politics

Pastors Should Follow Obama & Stop Evolving!

May 10, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 13 Comments

Unless you spent yesterday hiding in the woods you heard that our President came out publicly in support of gay marriage. He was already the most aggressive Presidential advocate the LGTBQ has had, over turning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, giving executive orders to secure legal rights for gay partners, and ending executive support for the defense of marriage act, so one could think that this public announcement isn’t a significant shift in policy at all and in the end a liability for re-election. Regardless of any long term consequences, I am proud of Obama when he said that “In the end the values that I care most deeply about and she (Michelle) cares most deeply about is how we treat other people.”

You see for those who pay attention to how he has served as President we already knew what he thought. He has been actively supporting the recognition of equal rights for the gay community throughout his first term. Obama was never evolving personally in the White House. What has happened is Obama finally let his conscious speak on an issue that is divided and contentious because it was becoming humorous to here again that his mind is ‘evolving’ while acting like his mind was settled. Yet there is something powerful about the one occupying the White House to believe it out loud! I wonder if the same wouldn’t be true if more Christian leaders stopped evolving and started speaking.

Obama’s situation is not much different than many Christian leaders throughout the country whose jobs and personal security necessitate keeping the mysterious ‘independents’ and ‘moderates’ more happy with you than the other options. The number of influential pastors of large churches, seminary professors, and denominational leaders who have been walking the ‘evolving’ tight-rope around gay marriage in the church are huge. Just from personal conversations I can think of 15 well known church leaders who would loose their jobs if their actual conviction as a Christian was known. If you ask these individuals who have dedicated their lives to the service of the church what they really believe they are open and affirming to the full inclusion of the LGTBQ community into the church and yet their public stance is ‘evolving.’

Just this past week a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship minister from North Carolina said regarding Amendment One, “It’s sad that the only three people at the church voting against the amendment are the three ordained ministers and the congregation will never know.” That is a sad but all too frequent decision by many.

It is my hope that my Brother in Christ Obama’s risky move to make his personal convictions known will inspire the silent ‘evolving’ leaders in the church to do the same. Maybe then we can end the culture war that is costing the church its integrity with a generation and communicating hatred toward our gay brothers and sisters.

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Our Double Theology of Debt

May 4, 2012 by Stephen Keating 5 Comments

We all have to pay our debts right? Isn’t that the moral thing to do? This is so self-evidently true to us that it seems ludicrous for anyone to challenge it. But that’s exactly what David Graeber does in his important book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I’ve been doing a series of posts on the book over on my personal blog and Tripp asked me to follow up his post on student loan debt.

Discussions of debt quickly turn into moral arguments and because we have forgotten that interest was a technology created by humans, we forget that there is nothing natural about it. Other cultures have rejected the idea of interest, as shown by the following funny story of the Sufi philosopher Nasruddin:

One day Nasruddin’s neighbor, a notorious miser, came by to announce he was throwing a party for some friends. Could he borrow some of Nasruddin’s pots? Nasruddin didn’t have many but said he was happy to lend whatever he had. The next day the miser returned, carry Nasruddin’s three pots, and one tiny additional one. “What’s that? asked Nasruddin. “Oh, that’s the offspring of the pots. They reproduced during the time they were with me.” Nasruddin shrugged and accepted them, and the miser left happy that he had established a principle of interest. A month later, Nasruddin was throwing a party, and he went over to borrow a dozen pieces of his neighbor’s much more luxurious crockery. The miser complied. Then he waited a day. And then another… On the third day, the miser came by and asked what had happened to his pots. “Oh, them?” Nasurddin said sadly. “It was a terrible tragedy. They died.” ~Quoted from Debt

Why does the morality of debt repayment focus solely on the debtor? Graeber argues that we have a double theology of debt, one for the creditors and one for the debtors. The proponents of this double theology use the economic term “supply-side economics.” This theology/economic theory was taught to me in my Economics 101 class in college and is championed by the religious right. You may balk at the linking of economic theory and theology, but examine this stunning example summarized from George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty:

Gilder’s argument was that those who felt that money could not simply be created were mired in an old-fashioned, godless materialism that did not realize that just as God could create something out of nothing, His greatest gift to humanity was creativity itself, which proceeded in exactly the same way. Investors can indeed create value out of nothing by their willingness to accept the risk entailed in placing their faith in others’ creativity. Rather than seeing the imitation of God’s powers of creation ex nihilo as hubris, Gilder argued that it was precisely what God intended: the creation of money was a gift, a blessing, a channeling of grace; a promise, yes, but not one that can be fulfilled, even if the bonds are contually rolled over, because through faith (in “God we trust” again) their value becomes reality.

With reflections like these, supply-side economics became the de facto theological ideology of the religious right, with Pat Robertson going so far as to declare it as “the first truly divine theory of money-creation.” Within this theology, it is imperative that the debtors must always repay. While the creditors are lauded as God’s instrument for the ex nihilo creation of endless wealth. The “job creators/risk takers” are the saints, while those in debt are the wretched sinners. This theology is so widespread that it has been naturalized in our thinking. It doesn’t even occur to the new atheists to challenge it.

But how did we get to here? This perverse reversal of theology into a means of perpetual bondage for debtors could not be any farther from the liberative texts of the bible. They are unanimous and univocal in their condemnation of all forms interest and differentiating wealth. Jose Porofino Miranda, in Communism and the Bible, says the condemnation of differentiating wealth in the Bible is “so obvious and abundant that it will show us the prodigies of tergiversation (the evasion of clarity) and voluntary blindness that the theologians and exegetes, and even the translators of the Bible, have had to deploy in order to muffle a book whose solitary intent was the change the world and eliminate injustice.”

In that book, Miranda undertakes a detailed examination of the texts, but I want to highlight one important point. Without a single exception, every time that the word for interest is used in the Bible, it is condemned. Deuteronomy 23:19 condemns it three times “You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent.” The universal condemnation of usury is not isolated to Liberation Theologians, but was well-known to the early church. Take for example this excerpt from a sermon by St. Basil from 365 CE:

The Lord gave His own injunction quite plainly in the words, “from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” But what of the money lover? He sees before him a man under stress of necessity bent to the ground in supplication. He sees him hesitating at no act, no words, of humiliation. He sees him suffering undeserved misfortune, but he is merciless. He does not reckon that he is a fellow-creature. He does not give in to his entreaties. He stands stiff and sour. He is moved by no prayers; his resolution is broken by no tears. He persists in refusal. Then the suppliant mentions interest, and utters the word security. All is changed. The frown is relaxed; with a genial smile he recalls old family connection. Now it is “my friend.” (emphasis added)

Notice how Basil’s moralizing is the direct opposite of today’s, he condemns the one who lends. It only took a short while after the cross-bearers became allied with the cross-builders for the theology to change. The theology of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, and the rest of the bible is one-way: the way of liberation. Interest isn’t natural. It’s evil.

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Hell On Earth: A Sex Trafficking Survivor’s Story

May 2, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 5 Comments

*****Warning: this post contains graphic details of a sex trafficking story.*****

This is the testimony of a young woman I met last week on my trip to Tijuana with Centro Romero. She was extremely courageous to share her story with us. The transcript below is translated from her Spanish:

“I was sold to a gentleman from the U.S. by my sister when I was 13 years old. I already had a baby. In the exchange, I was sold under the agreement that he would help me out with my kid because my baby was ill. I ended up being trafficked to Anchorage, Alaska. He basically kidnapped my baby away from me and didn’t allow me to see him. I was in prison, not able to see anyone for a long, long time. At that time, I was forced to have sex with men and women. Obviously, I was aware that my baby was not getting the care that we were promised. Our diet was basically rice and beans and nothing else. At the main market, at least in my case, I was 14, about to be 15, I was sold to have sex with other women.

“So, unfortunately my baby’s condition got worse. He never allowed me to see my baby and my baby was never provided with the medical care he needed, even when he was in the process of dying, he never thought about providing care for my baby. My baby had leukemia at the time, but of course I didn’t know that.

“Probably because of my mothering instinct, one day I decided that I didn’t care what happened, I needed to take care of my baby. So I found a way to escape and to take my baby to a place in which I was pretty sure that he would get the care that he needed. But the problem was that I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t know the area or the town or even where I was. And unfortunately my baby passed away.

“When I ended up getting to a place, before my baby passed away, the people that received me didn’t want to take care of my baby. After the baby passed away, due to the lack of care, I noticed that I suddenly started receiving gifts. As I think about it now, I think they were probably trying to keep my mouth shut because they didn’t want me to denounce them or anything like that.

“After my baby passed away, instead of burying him, they invited me to cremate my baby. It was a tough situation for me because I was only 15, so I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. After my baby was cremated, the only thing that I had to be in touch with what I felt was a part of me was the ashes. Unfortunately, he basically kidnapped the ashes and I was recaptured and put out to have sex once again. I used to cry, just asking him to allow me to touch the ashes of my baby, but he never allowed me to do that.

“One time, after the cremation of my baby, I was forced to have sex with a woman and him, and he was so involved with what was happening that I was able to escape through a window. I was able to make contact with a policeman and they took me to a place where they used to take minors who are in trouble. Because I didn’t know any English, they kept asking me where I was from. They kept me in the shelter for minors for a few months.

“I found out that the man who bought me was 33 years-old, that he had a criminal record as a sex offender, and had been involved with minors in the past. But he, as a predator, kept looking for me. After a few months in the care of the police department, I realized that I was once again pregnant.

“He showed up, presenting himself as a relative. He promised me that he would be gentle with me if I came back to his place. Without the support of the police department, being 15, I didn’t have any option other than to believe in him again. At least during my pregnancy he was very loving. But, after the birth of my baby, as soon as my baby was born, he put me under the “care” of the immigration officers. He told them that I didn’t have the capacity to care for my baby and that my first baby had passed away because I physically abused him.

“I was deported from Anchorage to Tijuana. Even under those conditions, I started working at a bar in Tijuana because I wanted to put some money together for airfare in order to go back to Alaska for my baby. And I ended up going back to Alaska. I was looking for my baby and then my abuser kept telling me not to leave him because he was finally in love with me. He was getting government support because he was a single father. He asked the government to facilitate the process of getting a house for the family in San Diego county. Two months after that, we got a house in San Diego and he moved himself to San Diego, but without me because I had to come back to Tijuana. He promised that he would bring my baby girl to Tijuana so I could see my daughter. But, if I wanted to see her, I had to pay him $100.

“My pain and suffering was just too much, so I decided to give up and think that my baby was dead in the same way that I lost my first child. I decided to stay away from him. Even though being apart from him would hurt me a lot because of my child, I knew that it was the best thing that I could do for me and for her.”

At this point she was overcome and unable to continue the story.

I’ve struggled with what to say to close this post. The hell on earth that this precious young woman experienced is devastating. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to the problem of sex trafficking. It is a global and complex problem. But I want to issue a challenge to men: We are the primary source of the demand for sex trafficking and we must begin to challenge the male-culture that says that putting others down makes us feel better about ourselves. Every single time that we make a joke about rape, call a girl a slut or a whore, or objectify women through pornography, we contribute to a culture that makes possible the stories like the one above. The fact that we are unaware that there are literally millions of stories like the one above shows how desperately we try to suppress them. If we want to end sex trafficking, we must start with ourselves.

* This is a guest post from Stephen Keating who is covering this sex trafficking conference for HBC. Thanks to Stephen for sharing what he’s learning with us!

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, news, politics, public policy

Facebook Hermenutics Lesson

April 30, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 12 Comments

I am pretty sure God invented Facebook so people could argue about religion and politics. Nothing demonstrates the beauty of social media like a good legislative proposition against Gay Marriage to bring out the best in humanity…ugh.

Any way, my home state of North Carolina is being completely ridiculous and attempting to coerce people though the power of the state to comply with a particular religious vision for the home. That vision isn’t normative in scripture but don’t tell hetrosexist Christians it’s not, they got hermenutical skills no one can match. I use to think I had heard every contrived way of explaining the Bible failing to speak consistently on behalf of God’s favorite relation math equation, One Man + One Woman = Marriage, BUT THEN I posted a link to Protect All NC Families on my facebook wall saying that I wished I was still in North Carolina to vote against it.

I got a few negative comments, a number of HBC Deacons saying they would vote on my behalf, and then this masterpiece of Biblical exegesis. One of my former youth dropped a Bible verse and all hermenutical hilarity broke loose. I learned something. The patriarchs like Abraham should have just married and reproduced with one woman. Because Abraham failed to live up to Biblical marriage God cursed him and so Islam was born. That is disgusting. I hope this isn’t an idea gaining popularity. I had no idea what to say but a College Friend did. Check out this conversation and see some masterful facebook hermenutics in action.

FORMER YOUTH Genesis 2:23-24

COLLEGE FRIEND Former Youth – Unfortunately, The Bible is not an ally in the fight for such legislation, but rather a liability. If “one man & one woman” is the only definition of a legal marriage then – without venturing out of the book (Genesis) you’ve chosen to cite – the following men were breaking the law: Abram/Abraham (16:3), Esau (26:34), Jacob (29:23, 28; 30:4, 9), and Nahor (22:20-24). There are plenty more examples outside of Genesis that refute the notion that 1 Man + 1 Woman = “Biblical Marriage.”

FORMER YOUTH You are correct in saying that those men broke the law, and they suffered serious consequences because of it. Because of Abraham’s actions, it distorted his image of God, eventually leading to the creation of Islam.Just because men did these things in the Bible does not mean they were following God’s will in doing so. Judas was one of Jesus disciples, yet he betrayed him. Just because Judas had been a follower of Jesus does not mean he was doing God’s will in this instance. Jesus supported the Law of Moses (Lev 18:22 & Lev 20:13). Also, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Paul says “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

COLLEGE FRIEND It’s interesting that you have no evidence to back up your claim that these four men “suffered serious consequences” other than the fact that one of them was used as the foundation of an alternate religion, which is – in your opinion only – the serious consequence 1 of the 4 listed suffered (centuries after his death). I see nothing regarding polygamy in any of the verses you cited, and yet I see polygamists in the Bible who, unless you can show me evidence to the contrary, suffered no rebuke from God for living a polygamist lifestyle. What was Davids punishment? Moses’? Saul’s? Solomon’s? Caleb’s?

FORMER YOUTH Although Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death” I would say that Isiah 59:2 is also is a pretty severe consequence of sin of which we all suffer: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear.” I am not as well knowlegded about the Old Testament as I would like to be and I am sorry that I do not have answers to all of your questions. But I do pray that in time the Lord will answer them. I therefore encourage you: that the power of prayer is enormous: Matthew 7:7 ”Ask, and it will be given to you seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

COLLEGE FRIEND Former Youth, it appears now you’ve taken to simply firing off Scripture that has no application here. The wages of sin may, in fact, be death, but we’ve yet to establish that polygamy is a sin. To the contrary, I’ve provided several unchallenged Biblical examples of Godly men who had multiple wives and God never chose to chide them for it. In closing, two things…

Firstly, and with all due respect, if you are admittedly ignorant of the Old Testament (OT) (and I give you tremendous credit for your humble admission of this), yet choose to use select passages from it to inform your decisions regarding your political voice, then I would encourage you to become more familiar with it. In doing so, you will find that the many commands regarding how to treat one’s slave(s) are not being put to their full use in today’s America and perhaps could spearhead a petition or legislation to re-introduce OT-based slavery in NC/America… or any one of the other categories of OT laws that are currently being ignored by our government: dietary, parenting, haircuts, clothing, etc.

Secondly, do pray that the Lord will clear up for you the confusion between “Love your [heterosexual, monogamous] neighbor as yourself,” and “the wages of [what I perceive to be] sin is death [and legislation to deny you man-made government/legal benefits].” Also, while we’re on prayer, I would encourage you, if you truly feel that “the power of prayer is enormous,” to act on that conviction (and encourage others to do likewise), by staying home from the polls on May 8th and, instead of voting against the Marriage Amendment, do something much more powerful: pray against it.

Tripp – apologies for rambling on your page; much love and respect to you for standing up for love & equality in this world. Peace.

SARCASTIC MINISTER These comments have been such a blessing in my life, thank you! I always knew Islam was a lie! May the Truth of Jess Christ win the hearts of those who are under the devils grip.

SARCASTIC PHD STUDENT If there was such a thing as biblical marriage, it would include sexual hospitality, i.e. giving one’s wife/wives or daughters to establish social and political connections. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it would be good to read the bible.

NICE MINISTER LADY Former Youth, the Corinthians verse you quote above is also talking about having sex as a form of worship to a plethora of Roman deities. In this case, it was about the Corinthian cult of Venus who required worshippers to participate in orgies and things to supply worship. The scriptures have a long history of saying that sex in order to please God is a no-no. Sex as a worship and appreciation of what God made, on the other hand, is the subject of an entire Book (Song of Songs) and is lauded! Whenever Paul forbids LGBT stuff, he’s usually either talking about ritual sex or prostitution (usually boys prostituting themselves to men). There aren’t a lot of words to translate this super well, as the context of the culture the verse was written in is what makes it important. We’re not dealing with many of these issues today, so the verse is irrelevant. Also, Paul’s words are not the words of Jesus, and so many seem to forget that. Jesus doesn’t talk about LGBT stuff… except for that verse when he talks about how being transgendered is totally fine (Matt 19:12) and he DOES forbid divorce. We seem to have a narrow minded definition of what defends families in NC.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, politics, public policy Tagged With: homosexuality

The Slave Trade Chain

April 28, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 2 Comments

I emphasized some statistics in the last post, but now I want to share a story. How does a girl become a trafficking victim? Friday afternoon our group from Centro Romero went into Tijuana and visited several different sites. We met a man (I’ve omitted his name for safety) in Tijuana who runs a safe house for girls told us about the economic chain involved. The trafficking occurs along a well-established route:

A large number of victims are taken from communities of extreme poverty in places like Honduras and Guatemala. Traffickers go down into these communities and identify potential children. They approach the mother of the child and say “That’s a beautiful daughter, can I buy her for $100?” Because of the extreme poverty, lack of education, and the dire needs of their large families, the mothers often agree to sell their children (often with the added incentive of violence). Once the traffickers have purchsed the children, they are moved to port towns and then on to warehouses in Chiapas (southern Mexico). In these huge warehouses, there are rows and rows of children with signs hung around their neck with prices. Brothel owners, pimps, and other traffickers go to the warehouse to purchase the children for approximately $200-500. They are then moved from southern Mexico up to border towns like Tijuana. At this point, the children are sold again for $500-2000. In Tijuana, a girl on the street can be propositioned by U.S. “sex tourists” for 10 minutes for $40. A very young girl will go for $200-500, virgins for even higher. Pratically anything you want, if you have the money, you can get. The girls are sold to 10-15 times a day.

Some of the girls are moved from town to town to keep their profits high. Others are moved across the border. Traffickers may connect with Americans and pay them to use their children’s birth certificates to move the trafficked child into America. Once in America, they are sold for approximately $15,000.

This whole process can occur in 15-30 days. Throughout the process, the children are raped and their spirits are broken. They are manipulated into believing that they are worthless. Pictures of their brothers and sisters are shown to them and they are told that If they ever speak out to anyone, their family will be attacked.

The Mexican government estimates that 137,000 children, women, and men are currently caught in this chain. In reality, that number is probably much, much higher.

* This is a guest post from Stephen Keating who is covering this sex trafficking conference for HBC. Thanks to Stephen for sharing what he’s learning with us!

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, public policy

Secular Scientists…the Present Day Noah!

April 17, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 2 Comments

I am busy editing and reworking my keynote for the Sustainable Faith conference later this week in St. Petersburg Florida. I was going back and forth between making a biblical illusion to either Noah or Job when I read this post by Church historian Bill Leonard. Now that he used it oh so well in this post I guess I will link it and go for Job! If you are local come join us for a conversation on “ecology, incarnation and the interconnectedness.”

As for Noah, Bill Leonard asks a bunch of questions – good ones. Be wise. Listen to his awesome visit to the podcast & go check out his post on Noah.

When did the people of Noah’s day finally realize that what was happening to them was more than just a stationary front? Why do some religious folks take the Noah story literally but resist the possibility of a contemporary global catastrophe, one essentially of human creation?

Is biblical literalism clearer for the past than the present? How many glaciers must collapse and heat waves smolder before we literally read the “signs of the times?”

Wouldn’t it be weird if “secularists” turned out to be the ones who discerned earth’s impending judgment on our lives and lifestyles? What if global warming is true and we don’t have sense enough to see the planet itself as ark?

Like Noah, we still could labor together to find “grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Or just turn up the church air conditioning.

If you wondered exactly what our modern day Noah has to say check out Paul Gilding’s recent TED talk ‘the earth is full.’

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, public policy, science

Power & Politics in Theology with Laurel Schneider

April 17, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 9 Comments

Why should everyone care about theology? Laurel Schneider joins us this week for some good theo-nerding. We have too much fun tackling just a few non-controversal theological topics like…Politics, Culture, Power, Social Justice, Feminism, Church History, Economics, Freedom, Liberty, Queer Theory, Occupy Wall Street, Ayn Rand, Karl Barth, Capitalism, Democracy, and a few other goodies.

Laurel Schneider is Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Culture at the Chicago School of Theology. If you are wise you have surely gotten yourself a copy of Laurel’s edited volume Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation since both Catherine Keller and John Thatamanil have discussed it on previous episodes. Now you just got check out Laurel’s Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity.

Check out Lauerl’s “It Gets Better” video here.

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A Most Interesting Reading of Moses at Meribah (Numbers 20)

April 11, 2012 by Bo Sanders 7 Comments

Recently I stumbled on what might be the most interesting reading of Moses at Mirebah I have seen. It comes from the book Emergency Politics by Bonnie Honig (also on Kindle). In it, she is engaging the theology of Franz Rosenzweig – a contemporary and rival to the German (later Nazi) Carl Schmitt who famously said “” Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

In Numbers chpt 20, Miriam passes away. She had been a prophetess for the people and had challenged Moses’ authority on occasion. Immediately after her passing (this will become important) the people realize that there is no water and press Moses and Aaron for solutions. Moses and Aaron step away from the people to seek God and receive instruction to “take the staff and speak to the rock – it will pour out water before their eyes”.

Moses, as you may remember, doesn’t follow instructions to the ‘T’. He ad libs a little bit. He does indeed gather the people but then he veers from the plan. He chastises the people and then strikes the rock. Two things happen:

water does indeed come out
God is displeased with Moses and will not let him enter the land that is promised.

I have preached this passage many times and have read lots of treatments. I am intrigued by this passage and have always been unsettled by one detail in the story, which I have never been able to resolve:

why does the Lord tell Moses to take the staff if he is just going to speak to the rock? Why even mention the staff?

Here is where Honig and Rosenzweig bring a unique reading. The staff represent something magical like sorcery – or the miraculous for the early 20th century. This is a political theology and what is at stake in the suspension of law in emergency conditions. Can a sovereign power suspend law in the same way that God suspends the laws of physics in order to preform miracles? Leaders, being empowered by God, the thinking goes, could suspend ‘normal’ activity if they determined an exceptional circumstance.

In Honig and Rosenzweig’s hermeneutic the dispersed empowerment of the people (multitude) is the location for God’s will and is intended to be home to the will/voice of the Lord. But, as we know, this responsibility had been too overwhelming and was resisted by the people in selecting Moses as a king type who would speak to God for/instead of them (Exodus 20:19). This was an abdication by the people of what the Lord had desired for them as a people – to be prophets all.

This resistance is reinforced when the voice of the people rises in the absence of water, and Moses (along with his brother Aaron) turn away from the ‘stiff necked people’ and receive instruction to speak to the rock. Moses then, probably importing the top-down authoritarianism of his Egyptian upbringing, disobeys the command to speak and instead, chastises the people and strikes the rock with his staff in an act of magical sorcery. God, though it produces water, reprimands this act, and Moses is disallowed from entering the promised-land with the people.

This event is placed within the historical context, earlier in the passage, where Miriam passed away and immediately the people realized that they had no water and held a council against Moses and Aaron. Miriam’s name alludes to water and she was the sister who placed Moses in the Nile’s water when he was an infant. She had been the only one to challenge Moses’ authoritarian ways and she provided, as a prophetess, a check to Moses’ power. Without her, this reading states, Moses proved he will give the people … “not authentic prophecy, but sorcery.” In not recognizing the predictive prophecy of the people (and Miriam), Moses loses his leadership of the people.

Honig utilizes Rosenzweig’s two types of prayer – one that spontaneously arises in a situational moment, and another that is used by the community and creates an openness or receptivity – to analyze the judicial deliberation surrounding the Bush v. Gore presidential ruling. By imagining that the people could have risen up in expectation of a serious effort to count valuable democratic votes instead of waiting for a Schmittian top-down rule from the authorities. The sovereign power might have been within the people prepared for and receptive to the sign instead of what came from above it – a rupture from beyond them. This expectation is foreshadowed within the Mosaic tradition that one day all of the people would be prophets (like Miriam).

Honig asks if this metaphorical reading (which it expressly is) is a good model for democratic politics and a comparison of the “state of legal exception to the divine rule of god”. The people, she says, when bound together can give to themselves the powers of state and can again decide to suspend them when, as a multitude, they are oriented and receptive (having been prepared) to the consequences of such action and what they point toward as a sign.

This, in the end, is the problem with magical thinking! We abdicate our power as the people – to be receptive to and bring forward the voice and will of God – in favor of looking to magically empowered leaders to suspend the rules that govern due to exceptional (or emergency) circumstances and hand down solution (metaphorically) through sorcery.

It makes sense then why the Lord even mentions the staff if Moses is ultimately to speak to the rock. It is a metaphor (symbol) of concentrated power that is present but to be resisted in lue of the prophetic possibility of speaking. In that speaking, which is to be located in the people (multitude) prepared by prayer, that a sign is revealed that points to a greater reality. We never hear that voice if a receptive people continually abdicate that potential to exceptional leaders who are expected to provide magical results.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, politics, speaking, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Bonnie Honig, book, books, Carl Schmitt, church, democracy, democratic, emergency, empower, Franz Rosenzweig, God, jesus, law, magic, magical, multitude, political, politics, power, prophecy, sorcery, the people

Woody Guthire answers “Why Jesus Was Killed?”

April 4, 2012 by Tripp Fuller 4 Comments

I am a huge Woody Guthrie fan. Both Woody and my Mom’s side of the family hail from Okemah Oklahoma so I like to pretend that (and our shared political sensibilities) make us like family.

As Good Friday approaches more people will be thinking about ‘Why Jesus was killed?’ There are a bunch of reasons and probably more than one historical one too, but I think Woody Guthrie gets at least one of them right in his song ‘Jesus Christ’ so I decided to record it and share it with y’all. Plus it might as well be the new American song for Occupy Wall Street Christians. So Enjoy!

If you are wise then check out my favorite box set of Guthire. It makes me smile.

Jesus Christ
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, “Give your money to the poor,”
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
“Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,”
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

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Filed Under: living, politics, songs

The Death of the Liberals is killing us

March 23, 2012 by Bo Sanders 17 Comments

In chapter 1 of his book Death of Liberal Class, Chris Hedges sketches both the height of the Liberal era in the 19th century and its cataclysmic implosion with the arrival of World War in the 20th. The disillusionment of human evil, aggression, and suffering deflated the optimism of innate human goodness and inevitable progress that Liberalism is founded upon.

To understand the profound impact of Liberalism’s demise, it helps to make sure one understands the difference between Classical Liberalism and it’s contemporary milquetoast descent that slinks around in straw-man form on our 24 hours news cycle.

Hedges explains (pp. 6-7) “Classical liberalism was formulated largely as a response to the dissolution of feudalism and church authoritarianism. … (It) has, the philosopher John Gray writes, four principle features, or perspectives, which give it a recognizable identity. It is :

individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against any collectivity;
egalitarian, in that it confers on all human beings the same basic moral status;
universalist, affirming the moral unity of the species;
and meliorist, in that it asserts the openended improvability, by use of critical reason, of human life

Both John Cobb (Mainline) and Clayton Crockett (Radical Political Theology) use very similar formulations in their recent Homebrewed podcasts. Cobb, by focusing on the demise of the Mainline and Crocket, by focusing on the Evangelical and Religious Right, articulate the monumental shift in the religious-political landscape in the past century.

The Mainline denominations are in a collapse narrative and it makes perfect sense why when one examines both the way liberal thought partnered with power in the 20th Century and the way that conducted itself (largely) within the shifting landscape of post-war realities at home and globalization abroad.

“In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite. But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims…

The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has left it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.” (pp. 9-10)

We talked yesterday about the fictitious nature of the supposed Left-Right spectrum. For those of us who participate in christ centered communities and organizations, what does this mean? While incomplete, here is my little experiment to come up with a game-plan for a start.

We stop using the label ‘Liberal’ generically for anything that is not Conservative… especially to be dismissive. Liberal is a very specific ethical framework and it takes quite a commitment to liberal. It is not a default position.
We disavow the left-right , conservative-liberal split as farcical. It doesn’t exist. Obama is a Centrist Democrat. Romney is a Centrist Republican. Any idea that Obama is a radical is ridiculous.* We repent of lazy language & thought.
We wake up as the church that the role the Liberals used to play in the system does not function. There is no moderating or buffering presence to bring a corrective to the system. Thus, participating in the system as-it-now-exists will not fix the system. The corporate hold over every aspect of our political system is pervasive.
We step up as the church in the revelation that government is not going to fulfill the expectation to

bring good news to the poor (Economy)
restore sight to the blind (Medical)
release to the captive (Legal)
lift up the broken hearted (Compassion)

The church can do these things! We have deferred to the political system for too long. We have outsourced our responsibility to society but now live with the remains of the bloated carcass Christendom. With the death of the liberal class resistance to corporate rule and unchecked consumerism is impotent. The Citizen’s United ruling is just one step on long trail … but we know where it leads.

There are churches in every community and there may be no greater existing potential than us! ** I know it sounds dreamy, but in the rest of this series I want to flesh it out. By the end, it might not seem as far-fetched as it does right now.

- Bo Sanders

*Wall Street campaign funding, legalizing assassination, and Guantanamo Bay are your first 3 hints.
** The danger of course is that we keep voting based on two issues while turning a blind eye to corporate rule, environmental deregulation, and perpetual war.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, news, politics, random, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Citizen's United, Clayton Crockett, democracy, ecology, economy, environment, evangelical, globalization, God, Hedges, jesus, Liberal, liberalism, liberals, Mainline, Obama, radical, Religious Right, War

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Jesus Christ
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

The Death of the Liberals is killing us

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