The Wings of the Dragon

Left and right are the wings of the dragon

that flail as it falls from highest heaven

Hating the Samaritan

One of my congregants brought my attention to a statement yesterday by Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and CEO of Samaritan's Purse.  

Samaritan's Purse, if you don't know it, is an evangelical relief organization, one that does tremendous work to bring lifegiving support to places of crisis in the world.  They're competently run and remarkably bold in stepping into areas of crisis to provide food, medicine, and emergency support.  I have friends who have witnessed first hand the good work they're doing, particularly in Sudan and Haiti.

Workers for relief agencies work side-by-side in desperate conditions, even as they may come from different national and ideological backgrounds.  Those workers face violence, desperation, and privation, all to ensure the hungry are fed, the thirsty have water, and those wrenched from their homes by war or natural disaster are cared for.  

It's heroic work, and every effort counts.

Which makes Graham's statement about USAID utterly incomprehensible.  USAID was founded during the Cold War to use American soft power to push back against Soviet propaganda.  Like the Marshall Plan, the goal was to win the hearts and minds of the world by showing that we as a nation were noble, honorable, and generous.  It provides relief in precisely the areas where Samaritan's Purse operates.  And yet Franklin Graham said the following about it yesterday:

"USAID, under the control of the Democratic left, has been pushing LGBTQ, transgender, and other godless agendas to the world in the name of the United States of America. We the taxpayers have been paying for this to the tune of billions of dollars. Thank you Elon Musk for exposing this—and now President Donald J. Trump is bringing it to an end. I encourage the State Department to continue providing life-saving aid like food and medicine."

Is this true?

The first sentence has some truth to it, as do most well spun falsehoods.  A tiny fraction of the USAID budget has been used to support organizations that assert that Queer folks are human beings with rights.    But the second sentence does not follow from the first, and what it implies is false.  Yes, the USAID budget is in the billions, but those billions are spent on economic development, humanitarian assistance, and health initiatives.

Because faith-based initiatives are a major part of American identity, much of that money goes to support the efforts of Christian relief efforts.  The largest single recipient of USAID funding, at over $4 billion dollars, is Catholic Relief Services.  World Vision and Lutheran World Relief and the Presbyterian Church in East Africa have also been significant USAID partners, with total annual giving to Christian organizations in the billions of dollars.  USAID also buys billions of dollars of food for emergency relief from American farmers. 

Franklin Graham knows this.  He knows this because his own organization received $90,000,000 from USAID over the last four years.  Ninety million dollars.  Samaritan's Purse alone receives ten times as much USAID funding as all of the grants supporting Queer folk combined.  Watch this far right propaganda video listing every "offensive" grant they could find, and add up the amounts.  It's not even close.

Again, this is not meant to in any way denigrate Samaritan's Purse, which does excellent work.  They're worthy of support.  But Franklin Graham should know better.  I think, on some level, he does know better.  But when you've bent the knee to Powers and Principalities, and made your witness subordinate to a decadent worldly authority, you must parrot the lies that they tell.  And that dissonance makes you angrier and angrier, as you shout down the voice of grace in your own heart.

Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that Graham seems to have completely forgotten the point of an obscure story Jesus told.  Maybe you've heard of it?  The one about the Samaritan?  

That parable was about how we approach those who we consider our enemies, yet through the fruits of their actions show themselves to be our neighbors.  Samaritans were hated by Judeans, considered unfaithful and idolatrous and traitors to the faith.  Yet it was the good work of a Samaritan that Jesus honored, as a way of telling us who we are to love as much as we love ourselves. 

It's straight up, right there, front and center.  But Lord have mercy, we mortals are so good at missing the point.

Descending into Crazytown

 

As a boy, I found the Second World War endlessly fascinating.  I'd devour books on the subject, and found WWII aircraft endlessly fascinating.  

I mean, I still have a favorite aircraft, all these years later.  It's the P-38 Lightning, naturally, it being the fighter of choice of Richard Bong, the most successful ace of the war.  Twin engines meant greater survivability, it packed a heavy punch, and while it wasn't nimble, it could outclimb almost all of its adversaries.  Why do I still know all of this?  It's just in there.  All this stuff still bops around in my brain.

I remember, too, talking with my maternal grandfather about the war.  Grandfather was a mathematician, and in that capacity worked on the home front as part of the science-side of the war effort.  But his cousin died aboard the Arizona when it was sunk by Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor.  One summer, when visiting them down in Georgia, I asked him about the Germans.

I found Nazi Germany confusing when I was a boy, because while it had some really cool aircraft, it was also obviously and purely evil.  Every defining feature of evil was present: lies, brutality, horror, the desire to dominate, blame, bitterness, and a valorization of violence.  And yet Germans, insofar as I was aware of them in the late 1970s, weren't monsters.  They weren't inherently stupid people, and were often quite the opposite.  They made rock-solid cars.  They were our friends again.

My question, to my Grandfather: what happened?  How could a people who were really no different from us do such obviously horrific things?

His response came after some reflection.  "I think, honestly, that they all went crazy.  Really actually crazy."

Grandfather introduced me, then, to the idea of mass psychosis.  An entire group of human beings can become consumed by the same collective delusion.

Which, clearly, is where we are now.

We are in a place where vaccines are considered a Big Pharma Conspiracy.  Where crazy blatant racist lies against migrants legally in this country are spouted at the highest levels. Where an entire party is organized around a Big Lie.  "Truth" is no longer grounded in objective reality.  

And Lord, does that go deep.

There are rumblings about fluoride in water.  Talk of secret cabals controlling the weather is now acceptable political discourse.  The idea that we are being subjugated by chemtrails is taken as a topic of serious conversation.

I mean, fluoride?  WEATHER CONTROL?  CHEMTRAILS? 

These are markers of the vintage 20th century paranoid delusional, definitively, stereotypically so, the sort of thing you expect to hear That Guy talking about.  You know That Guy, the grizzled one six houses down, whose high-fenced yard is cluttered with old rusted hulks, who has ten bolts on his door and cameras everywhere, and who either looks at you furtively from behind his blinds or buttonholes you for a nice long wild-eyed harangue.

If this is what we're talking about as a people, seriously talking about, there's no question that a substantial portion of the population has kind of lost it.

And in this Republic, they're all voters.

Guess I should fasten my seatbelt, and put my chair and tray table in their locked and upright positions.

Not Praying for Power

As a Christian, there is, in this political season, a deep and abiding temptation.  I feel it, as others feel it.

It is the danger of conflating the divine intent with my own, and to turn to God to give me power.

I have, without question, certain sociopolitical predilections.  They fall, generally, somewhere in the peculiar Venn diagram of anarcholibertarianism, liberalism, and social democracy.  This means I'm politically a bit on the odd side, but, eh, I'm the sort of weird that isn't afraid to be weird.

This has, generally speaking, meant that my voting falls on the Democratic side of the rigidly binary US political spectrum.

That hasn't lessened, as the political heat has intensified and American conservatism has gone on a drunken bender in Trumpsville.  When you're a faithful person with a great deal on the line, the Tempter whispers in one's ear: pray for power.  Power over them.  Pray for the reins of the Wagon of State.  Pray for the sword.  Ask for dominion.  Manifest the success of your party, and the grovelling, complete demise of your adversaries.  You pray for Gott Mit Uns, as the Germans used to pray it.

That's certainly been the case on the American far right, where the operating assumption is that Trump is God's Perfect Righteous Anointed, chosen for such a time as this, and prayers for God to give power to the One have become the norm.

Beyond the self-evident absurdity of that core premise, that's a terrible way for Christians to pray.  It is, bluntly, an AntiChristian form of prayer.

Over the last six months, and with the help of some fine editors, I've put the finishing touches on an upcoming book about the point and purpose of the Lord's Prayer, which is the beating heart and solid rock of my prayer life.  At the center of that simple prayer is a turning away from all but the most necessary things of this life, and a refutation of the human ego and its grasping for power.  In the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, the only thing we ask to be given is our "daily bread."  Nothing else.  Everything else is about emptying ourselves to make room for God's spirit, and about turning our hearts away from evil and the seductions of the worldly realm: moral decadence, political power, material wealth, social status, all of it.

It's a tough prayer to offer up in a fiercely partisan time, but a necessary one.

It checks the ego against the lie that rises from willfully misrepresenting one's opponent, the Luciferian bargain that Alinsky would have radicals of every persuasion make.  It challenges the partisan unwillingness to show grace and mercy to those who are on an opposing path.  It reminds the one praying it, if they're paying attention, that blind fealty to a party or a leader is a form of idolatry.

As is praying for power, even and especially if you're sure you're right.  Sure, we want power.  But that desire is a broken thing.

And our broken wanting breaks the world.

On the Partisan Mind

Late last week, I woke early and puttered into southeast DC on my scooter.  I was headed to a formerly industrial area near the DC Navy Yard, where I planned to spend a day amongst members of a different Jesus tribe.

My own tribe is rather particular.  I'm a cradle Presbyterian, the child of a storied old church in downtown Washington.  It's the church of Lincoln, of Eisenhower.  The pastor who baptized me, and who was a regular guest at my house?  He preached the sermon that helped put the words "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Let me note, because history warps weird: that same pastor also marched with Dr. King in Selma, and fiercely opposed our misbegotten war in Vietnam.  

I've been part of the PC(USA) since before the PC(USA) was the PC(USA), and after years of conservative flight, we're now a very uniformly progressive gathering. 

The purpose of my day last week was to attend something called The After Party.  There, I intended to listen to the voices of evangelicals lamenting the toxic direction of American political discourse, and challenging how the partisan mind has seeped into the faith.  Two of the three primary speakers...Russell Moore and David French...have been vigorously outspoken about the poisonous impact of Trumpism on the Christian witness, and their presence was a significant draw.

It was, I will say, a very different experience than attending Presbyterian gatherings.  The event was held in the worship space of an evangelical congregation, which was...as such spaces tend to be...a sleek conversion of a former industrial warehouse.  The seating, theater-style.  The tech, stunningly sophisticated, with a board exceeding the width of my congregation's sanctuary, gimballed cameras, and a primary ultra HD screen that spanned the entire front wall.  To my oldline sensibilities, such spaces parse as functional rather than sacred, but one has to appreciate the depth of the functionality.  

So it didn't look like most progressive Christian events.  Meaning, pastel fabrics wantonly festooned everywhere, like someone set off a grenade in a Michaels.

The attendees were a diverse mix of races and genders, as evangelicals tend to be.  There were also plenty of folks in their twenties and thirties, which was...different.  The oldline, progressive as it has become, remains remarkably and increasingly old.

It was a vigorous, intellectually bracing, remarkably grace-filled day of engagement.

I'm not sure, from my conversations and observations, if there was another mainline liberal in attendance.  

This got me to thinking about the partisan mind and progressivism.  

In this gathering, at least as my frank and remarkably civil conversations at table about queer folk and inclusion were concerned, I felt very liberal.  In mainline gatherings, I almost invariably feel like a conservative.  Decades of reimagining and reframing and deconstructing have created discourse that...to my soul...often wanders from the heart of the narrative.  Justice is a worthy fruit of the Gospel, but when it supplants grace as our purpose, we are no longer telling the same tale.

There is a point, without question, when the partisan mind...the mind that divides, that is motivated by hatred and resentment, that embraces the useful falsehood...infects any movement.  This is true of left and right.  If we understand that Christian faith is not and cannot be a creature of the saeculum, that disciples of Jesus are committed to the Gospel first and foremost, then there are places where we set bounds against our partisanship for that highest principle.

Unlike the bat from Aesop's fable, which claimed allegiance to whatever party held power, the Christian witness is to affirm commonality wherever it can be found, but also to retain integrity of witness to our own tribe when partisan conviction subverts the call to grace and redemption.

Bad Family Businesses

Having a family business can be a good thing.

Like, say, the humble hole-in-the-wall strip mall Chinese restaurant my own family has been ordering from for nearly two decades.  The food is classic American Takeout Chinese, cheap and abundant and generically tasty.  We've been their regular customers as management has passed among and between members of an extended Chinese family over those years.  We've watched extended family arrive from China, folded into community through the business.  We've watched the children of the family grow up, first diligently doing homework in the restaurant while their parents worked, and then helping with the business while juggling school and life.

Family farms and restaurants and businesses of almost all ilks can be a cross-generational blessing.  The bonds of blood and trust that unite extended families can add to the sense of purpose that rises from a shared labor.

But there are some lines of work that lend themselves poorly to that connection, where the expectations that rule family life and expectation clash with the reality of the vocation.

Pastoring, for pointed example.

Just because your Daddy was a preacher doesn't mean that you are, kid.  Call is a fiercely particular thing, and while it can run in your blood, it operates on a different plane from the logics of lineage.  When it becomes the family business, faith often goes awry, becoming less about being a servant of the divine encounter and more about social position and remuneration.

Because that works socially...human beings get attached to a name, to the story of a brand...it too easily loses authenticity, as the self-serving necessities of nepotism take precedence over all other considerations.  In churches, it creates a willingness to raise up too many of Eli's sons, too many of Samuel's sons, those who see the power that comes from that position, and who are eager to milk unearned social authority for their own benefit.

Church becomes a place of falseness, of self-serving plunder and profit.  But there's a place where social power plays even more freely.

Politics, if one believes in republican virtues, is another place where familial expectations are poorly applied.  I've always looked a wee bit askance at the various political dynasties that have arisen over the course of the short history of our republic, because dynastic thinking is antithetical to constitutional principles.

It's difficult to avoid, because political systems are systems of relationship and social influence.  Those connections inhere within family networks, in ways that must be warily watched. 

The more deeply a single family weaves its name and its brand into the political life of a constitutional democracy, the more danger there is that we will slide back into a functional monarchism.  I mean, sure, it was romantic and young back in the day, but Camelot wasn't the capital of a republic, eh?  

When we see leaders promoting family members to positions of power, approaching both party and nation as if they were the family business?  It's a red flag for a republic, a warning light on the dashboard of democracy, an alarm ringing in the ears, no matter what the party.

Falun Dafa, Swastikas, and Fascism

Falun Gong...or Falun Dafa...is such an odd thing.  In the United States, they're perhaps best known for the inescapable Shen Yun show, a relentlessly hypermarketed spectacle of music and dance that retells Chinese history from their religious perspective.

Over the past several years, I've seen the adherents of that religious movement making their presence known at large, open social events.  They march in local parades, their floats festooned with signs proclaiming peace and love.   They're consistently present in the annual parade in the little town where my church resides.  They're there in my hometown Annandale Parade, as they were this last fall.

It was at that hometown parade that I accepted a flyer pressed into my hand, neatly produced and earnest.  Peace and Love, proclaimed the cover.  I opened it up, and there they were.  The symbols of their movement:

Swastikas.  Oof.

I'm not ignorant of the history of that symbol.  As an image, the swastika had a long history before it was co-opted by Hitler's National Socialist movement.  For millennia, it had none of the connotations of brutal, genocidal nationalism that now hang around it like a cloud in the West.  When someone from Asia or Southeast Asia uses it, I think rather differently about it than I might were I to see it flying alongside a Let's Go Brandon flag in rural America.

Still and all, there's a clumsiness to putting that front and center, an awkward failure to acknowledge the context you inhabit, like walking into a mosque with your shoes on and wearing a t-shirt that asserts that everything goes better with bacon.  "Hey, it's just my culture, get over it" doesn't quite cut the mustard.

And there's another, peculiar level to this story.

Falun Gong has been systematically and often brutally oppressed in their native China, with adherents subject to imprisonment, "re-education," and exile.  Because of this, they are vehemently opposed to the Communist party in China.  Like Sun Myung Moon's "Moonie" Reunification Church back in the 1960s and 1970s, their vociferous anticommunism overcompensates into something peculiar.

In addition the the ubiquity of Shen Yun, Falun Dafa is also responsible for the media content produced by The Epoch Times, which they own.  

That outlet, if you're not aware of it, is a "fair and balanced" news organization that aggressively promoted claims of election fraud in 2020, that sees communist influence everywhere, and that routinely casts doubt on the efficacy and safety of vaccines.  They're purveyors of "hard-hitting documentaries" produced by entirely "neutral and reflective" folks like Dinesh D'Souza, and proudly highlight the endorsements of thoughtful moderates like Sebastian Gorka, Pete Navarro, and Paul Gosar.

For entirely comprehensible reasons, they're pro-Trump, because Trump is performatively anti-China.  This position mirrors that of the Moon's Reunification Church, which purchased the Washington Times back in the day to both promote themselves and align with far right wing causes.

Which brings us back, in the deepest of ironies, to their use of swastikas.

Saying "the swastika is just our cultural sign of peace and love" feels a little off when your media outlet is championing the messages of the far right, and amplifying authoritarian voices that would overturn the constitutional foundations of this republic.

Seven Ways You Can Be Like Hitler

The political season has begun, and that means for the next year, Godwin's Law will come out to play.

Godwin's Law, in the event you've not heard of it, is the debating principle that states that in every argument, eventually someone will accuse their enemies of being a Nazi.  "You're just like Hitler," they'll say.  "Gay rights advocates are Nazis! Conservative Christians are Nazis!  Cops are all Nazis! Hitler banned guns!  Being concerned about gun violence makes you a Nazi!  Hitler Hitler Hitler!  Nazi Nazi Nazi!"

But as much as his name is the go-to insult for any opponent, and being a Nazi is just shorthand for "an opponent I despise," Hitler's National Socialism was a very, very specific thing.  It involved discrete patterns of thought.  It was a cohesive ideology and way of understanding the world.  To understand it, you must know it.  You must engage with it.

Ad fons, or so the saying of my Reformed faith goes.  "To the foundations," that means.  To understand a thing, go to its source.

And so, with that as my purpose, I girded up my loins, invoked a sequence of protective prayers around my soul, and waded into a book I'd never read.  It was the bible of National Socialism, the heart of that darkness: Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf.

For some reason, I'd visualized a pithy little pamphlet filled with terrible aphorisms.  Perhaps it was memories of reading Chairman Mao's Little Red Book echoing in my head.

Oh Lord, was I wrong.

Sweet Mary and Joseph, but that book was long.  It was huge, and remarkably, amazingly drab.  Much of it is dull, interminable political inside baseball, as Hitler rambles on about the Hapsburg dynasty and minutiae of contemporary German/Austrian Parliamentary processes and personalities.  In between some remarkably tedious droning, there was the clear seedbed of horror, a fevered, passionate hatred, and the clear conceptual foundations for both war and the systematic extermination of millions of human beings.  Mein Kampf is a monstrous book, an evil thing.

Now that I've read it, and taken the spiritual equivalent of a long hot shower, I have a better sense of both the methodology and approach of National Socialism.  Here, seven takeaways, a listicle of evil, what it really means to be like Hitler:

1) It's All About the Outrage.  At the beating heart of Mein Kampf is umbrage, the absolute certainty that Other People are Responsible for Our Suffering.  "Mein Kampf" means "my struggle," and that's what Hitler means for his reader to feel. He...and you, the reader...are in a desperate struggle against a nefarious Other, who is seeking to destroy all that you hold dear.

That Other, in the five hundred and twelve times he names it, are the Jews.  But as Hitler himself admits, it does not have to be.  It just has to be an enemy, against which a movement or a nation can be organized.  As Hitler puts it:

"The art of leadership, as displayed by really great popular leaders in all ages, consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention into sections. The more the militant energies of the people are directed towards one objective the more will new recruits join the movement, attracted by the magnetism of its unified action, and thus the striking power will be all the more enhanced."

I've read this before, seen this principle used as a baseline for organizing a mass movement.  It's articulated repeatedly in Saul Alinsky's The Rules for Radicals, for pointed example.

To get a people moving, there is nothing more effective than an enemy to demonize and hate.

2) Politicians are All Corrupt.   Hitler spends a great deal of time attacking politicians.  They are all pocket-lining, incompetent fools, he asserts.  All they know how to do is speechify, and none of them do their jobs.  They need to be replaced, all of them.

His attacks on politics as usual, through a simple redirection of force, becomes an attack on the idea of representative democracy itself.  Our representatives are just suck-ups and weaklings, and that's the only reason they are in power.

"Surely nobody believes that these chosen representatives of the nation are the choice spirits or first-class intellects," he snarks.

Throw the bums out.   Having accepted that premise, it's an easy move to Hitler's answer:  they need to be replaced by men of Will and Honor, people who can really get done what needs to get done.

By which he means himself, and the Nazi Party.

Hitler was clearly tapping a deep wellspring of popular cynicism about governmental incompetence, and particularly the incompetence of representative government.  Sure is a good thing that there's none of that in America these days.

3) The Press is The Enemy.   Hitler hated the press.  As far as he was concerned, the media were primarily responsible for the collapse of German pride, sappers of the will of the people.  Again, he taps a deep and abiding cynicism, this time about the media.  For example:

"It took the Press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance, while vital problems were completely ignored or filched and hidden away from public attention."

Why does the press do this?  Well, it's the "Jewish Press," as far as Hitler is concerned.  Because Jews engage in objective thinking, which saps the vital essence of a people.  That's the idea, at least.

From that foundation of racial hate and cynicism, Hitler makes the move to asserting...at great length...what the press should be doing.

Hitler argues that the goal and purpose of all media needs to be instilling patriotism and national pride.  It must intentionally create propaganda--he's unafraid of that term--that stirs the emotions of the lowest common denominator.  It does not matter if this propaganda is "true."  It only matters that the people believe it, and that it serves the purpose of patriotic endeavor.

 As Hitler puts it, good propaganda is exactly like advertising or marketing.  The goal is not to tell the objective truth.  It's to sell your product.  Or to proclaim your ideology.

The best propaganda, in other words, speaks to the folks in your society who primarily use their lizard brains, whose higher functions are ruled by their passions and emotions.

4)  The Military Is the Heart of Culture.  Hitler's National Socialism was fascist, and central to fascism is complete reverence for all things military.  That's what the fasces--the bundle of sticks with an axe-blade that is the symbol of fascism--represents.  Hitler talks, at great length, about the refining fire of martial endeavor, about the nobility of the military and the abuses suffered by veterans.  The military is, as far as he is concerned, the very best part of national identity.

Why?  Because in the crucible of conflict, where your life is on the line, men become stronger.  Or they die. And because this is done in the service of the nation, soldiers are the truest, most tested patriots.

As he presents it, the German army only lost because it was betrayed by the press and subverted by the Jews.  It made no errors.  It was about to win, until victory was snatched from it by the Other.

He has nothing but contempt for talk of peace.  Peace makes a people weak.  Those who call for compromise and finding nonviolent solutions with the Enemy are just parasites or subversives.

5)  Passion is Primary, Critical Thinking is to be Avoided.  The goal of National Socialism is passion, which is peculiar, given the tone and language of Mein Kampf.  It's a cold book, bright-eyed and distant, written in a tone that most closely resembles the distant, unforgiving prose of Ayn Rand.  It is, itself, a little distant.

For those few in control of the system, being dispassionate is key.  The scientists and the elites must be cool, rational thinkers.

Yet for the rest of the people, what Hitler prescribes is passion and emotion.  Outrage, yes, but also all other emotions.  Fierce love.  Tears.  Laughter.  Joy.  The reason for this: motivating the masses.  To stir the heart of a folk is to call them to the Great and Noble End which you are pursuing.  Make them feel the feels.  Stir their heart, because it is from emotion--anger and pride in particular--that the strength of a people is found.

What's remarkable is how up front he is about his methods.  Right there in his book, the idea that leaders must manipulate the emotions of their followers, that they should mask objective truth.

6) Liberal Intellectuals are the Enemy.  Why?  As Hitler describes it, this is because they undermine the spirit of patriotism that shapes a nation's pride and purpose.  Liberal intellectuals tend to be internationalists, who see value in other cultures and other races, and this distracts from building up national identity.  They also insist on critiquing the behaviors of a nation, which drains morale and the vigor of the folk.

Worse yet, liberals insist on looking for common ground with the Enemy, or finding reasons that the Enemy isn't really as bad as all that.

For example, Hitler has pages of venom directed at those German Christian liberals who argued that Jews were just another faith, and that they could be truly German.

He also notes with rage that liberals had taken charge of the educational system, and that they were using education to corrupt the spirit of German youth.  The purpose of education, Hitler suggests, is not to create objective, critical thinkers.  It is to teach the greatness of a people, to inculcate pride and patriotism, and to cement their commitment to the national purpose.

7) The Goal Is Purity.  What mattered to National Socialism was racial and ideological perfection.  That was its goal and purpose.  All compromise, accommodation, and weakness were to be cut away.

For Hitler's National Socialism, that meant racial purity.  The Aryan and Germanic ideal was only diluted by efforts to blend in or mix with other cultures and races.  Efforts to create states that included multiple cultures were inherently doomed, because they were inherently corrupted.

From that also rises a focus on ideological purity.  That means that any variance from the party line, any whiff of compromise, any move away from the One Purpose?  It is to be viewed as suspect.

National Socialism, as Hitler lays it out in Mein Kampf, represents a radically binary, absolutist worldview.  There is Us, and We are Good.  And then there is Not-Us, which is inferior or the enemy.

And there, from the darkest heart of twentieth century evil, are seven key features of Hitler's thinking, of what it really means to be a Nazi.

It's important to have a grasp on these principles.  Why?  Because while Godwin was right about our compulsive overuse of the Nazi/Hitler card, that doesn't mean that there aren't movements and leaders that actually resemble National Socialism.

And just because we falsely cry wolf, over and over again, that doesn't mean that wolves don't still roam hungry in the darkness of our culture, looking for an opportunity to rule.

Charlie Hebdo Baptist Church

As it drifts out of our low-attention-span popular consciousness, I can finally say: I had a heck of a time processing the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  I really did.  It was monstrous, horrific, and an absolutely unjustifiable act.  Violence cannot be allowed to silence speech, the protection of which is a vital part of both individual and religious liberty.

But having seen the cartoons, and read some of the translated pieces of that magazine, I can honestly say that I didn't find them funny or insightful.  Just sort of crude, by every definition of that word.  It didn't have the bite or elegance of, say, The Onion, which is so often cultural satire at its very best.   Or the Daily Show.  Or Colbert's recently lamented report.  Most of the time, Charlie Hebdo seems to lack...subtlety.

Americans? More subtle than the French?  Quoi?!  C'est absurde!  Mais...c'est vrai.

That, and something else, something harder.  Charlie Hebdo is often more than a little mean, focused on attacking a struggling immigrant minority, mocking and lambasting them for their poverty and ignorance.  French Muslims have no power, and minimal representation, and control no significant part of the French economy. There's just no reason to attack those who are weaker than yourself, unless you're trying to score points by stoking popular ressentiment.

I could not say, #jesuischarlie, back when we were all supposed to be saying that, because I wasn't, any more than #jesuisanncoulter.  I just would never express myself in that way.  With the murdered being buried, that seemed awkward to bring up.

But how to come to terms with someone who uses their freedom in a way you would not?  On the one hand, you want to defend their liberty.  On the other, you cringe when they do.  How can I frame this?

Here, once again, the good folks at Westboro Baptist Church came to my rescue.  Westboro, as I have argued before, is America's most successful deep-cover troupe of Queer Christian Performance Artists.  Their deeply biting satirical portrayal of a venomous theo-cultural bias has done more to advance the cause of gays and lesbians in America than any other organization.  By holding a mirror up to what some Christians purport to believe, they show the moral untenability of that position. They have helped move America towards a more welcoming stance.

More importantly, they show the boundaries of free speech.  What Westboro is saying is utterly reprehensible, bullying towards a minority and the vulnerable, and crudely cast, and yet they absolutely have the right to say it.  It would be an unacceptable affront to human liberty if they were legally coerced into stopping their bizarre demonstrations.  It would be tragic...yes, tragic...if they were physically harmed.

And there, I was given a conceptual handle to help me come to terms with secular Charlie Hebdo, which, though often willfully offensive, comes nowhere near the wildly horrible displays of the religious Westboro troupe.

If I can defend the rights of Westboro Baptist, it is far easier to see where Charlie fits into the scheme of human discourse.

Tortured Conservatism

I am a liberal.  When I encounter a reality, I only come to a determination of its worth after considering it for a while.  Which means, paradoxically enough, that I do not reflexively reject all things conservative.

For example, few things, in my experience, are more anathema to conservatives than the absence of a moral core.

If you claim to hold to a set of values, but seem willing to compromise on your values whenever it seems politically expedient or personally convenient, then--by the metric of conservatism--you are an immoral person.  

Untrustworthy.  Vacillating.  Weak of spirit.  Ignoble.  Unworthy of respect.

If, on that big test, you realize that you have an opportunity to pass it by cheating and you take that opportunity, you have failed morally.  If you beat out competitors and get a business contract by fudging numbers, that victory means nothing.  You are personally compromised.  If, in a committed relationship, you choose to engage in a secret tryst with someone else--and aren't caught--your getting away with it means nothing.  You have still fundamentally violated your commitment.

What matters is not your desire, or your success.  What matters is your integrity, your commitment, your honor.  If you fail to fulfill that duty to your values, you have failed as a conservative.

Our nation's willingness to torture represents just such a failure.  

It is a failure because it violates our honor as a nation.  What makes America great, and a country worthy of respect, is that it stands on principles of liberty that transcend even our own identity as a nation.  The freedoms we so vigorously defend aren't just ours.  They are self-evident truths for all people, written into the nature of existence by our Creator.  We value human beings, and the integrity of individual liberty.  It is what makes us different from our enemies.

When we allow ourselves to act in ways that are monstrous and ignoble for the purposes of expediency, we fail.  When we view any means to an end as acceptable, we have ceased to be moral persons, and a moral nation.

"It's not torture.  It's enhanced interrogation techniques," say the lawyers and the politicians and the apparatchiks, spinning and obfuscating and equivocating.  Language, however, is less important than reality.  The Chinese call their vast network of slave-labor prisons laogai, or "Reform through Labor" camps.  The Soviet gulags were called "corrective labor camps."  The language does not matter.  It is the action that matters.  "Enhanced interrogation techniques" include drowning, beatings, exposure to extreme cold, forced standing, "stress positions," and mock executions.  Those techniques are torture, as we would rightly call them if inflicted on an American soldier in the hands of an enemy.

"To say this disrespects our war fighters and intelligence community," cry some.  This is falsehood, a perversion of patriotism, wrapping excrement in the flag.  What matters, if you care about the values espoused by our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence, is that you live them out.  That we have soldiers and spies is meaningless.  So does North Korea.  So does Iran.  What matters are the values and principles they are defending.  It is what makes us different.  We treat human beings differently from our enemies, or we are no different.

"It gets results," cry others.  This has truth in it, the sort of truth that makes for the most pernicious lies.  Human creatures, subjected to intense pain, will do whatever it takes to end that pain.  When ISIS beats, abuses, and tortures a captive into "converting" to their perverse and monstrous faith, is that a "result?"  Or is that a lie, told to end the suffering?

"It kept us safe," say still others, stirring our fears, appealing to our craven self-interest.  Bad things would have happened, we are told, ominously.  Bad things did happen.  We stepped away from what makes us a nation worth living in, and worth fighting for.  We dishonored ourselves.  Our founding fathers held such moral cowardice in contempt.

Conservatism, in its most gracious form, is a worthy thing. It is about integrity, about having clear morals and ethics, which you pursue even if you yourself do not benefit from them.

What the warped ethic of the right-wing would have us believe is that America can never be dishonored, no matter what she does.  Such a belief not only betrays the dignity of our republic, but also the essence of what it means to be both honorable and conservative.

Subpoenas and Sermons

The netrage is out there, about everything, about anything, and one rage-meme that's been popping a whole bunch in my feeds lately has to do with the subpoenas issued to five Texas area pastors for copies of their sermons.

The reason has to do with a fight over a Houston ordinance protecting the rights of transgendered persons.  A coalition of conservative megachurch pastors actively opposed it, using the same odd tactic that's been attempted in my region.  They also used their large congregations as their political base in their attempt to overturn the law.  After a petition attempt to put the issue on the next ballot as a referendum failed, the coalition filed a lawsuit to stop the ordinance.

So the lawyers for the city, acting in defense of the municipality against the lawsuit filed by the churches, chose to subpoena the sermons of five representative communities.

This has created the netrage, as the pastors now stand firmly on the principle of the separation of church and state.  It has nothing to do with the LGBT community!  This is about the Constitution!  This is about religious liberty!

Of course, this is also coming from pastors who are using their pulpits and their congregations how?   To engage in political endeavor.  Complaining about the separation of church and state when you've actively used your congregation to mobilize politically is...well...mildly ironic.

Two particular things seem problematic about this carefully cultivated outrage.

Thing number one: why would you ever need to subpoena a sermon?  If a congregation and/or their pastor is doing their job, a sermon is not a secret.  This isn't a closed business meeting.  It's something you share, not just with the true believing Pureblood Christians, but with anyone and everyone.  It's not "inside the silo" speech.  It's a message to the whole world.  Anyone can hear it.  You should never, ever, need a subpoena to shake loose a sermon, any more than you'd need to subpoena the front page of the Washington Post or the Houston Chronicle.

Sermons are public speech, and speech you should be willing to have out there in the world in front of everyone.

I post the full text of every single sermon I preach online.  Thanks to the good work of folks at my church, the audio is also available...on iTunes, streamable, and downloadable.  Every single one of those sermons is there, my weekly efforts to interpret these ancient sacred texts with as much accuracy and grace as I can. Why?

Because what I preach is intended to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's the whole point of preaching, isn't it?  Not to affirm what my congregation already believes as we whisper to each other in secret, but to challenge anyone who hears me to be more loving, more merciful, more compassionate, and more gracious.  If I'm doing my job right, it's a message of grace to anyone...the stranger, the visitor, anyone.

If one so chose, you could keyword search through my sermons, looking for anything and everything.  Go ahead.  I stand by those words.  They represent my best effort to articulate the grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the world.

So if anyone ever says to me, I demand a copy of your sermons?  Sure.  Here's the link.  Go to town, buckaroo.

Which gets me to thing number two:  It's an effort to shame us, the pastors argue, and to tar us as anti-LGBT bigots.  We're being bullied by those mean government folks, just because we've used our pulpits in an effort to overturn a law that prevents discrimination against a tiny minority of Americans.  We will never turn over our sermons, they cry.  They're just trying to shame us with our own words!  We'd rather go to jail than turn over our preaching to these shamey bullies!  Because...liberty!  Because...Constitution!

From a libertarian/anarchist perspective, I can sort of see that.  We don't like being told what to do, not by anyone, for any reason.  It's an affront to my sovereign individuality to force me to do anything.

But from a Gospel perspective, a servant-of-Jesus-Christ perspective, this is completely insane.  If those messages contain the Gospel, then they're nothing to be ashamed of.  I want you to hear them.  I want you to read them, whoever you are, wherever you are.

If what they are would appear hateful in the sight of a neutral, objective third party, then they're not the Gospel.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the church at Rome, laid that out pretty clearly.  What we do and say, if we are acting and speaking as Christians, must be noble in the sight of all.  Following Jesus is self-evidently loving, self-evidently merciful, self-evidently just.

As preaching should be, if it is really and truly the preaching of the Gospel.

Leaders, Favors, and Corruption

It feels tragic, because it is.

As the trial of Virginia governor Bob McDonnell came to its difficult conclusion, it'd be easy to gloat.    Here, a notoriously straight-laced and upright conservative, brought down in a major corruption scandal.  There was intrigue and inside-dealing, Ferraris and cash under the table, the sausage works of a marriage and some amazingly unwise decisions, and now jail time is in the cards.

I don't agree with most of McDonnell's politics.  As a Virginian, I didn't vote for him.  But he was not a terrible governor, not if I'm honest.  He was generally prudent, and for all the leftist hullabaloo about how he was basically a well-shaved Talib, he proved surprisingly fair and even-minded.

Seeing him brought down gives me no pleasure.  He was no skeeving, shamelessly corrupt Blago, not at all.  When the verdict was delivered, and his daughter sobbed, McDonnell wept because he was an honorable man who had brought shame on himself and his family.  It's heartbreaking.

Was he guilty?  Was his wife guilty?  Well, yes.  Yes they were.  But he and his wife had wandered into a trap, a trap that was not of their making.  What was that trap?

For that, I look to my own profession.  Pastors are leaders, after all.  Like the governor of my state, we're also marginally paid relative to our workload, outside of one or two unrepresentative outliers.  So it must be.

But as visible leaders with influence within our small communities, we're often the recipients of favors.  We get gifts, cards, and presents, often after we've worked someone through a difficult time in their life.

I've always struggled with those gifts, when they've come.  A Christmas present?  What?  But...I didn't get you anything.  I have learned, though, to accept those gifts--up to a point--as a part of my position.  They're just grace notes, heartfelt and well intended.

The danger comes when those gifts start having strings attached.  There's the invitation to the beach house, which of course assumes that you'll push for a pet project at the church.  There's the brand new car, which assumes that you're pretty much in that parishioner's pocket for the rest of your born days.

There, pastors have to be remarkably careful, and self-aware.  Is this influencing me?  Does this seem like a genuine token of thanks, or does it have a hook embedded in it?  The bigger the gift, the more likely there's a hook in there somewhere.

We're often responsible for raising funds, too, to both pay our salaries and keep the institution of the church from collapsing.

That can lead us to spend considerably more time and energy cultivating and connecting to the wealthy members of our community.  They become our focus, the people we go to with the intent of impressing upon them how simply wonderful they are, how very spiritual, and how very very much Jesus appreciates their generosity.  They are given more access, and then more influence, and then more access.

They become more important to us than the homeless stranger, or the members who scramble to get by.  This is when churches become woven up in the power dynamics of human wealth.  And when a member is given precedence because of their wealth, the church has failed.

What is true for the church is also true for our republic.

That's the trap that the McDonnells were snared in, because the truth of it is that they were simply doing a version of what every politician does in our money-hungry political culture.  They were returning favors to a money-bundler who'd crossed the blurry boundary between pouring cash into a person's campaign and pouring cash into the person the campaign supports.

Conservative defenders of the McDonnells have been quick--perhaps too quick--to note that this is just how the political system works, particularly now that the Supreme Court has opened the spigot for unlimited campaign donations.

This is a self-annihilating defense, though, because it surfaces the deepening reality of our political system.  It is a system that increasingly favors the powerful, favors the wealthy, and gives them greater voice and influence than others.  That is and has always been the measure of injustice and broken, self-dealing governance.

The further we go down that path, the more our regular political practice will be inherently corrupt, and unbefitting the best intent of our republic.

God help us.

America: Now With 50% Less Gay!

When I first saw the research findings a few weeks ago, I knew it would cause a stir.

The National Health Interview Survey is a CDC administrated survey of the population of the United States, one with an unusually large and representative sample.  This was science for the sake of understanding population dynamics, with no agenda.  It was solid, meticulously-designed empirical research, geared to answer an array of questions about our society.

Among the questions: do you self-identify as gay, lesbian, or with a non-traditional sexual identity?

The return on those particular data-points:  About one point six percent of the American population self-identify as gay, or lesbian.  About point seven percent are bisexual.  One point one said they were "other" or did not answer.  Ninety six point six percent were straight.

This is a robust finding, and that worries activists for those who differ from the norm sexually.  Why?  It's less than half of the percentage typically claimed or found in less rigorous studies, and vastly lower than popular perception.

The worry is bluntly political: if there are fewer gay people, that's a problem, because that means fewer votes.   Fewer votes reduces political influence, and reduced political influence will embolden reactionary forces in our culture.  "Look how few gays there are," right-wingers will shout.  "We should be able to oppress them with impunity!"

Or so the thinking goes.

There is a temptation here, no doubt, for advocates to attack the messenger, to pick through the research for flaws in methodology in an attempt to discredit it.  Or to look for ad hominem ways to attack the research team.  But that's dangerous ground, because when you start attacking science, it means you've ceased to be interested in reality.  The researchers involved are already viewing this critically, examining the study themselves without concern for political points.  Because, you know, that's what good science does.  But in the meantime, it's the best available finding.

How can there be so few?  Our culture spends a huge amount of energy on this issue, and...it's that little?

It seems to change the flavor of the issue, taking it from whole-milk to two percent.

It also doesn't *feel* right.  I know so many more LGBTQI folks than that, you say.  I know so many, I even know what all those letters mean.  But your observations are anecdotal, and particular to a subculture.  If you're a creative, and hung around with the drama crowd in high school, sure, you knew more gays and lesbians than that.  If you live in an urban, progressive area, sure, you know more than that. This makes sense.  If you're not actively toxic and hateful towards a certain group of people, you'll tend to know more of them.  They won't lie to you about who they are, or just avoid you altogether.  That's how that works, kids.

This finding reminds us that none of our immediate, local realities is quite as representative as we think.  That's why science is so very useful, eh?

I don't think this is much of a worry, though, for two primary reasons.

First, sure, the number is lower.  We're talking about a smaller minority.  Why does that justify oppressing that minority, or refusing basic human rights to that minority?  It does not morally strengthen the hand of the ultra-conservatives.  If anything, it weakens it.

Here, a small group.  Why are you so insistent on repressing them?  Why is every other sermon your pastor preaches focused on hammering on those sinful gays, if there's a tiny number of them?  Why do your organizations spend all this time going on about what a huge threat tolerating this tiny minority will be?  Perhaps that's a sign that something's gone seriously wrong with the priorities of the people shouting at you.

Second, the number still works, and it works tribally.   What do I mean by that?

Two percent means the odds are there's one in every fifty.

More significantly, there are three in every hundred and fifty.

One hundred and fifty is an important social number.  It's Dunbar's number, the rough number of individuals that make up organic human social networks.  The number of people you know personally, and are part of your sense of the world and your place in it?  That's around 150 total souls.

Even with the social sifting in our culture, everyone will know someone who was just...um...born that way.  Within every American's network of belonging, there will be one or two or three people--a friend, a co-worker, a cousin, a child--who self-identify as gay, lesbian, or some other orientation.  We know them.  They are our friends and our family, and we love them, and now that we know how much our culture has hurt them, we want that to change.

Because, as Horton said, a person's a person, no matter how small a demographic percentage they represent.

Or something to that effect.

The Unwelcoming Neighborhood

It was a long walk, but I like it that way.

I'd rather not have walked it, because it meant an indefinite separation from my ailing steed, sidelined after yet another fueling problem surfaced.  One issue with riding a bike hard and year round is that they age a little bit more rapidly, and my formerly trusty Suzuki is feeling its age.  But whatever the circumstance, the three point six miles did me good, and at a moderately brisk pace, it took a little under an hour.

When you walk, you see things you'd miss as you barrel by in your cage.  In a car, you're focusing on the road and/or the blabbering inputs of your infotainment suite.  On foot, your pace lets you note nuance.  It lets you observe, and linger over an interesting thing.  You can't linger in DC, idling over to the side of the road like it's Mayberry.  Stop or slow down around these parts, and you'll have some ute-driving schedule-maddened DC parent/lawyer and the entire soccer team they're transporting yelling at you to learn how to drive as they swerve wildly by your stopped car.

Walking lets you see things on a human scale, and process them on a human scale.

I was at about the three-quarter mark on my walk when I came across the signs.

There was a row of them, on every house on a whole block, one trim little home after another on the access road off of Columbia Pike.

Well, every house but one.

They were neatly printed up, the sort of lawn signs you get professionally done if you're a small business startup, or a politician running for office in a little town.  "Say No to Bethany House Shelter," they said, one after another.  There was an address--the one house without the sign, as it so happened, sitting isolated on the edge of the block.  And there was a date, just a couple of days away, when there'll be a public hearing about whatever it was.

Because I was walking, I stopped, and lingered and looked.  I took a picture or two.

Beyond the signs, the houses were all very similar, in the face that they presented to the world.  Well maintained and clean cars were in every driveway, and--unusually for this area--they were almost entirely of American manufacture.  The homes--humble, straightforward, and of late 50s construction--were all primly kept.  Gardens were tidy and neat and tastefully conservative.  Lawns were mowed and edged.  Flags were in evidence on many doorposts.  These are people who are are proud of their homes.

Here, on the one hand, a group of neighbors, exercising their solidarity with one another and engaging in civic discourse.

On the other, it stirred my curiosity about the thing they were rallying together to oppose.  The name whispered hints.  A homeless shelter, perhaps?  Or a group home for the mentally ill?

I continued on, and when I got home, I went online to see what it might be.  As it turned out, it was a shelter for women fleeing domestic violence and their children.  The shelter already exists, right there on the block in that house.  Those women and their children are already there.  But it is--according to the exhaustive plans and zoning approval schematics available online--conducting a modest expansion to open space for two to three more families.

Why there?  Why in that neighborhood?  Well, directly across the street lies the answer: the Mason District police station, with rows upon rows of police cars and dozens of officers just moments away.  If you care about protecting women and their children from violent abuse, that'd be just about the best place to do it.  Siting in this instance is a no-brainer.

But of course, that has an effect on property values.  And even though a small army of trained and armed law enforcement professionals is right there where you can see them, it's also the kind of thing that makes people anxious.  Mammon and anxiety go hand in hand, they do, and that's where this ultimately lies.

I do not doubt, when that hearing comes, that there'll be other reasons presented.  It will destroy the feel of the neighborhood, they'll say, though other little houses nearby have been massively expanded or completely replaced.  Or perhaps there'll be ad hominem arguments against management, subtle insinuations of profit-seeking or incompetence.  There often are, when people are up in arms about something.  And of course, what about the children!  The children!  Someone always has to say that, even when you're opposing something that's there to protect children.  It's everything and the kitchen sink, when you get to that place.

And I can understand that reaction, up to a point.  Homo sapiens sapiens is such a fiercely territorial primate.

But what I don't understand--can't, frankly--is being the sort of human person whose pride wouldn't include protecting women and children.

"In my neighborhood, there is a shelter where women and children can come and be safe.  We've got first responders across the street to help out.  And we pitch in, keeping our eye out to help those kids and women stay that way.  That's who we are here.  We're a place of refuge.  We're a place of safety."

So there, a row of signs that proudly say the opposite.  Those signs are visible, to every battered woman and every frightened child that comes to that house now, or that is sheltered in that house now.

"You are not welcome here."

I stopped, and I noted it, because that little community wanted me to notice it.  They mark the place, and the spirit of that part of the neighborhood.

When you put out a sign, you need to expect that people will read it, and listen to what it is you're saying about yourself.

Israel, the PCUSA, and "Divestment"

Divestment?  From Israel?

That's the rumbling issue that's raising eyebrows, as the PC(USA) holds our biannual Meeting di tutti Meetings.

For all the kerfuffle, I don't know that what the Presbyterian Church is considering can even be meaningfully described as "divestment."  Sure, there are folks out there advocating for that approach, but that's not what's being done.  At no point has any proposal been seriously considered that would sell my old-line denomination's collective holdings in all businesses that operate in Israel.  That's just not gonna happen.

The question, for Presbyterians, is whether or not we can treat businesses who operate in Israel in the same way we treat business which operate in the United States.  For example, the PC(USA) does not invest in American businesses that build or design weapons.  We also do not, as a matter of principle, invest in the very profitable businesses that own or manage privatized prisons.

We don't hold stock in Lockheed Martin.  We don't hold stock in the Corrections Corporation of America.

Do such businesses serve the security of the United States?  Sure, on some level, as icky as it is. Would we be wealthier if we'd laid all our money into them?  Just click those links, and see how profitable human brokenness can be.

But as a free association of individuals, we are fully entitled to place our capital into endeavors that more clearly articulate our shared values as a community.  Because those values are fundamentally countercultural in this society, profitability and maximization of shareholder return are not our only metrics.  Far, far from it.

While that impacts the sorts of businesses in which the church invests, having a socially responsible investing strategy could not be sanely understood as "divesting from America."  Neither would it be rationally defensible to describe choosing not to invest in such business as a "slippery slope" to "divesting from America."

Similarly, choosing not to invest in businesses--American ones, I might add--that serve the purposes of coercive power in the Israeli/Palestinian mess does not mean that we are "divesting from Israel."

If a business is owned and operated in Israel, that's all well and good.  It could make funky and practical little sandals, or cosmetics, or gaming software.  These are not weapons, or part of an oppressive power structure within a nation state.  Those companies, the PC(USA) can still invest in.  They are simply creating products from the economy of a democratic ally of the United States.  If an American business works in Israel?  Also not an issue, so long as it doesn't do the same things there that would lead us to not invest in here in the US.

There are some on the left who call for more expansive punitive sanctions against the whole nation of Israel, the complete withdrawal of resources from any business that works with that state.  As a denomination, the PC(USA) has never seriously considered being part of the "BDS" movement.

More significantly, broad calls for blanket divestment make no sense in this context.  If an entire system is fundamentally and unworkably corrupt and oppressive, sure.  It's why people who care about the good do not invest in Iran, or in North Korea.

But Israel, troubled and imperfect though it is, is not in the same category as such states.   There is a viable parliamentary democracy in Israel.  Speech there is free, and the press is not muzzled or beaten into silence.  There is active and unsuppressed debate, including the voices of Israelis who are deeply troubled by the way a right-wing led Israel is treating the Palestinian people.

It would not be in the interests of peace--or justice--for the Presbyterian church to disengage from Israel.  If we have anything to contribute to the cause of peace, it is in respectful and honest conversations with our Jewish friends and colleagues.  There, we can share the pain we hear from our Palestinian brothers and sisters in faith, who yearn for peace even under the harsh conditions in which they live.

If we slam that door closed, using the power of our mammon to build a wall between us, then that role would be compromised.  Which is why that is not even close to being on the table.  Nor should it be, so long as Israel remains a state worthy of its sacred name.

The more radical BDS folks want to say that what we're doing is "divestment", because it would represent a "win."   Those reactionaries who want folks who care about Israel to be afraid?  They want to say this would be "divestment."  That fear of an isolated Israel conveniently obscures hard realities that they don't want seen or discussed.  But the reality of what's being proposed remains.

It's three American businesses, and if they were doing what they were doing in Israel in the United States--facilitating a peculiar mix of war and the incarceration of an entire people--we'd sell our stock in them.

All we're trying to be is consistent.

Walking Away From Iraq

When do you walk away from an irresolvable mess?  When do you walk away from a mess that you yourself made?

After over a decade of American military engagement, tens of thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, Iraq today is falling apart.

As U.S. forces have stood down, the nation that we've left behind crumbles like a drying sandcastle in the desert wind.

Mosul has fallen, as 30,000 U.S. supplied Iraqi troops fled the city before an advancing insurgent force of 800.  In the north, Kurdish rebels have seized Kirkuk.  So much effort, so much energy, so many lives, and it is not possible to say that it made anything better.  Different?  Yes.  Better?  No.

There are reasons for this.  Iraq itself was held together by despotism.  That--as in Tito's Yugoslavia--was what gave that nation-state cohesion.  Assuming that waving the magic wand of democracy over a people will suddenly change the social dynamics?  That was, is, and will always be a tragic neoconservative foolishness.  Democracy must arise organically.  It cannot be imposed.  Empire?  That you can impose.  But a republic must be the creature of the people who yearn to be its citizens.

Our adventurism there, undertaken under false pretenses and with amorphous goals, has been a disaster.  I feel that strongly for the Iraqi people, who have and do suffer mightily.  But I feel that equally strongly for the men and women of our military.  These are Americans, my fellow citizens, doing their duty with honor, and being sent--for decades--into a bloody fray that served no coherent strategic or national purpose.

Now that we're finally out, things are collapsing.  The false stability we provided--the illusion of a nation-state, maintained only through our agency--is gone.

There will be those, as there always are, who want to double down.  Our only weakness was lack of commitment, they will insist.

And yet I can't imagine, not for a moment, that America has a heart to throw itself back into that fray.  The mess there is ancient and deep, and goes well beyond the cruel despotism of a now-dead tyrant.  There are hatreds and lines of conflict that run deep into the culture of that region, ones that have not been worked through to the point of resolution.

That we broke through the surface of one mess does not mean that the problem was solved.  We just shattered the evil that was repressing another evil.  Had we been thinking longer term and seeing clearly, we'd not have acted as we did--or at least been willing to acknowledge our motivations.

So now, with one mess replacing another, we are left with mess.  We cannot spin it as success.  Nor, frankly, does doubling-down work.

From church life, I know this.  If a ministry or church is failing, and has critical flaws in its assumptions about life together, pouring energy into failed efforts does nothing.  Simply "doing it harder" does not work.  It must be done differently.  It must be re-created.

But if a failing community does not want to live together differently, then it will fail, no matter how much energy and noise it pours into the process of doubling down on "the way we've always done it."  That desire for change must be organic, rising intrinsically from a repenting culture.  In a church, that desire is a work of the Spirit, given freely, and responded to freely.

Where that change comes in a society?  I cannot say, as I'm not quite sure even our fractious republic has that one down yet.

Again, the values of the good culture--freedom, tolerance, mutual care and a sense of shared purpose--cannot be imposed.  They can be taught, and modeled, and encouraged.  But they cannot be imposed.

Which is why sometimes, if you've modeled and worked and tried, and still nothing has changed for the good, you need to walk away.

Tax Dollar Ferraris

It had been a lovely, lovely spring here in and around Washington, DC.  Summer is finally arriving.

We've not had one for years, as our winters have blanged right into summer.  One day, it's bitter.  The next day, it's fetid and cloying and oppressive.  Why our nation chose to build its capitol on Dagobah is ever beyond me, but I suppose we're stuck with it.

But this spring was a spring.  Gorgeous days, with clear blue skies and perfect temperatures.  Nights with a hint of lingering crispness.  You couldn't have asked for more.

And that meant that the Ferraris came out to play.

My commute to my little church takes me through some of the richest turf in Washington, and snakes along the beautiful country roads of the Western Upper Montgomery County Agriculture Reserve.

This spring, it feels like every Washingtonian who owns a trophy vehicle has taken it out on those roads.  They've been as omnipresent as the pollen.  That means, on my every commute, I pass at least two Ferraris.  And a Lamborghini.  Mixed in with the Mercedes and Jags and Lexuses (Lexi?) that are every other vehicle here, there are the toy cars.  Behind the wheel, men of a certain age, the tanned and toned silverbacks of industry.

These are vehicles that sit covered in the three-to-five car garages of the mansions that stretch for miles up the Potomac.  They aren't driven, not often, because though they are impossibly fabulous, they aren't meant for daily--or even monthly--use.  That's why you have your Audi or your Mercedes, which are as common in certain Washington suburbs as Chevys and Toyotas.

The Ferraris and Lamborghinis say: I am not just well off.  I am absurdly well off, so wildly and excessively successful that I can purchase a car that I drive once or twice a year.

It's the kind of car that you show off during a catered dinner party, as you bring a few select guests into the garage to ogle it over your third martini.

These are unquestionably beautiful vehicles.  I admire them, as objects of industrial art.  The boy in me finds them delightful.

Yet I wonder at them, too, because there is only one industry in Washington.  We are in the business of government here.  I have no beef with that.  Government has a role in any society.

But what's troubling--knowing how much the rest of the country still struggles with underemployment and the explosive deindustrialization of our nation--is that the resources that my fellow citizens are obligated to render under Caesar are buying these cars.

Perhaps it's my pastor's bias against ostentation and consumption, but if your position is that of a servant, then that implies certain things.  I look seriously askance at pastors who enrich themselves at the expense of their flock, and I have the same feeling about public servants.  Should they be desperate and hungry?  No.  But neither should they be Croesus.

The owners of these vehicles aren't public servants, though, not technically.  The federal employees and oft-reviled "bureaucrats" putter around in their Hondas and Fords and Subarus, and live in smaller townhomes and old ramblers.

The owners of these glistening trophies are the lawyers and politicos, the lobbyists and--mostly--the captains of those vaunted "public-private partnerships."  These are the businesses who took over so many of the tasks of governance from public servants back in the Reagan Years.  It was all done in the name of "efficiency," which is absurd.  Profit-driven systems thrive on inefficiency.  They feast on it.  What is profit, after all, but inefficiency?

And for those businesses, government has proven very, very profitable indeed.

That seems worth remembering, as those gorgeous tax-bought Ferraris are tucked away until the first beautiful fall morning in Washington.

Christian and Libertarian

At a conference this last week in Washington, DC, a group of Catholic bishops and thinkers gathered to discuss the deep schism between Catholic teaching and American libertarian thought.  The title of the conference laid out the core premise pretty clearly:

"Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism."

The speakers and presenters weren't there for dialogue with the libertarian movement.  They were there to present the Vatican's position, which is pretty solid.  That position is that...as it is manifested in the United States right now...libertarian thought is fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching.

The reasons for this are various.

The most obvious, is that the "libertarian" thought typified by Ayn Rand and some right-wing masters of global capital is utterly alien to the teachings of Jesus.  You cannot hold the poor, the outcast, and the weak in contempt and consider yourself a Christian.  You cannot have personal profit or "shareholder value" serve as your primary moral compass and consider yourself a Christian.  That cannot be so.

This is the thrust of the Vatican's case against what often passes for "libertarian" thought in American political discourse. What does this look like?

It looks like the cretin wandering through Target with a faux-assault long gun.

It looks like the CEO who couldn't care less about workers, customers, clients, or community, but only thinks about maximizing profits.

If you use your freedom to threaten or prey on others, Jesus has beef with that.  In that, I find myself in agreement with my Catholic brothers and sisters.

I'm not totally there, though, because I think it's easy to assume from the morons and magnates who tend to become the public face of libertarianism that that's all there is to it.  That's a flawed assumption.

I'm also aware that Catholicism is a deeply hierarchical and authority-based faith tradition.  If you are a traditional Catholic, all autonomy is erroneous.  Final authority for all spiritual matters rests with the Vatican.  One can resist, of course, or disagree.  And I know folks do, and still consider themselves Catholic.  But within that system of faith, autonomy is not a core value.

Or to put it another way, when Catholicism errs, too much freedom ain't the error.

While it is not possible to be an acolyte of Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman and also Christian, it is entirely possible to be libertarian and Christian.

I can speak this with confidence, because I've bothered reading the Bible.  Jesus has plenty to say about freedom and the law, in both his actions and his teachings.  While he honored the intent of the law in both his actions and his teachings, he was also not willing to be bound by authority when authority itself transgressed against the purpose of the law.

The Apostle Paul--not "deutero-Paul," but the Apostle himself--taught precisely the same value set.  Honor and respect the law, even if it kills you.  He'd say this.  But at the same time, he recognized that following Jesus meant we no longer felt under the pressure of coercive power.  There's one law.  Just one.  Other than that, we're completely free.

That's the same position held by the Letter of James.  The "Royal Law" is also the Law of Liberty.

The Gospels and Epistles make it clear: liberty exists so long as love is the rule of our life.  If we do not love our neighbors as ourselves, then the systems and cultures we create will become the enemies of our own freedom.

If this is how you live, valuing your neighbor's freedom as deeply as your own, then liberty is a meaningful value for you.  You're both Christian and libertarian.

If not?  If all that matters to you are your rights, your wealth, and your power?  It is not a love of liberty that guides you.

That so many in our culture choose to understand liberty otherwise creates an interesting and observable irony: profit-driven capitalist "libertarianism" is the enemy of human freedom.  It controls with hunger and fear, and zealously defends its selfish freedom even if the liberty of others is trampled in the process.

So we can talk endlessly about liberty, while doing everything in our power to destroy it.  It never ceases to amaze me how many novel ways human beings can come up with to screw things up.