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Hollow cake

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I tried my baking skills the other day. I had an orange-cranberry muffin mix, which called for an added cup of water.

Flush with the success of earlier efforts, I added a protein booster whey powder, a couple eggs, and two tablespoons of oil.

After 25 minutes in the oven, the knife came out clean.

We cut the cake the next day to store it. It consisted of an outside ring, inside ring and center.

The outside was perfect, a dream of a cake.

The inside was still semi-liquid, doughy.

The center was empty.

T. S. Eliot:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Wow! What an image of spiritual life!

It is critical for our spiritual lives to be real, nourishing, whole.

Not cream puffs without cream.

And, when you’re starving, a good hearty piece of bread is better than a pastry.

I’m reading Dom Helder Camara in the Orbis Books series Modern Spiritual Masters. I was intrigued that I never heard of him before, yet the blurb identified him as a major player in Vatican II and an archbishop (?) who implemented changes to move the Brazilian and Latin American church toward ideals of Poverty and Service.

He embodied the bishop Victor Hugo described in the opening pages of Les Miserables. Fluent in French,  he must have known that book well. The Brazilian dictatorship of the 1960s silenced him in the country, but could not outside.

Conservative, fervent anti-Communist pope John Paul II dismantled most of his accomplishments. His writings are largely in Portuguese and housed in Recife, I believe. Orbis is doing world Christianity a great service in bringing the riches of his thought to light.

I confess I  got a flyer offering them at half off. I purchased:

  • Dom Helder Camara
  • Pedro Arrupe
  • Thomas Merton
  • Evelyn Underhill
  • Simone Weil
  • Writings on Contemplation and Compassion, ed. Robert Ellsburg.

Easily a year’s worth of reading and reflection.  I was introduced to the series by the volume on Dorothee Sölle, the German theologian. That led me to read her magnum opus The Silent Cry, which I’ve written about.

Reading is a way out of despair for me. It helps me in these increasingly dark days. Advent is around the corner, my heart cries out for light, light, light!

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Beauty and the Tyrant

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Why bother with Arenas? A comment follows this quotation.

Quoting Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (1993):

“At the [Cuban] National Library in 1969 Lezama [Lima] gave a reading of perhaps one of the most extraordinary essays of Cuban literature under the title ‘Confluences.’ It reaffirmed the creative force, the love of language, the struggle for an integrated image against all  those who opposed it. A sense of beauty is always dangerous and antagonistic to any dictatorship because it implies a realm extending beyond the limits that a dictatorship can impose on human beings. Beauty is a territory that escapes the control of the political police. Being independent and outside of their domain, beauty is so irritating to dictators that they attempt to destroy it whichever way they can. Under a dictatorship, beauty is always a dissident force, because a dictatorship is itself unaesthetic, grotesque, to a dictator and his agents, the attempt to create beauty is an escapist or reactionary act.” p. 87

Arenas is not somebody conservative Christians typically read. He was a promiscuous gay activist in communist Cuba. His writings caught the acclaim of an international audience, and of Castro’s State Security, which hounded Arenas and imprisoned him in El Morro, a notorious lockup for murderers and the like.

Arenas was brutalized. Even after he escaped Cuba by slipping into Key West in the Mariel exodus in 1980, Castro’s agents sought to destroy him.

One night a mysterious blast, like a gunshot, shattered a glass of water in his apartment. Unfortunately, because he was debilitated due to AIDS, poverty, and the struggle to publish as an ostracized Cuban expatriate, he took this shattered glass as an omen, a metaphor of his life. The protective aura he had enjoyed from childhood abandoned him. He died.

He ended a letter published posthumously:  “I do not want to convey to you a message of defeat but of continued struggle and of hope. Cuba will be free. I already am.” (p. 317)

Yet, I find some lessons from his memoir:

  • Faith and a living relationship with God make a difference. As tyranny hammered Arenas, he could have benefited from experiencing the unconditional love of God [not the stereotypical right-wing deity, however].
  • His commitment to Beauty, truth expressed through literature, and his refusal to use his gift to glorify the state, have transcendent value. Quakers speak about “that of God in everyone.” Arenas’s commitment to writing were “that of God” in him.
  • His experience of America as “a country without a soul,” a country tyrannized by “the power of money” is a legitimate warning. I know another America, where people’s love of God and one another is the primary power. But I believe Arenas’ experience is also true. I can’t read the Hebrew prophets, who condemn the rich for caring not at all about the poor, without recognizing parallels in the US today.

Other voices have sounded the warning, too. Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn addressed Harvard; he spoke about how human potential must be balanced by belief in a Supreme Being who gives value to human life and responsibility to human freedom. I also compare Maria von Trapp in Sound of Music with Sally Bowles in Cabaret, two figures iconic of America–but which will we ultimately choose to become?

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In Spirit and Truth

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

I always get into what I’m reading. I’ve been wanting some biography, and happened on Before Night Falls through a book list. It’s a memoir of Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban poet, freedom fighter and gay activist.

Not the kind of book you’d expect a preacher to be reading. Lots of rowdy sex.

Besides that, what I like in this book is the longing evident from early days in Arenas’s life, a longing for something missing in the Communist paradise he grew up in.

Maybe food. As a boy he often ate dirt to fill his stomach.

His writing brought him to the attention of the literary community in Cuba. Despite the many parasites who sold out to State Security, there were others who gathered in small groups to read their work.

In one meeting the poet read his original poems, then burned the only copy in a hibachi to the gasps of the crowd. In Cuba it’s criminal to write except in connivance with the State.

Arenas’ friends smuggled his work out of Cuba, and it was published in France, winning acclaim.

He writes that tyranny hates the Beauty of a poem which cannot be enslaved to its purposes.

He would have liked Ephesians 2.10, “We are God’s works of art…” [lit. poema] NJB.

In my heart is a longing that Arenas somewhere, somehow met the God, who might be known by other names—such as Beauty, Medicine, Truth, Justice, Love. Transcendent names.

I don’t know. I’m just really clear that the system I grew up with, in which people were either saved or lost (no other possibilities), doesn’t cover all the people I know.

There are those souls who long for a better God than all the gods they know, souls who serve their better God even though they have no proof their God exists, souls who put many “saved” folks to shame.

C.S. Lewis wrote of one such soul in The Last Battle. Emeth [Hebrew word meaning faithful] was an enemy soldier who loved the pagan bird god Tash fiercely, risked his life to catch a glimpse of Tash, only to learn in Aslan’s country that he had worshiped the great Lion all his life.

Lewis explained, you can’t offer true worship to a false god; nor can you give false worship to the true God. By whatever name they call God true worshipers serve the true God; false worshipers, false gods.

O true God of mercy, love and grace, you have other sheep, belonging to other folds. May you bring them home in peace at the last. Amen

 Note: high pain today, so I can’t write a lot.

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If as Christ prayed “We are One,” then what does our Solidarity mean?

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

I continue reading Bonhoeffer slowly. He wrote that freedom in Christ is not selfish narcissism. No—we are free for others.

I come more and more to believe the Western idolizing of the rugged individual, the Marlboro man, is pathological. My friend Jean-Emile Ngué suggested that Buber ought to have a category, not simply of I-Thou, but  of

We-Thou.

The more I think about it, the more profound my brother’s insight strikes me.

The incarnation of Christ continues in the community he founded: the Church. Not the political entities such as the Southern Baptist Convention or the Roman Catholic Church. These are instances of the Church. But the whole, the mystical reality of all who are in Christ is the Church.

Preferential option for the poor

I watched a Paulist film Romero, with Raul Julia in the title role. Oscar Romero was a bookish, conservative mouse who was elevated to Archbishop of El Salvador in the late 1970s. His priests were involved in the liberation theology movement. He was killed by an assassin in 1980, while saying mass in a small chapel of a cancer hospital.

Right-wing elements of the government opposed the people’s growing demands for free elections, full voting rights, education, and land reform. Romero recognized the power of his radio addresses and became the voice of the poor. He wrote the U.S. President Jimmy Carter, asking that the U.S. stop selling arms to El Salvador. Carter eventually did stop, I think; Reagan resumed the sales under the banner of defeating Communists.

In the German Peasants’ War 1524 Luther faced demands of the poor for such things as open grazing rights, and the right to choose their own pastor. Luther, sadly, sided with the powerful German princes who protected him from the Pope.

The Anabaptists, whom I consider my forebears, were among these people.

In the American Colonies Baptists rocked along, not making headway until the Revolution. Then, Baptists sided with the revolutionaries. Baptist numbers swelled.

Fear words: liberal, communist, terrorist

All this to say that we as Christians need to be wary of cries such as “Terrorists!” Is our government pursuing geopolitical goals, and manufacturing consent by hiding its real ambitions beneath a banner that most Americans will accept?

All this is so murky. People who profit from our ignorance don’t want us to know the truth.

But I’ve discovered some things that average people can do.

Fair Trade expresses faith and solidarity

One thing is buy Fair Trade coffee, chocolate, and crafts. The Free Trade agreements impoverish the farmers and workers who produce these goods while those who roast the coffee beans and sell it in North America make huge profits.

Fair Trade, on the other hand, assures that the producer—the small farmer—receives a little more and the goods are sold at less profit to the end of the line seller.

A Pound of Free Trade Coffee

 Farmer receives about 25 cents from buyer

 Coffee is Imported to the U.S. for about 61 cents

 Coffee is Roasted and Sold to the Coffee Company

 Your Retailer buys it from the Roaster and sells it for about $10.00

A Pound of Fair Trade Coffee

 Farmer Receives 90 cents from Cooperative

Cooperative Sells to Fair Trade Company for $1.26

Fair Trade Company Roasts Coffee and Sells it to you for $6.00

Source: SHARE Foundation here.

In memory of Romero and others martyred in El Salvador, Roman Catholics and others founded

the SHARE Foundation here

 helps accomplish the goals of the people to improve their lives: education for their children, food and peace.

Increasingly, consumers ask about the worker who produced the goods they are buying. Both Fair working conditions, wages, and sustainability are concerns.

Christ followers must take the lead in asking such questions.

Your Sunday morning coffee
can be Fair Trade coffee!

It seems to be a little thing. But in fact it is not. Check out Fair Trade facts here.

Solidarity

A beautiful word. We belong together. On the night of his arrest Christ prayed that God’s people might be One. What happens to the West Bank Palestinian who is barred from land that his ancestors have farmed for hundreds of years,  cocoa farmer in Africa, and the coffee farmer in El Salvador happens to me.

In 19th century England anti-slavery forces promoted the boycott of sugar because the working conditions of slaves on plantations in the West Indies were sub-human. William Wilberforce worked in Parliament for 26 years  to end slave trafficking in the British Empire.

How can we imagine that we might have stood with Wilberforce or Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi or Oscar Romero, when we won’t do such a small thing as find out about those who grow our coffee and act to assure them Fair Trade. 

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A Cannibal’s Hope

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Recently I had my big toenails removed, so I started the day daubing hydrogen peroxide on the wounds. Then, letting my toes air out, I brewed some coffee. I experimented, for 15 seconds on High nuking a square of Dove dark chocolate in a third of a cup of coffee. Then I read a few psalms, 11-14, and John 6, “I am the Bread of Life.”

I’ve divided my NT & Pss into sections: gospels, epistles, psalms, ps 119. Three or four times a day (ideally) I read first a psalm or two, then either a gospel or epistle chapter. Each time I finish ten psalms, I read a page of ps 119. (This system doesn’t do justice to the Hebrew Bible as a whole.)

To a degree I put my brain in neutral as I read. Trained in the critical method, I have all the tools for vivisecting the Word at the ready. But this isn’t that. This is simply soaking in the Word, letting words and phrases I’ve known all my life wash over me—being still that I might know.

I check on day’s events through msnbc.com, mostly, reading at random for a few minutes. What’s happening I don’t understand, unless it’s as simple as it seems: the Selfishness at the heart of Capitalism run amok. How else could you explain a man who thinks making $500 million reasonable while his company vanishes in debt?

Can you afford Hope in such a time?

Or do we now have proof that both Communism and Capitalism are unworkable economic models, and there isn’t a good one out there?

I’m not a good enough economist even to know how to ask the question.

Nor do I know enough about political science to know what to make of recent events. We’ve elected an eloquent, informed, idealistic man to be President. (Oh, yeah, and that other thing.)

Will we let him govern?

Or will we play the game so popular in Washington D.C.: in rare event something good occurs, take credit for it; spend most of your time and energy in negative mode, blaming everything on everybody else. The bibble babble of Democracy grinding to a sound byte, while Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee point fingers and say “‘Twas he.”

Or, amazing things may happen.

Maybe it’s the chocolate.

Maybe it’s eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Christ.

Maybe it’s Hope.

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Letter to an Invisible President

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

The invisible coffins of our honored war dead arriving at Dover AFB. The Pentagon banned photographs like this one.

Monday 3 November 2008

Dear George:

in a few hours, Americans will begin voting for your successor as President of the United States.  Actually, early voters have banked millions of votes already.

You are remarkably absent from the campaign.  From invincible to invisible in four short years!  You should give lessons. Or maybe Dick Cheney should.

As a fellow sinner, however, I cannot gloat.  But I hope you’ll reflect on your experience, and maybe learn something from it, although in office you have shown a remarkable inability to learn from your mistakes.

The first observation I’d make is that you took office, almost with a halo, a literal anointing by some Christian leaders to your position.  Mr. President, that’s scary.

I profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  By that careful choice of words, I mean to strip away historical accretions which have encrusted faith.

Your election represented the peak of political power exercised by the religious right.  Much of the country has rejected that viewpoint, not because people are not Christian or do not respect those who are Christians, but because the religious right smells bad.

It stinks of pride, looking down on others not so blessed as itself. It seeks to rule without consent of the governed, except the inner circle of the chosen few.

My prayer is that the new President will realize he must win the support of the approximately 50% of voters who didn’t vote for him.  You never bothered to do that.  To you and to your party everybody else was invisible.

The second observation I’d make is that being invisible has lots of advantages. It gives you a chance to recognize that you aren’t the center of the universe.

And, it gives you privacy in which to repent of your sins.  If that sounds harsh, Mr. President, I don’t mean it to be.  I have to repent of my sins many times a day. 

Now that you’re invisible, you won’t have the White House press corps dogging your every step.  So, if you have to backtrack, it’s no big deal.

When you’re invisible, you can actually be righteous, rather than simply appearing righteous all the time.   

My third observation is the last.  (Being a preacher, I’m used to three points and a poem.)

It’s hard not to blame you for the incredible mess we’re in:

  • The war in Iraq: you lied to get us in it (I’m not sure if that was on purpose or in ignorance);
  • you snubbed the other nations of the world with arrogance America will be paying for for a long time;
  • you abused the loyalty of our troops and have worn our military to sub-operational levels; the steady stream of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base is invisible, but the anguish  grieving hearts glares like a nuclear conflagration;
  • the US economy and world economies are in meltdown.

At least you got your vacations in every August.

It’s not all your fault, of course.  But some of it is.  Your job as President was to make things better for ordinary people and for the world. 

Mr. President, how do you think you did?

Sincerely,

John

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In America any child can grow up to be President!

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

In his endorsement of Barack Obama. General Colin Powell referred to Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a young American patriot, age 14 on September 11, 2001.

One in four people in Texas believe Barack Obama is a Muslim!

Barack Obama’s a Christian!

But!

A book I read that touched me deeply was The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He wrote that a turning point in his life came when, as a child, he told a teacher he’d like to become a lawyer. The teacher laughed and said, “Negroes can’t be lawyers!”

From that early disappointment followed years of wandering in dead end paths, until he became part of the Nation of Islam. Later, his religious experience broadened into mainstream Islam. When he went on the Hajj, and mingled with Muslims of every skin color, it was a transformational moment for him.

General Colin Powell’s comments endorsing Barack Obama included the observation that Obama isn’t a Muslim, but what if he were! Why shouldn’t any child born to American parents grow up thinking she or he could be President?

The earliest statement of the American dream I learned was, any boy can grow up to be President.

Fifty years ago I didn’t think about a girl growing up to be President. 

The 2008 election has caused us to examine our most deeply held ideals. Exactly who can claim the American dream as her or his own?

For me the American dream is not making a $100 billion. It’s all people having equal worth before the law and (for me) under God. All people having equal opportunity.

One of the holiest places on the planet for me is the Abraham Lincoln birthplace near Hodgenville, KY.

You can walk down to the spring where the Lincolns drew water. You go down into the earth which the water has hollowed out through the years. The boundary oak that marked the property line was still standing when I pastored at Rolling Fork Baptist Church near there. A short walk away in a climate controlled marble shrine stands the small one room log cabin where Lincoln was born.

I’m sure in my lifetime a woman will be President. Maybe an Hispanic man or woman. Even an openly gay man or a lesbian.

Soon members of Congress will take the oath of office, swearing on the Holy Qur’an. So who knows?

In America, any child can grow up to be President.

Maybe in my lifetime the time will come when we won’t use labels to divide or exclude, but to celebrate and enrich the vast mosaic that is America.

The 17th century Roger Williams is one of my heroes. He was, briefly, a Baptist, so Baptists claim him. But he found being Baptist a little too restrictive, and ended his life as a seeker.

With the best theological training he was qualified to pastor one of the fine churches of Boston. But he turned them down. He learned Indian languages and contended that the English had no right to take Indian lands.

He founded the colony of Rhode Island, where no religion was established, and all religions could be freely practiced. In the 17th century he spelled it out: that included ”Christians, Jews, Turks, and atheists.” 

At the end of his life, he built a trading post which provided financial security. But he used that money to finance a return to England and a renewal of the Rhode Island charter. Neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut would have liked to be rid of their troublesome neighbor.

A century later Rhode Island refused to ratify the constitution, without a guarantee of religious freedom. So the first amendment goes back to Roger Williams.

The Bible climaxes with this description of the heavenly Jerusalem:

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day–and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.

Rev 21:23-26 (NRSV)

To the extent that America celebrates the beauty of all colors, all cultures, all persons, it’s a little bit of heaven on earth.

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Before you cast an historic vote…

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

I seldom address politics, but in this once in a century moment, I’ll make an exception.

I literally want to talk to you about the election— talk since I’m dictating my comments.  Many readers agree with me politically but there may be some who do not.  It’s you that I want to speak to heart to heart. 

Honoring our troops

First, I want to mention our troops. Is Obama against our troops?  I don’t think so.  As General Colin Powell said, the war in Iraq began on the wrong assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  This proved to be false.  The war in Iraq has worn our brave forces nearly to the limit, has depleted our weapons and munitions to dangerously low levels, and costs us $10 billion a month, although the Iraqis are sitting on a surplus of oil revenues.

Obama wants to honor and conserve our forces and to focus on the war in Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda is.  He is not willing to shed one drop of American blood wrongfully. But, as a senior Pentagon official said at the outset, the Iraq campaign squandered our military resources in a cavalier fashion.

Divide and conquer with theological weapons

For several decades politicians in denominations and in the country have successfully used theological issues as weapons to divide and conquer the people of God. 

What’s important to understand is how good people have been manipulated.  Political operatives used your strong convictions virtually to coerce your decisions about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Republican Party, and the United States Congress and the Presidency.

The 2008 presidential election is not chiefly about unrelated theological or social issues that people feel strongly about.

Economic meltdown

The main issue is economic. 

Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the primary economic theory was to cut taxes, mainly for the very rich, who then would spend lavishly, money trickling down to everyone further down the pay scale.  While accusing Democrats of being “tax and spend liberals,” extreme right Republicans became “borrow and spend” puppets of big business.  In seven years the national debt doubled, from $5 trillion to $10 trillion! Before long, the United States could be another Enron, with costs like the war being off the books just as Enron’s major deficits were.

Another tenet of this philosophy is deregulation.  Self interest and the free market would supposedly assure fair play and honest dealing.  The economic meltdown last month proved this philosophy to be wrong; executives acted in self interest, giving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses while their companies collapsed. Reagan practiced “trust but verify” with regard to the Russians; he should have done so with his business tycoon buddies as well.

Obama’s plan means lower taxes for people making less than $250,000 a year.

We don’t live in a Jeffersonian world any more

In the age of Thomas Jefferson, governments were the biggest fish in the pond. Today, however, many governments are small by comparison with multinational corporations.  The Jeffersonian ideal of smaller and smaller government doesn’t work when larger sharks patrol the pool.  Without a strong government to exercise reasonable regulatory powers, huge business interests run rampant over the rest of society.

Powell: the constricting of the Repiblican Party

General Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was based partly on the Republican Party’s being hijacked by extreme right wing conservatives who use the cloak of religion to gain and keep power.  He said the party has become so narrow, he felt uncomfortable in it.

John McCain: honorable, impulsive and unsteady

John McCain has served with honor.  Throughout his service, however, he has been impulsive.  By choosing Sarah Palin, rather than Tom Ridge, for example, McCain illustrates the problem with his leadership.  By first canceling his campaign, flying to Washington, DC, failing to solve the economic meltdown, then resuming his campaign, he demonstrated an unsteadiness unsuited for the White House. At age 72 his future health is a concern.

A transformational figure: Barack Obama

Barack Obama can unite our country. In a once-in-a-century crisis (Greenspan), Obama remained calm, well-informed, and disciplined. He is, in the words of General Powell, “a transformational figure.”  I believe his service is rooted in a profound Christian faith.

Join me in voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.  Pass this post along to a few friends as well.

Let’s talk

I’d welcome the chance to discuss your views, even if they’re different. If you can change my opinion, fair enough.

(BTW, I only have a few readers as a matter of fact.  I appreciate you a lot.)

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One American Dream about to be realized

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

 Martin Luther King Jr. 28 August 1963

 The sad truth is, if the Democratic nominee for President this year were anybody white, the projected margin of victory in the polls might be 30+ points. But, Providence may be heavily weighted on the side of justice and equality. We may be about to elect a black man President.

Is a vote for Barack Obama a vote against our troops? No. It’s a vote against a war of choice, a war in which for the first time in its history America acted as the aggressor. Oh, you say to me, the situation in Iraq cried out for justice. Just as it does in a dozen countries in the Western hemisphere, which we have ignored for decades.

The military tradition of submitting to civilian authority, of serving with sacrifice and honor, still shines. But Gen. Colin Powell’s endorsement clearly weighs in against those who would continue to send Americans and their resources into a country that is about to cancel our status of forces agreement.

The great challenge now facing Obama is to govern. Sadly he will have to be twice as good as a white man to be accepted. Some will never accept him.

Churches need to pray for him. We need to step up in this time of crisis, providing social support to a population in turmoil, who have never been in desperate straits before.

This is a Matthew 25 moment. “Inasmuch as you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it to me.”

Churches can run support groups for the unemployed. They can operate food and clothing ministries. They can hire people for very nominal wages perhaps to run ministries.

Glenn Hinson wrote a study of how the early church evangelized the world. They did so through their charities. They simply out-loved everybody.

We need to do the same.

Electing a black man, as we’re about to do, please God, is not the same as allowing him to govern. It’s not protecting him from the nuts like Ashley Todd, only these have rifles. It’s not yet making good on America’s promise that here all are equal.

But it can be.

And moderate progressive Christians need to get off our duffs and do all in our power to make it happen.

 

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Willie Horton redivivus?

Friday, October 24th, 2008

In 1988 Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush used the image of black convicted felon Willie Horton to arouse the basest racial feelings of the country. We may be seeing a similar attempt unfolding.

THE FOLLOWING PROVED A HOAX BY PITTSBURGH POLICE! 2:41 PM 24 Oct 2008

In crucial swing state Pennsylvania, a McCain campaign worker from Texas Ashley Todd reported that she was held up by a 200 pound 6′4″ black man at an ATM. When he saw the McCain sticker on her car, he allegedly knocked her down and carved a backwards B in her face.

She delayed reporting this to the police, and refused medical attention. The wound is very shallow and is a mirror image, as if self-inflicted. Police have given her a lie detector test but have not released results. Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard said, “We’re looking at all angles.”

AP reports, “no police photo had been taken of the woman Wednesday, but by Thursday afternoon a purported picture of a woman with a “B” scratched into her cheek was circulating on the Internet.”

The NY Times, endorsing Obama today, wrote: “Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism.” There is no solid proof as yet that this is a political maneuver, however.

It has only been 80 years since black men were being lynched in the United States. Virulent racial hatreds can be easily stoked up. But the fires of hate will burn all that we love about this country.

Lord God, you endured campaigns of lies and hatred. You were dismissed by the powerful of your day because you came from the back country of Nazareth and there were rumors about your father. O Lord, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama is the messiah. I pray that the man of your choosing will be elected. (If you want my advice, I’ll be glad to give it. —Maybe not!) I pray, Lord, you who love all people equally, that you would lead us past the ugly scars and wounds of racism past and present. Hear the frank confession of white privilege that I have enjoyed. Help us treat all persons with equal love. And Lord, if this is a hoax, have mercy on those who stooped to this level. May it be exposed as such before the election. Lead us into the light. Amen

 PROVED A HOAX BY PITTSBURGH POLICE! 2:41 PM 24 Oct 2008

 

 

 

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