Il carnevale è finito

Can't we distill it one more time?

 Let me add this to what I said below:

"The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology," he said, according to Radio Vatican. "And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. "And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought... For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.' The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people," Francis added. "But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?"

I am not accusing Lucy Duncan of committing ideology; I'm thinking rather of her topic, of the abuse of Scripture; and ideology certainly plays a strong part there.  The basic ideology which is so abusive is the idea that Scripture is universal, is applicable to all and a solution for all things.  That is the "distilling" which the Pope speaks of; in my application, the reducing of Scripture to a thing, an object, even a weapon.

If it is, instead, the Word of God, it needs to be handled rather differently from other things.  And the first thing to do, is not to try to distill it.

Here's the thing

Brother, can you spare a paradigm? 

Start with the headline:

Study: Religious more likely to lie for financial gain 

Uh, no. Here's the first giveaway:

However, he discovered other factors predicted a greater likelihood of telling an untruth—including the assertion that religion plays an important role in your life. 

And here's the second:

 “We find that sex, age, grade point average, student debt, size of return, socioeconomic status, and average time spent in religious observation are not related to the decision to lie,” Childs writes in the journal Economics Letters.

And the third:

Those for whom religion was more important to their lives. “This is surprising,” Childs writes, as most religions “promote honesty as a virtue. It may be that students for whom religion was important feel separate from other students at this largely secular university,” and thus feel less compelled to be honest with them.

Or it may be the religion isn't that important in their lives, they just think they should say so.  Or it may be what's important in their lives is attending worship services and other church functions, but not really anything to do with being "religious" such as all that "virtuous" stuff.  Oh, except they're convinced they are virtuous, even when they aren't.  Ordinary Christians, in other words (it's harsh and excessive to call 'em "hypocrites."  Let he who is without sin....)

So at most what you have, assuming (perhaps wrongly!) that the majority of these self-identifying "religious" students who are slightly more likely to be dishonest about money probably think Paul said "the excessive love of money is the root of all evil."

Which is how it was taught to me, way back in Presbyterian Sunday School.  I also learned the "eye of the needle" that camel couldn't get through was a narrow gate into Jerusalem that a heavily loaded camel couldn't get through, so don't be so greedy, kid!*

I guess that means I'm prone to cheat in financial transactions, too.  Or maybe I would be, if I self-reported that "religion plays an important part" in my life.  In my experience, that phrase can cover anything form the life of a monk to a regular churchgoer who'd steal the pennies of a dead man's eyes, given the chance.

Takes all kinds, ya know.....


*Nope.  Jesus meant a sewing needle, though probably something far larger than we imagine today; still far too small for a camel to squeeze through.  Humor doesn't age well, or cross cultures all that readily.

"Shall we go?"

Of course you did, dear.

In Praise of Ursula LeGuin:

Let’s fire up the old ansible and send an interplanetary happy birthday to Ursula K. LeGuin on her 84th orbit. LeGuin is one of those science fiction/fantasy writers who gets to be called “literary”; her work actually shows up in college literature anthologies — usually the short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” a fable about moral complicity in injustice that college freshmen usually decide has to be about communism, but that I’d really like to try using in a class someday in conjunction with some reporting on where iPhones come from.

I've used "Omelas" this way for nearly 10 years now, on average once a semester or so (at least once a regular term, anyway).  I point out that the rare earth which makes cell phones work (unless the technology has changed that much since I read the NYT Magazine articles many years ago) is extracted from mud in the Congo, mud gathered by hand by women who carry it in baskets miles through the jungle to a collection point, for which they are paid pennies. Without the rare earth in that mud, however, their cellphones would be paperweights (buildings no longer have windows that open, nobody knows what the hell a paperweight is, so maybe my comparison is inapt), and the manufacturers who get rich off such phones would go out of business.  I make it quite clear their convenience rests on the misery of people in the "basement" of the world, yet we don't even admit they exist (which puts the people of Omelas one up on us).

And the reaction from the students is the same:  they still think Omelas is imaginary, and that they'd just walk away from it.

Recent submissions actually specified places they would go away from Omelas.  Oddly, the popular choice seemed to be mountains:  Colorado or the Ozarks of Tennessee.  Every one his (or her) own Jeremiah Johnson, I guess.

But never a clue about the interconnectedness of which Omelas is a parable, or how much we really are our brother's keeper, and what that really means.

Such, anyway, is the power of parables.

I learn most from that which I disagree with....

Still true.

NTodd sends me this, for which I thank him.  I want to be sympathetic to its thesis, but I can't help but have another in mind.

For one thing, there is an essential tension in the story of Abraham on Moria which this new version wants to remove.  Abraham heard two voices:  one human, one divine?  And that teaches us that:

Rev. Ateek said, “The Bible is not a seamless work, people who wrote it were living at different times, with different theologies. It is a spiritual enterprise, we have a conversation inside the text, it is multi-vocal.  Let us enter into the conversation; which are the true voices of God, which are the voices of tribalism, nationalism? No one comes to the text without their preconceptions. Our values are inclusivity; all God’s children are worthy of dignity and rights. That is going to affect how we read the text, we should be unabashed about that.” This way of reading the Bible struck me as very sympathetic with the central tenets of Quaker faith.

Well, scripture is a human product; it is for us, after all, not for God.  Rather like a funeral is for the living, not for the dead.  I'm always amused by people who tell me what they want at their funeral.  I refrain from reminding them they won't be there to make demands, and the funeral isn't for them, anyway.  They'll be long past caring.  Scripture, likewise, is for the living, and for the humans that read it.  But does that mean we can discern the "true voices of God" by turning the thorniest of Biblical passages into simple lessons from pop psychology (because the idea that an "abusive father" would lead one to be a cruel father is a rather simplistic one).  Likewise, I'm not entirely impressed with this assertion:

Rev. Ateek and Rabbi Rosen were modeling engaging in the kind of dialogue that can bring us closer to hearing that voice, a voice of truth that calls us to understand that we are one.

Yes, but one what?  One with my vision?  Or yours?  One with the Society of Friends?  Or the Southern Baptists?  Don't get me wrong, I'm not unalterably opposed to the concept.  The motto of the United Church of Christ, after all, is:  "That they may all be one."  But what unity are we talking about?

 The mindset or belief that only certain people are worthy of compassion and empathy underlies so much oppression in the world.

Yes, it does; and sadly, that is the thinking that usually unifies us.  Some people are deserving of our charity; but able bodied men, especially, never are.  Children?  To a degree, and depending on their age (and even more so on gender).  The elderly?  Again, to a degree, and depending on their health, their ability to take care of themselves.  Gone are the days when "elderly" equates with "infirm, invalid, incapacitated."  I expect to see our charitable impulse toward the elderly change as more and more people look less and less "old".  It's funny to watch episodes of "The Twilight Zone" from the '60's when the "elderly" are portrayed as grey and lined and tired, at the age of 60.  Perhaps that was a true reflection of "old age" 50 years ago, but it isn't anymore.  We are already beginning to rethink "elderly" and we may seek a new unity on just who we mean by such adjectives.

I'm all for a dialogue that can bring us closer to hearing the voice of God.  But I won't engage a dialogue that starts with gutting the concept of God and replacing it with a simplistic model of "love and compassion," a model that doesn't recognize the awful (as in full of awe, the original meaning of the word) strangeness of the compassion of God, and doesn't take the story of Abraham and Isaac as central to the fact that our relationship to God is, and should be, a struggle; not a comforting affirmation.  I have problems with the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Moriah; but I want to have those problems.  I see that as the genius (again, in the 19th century meaning of the word) of the scriptures; especially this scripture.

I've found the first place I have to start in a conversation with people, is leaving them as they are, and not expecting them to come any closer to me.  That is the beginning of the struggle to listen to the "true voice of God."  It is also the beginning of the struggle to be, myself, worthy of compassion and empathy.  Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the struggle to understand I am not God, and God is not me, is reflected in the problems raised by the story of the akedeh.  If I am called to be in relationship with God, perhaps I am called to understand that relationship in terms other than the ones currently in vogue.

As for redeeming the Bible:  that's another issue, and an important one.  We have taken the Bible out of its context and used it for purposes it was never meant to fulfill.  We have abused it, misused it, misappropriated it, ignored it, mined it for support for our own predilections, and generally misapplied its lessons.  But that would be another conversation.

In our telos is our beginning....

Because for some reason Blake's images make sense to me here...

I come to this via Thought Criminal (and I continue to wish Anthony well, and pray for his speedy recovery).  I mention it because of my recent Ted Cruz obsession (I've long ago given up my Sam Harris obsession).  I think I can see Ted Cruz's future from here.

NPR this morning, in a story on Cruz, quoted a political observer surprised by the junior Senator from Texas' rise to prominence.  One could draw an almost exact parallel to Sam Harris, whose first book, a mindless diatribe on Christianity (do I betray my feelings?) won a Pen/Martha Albrand award and much praise for its "courage."  Harris rose quickly to prominence, usually mentioned in the same breath as the late Christopher Hitchens and the still extant Richard Dawkins as part of the "New Atheist" vanguard.  By now, he's been eclipsed in his atheism by even Daniel Dennett.  Small wonder he got bored with Christianity and went after Islam.  And now he's poaching on Malala Yousafzai.

Harris doesn't deal in facts and research; he deals in accusations and pronunciations.  ("Harris doesn’t cite how exactly he knows that her nomination has increased 'anti-Western sentiment' in Pakistan or what exactly he’s basing this belief on; but he doesn’t have to. It’s simply another expression of the naked ignorance and fear of the brown, Muslim hordes on the other side of the Earth, which Harris has built his career on.")  There isn't a shred of research in his first two books on Christianity, and I don't imagine there is any more substance to his books on Islam or his recent essay on Malala.  Let's go with this for a second:

Given the requisite beliefs…. an entire culture will support such evil. Malala is the best thing to come out of the Muslim world in a thousand years. She is an extraordinarily brave and eloquent girl who is doing what millions of Muslim men and women are too terrified to do—stand up to the misogyny of traditional Islam.

Ignore the naked xenophobia and sweeping generalizations unworthy of a Freshman English essay, and look simply at that concluding term.  "Traditional Islam" has no more meaning than "traditional Christianity."  If any group has a claim to "traditional Christianity," it would be the Coptic Church of Egypt; or the Orthodox churches; or even the Roman Catholic Church.  But do any of those groups agree on what "traditional Christianity" is, beyond perhaps baptism in the name of the Trinity, and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist?  What is traditional among the members of the UCC is not traditional among Southern Baptists is not traditional among MO Synod Lutherans.  And then we get to "traditional" among Christians in other nations.

And there the point begins:  The majority of Muslims do not live in the "Middle East" or Pakistan.  They live in Asia and Africa.  Try as I might, I can't call to mind cities full of Asian women wearing burkas, or African women wearing chadors.  Those are "traditional" within a few certain cultures; not within Islam.  They are no more central to Islam than clergy celibacy is central to Christianity.  If there is misogyny in "traditional Islam," it is traditional to the cultures of the world, not to Islam.  Misogyny is also traditional to Christianity; but it is traditional to the cultures that have adopted Christianity; it is not essential to Christianity.

You would think a self-described philosopher and neuroscientist would understand the importance of distinctions and nuance.  Sadly, no.

Ted Cruz, after the government re-opened and default was averted, was still decrying Obamacare as a jobs killer and a ruiner of lives which was destroying the country.  This caused the panel on Chris Hayes' "All In" to wonder aloud:  does he really believe this stuff?  Cruz's rants are as fact-free as Harris'; and apparently about as effective.  Harris' factless assertions are better detailed in the article at Salon.  I only want to point out that Harris's predilections, like Cruz's, seem to have been formed "in Ivy League universities."

Where is Cruz going, then?  Pretty much where Harris has gone, or Dawkins, for that matter:  into irrelevance.  Cruz has gained great fame, but how does he sustain it?  By screaming louder?  By getting in front of more TV cameras, more adoring crowds?  Is he going to eventually find a Malala to latch on to, hoping to revive his own moment of glory which is even now fading away?

He's certainly not going to overturn D.C. and the political culture that has been created there over 200 years.  Barack Obama tried that, and found out the Presidency isn't nearly that powerful.  Even kings don't have that kind of power.  Even Kim Jong-Un had to please the power structure of North Korea to maintain his inherited role as Supreme Leader.  Harris is clearly irrelevant now because he has latched onto someone of true importance and is trying to burnish his reputation with her glory.  Malala will not change the world, but she'll have a far more positive effect on it than Sam Harris ever will. Harris grabs hold of her as a drowning man would a life preserver.  But she is not an object for his salvation, and if he is drowning it is because he refuses to swim.

Ted Cruz is on about the same trajectory.  He continues to dance with those what brung him, but he mistakenly believes they are the majority he needs to reshape the republic in his own image.  I don't know that he'll try to grab hold of someone of far nobler spirit than his when he realizes his 15 minutes have run, but he's on the same glide path:  a narcissistic self-obsession which he mistakes for self-awareness and a belief in his own self-worth that would make Emerson say with Eliot "That is not it at all.  That is not what I meant, at all."

"I love mankind! It's people I can't stand!"

I dunno; maybe I'm just feeling churlish:

The tragic truth is that an angst-driven minority can dominate a well-meaning progressive majority through threats of disrupting the structures designed to maintain a stable social system. The answer to this threat is enough people to maintain a posture of non-anxious reaction to the chaos engendered by the frightened angry minority. The future of American and global well-being is dependent on raising the level of self-aware conscientious independent citizenry who ultimately consider their highest allegiance to be humanity itself.

Overcome the concrete reality of the individual(s) with the abstract concept of humanity?  Resolve the prickly nature of human encounters by dwelling on the ideal of a humanity that is smooth and guileless?  Steamroll individuals into a goo of an ideal that just happens to be what I want?

Yeah.  That'll happen.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Mitey cheese

JMM signs on:

Cruz never seems to have grasped that there are people every bit as sharp as him who didn't go to an Ivy League School (even a 'top Ivy'). My read on Cruz, from talking to people who knew him very well in college and law school, is that he's so confirmed in his belief in his own rectitude and genius that he's likely impervious to what most of us would interpret as rejection or failure. This didn't work? Well, too many stupid people or cowards who didn't flock to my banner. That seemed to be the gist of his speech before the vote. And my guess it wasn't just puffing but represented his genuine belief.

Remember, this is a man who by all accounts is 100% focused on being the 2016 Republican presidential nominee who has quickly racked up a cosmically abysmal level of popularity nationwide. According to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, he has a 14% approval rating nationwide, with 28% disapproving of him. Now he's back to saying that he can't rule out shutting down the government again.  

I still stand by what I said:  Cruz is modeling Daddy Rafael, right down to the insistence that those who love him are among the elect, and those who don't are damned anyway, so who cares about them?  Even if he loses the race for POTUS (which he surely would, if it came to that.  He'd lose to Millard Fillmore if the Democrats dug him up and put him on the ballot.), he will be unshaken in his conviction that the loss only proves he is in the world but not of the world, and still doing the work of the Lord.

Or of Ted Cruz; it's pretty much the same thing, at this point.

I blame Ralph W. Emerson

 WTFWJD?

I have a high regard for someone's expression of religious passion.  I don't discount the outbursts of pentecostal Christians any more than I do the religious visions of Julian of Norwich or Mother Teresa.  But, according to CNN, this is what Diane Foster Riedy said:

"Do not be deceived. God shall not be mocked. A House divided cannot stand," she said, according to a House GOP aide. After a few seconds, she was escorted out by the Sergeant-at-Arms, but an audio recording by Todd Zwillich of Public Radio International captured the rest of her rant.

"He will not be mocked, He will not be mocked, (don't touch me) He will not be mocked. The greatest deception here, is that this is not one nation under God. It never was. Had it been... it would not have been... No. it would not have been... the Constitution would not have been written by Free Masons... and go against God. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve two masters. Praise be to God, Lord Jesus Christ."

According to her husband, she didn't say this:

“The big vote, the whole crew was there, and she just felt the Holy Spirit knows the time she was to go up,” he reports.

She told him that the words she had spoken were not her own, that she had just been the messenger.
“She said she didn’t know what she was going to say,” he reports. The only thing I have to say about it is:  the Holy Spirit isn't that incoherent.

My position on this will be a but unclear if I don't try to clarify it.  The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures never spoke to an empty room, and they didn't speak out of isolated conviction.  Certainly the actions of Hosea seemed odd:  marrying a known prostitute and naming his children "Not Loved" and "Not my people."  The joke in seminary was that Ezekiel had found some mushrooms on the river banks of the Kebar.  It was the community that affirmed the prophetic voice of Ezekiel and Hosea and the other now-canonical prophets.  The visions of Ezekiel and the actions of Hosea may have seemed incoherent at the time, it is true; they were eventually evaluated by the community and found to be true and trustworthy.  So I do not leap to the conclusion that Diane Foster Riedy was merely reacting to a stressful situation.

But neither do I conclude she was a messenger for the Holy Spirit.  Reidy's conviction that she spoke for God is still rather isolated.  It may be her congregation will confirm her gifts; but even then, it doesn't mean all Christendom affirms it.  It's a sad, strange episode.  But it says more about the speaker than the one whom she claims to be speaking for.

Good thing I don't own a gun....

This time we'll do it!

Susan Page pushed me over the edge this morning.

If I hear one more person say President Obama didn't build enough "personal relationships" in Congress and that's why he had this last crisis on his hands, I'm gonna take a hostage.

Who was he supposed to have a relationship with?  John Boehner, who as Speaker doesn't even speak for his GOP majority in the House?  Eric Cantor?  Louie Gohmert, who accuses Obama of being a secret Muslim?  Michelle Bachmann, who thinks Obamacare is a sign of the Apocalypse?  Ted Cruz, who thinks he's God's gift to the country and its new Messiah; the man in charge of the House GOP and the most arrogant person in the Senate?

And Obama doesn't have enough Democrats on his side, isn't friendly enough with enough of them?  When the Democrats, for maybe the first time in my lifetime, voted as one in both the House and the Senate?

I gotta turn the radio off....

Fear of a non-gray planet

Screw the grandkids!  They don't even come for Thanksgiving!

The problem in America is not the browning of America; it's the graying.

They think young people are not measuring up. That the grandsons and daughters and nieces and nephews expect to get free college loans, and don’t get a job, and hold ideas that are not very American in their view — like Obama. Obama symbolizes all of this.

How does that play out in the politics around the Affordable Care Act, and these accusations of raiding Medicare?

One of the big mysteries that we’ve tried to deal with in our research is why the Affordable Care Act, which after all is fairly moderate — it’s an extremely important piece of legislation, but it’s moderate in its means — why would that become a flashpoint?

Well, despite all of the particular policy features that came from conservative origins, it is a powerfully redistributive law. The people left out of the insurance system have been lower income and more moderate income workers.  They’re a younger population, browner and blacker. And then you come along with a president who symbolizes everything that conservatives and Tea Partyers hate. And he proposes to raise taxes on wealthier people, Medicare beneficiaries and business to pay for insurance for those people who’ve been left out. So Obamacare really symbolizes the idea that this new America is going to take something from “our America.”

The hatred of grandchildren is an interesting shift; when Bush wanted to privatize Social Security, it was largely credited to grandparents that it didn't happen, because they supposedly knew what that would do to their grandchildren.  As ever, gross generalizations, even from someone like Theda Skocpol, have to be taken with a measure of salt proportionate to the generalization.

But I've seen this dynamic before, and I've seen it turned against even one's adult children:  this much is ours, and you don't understand, and you can't take it from us.  It's part of the reason for the chart here.  Not all of it, certainly; but a part of it, to be sure.  Just as we have at least socially and politically, segregated ourselves by race and ethnicity (I say from one of the most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the most ethnically diverse city in the country), now we, at least socially and politically, segregate ourselves by age.

I sometimes think this will only get better when more of us move off the stage and make room for the generations below us.  I know some of these elderly represent the "Greatest Generation," which is not holding up their label (imposed by a Boomer that it was), but too many of them now have to be Boomers young enough to be elderly but not to be too old and tired to be politically active.

It may be the ancestors who ate the grapes that set our teeth on edge, but we will have many sins to pay for before this is over.

What you can see from my house....

Take two, they're small

One of the most exciting things about the internet when I first encountered it was the access to foreign points of view; to a truly international view of the world by getting, first-hand, the opinions of people in foreign countries.  I remember finding the Irish Times website, and reading an article by an Irish Catholic in Belfast (if I remember correctly), and her first experience crossing the street into the Protestant section of the city, after the Good Friday accords.  She crossed a city street, but she might as well have crossed into a completely foreign country familiar only because they still spoke the same language.

I thought that now, finally, we would all cross such streets.  Sadly, no.

This article in Salon is so good, so much a matter of crossing that street, I almost want to announce it with trembling excitement.  I will not quote much from it except to take these excerpts the article itself quotes, from the Christian Peoples Alliance of Britain:

“The Christian Peoples Alliance believes that Britain will return to economic prosperity when government chooses instead to put human relationships in right order. This requires power, income and wealth to be redistributed and for greater equality to be achieved. These are deeply spiritual convictions and reflect a Biblical pattern of priorities…By the end of the next Parliament, the CPA will establish the reduction of inequality as a national target, so that the ratios of the incomes of the top 20 per cent are reduced to no more than five and a half times the incomes of the bottom 20 per cent.”

And this, from the European Christian Political Foundation:

 “‘After Capitalism’ seeks to rethink the foundations of a market economy and argues that the Bible’s central theme of relationships is the key to rebuilding a system that promotes economic well-being, financial stability and social cohesion.”

This is not what most Americans think of as "Christianity."  Indeed, despite the "World Wide Web" most comments I encounter on Christianity (and occasionally Islaml and that link is just one example among many; comments at HuffPo's Religion page can make you tear your hair out) are remarkably parochial, if not just blinkered and ignorant.  Despite access to the world wide web, we aren't expanding our horizons, we're contracting them.

Read the article, as I said.  This is extremely refreshing thinking, especially after the drivel that passes for "Christianity" so commonly proclaimed in the U.S. press.  This thinking is not unusual in America; it just largely goes unheard.  The United Church of Christ, for example, says what almost every mainline American Christian denomination would say:

But things are a little simpler for people of faith. We measure the economy against one fundamental truth: the earth and all that is in it belong to God (Ps. 24:1). Moreover, God intends that we fully share God’s gifts (Exodus 16: 16-18). But we know that this radical equality is not reflected in the economic realities of our world. Some of us have very little while others have very much.

As people of faith, before we begin working to change the economic system, we must first discern, as best we can, a vision of God's will for our society and our economy. For many people, this would be a world where no one is poor, homeless, living in substandard housing, or lacking the nutritious food needed for a healthy life. Everyone who wanted a job would have one.

Not a sentiment you would hear from the public face of Christianity in this country, a public face that is largely Mike Huckabee and Michelle Bachmann and occasionally Rick Warren.  None of those people are famous for their compassion for the poor.  Warren, to pick an actual practicing minister, specifically disavows wealth redistribution; he prefers wealth creation.  But, as Stoker and Breunig say, that attitude isn't Christianity, it is:

just a particular flavor of right-wing political culture, one that opts for Christian language and rhetoric when communicating its message. ....[I]t is their freestanding political commitments that inform their Christianity, not the other way around.

Or, as Rick Warren infamously put it:  "HALF of America pays NO taxes.  Zero.  So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay taxes."  As I've said before, Dorothy Day he ain't.  Today I could add, he's no Pope Francis, either.

Now, are any of these sentiments from these European groups more widely publicized than the statement of the UCC?  I honestly don't know, but it is ignored in this country because it is "socialism."  Or because it simply doesn't blindly support American capitalism, and in this country money is our great green god.

The admonition of Romans 12:2 is that Christians should not be conformed to the world; John 15:19 puts the sentiment in the mouth of Jesus.  Poverty is of the world; it is of human systems.  Treating it as if it were God's will, God's plan, or simply as if THEY were trying to take from YOU, is a perversion of Christianity.  It's the theology of scarcity.  But despite the proclamations of infamously public "Christians," we are not a "Christian nation:"

It seems especially perverse that people purporting to be Christian, a religion that vows to help the poor and heal the sick, should be so violently against helping the poor and healing the sick. Followers of a religion that preaches forgiveness and turning the other cheek, demand the right for the outright insane to own more and more weapons. Nuts, I'm afraid.

It's the "purporting to be Christian" that's the key point here.  The most public Christians in our national life, people like Michelle Bachman who says Obamacare is a sign of the Apocalypse, are simply insane.  There's no reason to be nice about it, people who make statements like that are nuts.  They're notion of Christian justice is much closer to "just us."  There are plenty of such exclusionary denominations in American Christianity, but why they are presumed to speak for the mass of American Christians is the central mystery.  So the question is less "Why aren't we more like European Christians?", the question really is:  "Why aren't we Christian at all?"  Because there really isn't anything Christian about "Screw the poor, they're the problem!"

But there's the reason we hear from Rick Warren and Mike Huckabee and not the UCC or any other mainline denomination:  "Follow the money."  Warren is a best selling author who used his fame to host a Presidential debate.  Huckabee is a huckster, selling things just like the late Jerry Falwell did, just like Pat Robertson does.  Michelle Bachmann relentlessly promotes Michelle Bachmann; the Christian crazy is just lagniappe.  They get attention because they are rich, or famous; not because they are religious.

It's fairly easy to trace this back to American origins.  The Puritans, judging by the documents they left behind, were as concerned with success as with spiritual matters.  It is not that material wealth meant more to them than spiritual health, but the former did not always determine the latter.  An ascetic lifestyle, in other words, they did not pursue; but they certainly pursued a publicly religious one.  It was the latter that they lamented the loss of; you can see it in William Bradford's history of Plymouth Plantation, in Cotton Mather's history of the Salem Witch Trials, in the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne 200 years after the Puritans landed here.  The connection of God's blessing and material wealth runs deep in American culture, and it wasn't long connected to the harvest blessing of Deuteronomy.  Americans quickly accepted the assertion of Benjamin Franklin that "God helps those who help themselves," and that sentiment defined both their relationship to God, and to the poor among them.  That the quote is actually contrary to Biblical teachings didn't slow down those who prefer their Bible to be as American as possible.

So maybe this really is a cultural thing.  What is certainly isn't, is a Christian thing.  It is taken up as a verity of American cultural Christianity (the kind practiced publicly by people like Michelle Bachmann and Sara Palin).  It is a central tenet of the Christianity of some, even those in the churches.  But it is no more Biblical than capitalism itself, and no more of God than racism or poverty.

We might have to cross the Pond to finally get a clear perspective on that; but whether we actually see and hear is up to us.  "Those who have ears had better listen!" is a Biblical admonition; and that one does put the responsibility where it belongs.

Praise the Lord and pass the plate!

Because now it makes sense....

I can't get a clear line on Rafael Cruz, but I do know he is now, though he wasn't always, something of an evangelical preacher.  His son Ted has said his father was one of the great influences on his life.  I now see that influence explains almost everything Ted Cruz has done since entering the U.S. Senate.

Evangelical preachers in America are itinerants in the worst sense of the phrase.  They go from place to place, speaking to appreciative audiences.  If the audience is not appreciative, they simply move on.  If the audience is appreciative, they take that affirmation with them, wrap themselves in it, use it to confirm they are doing God's work and that the "true believers" have recognized and confirmed the preacher's gifts.  It's a bubble, if you will.

If you want to burst that bubble, stay in one place for awhile.  No matter your self-confidence or self-assurance, staying in one place, speaking to the same group of people, working with them, living with them, being a pastor to them, will destroy your arrogance and your sense of your own worth.  I don't mean "destroy" in some detrimental sense.  I mean it will make you realize your place in the world, and the difficulty of being "in the world but not of the world."  The itinerant evangelical preacher gets to tell himself he's not of the world because he exists in the bubble of approval afforded by the crowds enraptured by what he has said.  He never has to stay for a repeat performance, or worry about what to say when the old verities no longer move the same congregation.  He doesn't even have to worry about having a congregation.  The crowd the itinerant evangelical preacher body-surfs sustains him from place to place, and seems to stretch to all corners of the country, if not the world.

I have a friend long in ministry, who told me a story years ago about a congregation member who said to my friend that this member could just stay home and watch TV preachers; there was no need to go to church.  My friend's reply, to which he didn't give voice, was:  "Fine.  Call that preacher the next time you need a funeral."

That's the difference between itinerant evangelical preachers and pastors.  The latter have to marry and bury and console and confront and comfort and cajole and struggle with God's people as surely as God's people struggle with God.  The itinerant preacher who never stays long in one place has no such burdens.  He is free to repeat himself endlessly, to amaze the crowd with his rhetorical tricks, and move on to the next location the next week, if not the next night.  And why do they do it?  For the money, of course.

Oh, they are doing the Lord's work, but the laborer is worthy of his hire, so they do it for the income.  Unlike a pastor who has to negotiate with a congregation or depend on the yearly donations (which always go down in the summer and don't really recover until the year's end; the similarities between a church's finances and a retail store's finances are frightening), the itinerant pastor depends on bookings and his own reputation for drawing crowds.  Crowds, it turns out, are far easier to inspire and to entice into the building than congregations are.  So the itinerant evangelical moves from place to place for the money, keeping himself in the public eye, or at least the eye of the public interested in what he has to say, and making sure he is saying what that public is paying for.  They do it for God, they tell themselves.  But they also do it for the money, and for the notoriety, which increases the money.

Ted Cruz has all but admitted that he used the past two months for fundraising.  He spoke to any group that would listen to him, and he spoke like a true believer.  But just like an itinerant preacher who has no real responsibility to any "home crowd," he never got his hands dirty in the Senate.  He didn't want to be responsible for a US default, so he didn't try to filibuster the bill to reopen the federal government and raise the debt ceiling:  he simply voted against it, knowing his vote would not endanger the full faith and credit of the United States government.  He pressed the House GOP to vote against the measure, and more of them did than didn't.  Were it not for the unanimous 198 Democrats, the measure might not have passed the House, and Cruz could crow his victory without ever taking any personal responsibility for the disaster that followed.  Like an traveling preacher who visits the congregation but isn't responsible for its dissatisfaction with its preacher, or the new organ, or the new carpet in the Fellowship Hall, Cruz is in the Senate but not, he insists, of the Senate.  Like the traveling preacher his main goal is to preach, is to draw attention to himself.  As the preacher does, Cruz insists he is a true believer.  In his speech on the Senate floor last night, he again insisted Obamacare is damaging the country and that 2 million people on a petition that was also a fundraiser for Cruz, represents the majority of  350 million Americans.  It isn't that the 2 million are a majority, however.  It is that the 2 million are the true believers, so they are the only ones who count.  Is Obamacare really damaging America?  As with a fervent evangelical preacher, it is an open question whether Cruz believes 3 impossible things every day before breakfast, or just claims that he does.  What he believes doesn't matter; what he claims, is that all counts.

Ted Cruz is raising money because that's what evangelical preachers do.  Whether Cruz spends that money on a quixotic quest for the Presidency is almost beside the point.  Collecting the money right now is what matters; how it will be used is another matter, but it will be used for Cruz, not for some larger purpose.  Traveling preachers like Rafael Cruz serve themselves first, and any other group later, if at all.  They belong, not to a denomination, but to the body of "true believers" who are "out there," everywhere and nowhere.   They are doing God's work, which is defined by whatever they think is right, and confirmed by the crowds who pay them to come to town and tell them what they want to hear.   And he is engaged in the battle with evil the same way those preachers are:  from 30,000 feet up, and as an abstract enemy that must be opposed but can never be vanquished.  The itinerant evangelical never has to face a grieving mother and answer why her infant had to die.  The itinerant evangelical never has to comfort a cancer victim, or help a wife deal with her husband's Alzheimer's.  The traveling preacher never meets evil face to face, except in the person of people who think the preacher is the problem.  And then the preacher knows the answer:  he must be doing it right, because that critic is an agent of Satan.  Who else would oppose the rigorous application of God's word in the world?

"The world," of course, consisting solely of the crowds that come to adore the preacher; crowds who, by extension, represent the "real world" of God's people, against the "false world" of the followers of darkness.

Ted Cruz is in this for Ted Cruz.  And he learned at his father's knee just what to do, and how and why to do it.

Is our children learning?

The Big Idea can never fail....

The deep irony of the observation that this shutdown was just secession by other means is the proof that the boil is never lanced, the fever never broken.

We fought the bloodiest war this continent has ever known, and still the "fever" never abated.  It flared up again with Reconstruction and American apartheid, boiled up when JFK started talking about civil rights and LBJ put it into law on JFK's legacy, and it's come back again in the Tea Party.

When does this fever finally break and the patient start improving?  When does this illness finally pass from the body politic?

This is a very familiar sentiment to those of us who grew up in the South:

 They might have lost the battle, but they'll win the war. They just need to find a way to get people to listen.

There is a plaque on the backside of a column in the rotunda of the Texas Capitol, a plaque put there by private, not public, interests.  It's about the cause of the Civil War.  Almost 100 years after that war ended, a group felt aggrieved enough to still argue the cause of that war was just, and that cause was not slavery.

"We've been talking amongst this group for the last four weeks about fairness. ... That is a winning argument for us," Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) told reporters. "Somebody asked whether it would be different next time, in January or February, whenever we take this up again. The natural inclination is to say 'No, it will be exactly the same. But if we can figure out a way to drive that message home, that this is about fairness ... then the outcome may well be different."

And if people would just understand the Civil War was not about slavery, "then the outcome may well be different" next time around.

Everything old is new again.

Just before the credits roll....

Yah, not this time, either

Two things I feel compelled to mention:

1)  Ted Cruz is a coward.  He fought only in the House, and then only as he could manipulate House members to do his bidding.  He never put himself on the line once, never so much as tried to filibuster or object to a vote when it really mattered.  And when the whole thing fell apart because he's no more a strategist than he is God's gift to the Senate, he folded like a cheap tent and blamed everyone else for the failure.

2)  Having heard this excuse so many times among the "left" on the intertoobs, it's downright funny whoever says it:

Their tactics weren't to blame. Division with the House GOP conference doesn't account for it. They didn't overreach in aiming to dismantle Obamacare. Rather, it was the press that failed to communicate their message to the American people -- or blatantly misled them.

Don't worry about the supporting details, those never change.  Again, the lesson is:  the Big Idea cannot fail, it can only be failed.

Or it can have Ted Cruz for its champion.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Oh, and I called this, too:

About two weeks ago, as tea partiers in the GOP-controlled House were forcing a government shutdown, some House Democrats sent a private and informal message to House Speaker John Boehner: If you need to break with the die-hard conservatives of your caucus to keep the government running and avoid a debt ceiling crisis, we might be able to try to help you protect your speakership, should far-right Republicans rebel and challenge you. This offer was conveyed to Boehner just as he was entering what has turned into the toughest stretch of his speakership, according to two senior House Democratic lawmakers who each asked not to be identified.

I'll be waiting by the mailbox for my no-prize.

Victory Lap*

Oh, put a sock in it.

Jonathan Chait says it's all over.


A)  Called it!

B)  Bob Costas said the House GOP saw the Cruz/Palin shenanigans over the weekend as proof they were winning; so

If you can't fathom my report about Right enthusiasm/#war mentality following memorial protests, go ask a righty lawmaker, or check out...
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 13, 2013

and later that same day:

That's what I'm reporting: this vet/Palin/Cruz memorial protest story is going viral quickly on right, will shape House GOP scene on M & T
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 13, 2013

C) But the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley because now:

They're ready for what Boehner calls a "tough vote"--a vote where the Rs needs Ds to pass it through the House. "Get it over with," says one
— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 16, 2013

What a difference three days makes.

And did I mention I totally called it?

*Gotta take what you get

Socialism in the Holler

And anybody who can identify this person....

I heard two things in this lovely story this morning.  The first, and more important, was the beautiful singing, and the efforts, like the preservation of a language whose native speakers are dying off, to preserve it.

The second was this:

"Danny Amburgey, a retired state road inspector..."

"Don Pratt, retired assistant school superintendent..."

"Elwood Cornett, a 76-year-old retired school administrator..."

There was a lot of random noise, mostly generated by Sen. Ted Cruz (who should be examined as a random noise generator) about a recent poll that "oversampled" government employees.  The response was to point out that roughly 20% of the U.S. population is a "government employee," if you include teachers, firemen, police, etc.

This story, regarding people living in the Kentucky Appalachians and thereabouts, found 3 former government employees without so much as breaking a sweat.

Funny how it's always government employees pointing out there aren't that many "real Americans" who are government employees, and that government isn't that important to American life.

Funny what you notice when you've been prompted to pay attention.

Winter's Light

Does the silence of God always mean the absence of God?

The credit agency Fitch speaks. But who listens?

"The prolonged negotiations over raising the debt ceiling (following the episode in August 2011) risks undermining confidence in the role of the U.S. dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the U.S," the agency added. "This "faith" is a key reason why the U.S. 'AAA' rating can tolerate a substantially higher level of public debt than other 'AAA' sovereigns."  Emphasis added

The word highlighted in that quote is the same word used here:

"And the Lord said, "If you had trust no larger than a mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree, 'Uproot yourself and plant yourself in the sea,' and it would obey you."  Luke 17:6, SV

The Greek is πίστίν ("pistin", root πίστίς, "pistis").  It means, as it is rendered here, trust.  It has accreted many religious and theological meanings.  Bauer devotes 3 1/2 pages and 7 columns to it, trying to get at variant shades of meaning deemed acceptable over 2 millenia.  But the simple fact is the "faith" in "full faith and credit" is the same "faith" in the more familiar translations of that scripture:  "If you had faith (πίστίν) no larger than a mustard seed...."

It is the trust in the US government that allows the US to be the world's currency.  Ignorant yahoos (is there any other word for them?) who have no idea what finance is, other than a business loan from a bank, have no real idea what that "trust" means in real terms.  To make a theological assertion out of it (and I am loathe to do so, but my apprehension doesn't invalidate the point), the "trust" earned by the US government over the centuries is similar to the trust asked of believers by God.  It is true and it can be trusted.

Except that humans are involved wholly in the basis of this trust, and so it can be destroyed.  And the loss could be as great on a global scale, as a loss of faith could be for an individual.

Like, say, Bergman's priest.....

Irony is a terrible thing to waste, too. Also. As well.

World War II soldiers were better at this than we are

One finger pointing at me means three point back at you:
 

"Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game," Palin told the crowd.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste....

Because I can; and because:  Yup!

TC has pointed out the major problem with Amanda Marcotte's piece on religion and the GOP; but there are other problems as well.

Bill Schneider on MHP this morning pointed out that the Values Voters Summit is a religious political group.  He also pointed out that Ted Cruz is a Tea Party candidate, not a right wing religious candidate; and yet Ted Cruz spoke to the Value Voters Summit.  Schneider’s conclusion?  The religious right has recognized the momentum in GOP politics is now with the Tea Party, not with the Religious Right.

Somebody needs to tell Amanda Marcotte.

Ted Cruz said 8 crazy things to the Values Voters; not one of them involved religion in any way.  Rand Paul, not an especially religious person himself, did try to invoke Christian persecution.  But Rand Paul didn’t run on religion, either.  He’s looking for a scare tactic that will connect him with the Religious Right, but that’s just to broaden his base of support beyond his father’s libertarian fringe.  

Yes, Michelle Bachmann said Obamacare is a sign of the end times predicted (she thinks) by the Revelation to John, but Michelle Bachmann is a lame duck and she’s always saying insane things like that.  The fact is she’s no more influential in the Congress than Ellis Washington (quick:  tell me who he is.  No Googling!), the Christian News Network (what channel is that on your cable/satellite?  Do you know?  Do you care?), Tony Perkins (is he still alive?), or Christianity.com (Christianity is a business?).

You can find these people on the fringes of cable TV or the even weirder fringes of the internet; but that doesn’t make them influential.  Tom Coburn of Oklahoma gets a lot of TV time; name one Senate committee he chairs, or even sits on.  Name one piece of legislation he’s responsible for.  Name what faction of the Senate he speaks for.

I’ll wait.

Ted Cruz is giving John Boehner fits (and the rest of the GOP), and yet I’ve never heard him so much as mention the word “Jesus.”  Paul Ryan ran afoul of even the U.S. Conference of Bishops for his budget plan, but he’s still a Tea Party darling (so far).  If he’s getting steamrolled in the current shutdown/default discussions, it’s the Tea Party, not the religious right, that’s getting schooled.    The concerns of the Tea Party are the concerns of true believers in government as they see it, not in a religious vision of government as the bearer of the Mark of the Beast.   The comments of GOP Tea Party adherents are not that the End Times are upon us, but that government, specifically Obamacare, will destroy life as we know it.  In fact, you can’t slip a piece of paper between Ted Cruz on Obamacare and Ronald Reagan on Medicare back in 1961.   And Reagan was so areligious he barely attended church while in the White House; but none of his supporters ever cared.  He certainly didn’t object to Medicare on grounds it was against God’s word.

Marcotte, in other words, is trying to build bricks without straw.  And the most telling sentence in her amazingly popular (at least at Salon) is the final one:

Being able to blow past all the advice of experts just to make stuff up you want to believe isn’t a quality that is unique to fundamentalists, but as these budget negotiations are making clear, they do have a uniquely strong ability to lie to themselves about what is and isn’t a real danger to themselves and to the world.

No kidding?  I suppose there is no irony intended in that sentence, but does Marcotte understand fundamentalists are not limited to those who hold religious beliefs?

Shorter Joe Klein

Not actually Joe Klein

Actually, the worst thing the Baby Boomers did was take the introspection of the Confessional poets and turn it into navel gazing, and then decide our belly button lint was a road map to history.

Well, some of us did, anyway.