeasure on the beer's Facebook page, according to Ad Age.
"Mr. Goldsmith's opinions and views are strictly his own, and do not represent those of Dos Equis," said Heineken USA, which imports Dos Equis, in a statement seeking to head off political blow-back.
Clearly, the Most Interesting Man in the World, who "once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels," has created an awkward moment for the brewing company.
Should Heineken be worried about damage to one of its flagship brands?
Based on the partisanship of beer drinkers, they are wise to be in damage control mode.
We've analyzed Scarborough Research data, which includes 200,000 interviews with American adults, to determine the politics of beer drinkers.
As the bubble chart shows, Dos Equis is a bipartisan brew - Republicans and Democrats both like to drink it. So Mr. Goldsmith's public foray into the 2012 race could alienate a large share of Dos Equis fans.
Ironically, this is in contrast to its corporate sister Heineken, which as it turns out is the most Democratic beer of all. On the other hand, Republicans love their Coors Light and favor Sam Adams, which is brewed just a few miles away from Romney campaign headquarters and whose namesake was an original tea partier.
Dos Equis is not the first - and won't be the last - brand to find itself in a political pickle. From Chick-fil-A to Susan G. Komen to the pizza owner who recently hugged the president, the fallout depends on media coverage, the brand's response, and the political values of its customers.
We continue to advise big brands - who spend millions on consumer research - to make the investment to know where their fans stand politically and to put in safeguards to mitigate a political firestorm.
That being said, the best advice we can give: Stay nonpartisan, my friends.
Will Feltus is the Senior Vice President for media research and planning at National Media in Alexandria, Virginia. Mike Shannon is a partner at the consulting firm Vianovo in Austin, Texas.
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2012/09/the-politics-of-3.php
07 August 2011
Rick Perry's Religious Revival Sparks A Holy War 5AUG11
Listen to the Story
[4 min 24 sec]
Correction Aug. 5, 2011
The audio and a previous Web version of this story incorrectly identified James Dobson as being "of Focus on the Family." Dobson was the founder of that group but is no longer associated with it and is a Family Talk radio broadcaster.
Gregory Bull/AP Texas Gov. Rick Perry looks on during a speech at a Boy Scout ceremony in June aboard the USS Midway in San Diego. At that dinner, he said the federal government is rudderless. Now, he's calling for a "day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our nation."
On Saturday, Perry, who is widely expected to enter the race for the White House, is hosting a religious revival in Houston to pray for what he calls "a nation in crisis."
While the governor claims it's nothing more than a Christian prayer rally, the event has touched off a holy war among critics, who claim it is Jesus-exclusive and political.
'We Need God's Help'
Late last year, shortly after he won his third term, Perry, a Republican, began to envision the event that is now called "The Response."
"With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis, people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help," he said. "And that's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did."
An event spokesman, who is a former Perry speechwriter, says the daylong affair will be filled with prayer, inspirational messages, Scripture readings and praise music. More than 8,000 people have registered for the prayer rally, which is being held in the 71,000-seat Reliant Stadium, normally used for rodeos and NFL games.
Perry invited all his fellow governors. The only one to accept was Sam Brownback of Kansas, but he is now backing away. His office says Brownback is "on vacation," and if he goes, "it's at his discretion and on his dime."
Among prominent religious leaders expected to speak: James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and now a radio broadcaster; Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Perry is not scheduled to address the crowd.
'The Fringe Of The Fringe'
Other names on the list of coordinators and endorsers have raised eyebrows.
"I mean, when you talk about the religious right, this is the fringe of the fringe here," says Dan Quinn, communications director of the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based watchdog group that tracks the far right in Texas.
"This is clearly, when you look at it, religious extremism and naked partisan politics," Quinn says. "I think it's one of the most cynical displays of using faith as a political tool we've seen in a long time."
This is clearly, when you look at it, kind of a combination of religious extremism and naked partisan politics ... I think it's probably one of the most cynical displays of using faith as a political tool that we've seen in a long time.
Among the participants:
— John Hagee, a San Antonio evangelist whose endorsement was rejected by John McCain in 2008 because of Hagee's anti-Catholic statements.
— Mike Bickle, a founder of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Mo., who has called Oprah Winfrey a "pastor of the harlot of Babylon."
— Alice Patterson, founder of Justice at the Gate, in San Antonio, who has written that there is "a demonic structure behind the Democratic Party."
— And then there's John Benefiel, head of the Oklahoma-based Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, who once said this about the Statue of Liberty: "You know where we got it from? French Freemasons. Listen, folks, that is an idol, a demonic idol right there in the middle of New York Harbor."
A Rush To Judgment?
The gathering in Houston appears to some observers as an early attempt to line up the support of conservative evangelicals for Perry's expected presidential run. The event's executive committee includes religious/political activists David Lane and Jim Garlow, as well as Wayne Hamilton and David Barton, both former officials of the Texas Republican Party.
But wait, organizers say: Don't condemn an event before it happens.
"We do need to come together, and pray, and to seek the Lord on behalf of our nation," says Doug Stringer, who runs a Christian world outreach ministry in Houston called Somebody Cares. "If we can do that without being against anything, then I [am] pleased to be a part of it."
Stringer says he agreed to be an organizer if they guaranteed there will no long-winded sermons or political speeches.
"And so as a result, they've allowed me to be a prayer captain, and if anything goes off-track to where I feel it should be focused on the Lord and prayer and worship, I can come to the microphone and kind of give redirection to it."
Yet "The Response" remains divisive.
Earlier this week, 50 Houston religious leaders, led by the Anti-Defamation League, signed a letter expressing their concern that the Texas governor, and possible presidential candidate, is "sending an official message of religious exclusion" to non-Christian Texans.
An event spokesman insists that everyone is welcome.
05 March 2011
Public Employee Unions Don't Get One Penny from Taxpayers and Can't Require Membership, But the Big Lie That They Do Is Everywhere 5MAR11
Nobody has to belong to a union or support its political activities, but you'd never know that from reading the news. |
Photo Credit: vaxomatic
Public sector workers are employed by the government, but they are private citizens. Once a private citizen earns a dollar from the sweat of his or her brow, it no longer belongs to his or her employer. In the case of public workers, it is no longer a “taxpayer dollar”; it is a dollar held privately by an American citizen. Public sector unions are financed through the dues paid by these private citizens, who elected to be part of a union – not a single taxpayer dollar is involved, and no worker is forced to join a union against his or her wishes. No worker in the United States is required to give one red cent to support a political cause he or she doesn't agree with.
There is no distinction between the role public- and private-sector unions play: both represent their members in negotiations with their employers. At the federal level, both are prohibited from using their members' dues for political purposes. They donate to political campaigns – to elect lawmakers who will stand up for the interests of working people – but only out of voluntary contributions their members choose to make to their PACs.
“Unions cannot, from their general funds, contribute a dime to any federal candidate or national political party,” says Laurence Gold, an attorney with the AFL-CIO. “They can only do it through their separate political PAC and only according to strict limits.”
The states have a patchwork of different laws, and many do allow unions to donate to campaigns. But membership is entirely voluntary – when a group of workers elect to form a union, it doesn't mean that everyone must sign up. The union negotiates on behalf of all the workers in the group – and all of the workers get the job security and other benefits that come with collective bargaining -- but by law it can't compel them to pay union dues. “It is a right-wing canard that anyone needs to join a union,” Gold told AlterNet. “If a union member doesn't like what his or her union is doing, he or she is ultimately free to walk, without any diminution in their employment rights. They still get all the benefits and the union still has to represent them – just like it did the day before.”
In states that haven't passed so-called Right-To-Work laws, the union can charge all workers in a “negotiating unit” for the direct cost of representing them, but cannot, by law, force them to pay for the union's political activities. “They can only be required to pay for their share of bargaining costs and representation costs – not politics, not legislative stuff, not anything else,” Gold said. “Compulsory union dues are a canard, everywhere, and without exception. Anybody who says, oh you can compel somebody to support the union's electoral activities – well, that's simply false.”
Now that we have established a baseline of factual reality, let's take a look at what much of the media – even the ostensibly “liberal” media – are telling the American people.
In a widely cited opinion piece in the Washington Post, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson claimed that "public employee unions have the unique power to help pick pliant negotiating partners -- by using compulsory dues to elect friendly politicians." Again, a blatant falsehood, and one that prompted economist Dean Baker to point out that “if Mr. Gerson knows of any violations of the law, I'm sure that there are many ambitious prosecutors who would be happy to hear his evidence.”
The irony here is that while unions can't compel workers to fork over a penny for political campaigns, corporations can donate unlimited amounts of their shareholders' equity to do so – they are, in fact, in the “unique position” to elect pliant lawmakers. “What the right-wing and the business community always try to portray is that you have these union bosses that are forcing helpless employees to give them money,” says Gold, “when the reality is that these are their members who chose to be in a union and then elected their officers democratically, in sharp contrast to corporations, none of whose officers are elected democratically unless you count shareholders voting at an annual meeting as a real democratic system.”
And conservatives have long held that voluntary donations to political campaigns are a high form of free speech. The double standard is clear-- “money equals speech” unless it's money freely donated by working people to advance their own economic interests.
The corporate-backed Heritage Foundation – which has waged a longstanding propaganda war against the American labor movement -- notes that “state and local employees in 28 states are required to pay full union dues” – patently untrue -- and, “using this government coercion, government unions have amassed tremendous financial resources that they use to campaign for higher taxes and higher pay for government workers.”
There are no “government unions,” just unions of private workers. And they have no interest in campaigning for higher taxes – they are unions of taxpaying citizens. They do push for better pay, benefits and working conditions, like private sector unions, but officials elected by American voters determine the number and size of public programs and therefore the ultimate cost of government.
Heritage also makes much of the fact that public unions lobby for various policies that conservatives don't like, and claims, yet again, that they do so with “taxpayer dollars.” That's false, as we know, but it is true of another group: private contractors. They routinely include a line-item billing the government for part of the money they spend on lobbying – they, rather than the unions, actually use taxpayer dollars to lobby for, as Heritage puts it, “legislation and ballot measures that raise taxes and spending.”
Writing for Newsweek, Mark McKinnon writes that “it is the abuse by public unions and their bosses that pushes centrists like me to the GOP.” (McKinnon was a political adviser to both George W. Bush and John McCain.) His enthusiasm to spin public unions as something to be feared is so great, he ends up making this confused – and confusing – argument:
Unlike private-sector jobs, which are more than fully funded through revenues created in a voluntary exchange of money for goods or services, public-sector jobs are funded by taxpayer dollars, forcibly collected by the government (union dues are often deducted from public employees’ paychecks).I don't pretend to know what he means when he says private sector jobs are more than fully funded – we do have an underemployment rate of about 17 percent – but the rest is an incomprehensible mish-mash of “public sector jobs,” which are obviously paid for out of tax revenues, and public sector unions, which, as he notes, are funded out of the paychecks of private citizens working for the government – workers who choose to belong to a union.
He then advances the Big Lie, essentially turning reality on its head:
Big money from public unions, collected through mandatory dues, and funded entirely by the taxpayer, is then redistributed as campaign cash to help elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions.This falsehood pitting public employees against taxpayers is ubiquitous. The Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Ohio, Wisconsin shine spotlight on new union battle: Government workers vs. taxpayers”; Rush Limbaugh called public sector unions, "money launderers" for "Democrat politicians"; Mark Steyn called them, "rapacious, public sector-shakedown kleptocrats," and self-proclaimed liberal Joe Klein wondered if they “are organized against the might and greed...of the public?”
All of this is meant to serve another, Bigger Lie – even more ubiquitous -- that the cost of public workers is killing state budgets. As Bill O'Reilly put it with typical understatement, state "governments can't afford to operate" because of "union wages and benefits."
Here's another factual baseline: those “cadillac” pensions we always hear about public workers getting actually average $22,000 per year and amount to just 6 percent of state budgets. Some states' pension funds have problems because they've been raided to pay for tax cuts, but in aggregate, pensions aren't eating up state budgets. Andrew Leonard, writing in Salon about what he calls “the imaginary public sector pension fund crisis,” notes that because the stock market has recovered to a great degree, “those horrible 'shortfalls' everyone has been making such a big deal of are already in retreat.”
As economist Dean Baker notes, it was Wall Street, not a bunch of teachers and firefighters, which is to blame for the gaps that do exist. “Most of the pension shortfall,” he wrote, “is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are today.”
Public workers' salaries are another 28 percent of state budgets. They get paid less than comparable workers in the private sector, even including benefits. The problem, as far as an honest debate goes, comes from the word “comparable.” Last week, USA Today (mis)informed its readers that workers in the public sector make more than in the private, a claim it backed up with misleading averages. The article only quoted in passing an economist who pointed out that their “analysis is misleading because it doesn't reflect factors such as education that result in higher pay for public employees.” It's actually meaningless, as public workers are twice as likely to have a college degree and have, on average, more years on the job than workers in the private sector.
State and local employees' wages and salaries have virtually nothing to do with the budget gaps which many states are grappling with – that too is a result of the recession caused by Wall Street, not Main Street. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “State tax collections, adjusted for inflation, are now 12 percent below pre-recession levels, while the need for state-funded services has not declined. As a result, even after making very deep spending cuts over the last several years, states continue to face large budget gaps.” According to Census data, states' social welfare payments to struggling individuals and families increased by around 25 percent between the first quarter of 2007 and the last quarter of 2010.
Most of the media lazily accepts that collective bargaining by state workers is a fiscal matter – a typical headline on AOL news asked, “Can collective bargaining bills stem state deficits?” as if there is some correlation between those two things. But the evidence doesn't suggest as much: There are already 13 states that restrict public workers' bargaining rights and it hasn't helped their bottom lines. As Ed Kilgore noted, "eight non-collective-bargaining states face larger budget shortfalls than either Wisconsin or Ohio," and " three of the 13 non-collective bargaining states are among the eleven states facing budget shortfalls at or above 20%."
Tragically, the corporate media, rather than shedding light on these facts –which are necessary for a healthy debate -- is helping to obscure them under a cloud of anti-union spin.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America). Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.
04 March 2011
Obama administration prepares for possibility of new post-revolt Islamist regimes 4MAR11
The same people and politicians who are concerned about and / or object to Islamist parties in the new or reforming governments of North Africa, the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf are generally the same people who are pushing their form of Christianity into law throughout the U.S. They generally represent a capitalist, profit driven, and militaristic Christianity, unwilling to compromise with Christians more concerned with social justice and peace. They are no different than the extremist Islamist parties that exist across the Islamic world except in their religion. If these people are telling the rest of us we should be afraid of all Islamist parties in the Arab world shouldn't we be afraid of these people and their form of Christianity in the U.S.?
By Scott WilsonWashington Post Staff Writer
The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics.
The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region.
"We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal policy deliberations. "It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."
Islamist governments span a range of ideologies and ambitions, from the primitive brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan to Turkey's Justice and Development Party, a movement with Islamist roots that heads a largely secular political system.
None of the revolutions over the past several weeks has been overtly Islamist, but there are signs that the uprisings could give way to more religious forces. An influential Yemeni cleric called this week for the U.S.-backed administration of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be replaced with Islamist rule, and in Egypt, an Islamist theoretician has a leading role in drafting constitutional changes after President Hosni Mubarak's fall from power last month.
A number of other Islamist parties are deciding now how big a role to play in protests or post-revolution reforms.
Since taking office, President Obama has argued for a "new beginning" with Islam, suggesting that Islamic belief and democratic politics are not incompatible. But in doing so, he has alarmed some foreign-policy pragmatists and allies such as Israel, who fear that governments based on religious law will inevitably undercut democratic reforms and other Western values.
Some within the U.S. intelligence community, foreign diplomatic circles and the Republican Party say Obama's readiness to accept Islamist movements, even ones that meet certain conditions, fails to take into consideration the methodical approach many such parties adopt toward gradually transforming secular nations into Islamic states at odds with U.S. policy goals.
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories have prospered in democratic elections and exert huge influence. Neither party, each with an armed wing, supports Israel's right to exist, nor have they renounced violence as a political tool.
And while many in the region point to Turkey as a model mixture of Islam and democracy, the ruling Islamist party is restrained by the country's highly secular army and court system, a pair of strong institutional checks that countries such as Egypt and Tunisia lack.
"The actual word and definition of Islamism does not in and of itself pose a threat," said Jonathan Peled, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, citing Israel's relationship with the Turkish government, among others.
But Peled said Israel fears that "anti-democratic extremist forces could take advantage of a democratic system," as, he said, Hamas did with its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel allowed Hamas to participate only under pressure from the George W. Bush administration as part of its stated commitment to promote Arab democracy.
"We obviously have concerns that are different than the administration's," Peled said. "We live in the neighborhood, obviously, and so we experience the results more closely."
The choice between stability and democracy has been a constant tension in U.S. foreign policy, and in few places has it been more pronounced than in the Middle East.
Many of the fallen or imperiled autocrats in the region were supported by successive U.S. governments, either as Cold War foils to the Soviet Union or as bulwarks against Islamist extremism before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In his June 2009 address at Cairo University, Obama acknowledged the controversy that the Bush administration's democracy promotion stirred in the region.
"That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people," he said, adding that "each nation gives life to the principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people."
In the Arab Middle East, those traditions include Islam, although Obama did not directly address the religion's role in democratic politics. He said the United States "will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people."
The goal of Islamist movements after taking power is at the root of concern expressed by Republican lawmakers and others in Washington.
Paul Pillar, a longtime CIA analyst who now teaches at Georgetown University, said, "Most of the people in the intelligence community would see things on this topic very similarly to the president - that is, political Islam as a very diverse series of ideologies, all of which use a similar vocabulary, but all quite different."
"The main challenge President Obama will face is a political challenge from across the aisle, and one reinforced by Israel," said Pillar, whose portfolio included the Middle East.
As the Arab revolutions unfold, the White House is studying various Islamist movements, identifying ideological differences for clues to how they might govern in the short and long term.
The White House's internal assessment, dated Feb. 16, looked at the Muslim Brotherhood's and al-Qaeda's views on global jihad, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States, Islam in politics, democracy and nationalism, among others.
The report draws sharp distinctions between the ambitions of the two groups, suggesting that the Brotherhood's mix of Islam and nationalism make it a far different organization than al-Qaeda, which sees national boundaries as obstacles to restoring the Islamic caliphate.
The study also concludes that the Brotherhood criticizes the United States largely for what it perceives as America's hypocritical stance toward democracy - promoting it rhetorically but supporting leaders such as Mubarak.
"If our policy can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, we won't be able to adapt to this change," the senior administration official said. "We're also not going to allow ourselves to be driven by fear."
After Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the United States and Israel led an international boycott of the government. But Obama administration officials, reviewing that history with an eye toward the current revolutions, say the reason for the U.S. boycott was not Hamas's Islamic character but its refusal to agree to conditions such as recognizing Israel.
In a speech Monday in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to draw on that lesson, implicitly inviting Islamist parties to participate in the region's future elections with conditions. "Political participation," Clinton said, "must be open to all people across the spectrum who reject violence, uphold equality and agree to play by the rules of democracy."
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