Prevailing Winds

I Thought I Knew Tucson ...

2012-02-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm pretty sure I had fond memories of cavorting about in the neighbors' pool in February when growing up in Tucson. It was a bit nippy, but theirs was heated and we were willing to risk a tad bit o' chill anytime our parents decided that a mid-winter cocktail party at the Beebe's was a good idea.

There was a time when our parents, all of the parents on the cul-de-sac I grew up on, had frequent spontaneous and lush cocktail parties with the neighbors, and life on my little cul-de-sac was ideal once I got out of my house. Ours reigned from the top of the loop, enabling me, after innumerable tries, to become the only girl in the neighborhood who could skateboard all the way down my sidewalk to the street pole six houses down. No fear of frost heaves or ice in Tucson in the '60s and '70s, and miraculously no broken bones either.

So my thought of a quick trip to Tucson in the early days of February prompted me to bring lots of short-sleeved things and Birkenstocks -- which my mother once remarked were shoes worn only by lesbians and pot dealers. To which I, a snarky little thing, replied, "OK, wanna guess which one?" Alas, I was only a Birkenstock wearer, but I felt the need to stand up for my tribe, as well as for my more fashion-conscious lesbian and pot-dealing friends who would never be caught dead in ugly footwear.

Anyway, for those of my readers pondering some February fun in the sun in the desert Southwest, a note of caution: It gets cold down there. Most mornings are in the low 40s, and even the afternoon mid-70s don't seem as mid-70s-ish as I remembered. I spent much of my time wishing I was warmer, and I wasted twenty bucks on a necessary hoodie, and article of clothing that, oddly enough, has never flattered me.

Of course, many of my memories are tainted by the rust of decades following and the light of perspective that age brings. I'm guessing I wasn't a knockout in my first, or even my last, bikini, and I probably didn't wear one in February. My memories of late-winter sunburns have been gently nudged to a more likely late-spring, and the one winter the four of us descended on Tucson in late February and DID spend hours in the hotel pool was clearly a late-'90s anomaly.

I know, however, and know without a doubt, that I truly did skateboard all the way down the block -- an early memory of empowerment and achievement time can't take away . . .

I'll be back blogging in mid-February, and I hope all of you are well. There's MUCH to discuss: the emergence of Rick Santorum as a plausible presidential candidate, which I had predicted months ago before Cain, Bachmann, and Perry dropped out, the moral vacuity demonstrated by the Religious Right-influenced GOP, the reality that, in 2012, we're discussing the right of women to avail themselves of contraceptives, the continuing and pitiable Doug Wilson obsession with manhood, fatherhood, masculinity and patriarchy, and all sorts of issues both vexing and valorous. So stay tuned,readers, and get ready for a mid-February gust of Prevailing Winds that I guarantee will be fresh, focused, and funkier than words can say.

It's gonna be a wild ride.

The Rank Apostasy Of The Religious Right

2012-01-24T04:08:00.001-08:00

The hatred of Barack Obama and the contempt for those Jesus called "the least of these," as well as an abject and sewer-borne hypocrisy, was manifested in South Carolina over the weekend as Republican, evangelical voters gave their overwhelming support to a man whose promiscuous public and private immorality is nothing short of stunning.

That the Bible-proclaiming arbiters of morality and family values who have inundated the GOP over the last thirty years, and especially since the election of this nation's first Black President, have embraced Newt Gingrich as their leader is an example of the apostasy Scripture warns would happen in the last days. That evangelical pastors would attempt to explain away Gingrich's serial adultery by comparing him to God's restoration of King David is an example of whorish pandering and naked stupidity far beyond that spoken of in the Bible.

There is no sin Newt Gingrich has ever committed that was not defeated and forgiven by Jesus Christ on the cross; redemption for Gingrich is no further away than that of my own. But Gingrich's behavior evinces no signs of repentance, no signs of humility, and no signs of conversion. On the contrary, he demonstrates only a pallid, vague apology for his extensive catalog of wrongs committed and sins indulged -- while displaying anger at those who would dare to question him on specific offenses he's committed, and committed while publicly condemning others who do the same.

In this, he shows that he despises the kindness of God.

This is a man who uses his children from the first sick wife he dumped to deny accounts given by the second sick wife he cheated on and dumped in order to defend his character and marriage to his third wife, with whom he cheated on his second. This is a man taken to court by the mother of those children when he failed to pay child support; this is someone who was excoriated by Congress and his own party for ethical violations that shocked even the most insidious Washington insider. Further, this is a megalomaniacal narcissist with a messiah complex whose grandiose view of himself is utterly at odds with the truly Spirit-converted life. Any pastor truly called by God would assure a repentant Gingrich of his forgiveness by faith in Christ -- and any pastor filled by the Spirit would counsel steps toward his restoration and reconciliation with those he's wounded.

That probably would not include having the adulterous Callista singing in her Catholic church's choir, nor would it encourage Newt to use his children and his manufactured outrage to shield him from legitimate questions about his conduct. Or does the Religious Right exempt Gingrich from pastoral counsel and judicious steps toward Christian growth and restoration? Have they judged that his being hateful enough, pompous enough, and divisive enough is . . . good enough for them?

Gingrich's seduction of South Carolina's evangelical voters and his elevation to front-runner status as Florida's primary draws near is nothing more than a shameless and lemming-like rush on the part of the GOP off the cliffs of decency and discernment. The Church of Jesus Christ ought to consider the Religious Right and Gingrich himself to be the focus of evangelism and prayer, not standardbearers and brethren empowered to wallow in and spread a message of power, privilege, greed, and division entirely at odds with even a cursory look at the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If those in the Religious Right extend an enthusiastic hand of political favor to a man so corrupt and so devoid of evidence of true salvation, if it accepts at face value that all evidence notwithstanding, Gingrich has, in his words, "gone to God for forgiveness" and concludes that the words need not match the actions if the agenda -- an ugly, un-Christian, pandering and bigoted agenda -- is good, they will prove to be the leaders of perhaps the greatest apostasy this country has ever seen.

They will confirm to a watching world that the Gospel is for sale, that the American Church is ready and willing to bed powers and principalities, and that those Christians who work for justice in their worship of the Savior are, truly, a despised, silly, sentimental and irrelevant remnant.

But let God be true and every human a liar -- for it's the faithful remnant and not those in the grip of lust and power who wait for their Lord with awe and expectation, knowing that, indeed, the Way is narrow and few will find it. I pray for the sin-stained GOP, because I take seriously Jesus' warning that some who say "Lord, Lord" will find that they were, in fact, entirely unacquainted with Him or with his message. May God have mercy on them, but may God also silence their voice and dismantle their power with the strong, cleansing wind of the Holy Spirit.

Caught In Careless Editing! Sacre Bleu!

2012-01-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

Erstwhile reader Ben makes the falling point:

"It would be a lot easier for me to believe you knew anything about Mark Driscoll and had read this book if you actually knew his wifes name...."

(comment received January 20, 2012, from Mark Driscoll marriage book post)

Ouch. In my passion to pour out my profound concerns about the Driscoll's new book on "real marriage," I mistakenly referred to Grace Driscoll as "Gail" in much of the post. My father would be disappointed; errors like that resulted in an automatic "F" in his newswriting classes, with various colorful and scathing comments scrawled in red pencil, just in case the 72-pt. "F" didn't shake you up.

I'm not as shaken up as I would've been then, but it was a bit of a jolt to see that I was that careless. Here's my response to Ben:

"Good catch, Ben. I should've caught the errors -- although I reference Mrs. Driscoll as "Grace" as often as I carelessly referred to her as "Gail." I guess the thought of grace didn't come up as I was reading the preview chapter I was sent. I have the participant's guide to the book, remain unimpressed, and am waiting for the book itself. Be assured, however, that I know quite a bit about Driscoll and his thuggery. Be assured, too, that when I make a mistake, I put it front and center. So thanks for your comment, which is now a blog post."

Market-Driven Healthcare Is Market-Sanctioned Death

2012-01-18T12:58:00.001-08:00

Defenders of the healthcare status quo seem terribly concerned that enabling access to preventative care will result in an orgy of medical spending on the part of an innately selfish consumer base.

One Moscow Vision 2020 community forum pundit likened it to the louse who orders the most expensive item on the menu once she knows the other person is taking care of the check. I, of course, think the bad behavior exhibited in the healthcare economy we have now makes that analogy overly simple.

I'm being generous.

The idea that medical consumers -- we call them "people" -- would engage in a determined recklessness in using "other people's money" in the form of government healthcare-access programs is a convenient way to defend continuing injustice. I think we've all seen a multitude of examples of "people making bad decisions" in the healthcare climate we endure these days in the U.S. Most of the time, those decisions are made by insurers, whose approach to market-driven, business-model healthcare counts every single cost except for the very real personal costs inflicted on sick people.

I don't see the truth in the example that using "other people's money" in healthcare distribution is like you and me going to a restaurant and my ordering not the lobster I would've if I'd known you were paying and, lacking that knowledge, ordering only the soup-and-sandwich combo. Possibly engendering bad manners in social interactions is not the same thing as denying people access to preventative care that not only spends healthcare dollars wisely in prevention and early diagnosis, with better treatment outcomes, but also empowers people to manage their own personal health. People who seem to believe that the indignation I might feel that someone "orders up" if I'm paying is at all analogous to their having access to and making use of comprehensive preventative, diagnostic, and treatment options that by every standard improves the life -- and life expectancy -- of the patient are simply dead wrong. It isn't.

I cannot imagine a scenario under which people "pig out" by availing themselves of "other people's money" -- which, given the tax-supported nature of government involvement in healthcare is actually THEIR own money -- to pay for their scooping up each and every test possible. Those who say so surely are aware that most diagnostic tests are ordered by doctors themselves, not by patients. In other words, while I might call and schedule my own mammogram (at my doctor's recommendation), I can't just wake up one morning and decide that an MRI would be a fun way to pass the day.

No, those tests are ordered by physicians. I suspect the defenders of healthcare as a business model haven't had the experience of having their doctor suggest an MRI to pinpoint the source of acute pain, or a complete blood panel to rule out leukemia, only to have to tell her/him that they can't afford it -- either because they're uninsured, or because they carry a $10,000 family deductible and can't come up with their share of the cost. Further, it's hard for me to imagine that the unequivocal defenders of the market actually envision a world in which "too much" medical care is a bad thing, unless, of course, they're in the camp that believes that Grandma really ought to have to have her case reviewed by managers disinclined to spend money on an 80-year-old.

If you're at all "pro-life," you can't defend that, unless your allegiance is only secondarily to the giver of Life and primarily to the market. Which I believe is often the case with "Christian Libertarians" and others who worship at the altar of free enterprise, even when it's the fodder of sin, violence, and death.

Finally, I think that the Libertarians and I would measure the moral strength of a country in different ways. They seem to think that the market-driven, frankly discriminatory stinginess now evident in the way this nation deals with healthcare is not only a good business model, but an honorable way to have its citizens deal with each other -- and not as equals or as co-citizens, but in a hierarchical model that ensures that those in power, those who are not doctors, those who control the pursestrings and thus make life-and-death decisions that result in death, not life, are entitled to inflict a business

I disagree. The measure of this nation's moral character is when the gap between the have's and the have-not's, while evident in other areas, should never result in the acceptability of early death and prolonged suffering because it makes business sense to people whose healthcare needs are immune to the "silent hand of the market." That, I'd never apologize for. I'm just amazed that so many others would defend it, as if the sin of committing idolatry is excusable only if the focus of that adulation is the free market -- allowed by God, yes, but never permissable as an adjunct focus of devotion. And until Christians put the market in its place -- which, as would seem evident, is necessarily below that of God as well as those created in His image -- more and more people will die because care wasn't available to them.

If there's "market success" in that, it serves only to damn the ammoral hand that guides it, not commend it.

Mark And Mark Driscoll's Wife On Being Married t o Mark Driscoll The Way Mark Driscoll Says His Gal Should Be

2012-01-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

Mark Driscoll and his lovely wife Gail have put out a new book on marriage. I have ordered their new book on marriage, and not just because the publisher swears I'll be, like the rest of the Church, blown away by the wisdom therein. My response will probably be explosive; I think his publishers meant something different. But it's important that I remain open to new, explosive, experiences, and so I discovered how to hit "one-click order" while holding my nose; new skill thus mastered, I'll read the book, I'll throw something against the wall, and then I'll write about it.

I'll do this because of the emotional -- nay, near-hysterical -- sense of loathing I feel whenever I read anything by Driscoll. Not that I generally enjoy cultivating nausea; it's just that Driscoll and Douglas Wilson have recently fallen into each others' arms, emerging as evangelicalism's oddest couple, and no matter how ill it makes me, it makes the Body of Christ a lot sicker.

Turns out I have a pretty strong stomach for a little gal.

Together, the two are pretty different from each other: Wilson is a faux-intellectual, would-be Oxford Don Wannabe whose Federal Vision theology is off the rails and whose contempt for evangelicalism, revivalism, and "winning souls for Jesus" is almost as profound as it is for icky people with tattoos and piercings; Driscoll is a buff, rock 'n roll-loving megachurch pastor whose theology of thuggery -- he once remarked that he could never imagine worshiping a god he could beat up -- attracts street people, whose lives he often claims to see through the Holy Spirit with film-clip clarity.

Together, though, they provide a potent argument for Christian machismo and "Biblical" patriarchy, a posture stiffened by their mutual disgust over "sentimental" and "feminized" churches made soft by "girly men" and egalitarian theology. Driscoll's female congregants may sport ink and studs while pushing their strollers and submit to their men on denim-clad knees. Women in Wilson's churches eschew tattoos and nose rings and focus on amassing breathtaking arrays of teacups and napkin rings. A gathering of the women's groups from Driscoll's Seattle Mars Hill congregation and Wilson's Christ Church/Trinity Reformed Church would likely be a culture shock for either one, but their menfolk are well endowed with a rock-hard theology of male headship, female subordination, and robust fecundity.

In other words, Driscoll offers the same old culturally-bound, un-Biblical masculinist wine, only in cool, tattooed, hipster-bedecked wineskins, while Wilson serves the wine of suspicious, stodgy sexism from moldy old wineskins whose externally refined appearance only makes more foul the wine within. Wilson has written books on marriage that ignore the clearest New Testament teachings about the covenant between a man and a woman while straining beyond credulity the metaphorical and illustrative, and always in service of a hierarchical approach to relationship foreign to the Trinity -- or the Bible. Now it's Driscoll's turn, and while he's not the . . . ahem . . . classicist Wilson is, he has his own approach.

It's not real promising. Driscoll's theology of the marital relationship just HAS to be more than "Because I'm a dude, that's why, and she eventually got ahold of herself," although the excerpt I read doesn't leave me with much hope that he'll expand his take on Biblical marriage.

The single-chapter excerpt I read was utterly nauseating, an exercise in that special Driscollian Patriarchy that makes its Stud-In-Chief cheerfully recount, for example, cringeworthy moments like the time he made Gail cry because her new haircut was too "mom-looking." He tells us how "hot" she was before marriage and how "frigid" she was for a time afterwards, and while the book is written, supposedly, by the two of them, I would imagine that if Driscoll ever struggled with erectile dysfunction, his would be a purely physiological issue -- nothing, you know, that his followers would ever have to know about. Gail gets no such break. She's now an open book, simply because at one point in her life she was at least a semi-open door.

Usually, in Driscoll's knuckledragger approach to theology, culture, and relationship, the risk is assigned to and eagerly assumed by his rabid, more-hep-than-thou devotees. They devour his every take on marriage, sex, relationships, parenting, family, culture, and media, believing that because Mars Hill is where the action is, it must be where the Spirit is. It's a toxic place and a vile message, but they've embraced it, and no single Driscollian will likely face his public scorn.

This time, however, Driscoll has a target for much of his anger, dismay, and frustration. It's Grace, or at least has been Grace. Driscoll has put his wife front-and-center; while he comes off as a gruff, insensitive doofus, his "guyness" rescues him. Grace, however, appears to be left twisting in the wind as Driscoll recounts her cheating on him during their courtship and his struggle to "forgive her" for behavior that she claimed was the result of past sexual abuse suffered at the hands of another man in her life. One wonders if Driscoll's congregants and the breathless masses who envy them needed to know about Gail's sexual past; it may just be me, but I marvel at how little his unabashed relational idiocy likely will matter to his fans. I have no doubt that they'll be fascinated at the revelation of her occasional lack of sexual response and yet completely unbothered that they have any inkling at all of it.

I think Mark Driscoll is a blight on Christiandom, and I think an undiscerning, culturally-compromised, media-prostituted Church deserves him. I can see how he lends a bit of youthful "cool" to Wilson; I see how Wilson serves to lend some legitimacy in Reformed and "classical" circles to the street-smart Driscoll. Sadly, I can also see that those who confer legitimacy on either of them appear to be sorely lacking any example of Christian leadership that looks even remotely like Jesus. Driscoll's and Wilson's ministerial track records, public pronouncements and behavior and shipwrecked theology prove handily that they should, if we were in a sane and reasonable Church culture, be focuses of evangelism and not recipients of statesmen-like respect.

It takes more than being male to be Christlike, but that'll be lost on these two as long as their eyes, hearts, and hands are focused on a worldview whose origin is comfortably lodged below their belts, not in their hearts.

Saturday's GOP Debate (Sawyer/Stephanopolous Version)

2012-01-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

I missed the first half hour of Saturday night's GOP debate, and so when Jeff told me they'd spent a good fifteen minutes -- or, in his words, a "frightening" 15 minutes -- discussing contraception, I was doubtful.

He also told me Rick Perry didn't pick a booger on stage. Again, I was doubtful, although the pantheon of things Perry does to embarrass Perry is greater, perhaps, than my imagination.

So I watched the first half of the debate again last night on CNN. I saw a befuddled, wounded-looking Perry assure the audience that Barack Obama is a socialist, I saw Ron Paul grow peevish with tempestuous microphones and taunting opponents, and I saw Jon Huntsman once again illustrate what sane people look like when sailing rocky seas while surrounded by nitwits. It was upsetting, but I'm used to it -- even without Bachmann and Cain, the GOP field is pathetic and obtuse, an example of the very worst effects of the Religious Right on the Republican Party.

But even though I had anticipated a Santorum surge (it's true -- ask Jeff!), I was unprepared for the reality that the opposition party in the 2012 presidential election would actually involve itself in a discussion not of the immorality of poverty, greed, war-mongering, or debt, but of contraception.

Birth control.

Trojans, pills, foams, and Nuvarings. Natural Family Planning, abstinence, and coitus interruptus, perhaps. IUD's and injections, and for some maybe even Coca-Cola douches. All things important to Americans, but none of them at all appropriate focuses for the politicians who serve them.

Fortunately, even among the doofurati of the GOP, Santorum stood out as exceptional. That's how it should be; Santorum's social conservatism is far beyond the pale of what's truly "Christian" and what's honestly "conservative," and his ascendance in the polls is, I hope, just another example of the Religious Right's endless, fruitless courting of the God-talkers in the GOP -- an exercise in bigotry and pandering that should result in their resounding loss in November.

Whether it will or not is largely dependent on the degree to which American evangelicals embrace God or mammon, Jesus or Herod. They're free to side with the powerful and the rich and extract misery after misery upon the poor. But they're not free to claim that their Savior applauds their efforts.

The Bible As A Vessel For Football Evangelism

2012-01-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

Tim Tebow, the dashing young Christian quarterback of the Denver Broncos whose kneeling-after-a-point praise has frankly been made too much of by believers and by the outside the fold, threw for 316 yards in yesterday's game.

It has nothing to do with John 3:16. But aren't you horrified that some people think it does?

If you're not a believer, you might switch "gobsmacked" or "politely amused" for "horrified," but if you revere Scripture, you oughta stay with it. With "horrified," that is.

That the Church has degenerated to the point that some believers -- Google "Tebow's 316" for yourself -- have erupted in wonder that HE CAN EVEN THROW TO THE SCRIPTURES! is sadly predictable. TV Praise Show-culture and sports adulation has combined here to make dumb people even dumber and dumb Christian people even crazier, less discerning, and more gullible and ripe for deceit.

It's of no particular importance, just cause for great embarrassment, that pop Christiandom flocks to signs, wonders, and prophets from the gridiron but can't figure out that the President is an American citizen -- unless, of course, you believe the Church should bear a witness of truth and power to a lost and dying world.

In that case, it's pretty effing disturbing, as is the fact that some of you will be more concerned that I hinted at the "F-word" than you are that such a huge swell of Christiandom would countenance the idea that any particular football statistic can be appropriated for use in Bible study.

Rock And Roll And The Republican Party

2012-01-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

"I've spent a life exploring
That subtle whoring
That costs too much to be free
I've been to Paradise, but I've never been to me"

Charlene, "I've Never Been To Me," 1981

Yeah, I don't think of pop music and the GOP together too often, either.

But a couple of classics -- meaning they were popular when I was rocking the disco blouse or trying in vain to feather my hair -- seem appropriate for the GOP field, especially after Tuesday's Iowa caucus results.

First, we have resolution to Michelle Bachmann's dilemma regarding the future of her campaign -- whether to change course and drop out, or buckle down and redouble her efforts. But she says she's out, so the question of "Bachmann: Turn Or Overdrive?" is off the table for reasons I'm cautiously celebrating. That is, I'm thrilled that so few sentient beings in Iowa actually thought she was a reasonable choice for leader of the free world.

Perhaps now the Minnesota Congresswoman can focus on educating her husband Marcus on the difference between pedophiles and gay men. Why would we expect a moral health professional to know that on his own?

On the other hand, my joy was, as I said, muted. Thousands of those who couldn't justify voting for Bachmann flocked eagerly to Rick Santorum, whose campaign focus seems largely to be based on his moral outrage over sentiments like those expressed in Billy Joel's "Come out, Virginia." ("Come out, Virginia, and don't be late/Catholic girls start much too late/they say there's a heaven for those who wait/but sinners have much more fun").

I don't know how else a presidential candidate determines that marital contraception is an appropriate national campaign platform issue. Certainly many committed Roman Catholic politicians, regardless of their personal convictions regarding contraception, have determined that the things Jesus actually spoke about, things like justice for the poor and peacemaking, warrant more attention than whether or not oral sex is sinful for married couples to engage in. So it doesn't seem, as a plank in his platform, to be part-and-parcel of Santorum's Catholicism. While Rick and Karen are blessedly free to eschew birth control in their marriage, his condemnation of other couples' choices represents a dangerously unwieldy burden on American people who expect their President to concern himself with that part of their economic well-being not tied to the purchase of Trojans.

Finally, we have the ineffably immoral Newt Gingrich, whose every utterance brings to mind pop chanteuse Charlene's words above. Nothing about Newt's egotistical and reckless prostituting of himself is without cost to a nation that only a month ago, as he rose to the top of the GOP heap, appeared close to anointing him Vicar of the Viciously Virtuous. It seems now that Newt is himself reaping some cost, but the mere fact that he's taken seriously as a candidate after two decades of pompous, pernicious conduct on the national stage is sobering. That a former Speaker of the House and national cultural lightning rod could reintroduce himself to so many gullible, uninformed conservative voters as a religious, reasonable, refreshing voice from the outside is an indication that today's GOP is as intellectually bankrupt as it is morally insolvent.

There's no anti-tax pledge in the world that can remedy that one.

Newt and "Junior Partner" Rick On Economic And Racial Justice

2012-01-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

“I will go to the NAACP convention, and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps."
>
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich while campaigning in New Hampshire (January 5, 2012)

Remember this the next time one of the GOP candidates or pundits deride the "dangerous class warfare" of the Occupy protestors.

How I, as an off-and-on NAACP member, would love to be there when Newt Gingrich presumes to lecture the African-American community on his vast knowledge of the economic struggles of Black families. After all, he was so insightful in his contribution to the nation's understanding of economic justice when he suggested that young inner-city kids have no understanding of hard work -- perhaps because they rarely see their two- and three-job-juggling parents -- and should, therefore, take the place of union janitors in cleaning their schools.

I'm always just thrilled to hear the perspectives of privileged-bloated white men on racial justice, sexual integrity, and class divisions. It's nearly as enlightening as having a bank robber tutor me on the advantages of one checking account package over another. Or of my dog trying to communicate to me the virtues of a localvore, vegan diet.

That, combined with Rick Santorum's "blacks and welfare" comment Tuesday, illustrates that the GOP is comfortable with the conservative status quo that clings to the tired, disproved notion that "welfare" is "a Black peoples' thing" and corporate favors and tax cuts are quite appropriately the providence, if not Providence, of wealthy whites. For a party greatly inclined toward whoring, that's a terribly convenient, comforting notion no less so in its demonstrated falsehood. But these folks regularly cuddle up to liars, cheats, and panderers, so you'll forgive me if I continue to be not surprised.

The Republican Party is falling apart because of its insistence on rewarding piety, not virtue; privilege, not honest gain; stupidity, not scholarship; and judgmentalism, not judgment -- and the free fall risks bringing us all down with them.

The big question in November and beyond is, will we continue to let them?

Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com

> From: thansen@moscow.com
> Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 13:54:02 -0800
> To: vision2020@moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Say What?
>
> “I will go to the NAACP convention, and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps."
>
> - Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich while campaigning in New Hampshire (January 5, 2012)
>

Ten Things I Bet You Didn't Know About Yours Truly

2011-12-31T13:42:00.000-08:00

Lots of heavy things are coming up in 2012, in addition to my fear of the perspicuity of the Mayans centuries ago, so why not end 2011 on a light note?

So, here are Ten Things That Make Me More Interesting, Or Eccentric, Than You Ever Imagined:

1. I am absolutely taken by the old 1950s Dragnet TV Show. The 1960s ones are OK, even if I don't believe that marijuana makes innocent girls poke their own eyeballs out, but nothing beats the black-and-white splendor of Joe Friday, et al, making L.A. safe for good-hearted citizens.

2. Before the wreck, even in my early 40s, I played basketball better than most people. My son once said I had a better hook shot than any of his friends' mothers -- then realized that, actually, that that would be hard to quantify.

3. I DO NOT understand, nor ever have and likely never will, the appeal of the Beach Boys.

4. I learned to drive a Case backhoe before I mastered the intricacies of a passenger-car stickshift. We used the Case to clear off Jeff's early nursery property; unfortunately, I only mentioned to him after we bought the 1982 Bronco II 5-speed that I didn't know how to drive a stick.

5. Owing to my father's obsession with baseball, I learned to keep official score, which involves more than tallying runs, by the time I was 12. If you know that baseball's "hot corner" is 5, you know what I mean.

6. I really need to get over this thing I have with finding the perfect purse. Because it doesn't exist, and I buy too many trying to find it.

7. Why, yes! I WAS named after jazz chanteuse Keely Smith! Lamentably, her music almost makes me run toward the Beach Boys. Or poke my eyes out.

8. In my pre-Christian days way back when, I and a couple of other members of Women Against Violence Against Women Against Violence Against ... committed acts of vandalism against some of the more hideous of Tucson's LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! NUDE GIRLS! dance parlours. I regret the acts, but never the sentiment that motivated them.

9. I once rode my bike, back in 1980, nonstop from Tucson to Phoenix -- some 130 miles. We started at 6 a.m. and pulled in by 3 p.m., caught a ride back, and partied vigorously that evening, after which I recall getting up and putting in 50 the next morning. It's safe to say those days are over. Both the partying and the biking.

10. If someone told me the inside of my house looked just like Aunt Bea's on the old Andy Griffith show, I'd be the proudest homemaker in town. I've emerged from my rustic/cowboy-influenced thing, skipped over contemporary, lamented my "everything's political" period, flirted with Victorian, and now want a house that looks, on the inside, like some old Methodist lady's from the 1940s.

BONUS: If I won a million bucks, I'd splurge on a $300 pair of women's tobacco-colored or deep-russet Frye harness boots. And buy a pair for my husband, because I think they're just wicked sexy. Alas, I don't play the lottery, there's no rich uncle, and I'll just have to save my nickels . . .

OK. Now you have a more fully-orbed view of your hostess, who sincerely wishes you and yours a New Year full of peace, joy, prosperity and hope. Let the Spirit guide you into keeping the Lord Jesus enthroned as Lord and Savior, Advocate and Friend, and pursue the things that speak truth, lead to peace, and honor others before yourself. Thanks for reading -- and feel free to share Prevailing Winds with other co-agitatorss, or even with others who think there's nothing out there to agitate against.

Hey, Keely, Why Do You Blog?

2011-12-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

Because the most well-known pastor of the largest ecclesiastical organization in Moscow -- and a rising star in some conservative Christian circles, despite his bellicosity and maliciousness -- writes things like this.

Silence is assent. Whatever Moscow's brave male evangelical pastors do or don't do, say or don't say, I won't be silent in the face of the smarmy nastiness represented below. Follow this guy at your peril, campers, because his heart is as hard as his pen is sharp and his serrated edge razor-sharp.

The choice is between Jesus Christ and Douglas Wilson. Choose wisely whom you seek to emulate, because one of them will lead you toward a withering death of all that's holy within you.

From Blog and Mablog, December 28, 2011, on what he sees as the faddishness and compromising of the "postmodern" evangelical Church in the U.S.:

"So as all the lunacy of 2012 -- with digital swiftness -- fills up your inbox, computer screen, and flat screen, and as you see Christian leaders stroking their chins in response over some particularly fruity contributions from the homo hipsters, or the femmy flannery fanboys, or the dodgy darwinians, or the pomo poofters, or the vitalist vegans, or the loco localists, and so on, down the street and around the corner, always remember this. You can't attack a gaudy show by becoming part of it. If your desire is to attack the circus, you won't get anywhere by joining the circus."

I don't care, Doug, that you're not a nice man. "Nice" doesn't mean much to me, or, I imagine, to Jesus. But you're neither a wise man nor a kind man, and that matters very much . . . and least of all to me.

The Times, They Are A-Changin' -- Praise Be To God

2011-12-29T17:47:00.001-08:00

“We live between the times, between the breaking up of an old order and the birth of a new one. It is a new order of justice and flourishing. The old order in which the ranks of women's voices were muffled—that old order is coming to an end. Slowly and with pain, but it is ending; it really is ending. We have seen signs of that, clear signs, of flourishing and of justice. And wherever and whenever we see signs of flourishing and justice, we celebrate, we break out the champagne. Cheers!” --

Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Between the Times"

Two Books You Have To Read.

2011-12-29T02:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'll even buy you a copy if you're the first person to contact me (kjajmix1@msn.com) and ask nicely.

I've just finished "The Bible Made Impossible" by Christian Smith, which argues convincingly that the "inerrant handbook with answers to everything under the sun" approach to Scripture is not only unwise, indefensible, and illogical, but also has the effect of dethroning the Lord Jesus and his death resurrection from his position as the sole focus and purpose of the Bible. The Word presents the Word/Logos, Smith writes, and using the Bible to prooftext arguments about dating, dieting, taxation and testosterone (I'm paraphrasing here) leads to disunity in the Body and disgust from those outside. It's a rare theological treatise that ends up affecting the reader as a devotional, and I found myself with a deeper appreciation of the Bible and an intense drawing-near to the Savior while reading it.

If, by chance, you know of a Christian pastor who, say, defends slavery as Biblical, or who believes that the only problem with the Crusades is that they happened too late, or who associates with other men who claim that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were better off being slaughtered by "Christian" conquistadors, why not loan him a copy of "Must Christianity Be Violent?," edited by Kenneth R. Chase and Alan Jacobs and published by Brazos Press. It's a collection of essays that explore the theological, historical, and practical justifications for and condemnations of violence, particularly as practiced by Christians. I'm only halfway through, but I've read enough to know that this collection is a treasure, a gift to the Body that, if taken seriously, would be a gift to a lost, suffering, dying world desperately in need of peace. It's a challenge to read and a greater challenge to dismiss, and I'll be sending a copy to someone I know in Moscow who actually DOES say the things I mentioned above.

Take me up on my offer: Copies of both to the first person who emails me and asks. Certain local pastors, however, don't have to beg. They just have to risk having their scaly, calloused hearts polished and buffed by these fresh, powerful words grounded in the Spirit and fragrant with love.

The GOP And The Personhood Of The Zygote

2011-12-29T00:35:00.000-08:00

I'm going to talk dirty here and use words like uterus, sperm, and even "whore," so shoo the kidlets from the room, will you?

The GOP Presidential contenders, besides representing possibly the biggest single collection of dull-witted, fanatical, cruel, factually- and morally-confused zealots ever amassed for your TV viewing pleasure, have, a few days before Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, lurched even further to the Right -- and away from anything like a truly Christian public witness. It's not enough to tarnish the message of Jesus Christ with enthusiastic embraces of torture, the telling of lies, grotesquely reckless extra-marital behavior, social policies that condemn the poor and suckle the rich, and the elevation of gross ignorance as a weird sort of civic virtue. They're not content with language and policies that out-Scrooge dear Ebenezer, nor with foreign policy utterances -- the Palestians as "an invented people," Newt? -- that make George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sound almost sagacious, almost gracious. And it's not enough that they've taken oaths, rather than simply letting their "yes" be "yes" and their "no" be "no," as Scripture commands, to never raise taxes and to defend "traditional" marriage in order to appeal to the farmland fundamentalists who, in Exhibit A of "What's Wrong With The U.S. System Of Electing A President," wield such disproportionate influence every four years.

No, in their relentless pursuit of a good showing on January 3, four of them -- Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and the odiously pandering Newt Gingrich -- have now signed a pledge vowing their support for the legal "personhood" of the fertilized, pre-uterine-implantation human egg, a concept found in November to be too radical even by the somewhat-less-than-progressive citizens of Mississippi, who soundly rejected a statewide "personhood" measure that would equate abortion with homicide.

The whorish wing of the Right, represented by all of the GOP candidates except for Huntsman, Paul, and Romney, has determined that to win evangelical-influenced Iowa, they have to craft a sort of "Christian" persona and platform that mindlessly veers rightward, recklessly speeding away not only from plain common sense, but from the Gospel of the Christ they all embrace with such public, and presumably sincere, fervor. As is true across the country, conservative evangelicals in Iowa are "pro-life" when it comes to abortion and unquestionably Republican in their politics. If they hate abortion, the winning candidate will have proved to hate it more plus ten. The "personhood" issue is simply another field on which they can jostle each other for the turf as far away from the center, or from rational thought, possible.

(I don't include Ron Paul in my list of "whoring candidates," because he's risked the ire of the Religious Right in Iowa and elsewhere by calmly and clearly stating that waterboarding is torture and that U.S. involvement in unnecessary foreign conflicts is unwise and immoral. Paul is also a Christian; sadly, his condemnation of torture and desire to not embroil the "Christian" U.S. in warfare puts him at odds with his brethren. If that doesn't indicate something seriously wrong with the witness of American Christiandom to the message and work of Jesus Christ, then let's agree, here and now, that the Religious Right and the Christiandom that fuels it are false religions, as bereft of the Holy Spirit as the worst pagans they're itching to bomb next. I am not a Libertarian, not even close, and I disagree with virtually all of Paul's positions. But the "Christian" voter's rejection of their brother Paul, if on the basis of his opposition to warfare and torture, is that voter's rejection of their Savior's message. Warfare and torture are anti-Christs; that a significant majority of evangelicals refuses to see that -- or, worse, CAN'T see that -- is a tragedy far more dangerous to the stability of the United States than anything imaginable).

As I've written here before, I do believe that abortion ends a human life, just as spontaneous abortions, "miscarriages," result in the cessation of life. I do not believe, however, that criminalizing abortion is the answer, neither as an effective deterrent nor as a reasonable punishment. The "personhood" of a fertilized egg, both before and after uterine implantation, is something I take on faith, with a measure of logic -- if it is alive, its taxonomy, then, is of homo sapiens rather than, say, volpine or porcine (fox or pig). The personhood of a week-old baby, or a slave in the antebellum South, is evident and obvious; the personhood of a fertilized egg, an embryo, or a first-trimester fetus is not. Sadly, to the Religious Right, this means that good and decent people can disagree on the issue of the criminalization of abortion, whereas someone who argues for the enslavement of Blacks immediately disqualifies himself from a designation as "good and decent." Nonetheless, I believe that the deliberate ending of that taxonomically-human life, then, is arguably and logically "homicide." But it's not murder, and it's not about logic.

If the zygote/embryo/fetus/unborn child is a person, it must have, must be, a soul loved by its Creator -- who also loves its mother, whose decision to terminate her pregnancy is not something she makes lightly, and particularly not if she's faced with the loss of either her life or that of the fetus, or with a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. In a fallen world that seamlessly accommodates neither the musings of the theoretical nor the sterile, if solid, argument from the logical, judgment borne of perspective and empathy must prevail. That judgment might agree that the deliberate cessation of life-called-human is tragic for all involved, but it would not presume to use the plumb line of mere logic to determine that all tragic things must, then, be met with judicial sanction.

And this is something the "Righter-Than-Thou" GOP candidates never discuss. If "personhood" amendments are added to State Constitutions, for example, who, exactly, is subject to prosecution? Is the mother guilty of solicitation of murder or conspiracy with intent in the same way as a gang thug who orders someone to kill a rival? Is the ob-gyn or ER doctor guilty of homicide if she performs the abortion? Regardless of the circumstances, even if the pregnancy is only in its first month, or if it resulted from incest or rape, or if carrying the fetus to term could kill the mother? What about the biological father who compels the woman to terminate her pregnancy? Is he an accessory to murder? The rigidly religious GOP, who rarely quote from the Psalms in their desire to outlaw all abortions, insist that "life + taxonomical designation = personhood" is a matter of unassailable logic, logic that leads to the conclusion that the deliberate termination of human life is always homicide, perhaps always MURDER, and that that logic is, in its unassailability, impossible to argue against. And if life were a neat, perfect exam proctored by Pharisees, they would be correct.

It isn't. I write this, as I have before, not only as a victim of a rape some 30 years ago, but also as the mother of two young men whose conceptions, however unplanned, were begun in love and met with a joy so profound that I would never be the same. Unlike the men who rail against abortion and pour out their love on the unborn, I've had children. And unlike those men, and presumably unlike Bachmann, I've experienced the brutality of rape -- and I would not presume, ever, to insist, personally nor legally, that any woman carry any pregnancy to term if she herself believes she simply can't.

In the case of pregnancies resulting from rape, pithy, seemingly logical appeals to "not punishing the victim" of rape reveal the contempt with which most of the Religious Right holds women. It's the woman, not the fetus, who is the victim of rape. The fetus is the result, not the victim, and there is no classically Christian logic that erases the appalling absence of mercy that accompanies the State's decision that the violated woman continue the pregnancy, living for nine months, and then the rest of her life, with a reminder of the horror she endured. She may well decide that she honors her Lord best by continuing the pregnancy. Bless her, and may the Church be there to care for her and for the baby. But she may determine that she cannot endure the pregnancy. Bless her, and may the Church be there to care for her. Either way, though, mercy and empathy triumph over judgment and logic, and in the face of this terrifically imperfect tableau called "life," it's better to trust the fetal soul to its Creator and to offer the fully alive, fully formed woman in front of us not judgment but peace.

I despair that the majority of GOP Presidential candidates, even those who previously have affirmed abortion as a matter between a woman and her doctor, not the State, have decided now to "out-Right" each other so unrighteously. The rigid fundamentalism of Iowans is not something to be catered to, fawned over, or applauded. Their endorsement at the ballot box, while important in a run for the Presidency, isn't something that ought to cause people who, charitably, are sincere in their religious convictions, to prostitute themselves trying to win their affection. True Christian morality -- a true Christian worldview -- is neither Democratic nor Republican, neither Left nor Right; it is, however, utterly absent today in the words and platforms of the GOP slate. The staunchly Bible-believing Religious Right has produced a public witness that looks nothing like the Gospel, and the largely Irreligious Left has managed despite itself to cling, if barely, to social policies that reflect the actual and tangible good that government, ordained by God, can do. I wish there were more of it. Nevertheless, the Republican Party has abandoned its commitment to its neighbors, to the God it proclaims as LORD, and to any real semblance of common sense, reason, and civic-mindedness.

A rush to the Right will, I think, result in a pile-up from which no Jaws of Zygote Life can extract victory in 2012 -- but it also will enshrine the GOP as the party of those who seek to be Right and embrace Right-ness while shrinking from any notion of being truly righteous. That's a trial to the few clearheaded Republicans left, a tragedy for this nation, and a toxic infusion of godless hypocrisy into the message of Jesus Christ and his Gospel.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

We're back in town, and I wish all of my readers the merriest of Christmases, happiest of Hanukkahs, and a New Year full of all good things from the One who is author of all good things.

And yep, there's a lot more Prevailing Winds scheduled to blow your way in 2012!

Keely Goes Country

2011-12-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'm not all Prius and no hat, or cattle, or whatever. (I do have a cowboy hat and will wear it in public with you if you annoy me). But, you know, I WAS born in Tucson, and I've only ever lived in the west, and my maternal roots are in Little Rock, and my mother and Emmylou Harris looked alike on Emmylou's Angel Band CD. I'm not just a one-punk-note Sally . . .

Not that -- conspicuous nod to Sally -- I wouldn't relish a little punk passion in my country music. I find today's slickly produced jingoistic swagger not only not pleasant, but not country. Nonetheless, I was so taken by Rick Perry's accent that it made me think of Leon Russell's twang, which led me to a wasted afternoon, although I really am making a killer cioppino, of YouTube-ing my favorite country classics.

There will not be one song on here by anyone born after about 1960, nor who performs at NRA events in a cowboy hat, nor who is named Toby Keith and promoted by G. Gordon Liddy. Promise. And so, in no particular order, are my Ten Favorite Country Songs:

1. If You Needed Me, Emmylou Harris with Don Williams (sniff!)

2. Goodnight Irene, Leon Russell

3. Telephone Road, Steve Earle

4. Don't Toss Us Away, Maria McKee, who, along with Emmylou Harris, could make me buy a recording of her singing from the label of a shampoo bottle . . . and with Emmylou, I'd buy the DVD, having seen her in concert four times and wishing it were more . . .

5. Green Pastures, Emmylou Harris with Ricky Skaggs

6. Queen Of The Silver Dollar, Dr. Hook version, for which I feel really guilty and am thus duly chastened.

7. Leanin' On The Everlastin' Arms, Iris DeMent, who otherwise is an acquired taste I have yet to, uh, actually acquire.

8. Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

8. Before The Next Teardrop Falls, Baldemar Huerta (you knew him as Freddy Fender)

9. Western Dreams, Ranch Romance

10. Rosewood Casket, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt

More on Rick Perry. Because I Simply Must.

2011-12-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of additional thoughts -- OK, three -- about Rick Perry, besides what I wrote in the post just below:

One, if you're going to criticize Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court Justice who you say is "anti-religion," get her name right. It's not "Motamayor." Need a memory aid? OK. "Kid Rock is SO not the Mayor of 'The Motor City'."

You're welcome.

Two, no child anywhere in the U.S.A. is prohibited from praying in a public school in the way Jesus taught -- namely, quietly, privately, and non-disruptively, as he says in the Gospels. They just can't be privileged in their prayers or religion, as the Constitution teaches, although rote, loud, public, and such is quite as the Pharisees taught. Jesus doesn't like it, but the priests and the scribes, like you, really did, like perhaps with Mrs. Woodbury leading a rote murmuring of The Lord's Prayer in fifth grade, even before the ipledjuvaleegents. Even with little Bobby O'Shaughnessy pulling adorable Denise Crowden's hair while Skeeter Bickle snickers uproariously from his seat by the blackboard, it wasn't OK.

Now, Rick, I know you know a lot about "privilege," but what I mean here is "privileged in any organizational, affirmed manner by the State." Which, perhaps, someone boldly not "ashamed" to "admit" he's a Christian probably ought to know, and someone running for President simply must. Your supporters, however, continue to punch their pugilistic fists in the air, 'cause you sure got the libs and homos with that one, huh?

One final thing: Before you say elsewhere that "my religious faith hasn't gotten in the way of the people of Texas," as evidenced by your State's (alleged) economic success story in light of that bold, radical, uncompromising faith of yours, please go home, enter your prayer closet -- don't panic; "closet" is just a metaphor here -- and ask the Holy Spirit if this really is where you should be, or if you should make some changes.

Wouldja, Rick? Wouldja please?

I Approve This Message. Not Rick Perry's.

2011-12-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian. But you don't need to be in the pews every Sunday to know something's seriously wrong with this country . . . when a bigoted lightweight like Rick Perry can both shamelessly apologize for his faith AND capitalize on it by mewling about a non-existent war on praying in school as well by bashing thousands and thousands of lesbian and gay soldiers and veterans, while running for the job of Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces they've bravely served."

Addendum: No, Rick didn't originally say "seriously wrong," just "wrong," but, as you can see, the quote above features MY words, which include my thought that any consideration of Rick Perry for anything higher than walk-on in a Western is SERIOUSLY wrong. Still, I shoulda been more clear.

Well, We Remember It Now, Grandma

2011-12-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

My shrill, birdlike, eccentric and utterly splendid in every way paternal grandmother, Mary Lou Emerine, was a liberal's liberal.

Not in the sense of being owned by a liberal, as the apostrophe would indicate, although she was devoted to my dear grandfather, about whom I've written elsewhere, who was as leftist in his politics as it was possible without actually being a socialist. Which pretty much was what everyone to the right of him called him anyway, and which bothered him not a which, once he pointed out that the Trotskys were intellectually inept, whereas true progressives generally were pretty smart.

But Grandma was a quintessentially liberal, FDR-minded, sharp as hell nurse who traveled around the west with Papa, co-publishing the newspapers he owned and helping him pack up the old Remington and reporter's notebooks when he got fired by the ones he didn't. She came from a family of osteopathic physicians and firebrand, anti-papist evangelists who were instrumental in the founding of the Disciples of Christ denomination in the Midwest, but by the time I was born, she had adopted the faith that I consider the religion of my family during my youth -- progressivism, liberalism, and Jesus as The Ideal, True Democrat.

I am now aware, but wasn't 'til I was 19, that that's an anemic, ultimately human-cast view of Christ, and I reject it entirely in favor of the Christ of the Bible -- whom I nonetheless believe was "liberal" in his day and whose message is best embodied, however imperfectly, by the Left. But that flawed, lacking view of Jesus did result in a social ethic that my preaching great- and great-great grandparents, including Louisa Spiller Bowles, a physician and evangelist, likely would've demonstrated in their lives, and it was one that certainly made its way into the heart of a woman who was in every way central to my heart, my mind, my conscience, and my awareness of toothpaste as a wonder treatment for acne, burns, and jewelry cleaning.

From the time I was about two, Grandma and Papa lived in Tucson, and when I was ten they moved two blocks away. Their apartment was cluttered with newspapers, printing apparatus, typewriters, ghastly art from her ancestors' days in med school -- the photos of Louisa peering at a body during autopsy and the graphic diagram of a human hand during reconstructive surgery were carefully hung over the dining table -- and a plethora of campaign memorabilia from Teddy Roosevelt on. Even when she broke her hip and moved into her assisted-living apartment, years after Alzheimer's claimed the rock and jewel of her life, she decorated with pictures of what we used to irreverently call "The Trinity": JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. She had every picture ever taken, I'm thinking, of Cesar Chavez, and her ever-present "medicinal" jug of red wine was never the Gallo we boycotted, just as the dinner salad she ate every night, slathered with Imo Dressing, was never lettuce grown by farmers whose pickers were not represented by the United Farmworkers Union. She smoked like a longshoreman, kept not a single opinion to herself, was devoted to the St. Louis Cardinals and, in fact, any sports team with a player from St. Louis, was steadfast in her belief that bowel regularity was the key to health, and once bought me a purse that, she explained loudly at my 13th birthday party, had a zipper pocket for my feminine hygiene products.

I never said she was always appropriate.

But every December 7, she lectured us about how damned little the average American -- this poor guy or gal, the "average American," was the target of most of her ire -- knew about Pearl Harbor. Steadfast in her opposition to the Japanese interment camps, she nonetheless experienced a surge of patriotism, even nationalism, whenever she held forth about the Day of Infamy. We all assured her, just to move on to how the Cards' pitching staff looked for the spring opener, that we would solemnly remember Pearl Harbor Day in a manner most befitting children of liberals, growing up in the desert.

My father called me early one morning about fifteen years ago and told me that this vital, active, 90-year-old woman had died a few hours before. I had just talked to her two days before; she was cheerful, utterly engaged, and feisty as ever. But according to him, that night she had had her two glasses of red, smoked her cigarettes, and cheered her team on to victory via the always-blaring-TV, but when she stood up to go to bed, she vomited. She called Dad, he came over and cleaned things up, put her to bed, kissed her and told her he loved her, and woke up the next morning to a call from Casa Esperanza, whose staff had checked on her when she missed breakfast and found her still warm, but gone.

It was December 7, 1997. So, Grandma, you gave me innumerable gifts of inestimable value . . . and you made damned sure, bless your heart, that I'll never forget this Day of Infamy.

He Of The Forked Tongue On Modernism -- Or The Hated "POMO"

2011-12-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

"Pomo," in Doug Wilsonspeak, means "postmodernism," as distinct from "modernity," as distinct from "modernism," which he says only produces insolent teenagers with unsightly tattoos (who presumably don't know how to sing hymns in four-part harmony, damn them). And, being Wilson, he's also coined the term "pomosexuals," which is just so clever, isn't it?

All of this nifty wordsmithing somehow is in the service of an appeal to lay down our rights and love our neighbor, an example of which love he gives us by wrapping all of the concerns of all of the people who are feeling all of the pain and oppression all of the privileged, affluent men in the nation (government, business, church and home) have heaped on them by reducing their lives' concerns to this -- who they want to sleep with and how much they want to tax others.

This is brilliant, really.

Not as an analysis, certainly, but as an example of how talking about lofty concepts like laying down one's life for the preservation of the rights of others can produce snarkisms that describe some of these "others" as nothing more than "insolent teenagers with unsightly tattoos," all because their parents don't go, I guess, to CREC, Wilson's vanity denomination churches. Which, of course, all evince Christian agape perfectly, and, more important, are steeped in the Reformed tradition of four-part hymn singing, disdaining the lamentable use of things you find in other churches. Like guitars and overhead projectors.

And the use of which, evidently, judging from recent Blog and Mablog posts, is part of the whole ball of pomo wax. At this point, before your head and mine explodes, let's just let the man speak for himself:

Excerpted from Douglas Wilson on Blog and Mablog, Dec. 3, 2011:

" . . . So when I defend free men and free markets, I am not doing so for the sake of "the individual." We had no business departing from the biblical description. I do not believe in the rights of the individual. I believe in the rights of my neighbor. And I can hear the disciples of Jim Wallis now . . . but who is my neighbor?

"This is no trifle. The Bible tells us that we should measure our love for God against our love for those we can see, like our brother, our neighbor (1 John 4:20). I cannot see "the individual," and neither can the postmodernist, which is why denial of the rights of the individual roll so easily off their deconstructing (and yet never deconstructed, how convenient), tongues.

Pursue this to the bottom line. If there is no thing as the "rights of the individual," then it shouldn't be a problem if I make off with his wife. If there is no such thing as the "rights of the individual," then we can jack his tax rates up to the point where we can finally pay for this socialist paradise we have going here. We can reveal the pomo agenda pretty easily, actually. Who do they want to sleep with, and who do they want to tax . . ."

Please, sir, tell us where this socialist paradise we have going here. I have too many friends who've paid, but haven't gotten their tickets, itinerary, or lodging yet.

Beyond that, an analysis of postmodernism that suggests that within it there is no such thing as "the rights of the individual" argues against Wilson's own analysis elsewhere of what's wrong with secular society. Pomos, as Wilson cheekily calls them, are those who, he's preached before, blaze the trail of rampant individualism, lacking respect both for their heritage and the covenant community that birthed it. They are determined to make their own way, in their own way; their alliances, even, are, in Wilson's World, predicated on rebellion against the community and its Church. They are their own secular and stubbornly individualistic Fellowship Of The Aggrieved. Presumably, we know who they are because they are insolent and sport tattoos not to Wilson's liking.

Wilson doesn't go much for, doesn't believe in, "the rights of the individual," but the rights of his "neighbor," and yet condemns what he calls the obvious result
of . . . disregard of the rights of the individual. But only if it's a "pomo" disregard thereof, and he's qualified to decide which is which.

Wilson can't have it both ways, in the world of reason and reality, but posts like this reinforce two things: One, loving your neighbor is complicated and can include the opt-out of disdaining others based on what criteria the Capo gives; two, the man's arguments just aren't that compelling -- certainly not so compelling as to be distributed by other than his own blog and own press. I found that to be true in my July 2007 radio debate with him -- there wasn't much "there," there -- and I continually wonder how it is that more than about nineteen other people bother much with with what he has to say.

On Capitalism:

2011-12-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

"Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with workers and the earth from which you made it."

Dr. Bronner, legendary and eccentric organic soap maker, philosopher, and environmentalist.

Here's my reply:

"Destructive capitalism is where you squeeze all you can from the workers you oppress and endanger, enjoy the fruit of their labor to obscene and indefensible lengths, strip the Earth of its bounty and in doing so degrade the gift the Creator gave us, and then, after tithing 3.2 percent of your wealth, proclaim your relationship with Christ Jesus."

The Cain Campaign: An Addendum To My GOP Whoring Post ...

2011-12-03T10:27:00.001-08:00

This just in: Herman Cain concluded his suspension-of-campaign speech with a quote from a Pokemon movie. I think it wasn't the same Pokemon quote he used a couple of weeks ago, but most eight-year-olds could probably tell you.

Not sure I could've supported my argument below any better.

Cain's words this morning are a good introduction to my analysis, so I'll quote from it. "We have decided . . . It would be best to suspend this campaign. That's the bad news. Here's the good news. The pundits would like me to shut up, drop out, and go away. Well, (insert folksy allusion to his sweet grandmother), I am not going to be silenced and I am not going away. And therefore as of today, plan B."

"I call it the Cain Solutions.com. There are three audiences out there that I have had to deal with. There's the media class, the political class, there's We The People. It is We The People that got us to this point. It is We The People that want change in Wash D.C. It's We The People that's responsible for the movement going through this country. I call it the Tea party movement, the conservative movement, the people's movement. The people will show that they are still in charge of this country."

Please, Lord, let it not be the people who've supported him, Perry, and Bachmann. Or those who believe the President was born in Kenya, or who think the Supreme Court "kicked God out of the public schools," or who are convinced that Jewish homosexual socialists run the "lamestream media" that hates them because they're Christians. Because there are millions of them, most of whom are Christians who've failed in the charge to love the Lord with their whole minds -- that is, by seeking truth unfettered by political affiliation -- but who, by God, hate a lot. Not necessarily "hate a lot of things," but simply "hate a lot." That, in Christendom today, is much more appealing than THINKING a lot and quite a bit less messy than, say, "loving a lot."

It's not their conservatism that makes them a frightening force. It's their elevation of dumbness as a civic virtue. Never has that been more evident than in this year's presidential campaign, with Cain's providing a sterling example.

As we all were waiting with baited breath for Cain's announcement regarding the continuation or termination of his presidential campaign, pundits from the right and the left -- I was watching CNN -- were busy chattering about his campaign thus far, specifically, the fairly evident lack of policy understanding he evinces and the cringeworthy bad judgment he's demonstrated in response to the sexual misconduct charges engulfing him. Between his Libya-question disaster and revelations of his secret friendship with an attractive younger woman, commentators say, it's been a rocky road for the now-former candidate.

Even the political questions themselves appear to have been beyond Cain's grasp, and I don't think it helps his cause to claim that "So you agreed with President Obama on Libya or not?" -- literally, the question posed to him two weeks ago by the Milwaukee newspaper editor -- is a terribly complex, deliberately tricky inquiry. Do we agree that it's pretty straightforward, if somewhat grammatically awkward? I think I wouldn't be comfortable arguing that Cain was so perturbed by the syntax that he couldn't quite get the point of the question. I invite my classically-educated readers to do a quick Shirley-method sentence diagram to break down the essential elements of the question if they disagree with me.

Simple question, not designed to trip him up? OK. Let's go on.

The pundits' discussion of Cain's difficulties, which I would call his ineptitude, lead, as it should, to a discussion of Rick Perry's problems, especially his debate performances, which show, to be generous, a decidedly lightweight and incurious intellect not offset by his glowering manliness. Which, of course, introduces talk about Sarah Palin, and Christine O'Donnell, and Michelle Bachmann, all of whose canon of public political and social utterances indicate staggering heights of vapidity and shocking depths of ignorance. And while on-air journalists can't really say so, we know that the regular buffoonery of Fox News anchors and pundits offers succor to the happily underinformed and a feast of food for thought for those whose minds are engaged.

Cain's background and his campaign show that "you didn't need a degree from Harvard to run for President. You didn't need a political pedigree to run for President," he said this morning, and he described himself as "a common man" who could lead this nation.

In this, he is partly right. You don't need a degree from Harvard to run for president, nor do you need a political pedigree. You do, however, need to be smart. You ought to know what's going on in the world, and you have to demonstrate a profound grasp of the issues you hope to represent and affect as the leader of the free world. You will be expected to know something about Libya, for example, other than the fact that if Barack Obama did something, you pretty much disagree with it just because it was Barack Obama who did it. It may please your supporters, but a foreign policy, it isn't.

Bill Clinton rose from humble beginnings to become, administratively, one of the most intelligent, effective Presidents this country has ever had. No one would have thought that a chubby kid from a broken and violent home in Arkansas would become, more than a decade after his presidency, a statesman and humanitarian admired throughout the world for his razor-sharp intellect and a heart of gold, tarnished sexual moral compass notwithstanding. And the current President, a bi-racial kid raised by a single mom, a boy who only saw his father twice in his life, used his considerable mind and character to rise to power as a man whose intellect and grasp of issues is unquestioned, even when his policies are.

Clinton and Obama. Cain, Perry, Bachmann, et al.

It's hard not to see the difference.

When Democrats favor people from humble beginnings, it's because the candidates have risen from their position and have demonstrated some degree of intellectual vigor and robust curiosity about the world they hope to lead. When Republicans fawn over someone lacking a political pedigree and a privileged beginning, they worship their "commonness" and elevate their simple-mindedness. Their perceived "common" man status requires a stunted intellect and a preference for the comfortable state of perpetual ignorant bliss. The "common man" -- or woman -- is applauded not for being of simple beginnings, but for being simpletons. Therein lies the difference between the conservative movement and the largely-informed electorate, therein lies the most essential truth of this presidential campaign, and therein lies the biggest tragedy of American politics.

The Softening Of Doug Wilson? Nah.

2011-12-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

Wouldn't be manly.

And with yet another "You Gotta Be Macho For Jesus" conference planned -- on the heels of September's Marc Driscoll/Wilson Men Circle Hercules -- it seems unlikely that the Paterfamilias of the Palouse is mellowing out in much of anything.

Still, I've noticed a slight change of tone regarding the Occupy Wall Street/99 Percent movement, for which, as a sentimental, silly gal, I'm grateful for. Initially, he called the protesters "pustules," which seemed, ohhh, I don't know -- maybe less than charitable, given, especially, the focus of their efforts to help poor and middle class Americans. Then, a few days later, we had from Wilson a switch from the dermatological to the entomological; he referred to the protesters as some sort of horse-fly-lice thing.

Now, according to this week's post on Blog and Mablog, they're just "Occuhippies."

Hand me a tissue. It appears our boy is growing up.

Knowing Your Enemy

2011-12-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

I honestly think that the current GOP establishment, given as it is to whoring with Grover Norquist (he of the "no taxes, ever, no matter what" pledge requirement) and the Tea Party, is the most destructive force the United States has seen in the last 100 years. Yes, communists were bad -- but they never occupied a significant chunk of anything other than old union meeting halls, not Congress, and they never fielded a presidential candidate whose nomination guarantees that he/she will be the only real challenger to the incumbent. Plus, the Reds never tried to cover their collective and collectivist rear ends with Christianity.

Better to be opposed, I think, than to pervert the faith with one's hypocrisy.

Just A Quick Primer On Marital Integrity, Wishing, In Retrospect, That Herman Cain Had Thought Of It

2011-12-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Herman Cain, embroiled now in the scandal surrounding an alleged 13-year affair with a woman who decided to tell her story publicly largely because she deplored his handling of previous allegations of sexual misconduct, is very likely not having nearly as enjoyable evening as you or I are.

Even if you're currently undergoing a spinal tap, I'm pretty sure you're having more fun than Herman Cain is right now.

It seems that one of the least-qualified men ever to have run for the Presidency, a man whose grasp of foreign policy extends only as far as not liking anything Barack Obama's done, but not understanding why, has the intellect/libido ratio generally thought unwise for public figures. Gloria Cain probably didn't marry her man for his scintillating intellect, likely didn't grasp the fervor of his carnal appetites, and, it turns out, didn't know anything at all, by Herman's own admission, about his "friend" and recipient of off-hours phone calls and financial aid.

But now she does; the man running for the highest office in a highly complex world as both its military Commander in Chief and its moral face/nerve center has decided, three days after Ginger White broke her silence and provided cell phone records with a "Herman Cain" number he answered directly after a reporter texted it, that it's time to tell his wife about others in his circle of acquaintance. Maybe especially the attractive female ones to whom he's been giving of himself, and I'm guessing Gloria reminded him of it a couple of times.

"In retrospect," Herman Cain says, he probably should have told her that he had a pretty, younger female friend accepting money from him. And if it turns out that he's taken trips with her and visited her place at night, he'll probably expand his moral retrospection to include not just fessing up to that, but to anything else that he and White have done together -- which, I'm guessing, will then prove to be just as she says it was.

I can't imagine the hurt, to put it mildly, that Gloria Cain is enduring. My prayers are with her and her family. But a hedge against infidelity would seem to start with an open agreement between spouses that one spouse knows, sees occasionally, and approves of any friends of the opposite sex the other spouse has. That hedge of marital protection is sealed with a commitment never to do anything in the course of one's day, alone or with anyone else, that you'd feel the need to hide. If you can't tell your spouse about it, don't do it. Period.

Herman Cain clearly is a man sexually attracted to women, as I suspect has been the case with all but maybe one or two previous presidents. But if what these women, including Ginger White, say is true about him, he is not a man who likes women. "Liking women" is not the same thing as having a libidinous and aggressive hunger for them. If these allegations are true, then there's a tragic irony at play: Gloria Cain, Ginger White, and at least four Herman Cain co-workers have all experienced the latter, which has less to do with appreciation of the female form than it does with contempt for women themselves.

The Table Is Cleared, The Leftovers Are Devoured, And All Visitors Have Departed

2011-11-28T21:38:00.000-08:00

. . . So I guess I'm ready to get back to the business of Prevailing Winds. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and because I care -- I really do -- I'm going to suggest that you buckle your seatbelts until Election Day 2012, because I think it's going to be a VERY bumpy ride . . .

In an effort to maintain a sense of perspective during the presidential campaign, I've begun Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham's "American Gospel: God, The Founding Fathers, And The Making Of A Nation," an insightful look into the differences and confusion between the "public religion" of the United States, the Biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the starkly areligious, hyper-Enlightenment approach to civic engagement that denies the validity of the former and the veracity of the latter. I'll periodically feature a point from the book. I mean, starting today.

But not before I add that I'm also re-reading Dr. Greg Boyd's "The Myth Of A Christian Nation," a book that both Doug Wilson and I read a couple of years ago with, not too surprisingly, entirely different reviews. He objected, in Blog and Mablog, to Boyd's assertion that the United States hasn't been, isn't now, and never ought to be "a Christian nation," and I applauded both Boyd's perspective and his prescription for a more Biblical understanding of the reign of God in the affairs of humankind. I didn't discuss it much in Prevailing Winds, but I imagine that "American Gospel" will prompt me to remember something in "The Myth . . . " and vice-versa.

When the U.S. does something evil -- like going to war with Iraq under the guise of a "War on Terror" in response to 9/11, blatantly ignoring the demonstrated, documented non-involvement of Iraq in the planning and execution of the attack -- the profound dismay that Christians ought to feel is tempered, if only a little, by the realization that the nation of which we are citizens is not committing its evil as the corporate expression, the Body, of the One to whom we belong. The Religious Right's insistence on inventing a historical, evangelical, Biblical and GOP prayer group-type convocation whence sprang the new Nation has brought untold shame on the Gospel, whose witness suffers enormously when it's proffered as the calling card of a country that, at times, is a shameless aggressor acting in direct defiance of the Name proclaimed by the Gospel message.

As Meacham points out, people worship. Nations don't. Further, a commonality of civic virtue is in no way a profound expression of individual devotion. The Founders' 1979 declaration, in a treaty with the Muslim nation then known as Tripoli, is explicit: "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion . . ." ("American Gospel, p. 19), and an accurate assessment of the religious beliefs of those Founders, to a man, would hardly lead today's Religious Right evangelicals to embrace their doctrines as Biblical, or extend to them the right hand of fellowship.

And yet the Founders insisted on the importance of a unifying public religion, Christian-ish in its understanding of "Nature's God" and the moral character its only quasi-personal deity expects from those who worship him and who do so, or not, without State coercion. As Meacham says, "The wall Jefferson referred to is designed to divide church from state, not religion from politics," and the Founders "consciously allowed a form of what Benjamin Franklin called 'public religion' to take root and flower at the same time they were creating a republic that valued private religious liberty." (Meacham, ibid.)

In short, and despite what more than two centuries of Christian fundamentalists have disseminated as unvarnished, even "Biblical," truth, the United States is not a Christian nation. And to the extent that it is so considered, its "God talk" exists merely as a familiar starting point for a beneficient, and beneficial, common morality whose practitioners may or may not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. This is not to say that the Trinity of Lordship is not, in fact, Lord over our country. Indeed, Father, Son, and Spirit reign over all of creation; such has it been from the beginning, and so will it continue eternally.

Acknowledging Christ's Lordship over the U.S.A. is a proclamation of truth, as is the assertion that many Americans worship him as Lord and Savior. Asserting, however, that the United States is an expression of either the Kingdom of God or of the Body of Christ -- as the United States -- is a proclamation that, while perhaps satisfying to the Enemy of our souls, nonetheless has blinded, offended, pacified, and confounded untold millions: Those who embrace "God" because they're Americans and so why wouldn't they, and those who reject Him because of those same Americans.

And, given what our "Christian nation" has often done, why wouldn't they as well?

God forbid that any offense, any offense other than the Truth against a fallen world, be committed in the Name of the One who doesn't just speak with veracity, but who embodies all that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:26), and who lives in the hearts of women and men in every nation who worship him. No earthly government possesses the Kingdom, and no worldly institution or tradition can replace, diminish, or impede it.

A Parable

2011-11-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

A woman died and went to the Pearly Gates, where she was greeted by St. Peter, who asked her to roll up her sleeves. Puzzled, the woman did so, and the Saint examined her smooth, bare arms. "What?", he cried out in dismay, "No scars?" "No," she said. "Certainly not! I have behaved. I have tried to live a quiet life." With tears, St. Peter dropped her hands and said to her, "Was there nothing around you, dear woman, worth fighting for?" (Origin unknown)

"Fight to the death on behalf of truth, and the Lord God will fight for you." Sirach 4:28

Sexual Harassment -- Really, How Bad Can It Be?

2011-11-17T10:16:00.001-08:00

OK, this is a long one, but it's worth making your way through, I think. Because this is personal.

The issue of sexual harassment, from dirty jokes and inappropriate comments to groping and intimate contact in the workplace, has been front and center lately thanks to the seemingly endless stream of women coming forth to say that presidential candidate Herman Cain harassed them -- sometimes "just" verbally, and at least once by pushing a woman's face into his crotch while he reached up her dress. In every case, he was the woman's superior, and therein lie significant components of the issue of harassment: power, economics, sexuality and sexism.

It's something that should never have faded from the nation's conscience, because it's so widespread and so damaging, and so clearly a picture of the effects of patriarchy made robust by this culture. And while I acknowledge the wrongness of female superiors sexually harassing male subordinates, it's absurd to suggest that this is not fundamentally a problem of male sexism -- which has everything to do with sex, power, and the violence that comes with a thin veneer of sexual activity that makes it look like no more than the birds and the bees gone just a bit awry. As a woman who has experienced rape, I have no difficulty saying that sexual harassment is a lesser form of rape -- crimes not of sex but of violence, power, and coercion expressed through sexual talk or activity.

A society as steeped in sexism as ours and which denies equal access, value, and status to women is a society that quickly condemns the man whose violence toward women doesn't provoke sexual arousal and isn't expressed through sexual contact, but dismisses the evil he engages in when it's not bloody and not outwardly violent and directed toward a woman he's been "friendly" with. Men who harass women sexually don't do so because they're sexually aroused; they're sexually aroused because they're in power over a vulnerable woman. Power that nurtures verbal or physical violence toward women may be expressed genitally, or may arouse the genitals of the harasser, but it's not "sexual desire" that occasions rape or harassment. It's power lorded over those believed to be vulnerable, compromised, or otherwise "less than."

And yet, it's more than that, as almost every woman who's ever had a job knows.

The sexist male assertion that feminist women see sexism everywhere they look is borne out in the workplace; perhaps it has to do with the tendency of many men in power to see the women working with them as T and A, placed there for their sexual gratification. (That's "tits and ass," if you've been kept from cultural engagement during your lifetime). There is a world of difference between a male superior respectfully greeting a female co-worker or subordinate with a "Good morning, Ms. Smith. You look nice today," and "Wow, Mary, that dress looks fantastic on you!" But I would acknowledge that the latter doesn't constitute anything other than a cringeworthy lack of social skills.

That's not harassment. Telling jokes about "pussy" is -- I dealt with that when I worked at the University of Arizona, and it was more than a little uncomfortable. A male boss grilling a subordinate about any possible sexual experiences during a date is harassment; I experienced that in Texas. Certainly the awarding of a raise to a male subordinate while denying the same raise to his boss -- because he's a man with a family -- is discrimination, and the patronizing "Now, you're not going to cry about it, are you?", is harassment, and I got it in a newspaper job when I was a newlywed. My experience is not unusual, and neither I nor any other woman I know who's experienced sexual harassment in the workplace did anything at all, period, to encourage it -- we just showed up to work. With breasts and other body parts that some men, weak and spiteful and perverse, simply cannot deal with.

I can imagine that some of my more conservative male readers, while assuring themselves that THEY wouldn't act that way, are nonetheless reading the examples above and thinking that I shouldn't be so "sensitive," that I should toughen up. Let me assure them that they aren't the only times I've felt the sting of sexual harassment. I "toughened up" early in my working career, believe me.

I worked, decades ago, for a daily newspaper in Tucson as a "stringer" -- in this case, the person who phones in sports scores and stats and a few interesting features of a high school game. I had a male superior, a guy, a sportswriter in his late 20s who oversaw all of us eager, would-be newspaper reporters so grateful to be working for the Citizen, no matter how lowly our capacity. At the end of the season, every stringer got a tour of the Citizen's plant, which was a real thrill for me, because my father had begun his newspaper career at the Citizen and was working, I'm pretty sure, at the rival newspaper, the Star, at the time -- or soon would be.

After the tour, my boss and I got into his car so he could take me back to school, and as I'm buckling my seatbelt and rambling on about print journalism, he grabbed me, forcing his tongue into my mouth and not letting me go, no matter how much I struggled to get free, for almost five minutes. I was scared to death and couldn't wait to get away, although I didn't feel safe going back to school, back home, or anywhere else. Sadly, I couldn't imagine ever telling anyone what he did, and I spent a lot of time trying to gauge just how bad I was that something like this would happen to me.

It was my first kiss. I was 15 years old.

I'm Crushed.

2011-11-17T09:53:00.000-08:00

Back in the 1970s, when I was between nine and 19, I had several romantic crushes.

Some were on real guys -- boys I went to school or church with -- and some, alas, were celebrities. My heart was broken by Jimmy, Agustin (the Mexican spelling), David, Miguel and a few other "real" boys who likely were unaware that I existed for any reason other than to help them proofread book reports. I knew I was unlikely to find lasting, 1970s love among the neighborhood kids, but somehow I thought I had a shot with Franco Harris, David Cassidy, and Bucky Dent, whose images plastered my bedroom walls.

One of the David Cassidy posters was especially, ummmm, meaningful. It was the one where he was bare-chested, wearing a vest, and had . . . hair. Below his belly button. My interest in studying that poster resulted in far more fervent pursuit of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (this was post-Vatican, "new" Catholicism, so we didn't call it "confession") than otherwise would have been required, I believe.

But my little heart was also much inclined toward athletes, especially Pittsburgh Steelers running back and former Penn State star Franco Harris and Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent. Remember that we were a VERY sports-oriented family. The death of Roberto Clemente was cause for mourning in our house, and arguments with my brother usually had to do with his insistence that Vida Blue was more valuable than, say, Jim "Catfish" Hunter. So it wasn't surprised that I dreamed of life with Bucky or Franco. They were cute; I was smitten.

So I'm disgusted that Harris has vehemently supported Joe Paterno's relative inaction regarding the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State. Harris insists that Paterno fulfilled his "legal" obligation, noting in one interview that the reporting of sexual abuse to the police is a "legal, not a moral" issue that his hero handled well.

Defending Paterno, McQueary -- the former grad assistant and current coach who saw Sandusky anally raping a little boy and ran home and told his daddy -- and any other Penn State official who knew of Sandusky's evil and didn't intervene is simply wrong. The defense of evil not only tastes of evil, but allows it to flourish among otherwise "good, decent" people. Harris got sacked by the casino he was a spokesman for, and he deserved it. Shame on him.

Gloria Borger On The Unbearable Lightness Of Cain

2011-11-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

CNN analyst Gloria Borger on the damage Herman Cain is doing to the GOP -- Nail, hit squarely on the head:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/17/opinion/borger-herman-cain-gop-brand/

It's perhaps a bit surprising that the former president of a second-tier pizza chain thinks he ought to run for the Presidency of the United States, but it's absolutely shocking that anyone other than his wife and kids would take that candidacy seriously.

Now, however, we know that Herman Cain is undisciplined, underinformed, and utterly unqualified to hold office beyond the Wasilla City Council-level. Further, he appears to have a problem with his sexual inclinations and female co-workers. He knows zip about foreign policy, he's a one-note (or nine-note) Sally on the economy, and he has a marked inability to state a coherent position on any position that would face anyone on the national stage.

He's a joke and a caricature. No wonder the tea Party loves him.

Note To Herman Cain

2011-11-14T11:25:00.001-08:00

Just a friendly, but not too-friendly, tip for the Most Staggeringly Unqualified Member Of A Group Of Thoroughly Silly Candidates For The Presidency:

You look even less adept than usual when you insist that your current difficulties are the result of conspiracies by both your GOP opponent Rick Perry AND the liberal media. Kind of in the same way that someone who shows up sweaty, frightened, and out-of-breath to meet a friend looks when he says he's being chased by a rampaging Triceratops ... oh, yeah, AND space aliens.

In other words, pal, you lose some credibility when you cast such a wide net in identifying your "enemies." Not that you had a lot of credibility to begin with. Still, I suspect your biggest enemy might be a little closer than you think, perhaps even in your lap.

Gabrielle Giffords Special On ABC Tonight

2011-11-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

Again, from Facebook:

I can't wait to watch the Gabby Giffords special tonight. She was a close friend of my father's, who acted as sort of a media advisor to her and made sure I got her Congressional office emails regularly. She couldn't attend his Feb. 2009 funeral (God, it's still hard to write that) because the President was in Phoenix; Dad might well have been at the grocery store with her last January. My mother's friend, the judge, was killed that day.

I'm sorry that some friends found me a little "off" that day. I'm sorry that I collapsed into my younger son's arms that day. I'm sorry that I felt guilty that I thanked the Lord Jesus that Dad wasn't alive to know about all of this; I'm not sorry that I was glad he couldn't have been there at that Safeway.

So yeah -- it's kind of personal, and Gabby's one hell of a woman. I'll be stocked up on Kleenex, and Jeff's on stand-by ...

Child Rape At Penn State

2011-11-11T21:42:00.000-08:00

I posted this on my Facebook page; it bears repeating here:

RE: The Penn State child rape scandal: The Grand Jury indictment mentions six or seven victims, and casts doubt that those who were told of the rape, abuse, and (at best) improprieties were perfectly candid with the Jury. Clearly, many, many adults chose affection for Sandusky, business success, and vicarious athletic stardom through the Nittany Lions' football program over the welfare of little boys. However, there's another point here: How could any adult who saw this happening not rush in and physically defend the children? Dear God. If we define "heroism" as simply "telling the right people," we're in a great deal of trouble as a society.

And let's nip this in the bud: based on the age of the majority of his victims, Jerry Sandusky is a PEDOPHILE, not a homosexual. There are two entirely different sexual preferences at play here. When a man prefers other men, he's a homosexual. But when he prefers pre-pubescent CHILDREN, regardless of their sex, he's a pedophile. The difference between the two is impossible only for local pastors and other bigots to grasp; I trust that the reasonable among us understand it.

What If We Viewed The Gospel Through The Lens Of Relationship?

2011-11-09T13:49:00.001-08:00

"Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone."

- Margaret J. Wheatley

We are relational beings, created in the image of the One who loves us and sought connnection -- personal, intimate, familiar, and emotional connection -- with us before we could ever even be aware of Divine love, much less accept and embrace it. That that makes masculinists and traditionalists squirm -- all this "feminized sentimentality" about a God who desires "connection" hardly leaves room for a Victor intent on slaughtering the people who, coincidentally, they hate, too -- is a tragic but true indictment of Western Christiandom.

Margaret J. Wheatley doesn't have to be a disciple of Jesus to offer tremendous insight on who we are and what we need. If all truth is truly God's truth, then she has a grasp on it that makes the conservative, patriarchal, brass-knuckled grasp of those who insist that primary importance be placed on "getting it right" pale -- shiver, shudder, and shrink away -- by comparison.

Why does the Church, the relational Body of the Lord Jesus who died to make a way for Love to come into our hearts, so disdain the idea of relationship and intimacy? I submit that it's the pernicious effect of a masculinist, patriarchal, hierarchical and power-based wresting away of the Gospel from the living, loving example of its Author, the Creator and Lover Christ Jesus. And that can only flourish when the feminine and the female are disdained, separated from identification with the Yahweh whose image lives equally in both women and men.

The greatest expression of hatred of God begins with hatred of the feminine and perversion of the masculine, and the Church too often has provided succor to God's enemies -- those whose disdain for the feminine not only holds Eve to blame for Adam's sin, but poisons God's creation with an elevation of the masculine, a degradation of the feminine, and utter contempt for the God who identifies in both.

He Says Some Of The Oddest Things, Wilson Does

2011-11-03T01:55:00.000-07:00

Moscow's Bishop of Bluster has been scurrying about addressing on Blog and Mablog everything recently from free light bulbs to hatred of the poor to playing prophet on the battleship while he was in the Navy.

You know, where you can sail the seven seas, as the Village People so helpfully point out, and where Wilson chose to both serve his country and assume the mantle of Old Testament prophet by railing against the sexual sins of his crewmates. He was always quick, pointed, and blissfully unrestricted, he says, in pointing out that their liaisons with prostitutes were sinful -- and indeed they were. Now, he avers, a Godly young man can't harangue and condemn his fellow soldiers because open "sodomites" -- leave it to Wilson to use an ugly word when the more common, irenic one is out of reach of his level of civility -- are in the Armed Forces. And, he argues, if they're judged to be fit to serve, Christians repelled by their homosexuality won't be permitted to, well, harangue and condemn them. This, he insists, will make for abysmal ship, bunker, and cockpit morale.

Now, I've never served in the military, and I am aware that every single study commissioned by a gay-fearing military since the 1950s shows that there is no reason to bar open homosexuals from serving, but it does seem to me that far more disruptive to the smooth operation of the mission, and much more threatening to soldiers' morale, would be a young Christian soldier who believes his greatest service to the Kingdom, then and now, is to loudly and repeatedly condemn the sexual behaviors of his comrades. It's a shame that the abolition of the absurd "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was necessary to rein in, we hope, these Thundering Onboard Prophets and instead allow the Spirit to help them live out their faith by praying for their comrades, walking in humility, and becoming grieved by the manifold sins around them that don't, actually, have to do with other men's penises.

In a long Blog and Mablog dissertation about Ron Paul and his "gee, he's ALMOST got it" political righteousness, Wilson uses the example of the free light bulbs shipped to Palouse-area residents by Avista -- under the same government energy-savings and environmental-safety program that resulted in most Americans receiving this summer a box of new lightbulbs. They may be free, Wilson thunders, but there's no "freedom" about it -- this was a socialistic governmental intrusion into how he and Nancy light their Sabbath dining rooms, by God, and it, like every other government program that seeks, however imperfectly, to do good for its citizenry and our world must be resisted. "Tyranny" is a word he uses often.

But while I wish the free, mandatory-usage bulbs were a soft pink, giving off a light citrus or sandalwood scent and projecting ponies on the wall, I suspect that with one out every nine Americans out of work and many millions more holding down to or three McJobs just to keep them in their homes -- perhaps even with food on the table -- the Great Injustice of the day probably isn't going to be manifested in a box of free light bulbs sent by a well-intentioned government. He is indeed a lucky man if the only crisis, tragedy, or injustice that shows up on his doorstep -- and I'm speaking metaphorically here -- is a box of freebie light bulbs, because thousands of his neighbors on the Palouse wish that was all they had to face every morning when they open their doors.

Kind of puts it into perspective, although perspective is one quality Wilson has yet to master.

In another post about a debate between two Christians regarding the social justice mission of the Church -- spoiler alert; he doesn't believe there is one -- Wilson takes into typically vicious account the ministry of pro-social justice debater Jim Wallis of Sojourners Community, a man who for four decades has fought passionately, fueled by his profound Biblical faith, for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and the lost. Wilson, of course, hates that kind of thing, preferring to stick with the Reconstructionist belief that poverty is largely a spiritual problem and one almost entirely non-existent in the U.S.

Poverty is a sin, actually -- but a grievous social sin far more often than it is evidence of an individual's shortcomings. Wallis, who once dared to call Congressional budgets "moral documents," which offends the man whose idea of a "moral document" is his promotion of the serrated blade of civil discourse with unbelievers, has been a tireless fighter for legislation and social policies to help poor people -- or at least prevent their further exploitation. He boldly, Wallis does, proclaim that God is on the side of the poor, which even a cursory reading of the Old Testament prophets and Jesus' New Testament teachings would support, and he stands in a long line of evangelical justice activists like William Stringfellow, Ron Sider, Stanley Hauerwas, Fredrich Beuchner, Dorothy Day, and Marian Wright Edelmen. Oh, and Jesus.

Wilson's social ethic descends from the redoubtable Rev. Dabney, Charles Hodge, Rousas John Rushdooney, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, and the late David Chilton. (Chilton was the guy who countered Sider's prophetic "Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger" with the snarky "Productive Christians In An Age Of Guilt Manipulators." I've read both, and the fruit falling from Chilton's tree was sour, rotten, and shriveled indeed). Wallis follows Paul's pastoral admonition to "expose the deeds of darkness" with the justice and righteousness that should stream forth from the Gospel message. Wilson equates that with the sin of "hating the poor," which seems to me to be quite a hefty stone to throw from the glass house of cultural insularity and privilege in which Wilson abides. It also sounds, ummmm, kind of nutty. But someday that tidy little separatist glass castle will shatter (again, I speak metaphorically), and I fear Wilson will have to contend with wounds far deeper than those wrought by what will, in Christ, be revealed as an impotent, silly, juvenile, and hateful serrated edge.

He who wields the sword of contempt, wrong judgment, and overweening pride ought to lay it down before, as Scripture says, that selfsame sword turns on him.

Wilson, you need a metanoia, and I pray you seek it.

("Metanoia" is the Greek word for a deliberate, complete turning around from something; its New Testament usage describes repentance).

Yes, It's True.

2011-11-02T11:39:00.001-07:00

You may have heard some things, been distracted by the buzz and peppered by the steady hum of rumor and innuendo, regarding me and my life that I think finally need to be addressed -- and addressed, as I always intend, with forthrightness and candor. So. Here we go:

Today IS my birthday, the day on which I enter my sixth decade and become, not incidentally, older than the Der Weinerschnitzel fast food franchise, a fact for which I thank my younger brother, who turned 50 on Oct. 30. And all I really want for my birthday, besides peace and health for those I love, is the successful passage of the Moscow School District's supplemental levy.

Oh, and the new Wilco album.

But, whether I get my wish or not, I'm glad to turn 51 living and walking in the love of Christ, living in my dream house (a delightful cottage on three forested acres that have been in my husband's family for 115 years) and walking with only a bit of a limp, which Jeff says gives me character. I have the two best sons in the world, a supportive and loving ring of friends and family who I delight in, and an annoying, yappy, irrepressibly cheerful little dog. I'm surrounded by books (and not in a "hoarding" way!), Sister's Brew still makes a delicious four-shot, 20 oz. Americano, and my keyboard still comes to life whenever I feel the Spirit leading me to write. And I have yet to hear a Justin Bieber song, for which I'm unutterably grateful.

Thanks to all of those in my life who've sent cards, called, emailed, Facebook'd, stopped by and taken me out to celebrate, and who I know are glad, in ways that most of the CREC aren't, that I was born and then wandered into their lives. I'm glad for them, too, and as Thanksgiving approaches, my gratitude is ever-spreading as I survey the wonder of being an entire year older than a franchise whose fortune comes from serving limp, flesh-colored tubes of extruded meat in enriched-to-virginal buns, via both drive-through and garishly yellow-themed plastic interiors. With twisty straws.

Even if Moscow's fabulous Nectar restaurant serves an all-weenie menu tonight, I'm nonetheless one woman, greatly blessed.

Herman Cain and "Lynching"

2011-11-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

It looks like the man who wandered unprepared and unqualified into the GOP presidential field, Herman Cain, has stepped in some shit festering beneath his feet for years. And, predictably, insane Republican banshee Ann Coulter and bloated Prince of Privilege Rush Limbaugh have dived into the circus with their, ummmm, unique take on Mr. Cain's problem.

Cain, whose GOP front-runner status attests to the stupefying Tea Party stink settling over the nation, not only denies that he's ever, ever, ever sexually harrassed anyone, but insists that when he said the National Restaurant Association administered an "agreement" with the purported victims, he didn't know it was a "settlement." No, not at all.

That would be like missing the ID of a Ford and calling it a Lincoln, I guess, which is different from seeing a Ford and calling it a cantaloupe. Clearly, "settlements" in the aftermath of sexual harassment charges and "agreements" after same are kind of like the latter. Or at least to Cain, unless he thinks the electorate is too dumb to grasp his equivocation.

An "agreement" with a purported sexual-harrassment victim that results in the case not being pursued and at least one woman being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement in exchange for said "agreement" couldn't possibly be a "settlement" involving payoff. Right? That's ludicrous. I'm sure that when he heard "settlement," he was asserting that in no way were the Pilgrims at the Jamestown community involved. Really, Republicans, ought you consider electing a man whose vocabulary evidently only includes understanding of one meaning of a word like "settlement"?

And now those dedicated denizens of the Civil Rights and social justice movements, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and, soon, a great many other Republicans, will flood the airwaves protesting the horrible, racist treatment of a Black man who insists that he hasn't himself experienced discrimination based on his color since he rode a segregated bus in 1963. Funny. It was in the early 60s that Limbaugh and Coulter's predecessors were expending tremendous energy to block the civil rights legislation that benefited not just Cain, but the entire nation. So I guess they have some perspective from which we can all gain insight.

Coulter, for example, who's turned aggression, fabulous hair and great legs into a lucrative career in the GOP punditry, howls that the leak, the coverage, and the firestorm is evidence of a "lynching." Coulter was too young and crazy only to her friends and family when the Clarence Thomas "high-tech lynching" over his sexual harrassment of Anita Hill was playing out, but she's on board now, by golly, stirred to action by her firm commitment to racial justice and, not incidentally, her hatred of Democrats. And Limbaugh calls this a "liberal drive-by" attack on "a Black conservative," evincing the same heartwarming care to engage in racial healing that he did a decade or so ago when he doubted that a Black football quarterback like Donovan McNabb would be smart enough to call the plays.

Coulter's and Limbaugh's feigned concern about racial equality is transparently hypocritical, vicious, and ill-conceived. By insisting that any rough media treatment of a Black candidate is a priori racist, they confirm the very racism within that Cain insists has never been used against him. I don't know if Cain committed any acts of sexual harrassment; Southern and Midwest conservative have long clung to the fear of the sexually rapacious Black man nurtured by conservatives and bigots for centuries, and it's possible that he's been falsely accused. If so, that's wrong. A settlement would seem to argue against that idea, but I'll give Cain the benefit of the doubt until more comes forward -- regarding sexual misconduct, that is.

As far as his integrity in responding to honest questions about his past, he appears to have none, and no game of Race Cards on the part of his supporters can change that.

Methinks Cain

Calling My Thinking, Feeling, Reasonable Friends And Readers!

2011-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Can anyone in Moscow tell me when and where the next Occupy/99 Percenter rally is scheduled? I missed the first couple because of this nasty, seemingly interminable bronchitis, but whether I feel better or not, I want to be a part of the Voice. Let me know at kjajmix1@msn.com (that's a "one," not an "l," before the "@") if you're up on things, and thanks.

Still Sick. Still Feisty.

2011-10-25T11:55:00.001-07:00

Still sick. So I have a lot of time to wander through the Internet, and, of course, my interests these days are sharply focused on the Occupy Wall Street movement. As I said, I'm a 99 Percenter, and I stand with the protesters. Or pray for them and cheer them on from my bed. Whatever.

From Michael Moore's website -- yep, he's obviously a liberal, and he has an agenda, but I would welcome anyone who can factually refute the information below:

"Contrary to Republican claims, the United States is one of the lowest-tax countries in the world– U.S. corporations and wealthy citizens pay far less in taxes than other developed nations. Since 1950, capital gains taxes have dropped 10 percent, tax rates for million-dollar households have decreased 10 percent since the mid-nineties, and the estate tax has virtually disappeared for those with the largest fortunes since the onset of the Bush presidency. Four simple solutions would close that $4 trillion budget gap in the next decade, without even touching Social Security or Medicare.

By passing laws like Sen. Carl Levin’s Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, we could generate over $100 billion in new revenue from closing loopholes that allow corporations to shift profits to overseas bank accounts. Through modest taxation of speculative Wall Street trading, we could bring in another $150 billion per year. With higher income tax brackets for households earning over $1 million annually, as Rep. Jan Schakowsky has proposed, we would gain another $100 billion. And progressively taxing estates worth $5 million or more would mean an extra $45 billion in tax revenue..."

The writer refers to the GOP lawmakers as "terrorists," and perhaps he's not far off, if the definition of "holding a country -- and its economy -- hostage" through coercion and corruption applies. Certainly the GOP and those Democrats who refuse to stand up and act like Democrats have instilled tremendous fear in the body politic, and while they haven't done it with guns, they've done it with legislation. More people die from bad social policy than do from gunfire, and I unabashedly believe that communities beset with violence such as gunfire are victimized by past and current social inequalities that give rise to despair, anger, restlessness and poor impulse control. Terrorists or despots, those who perpetuate the gap between the one percent who benefit from their cushy legislative largesse and the 99 who get shafted have done tremendous damage -- damage that the God of the GOP will demand an accounting for.

Pray that hearts change from the top before that great and terrifying Day . . .

And Speaking Of Church ...

2011-10-23T21:21:00.001-07:00

This morning was Sue's turn to give the message, and she said something from the pulpit that sent my pen scratching in the margins of my Bible -- words undeniable in their simplicity and almost unfathomable in their truth.

"Jesus came so that we didn't have to fear the Father any more."

That, sisters and brothers, is the essence of the Gospel.

Aaaacccckkkkk! So Many Typos ...

2011-10-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

I make a habit to re-read the previous post before I write a new one, and because I haven't been feeling well at all for the last week, it seemed wise to go back and review the last few.

My goodness. I must have been sick a bit earlier and a touch worse than I realized.

I've gone back and corrected some errors in spelling, some stray commas, and other imperfections that escaped initial notice, and I beg your understanding. I think the degree of sinus pressure and the aches/chills/fever I was experiencing torqued my eyesight and made me lightheaded, and as I get my strength back, I hope also to reacquaint myself with the standards of common grammar, style, usage, and punctuation I've loved lo these many years. Because if I were a student of mine, the red pencil would've been worn to a nub from tonight's corrective efforts of last week's work.

Yikes. But I suppose anything that humbles, as long as it doesn't come from sin, works good in our souls. I just grew up believing that typos and such WERE sinful, so perhaps I ought to receive humility from other, more usual, places . . . like when a visitor to our church cringes when I sing in worship. That, I'm comfortable with . . .

A Possible Answer ...

2011-10-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

... to Wilson's "When The Dirt Hit Hegel's Coffin" post today on Blog and Mablog, in which he laments that Christians play a game they're guaranteed to win as though that's a nice idea and all, but then they don't actually play in a way that they CAN win. He ties this to a "pre-pre" eschatology, but I have a different idea.

Perhaps it's because we achieve victory not by might, not by power, not by cleverness, not by hostile engagement, not by literal woodenness in reading the Bible, not by seeking prosperity, not by classical education, not by serrated edges and faux intellectualism, not even by the Westminster Confession, but by the Spirit of the LORD.

Because until the Lord Jesus returns again and draws us to him, and until he transforms the world by his final proclamation of victory, we're just strangers and aliens, passing through and hoping to be worshipers and servants. It's not as gratifying to the masculinist psyche, but it's gratifying to the Savior.

Caring only about that brings true victory, in the soul and in the world.

God Bless The Occupiers, And May The Church Listen

2011-10-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

It's so clear that the GOP/Tea Party "grassroots" is devious and dangerous, and thank God the last month has brought about a true groundswell of dissent -- dissent that speaks for the marginalized and refutes the pernicious cynicism of the Right.

Where were these "deficit hawks" during the eight-year orgy of waste and spending that was the Bush administration -- an administration that inherited a surplus and bequeathed to the nation, and its Presidential successor, unprecedented debt? They only came out when Barack Obama came into office. I find that telling, and you should as well.

The evil of the Iraq war and the wrong-headed military approach in Afghanistan, which drained funds for social services and infrastructure maintenance, were funded on the backs of the poor and middle class -- while the rich enjoyed enormous tax cuts unfathomable in time of war. Those tax cuts remain; the richest Americans currently pay taxes at Eisenhower-era levels that serve as a complement to government favor bestowed on them and their corporations. The rich have lobbyists; winning their tax cuts from their pals in the Bush White House and Congress was a breeze.

Meanwhile, those of us who aren't making a quarter-million a year or more shoulder the burden, and those jobs that pay us wages that, adjusted for inflation, are no greater -- and sometimes less than -- 70s-era workers' pay. Housing is often out of the reach of the middle class, and so are college educations for their kids. Retirement investments are trapped in a turbulent economy, their kids' schools are being stripped to a bare-bones shell of "the basics," and jobs are drying up, or changing shape to temp, consulting, or contract work that don't come with benefits. The United States has, undeniably, the most advanced medical system in the world -- but all of the technological possibilities in the world mean nothing if its country's poor and middle class can't even access it. And very often, they can't, and so people die from diseases that likely could have been successfully treated if access were available. It isn't.

The rich have lobbyists; winning their tax cuts from their pals in the Bush White House and Congress was as easy as cajoling candy from a rich uncle. The Democratic Party, which should honor its legacy of being the voice of the disenfranchised, has gone impotent, and organizations that have long championed the cause of the poor and middle class, the disenfranchised and marginalized -- the NAACP, the Childrens' Defense Fund, Common Cause, and other public interest groups have been demonized by a right-tumbling media and left disabled by shrinking donations from those they seek to help.

Most tragically, the Church has deserted the poor and hopped into a bed softened by the cushy pillows and sweet, soft sheets of "ministry to family," "pro-Americanism," "anti-immigration," "family values," and other relatively safe topics that please the Pharisees of culture and heap disdain on the poor. You can slap "Jesus" or "Christian" on something, but it doesn't make it Christlike.

Speaking out for "the least of these" isn't popular and isn't profitable, and the toxic rhetoric of the day has even those whose welfare is the focus of an organization's efforts questioning if they really are, after all, "un-American," or "pro-death," or "criminal," or otherwise nefarious and suspicious. So people, fed on a diet of lies, suspicions, and pandering to their fears and dislikes, flock to things like the Tea Party, hoping to be heard. They're heard, certainly, and the chorus they raise is pleasing to the very people whose policies and practices harm those in the ragged, misinformed, and angry choir. It's a desperate and pitiable song, but it pleases those in power. That must look a lot like support and succor to the throng.

So who speaks for the poor these days?

The Occupiers, the 99 Percenters, and those protesters and demonstrators who don't believe the lies of the GOP, refused to be co-opted by the media, and realize that the string-pullers of the Tea Party have precious little interest in actually crafting policies that would help them. They've seen the whoring and the seduction, and in my mind, the tremendous majority of them are the movement from the Left-Center this nation has needed for decades. God bless them and keep them from the cops who've been told to find them dangerous. They're largely on the side of truth, and truth is, indeed, a very dangerous proposition. May the roots and foundations of un-Godly power structures begin to crumble under the voice of the Occupiers.

Still Sick, Still Astonished And Angry At The GOP

2011-10-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

As you know, I prefer that every word on my blog be written by, well, me. But I'm still in the grip of flu and, now, bronchitis, so I'm going to honor others who have good things to say until I get better.

"Every Senate Republican voted to block a bill that would help middle class families and keep hundreds of thousands of firefighters on the job, police officers on the streets, and teachers in the classroom when our kids need them most. Those Americans deserve an explanation as to why they don’t deserve those jobs." — President Obama on the Senate's vote last night on a component of the American Jobs Act.

If this isn't proof that the oars steering the GOP these days are "defeat whatever the bastard proposes, just because it's him" and "keep feeding the middle class the lies that keep them in the dark," I don't know what is. The AJA wasn't anything that any reasonable Republican or Democrat -- or hermit crab, for that matter -- ought to have opposed.

But it was "him" who proposed it, and it's "them" it would help. And how the most viciously insular political movement in recent history has the gall to label itself "populist" is ample evidence that Satan has, indeed, sent a cloud of blindness and hardness of heart over this country.

The Church -- largely white, male, prosperous and privileged -- has made a virtual cottage industry of formulating a hermeneutic that somehow elevates platitudinous proof-texting from the Proverbs to a cogent, Christlike response to poverty and injustice and heaps indifference on the warnings of the Old Testament prophets and subverts the clear message of the New. We see it here in Moscow, where Doug Wilson's primary wrestlings with Scripture appear to be in the service of justifying his mocking, sneering, utterly unloving judgment of the poor, the middle class, and those who try to speak up for them.

Our God is not amused, either by the Church's embrace of those institutions that harm the poor, or by those who minister in his name by making fun of their plight. I'm torn over who most needs my prayers for God's mercy: The poor, or those who hold them and their defenders in disdain. Fortunately, the Defender of the poor is the one I pray to and worship, and I offer those to him on behalf of both.

Right On Point

2011-10-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

I have a nasty case of flu and won't be writing 'til I feel human again, but I read this on Facebook. It hits the nail right on the head in addressing the sinfulness of people who reduce real instances of poverty to a mere exercise in prooftexting from the Proverbs -- or shrugging off the conerns of the poor by labeling them as simple, sinful envy. We've seen myriad examples of that here from those born into relative privilege and security and see the poor and their defenders as . . . well, "pustules." Or some sort of leech, which is hardly a step up.

So. Does anyone know who to credit for the wisdom below?

"If you really believe that you stand on God’s grace, that means your work ethic, intelligence, and creativity are to God’s credit, not yours, which disqualifies using these qualities as a soapbox from which to judge other people. A lot of Christians want to get credit for the humility of believing in divine providence while retaining the right to judge others based on an ethic of individual responsibility."

Thomas a Kempis on Humility

2011-10-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

From Book One, Chapter 19, section 4 --

"Arm yourself with humility and charity so as to ward off the attacks of the devil. Refrain from gluttony and it will be easier for you to restrain carnal desires ..."

Humility and charity. That's the sacrifice -- the Sabbath feast -- the Lover of the Poor requires. It is a pustule on the corpus ecclesia when we mock the poor and those who strive to defend them. The Body of Christ could arm itself only with humility and charity (love) and conquer all the evils of the world -- rather than arming itself with serrated edges and contributing to them.

For Your Edification

2011-10-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

I have read Prism, the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action, off and on for the last 20 years or so, and I find it tremendously encouraging and illuminating.

I've also read Credenda/Agenda off and on for a few years, and I've found it tremendously irrelevant and pompous.

You can read Credenda for the thoughts of privileged, white Reformed "scholars" as they engage in self-congratulatory musings on culture, theology, and masculinity, or you can read Prism and learn about people whose worship of Jesus Christ compels them to live in egalitarian community, work for the inner-city poor, or educate men and women on the dangers of pornography.

You can read Credenda for pedantic theological hairsplitting and endless perspectives on the most obscure points of the Confession, or you can read Prism for solid evangelical scholarship on the Christian's sanctification, the inclusionary message of the Gospel, and a theology of worship that involves active engagement with the "Other" often ignored by the Church.

You can read Credenda for more of Nate Wilson's fascinating ruminations on story and imagery and metaphor, or Ben Merkle's confident declarations of husbandlike care for the little lady, or you can read Prism and discover how our brothers and sisters all over the world are rejoicing in Christ Jesus by proclaiming the Gospel, living lives of reconciliation and justice, and working to bring about the Kingdom of God in concrete, tangible ways.

You can read Credenda and come away sure that you know what self-educated, self-ordained, self-churched, self-important Reformed guys think about their education, ordination, ecclesiology, and importance, or you can read Prism and come away knowing that the Holy Spirit -- remember the Holy Spirit? -- is doing great things among Christ's people.

It's your choice. You probably know how to get a subscription to Credenda/Agenda. You can find Prism at Evangelicals for Social Action's website.

I'm a 99-Percenter, And Wilson Is, God Be Thanked, One Of A Kind

2011-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

As the GOP waxes fearful about what House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia calls "the mobs" he believes are threatening the very fabric of the United States as we know it, and as New York Congressman Pete King compares them to those awful activists of the 1960s whose civil rights, women's rights, and anti-war sentiments actually -- horror of horrors -- became law, it's clear that the 99-Percent/Occupy Wall Street rallies over the last three weeks have struck a nerve.

Thank God they have.

I was beginning to think that the middle class had turned over its mind, self-interest, and voice to the Tea Party, which has succeeded in taking over the GOP and its corporate whoremongering in the name of "the common man." It's a testimony to electoral ignorance, or the "under-informed" voter, that the Tea Party would presume to represent the hard-working American shouldering Bush-era debt while the rich continue to smirk and to shirk their share of the social contract thanks, again, to George W. Bush's tax cuts.

If, as Doug Wilson has said, the poor -- even those in his congregation who need help -- who avail themselves of Medicaid, food stamps, and any other social aid program are "piglets suckling at the teat" of government, the Tea Party's GOP favors aggressive corporate hogs who trample the runt, take over the porcine nursery, and suck dry the teats of a government all too willing to let them feed with alacrity. It's time that the middle class and the poor join together, not to "attack other Americans," but to attack those policies that harm them, their children, and their hope of a reasonably comfortable American lifestyle.

If any one group in America is attacking another, it's the rich who reap untold fortune at the expense of the middle class and the poor. There's definitely a war going on against the have-nots.

The protesters are not engaging in "class warfare," and they're not simply demonstrating "the sin of envy." The former is the secular GOP's tired, predictable, and impotent response to a group of people, in the most American and patriotic of traditions, who gather to object to policies that in some cases have literally killed those in their midst. The latter charge -- that "envy" motivates those who advocate for the poor and object to their marginalization -- is the classic rhetoric of the "Christian" who searches the Proverbs for verses condemning sloth and slumber while blithely skipping over the Old Testament's defense of and protection for the poor and the New Testament's message of reconciliation and equality. It works only among the Biblically illiterate and the irrepressibly smug; it's the message not of Christ, but of political privilege. Period.

In Genesis 41, the Yahweh-worshiping Joseph, working under a Yahweh-indifferent ruler, addresses the impending seven-year famine by appropriating the grain produced by the people, storing it, and then re-distributing it -- again, as part of and in the name of Pharaoh's government -- to save the lives of the people under his rule. Until someone, perhaps a classically-trained rhetoricist, can explain to me how that's NOT a Biblically-sanctioned government sanctioned social safety net, then I'll continue to believe that government has a God-ordained role in providing for the needs of his people. Not his Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches people, or his Calvinist people, or even just his Christ-confessing people, but all of the people created in his image. And the God who delights in those created in his image abhors discrimination, racism, classism, inequality, and -- especially -- the embrace of those things in his name.

It's not, therefore, that far off for Christian social activist Jim Wallis to say that the protesters are "standing with Jesus." (Ps. 82:3) That might not be the intention of all of the demonstrators, but they're standing for the right things nonetheless. God cares little for -- in fact, likely despises -- our patriarchal "free enterprise" system. He does care for the poor. And that's true whether Doug Wilson likes it or not.

I mention this because of the October 10 Blog and Mablog post Wilson wrote regarding the 99 Percenters. I expected Wilson to side with the rich; I expected Wilson to show serrated disdain for the demonstrators. But I didn't expect this, and if it doesn't sicken you, you need to check your heart.

"As I have thought about how best to respond to this Occupy Wall St. business, it seems to me that it really should be treated with the seriousness it deserves. It is not every day that the body politic gets covered with economically illiterate pustules. We are trying to make out their demands -- for are we not profoundly interested? -- but unfortunately their peculiar articulation of economic theory indicates that they apparently don't have a roof in their mouths. I can't quite decipher . . . But Jim Wallis has said that the protesters are "standing with Jesus." That, all by itself, is enough to make any right-minded citizen want to scurry up a tree and start throwing coconuts." (Blog and Mablog, Oct. 10, 2011)

"Economically illiterate PUSTULES?"

There's a reason that I would never call someone an asshole. It's not because it means that I think they are equal to a certain ugly part of the body -- it's because, although it's not a literal pejorative, it's damned disgusting. Calling God's created people, standing for justice for the poor and opposing the unjust favoring of the rich, "pustules" is so beyond the pale for anyone, much less a Christian minister, that I'm without words. Almost.

Calling human beings "pustules" while describing them as stupid and deluded, and doing so while mocking their concerns, is an act and an attitude so breathtakingly hateful that God will damn those who continue it. Contempt for the poor in Scripture is equal to contempt for God (Proverbs 14:31). Wilson's mockery of their plight and his hate for their defenders more than illustrates contempt for God.

Until he repents of that contempt, his presence at the Communion table is wrong, and his position as a "Christian minister" makes a mockery both of Christ and of ministry. I believe his soul is in danger, and I pray for his repentance.

Back Home, Unpacked, And Ready To Go . . . Tomorrow

2011-10-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

I spent last week in Western Washington, visiting our son and my in-laws and eating way too many restaurant meals, then zipping up to Spokane to see a friend I haven't seen for 25 years. It's nice that we still like each other! But now I'm home, and I plan to stay home as much as I can this week.

When I'm home, I either cook, clean, or write. And Lord knows there's a lot to write about, both here and nationally. It's been hard to keep quiet . . .

Mother Ought To Look Like Father, And Father Isn't A Guy

2011-09-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

If Mother Kirk encourages you to hold any other person in contempt, know that she's a liar.

Drown her out with the words of the Father, who tells you that the object of your contempt is someone created in the Divine image -- a God neither male nor female, and yet, mysteriously and wonderfully, revealed in women as much as in men. And if you feel conflicted, remember Augustine, whose use of "whore" I'll substitute here:

"The Church is a gay-bashing, macho, unloving bully, and she is my Mother."

Jamey Rodemeyer

2011-09-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

A 14-year-old gay boy from New York, Jamey Rodemeyer, killed himself last week after years of bullying. Yeah, you've heard versions of this one before. Too many; so many that you might just skip on.

Don't.

Jamey's peers, many of them no doubt speaking from the warped cocoon of their Christian youth groups and echoing the words they hear at home and in church, belittled, wrote, whispered, taunted, lied about and harassed this kid until he chose to die rather than endure what he had previously assured other LGBT kids -- a life that gets better. Jamey made video diaries and wrote about his struggles; as the horror got worse for him, he reached out more to other kids whose lives are made hellish by their looks, their speech, their mannerisms, and their attempts to simply live just as themselves.

It doesn't say much for you if your first thought is that he could've just, you know, like, TRIED harder. What threat did Jamey pose to you -- or anyone else? Does it say something about society that a boy like Jamey turned to pop star Lady Gaga for inspiration and hope? Gaga's music doesn't do much for me, but through the glitter, glam, and over-the-top production, she struck a chord in him; indeed, it appears that he tweeted his final good-bye to the woman who this weekend dedicated a show to him and who's called for the illegalization of bullying as a hate crime.

I'm glad Jamey found some comfort from his favorite pop star, and from his parents, who in their grief have found the courage to speak out against the abuse that led their only son to take his life. But I'm sickened at how many of you think that a kid who lisped, who wasn't enough "like a guy," brought it on himself. And I'm sickened that so many of you flocked to the Mark Driscoll/Doug Wilson machismo sideshow earlier this month, where the guys-only talk was about masculinity and the fatherhood of God -- an odd emphasis for a conference titled "The Grace Agenda," but an obsession of the masculinist culture of both Driscoll's Mars Hill in Seattle and the Wilsonian institutions of Moscow. That grace should be appropriated as a phallic, macho symbol -- we need grace because we're impotent to save ourselves -- is disgusting.

And so by doing so -- by favoring these bullies with your dollars and your interest -- you heaped legitimacy on two men whose words don't show them to be conservative Christians who see homosexual conduct as sinful, but as nothing more than anti-gay bullies who don't give a rip about people "not like them." The death of kids like Jamey ought to make you question your alliances; should you hold to a conservative theology here, you owe it to your God to question your assumption that part and parcel of it is to support bullies -- or be one yourself.

Because words have consequences, some of them life or death.

Wilson has previously mocked the "It Gets Better" campaign that exists to encourage LGBT kids to reach for life beyond the jungle of high school; Driscoll thinks it's cool to call, from the pulpit, the things he doesn't like "so gay." You can go back years for more examples of their kick-ass macho approach to showering contempt on the sodomites, queers, fags, catamites and buggarers -- thank a Wilson Blog and Mablog post from a few years back for the expansion of your vocabulary here -- and it was just a couple of months ago when, in belittling the It Gets Better campaign, Wilson reminded us of what "regular" people do.

Hint: Jamey wasn't "regular" in Wilson's eyes.

Nor was he in the eyes of his peers, who, in noting his mannerisms and words and preferences, announced that "Jamey must die." And they didn't get that from the hateful R. J. Rushdooney, their own understanding of Leviticus, or an exploration of endocrino-neurobiological evidences that might affect fetal development. They got it from a masculinist, patriarchal culture that's encouraged at every turn by a masculinist, patriarchal Church that looks nothing like its Author. Wilson, Driscoll, et al, are some of the primary purveyors thereof.

Let's be clear: Wilson and Driscoll didn't literally kill Jamey -- or any other gay kid who takes her or his own life. Jamey did, because of the hell those kids put him through. But the bullies and others like them got their inspiration, their identity, their boldness and their cultural views -- let's not dignify it by calling it a "theology" -- from the macho men of this culture. And where are they found? By whom are they encouraged, legitimized, and held up as examples? Where is the one place, other than the gridiron and prison, where the violent reflexes and noxious odor of masculinism is still apparent, still applauded?

Not among the people of Jesus Christ, who cooperate in the Spirit's work to conform them to his character, a life marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, mercy and self-control, but certainly in the Church that bears his name. It's no longer a question of the Church's being a "safe" place for young people dealing with their sexuality. The Church and the culture it encourages are about as welcoming to LGBT kids as a Roman coliseum teeming with heathens cheering on the bloodthirsty lions. Here, though, the audience proclaims allegiance to the Prince of Peace and -- with Bibles duly highlighted -- takes its cues from guys not much like him at all.

And it dares call itself "pro-life" in the midst of it all.

Sadly, and tragically for kids like Jamey, it's becoming apparent to a lost and watching world that the Church of Jesus Christ doesn't much look like a place where true disciples of his congregate.

The Debt The Rich Owe -- It's A Social Contract, Not "Class Warfare"

2011-09-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

With thanks to my friend Peggy J.:

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

I don't know whose words they are, but this is right on. The super-rich currently pay about half the tax rate they would have paid in the sensible, community-oriented, and prosperous Eisenhower era, and the burden of not only paying down the national debt but also maintaining even the minimal function of society now falls on the middle class. There are more poor people in America now than in decades -- and the gap between the middle class and the rich is widening.

That gap is ripping this country apart. Shame on those religionist Republicans who continue to parade their devotion to Christ while whoring for the richest corporate interests.

And yes, I mean "whoring."

Does Righteousness Really Matter To The Religious Right?

2011-09-21T13:20:00.001-07:00

I think we're pretty clear on the Church of the Republican Party's interest in what consenting adults do in their bedrooms, yet it occurs to me that there are other areas of righteousness, public AND private, that not only befoul our world but also require a response from those ministering and serving in it.

But this week has brought us a couple of occasions that would seem to require -- minimally -- comment from Christ followers of any stripe, and particularly those running the country or running for the opportunity to do so as President. The subject, though, is capital punishment, and the death penalty itself doesn't provoke much comment, ever, from the religious GOP -- until, of course, their audiences cheer Rick Perry's robust record of executions in Texas.

Glory to God, and flip the switch.

Tragically, though, two of the most clear, most grotesque abuses of an evil policy, one of which comes from Perry's home state, doesn't seem to merit even a murmur from him or from his co-political moralists. That's not just a tragedy. That's evidence of the kind of disregard for righteousness, and even an embrace of evil, railed against by the Old Testament prophets and condemned by Christ Jesus in the New. And the GOP is awash in it.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution hours before convicted murderer Duane Buck was to be put to death in Texas, the state that under Governor Rick Perry and his predecessor, George W. Bush, puts more people to death than all other states combined. Under normal circumstances -- those circumstances experienced and affected by a Church committed to the message of Jesus Christ and not to the ugly specter of privilege, power, and punch-drunk machismo it currently is -- the dissonance between Evangelical governorship and its tax-funded killing spree would prompt outrage or, better, fasting and mourning.

Sackcloth and ashes would be more appropriate for Governor Perry than polished leather cowboy boots with "LIBERTY" embroidered on them, in other words.

But this is the United States of America, where the Jesus worshiped in the public square too often is a "savior" entirely foreign to the New Testament, entirely absent from the Blessed Trinity, and entirely uninterested in reconciling humankind to Yahweh. So the well-churched GOP seems entirely unconcerned that the most conservative member of a conservative Supreme Court stayed the execution because of his outrage over the sentencing, wherein the fact that Buck is a Black man was said to legitimately represent a greater danger to the public should he ever be freed from prison. Too subtle for you? The fact is, Duane Buck was sentenced to death and not to life in prison without parole because he's a Black man, and the assumption that that made him more dangerous prevailed.

If that doesn't make you flinch in horror, your soul is calloused and your heart hardened. That includes Rick Perry,

And then last night brought about the shameful execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia man convicted of killing a cop. But seven of nine witnesses had retracted their testimonies against him, and even the prosecution acknowledged doubts regarding his guilt. There was no DNA evidence linking him to the murder; another man confessed to the crime. Davis, also Black, maintained his innocence until the State killed him late last night. Even William Sessions, former director of the FBI, objected to his execution. Davis' lawyer rightly called it a legal lynching. And Davis' message to his executioners?

"May God have mercy on your souls."

The State of Georgia has killed an innocent man, it appears, and the State of Texas was eager to kill a man sentenced to death because he was Black. And if none of the religiously-saturated, cross-draped-in-the-flag GOP candidates don't at least question Davis' execution and affirm the rightness of Buck's stay of execution, they show themselves to be nothing more than pretenders to the throne of Christian leadership. I would not want to be one of them, however, at the great white Throne of Jesus Christ. Indeed, may God have mercy on their souls -- and on ours if we remain silent.

The American Hikers' Release: It Ain't The Allergies . . .

2011-09-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

I've been tuned in to CBN much of the morning as two young American hikers -- and two mothers' sons -- were released a few minutes ago after more than two years in the Iranian prison from which another young woman was released last year.

Their offense? Naive imprudence, perhaps, in apparently hiking too close to the Iranian-Iraqi border, but certainly not espionage, and most certainly not something deserving of 25 months in an Iranian hellhole. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were hiking with Bauer's now-fiancee Sarah Shourd in September 2009 when they were arrested by officers of one of the, ahem, least-stable administrations in the world. Shourd was released last year on "humanitarian grounds," and I just watched live footage of Fattal and Bauer rushing down the jetway to plunge into a small crowd of family and friends, including Shourd.

I cannot imagine what Bauer's, Fattal's, and Shourd's families have endured. I have a friend here in Moscow who lost her son quite suddenly just two weeks ago, and her pain is unlike any I imagine I've ever felt. Missing a child hurts; losing a child, or being separated from a child under circumstances neither of you have control over, would be almost unendurable. I have words that I think might describe the hell of not knowing if they're well, if they're ill or injured, or if you'll ever see them again alive -- but what words could be sufficient?

I do things around the house most days wistfully thinking of my eldest, who's only six hours away and who picks up his cell phone ninety percent of the time; my youngest lives here in town, and I can see him pretty much whenever I want to. But my small home holds a million memories; even folding bath towels prompts thoughts of them both. (Like when Anthony discovered the effects of accidentally running a Korean-English New Testament through a load of laundry. I picked sodden bits of Philippians from my washer and all that was in it with astonishment that 27 books times two, on fine Bible paper, could create such a mess, while balled-up wads of Revelation clogged the lint filter for months). Even when my new UI graduate leaves to teach in Korea for a year or two, my longing for him will be tempered by the fact that he's there because he wants to be, and he'll be fine. In fact, it's ironic that his being in better shape than I'll be is a testimony to what a great thing we have. I'll cry, but . . . I'll KNOW.

But the Fattals, Shourds, and Bauers, as well as their friends, spent more than two years not knowing. And as anyone who's ever had to wait for results from a medical test or news of loved one in crisis understands, it's the not knowing that sucks life out of the soul.

The sniffling you hear and the tears slipping down my face aren't from an unusually wacky Moscow autumn, but from my joy that God heard the prayers of millions of people around the world and gave these two young men, and Ms. Shourd before them, back to their families and back to each other. It's a good day, and may God be praised.

Speechless, I Am

2011-09-20T11:44:00.001-07:00

I love the person who sent this to me, who agrees with it entirely, she says, but the video clip here is quite likely the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life:

http://www.therightscoop.com/open-thread-grinding-america-down/

Yes. It's true. "Commies" are trying to take down America, and they've succeeded, pretty much, by following the point-by-point agenda revealed in "The Naked Communist," a tell-all, we're told, by a former FBI agent.

Google Rep. Curtis Bowers. He appears to be a wellspring of misguided, albeit sincere, fears that rooms full of dedicated Communist "professionals" in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s -- with briefcases! -- have pretty much won the day; you're suffering from their successes far more than you realize, evidently. I think that perhaps Rep. Bowers is in a bit over his head. Further, the alleged Josef Stalin quote below is not prescient because of Communism, regardless of his intent. The Religious Right has corruptively used these three pillars of American strength far more egregiously, and far more effectively, to damage our nation than stadiums full of Bolsheviks.

Let the eldercommies totter off into the night. It's men like Bowers who frighten me a whole lot more, because they multiply and become Tea Party organizers, pastors, legislators, and media pundits. Tragically, good people, like the woman who sent this to me, take them at their word, believing it to be the Word, and perpetuate the whole thing by voting. And hitting the "send" button.

So. Josef Stalin, on how to weaken the United States, as quoted in the video link above:

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."

Oh, Shoot. Forgot Newt. And, Try Though I Might, I Can't Forget Palin.

2011-09-20T11:09:00.001-07:00

In my comments about the GOP presidential candidates, I forgot good ol' Newt Gingrich, about whom, for me at least, the less said the better. But just so the Coiffed Newt doesn't feel neglected, I'll just say this:

If he's honestly repented to the Lord Jesus of his serial adultery, then he's forgiven. Period. What I'm looking forward to is his repentance for his dishonest attempts to poison the political process that's been so very -- exceedingly, abundantly -- good to him. Take this, for example, from the just-published "Blind Allegiance To Sarah Palin" by former Palin head honcho Frank Bailey:

". . . Newt Gingrich (was) regularly emailing advice like suggesting she (Palin) not answer difficult questions but instead 'reframe it into the question she wishes they asked,' or better yet, 'When your opponent has posed a question designed to put you on defense, the right strategy is to destroy the very legitimacy of the question and pose a new question of your own.' "

I consider any support of Sarah Palin's political ambitions to be a sign of either sheer lunacy, near-preternatural ignorance, or, as I think is the case here, gross manipulation for personal gain by encouraging the destruction of the political process. Hyperbole? This is Newt Gingrich we're speaking of; there's no discussion of Newt, even BY Newt, without an oddly sonorous hyperbole. It fits. And that's why, when it comes to Newt Gingrich, I think it's best I move on . . .

Bailey's book is 380 pages of minutiae dedicated, as far as I can tell, to two things: First, expressing the evangelical Bailey's presumably sincere regret that he was so instrumental in her rise to prominence in Alaska -- he believed her to be "chosen of God," which, and I say this honestly, puts his grasp of theology in serious question. He also sets out a convincing, detailed, and ultimately damning case that Palin is -- surprise! -- an unstable, narcissistic, rage-prone prima donna of limited intellectual capability. How this would be a revelation to anyone is puzzling, but Bailey's repentance seems to require that we understand that he was enthralled with her, charmed beyond reason and righteousness, and yet eventually was left holding the Palin Shitstorm Bag enough times to have his reasoning faculties and moral compass restored.

Good for him, I suppose, although it doesn't say much for me that I spent the whole night reading the entire thing.

He also drops a bombshell about rival Palin-writer Joe McGinniss, who, according to Bailey, lifted publisher's draft copies of the Bailey manuscript and circulated the information throughout Alaska and the Capitol. That makes it highly unlikely that I'll now buy McGinniss' book, although I suspect it's a better read. But that's a tremendous ethical breach, and I can almost hear my tough, print-journalist dad roaring his disapproval from the feet of his Savior in Heaven. Besides, after a night with Frank 'n Sarah 'n Todd 'n Everyone In The World Who's Out To Get Them, I think I'll look for something more fun to do.

Like get a spinal tap.

The GOP Candidates. I Mean, I'm Really Trying . . .

2011-09-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

OK, here it is, several days after the GOP Presidential Candidates' Debate co-sponsored by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, looking as though he's just accidentally walked into the Fifth Grade Girls' Health Movie, complete with free product samples, and the Tea Party Express, which demonstrated, for those who've always wondered, what lemmings look like when they gleefully surge right off the cliff.

It was, early on, a spectacle-in-the-making; the arrival of the candidates only confirmed the sense of unease in the air beforehand. There was tension you could cut with a knife, if only you trusted anyone there with sharp instruments. As a debate, it was meaningless -- even reasonably cogent, specific questions were answered with pallid sound bites and tired platitudes -- but it was terrifically insightful as a look into what the GOP has to offer the American people in a presidential candidate.

Here's my take on each of the candidates:

Rick Perry, with a permanent scowl that belies his pasted-on grimace of a smile, looks like he's just itchin' to kick ass and take names . . . but can't remember how to spell them. Kudos to him, though, for his defense of the Gardasil vaccine and Texas' version of the DREAM act for immigrants. There just MAY be a heart in there.

Mitt Romney looks like central casting's idea of an executive, a leader, and a Captain of industry, but unfortunately he debates as someone who's disgusted with the script handed to him. While I suppose that speaks well for him, given the chaos of the Republican Party, he has it in him, as a moral free agent, to write his own. The voice of Dwight Eisenhower clearly is nagging at him. I just wish he'd listen

John Huntsman clearly chafes at the restrictions he feels, and he demonstrated, with his reference to a Nirvana song, that he doesn't know his audience and doesn't particularly care to. So do the right thing, John: Stop with the not-at-all convincing paeans to Paul Ryan, et al, and just run as a Democratic centrist in 2016. Problem solved and conscience salved.

Michelle Bachmann demonstrated once again that the commandment to not bear false witness matters little to her. There is no evidence that the anti-HPV vaccine Gardasil causes, as she claimed the next day she was told by a woman in the audience, mental retardation. What it DOES do is protect girls from a disease, cervical cancer, that's almost always caused by this largely, but not always, sexually-transmitted virus. Bachmann may not like the fact that the Gardasil vaccine's addition to the list of mandated immunizations recognizes the reality that girls will eventually have sexual relations, but she ought not act as though the vaccine is equivalent to the sexual corruption of "innocent little girls," many of whose lives could be saved by this vaccine. Also, she's dumb.

Herman Cain is refreshingly unscripted, and with his Nine-Nine-Nine program, he's at least offering something reasonably specific to address the economic crisis we find ourselves in. But I object -- I STRENUOUSLY object -- to his having been "anointed" as God's choice by clergy prior to the first GOP debate. Cain may have a deep, personal faith, and good for him if he does. But his deep, personal faith must not ever echo the deep, personal faith in the Ayn Rand-inspired Tea Party that's flocked to him. Cain's faith is of no consequence -- not temporally, not eternally -- if it doesn't comport to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter how witty he is.

Ron Paul looks like he'd be the most compassionate, wise doctor you've ever seen, and I'd have him as my next-door neighbor in a heartbeat. But his Randian Libertarianism is frightening; it's also entirely inappropriate for the Christian. I'd rather have a flat tire on a rainy night in front of Paul's house than in front of anyone else's, but I have zero trust in his followers' sense of empathy, justice, and righteousness in the public square. In fact, I'm afraid of them, and I consider them a population that needs to be evangelized -- not standard-bearers of evangelicalism.

I think that's everyone, and all-in-all, it's a pretty dismal group. I am an unabashed Obama supporter, even as I've been deeply disappointed by his failure to be the leader I know he can be in the face of the coming GOP self-immolation. This nation needs an alternative to simpering, impotent Democrats and Republican flame-throwers. A centrist-liberal -- Obama is not a liberal, and he's ineffective as a centrist -- could not only survive the coming political disaster, but also regroup and rebuild the confidence of a citizenry stupified by wrong-headed rhetoric and devastated by a chaotic economy left to him by his predecessor.

It would -- I speak in the conditional, not in the certainty of the future tense -- be a good day if Obama reached deep down into his heart and put his formidable gifts in the service not of pacifying Democrats and enabling Republicans, but of leading this country to higher ground. He can, I know.

This Is A Long One, And Worth Your Time In Reading It (And Be Sure To Scroll Down For A Comment On Driscoll)

2011-09-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

OK, so you might want to hit the bathroom before you start, but this is the most cogent, insightful, and courageous analysis of the modern GOP -- from a Republican apitol Hill staffer -- I've ever read:

http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779

Yes, he calls the Religious Right/Tea Party-controlled GOP a cult, and I agree with him. Now, I don't use the word "cult," in either its sociological or religious sense, carelessly; I've never, for example, referred to Doug Wilson's various organizations ("ministries" just doesn't fit) as "cults." There's enough there to object to without wrongly, in my mind, jumping to the conclusion that any weird or objectionable religious group is a cult. It's enough to be weird or, as is more the case with Wilson, objectionable; it needn't be a cult.

But the modern GOP meets the sociological definition, I think, of a cultish movement; that is, a group that adheres to a rigid, fundamentalist -- politically and religiously, in this case -- ideology and imposes strict litmus tests of ideological purity to determine who's in and who's out. It also utterly marginalizes the sociological "Other" and uses the vitriol it spews to energize its followers. While I had not previously thought of the GOP as a cult (content as I was to simply believe them to be obnoxious, ignorant, and entirely dangerous to the future of this country), I concede the writer's point. The GOP has become more a cult than a political party, and it's an exceedingly dangerous one.

Read the whole article, and I'll likely follow up with some thoughts of my own, now that the Driscoll Macho Circus has left town. And a note to erstwhile correspondent Rob: As I said in responding to your comment, you evidently are unaware that the Grace Agenda was a guy thing, and you probably don't realize my strong objection to sex-segregated theological and ecclesiastical conferences. But I wouldn't attend the Dangerous Woman sideshow for two reasons: One, most of the women there would recognize me, and I have no right to upset their plans, no matter how offensive I find them to be. Two, I would never pay money to attend a conference whose entire existence is predicated on the idea that I'd have nothing at all to learn from the "men's conference," which, dealing as it does with the subject of grace, ought never to have been a guy thing anyway.

That should clear it up.

Wilson, Describing Driscoll Better Than I Could

2011-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

So Doug Wilson and his two most loyal acolytes -- his son, N.D. Wilson, and his son-in-law, Ben Merkle -- have invited the coolest dude on campus over to their lunch table. And, wonder of wonders, he's accepted the invite, leaving the other bullies and jocks and moving over to the smart kids table with a swagger and a cafeteria tray full of in-your-face talk about "relevance" and "authenticity." All of the other kids are watching, even. Does it get much better?

Probably not. But it has gotten a whole lot worse.

Turns out that Reformed Christianity's coolest kid in school, Mark Driscoll, is a buffoon and a bully -- which could be why Wilson, et al, initially found him so appealing -- but, alas, his buffoonery and bullying come with an unexpected taint of the kind of controversy that's not, actually, all that cool, not at all, but kind of off-putting. Kind of unsavory. Kind of, in fact, grotesque. And while Driscoll might be the Big Man on the Reformed Campus, there are other alumni thereof who think he's a loose cannon, and not in the cool and masculinely hep "up yours, you sentimental girly-man" way, and is also a pretender both to orthodoxy and to simple decency -- the kind of decency their elders, and their ecclesiastical elders, expect those gathered around the lunch table to adhere to.

I've written about Wilson's pretzel logic in explaining how it is that a cessationist like Mark Driscoll, someone who, like Wilson, believes the "sign" gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased, nonetheless says the Holy Spirit "shows" him sort of a sign or bulletin board-like thing over someone's head that tells Mark the particulars, in graphic detail, of their past sin or past suffering. Most of the people Mark sees this about are women, it seems, and it generally tends to focus on Mark's belief that, thanks to the Spirit, he can just "know" when some young woman's been raped by her grandpa. (You can scroll down a few posts for the link). It's terribly inconvenient for Wilson, even if Driscoll's flights of fancy -- we must not call them "Spirit-gift" names like "words of wisdom," Wilson would say, because we're cessationists -- involved fairly pedestrian pronouncements. But Mark Driscoll appears able to see sex in most anything. He just doesn't normally thank the Holy Spirit for the view.

In fact, evangelical stalwarts like MacArthur Study Bible Editor John MacArthur of The Master's Seminary and the Grace To You radio program have taken Driscoll to the woodshed for his "soft porn" version of the Biblical Song of Solomon, and others in the Body have criticized those evangelical leaders who embrace the macho, coarse Seattle pastor. Driscoll is notorious for talking from the pulpit of things that most people tend not to discuss with anyone other than their partner, and his hearty endorsement of marital practices like anal sex, something that Wilson in earlier days would call a "foul sexual habit," as well as his recent assertion that women can help win their unbelieving husbands to Christ by performing regular and robust blowjobs has our local Bishop of Bluster . . . befuddled indeed.

Here's a recent Blog and Mablog post on pastors and other Christians who need to be seen as "edgy" and "real," but who, Wilson says, are deluded, like a "jungle full of monkeys." It doesn't solve his Driscollian horny-in-the-side problem, but it is, I suppose, a brave attempt to deflect attention from the now-crowded cafeteria table over which Wilson will preside this weekend, when "The Grace Agenda" storms, or limps, its way into the confines of Moscow's Nazarene Church:

"There are two basic ways for evangelical Christians to care about the arts. One is the Kuyperian Reformed route, and the other is the way of bohemian pose-striking. One of the most heartening aspects of the "young, restless, and Reformed" development is the possibility of a real aesthetic reformation. Perhaps I should explain myself.

Scripture teaches us, over and over again, that deliverance comes from odd and unexpected places. And Scripture also tells us repeatedly that the faithful who are waiting for such deliverance have a tendency to wait by the wrong door. David was just a shepherd boy. Joseph was handed off to a passing caravan for a bit of money. Daniel was a slave, captured in war. Esther was just one more beauty for the harem. Jeremiah was just a kid. And Jesus grew up in that podunk place, Galilee of the Gentiles.

When it comes to what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful, the emergent types have gone bohemian in all three areas. Their truth has gone to relativistic mush, their ideas of goodness are more interested in anal intercourse than they ought to be, and their concept of beauty is summed up by outre tattoos in inappropriate places. They have fallen for the simplest of Screwtape's devices, the idea that "gritty" is real and "lovely" is bourgeois. They fell into that simple trap because they are such deep people..." (Blog and Mablog, Sept. 7, 2011)

Wilson continues, as he must, with the assertion that the Spirit may yet choose to do wondrous works in these types -- because that's the prerogative of the Spirit, who chooses, as Wilson's words demonstrate, the most unlikely people to further the Divine will. Deft handling of the anal-sex favoring, tattoo-loving Driscoll required; deft handling done more-or-less well. But there is no handling so deft as to soothe the self-inflicted wound Wilson is suffering from.

Until he acknowledges that it was daft, not deft, to associate with Driscoll, that thorn in his side will continue to fester. Sadly, the infection will affect the reputation of the Nazarene Church, already compromised after having hosted the Sitler wedding in June, as well as that of the good people who worship there. I know that Wilson omitted news of Driscoll's attendance at this "local" conference when he made arrangements with Nazarene Pastor Eby. Even in late winter and early spring, Wilson knew Driscoll was who he was, and "who he was" was evidently not something Moscow's biggest pastor thought the conservative, Wesleyan Eby needed to know about. That's dishonest, and Eby's likely veto of the Driscoll Show would've saved Wilson a large measure of embarrassment, although Merkle and Nate sometimes provide some cringeworthy moments as well.

Still, they at least have their scripts OK'd by Dad, if not literally then by conditioning. Oh, to be a guy next weekend and hear the uncomfortable shifting in the seats that accompanies a Mark Driscoll appearance -- either from embarrassment or unforeseen provocation of lust or dismay over bad theology. With any luck, it just might drown out the yammering of the Dangerous Women conference attendees as they discuss the "radicalness" of blindly accepting permanent, functional subordination to the chair-squeaking guys inside.

Mercy.

Remembering 9/11. I Think Little More Needs To Be Said, Really

2011-09-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

From Methodist pastor and theologian Will Willimon, in Christianity Today's current issue marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

"On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.

The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusively martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt very vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.

September 11 has changed me. I’m going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what’s wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God’s own Son."

It's the truth of his words that makes me weep more than the anniversary we mark Sunday.

Prayer For N.J.

2011-09-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

Please, all of you out there who trust in the Lord, spend just a moment asking for peace and comfort for my friend N.J., whose son had been lost in the Alaskan wilderness since Saturday and whose body was found a couple of hours ago by searchers finally able to reach the area by helicopter after a severe storm earlier in the week. I have two sons, and so does she; I cannot imagine, not even a little bit, the horror she must be feeling. My heart breaks for her, and I pray the Holy Spirit would flood her heart with hope, peace, comfort, rest, and love.

It's a terrible thing. And yet God is bigger still . . .

Our Anniversary

2011-09-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

I got a little tied up last week by the kind of crises that those of you out there who are landlords understand as some of the best reasons in the world to question the sanity of investing in real estate rentals.

Honestly, there's got to be a better way. Maybe I should invest in Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, who appear to live in the relative harmony not demonstrated last week in our little four-plex community. Goodness.

Anyway, I plan to comment further on Mark Driscoll, as well as to weigh in on last night's GOP Presidential debate, but for today, let me just publicly thank God that I've been married to my best friend, lover, and companion for 27 years today. On a hot September afternoon in Tucson, where, I had forgotten, outdoor weddings really ought not happen until at least the end of October, Jeff and I exchanged our vows in front of a hundred or so friends and family -- me in a most un-Bridezilla-like simple white dress and veil, him in a stifling but handsome navy blue suit, and the people around us joyful even in the 90 degree heat. It was magical, and only one person passed out from the swelter -- his grandmother.

Thankfully, she was a hearty and forgiving woman.

Anyway, a lot of people, some even at the wedding after the beer and champagne flowed, said we wouldn't make it. We were too different, our families were too different, our histories were too different, and besides -- he's such a NICE person! It's distressing to think that people partaking of my parents' hospitality should be so uncouth while doing so, but I knew, and Jeff knew, that our Savior had brought us together. Forever. Period. Besides, Jeff thought then and thinks now that I'm a pretty nice person, too; I've never wavered in agreeing with the rabble that he is, in fact, an uncommonly decent person. And it's by the grace of God that we would come to see that about each other through the mail.

Yep. Through the mail. Jeff is a mail-order husband.

In March 1983, I had been working for about four months in Odessa, Texas, with my BA in journalism tucked in my belt and my reporter's notebook always at the ready. Mine was the cop beat -- crime, vice, and disaster, all day most days, and every day most weeks. In that one year, I saw more dead bodies, more violence, more squalor and injustice and noxious bigotry than I'd seen even growing up in Tucson, and I had only been a Christian a couple of years, maybe three. Jeff, meanwhile, had also come to Christ in the spring of 1980 or so, and he was working 18 hours a day, every day but Sunday, to build a greenhouse and scratch out a nursery business. He lived in a nasty old trailer on site, and I had what was, to me, a posh apartment in the newest section of Odessa. If you've ever been to Odessa, you know that's a little like saying your cockroach has the shiniest shell. It wasn't much, but it was mine, and my workmates and editors were beginning to see that I had some talent as a reporter and writer.

One afternoon, my mother called and announced that Jeff's parents were visiting Tucson from somewhere in Washington-State-Near-Seattle, and that their "boy" was "still single and religious in that same way you are." In fact, the Spirit had worked in Jeff to lead his family to Christ, while my parents, still married at the time, were politically Catholic and politically unchurched, although it was hardly a "mixed" marriage. Jeff's mother got on the phone and said she'd have him write to me, since my mother had taken pains to tell her how terribly lonely I was in Texas and how violent everything there seemed to be. I thanked her politely, but cringed at the thought of a still-single religious nutcase peppering me with unsolicited letters.

About a week later, a very simple sheet of paper came in the mail, tucked in a hastily-scrawled envelope bearing a Snohomish, Washington, postmark. He wrote:

"Well, our parents know each other. That's nice. Hope all's well. Bye, now."

It's true that our fathers had been best buddies from junior high on and that the families had kept in contact throughout the years, although all I knew about Jeff, or Jim, or Joe, or whatever his name was, was that he had part of a finger sliced off when he was 9. It seemed so heroic, so exciting, so very Johnny Tremain. But I couldn't let this maimed frontier woodsman think that I was at all lonely, lacking in friends, or lost in the oilfields of West Texas, so I wrote back something like:

"I don't NEED you to write to me. I make A THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH and I have a NEW CAR and an apartment WITH A DISHWASHER, and I can date ANY guy I want to date," and on and on and on . . . Almost a week later, I got this on a single sheet of
5 X 7 yellow notepaper, without which even today Jeff is rendered nearly mute:

"Hmmmmm. The 'still single' part makes a lot more sense now . . . "

I was smitten. We wrote almost every day, after I apologized for my haughtiness, and had already talked about the Big Stuff even before our first telephone conversation in August 1983 -- a call he had to make twice, because I was so nervous and so thrilled when it rang the first time, I threw up. Like his grandmother, he's a hearty and forgiving sort who never once said he didn't know it wasn't just, ummm, static on the line. There were a couple of months when my phone bill was higher than the rent on my apartment, and it became clear that we needed to meet, having already discussed marriage.

He flew me to Seattle to see him in November, and I got off the plane realizing that I had shared my secrets to, talked about marriage with, and fallen utterly in love with someone whose face, not even in a photograph, I had ever seen. I panicked as I walked through the gate; he said he'd be wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. It was Seattle, Washington, in the early 1980s. Who wasn't?

But a very handsome man with the kindest blue eyes I'd ever seen stepped out of the crowd, gave me a chaste peck on the cheek, and handed me a yellow rose. I was more than relieved -- I was ecstatic. Jeff was every bit as wonderful in person as I'd hoped he'd be, and my five days with him at his parents' HUGE home in Issaquah were phenomenal. He treated me wonderfully, and I left for Odessa thinking that this was either something real and lasting, or the worst cosmic prank in recorded history.

We got engaged on December 14; I moved up to Snohomish on January 30, 1984 and lived with his cousin while we planned our wedding. We wanted something simple, outside, and beautiful, and the entire event, my dress included, came to about $1200. His parents were ecstatic, as were mine; our fathers beamed beyond what was proper or common to 50-year-old men at that time, but it was wonderful to have their support.

Now, as we head off to Nosh in downtown Moscow, I look back and think that somehow God has let the doubters know that what he joins together, not even Keely, or Jeff, even, have ruined. He's been a father unlike any I've ever known to our sons, and my own dad freely acknowledged having learned things from his son-in-law. I have never been Mrs. Jeffrey Mix, and not even Mrs. Keely Mix, but I've been proud every day of my life to be Keely Emerine-Mix, and to wake up next to a guy who isn't perfect, but who's perfect for me -- and who thinks I'm pretty darned wonderful, too.

Yep, Mark, This IS "Demon Stuff"

2011-09-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot for me to feel even a little bit sorry for Douglas Wilson.

Now, if he were in a serious wreck, or were diagnosed with a terminal illness, or lost someone close to him unexpectedly, I would feel terrible for him -- and I pray those things never happen; unlike him, I refuse to pray imprecatorily. But absent those and other horrors, I find Wilson to be a pompous, bigoted, intemperate, boorish faux-intellectual whose difficulties most often come to him via his own recklessness, arrogance, or ignorance, and while I'm deeply pained that these controversies reflect poorly on the Christian faith and its Author, I'm comfortable assigning the blame for them solely to Doug -- sola Wilsonia, as it were. When one finds himself bleeding out from a wound inflicted by his own serrated edge, he is hardly a candidate for his critics' sympathy.

So imagine my surprise that, just last week, I found myself squirming a little at the humiliation Wilson, a devout cessationist -- someone who believes the "sign" gifts of the Spirit such as prophecy, miracles, and words of knowledge or wisdom no longer exist in the Church -- must be feeling just now. In luring the coolest guy in Reformed circles over to the Anselm Club House, he's got fellow pastor and cessationist Mark Driscoll co-headlining, with Wilson, his son, and his daughter's husband, a conference later this month.

Which would, at least for the guys involved, be just fine, except that the Grace Agenda and bonhomie of the weekend has suffered a bit of a wrinkle. It turns out that Wilson's new pal is on record as saying that the Holy Spirit gives him the supernatural ability to "see things" about other people, things like past instances of rape or molestation or adultery (this being Driscoll, they're almost always, it seems, sexual in nature) that he then shares with them.

If this is cessationism, it's the most sensational cessationism you or I have ever heard of, not to mention utterly offensive, dangerous, and un-Biblical -- and I say this as a non-cessationist, someone who believes the sign gifts DO, in fact, still exist. Here's Driscoll on stage at Mars Hill, clad in a brown hoodie and a gray Mickey Mouse shirt, presumably so we're not overwhelmed by his prophetic gravitas:

http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2011/08/pornographic-divination.html88886

The layers of danger here are higher than a Sabbath-dinner dessert parfait, and this odd little and exceedingly dangerous predilection of Driscoll's ought finally to topple him from any position, real or presumed, as a reasonable spokesman for the Christian faith. And they cause no small embarrassment for the seemingly un-embarrassable Doug Wilson, who evidently hasn't found Driscoll's myriad other pastoral and exegetical shortcomings terribly disturbing. But this has our Sergeant of Serrated Spin floundering about wildly as he attempts in Blog and Mablog to defend Driscoll, although rarely by name, while assuring the bewildered reader that when his pal uses words like "supernatural," "I see a picture," and "from the Spirit," it's not REALLY the same thing as what those charismatic whack-jobs do.

Because Wilson, to be Wilson, has to maintain his rigid theology -- Reformed, conservative, masculinist, and cessationist. Lord knows Driscoll and he share the first three, and presumably the still-cessationist Driscoll believes, and Wilson believed, that they share the final point. But even I felt a twinge -- just a twinge, nothing more -- of sympathy for Wilson as he flailed about in Blog and Mablog, trying to explain that, OK, when Driscoll says things like "I can see things, like a screen over their heads," attributes that (wrongly) to a gift of discernment and (wrongly a hundredfold) then, based on his salacious hunches, suggests that a woman go ask Grandpa if he molested her when she was three, it's somehow not the exercise of prophecy or the reception of a word of wisdom or of knowledge. That, of course, makes even less sense than Driscoll's blathering, albeit with much less danger attached.

I'll have much more to say about Driscoll's "spirit-guided" insight into his congregants' sexual and other sinful histories, but I am unshakeable in my conviction that this practice of his is dangerous. Poor Grandpa, in the example above, if he is, in fact, innocent. Can you imagine the effect on family harmony, not to mention the furthering of the Gospel among unbelievers, when that discussion goes sour? If he's correct, he's guessed well; if he's not, he's not only NOT hearing from the Holy Spirit -- although I absolutely believe he's hearing from A spirit -- but has caused tremendous emotional damage to someone who may not even have sought out his counsel in the first place.

Or how about when, after he gets one of these "pictures" over the head of a woman, Driscoll suggests that she confess during couples' counseling the lurid details of the adulterous sexual relationship he says the Spirit "shows" him she engaged in? Any potential for disaster there? If he's wrong, and if her spouse is not a Christian, there's no blow job sufficiently powerful to turn him around after that. (Remember, Driscoll believes women unequally yoked should augment the teachings in 1 Peter with frequent, robust gifts of oral sex to her reprobate husband). How about when Driscoll tells her, in typically lurid Driscollian detail, about the rape he's sure she suffered decades before?

After reading the post and watching the accompanying video, you'll understand why I use women as examples, not men; it seems this "gift" visits Macho Mark to inform him of women's past sexual experiences more often than not, which is made even more dangerous given Driscoll's well-deserved reputation for near-obsession with sex and his overtly, coarsely masculinist theology. Wilson gamely writes that he would never cease fellowship with a non-cessationist just because they understand the Spiritual gifts differently. That's good to know. Unfortunately, he seems entirely willing to NOT cease fellowship with a vicious and vapid man who, even when talking about the things of the Spirit, tends to make you want to admonish him to keep his mind out of the gutter and his hands up on the table, and then look for a bar of soap with which to wash out his smirking mouth.

True Manliness

2011-09-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Mark Driscoll, speaking of Jesus Christ as tough guy: "I could never worship someone I could beat up."

Jesus Christ, speaking of Mark Driscoll and other tough guys in Titus 1: "Since an overseer manages God's household, he must be blameless -- not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not violent . . . "

Christian social activist Cesar Chavez, wrapping it up nicely: "It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice."

I once shook hands with Cesar Chavez. He was a short, wiry, gentle man with kindness etched on his face and a devotion to Jesus manifest in his heart. Cesar wasn't interested in manliness, but Christlikeness; he "took himself down" to lift others up, and he lived with great faith in the One who did it first, and did it best, and did it as "the human one, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people" (1 Tim. 2:5,6) -- not the "tough guy" Driscoll insists on as the object of his worship.

"The Grace Agenda" -- Driscoll Brings His Macho Boorishness To Moscow

2011-08-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, as most of you know, Douglas Wilson, his son N.D. Wilson, and son-in-law Ben Merkle got the coolest guy in school to come over and sit at their lunch table.

Which is another way of saying that the Wilson/Merkle/Wilson Annual Conference On What Masculinist Reformed Guys Think About Sex is ready for its mid-September debut in Moscow as "The Grace Agenda," featuring Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, which reaches out with Driscoll's sex-saturated theology on female subordination, a kick-ass, tough-guy Jesus, and the value of the blow job as an evangelism tool for non-believing husbands. If you're offended by my language, take it up with Driscoll, who's provoked the ire of many conservative evangelicals for his salacious take on the Biblical Song of Solomon, coarse pulpit discussion of marital relations, and embrace of all things cool, hep, and relevant, no matter how obnoxious. It's impossible to write about Driscoll and still sound like a lady.

But I'll be doing my part nonetheless to welcome him to Moscow by posting -- daily, I hope -- on him, his ministry, and the Wilsonian-Driscollista take on Christian manliness, the necessity of a rough-and-tough, red-blooded Jesus, and the sentimental, feminized sappiness of the American Church. In some respects, the education is too late. The pastor of the Nazarene Church, where the conference is scheduled to be held, wasn't made aware of the special circumstances surrounding the groom at the June 11 wedding Wilson officiated there (the groom is a serial pedophile), and when I spoke to him in June, he wasn't aware that Mark Driscoll was part of the "Grace Agenda" conference he had promised his church building's use for. That might have been convenient for Wilson, whose own church facility can't hold a conference, because many pastors, knowing what they know of Mark Driscoll, would prefer several degrees of separation between their churches and him. But a pastor can't object to what he doesn't know about . . .

Nazarene Pastor Eby's lack of diligence in both cases is lamentable, but I intend to make it quite clear that in hosting Wilson and his cronies, he's not hosting your usual kind of Gospel-preaching pastor; in Wilson's not having told him about Driscoll, who attracts controversy virtually every time he opens his mouth, our local Arbiter of Manliness was less than forthcoming. Which, I think, is less than honorable. My hope is that Eby is a more diligent, less naive, more educated man after reading this. My greatest hope, however, is that Wilson's embrace -- not that they'd ever, you know, hug or anything -- of Driscoll tarnishes both men and reveals them and their ministries for what they are. What they are is not what any Gospel-loving Christian should call "good."

So fasten your seatbelts, because it's going to be a quite a ride -- vulgar at times, astonishing at others, and dismaying at every turn. We'll kick off tomorrow with some words from Driscoll about his favorite subject -- masculinity, or, if pressed, Jesus-as-the-embodiment thereof -- and an opposing quote that puts Driscoll to shame.

If such a thing is possible.

Examining First Corinthians, Marriage, And Roles

2011-08-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

I received this a few days ago from a correspondent taking issue, respectfully, with my insistence that Paul's discourse on marriage in 1 Corinthians is a beautiful, more accessible, less-likely-to-be-misapplied Scripture on marriage than the Ephesians 5 verses so often used to encourage wives' subordination to their husbands -- in defiance of Eph. 5:21, which sets the context by insisting on mutual submission. I'm printing Rob's response in its entirety, with my comments interspersed.

First, though, I want to apologize for taking so long to answer Rob. I wasn't feeling well and yet had to superintend a yard sale Saturday, and I was wiped out Sunday and Monday. I cleaned up the house and made dinner early Tuesday, and then my Internet service went on the fritz. Now, I'm rested, the house is in great shape, the dinner dishes are cleared, and my Internet is back up. I want to strike now while the iron is hot!

And, with a few exceptions, I'll be posting tomorrow (September 1) through the 18th strictly on Mark Driscoll, macho-masculinist Christianity, the Wilson/Driscoll "Grace Agenda" conference in Moscow Sept. 16-18, and other subjects and people distressing to anyone who holds a view of Christianity that comports with the person and message of Jesus Christ. But now, on to Rob's comments, with my thanks --

(ROB) In reading your post on 1 Corinthians 7, I struggle to see your application. Perhaps you could clarify. My understanding of your post is that you take Paul’s teaching on sexual purity and the benefit/costs of marriage in I Cor 7 as a balance to the text in Gal 5, where Paul teaches on marital roles, love and respect. Am I correct?

(Keely) Thanks for your comments. I assume you mean Ephesians 5, not Galatians 5, in your first paragraph; I will also disagree with your contention that ch. 7 deals primarily with marital sex, and correct your view on 7:9, which does not state that people "will burn with passion," but instead says that IF they cannot control themselves -- that is, IF they burn with passion -- then marriage is advisable. The condition here is vital to the application and I'm wondering why you maintain otherwise.

(ROB) As I have studied these two passages, both are being written to churches in an emerging Christian cultures. As such, there are frequent admonitions to the Greeks in these epistles to leave behind their former ways and to be inwardly and outwardly transformed; mind and body, evidenced through their redeemed relationships.
Paul’s emphasis in 1 Cor 5-7 deals with “the body” (soma) and its role in our spiritual walk.

(KEELY) I agree that ch. 5-7 deal with issues of the physical body, but also within the Body of Christ; that is, how its members treat one another. In fact, I think the corporate expression of Christian conduct here is more clear than the individual admonitions to abstain from previous pagan behaviors, although, of course, no one would argue that individual conduct doesn't affect the Body. Further, the "drumbeat of mutuality" in the first 15 verses of ch. 7 are not only exceedingly clear for us today, but also for this Church in its own emergent culture -- and the message of mutual love, mutual power, mutual subjection, and mutual benefits and responsibilities in marriage was utterly revolutionary to both pagans and to the Church coming out from among them. It shouldn't be revolutionary to us 2,000 years later, and it surely ought not be overlooked by those who favor marital, gender-based hierarchy.

(ROB)It matters how we eat (6:13), and particularly who we have sex with (6:15+). This was quite important, as the Greeks thought in mind/body dualistic terms, and the new Christians needed a holistic understanding. Clearly something was broken if a man was married to his MIL (1 Cor 5). Paul opines that the optimal condition for people in ministry, especially during troubled times, was to remain celibate (7: 7, 35, 40). Next, Paul provides a logical argument for the necessity of marriage, especially shocking to our modern ears. He states that there is a problem with “immorality” (7:2), and that people will “burn with passion” (7:9). The solution? Marriage, where the wife has the right of the husband’s body, and vice-versa. Sex in marriage satisfies desires and enables believers to avoid immorality (7:5).

(KEELY) Again, Paul does not say people WILL burn with passion and so, therefore, marriage is a "necessity" (your word, not his). He says that marriage, unlike celibacy, burdens the believer with distractions in their Kingdom living that single people don't have, and he only prescribes marriage for those people who ARE "burning" with lust and passion and unable to control themselves; he never forbids marriage, but neither does he command it. You seem to betray a decided bias for marriage as a norm, if not a near-imperative, and I find that complementarianism is a belief system that not only favors but requires "marriage-as-the-norm," perhaps because it severely limits women's choices, which I presume are, for the Christian woman, Spirit-led in God-given autonomy.

(ROB) This is where you lose me; I agree that there is “mutuality” (your word) in 1 Cor 7 in the sharing of bodies. But how does this change the distinct and “complementary” (a word you dislike) roles found in the relationship of marriage, as described in Ephesians 5? Both texts clearly discuss marriage, but the emphasis and line of thought in Eph 5 is quite different.

(KEELY) There are eight examples of "as for the husband, so for the wife; as for the wife, so for the husband" in the first 15 verses of ch. 7, and while the context is marriage, where gender relations are most immediately and intimately played out, Paul makes it clear that the reciprocity, mutuality, and lack of hierarchy based on gender is the Christian ideal for marriage. So, frankly, does Ephesians 5:21-28, but only if v. 21 -- "submit to one another out of reverence to Christ" -- is considered as the context-setting introduction to the verses that follow. Certainly wives are to submit to their husbands and husbands are to love their wives. But, as I've said before, would you really argue that ONLY wives are to submit if that logically leads to the idea that ONLY husbands have to love -- and particularly with verse 21's command that spouses submit ONE TO ANOTHER? If the submission is unilateral, so is the love; neither example of unilateral conduct is tenable logically, nor is it in keeping with a reasonable hermeneutic. To suggest that Ephesians 5 and the gender relationships it speaks of is an easy, confusion-free, crystal-clear passage is perhaps only believable when spoken among other complementarians, and even they surely must wrestle with how far the husband's responsibility to present his wife as a clear and blemish-free specimen of sanctification, which elsewhere in Scripture (and remember the first rule of hermeneutics, "the unclear is explained by the clear") is confidently spoken as the providence of the Spirit.

(ROB) In essence, 1 Cor 7 basically makes allowance for sex in marriage to avoid sin through collateral claims, whereas Eph 5 describes a mutual sacrificial blessing through the complementary exhortations to love and respect, and roles of headship and yielding.

(KEELY) You are aware, I hope, that "head" in Ephesians 5 -- kephale -- is more likely translated "source," as in "God is the source of Christ," as Christ "proceeds" from the Father. Paul could have used the words he uses elsewhere for master/servant or "obeying" relationships, and yet he doesn't. Christ as the "head" or "source" of the Church, particularly given the body imagery Paul uses so freely in his Epistles, could be seen as the "literal head" of the "literal body" knit to him in love. This is consistent with the first male, the man A'dam, as the "source" of the first female, Ish-sha, or the one who proceeds from him. Paul simply doesn't use the many Greek words at his command in describing the hierarchy of the relationships portrayed in Ephesians 5, not between Jesus Christ and Yahweh, and not between women and men. Unless, of course, you're a subordinationist, someone who flirts with the Arian heresy by insisting that in his eternal Being, and not just in the Incarnation, Christ is subject to the Father in the Trinity. Further, this passage is one that discusses Christ's emptying of himself -- his servanthood and even submission -- to his people; it seems clear that the parallel here, absent the "master/servant" language Paul avoids, is the husband's revolutionary and counter-culture (and counter-intuitive!) sacrificial pouring out of himself for his wife, not the wife's "obedience" paralleled with Christ's.

(ROB) I think that it’s been well summarized elsewhere — distinct in role, equal in value.

(KEELY) It's difficult, if not impossible, to argue that while women are ontologically equal to men ("in value"), they have "different roles" which are always subordinate. If the feature, characteristic, etc., of one person is the only ontological feature that requires that person's eternal, fixed subordination to the other person, there clearly IS something about that characteristic -- here, gender -- that causes them to be considered not equal. Logic commands this, unless logic can be circumvented by toying with orthodox Christian trinitarian theology by suggesting that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is eternally, functionally subordinate to the Father, while remaining eternal and ontologically the same. And that's why neo-subordinationism has become so attractive to complementarians such as Wayne Grudem and John Piper and the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood -- what logic and common sense doesn't countenance can be made workable with an appeal to the sacred mystery of the economy of the Trinity. Tragically, this perversion of the doctrine of the Trinity not only does violence to the Trinity, but also is a false entry into legitimate debate on women and men in the Church.

(ROB) This is why Eph. 5 remains a beautiful text for the wedding, while 1 Cor. 7 more often has a role in marriage counseling (where couples are withholding).
I’m sure that I just invited a storm of typing with that last paragraph. Your previous blog posts quite cover your belief that Eph 5 is “murky,” with alternate Greek word meanings and such. We clearly will disagree on that point ‘til kingdom come. Instead, I am looking to know more about why you take 1 Cor 7 to apply in its context to more than just sex and fidelity.

(KEELY) Because the context is marriage, the starting point in the home for gender equality and mutuality, and the application goes further from there. First Cor. 7 is not just about sex or "withholding," but the points Paul makes on marital sexuality all stem from a theology of egalitarian, mutual, reciprocal and non-hierarchical relationship between the husband and the wife -- proceeding even further in his letter, and in others, as he insists that ALL believers are to joyfully practice sacrifice and submission to ALL other believers, for the good of the Body and its testimony to an unbelieving world. That testimony is now contaminated, in the eyes of a watching world choking on patriarchal violence, by wrongful teachings about men and women and their roles in home, church, and society. We clearly disagree, and likely will forever. But I wonder if you could tell me what egalitarian books you've read, or if you'd be willing to look into research like "kephale/source, or where in Genesis you see God commanding Adam to require subordination from Eve before the Fall. And while I truly would love answers to these questions, I don't know that I'll get them from you. Nonetheless, Rob, I appreciate the respectful tone you've taken, and I pray blessings on you and yours.

Thanks For Sharing This, Caroline!

2011-08-31T19:22:00.001-07:00

"Christianity is a lifestyle — a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a clever 'religion,' in order to avoid the lifestyle itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain, and still believe that Jesus is their 'personal Lord and Savior.' The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great."- Richard Rohr

I don't know that I've read such a cogent and concise analysis of the ills besetting Christiandom in decades -- thanks to my dear Caroline for posting it on her Facebook!

A Church Without Distinctions?

2011-08-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

While I'm still crafting my response to Rob's earlier challenge to me about 1 Cor. 7, I do want to make clear one thing arising from a comment from him that just came in today:

No, I don't believe that Christ's Church is a Body with no distinctions -- a formless, uniform, bland, and monotonous corpus ecclesiastis with no diversity at all. The New Testament, especially Paul in Romans and First Corinthians, makes it clear that's not the case.

But I also believe that the entirety of Scripture, and most markedly, as we'd expect, the New Testament, endeavors to point out that while the God-given distinctions between the members of the Body still exist, and God be praised that they do, those distinctions are never meant to be ordered hierarchically, to reflect the sinful divisions of the world, or to deny full participation and opportunity for the exercise of gifts amongst the members therein. It's the multitudinous differentiation found within the Body that gives it the strength of an infinite Christ Jesus, and so we celebrate the differences in language, culture, gender perspectives, and other areas of diversity.

The weakening of the Body, the denying of the victory of Christ in redeeming the world, and the impotent testimony the Church offers a waiting, watching world occurs when Christ's Body takes the reality, even the blessedness, of Body-differences and constrains them within the brittle old wineskins of sinfulness: sexism, racism, classism, etc. I believe that service in the Church ought to be based on Godly character and Spirit gifting -- and neither of those things is gender-based. To deny the one with Godly character and evident Spiritual gifts full participation in the Body because of gender is wrong, and not because I say so, but because the Bible says so.

I yearn for a Body more diverse, more full of the vibrancy and strength that comes from differences respected, instead of a Church that gives lip service to "distinctions," but primarily as a means to harness them in the buttressing of hierarchy and power -- contrary to the testimony of Scripture and in favor of a weary, sinful, worldy sameness of thought and impotence of effectiveness. A Church whose earthly leadership is always male and usually "male-among-the-most-powerful" is a Church unable to reflect its true diversity -- a Church that erases, not respects, distinctions and does so in favor of the elevation of a distinction it must not privilege

Expect more engagement with Rob, with my thanks, in the next day or two.

From A Comment On My Life In Sports -- Words Well Worth Noting

2011-08-29T14:11:00.001-07:00

I've posted this comment in its entirety in the comments section, but my anonymous correspondent here makes a point that deserves more prominence, so here it is:

". . . I’m so glad that women have equal opportunities to play. I do see equality in Christianity more than in sports. Physical upper body strength isn’t needed to read the Bible, pray, preach or live a righteous life. Is a soul male or female, or just the shell? I see Jesus eliminating the barriers that separated us as people. I see the veil in the temple ripping from top to bottom and the system that kept the Gentiles in the outer court while inviting Jewish families inside. The sign on the next door said, “Women go no further.” The temple guards protected the next door from men who were not priests. Lastly, the curtain kept out all who but one high priest in for one day of the year – until Jesus blew it all away with his sacrifice. Why do we put the dividers back up?"

Excellent points. This silly, all-too-convenient reliance on "roles" simply perpetuates sinful, culturally-bound divisions that Christ's sacrifice did away with. The Gospel is not a message of "roles," it's a promise of reconciliation. It's not a perpetuation of worldly divisions, but a promise of love between family. And it's a counter-culture strike against a world struggling in the enmeshment of the Fall, not an endorsement of that enmeshment.

Paul On Marriage -- The First Corinthians Sermon

2011-08-26T12:16:00.001-07:00

I'm not feeling real well today, so I've cut-and-pasted some quotes for the previous two posts, and this one, my own words, will be shorter than usual.

Your sigh of relief is noted.

Anyway, it never ceases to amaze me how infrequently Paul's discourse on marital mutuality in 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 is referred to in Christian weddings. It's Ephesians 5 almost all of the time. And that's usually with precious little emphasis on the mutual submission of v. 21, and focus instead on a difficult metaphor in v. 25-32 that, if taken to its literal, logical conclusion WITHOUT the benefit of a proper hermeneutic, would have the priesthood of the wife and her conformation to the character of her Savior mediated by her husband.

Bad Gospel there, folks, and a risky way to start a young couple on the road to a Christian marriage.

But if you study what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, you come away with two conclusions after his discussion of marriage. One is that Christian marriage has mutuality and sacrifice as its defining characteristics; there are eight distinct "points of symmetry" in husband-wife relationships just between 7:2-16. This steady drumbeat of mutuality is inescapable and eternal, and to avoid it in favor of the murkier passages in Ephesians 5 doesn't make for a good foundation on which to build a truly Biblical message. It's a great way to buttress a complementarian one, though. And you know, that might just be the point.

The second conclusion, from chapter 7:25-38, is that marriage is NOT an imperative, contrary to what the Wilsonistas would have you believe. In fact, Paul suggests -- and, granted, with a more immediate eschatological perspective than we now employ -- that the believer would be better off not married. That "the last days" have lasted longer than Paul would've expected doesn't negate his message, and that's that not all called to marry, and those who don't are freer, in most circumstances, to work for the Lord. I praise God for the pastoral ministry of my 50-year-old single friend Lupita, and I praise God as well that she didn't, contrary to the advice of Nancy Wilson, focus her younger years hoping for marriage and preparing for it by amassing a proper collection of table linens.

I have now officiated at two weddings, and my message has been for both that the Author of marriage has given us a pattern of how to live in it, and an example in Christ Jesus of how to love while in it. First Corinthians provides the minister a wonderful source of marital teaching and encouragement, as does Ephesians 5, properly understood. I long for the day when these precious portraits of intimate marital mutuality become the standard for Christian marriages, which God intends, and not the obfuscatory and imbalanced rendering of Ephesians 5 that too many ministers fall back on.

Which is not what God intends, because Yahweh is not a God of confusion, selfishness, inequality, or anything else not in keeping with the Divine character, for which our praises ring out and our marriages, if they occur, glorify him.

That Radical, Dwight Eisenhower, Part 2

2011-08-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Forget the Republicans. The Democrats have wasted their opportunity to respond courageously to his words, and we're all the worse for it. Especially the poor.

That Radical, Dwight Eisenhower

2011-08-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible, and they are stupid." - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, November 8, 1954

This was when the GOP exercised common and moral sense. Those days appear long gone.

My Life In Sports -- Competition and Mastery, Not "Ladylikeness"

2011-08-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

Athletic competition is important for women. Yeah, even shotput, which Douglas Wilson has decreed is a forbidden pursuit for a woman.

(You needn't genuflect . . . )

But while I've never heaved a heavy iron ball in competition, much less picked one up in my non-competitive life, I was an athlete for all of my life, until the wreck in 2005 that left me partially disabled. I also grew up in the era of Title IX, which, lo and behold, did not introduce the end of civilization nor the end of a generation of girls' maturity into reproductively capable women.

(There was much talk in the 1960s and early 1970s about our delicate uteruses and the potential for grave damage if, for example, girls' basketball moved from a zone to a one-on-one defense. For those of us just blossoming as women, this was potentially frightening, but the opportunity to wear a uniform and play ball was too exciting, even if we were potentially looking at dislodged female organs leading to infertility. I also remember a Boys' Little League official in the early 70s insisting that girls should have to wear the boys' protective cup, not just to "protect" us -- how, he failed to mention -- but to "treat 'em like guys if that's what they want." I was grateful when my dad called him an ass and told him to shut up, as I was literally faint with embarrassment at the mention of a protective cup).

Little League was a huge part of my and my family's life, evidenced by the City of Tucson naming a Little League field after my father following his death in 2009. My brother, Eddie, started playing at age 7. There were no programs for me, but my dad taught us both how to throw, how to catch, how to hit, bunt, run the bases and field a grounder. I got my first glove when I was 7, and I have never, even now at age 50, been without one -- oiled, banded, broken in and ready. Dad insisted, contrary to Doug Wilson, that there was no "throwing like a girl" or "throwing like a guy," but simply a proper way to throw a baseball, and it was a skill I mastered early and well. I learned to throw a curve before my brother did, and as he rose through the ranks of Little League, I chafed on the sidelines, knowing that I was as good or better a player than the boys on the field, but unable to participate because I was a girl.

In the 1960s and early 70s, Little League baseball was closed to girls, in the minor League, ages 7-10, the majors, 11-13, and the seniors, 13-15. But there was nothing on the books that prevented me from coaching or umpiring, so my dad made sure I mastered the intricacies of the baseball scorepad -- if you've never played, it's not what you think -- and the strike zone, infield fly rule, and other baseball rules and plays. I was about 12 when I umpired my first minor-league game, and I helped my dad, who managed every team my brother was on, as his assistant until Little League allowed girls to play when I was, I think, 13. I played two years -- third base -- and could easily throw the 60-foot bases, although at the plate I often went 0-for-September.

We had a roughed-out basketball court in the rocky clay soil of our Tucson home, and I spent untold hours learning set shots, jump shots, lay-ups, hook shots and free throws. I dribbled the ball better than my brother and had a wicked -- and not in the Wilsonian sense -- hook. My kinda-sorta brother Darrell played on the high school team, and he was nice enough, when Ed and I were in junior high, to coach us. Dad taught me to throw a football in a spiral, and although my hands are still too small for a regular football, I still can. Growing up in Tucson then meant that most of my athletic successes were in pickup games or at home, because there were no opportunities for me to play on a real team until I was 13. It seemed unfair to me then, and it was.

I was in high school when Title IX, which guaranteed equal funding and access for, among other things, girls' athletic programs, was implemented. In junior high and high school, tennis legend Billie Jean King was my hero -- she not only beat the insufferable Bobby Riggs on national TV, but also brought tennis and women's sports in general into the spotlight. Yes, I'm aware that she's a lesbian; I couldn't care less, but I realize some of you do. Let me assure you that my love for Billie Jean King was and remains entirely platonic, and I'm still grateful for all she's done for female athletes. I played tennis, albeit it not very well, and my dream of playing basketball finally came in my senior year, 1977-78, when Cholla High School finally formed a girls' team.

Unfortunately, I dropped a huge roll of butcher paper on my foot while helping to decorate a Homecoming float, breaking two toes and putting an end to my basketball career. I was heartbroken.

I shifted to bicycling while in college, often riding 75 miles on a Saturday morning on my 19-inch lightweight Fuji, and I once rode nonstop from Tucson to Phoenix -- 135 miles -- and then celebrated by partying all night. And while my athletic career stalled and then sputtered out after career, marriage, and children (lo and behold, my uterus was entirely functional after all), it was briefly revived in 2001, when I played softball on a church team. Unfortunately, I was the catcher, and the one game I played without my mask was the game in which I took a hard foul tip to the eye and nose, resulting not only in a run scored but in a run on my part to the ER, where a CT scan revealed that, indeed, my clock had been thusly and thoroughly cleaned. There would be no more softball for me.

Now, my athletic endeavors are seriously limited, if existent at all. But even if I'm unable to participate these days, I nonetheless take exception to Wilson's and anyone else's assertions that women can only play sports in a "ladylike" way. (I say "take exception" because it's more ladylike than what I want to say, which involves a word I don't normally use in Prevailing Winds). Sports IS neutral. There is a proper way to throw a softball, shoot a free throw, kick a soccer ball, spike a volleyball, and put a shot. That men have had infinitely more opportunities to master those skills does not make the skills themselves "masculine," and only those men who are insecure in their own manliness would dare suggest that women's mastery of athletics and robust participation therein is somehow dangerous. It's long past time for guys like Wilson to let go of the ball and share the field with women, and his continued insistence on keeping them in their place -- which would be wherever he isn't, save the kitchen and the bedroom -- is deplorable.

It also suggests a somewhat desperate grasp on masculinity that in itself raises questions, not the least of which is why Wilson and his pals are so terrified that the gals will wrest it from their grip. I would hope that's not the source of his "ggkkk" feelings of disgust for physically strong women, because he's really not at all relevant to any of us, and threats to his macho-ness are solely in his own frightened mind, not ours.

This Speaks For Itself, I Think

2011-08-24T12:29:00.001-07:00

"In every aspect of religious life, American faith has met American culture -- and American culture has triumphed."

Dr. Alan Wolfe

An Existential Battle Between Douglas Wilson and Pat Summit

2011-08-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

The news that Pat Summit, the winningest coach in collegiate basketball history -- that's any division in the NCAA, men's or women's -- has early-onset Alzheimer's disease was devastating. Summit has lead the Tennessee Lady Vols (Volunteers) to unprecedented strings of victory, and has done so with grace, humility, guts, and brilliance. I pray for her health and for her continued success in coaching.

But this news comes on the heels of some typically inane blather from Douglas Wilson, who, of course, has a well-developed and Scripturally-sound view of women's athletics -- as he does every other possible subject in the world. His Logos School's K-12 program isn't exactly a leader in girls' sports, and this perhaps explains why.

"To illustrate, I don't have any problem with girls competing athletically. But you cannot just say that 'basketball is basketball,' and throw them all in there to compete like generic human beings. No, if you are going to have a girls' basketball team, then one of your goals should be to teach the girls to play and to compete like ladies. If masculine patterns of competition are just accepted across the board, the results will be appalling. In some sports, the girls should compete differently than the boys, and in others, it is grotesque for them to compete at all -- in shot put, say, or boxing." (Blog and Mablog, August 21, 2011)

Well, at least he didn't suggest that the girls' uteruses (uteri?) would be rendered unusable by playing sports. That's a start, I suppose.

But Wilson's insistence on both injecting his warped view of "masculinity" into every subject and then protecting it like, well, a frail, tiny lil' gal with a big ol' heavy basketball, is puzzling and disconcerting. It also reveals an odd insistence that fierce and cheerful competition, athletic energy, enthusiasm for victory, and the exhilaration of exercise is solely the providence of masculinity. Really? Who says? Just because Ruth, Abigail, Deborah, and Phoebe weren't known for their athletic ability doesn't mean that girls shouldn't enjoy robust athletics. The world has changed; it's inevitable, but they're not always, these changes, an indication of God's displeasure. Culture changes, thankfully, but character doesn't, and it's character that counts in athletics, not the degree to which ladies sweat. And, yeah, that includes when a big woman uses the gift of her beautiful, healthy body to put a seven-pound iron ball farther than the other women. (I agree with Wilson that women shouldn't box; I don't think men should, either, and Wilson's 2002 sponsoring of a little kids' boxing tournament via Logos and Christ Church was a nauseating exercise of aggression and macho bluster that, frankly, is far more offensive to God than a female shotputter).

I described Pat Summit as a woman with "grace, humility, guts, and brilliance," and I'm sure Wilson would be relieved that she exhibits the first two; he might even acknowledge that coaching brilliance might be found in a woman. But Summit's teams win, and they win because they play hard; they're "winners," though, because Summit insists on sportsmanship and character, something all too rare in the world of men's sports. I think God is pleased when the wonderful game of basketball is played with gusto by anyone -- athletics is part of the "dance of life" he delights in.

What displeases God is boorishness, whether on the athletic field or court, or in the halls of Christian academia. And in Moscow, at least, that blustering boorishness is entirely the product of menfolk who dare to claim masculine character over all things good and beautiful -- including the joys of athletic competition. Like Soviet hegemony in decades past, Wilson preaches an encroaching masculinity over the things he and his pals enjoy and desire, and then works to keep women out of them by appealing to "reason" that is entirely unreasonable, unenlightened, and unappealing in its arrogance.

Yes, Obama Said That. Here's Why He's Not A Hypocrite.

2011-08-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

A Tea Party-supporting reader who prefers I not name her challenged me to respond to this quote by then-Senator Barack Obama. I'll give my thoughts, briefly, before I turn to the upcoming Douglas Wilson-Mark Driscoll symposium on all things true, good, beautiful and totally macho.

Here's the quote:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

I'm reminded of a bumpersticker I saw once that had a smiling George W. Bush saying, "Hey, it was all my fault, but thanks for blaming the black guy!" Way too simplistic, but not too terribly far off the mark.

Here's my response to my correspondent:

Obama's speech above is not something I find terribly odd or offensive or inconsistent with his current position. Do you not recall that he made this comment in the midst of the George W. Bush debacle, eight years of spending-gone-wild on two failed wars, one so poorly planned as to border on criminal, the other criminally sold to the American people through the proliferation of lies, deceit, and obfuscation. Why wouldn't Senator Obama object to the rampant debt OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION that fostered the need for a raising of the debt ceiling?

I don't believe he voted against it AT RISK OF GOVERNMENT DEFAULT, and it's pretty common -- I'll grant you this -- that in the numerous "raisings of the debt ceiling," the party of the president votes to do it (that would be the GOP, which was largely in favor this time around of raising the debt ceiling, except for the Tea Party), and the party not holding the White House votes NOT to do it. If you want to accuse Obama of objecting to the debate over raising the debt ceiling in 2006, and then calling for it in 2011, go ahead -- but remember the times (Bush's taking a surplus and running us trillions into the ground with his tax cuts and warmongering), and remember the stakes (this year, a potential government default at a time of worldwide recession). It's a sign of political expediency, perhaps, but only if the circumstances are equal -- and here, they're not.

Frankly, only an immature, blinded, misinformed crank would hold to a position, regardless of changes that affect it, just so he/she can be called "consistent." I don't believe Barack Obama is an immature, blinded, misinformed crank. I do believe many of the Tea Party leaders are.

It Just Warms My Heart

2011-08-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

From yesterday's correspondent, the brother who wanted more information on Biblical egalitarianism, this comment:

"There are many punishments for sin in scripture. All of them disappear in the grace of Christ, thanks be to God! Jesus freed us from the curse of sin; this makes Gen. 3:16 history as of Calvary.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, men who work the soil find success and wives can walk hand in hand with husbands not two steps behind. Redeemed men and women desire Christ together voluntarily submitting to the rule of scripture. I am the NH person who is looking for Evangelical Free History and thank you for the book tip. I’ve put in for No Time for Silence and also Men, Women, and the Bible.

You site is interesting. Every year at our church meeting, I write in the name of a woman I admire from our congregation on the ballot on the “write-in” line for elder. Now that my daughter is in early elementary school, I wonder if I should do more to show her that she can be President of the United States, CEO of international company, race car driver, doctor, electrician, astronaut OR senior pastor in our small town church. Our question as parents is why she can be anything she wants in life, except in church where she can teach only women and children."

Thank you, brother, for your kind words of encouragement. We're in the minority, of course, but the Word says what the Word says -- and Christ did what Christ did. Your daughter is greatly blessed, and I hope you continue to write back. Please share "Prevailing Winds" with your friends and congregants; we need to get the word out about Biblical equality!

A Comment Worth Highlighting:

2011-08-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

I got the note below overnight regarding my recent post (late July, I think) on
"Must Ministers Always Be Men?" I include it here so the writer has easier access to my response, which, come to think of it, might be instructive for many of you:

"Thank you for your article. I found it searching for information on the Evangelical Free Church and its stand on woman ordination. Can you tell me where to find information on early woman pastors or elders and where I can find a current Evangelical Free church with a woman minister?"

I appreciate your comments, and while I did attend an egalitarian Evangelical Free Church in Pullman, Washington -- Cornerstone -- I don't anything about the congregation now. You can email me, though, at kjajmix1@msn.com (that's a "one" after "mix") and I can give you a contact. The E-Free is one of the formerly egalitarian, women-ordaining denominations discussed in "No Time For Silence," which chronicles the long, broad history of women's ordination in the 18th- and 19th-century evangelical movement. If you contact me, I can get you a copy. There are several other excellent resources; contact me and I'll give you some recommendations -- and will also prepare a list of resources sometime this week for my other readers.

Bless you on your search!

Responding To A Very Annoyed Cathy

2011-08-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

Referring to my last post on the Tea Party, reader Cathy comments:

"I was absolutely NOT silent on the Patriot Act under Bush. I very clearly told you (by email) that I deplored it, and still do..."

To which I would say that my Tea Party columns, while attempting to answer hers and other readers' questions, were not solely focused on her. I'd have to go back and check our correspondence, but while she may well have protested the Patriot Act, and good for her for doing so, I'm sure she can understand that my comments don't specifically have only her as their target or as their point of origin.

Then she continues:

"As an act of fairness, please, do me a favor and name some Democratic buffoons. Surely there are some...

... As always, I agree w/little of what you have written. And, I tire of the racism accusation just because people actually have the temerity to question things about Obama. I am one of those thinking people. Why is it that if I question Obama on any number of issues, it's racism, but when you call Bachmann, et al, a buffoon, it's tempered, measured thoughtful criticism? This one ticks me off. I think Cain has some good ideas. Should I deduce from your post that you're racist because you seem less than enthralled w/him? Argue words, but not the motivation of the heart. You cannot read minds, nor hearts, so stop accusing people of racism just because they don't like Obama as president. Don't impugn motives ... Are there ANY conservatives you like?

That's all."

I think I may not be one of Cathy's favorite people. But I do appreciate her willingness to do battle with me, and so I'll answer her "name some Democratic buffoons" question first.

It's not too tough, frankly. The whole party is tone-deaf at times and utterly lacking in the kind of backbone that leaves a legacy, not just wins elections. I believe I mentioned Charles Rangel already, and while I like Barney Frank's politics, and probably would like him personally, he's too sputtering-angry/smart-ass for my tastes. Although that doesn't quite rise to the level of buffoonery, I guess, as he at least shows a command of facts and a high level of understanding of politics. I don't much care for Jesse Jackson, I think John Edwards is a despicable man, I think that Bill Clinton was a brilliant president with serious, pervasive character issues, and I'm not fond of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell.

Other nationally-known liberals I don't like include John Stewart, who is brilliant not only in his satire but also in his knowledge of politics, but far too mean-spirited for my tastes, and I detest the odious ramblings of Bill Maher, about whose contributions to political dialogue "odious ramblings" would seem sufficient. I love Rachel Maddow, like Lawrence O'Donnell, tolerate Keith Olbermann, and can't stand Norman Goldman. I think Al Gore is right on global climate change, but he has an oily quality about him that turns me off. I wish Tipper had been the politically ambitious one in that now-failed marriage. And I'll never apologize for thinking John Kerry could've been a remarkably effective President, even if his political instincts seemed lacking.

Neither will I apologize to liberals for finding Barack Obama's relentless pragmatism and almost preternatural fondness for compromise maddening beyond belief, nor do I apologize to conservatives for my unalterable intention to vote for him in 2012. I suspect he will be a far better second-term president than he was in his first term, where he rightly acknowledges that a loss in 2012 would allow for the very real possibility of a Bachmann, Perry, or Romney victory. He also fought a House full of Republicans determined to defeat his every proposal, simply because they were HIS proposals. They've as much as said so; it's difficult, then, to imagine how he could have done all that he likely planned to do. But still -- I voted for a Democrat, and I'd like to see him act like the kind of 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s Democrats heralded in my house growing up.

I fault Obama for being so tardy in doing away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, for ramping up the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, for presiding over an administration that's actually deported more undocumented immigrants in its first 2 1/2 years than did the Bush administration in a similar period, and for only allowing us flashes of the inspiring brilliance, leadership, and understanding that so many of us saw -- and were NOT fooled, but impressed, by -- in 2008-2009. This man, should he survive his second term, has everything it takes to be one of the best presidents in history, and I want to see Barack Obama ignite not his base but the entire country. I'm not seeing that.

And Cathy would be wrong if she deduced from my criticism of Herman Cain that I'm a racist. If I applauded the entire Tea Party but only criticized Cain, and then only for nonsensical, made up, or superfluous reasons, that would be a reasonable deduction. Here's where I charge much of the Tea Partyers with either practicing or countenancing racism:

The Tea Party's entire goal is "cut government's reach, cut spending, and cut taxes," yet its loudest voices and the masses those voices command were largely silent during the eight years of a white, Christian president's grotesquely intrusive government, out-of-control spending, and tax cuts for the super-wealthy. These shifted an enormous burden to the middle- and lower-class who now pack the meeting halls and fill the stadiums, and these things so purportedly offensive to the Tea Party all happened after the white, Texas, Protestant guy inherited a budget surplus he and his cronies ate up by reckless spending on two wars whose premises were, generously speaking, built on shifting sand. Oily sand.

But a too-powerful government, rampant spending, and "high taxes" (currently at about the rate they were in the 1950s for most people, considerably less for the richest in America) suddenly became a galvanizing state of affairs, with no remedy in sight save revolution, in 2008-2009 when Obama ran for the presidency, and the clamor and desperation and furor upon the Inauguration of a Black man Tea Party activists too often portrayed as a dark, devious, shadowy, lying foreigner -- and a Muslim! -- has to at least suggest that their discomfort has much to do with Obama's race, perceived religious affiliations, and sinister "outsider" status. Almost half of all Tea Party believers polled consistently say they "don't know" where the man was born, even when every other rational human being not living under a cabbage leaf sees that the question has been answered. Until I see a Tea Party protester rebuke a fellow activist for signs and rhetoric that portray Obama as a savage Kenyan, a Muslim, a Nazi, and a Commie/Socialist, I'll have to believe, as I think any honest person would, that race and perceived nationality and religion have been tremendous energizers for the movement.

Does that mean that every Tea Party supporter is a racist? Of course not. But to suggest that the combination of racism and xenophobic suspicion somehow isn't one of the proteins that fuels Tea Party muscle is dishonest. Put simply, George W. Bush violated these most precious tenets of the Tea Party and did so in spades -- with nary a peep from the Right. People with integrity really ought to examine how it is that he got off scot-free while the guy they portrayed as the dark, sinister "other" has caught nothing but shit and vitriol for what he inherited from the good ol' boy. And so, Cathy, let me ask you: Has the Tea Party and the GOP Right in general been unfair NOT in analyzing Barack Obama's politics, but in burdening him -- hobbling him -- with charges that he's not an American but a Kenyan posing illegally as a U.S. citizen, a socialist, a Muslim, someone reeking of "anti-American values," and simply, in all the ways important to most people, "just not like us"?

Please take care with your answer; I want to consider my assessment of you as a reasonable person of integrity and insight.

A Little Taste O' Wisdom On A Nice, Sunny Sunday

2011-08-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

. . . and yes, it goes for me just as much as for any of you.

"It is a peculiarity of the Good Book that it elicits in its readers the strong conviction that it unequivocally supports their strongest convictions."

Jacques Berlinerblau, Associate Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University, in "Thumpin' It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today's Presidential Politics," Westminster John Knox Press, 2008

My Final Thoughts (Until I Have More) On The Tea Party

2011-08-18T17:39:00.001-07:00

My correspondence with Cathy, my anonymous critic, and another correspondent who prefers that I not publicly post her comments have kept me busy, busy, busy -- and I love it.

It's clear, though, that my readers disagree strenuously with my take on the Tea Party, whose leaders I see, as I wrote to a friend a month ago, as a hopelessly craven, blasphemously grasping bunch determined to shepherd a movement of people who are appropriately angry, but angry at the very institutions that could render them aid. Further, they're entirely unthinking, I believe, in their alliance with those who applaud the very systems and policies that keep them suffering. Their anger at Big Government and Big Corporations seems curiously unilateral, perhaps because Big Corporations fund and benefit from the Tea Party's efforts.

If lower-middle-class people believe they are taxed too much, it makes little sense to rail against those who would like to roll back the ridiculous Bush tax cuts and distribute the load more evenly. "Anonymous" believes that taxing the richest Americans will result in fewer jobs -- which sounds simple enough, but isn't borne out by facts or by economic history. The proportionately untaxed super-rich have allowed the tax burden to be shifted to those in the middle or below -- and they're not re-investing their profits into more jobs, and their lobbyists drive Congress to actually cut unemployment and other benefits for the lower-middle-class unemployed, the very people so angry with Government.

The Tea Party howls about the interference of Big Government, yet was silent during the Bush-era implementation of the Patriot Act. It rails against enormous national debt, but only found its debt-anger when Barack Obama was elected to manage the enormity of debt George W. Bush piled up. And instead of working within the system to solve the nation's debt problem -- and there IS a debt problem -- they hold Congress hostage by refusing a debt-reduction measure crafted not just by Democrats, but by the Speaker who represents their own GOP.

It doesn't define the whole Tea Party, but there's some truth that for a part of the movement, the problem isn't the national debt, but that it's, in their eyes, a Black man's debt. Can that be denied so easily when so much of the Tea Party's inception involved questioning Obama's citizenship, Americanism, religion, and "socialist tendencies"? I don't recall anyone, really, questioning the citizenship of John McCain, who WAS born outside of the U.S., and, some reports say, not in a military hospital. It's disingenuous to ignore the racist underpinnings of much of the movement's inception, and I commend those in the Tea Party who pointedly condemn the racism of some of their allies.

The recent debacle over the debt ceiling was an embarrassing look at how the perpetually misinformed can very nearly shipwreck a nation's economy. Can we honestly call the chaos that resulted in an anemic, impotent "compromise" any sort of statesman-like behavior on behalf of the country? Doesn't it say something when Tea Party politicos, mostly freshmen, confidently state that an August 2 federal default wouldn't have been such a big deal -- when every intelligent, reasonable member of Congress, the GOP leadership, the head of the Federal Reserve, and virtually every economist consulted insisted that a default would have been an unprecedented disaster not just for the U.S., but for the rest of the world? Senator John Kerry and Obama adviser David Axelrod are correct in terming the S & P downgrade as a "Tea Party downgrade," because S & P gave the loose and reckless language demonstrated by those who spoke so insouciantly about the consequences of default as a primary reason for its lowering of the U.S. credit rating. Those weren't Democrats, and they weren't mainstream Republicans. Words have consequence; this was a big one, even if S & P's math was sketchy. Do we trust people who are seemingly unable to grasp basic economic policy, appear proud of that fact, and speak recklessly to a watching world about the integrity of their country's debt obligations?

The Tea Party bigwig roster is full of buffoons, and I frankly think I'm speaking generously here. It's one thing when Michelle Bachmann churns out a gaffe a day -- mixing up Elvis' birthday with the day of his death, for example -- but it's dangerous when Senator Tom Coburn laments, in opposition of Barack Obama and his Senate opponents, that he can't carry a weapon on the Senate floor. How funny is that in light of the January shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords? Presidential candidate Rick Perry suggests that Ben Bernanke would be acting "treasonously" if the Fed prints more money, and then veers off into how evolution is "just a theory." Sigh. And Herman Cain, speaking at the Iowa Straw Poll and addressing a room full of people in a nation with unemployment hovering at about ten percent, snarks that his folks "made it" the "old-fashioned way -- they worked." Is it possible that Cain can't imagine that he was speaking to people who would LOVE to "do it the old-fashioned way" -- if only they had the opportunity?

Besides their Tea Party gusto, Cain, Bachmann, Perry, and Coburn, as well as Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Louie Gohmert, all proclaim their evangelical faith at every turn -- and the largely evangelical crowd expects them to. Wouldn't it be nice if their faith guided them toward a reasoned, reconciliation-oriented, and responsible approach to government? Does any conservative Christian really believe that the best of the best evangelical minds can be found on a Tea Party dais? As evangelical thinker Jim Wallis says, the Left doesn't get it, and the Right gets it wrong. Wouldn't a commitment to something other than rousing crowds to more anger help the Right veer onto the correct path, and show those Christian-ish folks on the Left how to live in Christ while in the public square? The Religious Right Tea Party has the microphone, with little or no idea of how to use it to benefit their nation, much less their Kingdom. It's better to speak not at all than to represent Christ in the public square by acting like boarish newcomers to a solemn convocation.

Why the Tea Party NOW, anyway? Is it possible that these people see Barack Obama as so irredeemably evil -- not just wrong in his politics, but utterly lacking in morals and character -- that any and all attacks are warranted, even the most vicious, racist, and irresponsible? How in God's name -- and I mean that literally -- is Obama's continuation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as bad as that is, anywhere near the evil of the Bush duplicity and manipulation that got us there in the first place? Do pro-life activists consider, even for a moment, the loss of life of 5,000 American soldiers and many more thousands of Iraqis? Does Bush's anti-abortion rhetoric somehow excuse the slaughter he unleashed in Iraq? Is the "pro-life" movement brave enough to simply acknowledge that its devotion to life is almost solely focused on the unborn? How is Barack Obama anywhere near as bad, his administration anywhere near as dubiously "Christian," as the blissfully and boldly evangelical George W. Bush?

It's easy to define the Tea Party by signs like "Hands Off My Medicare, Washington!" -- but isn't it more than a little odd that the Tea Party elderly who benefit from Medicare, the government-sponsored program that guarantees medical care until natural death for people older than 65, are so vehemently opposed to "Obamacare"? Would any of the Tea Party candidates, nationally and locally, refuse their Medicare benefits upon turning 65?

I've written more on this during the week than I have on any other topic, and you all know where I stand. I believe I've answered the questions posed to me by my correspondents, and my intent is to switch direction to address other topics, like the Douglas Wilson/Mark Driscoll conference here in Moscow next month. Mark Driscoll attracts controversy like a chicken farmer attracts shit -- but the farmer is doing honorable work. Driscoll isn't, and it's time for me to move on to him and other things.

Cathy's Rounding Third And "Anonymous" Is On Deck ...

2011-08-17T08:37:00.001-07:00

I trust that earnest correspondent Cathy feels that I've tried to respond to her Aug. 6 letter to me -- the one I didn't actually read until the 14th -- and I hope to hear from her if she has any further points to make, or any other objections to register. I sincerely thank her for her time and interest.

Now I'll map out my response to Anonymous, who's getting a break from my policy of not responding to those who don't use their names in criticizing me because he nonetheless levels some interesting and pointed criticisms at me, and I wouldn't want him to think he's heaping coals of shame on my head if I don't answer him. Please, though, remember that I write everything I write under my own name; further, I post a photo, personal information, and 57 different ways to contact me in this blog precisely because of the accountability I owe readers and the integrity I owe my God. So, anon, please use your name -- even just your first name. (Of course I won't know if you're Rick or Chuck or Vladimir or whomever; still, you should muster up enough courage to use your real name. It's not that scary, I promise).

Here's a rough outline of what I'll be addressing from his comments, which I posted yesterday in their entirety. First, I'll deal with my charge that the Tea Party's agenda is dangerous to the country, its methods dangerous to this democracy, and its embrace of simple, even non-sensical, "solutions" dangerous to those who follow it. Then I'll discuss why I think presidential advisor David Axelrod and Senator John Kerry were right in calling the recent Standard & Poor downgrade of the nation's credit rating "a Tea Party downgrade." I'll wrap up with a defense of the liberal notion that government, properly run and properly reined in, can and should do enormous good for the people -- with an acknowledgement that it very often has failed in that mandate. And while I'd like to hear from him again, I plan to move on to other subjects, coming back to the Tea Party only when events make it necessary.

Because at some point I have to fold some laundry and sweep these floors -- subjects about which neither the Obama administration nor the Tea Party nor Congress care much about. Pity. I wish they knew where the bag of gray work socks went . . .

One More Tea Party Post Before Bedtime

2011-08-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Reader Cathy took me to task for my having referred to the Tea Party as largely "Christian," pointing out in her missive, which I posted Saturday, that the Tea Party doesn't preach the Gospel or promise salvation.

I agree that it doesn't preach a Gospel even remotely like that of the New Testament's, and it doesn't promise eternal life -- just a life wherein they're not taxed "to death," or where the ideals of the Founding Fathers don't "die off" from the effects of some nasty liberal elite, or where "death panels" don't pop up via Obamacare to knock off Granny. So I suppose Cathy and I are in agreement: There's nothing "Christian" about the Tea Party. I'd go a step further by saying there's much about it that's not at all Christian -- and by that I don't mean "neutral."

I see it as a movement primarily fueled by people who believe the dismay articulated, and the solutions advanced, are consistent with -- perhaps necessitated by -- their Christian faith. In that respect, I think it's largely a Christian movement, and that's further supported as much by the Religious Right affiliations and prayers that accompany most rallies as it is by the near-total lack of participation by traditionally not-Christian religious and ethnic groups. Further, Tea Party standard-bearers like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain have appropriated the vernacular, emblems, and trappings of an Evangelical revival. I can't think of any Tea Party politicos who haven't made much of their faith or who haven't had Evangelicals to thank for their successes. It would be hard for me to imagine, frankly, how a devout Muslim or atheist who preached the Tea Party's line would do at the polls.

It's not their fervent faith that bothers me; what I find objectionable is the conflation of Christian faith with conservative/libertarian/Tea Party principles. Is there really a Christian exclusivity to Tea Party beliefs? More to the point, is there perhaps a morality that's more distinctly Christian than a belief, for example, that the debt ceiling ought not be raised? Or is it inherently Christian to insist that tax rates currently at rates similar to those of the 1950s, with a burgeoning population and tremendous, and tremendously neglected, social needs, nonetheless need to be cut further -- regardless of the harm it does to "the least of these"? Is naked nationalism or a greedy grasp of political power "Christian"? Finally, is disdain for government and its role in effecting God's will in the orderliness and ordering of society an appropriate Christian belief?

No one is a true Christian who would check his or her faith at the door when entering the political arena, although it would be nice that if in embracing their faith while so entering, they'd also consider it a testimony to their faith in Christ to study the issues, understand the facts, learn to deal with context, and display some command of real solutions apart from rhetoric. But the Tea Party has taken the GOP and Libertarian disregard for the marginalized and perfected it, developing an entire party full of largely marginalized people nonetheless voting for those who've profited from their marginalization and whose policies will guarantee its continuation. "Doing unto" the least of these probably shouldn't include bamboozling them.

I'll end with a Biblical defense of government found in the Genesis account of Joseph, acting as steward of Pharoah, who "taxed" the people out of their wheat crop in order to store it in preparation for the famine whose severity and duration God had foretold in him. Joseph acted as part of an "unbelieving" government, one whose ruler and household likely would've survived the famine without much regard to the people under him, and certainly one who worshiped pagan gods.

But Joseph, centuries in advance of Romans 13, was led by God to seize the crop grown by the populace and store it for the good of all -- even those "foreigners," his own Israeli family later immigrated to Egypt. It was Pharoah's government that took control of production and product, withheld a portion for the greater good -- even redistributed the grain-wealth -- under the direction of God and for the greater blessing of the nations. I find the story fascinating, not just as a testimony to faith, forgiveness, and family loyalty, but as a God-given template of what government can do when functioning in its proper role. And, unlike the illustration of collectivism in Acts, this example was not specific to the Church and, in fact, gains its strength precisely because it wasn't.

So I don't apologize for being a believer in what government can do. I believe that even secular governments can be used of God to maintain His priorities for society. That society will always include the poor, whose needs seem woefully underrepresented in the agenda of the Tea Party. The test of whether or not a political movement is "Christian" is not the religious rhetoric and trappings, or even the genuine piety, of those in it. It's the degree to which it seeks the heart of Jesus for the poor and forgotten -- not seeing government as savior, but government as a tool of the Savior to uplift the downtrodden.

Another Reader Weighs In

2011-08-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going to go against my policy of not devoting any time to people who leave me anonymous comments because the reader who wrote the missive below, whoever he or she is, takes me to task for my Tea Party comments -- my initial assessment and my response to Cathy, as well as yesterday's apology for my comments on FOX viewers. To not respond, or to keep this hidden in the Comments section, would make it appear that I'm ducking the challenge, something I like even less than I like rewarding anonymity.

It does appear that I've struck a nerve. I'll let Anon's comments fill the rest of this, other than my answer to his/her bewilderment over the phrase "intellectual foment." It seems fairly straightforward; Google and see if there are other usages of the phrase that predate mine. To "foment" means to promote or instigate the growth of something; "fomentation," or the act of promoting discontent or strife, is perhaps more clear. I trust that the confusion comes from my having used "foment" as a noun when it's more commonly used as a verb, but I meant it in more of a laboratorial/growth-culture/bubbling-product-thereof sense. But by "foment," and specifically in having said that the Tea Party is not a hotbed of intellectual foment, I mean "foment," while acknowledging that it is also an example of the "fomentation" of political discord.

So what does the Tea Party, then, have to do with "intellectual foment"? I'll bite my tongue here; it is, in my opinion, a movement -- and I speak of the Tea Party not as an organization, which it isn't, but as a movement -- that does NOT promote an intellectual, reasoned analysis of sociopolitical and economic problems. Therefore, if I believe it to be fueled by an anti-factual, anti-intellectual approach to solving problems, and if that approach is not only birthed in but encouraged by the perpetuation of the movement, it seems clear that while the Tea Party is a hotbed of many things -- you might say, for example, a hotbed of patriotic foment, or of Libertarian foment -- it cannot be thought of as a hotbed of "intellectual foment."

Whew. All this without a drop of coffee.

Anyway, here's what my humble correspondent wrote:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "RE: Are FOX Viewers Less Well-Informed?":

... I am not involved w/the Tea Party, but neither do I believe that building straw men makes your case. BTW, I'm not sure that I understand how you're using the word "foment." Please explain that one while you're at it..."intellectual foment." HUH?

Exactly what do you mean when you state, "...but because they seem to believe that facts matter less than rhetoric and that sound bites equal good policy. They have chosen to abandon what's true for what's preferred, have been energized by rage over reason, and have entrusted their political, social, and economic futures to a group of people either as un-informed as they continue to choose to be, or who benefit enormously from their followers' continued wanderings in the angry darkness"? From my point of view, you're guilty of using rhetoric in this paragraph. There is nothing specific, only generalizations. First of all, who is "they?" Secondly, WHAT has been abandoned? What "angry darkness?" Can you really expect to make those kinds of statements w/impunity? To what are you referring?

I just looked up the Tea Party's objectives, and I see nothing angry (or ignorant) about them. What is wrong w/wanting limited government, w/states' rights, etc.? And, even if you don't agree w/their agenda, why try to minimize them by taking shots at their intellect? Your view is an elitist one, i.e., if you don't agree w/the goals and objectives, well, then, "they" must not be too smart, or a thinking people. Instead, they're being blindly led. This is utter nonsense. I am a thinking person, and I don't like big government, and I get tired of the Constitution being ignored. Geez, I'm must be ignorant, and a follower. Hogwash.

I suppose you agreed w/the party line of John Kerry and Axelrod when they stated that the credit downgrade was a "Tea Party downgrade." Really? Why not focus on those kinds of ignorant, nonsensical statements rather than your assertions that are broad-based and sweeping? Frankly, for all your protestations, you write using lots of rhetoric and very little of substance. Please speak to the fact(s) that the government is broke, wastes our tax dollars, etc., and, how in the name of safety, our rights are being eroded (think BART turning off cell phones--I live in CA)? Just how much do you trust government? Have you ever taken the time to think about this idea that liberals bandy around about taxing the rich? Just how much do you think that you can pay toward the deficit by taxing the "rich" more? And, if you tax small businesses more, how do you think that the tax hike will be made up? All that will be done is that the tax increases will be passed on to the consumer. It's pretty simple math.

I will wait to read more of your response.

RE: Are FOX Viewers Less Well-Informed?

2011-08-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

I appreciate longtime correspondent Kris N., who challenged my contention in yesterday's blog posts about the Tea Party that FOX News viewers were generally not very well-informed about current issues -- a factor, I believe, in their rush to a Tea Party not working at for their best interest.

And I had intended to wrap up my response to Cathy by discussing how poorly-held Tea Party leaders' grasp of government is, but first I need to acknowledge that there is evidence that FOX News viewers, according to one study, are not really more- or terribly less-well-informed than others, but rank about average. Kris forwarded me that study, which you can review here:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/

This certainly means that the research discussed does NOT conclude that FOX viewers are consistently less well-informed, and so, insofar as I based my contention on research, I have to say that it does NOT support what I said. But here are other studies that do:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3563986

Please note that while the website is a Democratic one, the research wasn't conducted by pollsters of either political affiliation. There's also:

http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/04/16/11946/daily-show-fox-knowledge/

Again, this is a liberal site, but it reports on another Pew Research poll.

Here's the point: I was wrong in suggesting that it is a universally-held truth that FOX News viewers are less well-informed than other media consumers, and for that I apologize. I acknowledge that the three studies offer different conclusions; you're all able to make up your minds as to which is/are more compelling. Nonetheless, the evidence isn't rock-solid, and I was wrong in proclaiming that it is. Neither should I have conflated what I see as the Tea Party's willful, stubborn ignorance with a general ignorance on the part of FOX viewers, and I shouldn't have relied on one report -- the poll regarding information on FOX viewers and knowledge of the Iraqi War/WMDs -- to make a point just as easily made without discussing FOX at all. In short, it was sloppy on my part, and I apologize.

I don't believe, however, that changes my previous analysis of the Tea Party, and I don't think it affects what I had planned to write about tomorrow -- that Tea Party leaders show an unnerving lack of understanding of history, government, and economics. Our three-year acquaintance with the Tea Party has demonstrated that, particularly in the campaigns of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and other standard-bearers past and present, the expression of anger and an opportunistic grasping for power take up far more energy than a determined grasp of the facts.

In short, I do not see the Tea Party as a hotbed of intellectual foment, not because the people in it are stupid, but because they seem to believe that facts matter less than rhetoric and that sound bites equal good policy. They have chosen to abandon what's true for what's preferred, have been energized by rage over reason, and have entrusted their political, social, and economic futures to a group of people either as un-informed as they continue to choose to be, or who benefit enormously from their followers' continued wanderings in the angry darkness.

Tomorrow or Wednesday: What The Tea Party Gets Wrong (And Seemingly Takes Pride In Doing So), and, finally, Why I Refer To It As A "Christian" Movement -- And Always With Quotation Marks. Stay tuned.

And Kris -- thanks again. Really.

Veering Wildly Off Topic, But Promising To Come Right Back ...

2011-08-14T12:41:00.001-07:00

... I rarely read "Parade" magazine, because I don't care about celebrities, gossip, or recipes bursting with downhome wholesome goodness. Kinda hate "wholesome goodness" in describing food, I do.

But Jeff got the Sunday Spokesman-Review, so I read Parade. The last article had a presumably humorous piece on how baby-boomers don't like to be called by traditional "grandparent" names, and it offers some examples or suggestions for those of us born too recently to EVER "really" be grandparents. Obviously, though, I truly AM old enough, although I'm not, because I got all cranky-like in reading that kids are allowed to call their grandparents things like:

"Mellowman"
"Big (or Bigger) Mama"
GeezerGirl and GeezerGuy
Puggles
Crackpot
Jelly and Buster
Thompson

And may the man who wants to be called "El Funkinator Grande" grandparent nothing more complex than gerbils.

My kids' maternal grandmother is Emma (for all of my life, kids couldn't pronounce "Mrs. Emerine," so they called her "Mrs. Emma." "Emma" seemed like a sweet grandmotherly name); their paternal is Nana, whose mother, their great-grandmother, was simply "Nan." Jeff's dad is "Papa," (although one of my nieces calls him "Peanuthead," which I dislike, and my father was "Grandpa Steve." I had, growing up, a "Papa," a "Granma Lou," and a "Mother Dear." My sons would never have dared, or would only have dared once, to call a grandparent "Geezergirl" or "Puggles or "Jelly."

I know that it's affection, not names, that build grandparent-grandchild relationships, but relationships are also built on respect. It's simply not respectful, and perhaps even disrespectful, to call an elder, any elder, by a name that denotes silliness, insult, or overfamiliarity. My kinda-sorta -- chosen -- nieces and nephews and my brother's daughter call me "Aunt Keely" or "Tia Keely," and Jeff is ALWAYS "Uncle Jeff." I was raised to call those older than I am by "sir" and "ma'am," and I continue to do so. I don't mind if my kids' friends call me Keely, but I do mind if they do it without asking permission to.

See? I AM conservative about some things!

When either of my sons has a baby, we'll go for Gran and Grandpa, most likely, or, if the baby's mother speaks Spanish, Nana and Tata or Abuelito and Abuelita. But I won't encourage a culture of incivility, disrespect, and overfamiliarity by allowing such silliness. I guarantee "Big Mama" and "GeezerGuy" aren't taking ANY Mix grandkids to the park, ever.

Response To Cathy, Part 2

2011-08-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

So, do I think all Tea Party followers are "toothless hillbillies," as Cathy suggests?

Not at all. I believe the Tea Party is NOT the political tool or sociopolitical home of its supporters as much as it's a tool and a message of the GOP elite, the Dick Armeys and Koch Brothers and State GOP strategists who lend their considerable backing to a "populist, grass-roots" movement that convinces people to vote against their own bests interests as well as the general interest of the United States.

It's the GOP rich, not the people carrying signs, who benefit from absurdly low marginal tax rates on incomes over $265,000, continued tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and massive government deregulation and slashing of social-services funding like continued unemployment checks for those -- even those unemployed sign-carriers -- still unemployed in the worst recession in most of our lifetimes. The "grass-roots" Tea Partiers are being deceived, and when I say they "stupidly" support a movement that has prospered from their deceit -- a deceit made easier by the bland lack of discernment and powder-keg anger they demonstrate -- I mean just that.

The people are not "stupid," but it is undeniably stupid to vote on the basis of wrong information (the President is a Muslim, his trip to India cost $200 million a day, Congress wants to take your guns, Obamacare is "socialized medicine," etc.) and be proud of it. Bright, concerned people seek out good information, which is why I don't get mine from either Fox or MSNBC, but from CNN, which is hardly liberal, unless you define liberal as "willing to expose Tea Party-dishonesty," and from the Associated Press, a fixture of unbiased media for decades. I get both The American Standard and Mother Jones and balance it with Time Magazine; I enjoy MSNBC, but it's dessert after the meal, not the main meal itself that feeds my political engagement.

Polls consistently show that people who watch FOX News are overwhelmingly more likely to give factually-wrong answers to questions on current events; I think it's not just "conservative-bashing" to infer that FOX News is less a news source than a purveyor of the GOP party line. MSNBC, whose readers poll higher in their grasp of current events, is nonetheless more a source of liberal analysis than it is an unbiased news source, although its "straight news" coverage appears unbiased, if bland. Acknowledging that ought not be painful, and woe to anyone whose political views come solely from one side or another.

I see the Tea Party as a group of hypocritically angry and shockingly mis- or un-informed people who have decided now that we have a Democratic President, it's time to get mad about the deficit, about overspending, about Big Government. This is typical whenever a perceived liberal -- and Obama is not -- is in the White House. What's atypical here is the incongruity of a movement that sprung up AFTER eight years of staggering ineptitude, gross overspending, reckless overfunding and vicious underfunding resulting in a weakened country and a Chilean mine-deep budget deficit.

Where were these "outraged patriots" when George W. Bush, who took office with a budget SURPLUS, ran us into the ground by launching two wars (one deceitful and unnecessary, the other disgracefully planned) AND cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans, something generally considered in American history to be almost criminally stupid? Where was their outrage when their cities were falling apart because of a studied lack of support for basic infrastructure needs -- needs that haven't gone away and have in fact worsened, and that have to be addressed now, even with a budget crisis, because "W" ignored them?

Where were these "patriots" and "big government" foes when Bush lied to get us into a war with Iraq? Would real patriots countenance such a blatant "false-flag" operation? Do proud veterans necessarily have to accept the deaths and maiming of younger veterans in a war birthed long before 9/11 and launched with hysteria only barely polished for public consumption? THAT'S patriotic? Where was their anger at Bush's Patriot Act, the most obscene example of Big Brother looking into your metaphorical window and stationery chest seen in this generation? I don't recall seeing them on the streets hollering when the GOP and the Democrats in previous Congresses raised the debt ceiling numerous times in the last decade or so. Do you?

Where were all of these angry lovers of America and committed haters of bloated government under eight years of unleashed GOP spending? Does the Tea Party have any concern at all about the biggest recipients of "welfare" -- the corporations who seek and are granted unfettered access to the trough with nary a thought toward re-investment in their communities. And take a look at history: It's Republican presidents, not Democratic, who have presided over the biggest deficits in this half-century. But have you ever heard the Tea Party thank Bill Clinton for ending his tenure with a budget surplus, or excoriate "W" for blowing it to hell and back by trillions?

Finally, has it occurred to you that the grotesque and sinful preoccupation with casting Barack Obama as the dark, shadowy, suspicious, not-like-us "other" -- a foreign-born, anti-American secret operative of God-knows-who-or-what -- might explain the sudden "outrage" of the Tea Party? For eight years, Bush's Washington exhibited diarrheac spending and gross abuses of power. For two and a half years, the Obama Administration has spent on those things that have to be repaired and supported, like infrastructure and schools, and his contribution to the national debt is largely a necessary response to the preoccupation of the Bush White House not with making this country strong, but with further fouling the situation in the Middle East -- resulting in an America much less respected, and frankly much less secure.

I believe the Tea Party supporters, then, are acting hypocritically -- either because they're pitifully uninformed and thus manipulated by the rich who stand to benefit from policies enacted by their "outrage," or because they're comfortable in a bigotry that, if not directly against Barack Obama's name and skin tone, certainly privileges the good-ol-boy person of George W. Bush. If they continue in a movement that makes a virtue out of embracing misinformation and fueling itself by irrationality, they deserve to be judged as having acted stupidly. And if Tea Partiers continue to focus on creating a "shadowy, suspicious 'other'" out of their President, they deserve to be judged as those exhibiting a toxic civil bigotry.

I intend to judge those actions, while praying for the lower-middle-class and poor people in the movement so duped, so exploited, and so manipulated by the very people largely responsible for their disenfranchisement and despair. That will be the topic of my next post, but for today -- I've gotta give these fingers a rest!

Thanks, Cathy, and I hope to hear from you soon.

And My Response To Cathy, Part 1

2011-08-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Please read the previous post before you read this one, or else not much will make sense . . .

Cathy is concerned primarily with my July 29 post on the Tea Party; if you haven't read it, you might want to scroll down, have a look, and then refer to her objections. I'll try to respond to them in order, and probably in two or three separate posts. I'm told I'm a bit wordy at times.

First, an answer to a "by the way, how DO you feel about . . .?" question that has nothing, really, to do with the Tea Party but is important for me to answer. Cathy wants to know what I think about abortion.

As I've written before, I unequivocally believe that surgical abortion is the taking of a human life, while spontaneous abortion -- miscarriage -- is as well the loss of a human life. The life begun at conception is precious to God; if left undisturbed, the fetus will emerge from the womb as a human being made in the Divine image. However, surgical abortion, while ending a human life, is NOT something I consider, or countenance describing as, "murder." Even the Scriptures differentiate between the degree of severity in the ending of human life, and motive and circumstances in the life of a woman seeking or needing an abortion are as significant in describing her choice and its result as they are in the Old Testament.

Further, no woman I know who's had an abortion came to her decision lightly, with some sort of evil, cavalier plan to "kill" anything. I stand with our Christian feminist foremothers in diagnosing patriarchy as the primary cause of women's choice to abort, and I absolutely will not stand with those who condemn them. As I've said before, I have not had an abortion, although I miscarried in 1990, but the women I know who have were caught in a dilemma, a crisis, wherein ending their pregnancy seemed to make sense. I do not condemn them. The personhood of the fetus is something that, while scientifically obvious, -- insofar as the DNA is that of a human and not a catfish or a wolverine -- is not at all obvious to those thinking not "scientifically" but personally, and generally under considerable stress. Were it not for my faith, I, too, would have a hard time considering this DNA-bearing, three-inch long, relatively featureless entity "a baby," and I believe that's crucial for understanding a woman's true motivation in seeking abortion.

I am opposed to legislative bans on abortion because I believe that it invites the possibility of State-investigated miscarriages, for example, and assures State-mandated interference into what, in later months, has to be a medical decision made between a woman and her doctor. The ugliness of so-called "partial-birth" abortion argues for its blessedly rare necessity, unless one believes that there's a small contingent of doctors champing at the bit to stab a fetus' brain with scissors and suck out the contents while leaving it hanging out of the vaginal canal. Sorry to be graphic, but rationality dictates that the horror of the procedure ensures that, barring a wickedly psychotic cabal of baby-stabbers in the American Medical Association, it is a procedure that must be performed some times to save the life of the mother.

If we believe in the eternality of the soul, surely we believe that aborted fetuses live with Christ -- although Christian theologians in past centuries haven't attributed soul-presence to a fetus until "quickening." The life of the mother, then, must be the priority, as we don't know the state of her soul, and we assume she lives in this world with others of her children, her spouse, and family and friends who love and need her.

Those men and women who would legislate against abortion even in cases of rape and incest use legal arguments like "why punish (kill) the victim?" in defending the obligation of a woman who's conceived by rape. I frankly do not want to hear from men -- those who will never have to face a crisis or medically-dangerous pregnancy -- in the abortion debate, but I object, as a rape victim myself, to any man's legislative power to force a violated woman to carry a baby to term. Life is messy; it's lived sometimes in the margins, not in the neat and tidy annals of legislative logic. I praise God my rape in 1980 didn't result in pregnancy, but I also praise God that if it had, the Savior I would soon come to trust would gently hold me as the resulting pregnancy, with all of the horror, degradation, and filth it would remind me of, was swept from my body had I been unable to bear it. God bless those raped women who DO carry to term, but may God prevent any man from insisting that a woman suffering a horror he will never experience mandate that she must.

So, Cathy, that's my take on the abortion debate. I'm rolling up my sleeves now to tackle the criticisms you make of my analysis of the Tea Party ...

Cathy's Challenge To Me

2011-08-14T10:45:00.001-07:00

From reader Cathy, referenced in my previous post, from August 6, in its entirety. Yes, I've been taken to the woodshed, and I appreciate her guts in doing so with the integrity of using a real name:

I stumbled on your blog this morning, and after reading some of your posts, decided to write. I am not a member of the Tea Party, and have never attended anything political, Tea Party, or otherwise. I disagree, though, with much of this post.

In point #1, if I was a Martian reading your description of those who “stupidly voted” Tea Party candidates into office, I might deduce that they’re hillbillies, toothless hicks. Why...because they don't subscribe to your idea of smart? Are you the arbiter of all things "stupid?" What I know of the Tea Party is that they object to big gov't. What is wrong with that? The idea that the Tea Party is a Christian organization is nonsense. Political parties are not a vehicle for the Gospel of Christ. They don't teach the Gospel, or promote the salvation of souls.

Further, if you insist that the Tea Party should be called out for their "ignorance and duplicity," then, please, explain how the Democratic or the Republican parties shouldn't be called out for the same? You have arbitrarily assigned your own set of values and applied them. You are certainly free to have opinions, but you go beyond those opinions and make them judgments, applying your own interpretation of Scripture. There is nothing biblical about political parties, and believers aren't called to invest time in them. I would certainly draw the line @ issues like abortion which is contrary to Scriptural teaching. I've not read your blog enough to know your take on abortion. What is it, BTW? You also write ..."Washington -- government -- has great power to aid the people and to strengthen the society around them…” HOW does Washington have that power and those resources? The gov't doesn't generate any income. Their only way or producing "income" is through our tax dollars. Why do you advocate a dependency on gov't to "aid the people and to strengthen the society around them?" What is the role of gov't?

As to point #5, why aren't you calling out President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel for "co-opting Jesus Christ?" How 'bout when the president talks about having "a righteous wind at our backs?" Whose righteousness? How 'bout when he refers to "the least of these," a clear reference to Scripture, out of context. The biblical context is that Jesus uses that phrase to refer to What about President Obama's speech about Gabrielle Giffords, where he inserts Psalm 46. What does the context of Psalm 46 have to do with the shooting in AZ? What about calling out Pelosi for invoking Scripture to further her agenda? She actually invoked "The Word," as answer to why she crafts policies--"...in keeping with the values of Jesus Christ, The Word made Flesh." So, voting to ban the partial-birth abortion ban is a Scriptural mandate? Would Jesus have voted for the debt ceiling, as Charlie Rangel implied? I submit that Jesus came to die a cruel death on a cross so that men and women might know Him. I don't know for certain, but I don't think that Jesus would have been involved in a vote to either raise, lower or leave the debt ceiling.

Point #7—I believe that your “strongholds thing” use is to misuse II Corinthians 10:4 it in light of the context.

Finally, I voted for Bush twice. He was a disaster. I like him personally (as much as you can know someone personally with/out knowing him personally!)...I like his appreciation for the troops, and his involvement with/the Wounded Warriors, but think that he handled a lot of foreign policy horribly, the monetary system horribly, etc. Yet, you, on the other hand, see President Obama as a success, so much so that you're "unabashedly praying for an Obama victory in 2012." I would love to hear your reasoning for your fervor. HOW has he been successful? And, please, no platitudes, or straw men.

Sincere Apologies To Reader Cathy

2011-08-13T15:17:00.001-07:00

I've included this in the comments area of my post a few days ago regarding the Tea Party sign, but I'd like to make note of this reader's comment. Cathy -- I don't know her -- said she'd written me "an epistle" on August 6 and was waiting for my response. I certainly owe her an apology, and I sincerely offer it and hope she'll forgive me for my not getting back to her.

The problem is that I never check my Blogger email address -- the keelyemerinemix2008@hotmail.com one that she used, and so I haven't seen it. That will be remedied later today, with a response forthcoming. When I began my blog three years ago, I had to sign up for another account, the one linked on my profile page. But I'm not accustomed to using it; I always use the email address I've had since we first got email, kjajmix1@msn.com (that's a "one," not an "l," after "mix"), which I would invite you all to use. Obviously I wasn't on the ball here, and I presume my readers know that I don't shy away from controversy or correction.

So, Cathy -- we have houseguests, but I'll have an answer for you by Sunday evening, OK? Blessings to you and thanks for writing. I'll make it a habit to check that email at least weekly.

Obedience and Authority and Passing the Half-and-Half

2011-08-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

So it occurs to me that some of you, in reading yesterday's post about brides promising to obey their grooms, might think I don't get the whole "rightful authority thing."

The problem, though, is that I think I really do, based on Scripture. I absolutely believe that I have to obey those in rightful authority over me, lest I risk God's disapproval. If a cop tells me to pull over, I'll pull over. If my professor asks me to hand in a 10-page paper, I'll hand in a 10-page paper (although you all know that it'd probably be 12 or 14 pages). And if the National Guard orders me to evacuate my house, I'll start packing up.

They're all in rightful authority over me based on their roles in my life, roles that are not theirs by ontology -- their essential being -- but by experience, qualifications, and the endorsement to command my obedience by their superiors, who also are not in their positions by reasons of ontology. Further, my obedience to them is situational -- when I encounter their orders -- and only when they're operating in their official, authoritative roles. So the cop might "order" me to pass the half-and-half when she's off-duty at Starbucks, and my assent is based not on her professional authority over me, but because I believe in submitting to others whenever possible and whenever positive.

Nevertheless, there is no circumstance at all, Biblically, that suggests that you or I need to obey another person simply because of their sex. Which, of course, is "his sex" from the pastors and teachers who ought to know better. Sex, along with economic or social class and race, are distinctions that are acknowledged in the Church -- celebrated, even, in the Church -- but are never reasons for hierarchical distinctions among Christ's people. Galatians 3:28 here is not a prooftext but an announcement echoed throughout the New Testament and tantalizingly revealed in the Old that the victory of Christ over sin is the overturning of the curse and the ushering in of the new Kingdom.

In that Kingdom, people lovingly submit to one another. They aren't taught by masculinist pastors that ontological differences equal permanent subordination, and my prayer is that as the Kingdom grows throughout the world, Christ's Body would listen to the Spirit and reject such a fouling of the Gospel.

"Religious"?

2011-08-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

Remember when we all first came to Christ?

Remember the urgency with which we shared our faith by assuring people that "Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship!"? We were quick to describe our new faith as one of connection with God through Jesus, not a bunch of rules, and even the more legalistic among us went out of our way to remind others that we were just trying to please God when we turned down a beer or wouldn't go see an R-rated movie, not earn out way into the Divine heart.

Do you wish you had a dollar for every time you said -- probably too smugly -- "I'm not religious. I just love the Lord!"? I do.

But something came to my heart this morning as I was praying, and that's that it might be time, for all of us and for me especially, to rethink some things. Without ever considering denying Jesus, I and a lot of my brothers and sisters struggle with how we refer to ourselves in describing our faith. "Christian," to me, always seemed vague, given the "I must be Christian, I'm an American and not Jewish or anything" culture of our nation. "Evangelical," which correctly describes me when used in its historical socio-religious context, is a huge and unnecessary turn-off to people who've been sickened by TV evangelists and bullying pastors and politicians. "Jesus follower" doesn't tend to make conversation flow real easily, and neither does "Disciple of Jesus." And while I subscribe to the generally-considered seven historic, orthodox fundamentals of the Christian faith, I don't think too many folks would use "Keely" and "Fundamentalist" in the same sentence.

I'll let you pick yourself up from the floor before I continue . . .

But as I was praying this morning, I remembered a comment I heard on TV last night about the recently deceased Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield, whom the commentator described as "deeply religious." That struck me, and it stayed with me through the night. Could it be that in our young-Christian attempts to distance true intimacy with Christ from the constraints of rote religious faith, we strayed from the legitimate value of practicing, deeply and with private and public discipline, our religion? Is it possible that between the hep and relevant extremes of "my best bud, Jesus" and cold, Spirit-quenching ritual there's a place for the personal relationship with Christ the Gospel promises AND a profound devotion to the disciplines and practice of our faith?

And doesn't that seem just too obvious?

Of course it does. But the most public Christians in America today seem to be utterly convinced that Jesus is on their side and much less concerned with whether or not they're on His side. The rhetoric and posturing, the manipulation and lust for power, can hardly be seen as "religious" from a watching world unaware of our Evangelical discomfort with "seeming religious." Yet it's that kind of humble seeking of God's will, individually and corporately, that attracts unbelievers. It seems that in ditching the piety of our forebears and forcing our "Jesus Politics" into the political and social arena, we've lost our way. Mark Hatfield demonstrated that Christ's will for the public servant is manifest in the heart of a humble servant granted power by integrity and intelligence, not by disciples grabbing the microphone and screeching nasty things louder than the next one.

The difference between the two public approaches to "Christian Politics" seems to be not between Republicans and Democrats but between those who keep Jesus tenderly in their hearts and those who plaster Him on the flag and shove Him on stage. And if my life's testimony is reminiscent of the former, I wouldn't mind at all being described after I die as "deeply religious."

Mark Hatfield -- How Evangelicals Should Conduct Themselves In Public Office

2011-08-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

Longtime Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield died this week, as much as statesman and example for Christians in public service as John Stott, who died last month, was for Christians in both academia and everyday life.

Let me go back a few years, back to the 1970s, when Watergate fouled the nation's political consciousness. My father, furious at the warmongering and later criminality of the Nixon White House, answered the phone during those days with, "Hello, impeach the bastard!" I'd like to think that's why I didn't date much then; surely Brett in Chemistry would've been put off by that, although I suspect there were myriad other reasons I was a romantic only in heart as a teen.

I was also an activist, starting from pre-adolescence when we would picket the Air Base during the Vietnam War, collect petitions for the United Farm Workers (I didn't eat grapes or lettuce, and my parents didn't drink Gallo wine, for years), hold get-out-the-vote drives in our house, and host meetings with NAACP members, anti-war activists, and, once, a couple of members of La Raza Unida. You likely have concluded we were Democrats, and while our religious views were way off -- Jesus is NOT the embodiment of The Consummate Liberal Democrat -- our politics were straight down the line.

But there was one Republican my parents admired, and that was Mark Hatfield.

Hatfield, a deeply committed Baptist, made his own way in public life, guided not by polls and party allegiances but by his Spirit-guided understanding of how best to serve Christ by serving his country. He was a World War II veteran who became vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War. While other Republicans and far too many Christians were cheering on the horrors of the war, Hatfield stood opposed, calling it an evil that "must be condemned by all mankind." He was, predictably, a staunch pro-lifer, but unlike the "pro-life" movement today, he hated both abortion and capital punishment -- a consistent life-affirming ethic virtually absent from today's pro-life ideology. An avowed opponent of racism, he sponsored legislation to ban racial segregation in Oregon public facilities and modeled a spirit of civic republicanism -- which, unlike the Republicanism of today -- has at its core a community-building belief in both people and process. Hatfield dared to anger his religious constituents and Congressional peers with is early backing of civil rights for gays and lesbians. He was more conservative than my parents were in fiscal issues, and more Libertarian than I would have liked, but Mark Hatfield was a good man who stood out while in the Senate for his humility, his conscience, his intelligence, and his integrity.

Look at the GOP field today. We've got serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, who's seemingly written a book on virtually every subject under the sun, including one on character. Herman Cain, who's entire platform involves hating Barack Obama -- a platform he shares with all the others except John Huntsman. We've endured Tim Pawlenty, who apparently has to check his driver's license every morning to remind himself who he really is, and the vapid, vacuous Beauty King Mitt Romney, conspicuously silent during the debt ceiling debate -- perhaps frantically hiding during the distraction to finally figure out a way to describe his Massachusetts healthcare plan as somehow radically different from Obama's. Then there's Ron Paul, a very nice man who's made a career of increasing his irrelevance. Individually, I'm sure these are all the sort of fellow who would make great neighbors, but my prayer and hope is that they stay in their respective neighborhoods and not have cause to move into the White House.

It's early in the morning, and so it pains me to discuss Michelle Bachmann, whose entrance into the race has garnered a comedy CD's worth of gaffes, groaners, and garbled responses to the most basic political questions. Texas Governor Rick Perry already has a foot and a half in the ring; he'll remind us often, as he did earlier this month, that he "believes in this country because he believes in America," or, alternately, he "believes in America because he believes in this country." This razor-sharp grasp of the issues makes the inimitable and irredeemingly dense, pandering, shrieking, and grasping Sarah Palin look like a reasonable adult -- until she opens her mouth.

Why am I so hard on the Bachmann, Perry, and Palin?

It's because they share the essentials of Hatfield's Christian faith -- Jesus as the Way of salvation, the Bible as God's Word, and the Gospel as a message to be taken to the world. But Palin, Bachmann, and Perry have both constricted the Gospel and artificially inflated it with what the Word can never countenance. Their opposition to social programs, peace, justice, and a foreign policy based on honest humility, moral strength, and mutual respect indicates that they've distilled the Gospel message down to the Four Spiritual Laws of salvation, and that only. On the other hand, they deny Jesus by ignoring both His model of true servanthood and His message of reconciliation, and instead call "Christianity" their power-seeking, hierarchical, and damaging Dominionism -- a philosophy that adopts the very things hated by Christ and attempts to shove Him into its gaseous message and toxic methodology. As the most public proclaimers of Christian faith, they ought to be rebuked because they have traded their Christianity for a vile ChristiAmericanism whose power-hungry Dominionism will ultimately be shown impotent, absent as it is from the Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit of God.

Hatfield's soul is rejoicing with his Savior. I pray he sees no more what Christians have done to both the GOP and to this country.

Actually, Brother, You've Got This One Wrong

2011-08-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here's Moscow's Emperor of Epistemology Douglas Wilson today on Blog and Mablog, referring to a question from last night's televised Faux News debate before an Iowa presidential straw poll:

"At the Republican debate last night, (Michelle) Bachmann was asked if she was a submissive wife. She deflected the question, and answered in terms of respect, which is part of the right answer, but it is not the full answer. The traditional marriage vow -- which traditionalists are supposed to agree with, remember -- includes the vow to obey. This goes well beyond "think highly of in mutually affirming ways." All obedience should be respectful, of course, and true respect will result in obedience, but they are still not the same thing." (Blog and Mablog, August 12, 2011)

True respect for the Word will result in obedience to it, and Wilson's words here, yet again, are still not the same thing -- evincing, as they do, a greater respect for marital hierarchy than for coherent Scriptural exegesis.

Yes, the young ladies of Christ Church, Trinity Reformed, and NSA, when married by Wilson, promise to obey their husbands -- just because women have, however wrongly, promised to do that for years. "Traditional marriage vows" may extract only from the bride a promise to obey her husband, although my September 1984 traditional wedding vows, being based on Scripture, didn't.

And that's the point: Traditionalists -- complementarians, hierarchialists, patriarchs -- have elevated their traditional views on strongly-defined, separate gender roles and functions to the status of Scripture, a practice I'm quite sure they'd decry if done elsewhere by "liberals," "feminists," and "ecumenicalists." There is no Biblical precedent, but very many cultural precedents, for wives to obey their husbands. Included in marriage vows, the admonition to "obey" is an immediate, incontrovertible and public announcement that Ephesians 5:22 ("wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord") and not the preceding verse 21 ("Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ)," nor the entire message of the New Testament Gospel, will be the framework for the marriage. That's simply wrong, no matter how stunning the table decorations.

Even a non-seminarian can grasp that in Ephesians 5:21-28, mutual submission ("subordination" in the New American Bible, which makes the point in stronger language) sets the stage for emphasis on a husband's love and a wife's submission -- according to the areas in which culture or circumstance might make each charge particularly difficult for one spouse or the other. (The cult of Artemis, for example, elevated women at the expense of the denigration of men, which likely explains Paul's emphasis here on wifely submission; certainly, the first-century Jewish or pagan man wasn't surrounded by examples of profoundly intimate love for his wife). Here, Paul sets the stage -- mutual submission, everybody! -- and then emphasizes specific difficulties, without doing away with the virtue not specifically mentioned.

Ignoring the context-setting verse 21 and skipping to vv. 22 and 25 allows Wilson, et al, to cling to his hierarchical view of marriage. He is, of course, a Biblical literalist, and so I'm assuming that men who don't submit to their wives, yet love them, have his approval, as do -- follow the logic here -- the wives who submit with nary a trace of love to motivate it. Either v. 21 -- "Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ" -- is true and not controverted by the following text, or, if it's jettisoned, vv. 22 and 25 then command wives only to submit, not love, and men only to love, not submit. I imagine that a teacher of logic and rhetoric would see my argument, and I trust that any pastor, witnessing such a farcical marriage, would hike up his khakis and run back to v. 21. But then, I'm a trusting gal, and I've been disappointed a lot.

Mutual submission is not top-down authority. It's not "submission" from a status of expected, permanent subjugation, nor is it limited to marriage. Submission is, from a position of strength and security, a voluntary decision to put another first -- period. It's every bit as much a command for husbands as it is for wives, for men as it is for women, for clergy as it is for laypeople. If the New Testament is replete with examples of cultural mores that limit and even degrade women being shattered by the Word and example of Christ Jesus -- and, Rob, it is -- the true "Biblical literalist" will take the verse that introduces an argument and consider the following verses in its light. That's basic hermeneutics, however much it makes male supremacists in the Church squirm.

The fact is that the Bible nowhere commands women to "obey" their husbands; the Pauline letters do not use the Greek word for "obey as unto one in authority over" when discussing submission. The only example of God telling a spouse to "obey" the other partner involves Abraham's charge to obey Sarah. None of us would develop a once-and-for-all doctrine from that account, and the thoughtful among us -- and I assume there still are the "thoughtful" among us in Moscow -- would not glean from Scripture the necessity of a Godly wife "obeying" her husband. That's eisegesis -- reading into the Word what you'd like. In performing weddings, Wilson is, sadly, free to monkey with Scripture to his and his audience's liking, but that doesn't make his admonition to wives Biblical. It does, however, make it pretty damned convenient in keeping questioning, unhappy, victimized and ecclesiastically-dissatisfied women quiet, and the unrelenting influence Wilson exercises over his flock is easier to sustain if half of them believe they have no real voice.

"Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey . . . " (Romans 6:16)

Mature, Godly Christian marriages are a triangle of mutuality -- two points, equally positioned lower than the point wherein is pictured the One they obey and drawing closer to each other as they draw closer to the Almighty. There is no room for top-down power arrangements and gender-restricted "roles and function," only for robust and plentiful submission, one to the other, in marriage and in every single other relationship in which the Christian lives. Submission? I'm all for it -- I'd like to see more of it! But I don't want to see, and I believe our God doesn't, either, a worldy form of power and control pushed off on the Church by those who cling to the privileges they garner from it.

That, I won't submit to. And neither should you.

Wise Words, Even Though They Came From A Liberal

2011-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."

Former New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, thankfully, was spared the advent of the Tea Party.

Perhaps we can glean some agreement from this week's Time magazine, which, in quoting Moynihan, says "...it is clear that Moynihan's adage is no longer true."

"The Tea Party movement has proved not only that people can have their own facts but also that they can use them to vast tactical advantage, crashing through the taboos of political convention and changing the game along the way. It has also proved that in a democracy, a minority can rule quite effectively, thank you." (Michael Crowley, Time, August 15, 2011)

The More Things Change, The More They Stay Distressingly The Same

2011-08-08T21:03:00.001-07:00

From a late-1800s advertisement in the Idaho Free Press

"A Pleasure Shared By Women Only"

"Malherbe, the gifted French author, declared that of all things that man possesses, women alone take pleasure in being possessed. This seems generally true of the sweeter sex. Like the ivy plant, she longs for an object to cling to and love -- to look to for protection..."

And from "Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood -- A Response To Evangelical Feminism," 1991, in an article written by Pastor Ray Ortlund, Jr., analyzing what it means in Genesis 3:16, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (p. 109) Ortlund says it's either of these points God is making:

"...God is requiring the man to act as the head God made him to be, rather than knuckle under to ungodly pressure from his wife..."

Or is it:

"...in giving the woman up to her insubordinate desire, God is penalizing her with domination by her husband ... as the woman competes with the man, the man, for his part, always holds the trump card of male domination to 'put her in her place.'"

Now, I'm not sure I see the difference, and I'm frankly not sure Ortlund and his RBMW co-authors think too differently from dear ol' Malherbe. The Frenchman says the sweeter sex enjoys male domination; Ortlund, et al, say they darned well had better.

I can't help it. I find that really unfortunate, and yet fortunately un-Biblical.

Tea Party Sign At Anti-Obama Riot

2011-08-08T19:33:00.003-07:00

Read this one carefully. Being a Tea Party activist means to me that you're likely somewhat less than fully informed. Being a Tea Party activist who calls Obama an idiot might want to check his grammar:

A VILLAGE IN KENYA IS MISSING IT'S IDIOT
(as seen in Time Magazine, August 15, 2011)

Note to the protest guy: It's "it's" when you mean "it is," and "its" when you refer to something another thing possesses, like the possession of an idiot by a village, town, or even, perhaps, a political movement. But that's just weird Liberal grammar . . .

Responding To Faithful Reader Rob

2011-08-06T02:59:00.000-07:00

I appreciated the following comment from Rob, and not just for his use of an actual name, unlike too many of my brave patriarchal correspondents. I genuinely appreciate his concern and will address his points below.

From Rob, received August 4, 2011,

Keely,

I have been reading your blog and all of its gender neutral links (CBE) with interest. I have never encountered a person so given to turn the plethora of clear scripture and historically sound doctrine on its head. Yes, there are men and families that have applied scripture to devalue women, and I believe that we would both rightly confront this wrong on the basis of the Word. But I believe that you mistakenly bend and explain away clear biblical teaching on gender distinctions which are meant for the mutual blessing and protection of each other, and particularly for God's glory. These distinctions of role, but not value, are some of the many boundaries which God has established within which freedom is able to abide. You call these distinctions "oppressive", and that's just plain wrong.

Keely, you indicate that you are a pastor. Its clear from your most recent posts that you are listening to those who would tell you want you want to believe. As you are in a position of influence, it is appropriate to warn you of error. Paul warned Timothy of similar error when he wrote the following:

"For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."

Rob

(Prevailing Winds) -- Several points bear address here. First among them is that CBE (Christians For Biblical Equality) is not a "gender-neutral" organization, unless one charges the Apostle Paul with a gender-neutral theology in Galatians 3:28, one of CBE's and all egalitarians' foundational verses. We don't subscribe to some insipid "blessed androgyny" in the Body of Christ, nor do we women strive to be men, much less hope that men will be like women. May it never be! Rather, we take the Word seriously in living out the full significance of Galatians 3:28, and not, as my dear husband says, to a "two-thirds degree" in applying it only to class and race.

What we believe is that, as is clearly stated in the Galatians verse and supported magnificently in the New Testament, distinctions of class, race, and sex have no place in dividing members of Christ's Body, nor in any hierarchy within it, nor in the denial of full, Spirit-gifted service offered and accepted among its members. In complementarian arguments that pin their hopes on several unclear verses, this clear call for ecclesiastical, Body-life harmony and mutuality rings brilliantly clear.

I have heard many complementarians talk about the "clear" teaching of Scripture on gender relations, teachings that often are not found at all ("headship" in Genesis 1 and 2) or not "clear" to any interpreter on first read. I hear that Adam's naming of the animals and his primacy in creation forms the basis of his "headship" in Genesis, with no acknowledgement that Eve, Leah, and Elizabeth, to name a few women in the Bible, also exercised "naming privileges" over their children, which I doubt would cause any traditionalist to rejoice in their "headship." Yes, they named their children. Adam named animals, and then he named his "ezer," or strong rescuer, as the word is used with near unanimity in the Old Testament, where it refers to God as Israel's "ezer." In naming Eve, he rejoiced in her equal nature and her completion of him, which hardly argues for her subordination in "role and in function," as Piper and Grudem, et al, insist.

Likewise, the dominion mandate was given by God to Adam and to Eve -- equally. There simply is no hint of hierarchy in the Garden. Likewise, only a spurious and frankly desperate reading of the text would suggest that Adam's sin in the Garden was his failure to operate as his ezer's "head." What you learned in Baptist or any other Sunday School is correct: The sin in Eden was Eve's sin in eating of the tree, and Adam's sin in doing the same. It's noteworthy that Eve, who nowhere in the Genesis account was directly taught by God of the prohibition, nonetheless responded truthfully to God's inquiry, while the directly-taught Adam, in the first post-Fall instance of sin, blamed his sin on "the one" God gave him. Paul understands this when he says in Romans that sin came to the world through Adam, and yet one part of 1 Timothy 2:13-14 -- "For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor" -- is enough for complementarians to cling to the mistaken notion of Eve's innate greater sinfulness or gullibility and Adam's "headship" in Creation.

Can Rob really say that the verse following, which insists that women "will be saved through childbearing" if they persist in good works and conduct, is an example of "clear teaching"? Are women always saved through childbirth? No. Do women get saved differently from men -- not by grace through faith, but by childbearing? No. What about translations that refer to "the" childbearing? Not too clear, frankly. What about the verses preceding v. 13, where a woman is to learn "in silence and in submission," and where Paul says he is not now permitting women to teach or to have authority over men? (That's the Greek, which didn't make it into most translations and which indicates Paul's own decision, not timeless, to deny the women of Ephesus the position of teacher of the mixed assembly). Does Rob know what the puzzling verb "authentein" means? It's the verb translated "to have authority over." Commentators say it can mean "murder," "usurp power from," " 'killing' the reputation of another," and "behave insolently in taking the place of." Surely all believers are prohibited from doing that. So, from the temporary, in-time-and-place nature of Paul's prohibition here and the oddness of "authentein," are we really sure what the women of Ephesus can't do?

And if they're to be silent in the church, why then does Paul devote much of 1 Corinthians 11 to guiding the Body on how a woman may pray and prophesy in the assembly so that she does not offend outsiders or cause shame on her husband? Would he instruct women in how to do something he forbids them to do later, in chapter 14, or here? Is there perhaps something particular to Ephesus, the home of the "divine feminine," or the goddess Artemis and the female-supremacy cults that served her, that makes women's teaching there at that time something that would have had a negative effect on the Church's witness? Is Paul's focus on not needlessly offending outsiders by currying controversy, or is it really a timeless, permanent injunction against Spirit-gifted women using that gift in the whole assembly? And couldn't we make the case -- which, actually, I do -- that adhering to that cultural prohibition today needlessly offends outsiders and curries controversy?

What about the complementarian's devotion to "clear teaching"? Do the women in Rob's church remain stone-cold silent in the worship service, or are they given to wearing head coverings? Or perhaps Rob would recognize what most 20th- and 21st century commentators see in 1. Cor. 11 -- that God, in giving woman her hair as a covering, has also given her authority over her own head so that she may, in fact, pray and prophesy in the assembly without shaming either her husband or her Church?

"Clear teaching"? Really?

Do Rob and his fellow complementarians equate the difficulty in interpreting these verses with the overall clear testimony of Scripture that Christ's Gospel is one of reconciliation, restoration, and mutual submission? Is Christ's victory in overturning the effects of the Fall somehow not applied to women's and men's relationships? Is a "two-thirds" application of Galatians 3:28 a truly Biblical one? Has Christ through his Holy Spirit ushered in a new Kingdom, a new community, and a new way of living that has as its goal Eden restored? Is Christ's forward-from-the-culture treatment of women a model for us today? Could Rob honestly accuse St. John Chrysostom of seeking to have his ears tickled when even this historical patriarch recognized that Romans 16 lists a woman, Junia, as an apostle -- and applauds this great woman so greatly called and honored by her God?

If God is not gendered, and yet if man and woman derive their personhood equally from God, why would we presume that God always favors the permanent, eternal submission of women to men? Can women really be ontologically equal to men if they are, by virtue of their very being, ALWAYS to be subordinate to them? Can ontology be equal if it and only it -- not gifts, not experiences, not any other thing -- is the determining factor in who's on top in the hierarchy? Would a classical course in logic not reveal the fallacy of insisting that two people are entirely, fundamentally, ontologically equal IF an ontological and ONLY an ontological difference explains one's permanent subordination to the other? And did God constantly overthrow the idea of "primacy in creation" when he chose or exalted David? How about rejecting the firstborn Esau and calling Jacob? Judah? Ephraim? Joseph? God's adherence to "order of creation" would give us an entirely different list of names He used, called, and exalted. It seems our God laughs at primogeniture, unless he's opening wide all of its benefits to women formerly not permitted them.

Has the LORD called His children to hierarchy, or to mutuality? Put another way, does Rob's Bible have Ephesians 5:21 in it?

Finally, I confess to Rob that I read Scripture, by the grace and gifting of the Spirit, through egalitarian lenses -- because my Savior modeled and commands it. I did not always consider myself an egalitarian. When I first came to Christ some 31 years ago, I was taught that this "feminism thing" in me had to fall by the wayside -- conquered by Bible study, conformed to Christ by the Spirit, or beaten out of me by suspicious traditionalists. Only in recent years, as evidenced by the fact that I first attended an egalitarian church in the nine years I've been in Moscow (my current church is only my second like it), have I come to understand what the Bible really teaches about gender relations and service. I don't "repent" of my earlier doubts that Christ's was an egalitarian Gospel, but I do consider that the Spirit has led me into solid truth unfettered by cultural conformity.

William Webb, in his book Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals, calls this method of understanding Scripture a "redemptive-movement" hermeneutic. By the way, my bookshelf has volumes from both complementarians and egalitarians, and I have read a great deal from Grudem, Piper, and the Council For Biblical Manhood And Womanhood, which CBE was formed to refute. Can Rob say the same? Has he read egalitarian writers defending their beliefs? Or would he dare suggest that Bilezikian, Giles, Erickson, Clark-Kroeger, Keener, Gaebelin-Hull, Padgett, Lamb, Grenz, Spencer, and other egalitarian evangelicals -- Christians as committed to the authority of the Word as he is, and likely more educated in it than either of us -- are sub-par as theologians and heretics as teachers? And is he aware that Grudem is rightly under fire for teaching rank subordinationism, the quasi-heretical view that Jesus is eternally subordinate to Yahweh? This flirts with Arianism; Millard Erickson's "Who's Tampering With The Trinity?" is a good resource for overcoming Grudemism -- or Arianism, for that matter.

I do appreciate what I take to be Rob's sincere concern for my soul, my ministry, and my relationship with the Lord. And while I did pastor a Spanish-language church in Duvall, Washington, in the late 1990s, I consider myself a preacher; I just use an electronic pulpit these days. I hope he writes again -- and I would love to hear his views on the points I've made, while I pray that both of us are equally (dare I say mutually?) guided by the Holy Spirit in our understanding of God's Holy Word.

Your turn, brother.

Words To Live By

2011-08-06T02:39:00.000-07:00

Judge actions, not people.
Judge results, not intent.
Judge words, not heart.
Judge truth, not preference.
Let your judgment have as its purpose
light and not lightning.
Let it show you to be
righteous, not right.

KEM

A Pearl Of Godly Devotion From Mark Driscoll . . .

2011-08-03T10:53:00.001-07:00

. . . coming soon to Moscow as a co-presenter in yet another Doug Wilson conference extolling the need for more masculinity in the Church.

"I could never worship someone I could beat up." Mark Driscoll, piously and humbly extolling the benefits of belief in a macho Jesus.

Note to Macho Mark: That sort of thing is what gets burned up as wood, hay, and straw according to 1 Corinthians 3. Be real careful, pal, that you don't get incinerated as well . . .