Month: November 2008

What brought the following thoughts to mind was a widely distributed editorial by Wesely Pruden in The Washington Times (I have not checked to verify and am referring only to the copy distributed via e-mail), e-mails sent to me by a few acquaintances, a number of letters to the editor in our own daily paper, and radio commentary that I pick up when I hit the wrong button on the tuner.

In the early 19^th century, England was the scene of internal conflict generated by their industrial revolution.  Traditional weavers and their supporters organized as Luddites to fight automated weaving and the elimination of fixed prices.  The term evolved to mean those who reject new ideas and are anti-intellectual.  A few decades later, America saw the rise of Know Nothings who formed, among other things, The American Party, to oppose the unchecked immigration of Irish Catholics in the east and Asians in the west.  The opposition to Irish Catholics was based on the paranoid belief that they were part of a secret plot by the pope to take over the U.S., and I guess the opposition to Asians in the west was just plain old fashioned racism.

The recent presidential campaign saw the public emergence of the worst of both in a revised early 21^st century edition. While the so called mainstream media was said to be overly pro-Obama, the Internet, certain television hosts, right-wing radio and some newspapers were filled with the most outrageous accusations of Obama as an agent of every element of radical, racial and un-American activity possible.  They were aided and abetted by people whose obsession with “Our Broken Borders” fueled rabid anti-immigrant attitudes.

The election is over, but echoes of those sentiments are streaming into letters to the editor and talk radio commentary all across the country.  Many people were sold, solidly sold, on all the fear mongering accusations poured out on Obama.  They really believe they are all true; they have no doubts.  They are unwilling to examine their fears, beliefs and attitudes through any lens other than the one they already have.  They have become modern day Know Nothing Luddites who cannot be persuaded by any argument that their beliefs and attitudes are not only wrong but add up to nothing but bigotry.  They are convinced that America, their America, has been taken away from them and handed over to the powers of everything they have always hated and feared.

What is the proper Christian response?  Well, we have a problem with that.  A good many of those modern day Know Nothing Luddites are Christian and profess their attitudes in the name of Christ.  A good many of those who oppose them are also Christian and react with un-reflective, self-righteous outrage, also in the name of Christ.  Can we learn anything useful by examining the record of Jesus walking among the warring factions Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, Roman Auxiliaries, and ordinary villagers?  Can we find some way to, individually and collectively, become agents of healing and reconciliation in the name of Godly love?  I know I’m not very good at it, but it seems to me that that has got to be the path upon which we walk, even if not very well.  My guess is that if there is any contemporary guidance to be had, it is probably King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  So, got any thoughts on this?

Awake early, I checked out and drove up the street looking for a diner before getting on the road for my long drive back home.  Only one was open and it was busy.  I sat in a booth way in back and right across from four guys dressed in clothing that said they worked very hard to make a living just barely adequate for them and their families.  One did most the talking.  They weren’t so sure about Obama, and here’s why.

These addicts and people like that.  They’re just lazy.  They’d rather get high than work and don’t care enough about anything to even get out of bed.  They figure the taxpayers will pick up their tab for living a good life, and Obama is probably a guy who will just go along with that.

And these immigrants.  Sure there were others before them who had it rough, and look at the Japanese, they even got put into those detention camps.  Maybe they were treated poorly, but they put all that behind them and made something of themselves.  This new batch just wants to be on welfare.  They work for almost nothing, and then quit and go on welfare, and that’s where they stay

Obama want’s everyone to get a free ride to college.  Well look at those college kids.  They graduate and then they think the world owes them a living. They don’t want to do hard work. They only want a cushy job for big bucks, and then they squander everything with big houses, cars, boats and all kinds of things they can’t afford.  No one wants a starter house anymore.  No, you gotta have one with a walk-in shower and media room.

We work hard.  We work our butts off.  We’re the ones keeping this place running, and nobody gives a damn.  We’re getting older, and none of those spoiled kids wants the jobs we do.  So what happens when we’re gone?  The place will fall apart, that’s what.

Sitting there in my loafers, tan cords, blue button down shirt and vee neck sweater, I figure I was meant to listen to what they had to say, or at least to what he had to say with the others nodding agreement.  Sure it sounded a lot like Archie Bunker, but it also sounded like four guys honestly worried about themselves, their families, their jobs and their community.  They didn’t like McCain, but they are not so sure that Obama, or anyone in power, even knows they are there and most certainly doesn’t have respect for what they do to keep the fabric of society whole. Their refuge is reverse snobbery, and they’ve developed it to a fine, self-protective art.  I see the same thing around town.  If I go into certain stores in worn jeans, an old flannel shirt and the dirtiest cap I own, I’ll get waited on in seconds in a very helpful way.  If I go into the same place dressed like I was in that diner, I’ll get only the help I vocally ask for, and then in the least amount possible.  It’s reverse snobbery, pure and simple, from people who feel they are invisible to the rich and powerful, and are damn sure going to make them feel invisible in return when they are on their turf.

You want to be a real pastor?  Then learn how to bring the power of God’s reconciling love into the life of Archie Bunker.  I don’t think you can do it if you don’t know something about what Archie does, and show him a little respect while you’re at it.

I can’t help being something of a news junkie, and yet the 24 hr news channels are really annoying.  They’ve got 24 hours to fill up; they do it, in part, with creative repetition in which the same story is mined for increasingly irrelevant bits of information to the point of meaninglessness.  Having run out of current news they think will sell well, they turn to speculative news.  They speculate, in appropriately alarming tones of voice, about what the news might be tomorrow or next week.  The more frightening the better.  In voices as shrill as Billy Mays pitching OxyClean, they seek to raise our collective anxiety high enough to tune in tomorrow to find out if their dire prophecies have come true.  I guess they all went to the Chicken Little School of Broadcasting.  Maybe a good economic recovery plan would be to shut them down for a month or two in order to restore a sense of calm reason to the American psyche.  And that’s my humble opinion on that.

What of the religious right?  What will become of it now?  For twenty years or more the religious right has been skillfully working to salt legislative, executive and judicial leadership with enough of their people to establish a new order in American society.  My own member of congress, Cathy McMorris Rogers, was first elected on a traditional conservative platform heavily undergirded by her religious right credentials.  As it has turned out, she had to struggle to actually learn something about traditional conservatism, especially in regard to the way the economy functions.  But, she will continue to be reelected many times over because she has learned to say the words that appeal to the aging conservatives of the district who don’t care very much what her religious beliefs and motivations are.  She is only one among many of the religious right who saw their fortunes peak in the Bush administration.

The 2006 election began to see the unraveling of their influence, and the 2008 election demolished it, at least in appearance.  But that does not mean the end of the religious right.  My suspicion is that their hard core leadership will simply assert that 2008 was proof that “the beast” of Revelation has been loosed on the earth, and that they will need to redouble their efforts as God’s warriors.  What that may mean in practical terms remains unknown.  Perhaps they will retreat back into the separatist faith fortresses from which they emerged. 

My real question is not so much about them as it is about us in the so-called Main Line churches (including R.C.s).  Will we be able to vigorously assert the gospel message of love, healing, reconciliation, justice and hope as Jesus has commanded us to do, not in opposition to the religious right, but in place of it?  We do an awful lot of talking to each other, but will we, at the local level, boldly proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to those who so very much need to hear it?

God, speaking through the prophet Amos to the privileged leaders of Israel, said that they needed to put aside all that they had been doing to skew their society for their own selfish benefit and let justice roll down like water.  What would it look like for that holy counsel to be adopted in our own time in these next four or eight years?

Several times in the last few days I’ve heard Republican leaders explaining how the party had lost touch with the American public.  Getting back to the basics, the tried and true foundation of Republican ideology, is what they had to do, they said.  And that meant reconnecting with the public on the need for smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation.  I am amazed that what they do not, and apparently cannot, understand is that the American public is tired of that old saw.  They know perfectly well it is utter nonsense.

What the American public wants is an efficient, well run government, a fair tax system, and intelligent, responsible regulation of that which needs to be regulated for the well being of our society.  What the America public wants is a government in which the Fourth Branch is not a cadre of well heeled lobbyists whose primary interest is their own acquisition of power and influence on behalf of corporate executives whose personal interests are often at odds with what is best for their own investors and the public they purportedly serve with products and services.

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned against falling victim to a military/industrial complex.  His exact words were:  “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military/industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  They were prophetic words that went largely unheeded.  He might have added that we also need to guard against a treasury/financial complex, an FDA/pharmaceutical complex, and all the other complexes shielded by an adept Justice Department and the selfish self-interests of congressional leadership. 

These are lessons the Republican Party has not learned, not just in this administration, but in every Republican administration since Reagan.  It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will do any better, but we can hope.

When Jesus taught about loving your neighbor as yourself he turned the whole idea of neighbor upside down.  The neighbor who had always been understood as my kinfolk, my friend, the people like me, was abruptly and uncomfortably transformed into the one whom I most despise and least want to be around.  I don’t think the two are incompatible.  Tom Breidenthal, now Episcopal bishop of Southern Ohio, wrote that the neighbor is the one who is close, so close that he or she can easily get under your skin in the most irritating way, and does.  That neighbor can as easily be my beloved as my enemy or both.  It is the intimacy of our relationship, whether good or bad, in which I might learn how to love as God loves, in which I might move from the abstract idea of it to the concrete reality of it.  Then, and maybe only then, that love growing in me might flow out with greater compassion into a larger and more complex world.  To learn to love one’s neighbor in the worst of moments is what enables one to love all persons in any moment. 

Getting under your skin is a phrase we use without much thought, and it usually has to do with some minor event that throws off our emotional and spiritual equilibrium, and forces us onto a detour we did not know was there and do not want to take.  But sometimes the idea of getting under your skin is more about tragedy than anything else.  Tragic events can do that in such a big way that whatever emotional and spiritual equilibrium we had, and whatever path we were on, will never be restored to the way they were.  When holy compassion, Christ driven love, can flow into us as healing balm for us and through us into the lives others in the midst of that kind of tragedy, then we can also become more able to truly love the far away neighbors whom we do not know in the circumstances of their lives that we have never shared: those starving of famine, whose lives have been shattered by war and terrorism, whose children are dying of preventable diseases, whose governments oppress and enslave.

There seems to be something perverse in that doesn’t there?  Wouldn’t the world be so much better if we could learn to love without all that combination of everything from minor irritations to soul shattering suffering?  Maybe it would, but that’s not the way the world is, and the way the world is, is what we have to work with.

And so, from the prayers of my tradition, I close with our Collect for Friday:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

I don’t like fear driven politics, but we seem to be stuck with it.  One of my ultra-conservative acquaintances sends me an e-mail now and then warning of the dangers of a far left wing, Socialist, criminally connected Obama administration.  That last adjective is based on Obama’s Chicago roots amid the corruption of Chicago style politics.  Chicago does have a well deserved reputation extending back well into the 19th century, and my smart ass side wants to send back an e-mail wondering whether people like Cunningham and Stevens might have learned their trade there.   One could, of course, create box score of convictions of officials in each administration to come up with some sort of comparative index of moral turpitude, which could lead to a very interesting mud slinging contest.   On sheer count alone the Nixon, Reagan, Bush era would win hands down, but there is a certain sleaze factor that would badly tarnish the Clinton interregnum.  What I really wonder about is the enormity of the fear factor that is driving my very conservative friends up the wall.  They are truly scared of an Obama administration.  It isn’t just the Religious Right.  Most of these people are not especially religious at all.  I think a big part of it is racial and another part is their absolute conviction that it would mean the end of the market based economic system as they imagine it is.  By that I mean that they honestly believe that the Reagan-Bush legacy has preserved national security, individual freedom, private property and the privileges of individualistic American entrepreneurship.   The people they see coming to power are grossly exaggerated images of Pelosi and Reid, and those caricatures are given a sense of validity by the presence of ultra-liberals who have no more sense of reality than the ultra-conservatives.  This kind of fear driven politics is, to my mind, extremely corrosive to American society and abusive of constitutional meaning and intent.  And that is the source of my fear.