What is the matter with Kansas?

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all-what then would life be but despair? If such were the case, if there were no sacred bond which united mankind, if one generation arose after another like the leafage in the forest, if the one generation replaced the other like the song of birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as the ship goes through the sea, like the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless activity, if an eternal oblivion were always lurking hungrily for its prey and there was no power strong enough to wrest it from its maw-how empty then and comfortless life would be! Johannes de Silentio (Søren Kierkegaard), Fear and Trembling, tr. WalterLowrie, Princeton University Press, 1954)

I found the following letter via Holden, at First Draft (an excellent source for information and writing, by the way; and yes, "Lawrence" is Lawrence, Kansas):

To the editor:

My wife and I, both veterans of the U.S. military, found out the truth about Republican support for veterans at Ann Coulter's lecture last Tuesday. After I, a former Marine infantry sergeant, asked Coulter how she defended her promotion of the war, based on lies, which has sent 1,500 of my brothers and sisters to their deaths and 100,000 Iraqis to their graves, she responded that, "you're even stupider than I thought." This received an abundance of applause from the party that claims to "support our troops."

At the same moment, several Republicans hurled obscenities at my wife, a Navy veteran, and one threatened her with physical violence, stating he would kick her in the head if she didn't "shut up," when she was asking Coulter a question. The Republican Party claims to "support the troops," but who qualifies as a "troop"? Is the "troop" label only legit when we agree with the Republican stance, even if that "troop" has served in uniform bravely and selflessly for four years?

This is the manner in which the Republican Party treats its veterans that disagree with them. They threaten them with violence and call them names like "stupid," "f-ing bitch," or "idiot," all of which were hurled at my wife and I at Coulter's talk, despite our service to this nation. Ask yourselves this question, Lawrence: Why do you think they need to attack free-thinking veterans?

Chris White,

Lawrence

I keep thinking I don't need to mention the issue of boundaries, and how it affects our lives; mention it except in the largest, most metaphysical sense, like defining the boundaries of mortal life (the twin mysteries of birth and death) or the boundaries of our understanding (how does temporal humanity understand eternal God?). But I've been thinking about it so long I don't notice it in smaller contexts; things like this make me reappraise that knowledge.

This is an identity issue, and all identity issues are boundary issues. When Derrida speaks of the mysterium tremendum that shakes you to the core of your existence, I think of that in the context of a church, a congregation: a group of strangers called together for comfort and community by that which commands them and disturbs them and comforts them most. But that terror strikes, not from God, but from our own psyches, our own makeup. Called to be in community, we create communities without God and without understanding, and the mysterium that makes us tremble them is not tremendum, but is no less terrifying: what if everybody here is not like me? What then?

In small communities, this can be a problem; or it can be overridden. I don't mean to be exhaustive on the subject, but Romanticism was in part a response to the Industrial Revolution, which was a social revolution as well: uprooting communities, changing forever the notion of human labor (agriculture follows the seasons, working when the crops need planting, are growing, need harvesting, and then lying fallow even as animals and plants must rest and lie fallow. The machine never rests, and demands a caretaker more attentive than any commanded by animal husbandry). The other end of that revolution is people living no longer in any sense of community except the connections they have intellectually: agreement on politics, and religion, and commonality of purpose in labor. This is especially true in America, where the ligaments and tendons that join the body politic are always more ideal than real, more honored in the breach than binding on the body social. Eliot was right: we now live dispersed on ribbon roads, and no man knows his neighbor.

And we can't stand that, so we manufacture conformity and community, and insist that everyone agree and believe because just one non-believer might mean the house of cards would fall down. It sounds terribly harsh put that way, but how else explain the reactions described in this letter. This crowd is afraid down to its very soul that difference will dissolve agreement, and questions will undo compliance, and before long the fiction of society will collapse and the horror they are sure awaits them in strange places, places that are not Lawrence, Kansas, that are not "home," will overwhelm them: and all will be lost.

This is the America Bush has manufactured, in large part. Tapping into our latent fear of the other, a fear closer to the surface in a country where everyone is "other," where we are united only by an idea, and one we must hew to closely and loudly if we aren't to question our unity at all, to question who we are. Because that is the issue.

Perhaps, if I were philosophically inclined, I would blame this state of affairs on the collapse of Romanticism, that last bulwark of meaning meant to shore up psyches battered by the Industrial Revolution and what it wrought. But it seems to me that Johannes de Silentio was prescient, and what he feared has come to pass, and now Americans (or is it once again?) see themselves merely as leafage in the forest, passing through the world as a ship passes through the sea. We seem to all be fixated on the image of the bird flying through the castle from window to window, spending only the time it takes to cross the room on wing in a place we know, coming from the unknown back into the unknown. And we are the bird; and we are terrified of our ignorance. More and more, to shift metaphors one more time, we are living like the ignorant armies clashing by night on the darkling plain.

And all in the name of a man who claims to have been chosen by God to lead us. If ever there were a more complete lesson in American history on the perils of ignorance, I don't know it.

"When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean..."Humpty Dumpty to Alice

Admittedly, this one is personal.

Got into a "discussion" in the comments thread at Eschaton yesterday about the "full faith and credit of the United States" with someone who claimed it mattered not a bean what Bush said about the Social Security trust fund, since that money was owed to the government by the government, and so it could repay whenever it wanted to, on whatever terms it chose, unlike bonds held by foreign investors.

Well, of course, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And making such hairline distinctions has nothing to do with reality. As witness the New York Times editorial this morning:

Imagine this: On his next trip to Japan, President Bush visits the vault at the Bank of Japan, where that country's $712 billion in United States government bonds is stored. There, as the cameras roll, he announces that the bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, are, in fact, worthless i.o.u.'s. He does the same thing when he visits China and so on around the world, until he has personally repudiated the entire $2 trillion of United States debt held by foreigners.

Mr. Bush rehearsed just that act on Tuesday, when he visited the office of the federal Bureau of Public Debt in Parkersburg, W.Va. He posed next to a file cabinet that holds the $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities that make up the Social Security trust fund. He tossed off a comment to the effect that the bonds were not "real assets." Later, in a speech at a nearby university, he said: "There is no trust fund. Just i.o.u.'s that I saw firsthand."
...

Fortunately, the governments, institutions and individuals who hold United States debt can tell a publicity stunt from a policy statement. Still, casting aspersions on a basic obligation of the United States government is insulting and irresponsible.

That sums it up pretty nicely, I think.

"Stand Your Ground"

Well, now in Texas we can say: "Thank God for Florida!"

A law letting people in Florida kill in self-defence on the street without first trying to flee an attacker has been passed by Florida politicians.
Florida law already allows people to shoot a potential attacker in their home, place of work or car.

But until now, courts insisted that anyone confronted in a public place should first try to run away.

Texas has a concealed handgun which does not automatically ban such weapons in churches (the church has to put up a sign to that effect, to keep them out). Now one might conclude that any congregation member who felt threatened by a sermon would have a defense in court to charges of manslaughter.

Not really, of course; but in practice just how many whites will be prosecuted or convicted for shooting someone, if they say they were fending off an attack, especially if they shoot a black or an Hispanic? And how many blacks and Hispanics will be afforded that defense, or have a jury which considers it exculpatory?

And, of course, there's the "Student's Bill of Rights" in Florida. I heard the sponsor of that bill on Democracy Now! this morning. Apparently he was treated rudely by an anthropology professor in college, so now he's going to legislate that all professors be polite to their most willfully ignorant students.

All I can say is: it takes a lot to make the Texas Legislature look calm and rational. Thank you, Florida, for showing the way.

"I can connect/Nothing with nothing...."

The picture of the Knight of Faith Johannes de Silentio presents in Fear and Trembling is often related to the experience of Christian mystics who find that total immersion in the Godhead leads not to an otherworldly contemplation of perfection (a la Plato's telos of the soul: to venerate the Good and remain in its presence forever, because any movement away from the good is a movement away from perfection and so toward imperfection; an incomprehensible movement to Plato's Hellenistic mind), but to deeper relationship with the world, like Thomas Merton's famous experience on the street corner in Louisville, Kentucky (one of my favorite cities; someone someday may declare that corner "holy ground.") This experience not only undermines the Platonism inherent in Christian doctrine, but undergirds left rev.'s point here:

My take on Bonhoeffer's speculation in the context of SKs Knight of Faith is that although one lives in such a way as to seem divorced from the ultimate, in the sense that one does not focus on it, nevertheless, the ultimate will only be known in and through the act of living in the penultimate, a task the KoF addresses with joy and contentment.

But we are still stuck with the concepts of ultimate and penultimate, and I want to see if we can unstick ourselves from those.

The sense of that boundary, of course, goes back at least to Augustine. He didn't originate it, but he gave it its strongest argument, basing it as he did on his perception of the flesh as the obstacle to the soul's contemplation of God (the "ultimate," for Bonhoeffer; the telos of the soul for Plato). This is, in turn, no accident, as Augustine is in some ways the most "Platonic" of the Church Fathers, and Plato all but argues for complete asceticism in the Phaedo (a point often lost in drawing lessons from this dialogue is that without the body and the world, the soul can never recover the knowledge it needs to escape the wheel of reincarnation and ascend to the realm of the Good.) Perhaps that position was forced on him by his need to refute Manichee. No matter, because the question is: is the sense of boundary really so critical to our sense of God? Because focus on boundaries is what leads to exclusion, and exclusion is not the experience of the Christian mystics (whereas Plato's hypothesis of the contemplation of the good is not the experience of anyone since, like death itself, that is a bourne from which no traveller returns.). The mystical experience is that focus on God eradicates boundaries, much as it did for Merton on that street corner. So, while taking up Plato's Hellenism within Christian theology, we have reason to lay it down again almost immediately.

The Knight of Faith does seem to live in the penultimate, in anticipation of the ultimate, but the problem is the Knight of Faith does something quite impossible for the rest of us: he relinquishes despair by grasping completely the thorn of despair. He yields completely the notion of grasping the ultimate, and thereby, paradoxically, grasps it. Except he doesn't, of course. That's the purpose of de Silentio's meditation of the akedeh of Abraham. The individual grasps eternity; but eternity is the one thing we cannot grasp at all.

Abraham sacrifices Isaac fully, says de Silentio. He lets go of Isaac before the knife comes down. If not for the angel stopping his hand, Isaac's life would be taken from him. Isaac is bound following the ritual for binding a sacrificial animal, the akedeh. Isaac's life is already offered to God before Abraham can raise the knife. All that is left is to complete the deed, and only in that is he stopped. God, as was said to Jeremiah, tests the heart to find out what is in it. In Abraham's heart, Isaac is gone. How does he ever get his son back?

That's the question of the teleological suspension of the ethical, the context in which the entire discussion of Fear and Trembling takes place. And that very issue, the issue of the effect of the ultimate (in Tillich's sense of ultimate concern, or source of being) being known in human existence, is the mysterium tremendum that shakes an individual to her very core, and which never stops shaking it. Do we ever, in other words, reach a stage of harmony with such a condition? Or are we left in the state of fear, and trembling?

The philosophical character, de Silentio, is pursuing that question from the outside, looking in. He describes the ideal person who would represent the telos he is seeking. But that person is not a mystic, not a contemplative, not apparently more religious than anyone else, at all. That person is not even Abraham, because even Abraham was uprooted from his world by the call of God, and flung headlong into the unknown; flung into the unknown, in fact, over and over again. Even the connection between Abraham and the Knight of Faith is an ironic one. It is philosophy undermining reality, trying to reduce it to a system that can be contained and comprehended within a narrow sphere. One can never read Kierkegaard without being aware of his antipathy for the systematizing of Hegel, and his awareness of the corrosive irony of Socrates (an acid which ultimately destroys all and leaves not even itself behind).

This doesn't quite get us to left rev.'s point (you will have noticed), that we only know the ultimate through living in the penultimate. But we're at least slouching toward that goal. In the meantime, we have another question from the left rev. to answer: "If we had no eschatology, would we have need of a soteriology?" So, unless we are distracted again, that's where we will go next.

We were talking/about the space between us all...

[n.b.--in the time since this was originally posted, obvious errors have been corrected (where they were spotted), and one italicized emendation made to move the emphasis away from the comments toward Bonhoeffer's ideas, which was the original intent. Further discussion of Bonhoeffer vis a vis S.K. is envisioned and encouraged.]

In comments below, left rev left this post card:

We want to know salvation; and we want to see it in this life.

In “The Penultimate” and “Preparing the Way,” Bonhoeffer is exploring the relationship between the ultimate, i.e. the Kingdom of God, and the penultimate, or the condition humanity finds itself in prior to being a part of the Kingdom of God. Within this question of eschatology is the concern of the responsibility of the Christian individual in the context of the penultimate, and the impact the ultimate may have on this responsibility.

Essentially, the ultimate is irrelevant in day to day dealings. The reality of the Church is the reality of its context in the world, which serves to justify the context of the world.

Of course, Bonhoeffer rejects both of these solutions as inadequate, although containing truth. The ultimate and the penultimate are not mutually exclusive but are in fact in existence together. The penultimate continues until such time as there is no context of a worldly reality. Yet into this reality there is an inbreaking of the Kingdom as living faith impacting the world around it.

The penultimate is actually defined by the ultimate. It is only through the knowledge and experience of the kingdom of God that Christians are aware of the time they are in as the penultimate. One must acknowledge the reality in which one dwells is not the ultimate; nevertheless, as we do not dwell in the ultimate yet, we must dwell in the penultimate to reach the ultimate. Justification by grace occurs within the context of penultimate. The penultimate prepares the way of the ultimate. I would refer to this as “almost realized eschatology.”

The Christian life straddles the reality of God and the reality of the world and participates in both. As the ultimate is known only by seeing it through the penultimate, the reality of God can only be known in the context of the world. However, a Christian’s actions in the penultimate should reflect the ultimate, and so prepare for the transformation of the reality of the world to become the reality of God. We know the kingdom through the context of God, but we know God, through the grace of God, in the context of the world.

In the emphasis of the penultimate as preparation for the ultimate, Bonhoeffer reflects the influence of Augustine’s teleological ethics that a Christian’s pursuit of a goal is carried out in the context of being in relationship with God. In a sense, the inner and outer conditions for receiving God's grace about which Bonhoeffer is concerned are reflective of the “true peace,” Augustine claims as the goal of Christian life. Specifically, the peace achieved in the penultimate is dependent upon seeing it within the context of the ultimate.

According to Bonhoeffer, a Christian acts in such a way as to prepare for the ultimate “for the love of Christ.” (266) This motivation implies an acceptance of the responsibility to respond to the commandment of loving your neighbor.

Certainly, there is an implication in Bonhoeffer that the common good and the eternal destiny are in someway connected in ultimate’s relationship to the penultimate and our relationships within the penultimate.

My take on Bonhoeffer's speculation in the context of SKs Knight of Faith is that although one lives in such a way as to seem divorced from the ultimate, in the sense that one does not focus on it, nevertheless, the ultimate will only be known in and through the act of living in the penultimate, a task the KoF addresses with joy and contentment.

In the picture of the KoF prsented in your post, there seems to be an abundance of material and physical complacency, but this does not correspond to a spiritual complacency. Indeed, his every act seems to stress an awareness and happiness with what goes on around him. Perhaps for SK, the KoF is risible in his lack of awareness of the ultimate, and Bonhoffer would probably agree that he does display this trait. Nevertheless, the embracing of the penultimate is imperative to attaining the ultimate. The KoF is as likely to do so as is the secluded ascthetic, for one can focus on God in one's heart, or in the faces of others, and both arrive in the Holy presence.
left rev., Jolly Menace

First: there is a direct line from Augustine through Luther (who was an Augustinian monk, until he decided on grace through faith) to Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer (both Lutheran pastors).

Second: there's something interestingly Hellenistic (nay, almost Zeno-like) about the concern with the penultimate that must be prior to the ultimate. This intrigues me, but I can do no more than point it out, here, and dash on. Like Josh Marshall, I'll get back to that. (Yeah, right!)

Have to tread carefully here, as left rev. has shifted us from soteriology to eschatology, and Bonhoeffer works from the assumption that the kingdom of God is adventus, but not yet present. My eschatological kerygma, on the other hand (well, as opposed to Bonhoeffer's, which probably derives from Barth's) is that the basiliea tou theou is present now, and needs only to be realized. I'm not sure where S.K. would stand on that, though I suspect he'd be more sympathetic to Bonhoeffer than to me. But I'm going to try to hold on to left rev.'s point (and if I don't, may I be corrected), and yet move us back to soteriology (salvation; apologies for lapsing into jargon).

Let's start at the beginning: is the ultimate irrelevant in the context of day to day living? Well, depends on which "ultimate" is "ultimate." I would not place it on eschatology, but on soteriology. That shifts the ultimate from the "end times" to the "here and now," which replaces the concern with apocalypse with concern over the mysterium tremendums. Fear and trembling takes on it's soteriological orientation, not just its survivalistic one.

Okay, we've gotten that far. Let's see what else we can do.

"According to Bonhoeffer, a Christian acts in such a way as to prepare for the ultimate “for the love of Christ.” (266) This motivation implies an acceptance of the responsibility to respond to the commandment of loving your neighbor." But is "the love of Christ" separable from "loving your neighhor"? I don't ask that lightly, because this takes us back to the very Hellenestic (Zeno-like) distinction between "penultimate" and "ultimate." Is love of neighbor separable from love of God? Can I express one, without expressing the other? If so, what would that look like? I'm sure some distinction could be drawn, but is that distinction ultimately meaningful? Let me give an example: I had a neighbor once who was the epitome of Christian charity and love of neighbor, the absolute poster child for the concept; except (here's where the needle scratches across the record) he was an avowed atheist. The difference between him and a "knight of faith" was only in his profession of faith. But is that enough? If it is, then I can judge people based on their profession of faith. And yet even God tells Jeremiah: "I, God, test the heart" to learn what is in it, and Jesus says it is what comes out of a man that matters. If Luther couldn't know what was in his heart (that crisis of doubt led to his doctrine of justification by faith), how can I know what is in my neighbor's heart? Maybe he doesn't know himself! Maybe God is working through him, despite his lack of belief. Who am I to judge, except by what he does?

At this point this starts to sound like a meticulous take-down of "left rev.," and that's not the point at all. It has more to do with what I take to be Kierkegaard's point: why do we focus on the "ultimate" at all? In the case of the Knight of Faith, when we know it, what do we know? That the boundary is not so far from us after all? Why do we press to know what is at the boundaries? What do we hope to find there?

Which actually helps us pursue the discussion about soteriology.

Understanding Seeking Faith

We want to know salvation; and we want to see it in this life. We want a picture of it, an image, something we can attain, or strive for. Saints have commonly been used for such pictures. The lives of the blessed, some mutilated, some whole, still serve as icons for much of the Christian world, both Roman Catholic and Orthodox. But Protestantism eschewed such images; and still, people want some model for their lives. Enter Soren Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith."

Kierkegaard was a seminary student; he died before he could take a church in the Danish Lutheran Church. As a student in the Lutheran church, he was also a student of the teachings of Augustine (Luther himself was an Augustinian monk). It was Augustine who taught the Western world to consider the lessons one life might hold; it was Luther who taught the Western world that the lessons learned by one person in a crisis of faith (much like Augustine), might change the great institutions, even the direction, of the world. Surely those would be models for the kind of salvation we would expect to be at work, to come from the Creator of the world.

Salvation, however, has never been as central to Christianity as many church goers and non-theologians have thought. Salvation tends to turn the mind toward the life to come, rather than the life to be lead here. has been a vexing issue for Christians for millenia. But it has seldom been the "only" issue. St. Augustine is usually the one blamed or credited (depending) with the teaching that we must turn from the world in order to turn toward God, and on this hangs our salvation. But Augustine's Confessions is not really concerned with the afterlife, so much as with how one lives this life. Luther centuries later (and, not coincidentally, an Augustinian monk) would have the same concerns. Never one to turn down a good beer or a good time, Luther reportedly reformed not just the church, but the church hymns, declaring "Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?", and bringing songs from the beer-hall to the sanctuary, where people could actually enjoy singing to God.

But it was Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran seminary graduate, who gave us the best picture of what salvation in this life would look like. And, like the parables of Jesus, Kierkegaard presented it as a dark joke.

Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" is usually misinterpreted as either representing S.K. himself, or representing what a "true saint" should look like. The error begins with ignoring the proprietary rights of the pseudonym. S.K. wrote many books on theology and philosophy of religion, and virtually invented phenomenonlogy and Christian existentialism; but he did most of it in voices not his own, and in opinions not his own, either. The reasons for the pseudonyms are a study in themselves, but S.K. was quite clear in his Journals that the pseudonymous writings were meant to bring the reader to a confrontation for herself, and not based on any supposed authority of the writer. Indeed, Kierkegaard's work is divided between the philosophical writings (pseudonymous works) and religious writings ("edifying discourses," published under S.K.'s name). So Fear and Trembling, where the Knight of Faith makes his one appearance in all S.K.'s work, is attributed to the obvious pseudonym "Johannes de Silentio" (John the Silent). It is not Kierkegaard's representation at all; and it is not, in fact, even a presentation of what S.K. looks upon with approval. The pseudonymous works are almost secular in output. If theology is "faith seeking understanding," then the pseudonymous works can be understood (admittedly in shorthand) as "understanding seeking faith." Part of what understanding wants to understand about faith, of course, is salvation. The Knight of Faith is an attempt to represent salvation in this life, to show what a "saved" person would look like. But in the context of the akedeh of Abraham, it is hardly the serene picture we could want it to be.

First, de Silentio frames the issue of salvation in terms of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, a sacrifice interrupted only by the angel of God. It is one of the most disturbing and horrific stories in the Bible, and is given the Hebrew name akedeh, which refers to the ritual binding of a sacrificial animal. That name keeps the focus where it belongs. But Abraham, the father of a great nation, the father of one, and only one, son, in his old age, is not the picture of salvation we might want to see. Because we consider salvation "good," and it is hard to reconcile Abraham's absolute trust in God, which he places even above the life of his own son, with anything "good." It is this kind of faith which leaves understanding in "fear and trembling" (the phrase itself comes from Paul's letter to the Philippians: "So you too, my friends, must be obedient, as always; even more, now that I am absent, than when I was with you. You must work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deeds, for his own chosen purpose." (Phil. 2:12-13, REB). This is what Jacques Derrida, in his study of Kierkegaard's most famous work, would label the mysterium tremendums, what the French phenomenologist would call the secret that makes you tremble, tremble at the level of your very existence, your being. Whole essays spring forth from these words in this context: the roots of Christian existentialism are here, as well as a modern Christian mysticism, even a post-modern Christian metaphysics. All in the service of understanding seeking faith, even as understanding itself must learn to live in service to that which is both absent and present at the same time: both immanent and transcendent.

But we were speaking of the Knight of Faith. This is how Kierkegaard describes him:

The moment I set eyes on him I instantly push him from me, I myself leap backwards, I clasp my hands and say half aloud, "Good Lord, is this the man? Is it really he? Why, he looks like a tax-collectorl" However, it is the man after all. I draw closer to him, watching his least movements to see whether there might not be visible a little heterogeneous fractional telegraphic message from the infinite, a glance, a look, a gesture, a note of sadness, a smile, which betrayed the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite. No!...he belongs entirely to the world, no Philistine more so. One can discover nothing of that aloof and superior nature whereby one recognizes the knight of the infinite. He takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things. He tends to his work. So when one looks at him one might suppose that he was a clerk who had lost his soul in an intricate system of bookkeeping, so precise is he. He takes a holiday on Sunday. He goes to church. No heavenly glance or any other token of the incommensurable betrays him; if one did not know him, it would be impossible to distinguish him from the rest of the congregation, for his healthy and vigorous hymn-singing proves at the most that he has a good chest. In the afternoon he walks to the forest. He takes delight in everything he sees, in the human swarm, in the new omnibuses,in the water of the Sound; when one meets him on the Beach Road one might suppose he was a shopkeeper taking his fling, that's just the way he disports himself, for he is not a poet, and I have sought in vain to detect in him the poetic incommensurability....He lounges at an open window and looks out on the square on which he lives; he is interested in everything that goes on, in a rat which slips under the curb, in the children's play, and this with the nonchalance of a girl of sixteen. And yet he is no genius, for in vain I have sought in him the incommensurability of genius. In the evening he smokes his pipe; to look at him one would swear that it was the grocer over the way vegetating in the twilight. He lives as carefree as a ne'er-do-well, and yet he buys up the acceptable time at the dearest price, for he does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd. (Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, tr. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1954, pp. 49-51)

It is a refined joke, this image. It is the ordinary person, the member of "Christendom" that S. Kierkegaard will rail against in one of the last published works of his life, the complacent middle class citizen perfectly at home in the world and in the church, discomfited by nothing. This is the salvation everyone seeks and, ironically, still the icon of salvation everyone refers to, over 150 years later, without really knowing what they are talking about. This is the knight of faith who is no knight and betrays no faith: and it is directly drawn from a Biblical root: the semeia, the signs, that are in John's gospel both the indication, and the misdirection, of the Anointed One. The quest for signs is a convoluted one.

"In the midst of life, we are in death"

I have no idea whether Mr. Cahill is right about the situation in the Catholic church, or not, but it doesn't seem likely that church would be immune to the forces working on the Protestant churches. In any case, his analysis is interesting on the point (as for his larger his point about the significance of John Paul II, I literally have no basis for an opinion).

The situation is dire. Anyone can walk into a Catholic church on a Sunday and see pews, once filled to bursting, now sparsely populated with gray heads. And there is no other solution for the church but to begin again, as if it were the church of the catacombs, an oddball minority sect in a world of casual cruelty and unbending empire that gathered adherents because it was so unlike the surrounding society.

Back then, the church called itself by the Greek word ekklesia, the word the Athenians used for their wide open assembly, the world's first participatory democracy. (The Apostle Peter, to whom the Vatican awards the title of first pope, was one of many leaders in the primitive church, as far from an absolute monarch as could be, a man whose most salient characteristic was his frequent and humble confession that he was wrong.) In using ekklesia to describe their church, the early Christians meant to emphasize that their society within a society acted not out of political power but only out of the power of love, love for all as equal children of God. But they went much further than the Athenians, for they permitted no restrictions on participation: no citizens and noncitizens, no Greeks and non-Greeks, no patriarchs and submissive females. For, as St. Paul put it repeatedly, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus."

Churches, of course, are not immune to the culture they find themselves in. Churches are thriving in Africa and Latin America, even as their counterparts wither in Europe and North America. The reasons for this are complex, and not to be reduced to simple statements. However, Mr. Cahill is right: the church in Europe, in North America, must become the church of the marginalized again. Not necessarily the church of the catacombs that is oppressed by society, but the church of those society regards as dead-in-life. "Catacombs" has become a metaphor for the church-in-hiding. It should become the symbol for those who are "invisible," whose deaths, as well as lives, mean nothing to the rest of the world.

The Living Among the Dead

One of the ongoing projects is to return several years worth of sermons to electronic, and therefore less spacious, form. Starting up that project again tonight, I began with this sermon. From Easter Sunday, 7 years ago. somehow, it seemed apt.

Text: Luke 24:1-12

"[O]n the first day of the week, at early dawn," the women went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared." But they found what they were not prepared for; the stone was rolled away from the tomb, and the tomb was empty. And while they wonder about this, "two men in dazzling clothes" suddenly appear beside them, and ask a logical, but illogical, question: "'Why do you look for the living among the dead?'"

It's a fair question. God says to Isaiah: "See, I am creating new heavens and a new earth! The past will no more be remembered nor will it ever come to mind." (Isaiah 65:17, REB) But the past is all we remember, and all that comes to our minds. God says "see," but we cannot see it; God says "Rejoice and be forever filled with delight at that I create," but we fall down on our faces in fear. And the angels have to ask us: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" The angels have to ask us: What are you afraid of?

Because we live among the dead. We fear them, but we prefer their certainty. We know who the dead are; we can't be so sure of the living. The dead are unchanging; the living can surprise us. They can surprise by not being where we expect them to be. They can surprise us as God can surprise us: by creating, in their living, a new heaven and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. But that kind of promise scares us. It takes away our certainty. Truth be told, the living scare us even more than the dead.

So the women fall down in the presence of the angels; and they are afraid because the open tomb means the living have been here, and not the dead. And the living are always unexpected; are always new. It is the new that is truly frightening.

But what are we afraid of? Why do we fear the new? Because the new is truly the unknown. But the new is also life; and God is the God of the living, not the dead. God is the God of life. And life is always unexpected: like an empty tomb. Like a new heaven and a new earth, and" the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind." What could be more unexpected than that?

And we are afraid of the unexpected. The women didn't expect angels; they expected a body they could perfume. Death brings rot and decay, but the dead don't care; the perfume is for the living. But this is a new thing: in a place of death, they find only the living. The riddle for samson was that, out of the eater would come something to eat. Like the honey from the carcass of the lion, a riddle is posed by the angel's question: how can the living come out of the place of the dead? What wondrous love is this? What do we make of it?

This is the foundation of our belief. This is where it all began. "If there is no resurrection of the dead," Paul says, "Christ has not been raised either. If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and vain, too, your faith." For "[i]f it is only in this life that we have hope in Christ, then we are more pitiable than all men." So this is our hope, our faith. this is our gospel, our good news, our salvation. But when we experience it, when we encounter it as something real in our lives, not just a story on a page, or something we hear on Easter morning, when we go to the old familiar tomb, the place of the burial of the dead, the place of yesterday that is all the past, the past comfortably interred and safely buried, when we go there expecting calm and quiet and the familiar body we just left three days ago, and instead find the place empty and the darkness dispersed by a brightly shining light and the silence broken by the noise of people talking to us about the living: why are we afraid?

We are afraid because it is too new. Because life is the greatest gift of all and so God promises to Isaiah: "No child will ever again die in infancy, no old man fail to live out his span of life." God promises that "He who dies at a hundred just a youth, and if he does not attain a hundred he is thought accursed." What wondrous love, indeed, that this should come to pass. We are afraid, because to claim this new life, to live in this new world, we now understand we first have to die. We have to let go of the past we cling to, in order to live in the new world God offers us.

The promises of God to Isaiah came after the death of Israel. They came during the Exile, when the glory of Jerusalem was just a memory, the reality of Jerusalem a smoking ruin, a city long abandoned. The people of Israel lived in captivity for two generations; they only knew of Jerusalem from what their parents, and their grandparents, had told them. They had to die to the past, to the relics of this world, in order to live in the new one. The death was forced on them.

Just as death was forced on Jesus. He didn't climb onto the cross, stretch out his arms, and relax. He was beaten, whipped, scourged, forced there. He was nailed up and hung high in the air. He had to die, to show us he was the way. This is the only way to the new heaven and the new earth. But still the angel's question challenges us: why do you look for the living among the dead?

The disciples have to release the past, in order to see the new future that has come. Peter has to go to the tomb and look for himself; hearing is not enough. Even then, he doesn't understand. He doesn't yet believe. The women see and hear, but do not yet believe. Because this is the first moment of the new heaven and the new earth, and unless they can forget the past, everything they know is wrong. You have to struggle against yourself, you have to learn again and again that everything you know is wrong; you have to work out your salvation with fear and trembling in a wholly new place: a place of a new heaven and a new earth, in a life that is as much like death as life can be. Because everything you knew was true, is proven untrue; and yesterday all the past, and yesterday is gone.

Can it be said more simply? No. Can it be understood quickly? No. When you go to the tomb, what do you see, what do you hear? What you expected to see? What you expected to hear? No. You hear strange new people speaking in strange new tones, and they ask strange and perplexing questions: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" But we do not look for the living here. What are you talking about? What wonder is this, that out of death's door can come new life? And immediately you begin to understand, that you no longer understand, that nothing you thought was finally true any longer has meaning in the world. You have taken your first step on the new heaven and the new earth, where life is the greatest gift of all.

You can't go on with your ordinary life, after this event. You can't go back to searching among the dead, because from now on, you are looking for the living. Yesterday is all the past. This is today. This is the day the Lord has made. God is God of the living; and the living change; the living surprise you; they don't stay put. Theydon't lay down in little tombs where you can keep them safely, and always know where they are, and always know what to expect. What are you afraid of? Losing the past? It is not lost; it is transformed; it is in God's hands. This is the new heaven and the new earth. This is the entirely new thing that God has promised. Can you not perceive it? Even now it breaks forth!

Let it be so. Amen.

Second thinking second thoughts

I have misstated, to a serious degree, the case of Protestantism and culture. This is to be expected, in part; blog postings are first drafts, at best, but (pace, my friends) that doesn’t make them more “real.” If anything, that makes them more subject to reality, and to correction.

A part of what Protestantism came to be about was mediation between humanity and God. In the Protestant view, the primary purpose of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church was to mediate between holy God and sinful humanity. But, according to the Protestant critique, especially from the Reformed side of Protestantism, this was the problem with the Roman Catholic church: that the Church had replaced Christ as the mediator. The “Reformation,” accordingly, sought to correct this error, and in doing so emphasized a lack of mediation; emphasized, in fact, that no mediator was required. But access to God is always mediated; that is not God’s requirement, but human choice. God spoke directly to Abraham, according to Genesis; and directly to Moses, according to Exodus. But when God appeared on Sinai to talk to Moses, in the sight of the people of Israel, the people were terrified. The theophany on the mountaintop: the thunder and lightning that signalled the Creator’s presence in the creation, was too much for them, and they hid in their tents. When Moses came down, they told him to ask God if God would speak to Moses alone, because just standing by watching what happened on top of the mountain was too much for them. From that time forward, Israel always relied on mediators between themselves and their God.

Ironically, this can be explained in terms of modern ethical theory. Looked at from the point of view of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential ethics, Israel chose for all humankind. In this case, however, that choice ‘stuck.’ We all, of course, in terms of Sartre’s ethics, make this choice: for ourselves, and for all humanity. Sartre meant it as a burden, but we have taken it as being relieved of a burden. Hiding in our tents, we don’t have to witness the awesome presence of God; we can rely on a mediator, an agent, a go-between. Even Protestantism doesn’t want to have God unmediated: otherwise one of the pillars of the community of believers is removed, and the institution is made even more vulnerable and fragile. On the other hand, knowledge of God is always mediated. Who among us has first hand knowledge of God? The Roman Catholic church mediated God, and shaped Western European culture. The Reformed churches of Protestantism let culture mediate God. The Protestant work ethic; the congregationally based institutions; the heavy reliance on the “priesthood of all believers.”

And now Western culture is no longer willing to provide that service.

The core problem is: faith is not a question of will. It is a matter of discipline, based upon calling. I remember, all too vaguely, an “X-Files” episode that stuck with me only because of the ending; and perhaps I imagined it, because I never saw it again. At the end of the story, somehow connected with the case of the week, Scully was talking to her priest, and he was telling her to entertain the idea that God was, perhaps, still speaking to people. Scully said that worried her even more than if God was silent, and the priest asked why. “what if God is speaking, and no one is listening?” Faith is a question of openness; but Protestantism (aside from Anglican traditions) never cultivated much sense of the mystical. Perhaps the Protestant work ethic made that impossible. In fact, one root of Wordsworth’s near-worship of nature is the absence of any mystical tradition in the Protestantism that made the Industrial Revolution both possible, and so devastating to human society.

But hearing God is not a question of will, of exertion of effort; it is a matter of openness, of being responsive to a calling that may be no more powerful than an inclination. Protestantism leaned on the crutch of will provided by the culture, which was all too happy to support the white pillared churches as symbols of community, stability, and tradition: until they no longer served that purpose, and newer, more enticing, and more remunerative opportunities came along. Now we don’t just live dispersed on ribbon roads, but on electronic highways: we live on a shattered glass crazed with paths leading to video games and cable channels and internet sites and books and magazines and radio stations and satellite radio, as well as TV…..

And if God is still talking, who has time, or feels the need, to listen? If God blesses our efforts and our efforts prove good because of God’s blessing, who needs God anymore? CD’s and DVD’s and computer games and cable channels provide all the distraction and comfort we could ask, and with no effort from us. Happy creatures that we are, who can awaken us to our misery?

The End of Christendom?

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour
Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere--T.S. Eliot

Eliot captured the post-war situation with astonishing prescience. The shift from close community to scattered was already underway by World War II. After that war it caught on in a newly prosperous America with a vengeance. And it dispersed not just communities, but families; which meant it dispersed churches.

It didn't seem so at first. Church attendance in America following World War II set record highs. The percentage of the population which attended church rose to levels literally never seen before in America. It's popularly considered that the levels simply went back up to what they had been in some near, or distant, past. But studies showed the church attendance was actually higher, and has never been remarkably high in America.

And now, as Juan Cole (who is, for my purposes, simply a convenient source for numbers on this) points out, the number of people who even consider themselves Christian in America, is on the decline. Far from being the dominant religion in society, Christianity is on the way to being marginalized. Although it is still a long way from that problem. Still, it is no longer a "Protestant" culture; and that is the issue.

Protestantism, far more than Roman Catholicism, depended on the culture for its identity. Luther's reforms caught the fancy of German princes feeling their power and a new sense of inependence. As Protestantism spread, it took on the aspects of the culture it spread too: "dour" Scots took to Calvinistic Presbyterianism, while Norwegians and Swedes took to Lutheranism. A broad brush view, to be sure, but the essentials of each culture shaped the church it took on and made its own. Thus we had "Christendom," as criticized by Soren Kierkegaard; where one is simply born into a church, and no spiritual, or indeed even religious, conviction seems necessary.

And it wasn't, because the culture held the church together. But when that culture changes, when the homogeneity of the neighborhood and the community is changed, what then? When not everyone goes to church at the same hour on Sunday morning, and some don't go to church at all, and children gain more and more independence, the culture tha buttressed the church is no longer able to hold things together.

Social Security made some of this change possible in our day; but even the concept of "teenager" played a role. Look back in literature, and try to find the idea of "teenagers" anywhere in, say, the 19th century. A period for huge novels of sweeping scope encompassing persons in all walks of life and all ages from birth to death; and yet where does one find the modern-day "teenager"? The first reference to it I can actually think of is J.R.R. Tolkien's Frodo Baggins, who is said to be in his "tweens." And that's from a mid-20th century fantasy tale. The idea was current enough, and prevalent enough, for Tolkien to include it, if only as a sly joke, but a distinctive age of development between childhood and adulthood, is a fairly recent phenomenon. And it brought with it a new sense of autonomy; one reinforced by the changes in technology Eliot identified as so crucial.

"Teenagers" became, in the 20th century, quasi-adults. They were expected to work outside the home, to hold jobs, perhaps even to drive, if not own, a car. And that made all the difference. The family unit that travelled together on Sunday morning, could suddenly split up; physically and socially, children could claim autonomy from their parents. So at one end, the pool to draw from began to shrink; at the other end, it began to grow. And the result was the younger members of the church felt less and less inclined to participate in the life of the church, a church which suddenly found it could not change with the culture. The church could not change, because it could not adjust as rapidly to the idea that "young people" should have a voice in church affairs. As the young grew more "rebellious," or simply independent, their parents grew less inclined to release any authority to them. With their new autonom, then, they just left. They abandoned church altogether.

And when they returned, often as adults with children, they returned to the church they had left as teenagers, with the same people still firmly in charge, because the generations started living longer and longer; and never gave up their reluctance to let go of church power. But the reluctance was not just a hunger for power; it was a sense of loss, too. The culture that had supported the Protestant church for so long, was gone. Gone were the blue laws that kept stores closed on Sunday; gone for were 40 hour work weeks that left spare time for church softball teams and Wednesday night activities, and leisurely Sunday afternoons. Gone, too, was the notion that church was important simply because it was important, or because of some social (or even religious, though rarely) duty. Gone from the world, but not necessarily from the church.

And so churches adapted: either they became "contemporary" in their worship, and tried to compete with the entertainment industry the Baby Boomers had grown up with (and made possible), or they withdrew into a shell of amber, preserving "the best" of their "traditions." Except those "traditions" were often the preferences and peculiarities of a particular congregation, until "We have always done it this way!" became the only reason for keeping the church open at all.

In other words, the churches segregated along generational lines, and the generations became almost incomprehensible to each other.

These are generalizations, of course, and broad ones at that; but this is why "mega-churches" are always Protestant, and always non-denominational (or at least very congregational, that most Protestant of Protestant church forms) de facto if not de jure. The "mega-church" is a perfect reflection of modern American culture: it is loud, it is popular, and it is aimed at an audience. It's another roadside attraction, promising not so much salvation as entertainment, not so much meaning as simply belonging. And thriving not so much on what it provides, as what it promises to provide: mega-churches rise and fall on personality (the man, invariably, in the pulpit), and advertising. One of the largest and most popular here in Houston (its pastor has a best-selling book out, no less), exhibits billboards which proclaim: "We Believe in You!" Which even a militant atheist has to admit, has precious little to do with Christianity. Yet this mega-church claims to be a Christian church. Clearly is it Christianity that is being marginalized; but from the outside, the mega-church resembles our collective vision of the Church Triumphant.

Which is what most Americans of a certain generation remember: the Church Triumphant, the world after WWII when all Americans attended the (Protestant) church of their choice. And as the culture changed, that church was supposed to remain in place. But it couldn't; its culture, was the world's culture. Inexorably, the two were drawn apart, until now, they are barely on speaking terms.

This is the fate of "Christendom," which is not necessarily the fate of the Church.

The Individual v. the Universal

The difference between law and ministry, is that law requires you to focus on the general in the specific; while ministry forces you to focus on the specific in the general. Not exactly deduction v. induction, but a question of which comes first: the person, or the principle?

Romanticism teaches us that the individual must triumph over the principle; but of course that way lies anarchy, and romanticism is not about anarchy. So the victory is often a pyhrric one; the individual triumphs by being conquered by principle (the universal), yet going down unbowed, unbroken, ultimately: undefeated, even in defeat. The problem with that scenario is, we tend to see every instance in every life as an instance of the conflict between two universal principles: the absolute autonomy of the individual, v. the absolute authority of the universal. Unstoppable force meet immovable object: which one prevails?

The Roman Catholic church has said, as a general principle, that while extraordinary measures are not ethically required in order to sustain life against the natural processes of death, food and water are not "extraordinary measures." The general principle is sound. Torture, after all, is an "extraordinary measure" in the arena of imprisonment and detention of persons by governments. When torture is more narrowly defined, it is an attempt to make the extraordinary, ordinary, by simply moving the goal posts. Food and water, like humane treatment and bans on torture, should not be subject to hair splitting over what crosses treatment crosses the threshold from inflicting pain to inflicting inordinate pain; or, what crosses the threshold from life-sustaining to mere life-support. But then the general principle runs up against the specific case. Or, as my torts professor used to say: change the facts, change the outcome.

As a lawyer, I learned not to judge another lawyer's case: how he or she handled it, the outcome, even (rarely), the questions of possible malpractice. Too many facts, too many variables, too many particulars. I knew from my own work that the bewildering forest of facts and thickets of law were an ever shifting maze, and I could not judge the maze another struggled with, unless I saw it just as she did. Indeed, I learned to use that maze to my advantage against my opponents, counting on them not to see what I saw, until I had achieved some victory. Never big ones, for me; but that is how the "game" is "played." But always, I had to hold up the system of law above even my client's interests. I had to objectively weigh their situation, the particularities of fact involved, against the system of the law; and always, the system prevailed. Ultimately, my clients had to yield to what the law allowed; they never got everything they wanted, if only because the law couldn't provide it, or in many cases, wouldn't provide it.

Ministry was the same; but different. In ministry the theological thicket offered security, reason, order imposed on a chaotic world. Except in ministry, the individual reigned supreme. They came to you seeking the order and rationality of the theological structure, but when they turned to you in the emergency room, having just been asked to make the decision of life or death for their loved one, and said: "What do I do, pastor?," the theological answer was not the one they wanted. They wanted the individual answer. And they didn't have time for the legal research, and the analysis, and the brief to come back from the library, comparing their case to thousands of others and looking for the best possible outcome considering the facts on the opposing side and the likely temperament of the judge. They wanted to know now: what do I do?

All ministry is about individuals.

Which brings us back to the Catholic church. It is easier, from a distance, to tell a priest or a pastor what he should do. The farther you are from the particular situation, the easier it is to say what theological or ecclesiological or doctrinal principle should prevail. Standing far removed from the maze, it is easy to point out the preferred path; which is the problem. Even from a distance, you know no more than the individuals involved; you see no clearly than they do, although distance and distortion make you think you are wiser than they.

It is a human condition, not a Roman Catholic one. In ministry, everyone thinks they know better than the pastor or the priest how the job should be done, whether they are as far away as the national office, and pontificating on the importance of social justice while ignoring the realities and peculiarities of the situation in any one congregation; or whether it is a church member, always ready to tell the pastor how to conduct her calling, all the while never anxious himself to take on any responsibility in the church. Reinhold Niebuhr told a story from his days as a minister in Detroit that illustrates the point. During a time of labor strife and layoffs at the automobile factories, Niebuhr delivered a blistering sermon in support of the unions and castigating management for its heartlessness. After the service, as he greeted his congregation, one man stopped to tell Niebuhr that he was in management for an automobile plant, and his life had been a living hell that week as he announced the layoffs to individuals, men he knew were supporting their families with that job. Every pastor can tell a similar story. When the universal runs up against the individual, which should prevail?

Per the teachings of the Catholic church, as conveyed from the Vatican through the news reports available, removing the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo was an improper act. Improper because it involved only the delivery of food and water, which are not, by doctrine, "extraordinary measures." Except, in this case, perhaps they were. Change the facts, change the outcome. In this particular case, Terri Schiavo had no swallow reflex; could not control her bowel movements; may have been aware of no more than "noxious stimuli." Required constant and extensive nursing care simply to sustain body functions. She was in need of more care than any human being ever needs, even inside the womb. She was absolutely unable to provide any care for herself, and every bit of it had to be provided for her, the most life-sustaining parts artificially. From a distance, it is easier to say that food and water are necessities, not extraordinary measures. In the particular, even that fundamental principle has to give way to the conditions that prevail for one individual. It was no accident a Roman Catholic priest gave Terri Schiavo last rites when the feeding tube was removed, and again when she was dying; or that a Mass will be said in her name. From a distance, it is easy to uphold the principle; but the individual must always be considered. We must be guided by our principles, not ruled by them. It is only in the stereotype of the Catholic church, or indeed of any church, that principles always trump people.

The same should be true in the "public eye." The Schindlers, the parents of Terri Schiavo and her brothers and sisters, are individuals faced with the universal: the universal of death, and of love for their family. They have thrust themselves into the public eye with their actions; but who are we to judge them? Who are we to know what they feel, what they have been through, what they think is right? To the extent their grief warps our political system, we have grounds to complain; but to complain about the response of the political system only, not about their grief. How they have behaved in public may be shameful; and it may not. It is not the way I would have behaved, but the matter is not my business. To the extent they try to make it my concern, try, as they now say they will, to change state law, it is my business, and I can take a position on it. But to the extent I judge their behavior and find it wanting, judge their motivations for their fight for their daughter, and find them different from my one, I should remain silent. The political system is open to them if I let it be; but the court system should always be open to them, as it should be to me. To the extent their family problem is a public matter, it is one only when it is political. For the rest, it is too easy for me to judge, from a distance; to weigh them and find them wanting. Life is, for Christians, about ministry; and ministry is about the individual. I am in no position to judge them. Grief is a wrenching thing; and while it is no excuse for wrenching society out of balance, it is not answered with confrontation. It should only be met with comfort, and consolation; or, at a minimum, understanding. The individual must be given room, and benefit, against the universal.

Try to remember...

Pie directed me to this, in comments at Eschaton.

From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

JIM LEHRER: What about Mark's point, also, the point of the commission that things are still not in very good shape in the intelligence community and makes you wonder about North Korea and Iran and other places?

RICH LOWRY: Absolutely. I mean, it's a serious worry. My biggest complaint when it comes to the Bush administration in this regard, it should have happened Sept. 12, 2001. It was clear we had a dire intelligence failure and instead they really dragged their feet on this thing.

But also -- sorry, Mark, one last thing. Intelligence is inherently an uncertain business and it's always going to be built to some extent on assumptions and in Iraq the assumption were much too aggressive. The next mistake, I guarantee you, will be that in exactly the opposite direction.

MARK SHIELDS: Two quick things: Defense intelligence agency relied in 100 separate reports on a man whom his own handlers called unreliable and insane, all right. Second, Jim, Zbigniew Brzezinski sat at this very table with you and told the story about Dean Acheson at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis going to Gen. DeGaulle, as an emissary from President Kennedy, and telling him about the Cuban missiles there and offering him photographic evidence, the president's eyes only, and Gen. DeGaulle said the word of the President of the United States is all that I need. I don't know if that would ever be the case again.

Bomb Squad

"If you see me running try to keep up."


(saw it on a T-Shirt this morning, and I just liked it.)

The next "Terri's Law"?

Terri Schiavo's ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family doesn't show up and turn the burial into a media spectacle, a member of the Schiavo family said Thursday.

"If Mike knew they would come in peace, he would have no problem with it," Scott Schiavo, Michael Schiavo's brother, said during an interview at his home.

After an autopsy, Michael Schiavo plans to have his wife's body cremated and her ashes brought to Pennsylvania, where she grew up. Scott Schiavo said the ashes would be buried in a plot left by an aunt and uncle, but the family does not plan on providing the specific location for the burial.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had fought for years to prevent her feeding tube from being removed, and they opposed cremation and wanted her buried in Florida.

This is an increasingly bizarre situation. Will there now be lawsuits over the custody of the corpse, and its disposition? No indication of that, of course, but given events, not an unreasonable speculation. And will Tom DeLay and Congress have to step in, asserting some Congressional privilege to decide who decides the disposition of a corpse? Is burial, perhaps, a part of the "culture of life?"

Well, if we're going to revisit the question of medical care, why not plunge on into the question of corpse disposal? I mean, as long as we're poking the wasp's nest....

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers...."

I came upon this in a very roundabout way, but it seems clear now: the GOP is going to declare war on the judiciary.

But don't take my opinion for it:

Republicans, many of whom led the charge to focus federal attention on Terri Schiavo (search), are vowing to hold the judiciary system responsible for rulings in the case that some believe were tantamount to murder.

We are all, by now, familiar with Tom DeLay's statement on the matter:

Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo’s friends in this time of deep sorrow.

Which some have interpreted as a call for violence, although not yours truly (having heard too much such language from too many "evangelical" pulpits here in the "belt-buckle of the Bible Belt"). But Sen. Ted Kennedy's response is commendable:

"I believed that the courts are the fairest forum to do what is right in this case. I intend to do all I can to see that any action Congress takes is constructive and free from partisan politics, and does not make a tragic situation worse by exploiting this terrible tragedy," said the senior senator from Massachusetts.

"Mr. DeLay's comments today were irresponsible and reprehensible. I'm not sure what Mr. DeLay meant when he said 'the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.' But at a time when emotions are running high, Mr. DeLay needs to make clear that he is not advocating violence against anyone ... it is time for mourning and healing not for more inflammatory rhetoric, and responsible national leaders should understand that and stop this exploitation."

But wait, there's more. On the issue of war between the branches, this is language I haven't heard since Earl Warren desegregated the nation's schools (which was a real social issue, not an invented one, as the death of Terri Schiavo is):

"The actions on the part of the Florida court and the U.S. Supreme Court are unconscionable. In California, Scott Peterson, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to death, yet his constitutional rights were upheld to ensure that he received due process and fair consideration in court. Terri Schiavo was given a death sentence, and passed away without the right to due process."

In a later conference call with reporters, Santorum said the courts had practiced nothing less than "judicial tyranny" in this case and took aim at those who say Congress overstepped its bounds.

"[This is] routinely done by the courts — deciding they are now a super-legislature," Santorum said. "I'm not sure if the press realizes how serious this conflict is between the branches of government and how gravely concerned members of Congress are with [the] kinds of judicial tyranny we've seen...."

"To suggest Congress has exceeded power shows you there are judges who simply ignore written law and substitute their own judgments."

Yes, the words of Sen. Rick Santorum.

The inmates are in charge of the asylum. Or at least, they think they are. Had it come to the question, there is no doubt in my mind every court would have agreed with Judge Birch, and held the "Schiavo law" unconstitutional. Likewise, Congress has no power under the Constitution to pass laws in the area of family law, which is what the Schiavo case involved. The doctrine of Congressional limitation where the Constitution is silent, and judicial review, goes back to Marbury v. Madison. That doctrine will not be uprooted without taking the Constitution with it.

But that doesn't mean they won't try. And Juan Cole is right: "It is about hierarchy, power and control. It is not about life."

Death of Heaven and life with Christ

I was writing a long post on the Schiavo matter just as the BBC announced Terri Schiavo has died.

Death with unction and with penance,
Death with joy and with forgiveness,
Death without horror or repulsion,
Death without fear or shrinking.

Dying the death of the saints,
Thy Healer of your soul by your side,
The death of peace and tranquility,
And grant to you a good day of burial.

The seven angels of the Holy Spirit
And two attendant angels
Be shielding you, and be this night the night
Till brightness and summer-tide shall come!

.........

Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,
To thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer;
Thou goest home this night to thy perpetual home,
To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow;
Sleep, thou beloved, in the Rock of the fold.

Sleep this night in the breast of thy Mother,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself soothes thee;
Sleep thou this night on the Virgin's arm,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself kisses thee.

The great sleep of Jesus, the surpassing sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of Jesus' wound, the sleep of Jesus' grief,
The young sleep of Jesus, the restoring sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of the kiss of Jesus of peace and of glory.

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven joys be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven slumbers be thine, beloved,
On the arm of the Jesus of blessings, the Christ of grace.

The shade of death lies upon thy face, beloved,
But the Jesus of grace has His hand round about thee;
In nearness to the Trinity farewell to thy pains,
Christ stands before thee and peace is in His mind.

Sleep, O sleep in the calm of all calm,
Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of guidance,
Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves;
Sleep, O beloved, in the Lord of life,
Sleep, O beloved, in the God of life!

"The time has come for a dispassionate discharge of duty"

The 11th Circuit has now denied the petition for rehearing (referenced in the post below) en banc, and while it did so without a majority opinion, the special concurring opinion is interesting if only for the stirring language used. Some excerpts:

BIRCH, Circuit Judge, specially concurring:

I concur in the denial of rehearing en banc in this case because any further action by our court or the district court, would be improper, as I explain below.

An axiom in the study of law is that "hard facts make bad law." The tragic events that have afflicted Mrs. Schiavo and that have been compounded by the resulting passionate inter-family struggle and media focus certainly qualify as "hard facts." And, while the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty.

A popular epithet directed by some members of society, including some members of Congress, toward the judiciary involves the denunciation of "activist judges." Generally, the defmition of an "activist judge" is one who decides the outcome of a controversy before him according to personal conviction, even one sincerely held, as opposed to the dictates of the law as constrained by legal precedent and, ultimately, our Constitution. In resolving the Schiavo controversy it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people-our Constitution.

...

Conclusion

The separation of powers implicit in our constitutional design was created ''to assure, as nearly as possible, that each branch of government would confine itself to its assigned responsibility." INS, 462 U.S. at 951, 103 S. Ct. at 2784. But when the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene. If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow. See New York 505 U.S. at 187, 112 S. Ct. at 2434. Accordingly, we must conscientiously guard the independence of our judiciary and safeguard the Constitution, even in the face of the unfathomable human tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo and her family and the recent events related to her plight which have troubled the consciences of many. Realizing this duty, I conclude that Pub. L. 109-3 is an unconstitutional infringement on core tenets underlying our constitutional system. Had Congress or the Florida legislature, in their legislative capacities, been able to constitutionally amend applicable law, we would have been constrained to apply that law. See Robertson v. Seattle Audobon SOC'y, 503 U.S. 429, 441, 112 S. Ct. 1407, 1414 (1992). By opting to pass Pub. L. 109-3 instead, however, Congress chose to overstep constitutional boundaries into the province of the Judiciary. Such an Act cannot be countenanced.

One other point, on the issue of 'evidence.' Court opinions can be good places for finding a summation of the facts that is clear, concise, and competent. Unfortunately, few reporters seem interested, or perhaps capable, of doing that much reading. In the other concurring opinion to this decision, two justices quote from Florida's Second District Court of Appeal, which, they note, "did carefully review the record and determined that the question the trial court decided:

was whether Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, not after a few weeks in a coma, but after ten years in a persistent vegetative state that has robbed her of most of her cerebrum and all but the most instinctive of neurological functions, with no hope of a medical cure but with sufficient money and strength of body to live indefinitely, would choose to continue the constant nursing care and the supporting tubes in hopes that a miracle would somehow recreate her missing brain tissue, or whether she would wish to permit a natural death process to take its course and for her family members and loved ones to be free to continue their lives. After due consideration we conclude that the trial judge had clear and convincing evidence to answer this question as he did.

And that, in the end, is what this legal case is about.

An Eye for an Eye....

Speaking of the Schindlers, James Wolcott has a post up that truly disturbs me. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like the rationale of extremism.

Wolcott's point is to critique the handling of this matter by the pundits, which criticism is fair enough. Pundits tend to be pack animals, and it is easier to sympathize with the patient and the parents fighting to keep her alive, than with the husband fighting to remove life support. Pundits, especially on television, simply don't handle nuance very well. But when Wolcott supports his argument by quoting Steve Gilliard's comments on the Schindlers, it moves into treacherous territory.

Not because the Schindlers are above reproach, but for a more fundamental reason, one connected to the very foundation of ethics: do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. A good idea when it is applied to you; not a good idea, when you turn it into a club with which to beat others.

Because the essence of what Gilliard says, is that the Schindlers don't deserve our sympathy, or our consideration, based on the way they have acted. They have, in other words, put themselves beyond the limited reach of our consideration, a consideration wholly bounded by: "What have you done for me, lately?" Or, more accurately: "What have you done to earn my respect lately?" To quote Wolcott quoting Gilliard: "Sayeth Steve Gilliard: 'You know I want to sympathize with them, but at every turn, they do something even sleazier and more revolting. They should have stopped the children from being arrested. That hurt them. Badly. Then Mary Schindler's creepy appeal tonight to "have her daughter". She was a married woman. Not her property. Now, the sale of the [online donor] list and the allegations of abuse...'"

These are not unfair criticisms. What is unfair, however, is using them as a basis for deciding who is, and who is not, deserving of ethical treatment, of consideration as human beings. It's a meme that gets repeated, around the internet if nowhere else, but it is one that has no place in ethical discourse, or an ethical society. The theme gets used a lot on "trolls," which usually comes to mean people who don't conform to the groupthink of the thread, as much as to people who simply want to disrupt a thread. But that's a small enough forum that its use can be excused, even if it can also be condmened. In the larger forum of the "blogosphere," different considerations should apply. Not just because it is an ethical question; but also because ignoring ethics cheapens the public discourse; and that discourse is already cheap enough, without further contributions.

The fundamental fairness of ethics is that all are treated equally, despite their individual behavior. If we replace that fundamental position with one of "And what have you done to earn my favor", well, it's not even a slippery slope any more: it's 90 degrees straight down to hell.

To be fair, of course, Steve Gilliard is free not to sympathize with the Schindlers if he chooses, and equally free to choose the basis for withdrawing his sympathy. Further, neither Mr. Gilliard nor Mr. Wolcott seems to be talking about ethics; they are concerned only with establishing the basis for their public sympathies, or lack thereof, in this case. But how we act, and why, are fundamentally ethical questions. And whenever we displace ethics with sympathy, morality with empathy, and begin to decide our actions and then justify them on the basis of what we simply feel, we start down the slippery slope toward a toothless and blind society.

It may be satisfying to take public potshots at such public (and publicly unpleasant) persons as the Schindlers. But it generates more heat than light, more sympathy for not thinking than for thinking clearly, and lowers the level of discourse all around. It may seem inconvenient to take ethics into account in such circumstances; but it is, at the very least, responsible.

"It ain't over 'til it's over"

The parents of Terri Schiavo have been granted a chance to petition the federal courts one last time. Ironically, they are using the very grounds Congress tried to exclude when it gave the Federal Courts jurisdiction:

The petition, submitted by Schindler attorney David Gibbs, said the federal judges who rejected previous efforts to have Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted violated a Supreme Court precedent that requires them to consider the full record of the case, not just procedural history from the state court.

The statute gave the Federal courts the power to review this matter de novo, meaning from the beginning. The clear intent was to force the Federal courts to start proceedings anew with new evidentiary hearings, hearings that would all but require that Terri Schiavo be kept alive until the matter could be fully adjudicated in a second court system. In this way, Congress clearly hoped to sidestep the criticism that it was giving the Federal courts "super-appellate" powers in this case alone. But the law did not give the Schindlers any new legal grounds on which to pursue their case, so they had to fall back on the state court proceedings.

And now, relying still on that law to give the federal courts jurisdiction, they are claiming that the Federal courts failed to fully review the state court proceedings. In other words, the courts have failed to act as a super-appellate court after all.

"The district court reviewed only the procedural history and the results of the litigation in the state court, not the evidence adduced in the state court proceedings," the petition said.

The attorney argued that he could prove to the federal court that "the 'evidence' supporting Terri's alleged wishes is not credible, and that a reasonable fact finder would hold -- under any standard of proof -- that her wishes were to the contrary."

In other words, the District court, like an appellate court, must consider the evidentiary record, and rule on its sufficiency. It must, contrary to Congressional intent (perhaps), act as if this were an appeal, not a trial de novo.

It's a desperate legal move, and how much of a hearing this will even get is a close question. What has happened so far is simply a procedural move by the Appellate Court. They've allowed the filing of the petition after the deadline. They haven't agreed to even hear the matter. But this shows just how warped out of shape the system can be when it is bent to suit the needs of one family, no matter what their situation is. Is this what Congress intended, foresaw, expected? It no longer matters: it is in the hands of the Court system now. Fortunately, they are wiser about their system than Congress has proven to be; but that means only that we have another safeguard, not that "the system worked." What Congress intended, clearly, was to bypass the system, just this one time. That their intent was blocked, so far, simply means the system was lucky.

Lucky for us, too.

Does this mean I can blame Social Security?

According to this really interesting story from NPR this morning, Social Security virtually invented retirement in this country.

The short version is that people didn’t earn enough in their lifetime to consider retiring and living on their savings, and most simply worked until they died. In the 1920’s, the idea began to take hold that something should be done to encourage 65 year olds to retire, to make room for young employees. This gave rise, slowly, to pension plans (to encourage retirement, partly because young employees were cheaper), and finally to Roosevelt’s Social Security plan (which was to serve the same purpose, but on a uniform, national level, and as a response to the unemployment of the Great Depression). FDR also saw it as a way to pump money into the economy by making retirees consumers with money to spend, rather than simply burdens on their children (which is what happened to those who lived long enough not to be able to work anymore).

Eventually this gave rise to a class of people with money to spend on travel, etc. (although, if memory serves, that actually burgeoned in the 70’s, and 80’s, or even later), and contributed to the notion that “old people” should be able to both live longer, and enjoy life “after work.” Which, in turn, supported geriatric medicine and research.

Which brings us to the state of the church in America, today. It is, in large measure, divided along generational lines. In Protestant churches in particular, this is both inevitable and unfortunate. But it has less to do with the aging population, than with the nature of Protestantism.

Hard to adequately encapsulate 2000 years of Christian church history into a paragraph or two, but essentially, modern scholarship understands that Christianity began as, and was intended as, a marginal movement; not one aimed at the power structure of society, but at those at the margins. Paul had less to do with the eventual shift than is widely imagined; it actually had much more to do with the conversion of Constantine (and the human desire to keep the whole business going by giving it some stability. The problem with the margins is that they are inherently unstable. But that’s a theological issue for another time.). When Constantine converted to Christianity, much of the state quickly followed; not out of a sudden conviction and conversion, but out of expediency. By the mid-19th century Søren Kierkegaard would condemn this as “Christendom,” a state in which people adopt Christian beliefs because of society, not because of personal conviction. But that gets ahead of the story.

As the church struggled to establish itself (and almost immediately abandon the radical egalitarian roots of the church described in Acts), it went through many changes, finally settling into one dominant Christian church in the West, the Roman Catholic church (I told you we’d be compressing like mad here). That church dominated Europe and didn’t have to worry much about conforming to the culture after a certain point, because ultimately it was the culture (I recognize I’m speaking very broadly here. Bear with me). The Protestant Reformation of Luther was fueled in large measure as a reaction to that culture, brought about by changes in European society as massive as the 19th century Industrial Revolution, and as sweeping. Luther meant only to reform the Catholic church, but what he proclaimed resonated with a culture ripe for new forms of church and worship, and Calvin and Zwingli, among others, soon championed whole new beginnings apart from any sense of “reformation” of the Church of Rome. It is that resonance with the culture of the time that most interests me here.

Protestantism began, in other words, as a cultural movement. The Roman church had long since established its institutional culture, and while the shift away from dominance was anything but clean and easy, it was eventually done. Protestantism, however, depended heavily on the culture for its own structure and identity. It was no accident that Calvin, for example, set out to enact the very “City of God” Augustine had merely envisioned as a pedagogical and evangelical argument. It is also no coincidence that Luther found so much support among the German princes. Without them, he would have died early and all but unnoticed. With them, he built a new church, as did Calvin; as did Zwingli; as did others. But those churches owed much to the cultures in which they arose. They did not shape them, so much as they were shaped by them.

And in the very nature of Protestantism, those new churches quickly shook off the idea of central control. Identity was formed, not by a hierarchy of priests and bishops, but by the “priesthood of all believers.” And those believers had definite ideas about what God wanted, based on what their particular culture valued. And, in large (and again, very broad) measure, the whole thing ran on wheels; until World War II.

I’ll have to leave it there, and return to this topic in the next post, a bit later on. Where this leads, eventually, is to why there is a "generation gap" among many of the Protestant churches. Sorry to leave you hanging, but these narrow columns are hard enough to read without jamming an essay’s worth of text into them.

Continuing Unscientific Postscript

Following up unexpectedly on the post below, a pastoral colleaque sends me an e-mail (he's been sending them through Lent, to a lot of people), that tells me that he "caught a promo of a news item" about "a candle maker who was selling scented candles with the essence or smell of Jesus." Obviously: "One can not help but wonder what smell he put into the candle that is from Jesus," and, as my colleaque points out: "it sounds--at least on the surface--that there is one more person trying to get rich off Jesus. It sounds as if one more person forgot the lesson of the money changers in the temple. Prayerfully, we won't be among those who ... forget."

There is always a bottom, and at the bottom, someone with a shovel.

"It's Money that Matters...."

I started this rant over at Eschaton, but realized it was something I wanted to say something about, even though it is very "inside baseball." It began with this, from Professor Wombat:

That's why docs tend to circle the wagons rather than welcome the outside world. It's sad, really. They isolate themselves. And that's not why the best of them went into medicine, and that's not what most people want in a doctor.

Sadly, this analysis is not limited to doctors. It has become a commonplace of caregivers (and perhaps this is where it can be universalized) that money is what matters in the relationship; that price and value and cost and expense, have come to rule everything in ways that are absolutely shredding some of the fabric of our society. In short, we really do put profits above people; and, as much as we deny it, we continue to do it.

I know from my own experience that Protestant ministers face the same pressures as doctors. As their congregations shrink, their denominations, through whatever judicatory they have, press the pastors for more money (which aging churches cannot produce, for obvious reasons). This presses the pastors, who feel they must "compete" for parishioners. This pressure comes not just from the judicatories, but from the congregation as well, and from the culture.

The "mega-church" is, everyone "knows," the new model for the institution of the church. It is the sign of the "new Reformation" that even the most traditional Protestants think we have to embrace if "church" is to survive. (I have a good friend who is wiser than this. A pastor since he graduated seminary, at the same time I took my first graduate degree, he knows the future of the church is in congregations, not in judicatories or "mega-churches." He counts the number of such churches he has seen rise and fall in his time in ministry; while the small churches he pastors continue year after year, decade after decade, and sometimes past the century mark). It is well known, at least among church professionals, that mega-churches lose as many members as they attract; that the reason they spend so much on billboards and TV ads and broadcast, is that they need the money coming in from fresh pockets to pay for the billboards and the TV ads and the broadcasts. It's a vicious circle, but a profitable one, at least for a few.

But I was speaking of the isolation of the pastor: faced with the decline of congregations, and the likelihood that her church is dominated by people of retirement age, such churches face a "generation gap," an idea society left behind in the '60's, but one the churches continue to struggle with. When Mom and Dad still want to dominate and control "their" church, their children tend to leave church, or find another church. The younger church may or may not thrive financially (the "builder" generation is known for its generosity; the "boomer" generation for its stinginess), but both lose a great deal from the division. Some pastors are permitted to straddle that divide; some are not. And still the judicatory wants the money.

And so pastors wind up isolated. Their "work" is measured more and more by how many programs they implement, how many members they visit in homes and hospitals, how often they are at church when the doors are opened. Time to work with pastoral colleagues is limited; and every pastor has her hands full with the needs, demands, worries, and pressures of her congregation. Which is not thriving; or is not thriving enough; or is thriving too much. One of the problems of modern society is the breakdown of community, a situation T.S Eliot identified in the 1920's (in the "Choruses from 'The Rock'"), so it isn't new. But with that breakdown, the pressure is on the church to provide "community" where neighborhoods and cities don't, any longer. And it is a burden that falls, more and more, on the pastor. Who must keep the institution alive, keep it thriving, or surely be blamed for its struggle.

Because the only model for church now, is the business model: new members = "success." Falling membership = "failure." Whether or not the members actually give money is not even important; whether or not they come to church is often not even important (too many new faces! too many new people!). In fact, if money is a problem, that's the pastors fault, too. Her "job" is to inspire the congregation to give. If they don't feel so moved, why should they feel responsible? Which further isolates the pastor, until he becomes a football coaches without a football teams (because everybody wants to sit in the stands, nobody wants to play the game; they'd all rather watch you play).

Sociologist describe this as a group phenomenon: it takes less energy to be a member of the Church of Belonging than to be a member of the Church of Meaning and Belonging. Being social creatures, belonging obviously pays easy dividends to us; but belonging only if we acquire meaning requires effort, and quickly becomes too much effort. Far easier to belong, than to mean.

So pastors go into ministry because of meaning; but find the institution is all about belonging. They go into ministry to be part of the world, and find out the congregation is only interested in preserving their own bell-jar world. These things are not always or wholly true, but they are true enough, and wide-spread enough to be accurate. And the pressure now, more and more, comes from money. Churches are always a reflection of their culture, and American culture is all about money, and not much about anything else. Why can't we care for our elderly and retired? Money? Why can't we provide adequate healthcare to all? Money? Why do politicians hold onto office for a lifetime? Money. Are churches about bearing witness to the good news and being places of comfort and community to anyone who enters? Or are they about money?

Some questions answer themselves.*


*no, it isn't this simple, and yes, concluding that way is satisfying, but a cheap shot; and yes, there are remedies. But the problem lies in the culture, not just in the institutions. Consider this an opening toward developing a further line of discussion.

Where have you gone, Elliot Ness?

It's a completely idle reflection, but I was thinking about the nature of corruption in government this morning. A BBC World Service report on some African (I think) country (I was driving, and half-listening), concluded with a statement that the people of the country were apparenlty "fed up" with the corruption in the government, and were voting to do something about it.

The word jumped out at me, broke my reverie, and I realized how casually "corruption" is connected with foreign governments (even the BBC does it!). But it is seldom mentioned in connection with "Western" governments: European, American, Australian. But Central American, South American, African, Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian? Why, it's practically welded to the word "government." But what is corruption?

Is warping the fabric of the constitutional system of government for the sake of one otherwise unknown woman and cheap political theater, corruption? Is illegally detaining thousands of persons in violation of all known laws, national, state, international, what-have-you, corruption? Is tacitly (if not actively) condoning torture and prisoner abuse, corruption? Is ignoring the clear ruling of the highest courts, corruption? Rigging elections, undermining the vote process, trampling international law and ignoring treaties; is that corruption?

When do we decide a government is "corrupt," and on what basis? Cronyism? What of Halliburton, then? Favoritism to constituents, however minor numerically or politically they are? The parents of Terri Schiavo. Turning government over wholesale to a handful of plutocrats? Social Security reform. Suspension of environmental regulations. Re-writing of environmental regulations.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

When is a government corrupt? Is it in the definition of "corruption"? Or in the eye of the beholder? Are "they" corrupt, while we merely have "partisanship," "disagreements about the course of government," "differing interpretations of what the law requires"?

Remember that "shining city on a hill"? It wasn't a symbol of corruption. But it's certainly a reflection of what we should be, and a measure of what we are.

Addendum: As I was saying.

Tsunami Warning: 03/28/05

from Washington Post:

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck late Monday off Indonesia's Sumatra Island in the Andaman Sea, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

....

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning that the quake could generate a "widely destructive tsunami" and urged authorities to take immediate action, including evaculation of coastal areas.

Prayer (from Carmina Gadelica)

Relieve Thou, O God, each one
In suffering on land or sea,
In grief or wounded or weeping,
And lead them to the house of Thy peace
This night.

I am weary, weak and cold,
I am weary of travelling land and sea,
I am weary of traversing moorland and billow,
Grant me peace in the nearness of Thy repose
This night.

Beloved Father of my God,
Accept the caring for my tears;
I would wish reconcilement with Thee,
Through the witness and the ransom
Of Thy Son;

To be resting with Jesus
In the dwelling of peace,
In the paradise of gentleness,
In the fairy-bower
Of mercy.