Wondering whom to vote for? Or wanting to help others who are wondering?

Here are three very helpful voters’ guides, one on labor concerns, one on environmental issues, and the third dealing with human rights and civil liberties.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vote Your Values 2008: A Guide for Faith-Based Voters on labor issues

As the 2008 elections approach, our economy is in turmoil and workers are struggling more than ever. The next Congress and administration will have to establish policies that not only improve our economy but ensure that workers are not forgotten and their rights are protected.

Interfaith Worker Justice has published an exciting new resource, Vote Your Values 2008: A Guide for Faith-Based Voters, which highlights issues of major importance for working people in this election cycle. The guide frames pressing, national labor concerns so that voters may carefully examine matters such as wage theft, immigration reform, and the right to organize a union, and take them into account when selecting candidates.

Kim Bobo, Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, concludes her note: “We hope you will find this guide helpful. Please share it with your friends, families, and congregations!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Utne Reader recommends a guide to the candidates’ positions on environmental issues

Do voters really know exactly how the presidential candidates stack up on issues like drilling, animal protection, and conservation? Encyclopedia Britannica's Advocacy for Animals site has created a quick overview of their respective records.

The summary is not exhaustive, but still gives readers a good idea of what they can expect from the nominees.

Part 1: Drilling, Mining, and Energy

Part 2: Animal Welfare and Protection

Part 3: Global Warming

Part 4: Environmental Conservation

~~~~~~~~~~~~

AlterNet provides a Voter Election Guide to Human Rights and Civil Liberties

They link to a variety of resources on domestic spying, torture, Guantánamo and the U.S. government's secret prisons, the Supreme Court, state secrets privilege, Americans’ right to dissent, wrongful convictions, politicization of the Department of Justice, expansion of the federal death penalty, and signing statements.

Another voter guide has been suggested by Gene TeSelle – this one focusing on health care issues, prepared by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Voters have identified health care as the leading domestic issue for the government to address and for the presidential candidates to discuss in the 2008 campaign. In particular, voters would like to hear the candidates' positions on reducing the cost of health care and health insurance and expanding coverage to the 47 million uninsured Americans.

This side-by-side comparison of the candidates' positions on health care was prepared by the Kaiser Family Foundation with the assistance of Health Policy Alternatives, Inc. and is based on information appearing on the candidates' websites as supplemented by information from candidate speeches, the campaign debates and news reports. The sources of information are identified for each candidate's summary (with links to the Internet). The comparison highlights information on the candidates' positions related to access to health care coverage, cost containment, improving the quality of care and financing. Information will be updated regularly as the campaign unfolds.

from the Rev. Bruce Gillette
[10-6-08]

Have you, like me, been receiving a lot of email notes about political candidates? Some of these emails, like the political ads on TV, are not true. Before you forward an e-mail to others about anyone, political candidate or any other human being, please remember the Ten Commandments: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20). Our church’s Heidelberg Catechism explains it: “Q. 112. What is required in the ninth commandment? A. That I do not bear false witness against anyone, twist anyone’s words, be a gossip or a slanderer, or condemn anyone lightly without a hearing. Rather I am required to avoid, under penalty of God’s wrath, all lying and deceit as the works of the devil himself. In judicial and all other matters I am to love the truth, and to speak and confess it honestly. Indeed, insofar as I am able, I am to defend and promote my neighbor’s good name.” Please keep this biblical teaching in mind when you get political email or see ads on TV.

Please encourage your online friends and all political candidates to keep this commandment. If you have questions about the truthfulness of any ad (and you should about any ad), check it out at the web site for the Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania which is “a nonpartisan, nonprofit, ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.”

On Wasilla City Council, she opposed earlier closings -- and told a Presbyterian pastor that faith had nothing to do with such things    [10-5-08]

The Chicago Tribune offers an interesting insight into the religious faith of the Republican candidate for Vice President:

Sarah Palin may be the heroine of the religious right, but Rev. Gene Straatmeyer vividly recalls a public run-in he once had with the now Republican vice presidential candidate over clergy support for a crackdown on bars.

In short, Straatmeyer, as a Presbyterian pastor in Wasilla, supported the police chief in urging the City Council to shorten the traditional 5 a.m. last call by a few hours, partly to reduce drunk driving and domestic violence. Palin, then a city councilwoman, sided with the saloon keepers, and scolded the pastor for interfering.

"She said, 'I go to Assembly of God Church and I am a Sunday school teacher there and I see no relationship between my Christian faith and what hours the bars close,' " recalled Straatmeyer, now living in Texas.

The report adds:

Tavern owners then rallied around Palin's successful challenge to Wasilla's longtime mayor, with campaign records showing that two of them alone provided 15 percent of the campaign cash she took in from supporters. 

“Within months of taking office, Palin fired veteran Wasilla Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, the author of the bar hour reduction plan.

The full story >>

Presbyterian News Service has posted a story from Religion News Service, dated Sept. 16, 2008, which begins:

A church that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her family called home for more than 20 years has links to a controversial Pentecostal ideology that emphasizes prophesy, miraculous healing and “spiritual warfare” with demons.

Several Web sites and blogs — including Talk2Action, the Huffington Post and The Revealer — have been busily discussing whether Palin has been influenced by this theology, known alternately as Third Wave, the New Apostolic Reformation, Latter Rain and Kingdom Now.

“What are the political implications if you say problems are demonic and we are going to address them through spiritual warfare?” asked Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret of Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, an examination of Third Wave theology.

The rest of the story >>

[9-9-08]

By Berry Craig

Mayfield, Ky. – John McCain reminds me of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France.

Napoleon was a deist, maybe even an atheist. Most of his subjects were Catholics, so he wanted the church on his side.

In 2000, McCain challenged George W. Bush for the GOP presidential nomination. The mostly white, Protestant fundamentalist and Republican-friendly Religious Right backed Bush.

McCain called two of its leaders, the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, “agents of intolerance.” McCain lost.

McCain hopes that conservative Christians will equate a vote for McCain-Palin with a vote for the Almighty. “You can’t be a Christian and a Democrat,” some Religious Rightists claim in Kentucky. Other GOP Christian soldiers probably say the same thing elsewhere in the Bible Belt, where Religious Right preachers act like GOP also means “God’s Own Party.”

Part of the Religious Right’s message is anti-union. Right-wing Republican politicians, even those who seldom darken church doorways, love it.

Okay, Sarah Palin’s husband is a Steelworker. But his union endorsed Barack Obama.

The Steelworkers are for the Obama-Biden ticket. “McCain-Palin is not a team that works for working families,” warned Steelworkers President Leo W. Gerard.

Gerard added that Palin’s record as governor of Alaska “is thin and divisive. And John McCain has a life-long record of being for the rich and powerful. No union card can hide that - not any more than Ronald Reagan's union card did."

So far, Palin has not criticized McCain’s deeply anti-union politics. He supports right to work and opposes to the Employee Free Choice Act, for instance. My guess is Palin the “barracuda” will stay toothless on union issues.

Meanwhile, the Christian Coalition is sticking to the God-put-you-where-He-wants-you line: "Christians have a responsibility to submit to the authority of their employers since they are designated as part of God's plan for the exercise of authority on the earth by man.”

God Himself is against unions, according to the Rev. Tim LaHaye, another GOP holy warrior and author of the apocalyptic Left Behind novels. "Unions are one of the organizations leading the world to wickedness," he said.

LaHaye lives in California. But some of his strongest supporters warm the pews of white fundamentalist churches in the South, where anti-unionism is an old tradition.

“…Under the essential Calvinism of outlook which had been fixed by slavery before the Civil War even in the non-Calvinist sects and riveted home by the conditions of Reconstruction, it was widely felt in all classes that strikes constituted a sort of defiance of the will of Heaven,” North Carolina journalist W.J. Cash wrote in The Mind of The South, published in 1941.

In the 1930s, Cash covered strikes by Tar Heel State textile workers. He said he often heard opponents of the strikers – including “very common whites” – warn “that God had called one man to be rich and master, another to be poor and servant, and that men did well to accept what had been given them, instead of trusting their own instinct and stirring up strife.”

That sermon topic is still popular in Bible Belt Dixie and even in border states like my native Kentucky. Kentucky isn’t a right to work state. But every ex-Confederate state is. (So is McCain’s Arizona.)

While the Religious Right is strongest in the South, it is a national movement whose methods remind journalist and author Chris Hedges of tactics Italian Fascists and German Nazis used to grab power before World War II.

Hedges, who wrote Christian Fascists: The Religious Right and the War on America, told a radio interviewer that the Religious Right has acculturated “the Christian religion with the worst aspects of American imperialism and American capitalism.”

No doubt, Hedges is a heathen to Religious Rightists. But he’s the son of a Presbyterian pastor. Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter with a master’s degree in theology from Harvard to boot.

Hedges also said on the “Democracy Now!” program that Christian conservatives – who used to eschew politics as “worldly” – have allied themselves with the interests of large corporations and their Republican friends to the mutual benefit of both groups.

It doesn’t matter that profit, not piety, is the bottom line of big business. The Religious Right needs help in high government places if it is to turn American into a conservative, fundamentalist Protestant nation. The old corporate Republican right is grateful to the Religious Right for putting the Good Lord’s seal of approval on greed, polluting God’s green earth and union-busting.

“I mean, when you’re creating the corporate state, it’s very convenient to have an ideology that says, ‘Don’t worry. You don’t need health insurance, because if you have enough faith, Jesus will cure you,’” Hedges said. “‘It doesn’t matter if all of your jobs are outsourced and there are no labor unions, because, you know, God takes care of his own. And not only that, but God will make you materially wealthy.’”

LaHaye and more than a few other Religious Right preachers are well-heeled. They live in big houses in nice neighborhoods and drive expensive cars.

At the same time, many in their flocks are not rich, or even close to it. But these preachers – almost all of them conservative Republicans -- have that based covered: What's a short, miserable life on earth compared to eternal bliss in Heaven? To please their patron Napoleon, wealthy Catholic clergy posed the same sort of question to gull the Gallic poor.

Fundamentalist preachers sermonize that the hereafter – not the here-and-now – is what really counts. So what if you stock shelves at Wal Mart, flip burgers at McDonald’s or run a cash register at a 7-Eleven.

It doesn’t matter if you live a long way from Easy Street. All you need to think about is getting right with God (not the Jewish, Catholic or liberal Protestant version, of course). That accomplished, the humblest of souls can contentedly wait for the Kingdom Come and vote McCain-Palin on Nov. 4.

The con job is enough to make Napoleon proud, and even a little jealous. But the old scam doesn’t always fool working stiffs. In 1911, the famous labor balladeer and martyr Joe Hill wrote “The Preacher and the Slave.”

Sung to the music of “The Sweet Bye and Bye,” the song is timely as ever. The first part of it goes:

Long-haired preachers come out every night, 
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die….

Apple, cherry, whatever’s your favorite – just ask any preacher with one of those silver-colored Jesus fish and a McCain-Palin sticker on his new Lexus.

Two friends have shared with us this observation. One reports seeing it as a bumper sticker, the other as a comment from a community organizer:

Jesus was a community organizer.
Pontius Pilate was a Governor.

In October, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Republican Sarah Palin’s affirmation that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms.   Here's the story >>

Sojourners’ Jim Wallis found on a recent visit to Australia that Kevin Rudd, the new Labor prime minister elected last November, benefitted from a surprising shift of evangelical and Pentecostal voters to the Labor Party. He observes that “ the evangelical/Pentecostal swing vote was due to how the agenda is changing in those faith communities. In the past, as in the U.S., issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and cloning seemed to be the primary concerns among the religious. But now the ‘religious agenda’ includes global poverty, climate change, and the rights of Aboriginal people, especially among a new generation of Australian believers.”

Peter S. Canellos, Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe, takes another look at the current mixing of religion with politics, and sees a fairly ugly picture. He begins:

The 2008 primary election campaign began with candidates scrambling to embrace religious leaders, and it's ending with candidates rushing to repudiate them. An election cycle that was supposed to usher in the marriage of religion and politics may be hastening its divorce.

From the evangelical ministers who questioned the fitness of a Mormon to be president, to the religious-right activists who denounced John McCain as godless, to the McCain-backing radio preacher who said Hitler was fulfilling God's will, to Barack Obama's longtime minister who blamed the United States for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to Obama's Catholic adviser who last week mocked Hillary Clinton, the clergy haven't just made a bad show of it: They've behaved like small-minded bigots.

These preachers have managed the amazing feat of making all the politicians involved in the campaign seem, by comparison, more tolerant, more reasonable, and less self-interested.

One of the Democratic presidential candidates has a pastor who opposed both Iraq wars, supports same-sex marriage, opposes the death penalty, and has been a passionate critic of American foreign policy. The clergyman isn't the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama's spiritual leader who has become a household name and a campaign issue for his fiery rhetoric, but the Reverend Edward Matthews, a little-known Arkansas preacher who is the closest Senator Clinton has to a pastor of her own. While Mrs. Clinton says she would have quit Rev. Wright's church, Rev. Matthews expressed sympathy for Rev. Wright in a 35-minute phone interview with The New York Sun. "We preachers get irresponsible," Rev. Matthews, the former pastor of First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, said yesterday with a laugh. His take on Rev. Wright's now-infamous exclamation, "God Damn America," is that many pastors, himself included, say things "that if we had to say it over again we probably wouldn't say it in the same way."

The report in The New York Sun >>

Thanks to Media Roundup: a report on the use of religion in American life, presented by The Interfaith Alliance >>

Sara Robinson, writing for Campaign For America's Future, appreciates that in this year’s presidential campaign, wearingly long though it may be, progressives are for the first time in years speaking out of the deep cultural and political resources of America’s civil religion.

She quotes Norman Lear, speaking at the Take Back America conference last week:

Can we progressives -- who won't be caught dead these days calling ourselves liberals -- can we stop serving as a punching bag for the right?

And speak with depth and conviction about the things that really matter to us? Once and for all, can we break through the false and humiliating charade that they and they alone are the arbiters of family values, morality, patriotism, the flag, the life of the spirit, God-talk? And that they alone have the credibility to speak to these subjects and concerns? 

The search for meaning that defines us as humans is the greatest conversation going, and I want in.

The old framework of the U.S. civil religion has come unglued, she says, as Robert Bellah showed it does every century or so. But after the disintegration of the past few decades, people are turning to those narratives and symbols again, and the progressives are taking part in the recovery – and they should be working at doing that well. She concludes: 

The entire country is desperately hungry for a new, compelling story about what it means to be American, and what America means to the world. It does not have to be exclusive, nationalistic, or imperialist – in fact, we've got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity right now to offer the country another narrative entirely, one that will move us away from the madness of the past. Norman Lear and Bill Moyers moved us all when they preached the gospel of this 21st-century civil religion from the pulpit at Take Back America; Barack Obama also showed us how it's done last week in Philadelphia. The new stories are already emerging; and the country is inspired by what it hears.

The Nation has published an article suggesting, on the basis of efforts for health care reform in California and Massachusetts, that current proposals for national health care reform being advanced by all the presidential candidates may fall far short of meeting the needs.

Market-based efforts, working through existing insurance companies, simply leave too many people out. Ultimately, says the author, “any effective reform will have to bring everyone into the insurance tent.”

Of National Lies and Racial America
[3-24-08]

Tim Wise, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (both published in 2005), argues that “as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.”

He goes on:

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around – a notion with longstanding theological grounding – and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

Wise develops in detail his case that Wright has simply been portraying reality as it is seen in the African-American community, and that whites are outraged because they cannot accept – or even permit the expression off – such a view of the world. Our big white lies are too important to us to allow for any consideration of anyone else’s truth.

Published in Counterpunch >>                     Originally published in LiP Magazine >>

For another look at racism in the U.S. you might turn to the just-published Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon.  The Chicago Tribune summarizes:

Slavery by Another Name (Doubleday, $26), by Douglas A. Blackmon, due in stores in late March, shows the Civil War did not end racial oppression in America. Subtitled "The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II," this book by The Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief tells the often-overlooked story of neoslavery. From the 1870s until well into the 20th Century, under laws passed to intimidate them, black men were arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned, made to work off room and board in jail and, in effect, turned into unpaid slave laborers who were leased by manufacturers, farmers, mines and other businesses. This is a hard look at a horrifying aspect of recent history.

We received this note in response to our posts on March 18:

Thanks so much for sharing the supportive comments from others of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s preaching. He was well-named, wasn’t he?

Thanks also for re-printing the transcript of Barack Obama’s magnificent speech.

I look forward to hearing a lot more support from Presbyterian preachers who believe that the pulpit should be the place where those who study the Scriptures and follow the teachings of Jesus are free to pass on their understandings to others.

Lynne Reade, Fremont, California

After a note like that, how can I resist looking for more?

What do our candidates for Moderator have to say?

With all the discussion this week about Obama’s speech, both as a perspective on American race relations and as a look at the role of the prophetic tradition in American religion, it occurred to me to see whether any of the four candidates for Moderator might be putting forth their views.

Only one of them, as far as I can find from their websites and blogs, has offered any specific comments on Obama’s speech. But each has said something over the past few days that offers food for thought.

As it happens, the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow posted a blog note under the heading “bleep that chinaman.” He starts from a scrawled sign he saw recently in front of his favorite café in San Francisco, which uses an offensive word to tell what should be done to “that chinaman.” With apologies for the language, he offers three generalizations about our racism today: it has diversified, it will not go away, and it “must be challenged with a spirit of solidarity.”

The Rev. Bill Teng offers reflections on the role of the Moderator, and offers his own vision of serving as a witness to the grace of God, and the gratitude and hope that grow in our responding to God’s grace.

The Rev. Carl Mazza, in his blog of March 12, reflects on his own ministry with Meeting Ground, a shelter for the homeless, and finds an image for the church’s mission in “the table” around which “there is always room for one more.”

Elder Roger Shoemaker, in a brief reflection on Micah 6:8 dated March 14 (his reflection, not Micah!), notes in passing that a commentary he looked at shows Micah’s words set in the context of his presentation of “God’s case against Israel.” While Shoemaker is not discussing America’s problems with race, this does give a little reminder that the prophetic tradition, which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has sought to represent, does have a pretty sharp, critical edge.

A couple other views

“Obama shows grace under fire”

Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, praises Obama for facing directly the obviously big issue hanging over his campaign, and doing it with “courage and candor and grace.”

Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, praises Obama for facing directly the obviously big issue hanging over his campaign, and doing it with “courage and candor and grace.”

She concludes: It's possible Obama placed the wrong bet. His sort of politics may be well-loved by editorial writers and civics teachers but ill-suited to winning presidential campaigns. Straight talk and tough truths may have no place on the stump. It may be that campaigns are still won by those willing to kneecap their opponents with vicious ads and ugly rumors. Voters may prefer focus-grouped slogans to uncomfortable facts.

But it certainly was encouraging to hear from a politician willing to take his chances with a pander-free hour at a difficult moment in his campaign. It doesn't happen often.        The full column >>

“Obama, Reverend Wright, The Speech: A Problem And An Unanticipated Upside”

Thomas de Zengotita, a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, says that’s Obama’s speech is “being justly compared, by knowledgeable people, to some of the great political speeches in American history.” But, he adds, it may not be remembered as are the speeches of old, simply because our communication channels are too busy today, and we are not likely to retain and reflect on any single speech or event, because there’s too much more information coming at us.

Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor has drawn attention recently for his rather heated rhetoric about some of the less admirable characteristics of the United States, such as racism and a tendency toward imperial thinking and acting.

Sen. Obama himself today offered a deeply personal and thoughtful response to the criticisms of him and his pastor.

For the transcript of the speech >>

Another response comes from John Thomas, the President of the United Church of Christ, which is the denomination of which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a member.

What Kind of Prophet?

Reflections on the Rhetoric of Preaching
in Light of Recent News Coverage of Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
and Trinity United Church of Christ

by John H. Thomas, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ

Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit.  

One is tempted to ask whether these commentators ever listen to the overcharged rhetoric of their own opinion shows. Even more to the point is to wonder whether they have a working knowledge of the history of preaching in the United States from the unrelentingly grim language of New England election day sermons to the fiery rhetoric of the Black church prophetic tradition. Maybe they prefer the false prophets with their happy homilies in Jeremiah who say to the people: “You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.” To which God responds, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. . . . By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed,” (Jeremiah 14.14-15). The Biblical Jeremiah was coarse and provocative. Faithfulness, not respectability was the order of the day then. And now? 

What’s really going on here? First, it may state the obvious to point out that these television and radio shows have very little interest in Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright. Those who sifted through hours of sermons searching for a few lurid phrases and those who have aired them repeatedly have only one intention. It is to wound a presidential candidate. In the process a congregation that does exceptional ministry and a pastor who has given his life to shape those ministries is caricatured and demonized. You don’t have to be an Obama supporter to be alarmed at this. Will Clinton’s United Methodist Church be next? Or McCain’s Episcopal Church? Wouldn’t we have been just as alarmed had it been Huckabee’s Southern Baptist Church, or Romney’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?  

Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild “obscenity” in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright’s judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues? 

We might like to think that racism is a thing of the past, that Martin Luther King’s harmonious multi-racial vision, articulated in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and then struck down by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis in 1968, has somehow been resurrected and now reigns throughout the land. Significant progress has been made. A black man is a legitimate candidate for President of the United States. A black woman serves as Secretary of State. The accomplishments are profound. But on the gritty streets of Chicago’s south side where Trinity has planted itself, race continues to play favorites in failing urban school systems, unresponsive health care systems, crumbling infrastructure, and meager economic development. Are we to pretend all is well because much is, in fact, better than it used to be? Is it racist to name the racial divides that continue to afflict our nation, and to do so loudly? How ironic that a pastor and congregation which, for forty-five years, has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination, participating fully in its wider church life and contributing generously to it, would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to reach for racial reconciliation. 

The gospel narrative of Palm Sunday’s entrance into Jerusalem concludes with the overturning of the money changers’ tables in the Temple courtyard. Here wealth and power and greed were challenged for the way the poor were oppressed to the point of exclusion from a share in the religious practices of the Temple. Today we watch as the gap between the obscenely wealthy and the obscenely poor widens. More and more of our neighbors are relegated to minimal health care or to no health care at all. Foreclosures destroy families while unscrupulous lenders seek bailouts from regulators who turned a blind eye to the impending crisis. Should the preacher today respond to this with only a whisper and a sigh?  

Is Pastor Wright to be ridiculed and condemned for refusing to play the court prophet, blessing land and sovereign while pledging allegiance to our preoccupation with wealth and our fascination with weapons? In the United Church of Christ we honor diversity. For nearly four centuries we have respected dissent and have struggled to maintain the freedom of the pulpit. Not every pastor in the United Church of Christ will want to share Pastor Wright’s rhetoric or his politics. Not every member will rise to shout “Amen!” But I trust we will all struggle in our own way to resist the lure of respectable religion that seeks to displace evangelical faith. For what this nation needs is not so much polite piety as the rough and radical word of the prophet calling us to repentance. And, as we struggle with that ancient calling, I pray we will be shrewd enough to name the hypocrisy of those who decry the mixing of religion and politics in order to serve their own political ends.  

March 17, 2008

In any age, a prophet draws wrath
[3-18-08]

So what do you think of this quote:

"The Almighty God himself is not the only, not the, not the God just standing out saying through Hosea, 'I love you, Israel.' He's also the God that stands up before the nations and said: 'Be still and know that I'm God, that if you don't obey me I will break the backbone of your power, and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.'"

Ralph E. Luker, an Atlanta historian, co-editor of the first two volumes of "The Papers of Martin Luther King," offers us that thought – from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  Walker’s preaching, he says, like that of King, echoes the prophetic tradition of the ancient Hebrews.

And he also presents a view of Wright's ministry a bit different from what we’ve been hearing:

Critics of Wright never cared that for 36 years he labored to build a community of redemption on Chicago's Southside. They didn't notice that his congregation had become the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, a denomination rooted in the traditions of Puritan New England. They wouldn't care that it claimed to be "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." Wright's words become significant for them only as a means of damaging Wright's most prominent parishioner, Obama.

Two modest pointers toward a meeting of religious right and left
[2-25-08]

What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?
A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

Delwin Brown, dean emeritus of the Pacific School of Religion and formerly Professor of Christian Theology at Iliff School of Theology, “writes with a passion for clear thinking about what it means to be a pluralistic, compassionate, open-minded, justice-seeking Christian today,” according to a reviewer on the website of The Center for Progressive Christianity.

While he is critical of both conservative and liberal , Brown “reclaims the ideas and language of traditional Christianity, carefully reconstructing them in positive ways. If there is such a thing as progressive Christian apologetics, Brown has come close to producing it. For example, he rediscovers a positive meaning for ‘biblical authority’.”

The reviewer summarizes some of Brown’s major points:

A uniquely helpful part of the book is Brown’s wisdom about the role of religion in politics. “There are good reasons, then, for urging that religion be kept out of politics. The only problem is that it is not possible...” (p 112) So he proposes six ways to manage the inevitable relationship between the two: don’t privilege any one religion, understand one’s adversaries, find common values, seek compromise, don’t outlaw conduct unless it directly undermines the common good, and deliberate with others in community. “Our Christian voice is vitally important. It endeavors to speak reflectively on behalf of justice, repentance, inclusion, and healing. The progressive Christian witness is ‘good news’ for everyone.” (p 121)

And maybe things are changing anyway, as the generations change ...

The Austin (TX) American-Statesman carries a report of a Tuesday-night gathering in an Austin restaurant of “mostly 20- and 30-something Christians [who] drank iced tea, red wine and Belgian ale and traded thoughts about the war in Iraq, abortion and immigration reform. Some of them support Sen. John McCain for president. Some are torn between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. All said their Christian faith informs the decision they will make in the voting booth.”

Reporter Eileen E. Flynn writes that “at the moment, no candidate can lay sole claim to the evangelical vote,” citing Michael Lindsay, a sociology professor at Rice University in Houston, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, who pictures evangelicals today as much more “diverse and sophisticated than the stereotype of the right-wing fundamentalist.”

SBC President’s call for united evangelical front against Giuliani raises tax law issues, says church-state watchdog group

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has cautioned the top official of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that using his denominational news agency to oppose Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani raises federal tax law issues.

In a Jan. 24 letter, Americans United advised SBC President Frank Page that the Internal Revenue Code prohibits the use of tax-exempt resources to support or oppose candidates for public office.

Americans United acted after learning of a Jan. 21 analysis distributed by Baptist Press, the SBC’s official news agency. The analysis stated in part, “Page said he agrees with James Dobson of Focus on the Family that a united front against Giuliani is needed and that ‘evangelicals can realistically defeat him.’ Even a ticket with Giuliani on top and Huckabee for vice president ‘would be problematic for Dr. Dobson and myself,’ Page said.”

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, urged Page to review the requirements of tax law.

“Since you are the top official of the Southern Baptist Convention and Baptist Press is the denomination’s official news agency,” wrote Lynn, “Southern Baptists and other readers could easily get the impression that you are using the denomination’s tax-exempt resources to oppose Giuliani’s candidacy…. [W]e encourage you to review the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and to refrain from activities that might endanger the tax-exempt status of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The Internal Revenue Code bars religious leaders serving in their official capacities from involvement in political campaigns. When church leaders use their pulpits, church newsletters or other official resources of their organizations to advocate or oppose candidates, federal tax law is violated.

In its letter, Americans United notes that the Baptist Press article identifies Page as SBC president and gives no indication that he is being interviewed as an individual citizen rather than as the top official of the Southern Baptist Convention. (The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.)

AU’s Lynn says he hopes Page and other religious leaders take the time to learn about the law.

“We should have learned by now that churches should not become political machines,” said Lynn. “If clergy are a little fuzzy on federal tax law, now is a good time to get sound information. With a presidential campaign underway, it’s especially important for everyone to play by the rules.”

* * * *

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

Presidential candidates are increasingly talking about the impact of bad trade deals. Global Trade Watch urges: Please write your local paper today urging the candidates to make clear their opposition to expanding the current NAFTA/WTO model!

The Global Trade Watch message begins:

With all the news coverage focusing on the horse race aspects of the presidential primary, it's been hard to follow a fascinating - and hopeful - trend: criticism of our current NAFTA-WTO trade model has been a prominent aspect of all of the Democratic and a number of the GOP candidates' campaigns. We wanted to share with you the most comprehensive compilation of candidates' trade positions ever released.

Check out what the candidates are saying about trade and globalization here >>

Read what they're saying and you'll see that current candidates are now more critical of our failed status quo than even the most critical candidates in past presidential elections. Could it be that we have finally reached the tipping point where candidates must reflect the public's views on these issues - even though it flies in the face of their major corporate funders?

R. Gustav Niebuhr, Director of the Religion & Society Program, Syracuse University, offers these on the “On Faith” Web page of Newsweek and The Washington Post.

Here’s a brief version of the five questions he raises:

Kentucky may be a "red state," but it's turning a paler shade of red    [8-14-07]

By Berry Craig

PADUCAH, Ky. – My buddy Alan and I were college freshmen during the Tet Offensive of 1968 when Walter Cronkite said on TV what millions of Americans were thinking: "… It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

Cronkite’s candor floored LBJ. "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America," the president said.

"How many more people have to die because George Bush and Dick Cheney won’t admit they made a mistake in Iraq?" Alan mused at our recent 40^th high school class reunion.

I was floored.

Alan is a conservative, buttoned-down, corporate lawyer who often votes Republican. (He’s on my prayer list.) But my old classmate has had it with Bush.

Cronkite, the famous CBS news anchor dubbed "the most trusted man in America," reputedly represented "middle America." Has Bush lost middle America over Iraq?

If the polls are right, the war’s not playing in Peoria, about as middle America as middle America gets, I guess.

My buddy and I are Kentuckians. The Bluegrass State is Red State America. Bush won Kentucky big in 2000 and 2004.

If Alan is an accurate indicator, the president is in hot water in our old Kentucky Home, too.

Evidence is more than just anecdotal. Last November, Louisville, our largest city, elected an anti-war Democrat to Congress. He beat a pro-war, five-term Republican incumbent closely allied with the president.

In Paducah last spring, we wanted to have a public debate on Iraq at the community college where I teach history. We had no trouble lining up somebody from a local anti-war group. We couldn’t find anybody from the other side.

A retired Green Beret colonel who is a Middle East expert agreed to come – but to provide historical and geopolitical perspectives. The decorated Vietnam vet is not a Bush apologist.

"Condoleezza Rice," he suggested to one of our American government classes, "would make a great middle school social studies teacher."

We believe in truth-in-labeling at our school. So we dropped "debate." We billed our program a"discussion" of the Iraq war. It featured questions from the audience, no-holds-barred.

Almost all of the queries – including one from a mom whose son is in Iraq -- reflected deep skepticism about the war. So did applause for the doubting questions.

Doubts about Iraq were almost certainly mirrored, too, in a June Survey USA Poll in Kentucky. Fifty-nine percent of respondents disapproved of the job Bush is doing as president. Thirty-eight percent approved; 3 percent were unsure.

The poll numbers are almost exactly the reverse of the 2004 presidential election. Bush beat Kerry about 60-40 in Kentucky.

I believe in truth in labeling, too. I’m a liberal, union-card carrying Democrat. I didn’t vote for Dubya or his Daddy.

Partisan politics aside, it doesn’t look like Bush’s war, which he still insists is a noble cause, is playing in Paducah, Pikeville and points between. There seem to be a lot of Kentuckians like Alan.

Kentucky might be changing its hue, if not to Blue, at least to a paler shade of Red.

This past weekend was brightened (or burdened, depending on your point of view) by an important step in the current Presidential campaign. Initiated largely by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, the three leading Democratic candidates – Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards – appeared together on CNN, where each responded to several questions from journalists and religious leaders about the intersection of faith and politics. The stated topic was "Faith, Values and Poverty," reflecting Wallis’ conviction that poverty must be seen as the major issue in this campaign.

So, how did it go?

We bring you comments from Jim Wallis himself, Peter Steinfels of the New York Times, Brian Lewis wrote in the Springfield, MO, News-Leader, and Sister Joan Chittister -- with perhaps the most provocative of the responses.

A vital step forward in relating faith and politics

Jim Wallis himself reported that the forum was indeed a "groundbreaking" event, and a successful one, for two reasons: "First, the presidential forum ... clearly showed that faith is alive and well on both sides of the political aisle, and that God is, indeed, not a Republican or Democrat. It served to help ‘level the playing field’ on faith and politics, where the Republicans have enjoyed a decided advantage for several decades now. Second, it clearly moved the faith and politics debate far beyond the narrow two-issue agenda of abortion and gay marriage, which have for so long been ‘the religious issues.’"

A start – but only a start

Peter Steinfels, writing in the New York Times – or his headline writer – called it "a tentative first step in addressing faith and politics." And he suggested a long list of weightier questions that might have been asked, including: "What does the Bible or any other religious source tell you about fighting poverty — and what doesn’t it tell you? Likewise for writing tax legislation or extending health care. ... Does your faith dictate any absolute principles, ones you would never compromise, for using military force? For interrogating prisoners? For making peace in the Middle East? For legal provision of abortion? For recognizing gay marriage?"

It may have been, he concluded, a good start – "but only a start."

Pointing to deeper issues

Brian Lewis wrote in the Springfield, MO, News-Leader that "This is a promising start. This effort isn't about the Democrats becoming the Religious Right Lite. More spiritual without the guilt and pettiness! ... It's also about realizing that it's not healthy for candidates to compartmentalize their religion and the demands that faith places on believers apart from the decisions on public policy that their jobs require they make."

Judging by the questions asked, "Jesus would not do well in these elections."

Sister Joan Chittister had one of the sharpest comments, opening with "Frankly, I thought the questions not only completely missed the mark, they trivialized the very subject they purported to talk about. ‘How do you pray?’ they asked Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards on national TV. ‘What's the biggest sin you've ever committed?’ the interviewer wanted to know. ‘Do you believe in evolution?’ she asked, ‘And if so are the churches that believe in it wrong?’ she prodded. ‘What got you through marital infidelity?’ she went on. ‘Is this a Christian nation?‘ she asked while millions of people listened for right answers with bated breath."

Like the other commentators, she points to the vital questions that didn’t get asked, such as: "Do you sleep at night knowing that the longer you do nothing about ending the war in Iraq [the] more people will die? Or, does it bother your conscience that the more money we spend on war, the more children in this country will go without food or education or medicine? Or, do you ever pray that we'll start spending money on child care so women won't feel a need to have an abortion? Or, do you ever ask God to forgive you for supporting torture in the name of security?"

She moves beyond this to explore the very basic difference between the Democrats’ discussion of faith and religion as relating to public issues, and the Republicans’ insistence that religion deals primarily with private morality, and not the kinds of issues that really matter in politics.

Judging by most of the questions put to the candidates, she says, if they "are any sign of what we think religion is all about, Jesus would not do well in these elections."

GA actions ratified (or not) by  the presbyteries   

A number of the most important actions of the 219^th General Assembly have now been acted upon by the presbyteries, confirming most of them as amendments to the PC(USA) Book of Order.

We provided resources to help inform the reflection and debate, along with updates on the voting.

Our three areas of primary interest have been:

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PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

John Shuck’s Shuck and Jive

Got more blogs to recommend?