Prayer that works is prayer that makes a difference, contemplation that turns into action, on behalf of peace and justice in a troubled and unjust world system. Prayer is energy, the energy of love and transformative power. It is given to us to use for the good of all creation. In prayer God gives us the fuel of life, and asks us to live it.
--Margaret Silf
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Overcoming Poverty
I believe that the solution to overcoming poverty in America requires recognizing that a lack of personal responsibility and a lack of social responsibility both perpetuate the problem. Liberals must start talking about the problems of out-of-wedlock births, strengthening both marriage and parenting, and wealth creation programs such as Individual Development Accounts and home ownership. Conservatives must start talking about strategic public investments in child care, education, health care, affordable housing, and living family incomes. We need a new "grand alliance."
--Jim Wallis
--Jim Wallis
Monday, September 25, 2006
The New Naysayers
by Jerry Adler
Americans answered the atrocities of September 11, overwhelmingly, with faith. Attacked in the name of God, they turned to God for comfort; in the week after the attacks, nearly 70 percent said they were praying more than usual. Confronted by a hatred that seemed inexplicable, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed that God was mad at America because it harbored feminists, gays and civil libertarians. Sam Harris, then a 34-year-old graduate student in neuroscience, had a different reaction. On Sept. 12, he began a book. If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of religion—something that had been going on since long before 2001, of course—then perhaps the problem was religion itself. The book would be called "The End of Faith," which to most Americans probably sounds like a lament. To Harris it is something to be encouraged.
This was not a message most Americans wanted to hear, before or after 9/11. Atheists "are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.) "The End of Faith" struggled to find a publisher, and even after Norton agreed to bring it out in 2004, Harris says there were editors who refused to come to meetings with him. But after winning the PEN/Martha Albrand award for nonfiction, the book sold 270,000 copies. Harris's scathing "Letter to a Christian Nation" will be published this month with a press run of 150,000. Someone is listening, even if he is mostly preaching, one might say, to the unconverted.
This year also saw the publication in February of "Breaking the Spell," by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene") weighs in with "The God Delusion," a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."
Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever." He asks: How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow 180,000 innocent people in a few hours? How does it advance our understanding of the universe to suppose that it was created by a supernatural being who communicates only through the one-way process of revelation?
These are not brand-new arguments, of course, and believers have well-practiced replies to them, although in some cases, such as the persistence of evil and suffering (the "theodicy" problem), the responses are still mostly works in progress. Neither author claims much success in arguing anyone out of a belief in God, but they consider it sufficient reward when they hear from people who were encouraged by their books to give voice to their private doubts. All the same, this is highly inflammatory material. Dawkins acknowledges that many readers will expect, or hope, to see him burning in hell (citing Aquinas as authority for the belief that souls in heaven will get a view of hell for their enjoyment). Harris says he has turned down requests for the rights to translate "The End of Faith" into Arabic or Urdu. "I think it would be a death sentence for any translator," he says. Harris himself—who traveled the world for a dozen years studying Eastern religions and mysticism before returning to finish his undergraduate degree at Stanford—asks that the name of his current university not be publicized.
These authors have no geopolitical strategy to advance; they're interested in the metaphysics of belief, not the politics of the First Amendment. It's the idea of putting trust in God they object to, not the motto on the nickel. This sets them apart from America's best-known atheist activist, the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a controversial eccentric who won a landmark lawsuit against mandatory classroom prayers in 1963 and went on to found the group now called American Atheists. When a chaplain came to her hospital room once and asked what he could do for her, she notoriously replied, "Drop dead." Dawkins, an urbane Oxfordian, would regard that as appalling manners. "I have no problem with people wishing me a Happy Christmas," he says, expressing puzzlement over the passions provoked in America by the question of how store clerks greet customers.
But if the arguments of Dawkins and Harris are familiar, they also bring to bear new scientific evidence on the issue. Evolution isn't necessarily incompatible with faith, even with evangelical Christianity. Several new books—"Evolution and Christian Faith" by the Stanford biologist Joan Roughgraden and "The Language of God" by geneticist Francis Collins—uphold both. But to skeptics like Dawkins—and to Biblical literalists on the other side—Darwin appears to rob God of credit for his crowning achievement, which is us. In particular, evolutionary psychologists believe they are closing in on one of the remaining mysteries of life, the universal "moral law" that underlies our intuitive notions of good and evil. Why do we recognize that acts such as murder are wrong? To Collins, it's evidence of God's handiwork—the very perception that led him to become a Christian.
But Dawkins attempts to show how the highest of human impulses, such as empathy, charity and pity, could have evolved by the same mechanism of natural selection that created the thumb. Biologists understand that the driving force in evolution is the survival and propagation of our genes. They may impel us to instinctive acts of goodness, Dawkins writes, even when it seems counterproductive to our own interests—say, by risking our life to save someone else. Evolutionary psychology can explain how selfless behavior might have evolved. The recipient may be a blood relation who carries some of our own genes. Or our acts may earn us future gratitude, or a reputation for bravery that makes us more desirable as mates. Of course, the essence of the moral law is that it applies even to strangers. Missionaries who devote themselves to saving the lives of Third World peasants have no reasonable expectation of being repaid in this world. But, Dawkins goes on, the impulse for generosity must have evolved while humans lived in small bands in which almost everyone was related, so that goodness became the default human aspiration. This is a rebuke not merely to believers who insist that God must be the source of all goodness—but equally to the 19th-century atheism of Nietzsche, who assumed that the death of God meant the end of conventional morality.
But Dawkins, brilliant as he is, overlooks something any storefront Baptist preacher might have told him. "If there is no God, why be good?" he asks rhetorically, and responds: "Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up." That's clever. But millions of Christians and Muslims believe that it was precisely God who turned them away from a life of immorality. Dawkins, of course, thinks they are deluding themselves. He is correct that the social utility of religion doesn't prove anything about the existence of God. But for all his erudition, he seems not to have spent much time among ordinary Christians, who could have told him what God has meant to them.
It is not just extremists who earn the wrath of Dawkins and Harris. Their books are attacks on religious "moderates" as well—indeed, the very idea of moderation. The West is not at war with "terrorism," Harris asserts in "The End of Faith"; it is at war with Islam, a religion whose holy book, "on almost every page ... prepares the ground for religious conflict." Christian fundamentalists, he says, have a better handle on the problem than moderates: "They know what it's like to really believe that their holy book is the word of God, and there's a paradise you can get to if you die in the right circumstances. They're not left wondering what is the 'real' cause of terrorism." As for the Bible, Harris, like the fundamentalists, prefers a literal reading. He quotes at length the passages in the Old and New Testaments dealing with how to treat slaves. Why, he asks, would anyone take moral instruction from a book that calls for stoning your children to death for disrespect, or for heresy, or for violating the Sabbath? Obviously our culture no longer believes in that, he adds, so why not agree that science has made it equally unnecessary to invoke God to explain the Sun, or the weather, or your own existence?
Even agnostic moderates get raked over—like the late Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist who attempted to broker a truce between science and religion in his controversial 1999 book "Rocks of Ages." Gould proposed that science and religion retreat to separate realms, the former concerned with empirical questions about the way the universe works, while the latter pursues ultimate meaning and ethical precepts. But, Dawkins asks, unless the Bible is right in its historical and metaphysical claims, why should we grant it authority in the moral realm? And can science really abjure any interest in the claims of religion? Did Jesus come back from the dead, or didn't he? If so, how did God make it happen? Collins says he is satisfied with the answer that the Resurrection is a miracle, permanently beyond our understanding. That Collins can hold that belief, while simultaneously working at the very frontiers of science as the head of the Human Genome Project, is what amazes Harris.
Believers can take comfort in the fact that atheism barely amounts to a "movement." American Atheists, which fights in the courts and legislatures for the rights of nonbelievers, has about 2,500 members and a budget of less than $1 million. On the science Web site Edge.org, the astronomer Carolyn Porco offers the subversive suggestion that science itself should attempt to supplant God in Western culture, by providing the benefits and comforts people find in religion: community, ceremony and a sense of awe. "Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way," she writes. Porco, who is deeply involved in the Cassini mission to Saturn, finds spiritual fulfillment in exploring the cosmos. But will that work for the rest of the world—for "the people who want to know that they're going to live forever and meet Mom and Dad in heaven? We can't offer that." If Dawkins, Dennett and Harris are right, the five-century-long competition between science and religion is sharpening. People are choosing sides. And when that happens, people get hurt.
Americans answered the atrocities of September 11, overwhelmingly, with faith. Attacked in the name of God, they turned to God for comfort; in the week after the attacks, nearly 70 percent said they were praying more than usual. Confronted by a hatred that seemed inexplicable, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed that God was mad at America because it harbored feminists, gays and civil libertarians. Sam Harris, then a 34-year-old graduate student in neuroscience, had a different reaction. On Sept. 12, he began a book. If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of religion—something that had been going on since long before 2001, of course—then perhaps the problem was religion itself. The book would be called "The End of Faith," which to most Americans probably sounds like a lament. To Harris it is something to be encouraged.
This was not a message most Americans wanted to hear, before or after 9/11. Atheists "are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.) "The End of Faith" struggled to find a publisher, and even after Norton agreed to bring it out in 2004, Harris says there were editors who refused to come to meetings with him. But after winning the PEN/Martha Albrand award for nonfiction, the book sold 270,000 copies. Harris's scathing "Letter to a Christian Nation" will be published this month with a press run of 150,000. Someone is listening, even if he is mostly preaching, one might say, to the unconverted.
This year also saw the publication in February of "Breaking the Spell," by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene") weighs in with "The God Delusion," a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."
Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever." He asks: How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow 180,000 innocent people in a few hours? How does it advance our understanding of the universe to suppose that it was created by a supernatural being who communicates only through the one-way process of revelation?
These are not brand-new arguments, of course, and believers have well-practiced replies to them, although in some cases, such as the persistence of evil and suffering (the "theodicy" problem), the responses are still mostly works in progress. Neither author claims much success in arguing anyone out of a belief in God, but they consider it sufficient reward when they hear from people who were encouraged by their books to give voice to their private doubts. All the same, this is highly inflammatory material. Dawkins acknowledges that many readers will expect, or hope, to see him burning in hell (citing Aquinas as authority for the belief that souls in heaven will get a view of hell for their enjoyment). Harris says he has turned down requests for the rights to translate "The End of Faith" into Arabic or Urdu. "I think it would be a death sentence for any translator," he says. Harris himself—who traveled the world for a dozen years studying Eastern religions and mysticism before returning to finish his undergraduate degree at Stanford—asks that the name of his current university not be publicized.
These authors have no geopolitical strategy to advance; they're interested in the metaphysics of belief, not the politics of the First Amendment. It's the idea of putting trust in God they object to, not the motto on the nickel. This sets them apart from America's best-known atheist activist, the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a controversial eccentric who won a landmark lawsuit against mandatory classroom prayers in 1963 and went on to found the group now called American Atheists. When a chaplain came to her hospital room once and asked what he could do for her, she notoriously replied, "Drop dead." Dawkins, an urbane Oxfordian, would regard that as appalling manners. "I have no problem with people wishing me a Happy Christmas," he says, expressing puzzlement over the passions provoked in America by the question of how store clerks greet customers.
But if the arguments of Dawkins and Harris are familiar, they also bring to bear new scientific evidence on the issue. Evolution isn't necessarily incompatible with faith, even with evangelical Christianity. Several new books—"Evolution and Christian Faith" by the Stanford biologist Joan Roughgraden and "The Language of God" by geneticist Francis Collins—uphold both. But to skeptics like Dawkins—and to Biblical literalists on the other side—Darwin appears to rob God of credit for his crowning achievement, which is us. In particular, evolutionary psychologists believe they are closing in on one of the remaining mysteries of life, the universal "moral law" that underlies our intuitive notions of good and evil. Why do we recognize that acts such as murder are wrong? To Collins, it's evidence of God's handiwork—the very perception that led him to become a Christian.
But Dawkins attempts to show how the highest of human impulses, such as empathy, charity and pity, could have evolved by the same mechanism of natural selection that created the thumb. Biologists understand that the driving force in evolution is the survival and propagation of our genes. They may impel us to instinctive acts of goodness, Dawkins writes, even when it seems counterproductive to our own interests—say, by risking our life to save someone else. Evolutionary psychology can explain how selfless behavior might have evolved. The recipient may be a blood relation who carries some of our own genes. Or our acts may earn us future gratitude, or a reputation for bravery that makes us more desirable as mates. Of course, the essence of the moral law is that it applies even to strangers. Missionaries who devote themselves to saving the lives of Third World peasants have no reasonable expectation of being repaid in this world. But, Dawkins goes on, the impulse for generosity must have evolved while humans lived in small bands in which almost everyone was related, so that goodness became the default human aspiration. This is a rebuke not merely to believers who insist that God must be the source of all goodness—but equally to the 19th-century atheism of Nietzsche, who assumed that the death of God meant the end of conventional morality.
But Dawkins, brilliant as he is, overlooks something any storefront Baptist preacher might have told him. "If there is no God, why be good?" he asks rhetorically, and responds: "Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up." That's clever. But millions of Christians and Muslims believe that it was precisely God who turned them away from a life of immorality. Dawkins, of course, thinks they are deluding themselves. He is correct that the social utility of religion doesn't prove anything about the existence of God. But for all his erudition, he seems not to have spent much time among ordinary Christians, who could have told him what God has meant to them.
It is not just extremists who earn the wrath of Dawkins and Harris. Their books are attacks on religious "moderates" as well—indeed, the very idea of moderation. The West is not at war with "terrorism," Harris asserts in "The End of Faith"; it is at war with Islam, a religion whose holy book, "on almost every page ... prepares the ground for religious conflict." Christian fundamentalists, he says, have a better handle on the problem than moderates: "They know what it's like to really believe that their holy book is the word of God, and there's a paradise you can get to if you die in the right circumstances. They're not left wondering what is the 'real' cause of terrorism." As for the Bible, Harris, like the fundamentalists, prefers a literal reading. He quotes at length the passages in the Old and New Testaments dealing with how to treat slaves. Why, he asks, would anyone take moral instruction from a book that calls for stoning your children to death for disrespect, or for heresy, or for violating the Sabbath? Obviously our culture no longer believes in that, he adds, so why not agree that science has made it equally unnecessary to invoke God to explain the Sun, or the weather, or your own existence?
Even agnostic moderates get raked over—like the late Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist who attempted to broker a truce between science and religion in his controversial 1999 book "Rocks of Ages." Gould proposed that science and religion retreat to separate realms, the former concerned with empirical questions about the way the universe works, while the latter pursues ultimate meaning and ethical precepts. But, Dawkins asks, unless the Bible is right in its historical and metaphysical claims, why should we grant it authority in the moral realm? And can science really abjure any interest in the claims of religion? Did Jesus come back from the dead, or didn't he? If so, how did God make it happen? Collins says he is satisfied with the answer that the Resurrection is a miracle, permanently beyond our understanding. That Collins can hold that belief, while simultaneously working at the very frontiers of science as the head of the Human Genome Project, is what amazes Harris.
Believers can take comfort in the fact that atheism barely amounts to a "movement." American Atheists, which fights in the courts and legislatures for the rights of nonbelievers, has about 2,500 members and a budget of less than $1 million. On the science Web site Edge.org, the astronomer Carolyn Porco offers the subversive suggestion that science itself should attempt to supplant God in Western culture, by providing the benefits and comforts people find in religion: community, ceremony and a sense of awe. "Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way," she writes. Porco, who is deeply involved in the Cassini mission to Saturn, finds spiritual fulfillment in exploring the cosmos. But will that work for the rest of the world—for "the people who want to know that they're going to live forever and meet Mom and Dad in heaven? We can't offer that." If Dawkins, Dennett and Harris are right, the five-century-long competition between science and religion is sharpening. People are choosing sides. And when that happens, people get hurt.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
In What God Do We Trust?
by Terri Jo Ryan
We may be "one nation, under God," but Americans actually worship at least four versions of the Lord, according to a study released Monday.
More than two dozen questions about God's character and behavior were asked of 1,721 Americans nationwide in the survey, "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights into the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the United States," conducted by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion.
Respondents perceived God in one of four ways:
• Authoritarian God: Individuals who follow this model feel God is highly involved in their personal lives and world affairs, they give the Deity credit for their decision-making, and they feel God is angry and meting out punishment to the wicked.
• Benevolent God: These believers also think God is very active in their daily life, just not as wrathful. They believe God is mostly a force for positive influence in the world, and is reluctant to condemn individuals.
• Critical God: The faithful of this subset believe God is not meddling in world affairs but is nonetheless looking on in disapproval. These people tend to believe God's displeasure will be felt in another life, and that divine justice is not of this world.
• Distant God: Individuals in this group think God is not active in humanity's affairs, and is not especially angry, either. Believers consider the deity more of a cosmic force who sets the laws of nature into motion.
Which of the God models you follow is an accurate predictor of a number of factors, including race, political stances, even where you live, said Paul Froese, a Baylor sociologist who worked on the project. For example, belief in God has a strong gender difference. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist.
More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist.
Lower-income and less-educated people were more likely to worship types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded.
Froese noted that geography also seemed to correlate: Easterners disproportionately seem to believe in a critical God; Southerners tend toward the authoritarian God; Midwesterners worship the benevolent God; and West Coast residents contemplate the distant God.
Catholics and mainline Protestants are more apt to see God as distant, as are Jews.
Evangelical and black Protestants lean toward the authoritarian God. People who see God exclusively as "he" also worship this image.
Conducted with the Gallup Organization, the sampling of more than 1,700 English-speaking adults was conducted from October to December last year. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
We may be "one nation, under God," but Americans actually worship at least four versions of the Lord, according to a study released Monday.
More than two dozen questions about God's character and behavior were asked of 1,721 Americans nationwide in the survey, "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights into the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the United States," conducted by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion.
Respondents perceived God in one of four ways:
• Authoritarian God: Individuals who follow this model feel God is highly involved in their personal lives and world affairs, they give the Deity credit for their decision-making, and they feel God is angry and meting out punishment to the wicked.
• Benevolent God: These believers also think God is very active in their daily life, just not as wrathful. They believe God is mostly a force for positive influence in the world, and is reluctant to condemn individuals.
• Critical God: The faithful of this subset believe God is not meddling in world affairs but is nonetheless looking on in disapproval. These people tend to believe God's displeasure will be felt in another life, and that divine justice is not of this world.
• Distant God: Individuals in this group think God is not active in humanity's affairs, and is not especially angry, either. Believers consider the deity more of a cosmic force who sets the laws of nature into motion.
Which of the God models you follow is an accurate predictor of a number of factors, including race, political stances, even where you live, said Paul Froese, a Baylor sociologist who worked on the project. For example, belief in God has a strong gender difference. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist.
More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist.
Lower-income and less-educated people were more likely to worship types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded.
Froese noted that geography also seemed to correlate: Easterners disproportionately seem to believe in a critical God; Southerners tend toward the authoritarian God; Midwesterners worship the benevolent God; and West Coast residents contemplate the distant God.
Catholics and mainline Protestants are more apt to see God as distant, as are Jews.
Evangelical and black Protestants lean toward the authoritarian God. People who see God exclusively as "he" also worship this image.
Conducted with the Gallup Organization, the sampling of more than 1,700 English-speaking adults was conducted from October to December last year. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Blessed
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
--Matthew 5:3-12
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
--Matthew 5:3-12
Interview With Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson spearheads the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, which has embraced many controversial and difficult cases since its inception in 1989. A committed Christian, Stevenson has been working since law school with indigent and marginalized people caught in the crosshairs of the judicial system. Instead of reaping the financial benefits of his top-tier education and launch at a private law firm in the Northeast, Stevenson moved to Alabama, a state which boasts one of the highest death penalty rates and some of the most shameful racial legacies in the United States.
Question: One of the major social groups that oppose your fight against the death penalty is evangelicals. But in theory, they too believe in redemption and share your concept of God. Why do you think that is?
Stevenson: I don't know. I worry about what I would call institutional Christianity--cultural preferences and political perspectives that are cloaked in Christian garb but which underneath don't seem very integrated. I don't want to be critical of other institutions, but I am critical of the way the church is sometimes used that is wholly inconsistent with the teachings of Christ. We're not forced to explain ourselves if we say we're a Christian organization and our top goal this year is to fight against tax increases, which is what we see so much of in this state.
I spend a lot of time talking to evangelicals, some of whom I think come from very conservative communities, and so much of what I encounter is a real lack of thought. This notion that God is Republican, and therefore every Republican speaks for God--it's scary how comfortable some folks have gotten with that. Obviously Christians are called to reject the notion that God's a Republican or a Democrat, that God belongs to us and to no one else, that our Christianity is intended to justify morally our pursuit of wealth and power and our distance from the problems of the poor and disadvantaged. To me that just doesn't settle with the life of Christ. At a minimum, I think we need to talk about these things.
Question: I've heard spokespeople for evangelical organizations make the argument that God not only permits the death penalty but actually requires it. What's your response to that?
Stevenson: I'd say it's not, in my view, an integrated understanding of the Scriptures. Jesus says, when asked about the death penalty, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It doesn't say it's absolutely not permissible. I think what Jesus says (and what I believe) is that the question about the death penalty is not "Do some people deserve death for the crimes they commit?" but rather "Do we deserve to kill?" Are we so perfected, so beyond sin, so comfortable in our condition of grace that we are now capable of picking up the stones and throwing them? Jesus understood that we are never in that condition. We are saved by grace. We are perfected only through love and through daily acts of redemption and suffering and struggle and prayer and reflection; we never get to the point where we can act on this arguably permissible, scriptural authority to kill. Evangelicals say we believe that we're put on the planet to spread the gospel and share the love of Christ, but to me it's wholly inconsistent to be committed to that task and yet to want a secular government to eliminate folks before that act of ministry and reconciliation can be completed.
I am thoroughly convinced by the transformations that I see in people. I don't believe that anybody is beyond the grace of God. I've known a lot of people on death row about whom I could say, "This person is ill" or "This person may never be in a position to be released," but I've never met anybody about whom I could say, "This person is beyond redemption--his life has no value, no meaning, no purpose - and it is morally justifiable to kill him." And I certainly have not encountered a system of government or government officials about whom I could say, "These folks have it together; they are so beyond discrimination against the poor, so infallible that they should absolutely decide who lives and who dies."
We don't deny that we've got clients who've done horrific things that deserve really severe punishment. We just don't think that a state like Alabama, or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Pennsylvania, or New York, or California has the capacity to exercise these perfect judgments. Because when you kill a human being, you can't make mistakes--it requires perfection.
Question: Alabama has more churches per capita than any other state in the country, yet it sentences more people to death than any other state. Is there a relationship?
Stevenson: I think there's something really corruptive at play in a lot of our churches. We have politicians, both locally and nationwide, who are preaching fear and anger. They don't want Christians and people of faith thinking about how to love, how to restore, how to serve, how to respond to the suffering of those without. They want them angry. They want them angry about Hollywood and angry about people who are gay and angry about liberals and angry about taxes. They want them fearful of crime and fearful of terrorism and fearful of all these threats. That then yields social and political policies that are very predictable. What that will give you is a desire for the death penalty, support for mass incarceration, resistance to social justice, indifference to the poor, contempt for those who are disadvantaged and marginalized. This explains how we can be so saturated with churches and religious institutions and yet so silent on social justice issues and so lax in doing the things Jesus called for us to do.
The same level of religiosity, the same number of churches existed when we were comfortably defending segregation in this state. Churches have comfortably defended segregation and Jim Crow laws and comfortably tolerated lynching. Many of them comfortably accepted slavery. The comfort level of religious institutions and people expressing Christian ideology in the face of horrific human suffering, tragedy, and abuse has some historical antecedent. It's only when we get past that--usually because we're pushed by somebody who's not necessarily a person of faith - that we begin to come around. Any meaningful conversation about where we are has to focus on this: Why have we so frequently allowed ourselves to sit silently in church pews while horrific abuses and injustices and evil are being tolerated, oftentimes with our support? That's the challenge, I think, for all of us, because we've seen the church do so many things that undermine the kingdom of God. Human history is filled with volumes of gross abuse and evil, all in the name of God. Unfortunately, people are still very comfortable using God and Christianity to legitimate conduct that is very ungodly.
A lot of us really deprive ourselves of opportunities for incomparable joy and extraordinary spiritual affirmation and meaning when we shield ourselves from engaging people who are in crisis, suffering, sick, in prison. What I'd like to communicate to everyone is that if you get proximate to death row prisoners, to people who are struggling, and you just bear witness to their struggle and assist them when you can, there is this extraordinary redemptive experience that will reach you. Don't go into it thinking that you're doing this for somebody else; understand that you're doing this for yourself, because I guarantee you'll get more from it than you'll give. I think when we shield ourselves from those sort of experiences we deny ourselves a lot of miraculous redemptive excitement that being a person of faith can offer us.
Question: One of the major social groups that oppose your fight against the death penalty is evangelicals. But in theory, they too believe in redemption and share your concept of God. Why do you think that is?
Stevenson: I don't know. I worry about what I would call institutional Christianity--cultural preferences and political perspectives that are cloaked in Christian garb but which underneath don't seem very integrated. I don't want to be critical of other institutions, but I am critical of the way the church is sometimes used that is wholly inconsistent with the teachings of Christ. We're not forced to explain ourselves if we say we're a Christian organization and our top goal this year is to fight against tax increases, which is what we see so much of in this state.
I spend a lot of time talking to evangelicals, some of whom I think come from very conservative communities, and so much of what I encounter is a real lack of thought. This notion that God is Republican, and therefore every Republican speaks for God--it's scary how comfortable some folks have gotten with that. Obviously Christians are called to reject the notion that God's a Republican or a Democrat, that God belongs to us and to no one else, that our Christianity is intended to justify morally our pursuit of wealth and power and our distance from the problems of the poor and disadvantaged. To me that just doesn't settle with the life of Christ. At a minimum, I think we need to talk about these things.
Question: I've heard spokespeople for evangelical organizations make the argument that God not only permits the death penalty but actually requires it. What's your response to that?
Stevenson: I'd say it's not, in my view, an integrated understanding of the Scriptures. Jesus says, when asked about the death penalty, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It doesn't say it's absolutely not permissible. I think what Jesus says (and what I believe) is that the question about the death penalty is not "Do some people deserve death for the crimes they commit?" but rather "Do we deserve to kill?" Are we so perfected, so beyond sin, so comfortable in our condition of grace that we are now capable of picking up the stones and throwing them? Jesus understood that we are never in that condition. We are saved by grace. We are perfected only through love and through daily acts of redemption and suffering and struggle and prayer and reflection; we never get to the point where we can act on this arguably permissible, scriptural authority to kill. Evangelicals say we believe that we're put on the planet to spread the gospel and share the love of Christ, but to me it's wholly inconsistent to be committed to that task and yet to want a secular government to eliminate folks before that act of ministry and reconciliation can be completed.
I am thoroughly convinced by the transformations that I see in people. I don't believe that anybody is beyond the grace of God. I've known a lot of people on death row about whom I could say, "This person is ill" or "This person may never be in a position to be released," but I've never met anybody about whom I could say, "This person is beyond redemption--his life has no value, no meaning, no purpose - and it is morally justifiable to kill him." And I certainly have not encountered a system of government or government officials about whom I could say, "These folks have it together; they are so beyond discrimination against the poor, so infallible that they should absolutely decide who lives and who dies."
We don't deny that we've got clients who've done horrific things that deserve really severe punishment. We just don't think that a state like Alabama, or Mississippi, or Georgia, or Pennsylvania, or New York, or California has the capacity to exercise these perfect judgments. Because when you kill a human being, you can't make mistakes--it requires perfection.
Question: Alabama has more churches per capita than any other state in the country, yet it sentences more people to death than any other state. Is there a relationship?
Stevenson: I think there's something really corruptive at play in a lot of our churches. We have politicians, both locally and nationwide, who are preaching fear and anger. They don't want Christians and people of faith thinking about how to love, how to restore, how to serve, how to respond to the suffering of those without. They want them angry. They want them angry about Hollywood and angry about people who are gay and angry about liberals and angry about taxes. They want them fearful of crime and fearful of terrorism and fearful of all these threats. That then yields social and political policies that are very predictable. What that will give you is a desire for the death penalty, support for mass incarceration, resistance to social justice, indifference to the poor, contempt for those who are disadvantaged and marginalized. This explains how we can be so saturated with churches and religious institutions and yet so silent on social justice issues and so lax in doing the things Jesus called for us to do.
The same level of religiosity, the same number of churches existed when we were comfortably defending segregation in this state. Churches have comfortably defended segregation and Jim Crow laws and comfortably tolerated lynching. Many of them comfortably accepted slavery. The comfort level of religious institutions and people expressing Christian ideology in the face of horrific human suffering, tragedy, and abuse has some historical antecedent. It's only when we get past that--usually because we're pushed by somebody who's not necessarily a person of faith - that we begin to come around. Any meaningful conversation about where we are has to focus on this: Why have we so frequently allowed ourselves to sit silently in church pews while horrific abuses and injustices and evil are being tolerated, oftentimes with our support? That's the challenge, I think, for all of us, because we've seen the church do so many things that undermine the kingdom of God. Human history is filled with volumes of gross abuse and evil, all in the name of God. Unfortunately, people are still very comfortable using God and Christianity to legitimate conduct that is very ungodly.
A lot of us really deprive ourselves of opportunities for incomparable joy and extraordinary spiritual affirmation and meaning when we shield ourselves from engaging people who are in crisis, suffering, sick, in prison. What I'd like to communicate to everyone is that if you get proximate to death row prisoners, to people who are struggling, and you just bear witness to their struggle and assist them when you can, there is this extraordinary redemptive experience that will reach you. Don't go into it thinking that you're doing this for somebody else; understand that you're doing this for yourself, because I guarantee you'll get more from it than you'll give. I think when we shield ourselves from those sort of experiences we deny ourselves a lot of miraculous redemptive excitement that being a person of faith can offer us.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Love One Another
We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
--1 John 3:14-18
--1 John 3:14-18
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Questioning and Struggle
We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.
--Thomas Merton
--Thomas Merton
Monday, September 18, 2006
Guide and Critic
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
--Martin Luther King Jr.
--Martin Luther King Jr.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Perfect Storm for the Poor
by E. J. Dionne
After a week of remembering the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the most depressing realization is how easily our leaders forgot their fervent promises to lift up our nation's poorest citizens.
All manner of politicians and columnists said in Katrina's wake that this was the time to revisit the problems of the destitute. The anguish of the people of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward would have at least some redemptive power if the country took poverty seriously again.
It didn't happen. The innovative ideas that came from all sides were swept off the table. The poor became unfashionable once more. Congressional conservatives changed the conversation. A concern for the struggling gave way to debate over how to offset spending on Katrina with budget cuts -- directed in large part at programs for the needy.
Perhaps the release of the Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in this particular week is a sign that God and statisticians have a sense of humor. The report reinforces what we knew at the time of Katrina -- that the poor are still with us and that the middle class keeps losing ground.
The "good" news is that the poverty rate, the proportion of Americans who are poor, didn't change much between 2004 and 2005, falling in a statistically insignificant way from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent. The bad news is that the poverty rate, having risen steadily in recent years, is still higher than it was in 2001, when it stood at 11.7 percent.
Worse is that the proportion of the poor who are very poor has risen. People are considered in deep poverty if they have half or less of the yearly income of those at the poverty line. In 2005 half the poverty line for a family of three was $7,788; for a family of four it was $9,985. (Try living on that.) According to the new report, 43.1 percent of poor people lived in that sort of deep poverty -- a record since 1975, when the government started assembling such statistics.
In the six economic recoveries since the early 1960s, this is the first time the poverty rate was higher in the recovery's fourth year than it was when the recession was at its worst.
The number of Americans without health insurance rose, too, to 46.6 million in 2005, up from 45.3 million in 2004 and 41.2 million in 2001. The proportion without insurance is up from 14.6 percent in 2001 to 15.9 percent in 2005.
What about the middle class? Yes, the median income of American households rose by 1.1 percent last year after five years of decline. But most of the growth was in households headed by Americans 65 and over -- who are helped, rightly, by substantial government benefits. In households headed by people under 65, incomes fell yet again.
Want to know why so many men out there are mad? Check out Table A-2 on Page 38 of the Census report. (I'm grateful to my friend Bill Galston for calling it to my attention.) Adjusted for inflation, men's earnings were lower in 2005 than they were in 1973.
Dear liberals, who worry about the political leanings of angry men, and dear conservatives, who exploit that anger, do you have any proposals to end this income stagnation?
Yes, women have been slowly closing the gender gap in income. Among full-time, year-round workers, women earn 77 percent of what men do, compared with 57 percent in 1973.
But in the most recent year, the gap closed because women lost income at a slightly slower rate than men did. Between 2004 and 2005, the earnings for those working full time year-round dropped 1.8 percent for men and 1.3 percent for women. That's not how most women imagine achieving equality.
The census had some very good news for the well-to-do. The top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the Census Bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top 5 percent.
"The economy is growing, and someone is getting the growth," said Sharon Parrott, a senior analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "So now we know who it is."
President Bush and the Republican Congress, take a bow: You took power to make the well-off even better off, and you have succeeded brilliantly.
As for the poor and the middle class, maybe they'll do better after the next hurricane, or the one after that.
After a week of remembering the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the most depressing realization is how easily our leaders forgot their fervent promises to lift up our nation's poorest citizens.
All manner of politicians and columnists said in Katrina's wake that this was the time to revisit the problems of the destitute. The anguish of the people of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward would have at least some redemptive power if the country took poverty seriously again.
It didn't happen. The innovative ideas that came from all sides were swept off the table. The poor became unfashionable once more. Congressional conservatives changed the conversation. A concern for the struggling gave way to debate over how to offset spending on Katrina with budget cuts -- directed in large part at programs for the needy.
Perhaps the release of the Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in this particular week is a sign that God and statisticians have a sense of humor. The report reinforces what we knew at the time of Katrina -- that the poor are still with us and that the middle class keeps losing ground.
The "good" news is that the poverty rate, the proportion of Americans who are poor, didn't change much between 2004 and 2005, falling in a statistically insignificant way from 12.7 percent to 12.6 percent. The bad news is that the poverty rate, having risen steadily in recent years, is still higher than it was in 2001, when it stood at 11.7 percent.
Worse is that the proportion of the poor who are very poor has risen. People are considered in deep poverty if they have half or less of the yearly income of those at the poverty line. In 2005 half the poverty line for a family of three was $7,788; for a family of four it was $9,985. (Try living on that.) According to the new report, 43.1 percent of poor people lived in that sort of deep poverty -- a record since 1975, when the government started assembling such statistics.
In the six economic recoveries since the early 1960s, this is the first time the poverty rate was higher in the recovery's fourth year than it was when the recession was at its worst.
The number of Americans without health insurance rose, too, to 46.6 million in 2005, up from 45.3 million in 2004 and 41.2 million in 2001. The proportion without insurance is up from 14.6 percent in 2001 to 15.9 percent in 2005.
What about the middle class? Yes, the median income of American households rose by 1.1 percent last year after five years of decline. But most of the growth was in households headed by Americans 65 and over -- who are helped, rightly, by substantial government benefits. In households headed by people under 65, incomes fell yet again.
Want to know why so many men out there are mad? Check out Table A-2 on Page 38 of the Census report. (I'm grateful to my friend Bill Galston for calling it to my attention.) Adjusted for inflation, men's earnings were lower in 2005 than they were in 1973.
Dear liberals, who worry about the political leanings of angry men, and dear conservatives, who exploit that anger, do you have any proposals to end this income stagnation?
Yes, women have been slowly closing the gender gap in income. Among full-time, year-round workers, women earn 77 percent of what men do, compared with 57 percent in 1973.
But in the most recent year, the gap closed because women lost income at a slightly slower rate than men did. Between 2004 and 2005, the earnings for those working full time year-round dropped 1.8 percent for men and 1.3 percent for women. That's not how most women imagine achieving equality.
The census had some very good news for the well-to-do. The top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the Census Bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top 5 percent.
"The economy is growing, and someone is getting the growth," said Sharon Parrott, a senior analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "So now we know who it is."
President Bush and the Republican Congress, take a bow: You took power to make the well-off even better off, and you have succeeded brilliantly.
As for the poor and the middle class, maybe they'll do better after the next hurricane, or the one after that.
New Eyes
The important thing is that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, at sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perceptions of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, free, less corruptible.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Friday, September 08, 2006
Incarnational Living
by J. Monty Stewart
Cory Booker is a unique individual. He has a degree from the Yale School of Law and his resume includes Oxford University as well. Cory could be doing something great with his life, according to some. Cory is the 37-year-old mayor of Newark, NJ. Newark is not one as one of those cities that people scramble to visit. It is a city riddled with crime and poverty.
Mayor Booker has chosen to live among the people that he serves. He lives on the top floor of a public housing project. He recently told National Public Radio that he has not had hot water since last November and during the last winter his heat did not work. He then went on to comment that what is an "inconvenience" for him is a "life and death" issue for others. He pitched his television because he did not want to be consumed with something that would take his focus off his people. Some of his people accept him while several gangs have issued death threats. Mayor Booker does not want to look to the past and cast blame. He stated,"We could all sit and talk about the historical causes for where we are, we can talk about the geopolitical causes, the massive shifts economically in our global economy. But, more productively, my question as the mayor of New Jersey's largest city and one of the majority African-American cities is, where do we go from here?"
His desire is to move the people he serves away from blame and on toward a future. Mayor Booker, whether he knows it or not, is living incarnationally.
Jesus Christ did just what Major Booker has done. He moved into the neighborhood of a people that were oppressed, downtrodden, and longing for deliverance. The Gospel of John, John 1:14, records it this way: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
He stepped into a political arena that was casting blame on everyone from the Roman Government to the puppet Jewish governor. Crime was rampant and everyone was looking back to king that had been a great warrior. The people desired a messiah, a kingly messiah. Here comes a man that wants to live among them and meet the needs of the poor, the hungry, the diseased, the outcast, etc. Many people flocked to be around him. Many others hated him and desired to kill him. In spite of all this, he lived and walked among them.
Christians are called to live the same kind of live. A lesson could be learned from the model that Mayor Booker has adopted. A lesson can also be learned from Christ who moved into the neighborhood. That is what it means to be a Christian people. So many Christians desire to remove themselves from secular life and living. They desire a "City of God" where they can have Christian television, Christian media, Christian music, Christian aerobics, etc.
Yet Christ came to live in the neighborhood. He lived, moved, and had his being among a people that he longed to care for, much like a mother hen caring for her little chicks. It is time to move back into the neighborhood.
Cory Booker is a unique individual. He has a degree from the Yale School of Law and his resume includes Oxford University as well. Cory could be doing something great with his life, according to some. Cory is the 37-year-old mayor of Newark, NJ. Newark is not one as one of those cities that people scramble to visit. It is a city riddled with crime and poverty.
Mayor Booker has chosen to live among the people that he serves. He lives on the top floor of a public housing project. He recently told National Public Radio that he has not had hot water since last November and during the last winter his heat did not work. He then went on to comment that what is an "inconvenience" for him is a "life and death" issue for others. He pitched his television because he did not want to be consumed with something that would take his focus off his people. Some of his people accept him while several gangs have issued death threats. Mayor Booker does not want to look to the past and cast blame. He stated,"We could all sit and talk about the historical causes for where we are, we can talk about the geopolitical causes, the massive shifts economically in our global economy. But, more productively, my question as the mayor of New Jersey's largest city and one of the majority African-American cities is, where do we go from here?"
His desire is to move the people he serves away from blame and on toward a future. Mayor Booker, whether he knows it or not, is living incarnationally.
Jesus Christ did just what Major Booker has done. He moved into the neighborhood of a people that were oppressed, downtrodden, and longing for deliverance. The Gospel of John, John 1:14, records it this way: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
He stepped into a political arena that was casting blame on everyone from the Roman Government to the puppet Jewish governor. Crime was rampant and everyone was looking back to king that had been a great warrior. The people desired a messiah, a kingly messiah. Here comes a man that wants to live among them and meet the needs of the poor, the hungry, the diseased, the outcast, etc. Many people flocked to be around him. Many others hated him and desired to kill him. In spite of all this, he lived and walked among them.
Christians are called to live the same kind of live. A lesson could be learned from the model that Mayor Booker has adopted. A lesson can also be learned from Christ who moved into the neighborhood. That is what it means to be a Christian people. So many Christians desire to remove themselves from secular life and living. They desire a "City of God" where they can have Christian television, Christian media, Christian music, Christian aerobics, etc.
Yet Christ came to live in the neighborhood. He lived, moved, and had his being among a people that he longed to care for, much like a mother hen caring for her little chicks. It is time to move back into the neighborhood.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
What Bush Should Have Said
by Joe Klein
My fellow members of the American Legion, I have made some serious mistakes and miscalculations in our struggle against Islamic extremism over the past five years. Some of these were made out of anger and impatience in the months after we were so viciously attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Others were made out of my heartfelt belief that our American values—freedom, democracy, market economics—are the surest path away from the fury and despair that have plagued the nations at the heart of the Islamic world. I still believe deeply in those values.
I am still convinced that we are facing a long-term campaign against Islamic extremists who have the means to bring unimaginable horrors to our streets. But events in Lebanon and Iraq this summer have convinced me that our Freedom Agenda must be modified.
I was going to deliver a speech today in which I said, "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." But then I thought about a conversation I had recently with a young U.S. military officer, a combat veteran of the Iraq war who remains on active duty, committed to our mission. "Mr. President," he said. "If this struggle is so important, why is this the only war in American history where we haven't increased the size of the Army and raised taxes to pay for it? Why haven't you mobilized the nation?"
In the speech I planned to deliver, I would have spoken—too easily, too dismissively—about how previous Presidents pursued a mistaken policy of seeking "stability" in the Middle East, which resulted in the terrorist attacks against us. I would have implied that my aggressive promotion of democracy was the only alternative to the failed policies of the past. But that would have posed a false choice. Stability is, after all, our goal for the region. And we have learned, sadly, in recent years that the mere act of holding an election does not create a democracy. Indeed, in many countries of the region—in the Palestinian territories, Iran and, yes, Iraq—elections have brought the forces of instability to power.
Which brings me to Iraq. I want to tell you something I've never acknowledged: the U.N. inspection regime that was forced on Saddam Hussein in 2002 was working. We should have had more patience with it and supported it more fully. In the end, it would have revealed what we now know: that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. That revelation would have destroyed the dictator's credibility. His brutal regime might have toppled from within. At the very least, his power would have been severely compromised. But—impatient again—we rushed to war, without sufficient preparation and sufficient allies. Today we face a very difficult situation in Iraq. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is riddled with Islamic radicals. This week elements of the Iraqi army were attacked and defeated in Diwaniyah by a sectarian militia led by the radical Shi'ite Muqtada al-Sadr. This is the same al-Sadr who attacked U.S. forces in 2004, the same al-Sadr who controls 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament—and who is the linchpin of al-Maliki's governing coalition. I say this to Prime Minister al-Maliki: The U.S. cannot support a government that includes Muqtada al-Sadr. You must build a new coalition, one that includes the secular political parties and Sunnis and guarantees the Sunni minority the rights and the share of Iraqi oil revenues it deserves. We have not sacrificed 2,600 Americans to create a radical Shi'ite government in Iraq.
One of the many books I've read this summer was Fiasco, by Tom Ricks of the Washington Post. It is a careful summation of the military mistakes we've made in Iraq. It ends with a series of scenarios for what might happen if we withdraw now. All have terrible implications for the region and the world. So we must stay in Iraq, but we must stay smarter. To that end, I announce the following initiatives. I call on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to meet with me one on one to discuss the stabilization of Iraq. In time I hope we can also discuss other issues, like his government's nuclear program and support for Hizballah, and the resumption of normal diplomatic relations between our countries. But, President Ahmadinejad, as a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, you must appreciate the disastrous potential of the chaos on your western border. Surely you don't want to risk the possibility of a regional Sunni reaction that would bring fire to your oil fields and death, once again, to the streets of Tehran.
Here at home, I call on Democrats to join with me in building an alternative energy strategy to limit our dependence on foreign oil. Everything is on the table, including a tax on carbon-based fuels. Finally, to achieve stability in Baghdad during the creation of the new governing coalition, I am temporarily sending two divisions—30,000 more troops—to pacify that troubled city. If a stable, moderate, inclusive Iraqi government is not created, we may be forced to reassess our military posture in the region. These initiatives may not succeed. But the time for fancy words and grand theories about changing the world has passed. We need to take action now.
Peaceful Tomorrows
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
God and Our Brother
We are trying to make the point, by our lives, by our work, that personal responsibility comes first. We are born alone, we die alone, we must each of us do what we can for God and our brother--not God and country, but God and our brother, as Christ put it.
--Dorothy Day
--Dorothy Day
Friday, September 01, 2006
Nothing in You
Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.
--Thomas Merton
--Thomas Merton
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
