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Barrett, Supreme Court and Dogma

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
It has been reported that, should she become a Supreme Court justice, Amy Barrett’s apparent adherence to a particular Roman Catholic dogma would determine how she interprets the Constitution.  It raises an interesting question for those of us who are committed to a religious faith.  How much should one’s religious faith influence one’s politics?  Most of us are not in line to assume high public office where decisions affect the entire country, so how our religious faith, or lack of it, affects our politics is not often a matter for public debate.
Her faith has entered the public debate because she’s part of a small subset of Roman Catholics who submit themselves to obedience to a spiritual director, accept certain teachings about male superiority, and seek charismatic experiences such as speaking in tongues and being slain by the Spirit.  I think it would be safe to call it a fringe group within Catholicism.  Curiously, it’s standard fare for a wide swath of conservative evangelicalism whose members have enthusiastically elected agreeable candidates for every conceivable office without much ado.  So what makes this different?
For one thing, she’s an extremely intelligent and well educated woman who seems to have turned her back on all things remotely linked to feminism.  If she had been a man, someone like Scalia for instance, it would have raised a ruckus, but women would not have felt betrayed by one of their own.  For another, she’s been quite open about approaching the law from her religious convictions.  Others may do the same, but it’s not talked about, just assumed.  Then, few who are active in public life take vows of obedience that appear to preempt all other authority.  Finally, in our increasingly secular society there’s suspicion that openly religious people are a little whacky, not to be trusted with important matters.  It’s OK if they run their own colleges, give rousing revival speeches, and periodically predict the end of the world, but don’t let them be Supreme Court Judges.
As Country Parson I write a lot about politics.  Any regular reader knows how deeply my faith influences my understanding of what the Constitution means, and how legislation should be enacted and enforced.  In my working life I’ve written speeches for politicians, helped organize grass roots voices, and reported on public policy in ways intended to influence their outcome.  Sometimes overtly, but more often subconsciously, everything was shaped by my religious faith that was itself always in transition.  In recent conversations I’ve been exposed to hard core conservatives and liberals proclaiming that Christian faith demands this or that response to political issues.  “How dare you call yourself a priest,” said one person who was appalled at my criticism of Trump.  One way or another, religious faith and attitudes about religious faith play an enormous role in American politics.
Speaking for myself, Christ’s commandments to love God, love neighbor, and love others as he loves us have greater authority for me than any law, including the Constitution.  Yet I revere the Constitution, and the rule of law that cascades from it.  A law abiding citizenry is essential to the stability of any nation, and all the more so in our form of democracy where each of us can have a part in debating what the laws should be.  It creates a certain amount of tension when my understanding of Christ’s commandments come into conflict with secular law.  The tension is exacerbated when other Christians see it differently, other religions speak with other voices, and non religious persons have something else to say.
There have been attempts to resolve the conflict by asserting that private morality (religion) is only tangentially related to the law.  A half century ago I took a constitutional law course from Harold Chase who lectured that the Supreme Court had no business being concerned with whether a matter was just or unjust, moral or immoral, but only whether it was legal or illegal.  It was the legislature’s responsibility to take up questions of justice and morality, not the courts.  If that’s what he really said (fifty year old memories are not that reliable), it hasn’t worked out that way.
Judgeships are different from other high offices.  They alone determine what the law means, and how it is to be applied to individuals.  Trials by jury, case law and precedent, together with complicated appeals processes, put some limits on their authority for the good of us all, but the Supreme Court of nine justices not only decides the final and indisputable meaning of the Constitution, in so doing it creates additional elements of it.  Their decisions form a collective statement about what American justice and morality has been, now is, and is becoming.  It’s a statement far beyond mere legality or illegality.
Legislators, mayors, governors, and presidents are in a different league.  They have to negotiate with one another.  None has exclusive right to say what the law means, even as they write bills and sign them into law.  Issues of justice and morality have to be addressed within the context of what is workable, can it pass, how will it be paid for?  Presidents and governors are participants in that process, and our current president is furious at discovering he’s not the ruler of the country.  He can do the Rumpelstiltskin stomp all he wants, but it won’t give him the power he desires. 
Amy Barrett’s name on a list of potential nominees has created such an outcry not because she’s a Christian, but because her commitment to a particular form of Christianity is seen to undermine what other Christians believe are Jesus’ core teachings and commandments.  Secularists are fearful of having her brand of religion forced on them, liberals are concerned that she will beat a path back to 19th century political morality, and feminists feel betrayed.   If Harold Chase were alive today, he would be livid at the prospect of her nomination: leave religion out of it, the only questions are legal or illegal.

What’s Love Got To Do With It

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
A few weeks ago Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, gave a sermon at the royal wedding that captured the attention and imagination of millions across the globe.  It was all about the power of love.  The problem with attention and imagination is it evaporates like the morning mist.  The remaining echo is just so much blah, blah, blah, or, as Tina Turner sang, “What’s love got to do with it, what’s love but a second hand emotion?”
It’s a good question.  The answer, from a Christian point of view, is to leave emotion out of it.  The love bishop Curry preached about is not a second hand emotion, but the powerful word of God spreading out over the chaos of disorderly conditions of life, bringing them into the full abundance of life God intends for them.  As Christians, we’re to express that love by respecting the dignity of every human being, which is not a very emotional thing at all.  
Doing it takes disciplined effort.  It’s not something we’re inclined to do on our own.  Respecting the dignity of the ones we most dislike and distrust is hard to do.  Respecting the dignity of the homeless, addicted, corrupt, and ill informed seems like a hopeless task.  Jealousy of those who are better and have more displaces respect. Racism creeps in.  We’re likely to disrespect people who are not like us, who may replace us in the accepted social order.  Closer to home, the guy next door can really bug us.
But making the effort, deliberately working on respecting the dignity of every human being, or at least that human being over there whom you really don’t like, has an amazing effect.  It is, in some small way, your participation in the work of God’s powerful redeeming love.  It not only helps give new life to the other, the one you don’t like or want to be around, it gives new life to you also.  Of all the crazy things, it becomes an emotion of deep, overwhelming gratitude for all of creation and your place in it.  It isn’t a second hand emotion, it’s a primary emotion of sure and certain trust in God’s grace for you and for all.  What’s love got to do with it?  Everything!
Strange, this godly love, it refuses to be bound by our expectations and limitations.  Respecting others not because they deserve it, but because it’s in imitation of Christ, bursts all kinds of limitations we place around ourselves and others.  It opens us to new possibilities, but also to new vulnerabilities.  It’s scary, exciting, and curiously freeing.  If you’re reading this, and wonder if this love thing can be real, try it.  You might like it.  If you’re a professing Christian, you have no choice.  It’s Christ’s command that you love others as he loves you.  You’re certainly free to ignore the command, but there isn’t another one.  

By the way, how am I doing with godly love?  I’m a priest and pastor.  I should be a pro at this, right?  Wrong!  It’s a work in progress, slow going but I try to keep at it.  Let’s work together.

Apology

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment

Dear Country Parson Readers,
The column titled What’s Love Got To Do With It has been corrected to include the proper content.  Somehow I posted a half written piece that may not even see the light of day.  Read it again and it will make more sense.  In addition, formatting codes seem to be fouled up again, and I don’t know how to fix them while working on my iPad while on Maui for a few weeks.  Sorry about that.
Country Parson

Slippery as an eel corrupt politicians

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An eminently forgettable book I recently read had one line worth remembering: “…a perfect politician; slippery as an eel, ruthlessly elastic, a rhetorical show to hide other things…”
Obviously not an enthusiastic view of politicians, but one commonly held, partly because it fits too many of them.  I spent many years in the the political arena working as a staffer and consultant on everything from campaigns to issues of public policy, and at every level of government.  It may surprise you that I’ve known many politicians who were hard working persons of integrity doing their best for what they believed was best for the citizens in their jurisdictions.  Some had gifted competency, some struggled with the basics, the rest were like the rest of us, average.  Of course they had egos, some more than others, but not more than you and me.  It’s just that we don’t parade ours around in public on the campaign trail.  Politicians are not, ipso facto, slippery, ruthlessly elastic, self serving characters who only work for the people who finance their campaign funds.
Sadly, these last few years have seen such characters proliferate in greater numbers with greater boldness, not caring that they’ve been found out.  They hold some of the nation’s most important leadership positions at every level, including majority leadership in congress, the White House, and in an excruciatingly large number of state and local offices.  Open and flagrant greed, corruption and cruelty have been paraded as virtues in support of “real Americans.”  
It’s happened before in American politics, and world wide in many countries.  There seem to be certain conditions associated with it.
  • A critical mass of people, accustomed to being catered to, feeling alienated from the affections of previous political leaders
  • Egregious degrees of income inequality
  • Consolidation of political power that takes on dynastic appearances
  • Public submission to corruption as the acceptable norm for politicians
These and related conditions are not enough by themselves.  All they do is create the right environment for authoritarianism to emerge as a possible alternative, an attractive corrective perhaps.  They create the  right opportunity for would be authoritarian leaders to make their move, but authoritarians need a critical mass of followers to be successful.  Creating one is the job of a corps of well organized thought and opinion leaders to: 
  • Undermine the legitimacy of all forms of news and commentary other than their own
  • Exaggerate whatever the alienated feel threatened by
  • Promise relief and salvation to the alienated, and to the exclusion of others  
  • Identify a class of others as the cause of their misfortunes and the enemy of their hope for a better future
  • Portray the authoritarian leader as virtuous
  • Establish loyalty to the leader as loyalty to the country
  • Create the appearance of a spontaneous, popular grass roots movement in support of the leader
It’s a process that’s worked well in many countries, but not with much lasting success in modern democracies with histories of a free press, and cultures that value public freedom of expression.  It’s one reason why we’re experiencing such strong sense of political polarization.  The conditions for authoritarianism to emerge have been met.  A few politicians who favor authoritarian ways have firmly established themselves in congress, legislatures and state houses.  Authoritarian leaders have been encouraged to make their move, and one got elected president.  A committed corps of highly skilled thought and opinion leaders know what their job is, and have bent to the task with considerable success.
But they’ve been met with an outpouring of well informed opposition from journalists and commentators who understand what’s going on, value their freedom of expression, intend to fight for it, and are not intimidated by threats from authoritarian forces.  They are joined by citizens and politicians who recognize that treasured freedoms are at stake.  Moreover, they’re aware of the social and economic conditions that allowed the possibility authoritarianism to emerge, the need to do something about them, and a few good ideas about what that is.
As a result, authoritarian forces have not been able to create the critical mass they need.  They’ve come close, but they’re not there, and the tide may be changing.  The push and pull looks like polarization, but the appearance may be exaggerated.  If the temporarily united forces of freedom win, they will immediately dissolve into competing camps, each negotiating with the others to reach compromise solutions to conditions of alienation and economic inequity.  It’s not the rock hard polarization of black vs. white because white is an illusion created by all the colors appearing together at one time.
It’s complicated by the existence of multiple alienated classes.  Authoritarians recognized correctly that the class most likely to give them their critical mass was the so called white working class that had for fifty years served as the standard of who a real American is.  Racism was the card for them to play, and they played it well, denying it was in play at all.  Blacks and uppity women could be ignored because they were never catered to with the same generosity as the white working class.  In other words, they were used to being discriminated against, and could usually be put off for a while with a few well aimed platitudes.  American Indians have been successfully ignored for so long by so many that one more round was never an issue.  Hispanics in general, and immigrants specifically, especially the dreaded illegal ones, were the perfect threat target.  One couldn’t ask for a better class to be labeled as the enemy, and so they were.
It hasn’t worked as well as hoped.  The white working class is not monolithic.  It’s not even entirely white.  It exists in too many parts and too many places to be easily manipulated as a bloc.  Blacks, women, Indians and Hispanics have no intention of being ignored again, nor do they intend to submit to the imaginary white working class as the standard against which to be measured.  Authoritarian intimidation has not yet descended to the  use of generalized violence, and its ICE backed thrusts have been met with outrage and massive civil disobedience.   The intellectual elite may be scorned, but using their knowledge and gifts of communication, they’re wading into the fray with some effect.
The Koch brothers network, and sympathetic others, have always struggled with easily getting their way with the inefficiencies of democratic legislative processes.  They appear to believe it’s easier to buy corrupt politicians and manipulate authoritarian regimes.  I imagine they’re not happy to have discovered they can’t out finance the opposition, and, to their surprise, not all politicians are for sale, not even authoritarians.  People such as Bannon, filled with intellectual arrogance and contempt for their lessers, have yet to discover they’re not the smartest persons on the planet, nor are the people as easily manipulated as they think.  No question they’re dangerous, but the greater danger is from a man like Trump who rather stupidly crashes along looking neither to the right or left in his single minded intention to win by causing others to lose, and rule without question.  He never gives up, never admits he’s wrong, can’t apologize, and doesn’t care what others think.  That’s why it’s so important to beat him at the ballot box. 

Confronting Evil though Public Harassment

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Kirstjen Nielsen tried to dine, inexplicably, at a D.C. Mexican restaurant where she was assaulted by persons who entered the restaurant to yell, jeer, and shout shame, shame.  Rep. Maxine Waters of California endorsed that kind of behavior, and encouraged others to do the same whenever they spotted a Trump administration official out in public doing whatever ordinary people do when out in public.  I can understand why.  Moral outrage over so many lies, corruption, abuse of power, and rampant acts of injustice can bring it out.  But that kind of brutally confrontational harassment is morally wrong and politically inept.  Knock it off.  
It’s the Trumpian sort of behavior we abhor, and is a near cousin of criminal assault and battery with intent.  Trump’s name calling, insults, ridicule, and calls for supporters to “rough up” protesters are part and parcel of the trumpian way that should offend every decent person.  They should not, cannot, be adopted as a tool for use by those of us who oppose him and what he stands for.  We want a country more deeply committed to personal freedom, rule of law, restorative justice, and respect for the dignity of every person.  We can’t advocate for that if we embrace the very worst of trumpian contemptuous behavior when confronting him, his supporters and their sympathizers. 
As for the Red Hen incident in which Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant because people like her are not wanted; it’s not much different from the baker refusing to sell a cake to a gay couple, or, not so many years ago, the deli owner who kicked Vice President Biden out of his place because he didn’t like Joe’s politics.  Not that a store can’t have standards for who can come in.  They’re free to have all kinds of standards, as long as they apply to everyone equally, but there are limits.  If you have something to sell in the public market place, you have to be willing to sell it to anyone regardless of race, creed, color, etc.  You can’t make up a new standard, unknown to others, and apply it to one person.  True, most states have commercial trespassing laws that allow, under rule of law, for a disruptive person to be barred from entering.  Could Sarah be trespassed?  Maybe.  What’s the law in Virginia?
Playing tit-for-tat with Trump and his minions is to fall into the slimy gutter with them.  Why do it?   It’s grade school taunting and bullying.  The best way to defeat Trump (and trumpians) at his game is to not play it.  
As for those of us who claim to be Christian, it’s insubordination of Christ’s direct command to love even out enemies.  Which is not the same thing as laying down to be stomped on like a door mat.  We may be instructed to love our enemies, and yet know full well who they are and how dangerous they can be.  We’re not fools.  Jesus wasn’t shy about confronting the sins of society and the persons who commit them, from the most evil to the boorish banality of his disciples.  Matthew says he called certain religious leaders a brood of vipers, not once but twice (Matthew tended to exaggerate), but Jesus always kept the door open for them to enter into God’s kingdom.  He confronted evil without resorting to mud slinging.  It left room for repentance, and pointed to a better way.  Martin Luther King did the same thing in our time.  He was bold in naming injustice and those who acted unjustly, he confronted evil with radical nonviolence, but he didn’t wallow in the mud with them.
Political reporting and commentary must continue to be hard hitting, as it should be.  Country Parson’s certainly will. Trump must be held accountable.  His senior advisors must be confronted boldly on the issues, and in the places where confrontation is appropriate, but without the kind of harassment that borders on criminal assault. 

If we are to return the nation to its better self, political organizing and campaigning must continue to be vigorous and unafraid to spell out issues and name evils.  Non violent demonstrations and protests are needed.  But don’t let them become imitators of the very things we find so disgusting.  And don’t expect any of it to change the minds of Trump supporters.  Jesus never convinced a single one of his most rabid opponents.  King never changed the mind of a single hard core segregationist.  But each had a thunderous impact on the greater number of those whose hearts and minds tilted in the direction of goodness, freedom, justice, and hope for the future.  Aim there.  Leave the tar and feathers behind.  



July Fourth and the Soul of the Country

Steven Woolley1 Comment
The Fourth of July is only a few days away.  Newspapers and the internet will publish copies of the Declaration of Independence, and communities will celebrate, but this year with deeply conflicted emotions.  It should be clear by now that we are engaged in a battle for the soul of America, the outcome of which is yet to be determined.  What nation will be celebrated on July 4th in years to come?  Will it continue to faithfully live into what the Declaration could but vaguely hope, and the Constitution promise, or will it adhere to another, darker vision?
There was another time when our nation was at war with itself, army against army, family against family.  By late fall of 1863 it was not at all certain what the outcome would be.  On November 19th, Abraham Lincoln began his brief remarks on the Gettysburg battle field, saying; “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
We have endured through another seven score and fifteen years.  Wars, domestic violence, and economic hardships threatened, but the nation endured, grew stronger, more confident, and prospered.  Then it changed.  It began slowly with outrage over Vietnam and civil rights.  Government became suspect.  Decades of pointless wars shook our confidence.  The rumble turned to eruption with the overwhelming popularity of a two term black president who helped set the stage for a new America in which white men would no longer be the nation’s undisputed thought and opinion leaders.  The fragile equilibrium of the social and racial hierarchy had been shattered.  
Now we are engaged in a battle for the soul of America, not with armies, at least not yet, but with words and actions.  Social and racial anxieties coincided nicely with a tea party/libertarian movement demanding an emasculated federal government limited to national defense, and a few transportation and interstate commerce functions.  Fierce opponents of anything they can label as socialism, many feel compelled to be as heavily armed as possible, claiming it their constitutional right.   
Other Americans believe the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, regardless of race or condition in life, requires a federal government more deeply involved in securing them.  They trust in the resilience of the traditional ideals of our constitutional democratic republic to enhance personal freedom and quality of life for all persons in the increasingly complex conditions of life on this planet.  For the most part, they have no interest in being heavily armed, and abhor the violence emanating from an unrestrained gun culture.
It might have remained a vigorous political debate, but Trump was elected president.  He’s been publicly clear and unrepentant about intending to be a ruler, not a president.  His lack of knowledge about, or interest in, American history, its Constitution, the rule of law, and our shared political traditions have abetted his single minded intent to rule, and so far he’s had his way.  As chaotically unpredictable as he appears, his dogged determination to win on a narrow agenda of issues by causing others to lose has served him well.  His methods are eerily like those used in 1930s Germany.  His rallies whip up the enthusiasm of angry supporters who are told their personal troubles are caused by hordes of illegal immigrants, while the nation is beset by disloyal allies and a rapacious China.  Whatever is left of the Republican party has submitted with the whimpering of frightened puppies.  Democrats huff, puff, and bluster, but have little power, so Trump doesn’t care.  
His supporters and sympathizers imagine a prosperous, self sufficient America of hard working people enjoying a good life.  A nation free of welfare dependency.  A nation unentangled from global commitments.  A nation uninfected with brown aliens upsetting the demographic balance.  A nation united by traditional values culled from 1950s nostalgia.  A nation free of government limitations on personal autonomy, and regulations limiting business practices.  They are convinced that unchecked immigration across the southern border has flooded the nation with people who are a danger to their safety.  They are convinced that America has been betrayed by its old allies, and is under economic attack by China.  They willingly and stubbornly put their faith in Trump as the strong, decisive leader who will cut through red tape and congressional blathering to make things happen.  They are unaware that their libertarian values of personal autonomy are at risk.  They cannot be convinced otherwise.
The other side is not a side, but a conglomeration of sides who have difficulty agreeing or coordinating with each other, but there are shared links that bind them together, however loosely.  They see signs of a move toward fascism in which the state, in the name of defending workers, subjects them to state control.  They recognize that social and environmental issues have no respect for state and local boundaries, and must be addressed at the federal level.  Big government is not a threat to them, but ineffectiveness through inefficiency is.  They understand taxes to be our collective investment in the well being of the nation, and expect them to be fairly collected and efficiently used.  They have a high regard for education, science, verifiable data, and reliable public policy analyses.  The growing ethnic diversity of the population delights them.  They believe that border security begins with fair, simple, more easily navigated immigration laws.  It continues with diplomatic work to aid in restoration of safe, stable, free home countries of those seeking asylum.  They understand that the economic future of America depends on immigrants.  They recognize globalization not as a policy that can be reversed, but as a reality to be lived into.  They treasure old, established alliances.   They recognize the challenge of Chinese economic practices, and the best way to meet them through tough, good faith negotiation.  They are deeply concerned about income inequality, the need for universal affordable health care, and the eroding effects of corporate socialism.  They know that expansion of power through military conquest is no longer a realistic threat to any major nation, and that local armed conflicts are wasteful and immoral, but profitable for arms dealers.  

July 4th is coming up.  The two sides will walk together in parades, and  face off against each other across town squares, each wanting what they think is best for America’s future.  Tweeting away in their midst will be a president committed to his own power and authority, which he will try to sell to willing buyers at the cost of their freedom and the soul of the country.



In Due Time

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We don’t live in due time, Out for dinner with friends a few nights ago, we talked about America’s history of lurching against the status quo toward greater freedom and justice for greater numbers of its people.  The carnage of civil war, lynchings, burnings and beatings backed by laws of exclusion and prohibition existed along with optimism for a future in the vastness of a continent in which opportunity abounded for those willing to take risks and work hard.  The contradictions were not easy to resolve.  They haven’t yet been fully resolved. 
Nevertheless, the nation has lurched forward, not without great effort on the part of courageous people who stood for a better way, leading others to stand with them, sometimes at the cost of their lives.  It has made us unique among all nations, a marvel of civil instability that defies historical logic: one of the great wonders of the political world.  As dinner conversation went on, one of us wondered if progress in civil rights would have happened in due time.  Maybe it didn’t need wars, protests, and rabble rousing leadership to egg it on.  In due time it would have happened. 
“We don’t live in due time,” said our host.  Very little of real worth happens in due time.  It happens when forces of change have enough strength to overcome forces of the status quo.  It takes a lot.  Change is always disruptive, and sociopolitical change may be the most disruptive of all.  If we know how to get along with the way things are, why risk changes that may not turn out well?  Even if they do, how will we know how to get along in the strange ways of a new environment?  Not all change is good.  It can be bad.  How is one to know?  Why take the risk?  
Still, America has a record of lurching unsteadily, violently, but consistently toward more civil rights for more people shared more equitably.  And each forward lurch has been the product of courageous people taking courageous stands, against enormous odds.  
There are vicious enemies of more civil rights for more people: the KKK, neo Nazis, white supremacists, etc.  Within movements for needed change are internal obstacles created by radical extremists who would rather fight than win.  Against all of it stands the most powerful obstacle to expanded rights; the passive resistance of those content with the status quo who are more upset with bad manners and ill behavior than by injustice.  It’s something with which I’m quite familiar, having been a part of it at critical times.
Once again, the courageous among us are on the march, not to expand the scope of civil rights, but to defend ground gained against powerful counter attacks.  Hard won rights are under threat from the current administration, backed by a large portion of the population convinced that their own rights and privileges are being taken away.  Among them are passionate libertarians deeply distrustful of government interference in their lives, egged on, oddly enough, by a relatively small cadre of wealthy persons who appear to favor a more authoritarian form of government they hope to manipulate for their own benefit.  Such turmoil is the perfect opportunity to dismantle regulatory structures that impede doing business as one desires, getting out from under intrusive government oversight, and all in the name of freedom.
In due time will the nation come to its senses, and restore legitimacy to government?  It seems unlikely because we don’t live in due time.  
Several years ago I wrote that the United States would benefit from getting over the need to be the leader of the free world, the biggest and best at everything, and learn to be one nation among others, doing what it does best while letting other nations do what they do best.  I didn’t anticipate that we might get there through an administration intent on corrupting our national reputation, eroding our competitive advantages, and undermining the integrity of our democracy, doing it, they say, to Make America Great Again.
I don’t know how this will all work out.  Now and then I run into Trump supporters.  Some of them amaze me with the tenacity of their support.  Others astound me with the grotesquely distorted convictions they hold about the world they live in.  On the other side are dozens of opposition and resistance movements that have yet to say what they stand for instead of what they stand against.  In between is a discouraging number who don’t vote, don’t intend to vote, don’t know what’s going on, and have little knowledge of American government and history.  
I guess we’ll find out, in due time.

Authentic Americans, Elitists & Haters

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Trump’s advocates have ramped up use of an effective propaganda technique.  In editorial comments, social media posts, and thence to barbershop and coffee conversations, the theme is that those who oppose Trump are elitists and haters who are not authentic Americans.  It need not be said that authentic Americans are neither elitist nor haters, but it will be said in as many ways as possible to assure Trump supporters that they alone are the authentic Americans, while everyone else is an elitist hater, or one of their (duped?) sympathizers.  
It’s a technique skillfully used with amazing success in the last couple of centuries to isolate dissenting opinions, making them unpalatable to citizens fearful of being labeled unpatriotically disloyal. More important, it’s been used to isolate whole populations from exposure to plainly verifiable truth.
Given the ubiquity of today’s social media, freedom of speech, and plethora of news outlets it’s harder to have the nation shattering kinds of success it had in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Just the same, it’s possible to use it with considerable success by relying on the self selected isolation of information sources.  Thanks to algorithms, I, at least, am finding it harder to keep abreast of social media comments inconsistent with my political views, and I’m certain more conservative friends see little of what I write or the news sources I use.
What surprises me a little is the boldness with which commentators such as Steve HIlton use it, and operatives like Ed Rogers lean into its language.  I doubt whether they care very much that it’s an obvious old technique.  Rogers, for instance, is a gifted political strategist who knows how to push buttons without blowing things up, and this is a useful button.  Hilton’s more of a semi-refined Steve Bannon who relishes pushing all the buttons to see if something can be made to blow up.  
It would all be fun and games but for the barbershop and coffee conversations that reveal how well powerful techniques like this work to cement into otherwise decent people the certainty that they’re the only loyal authentic Americans standing tall against all those elitists who hate America.  It’s a frightening game given Trump’s frequent, enthusiastic statements in support of authoritarian rule and rulers, and his administration’s moves to reconstruct the economy to favor unrestricted business practices for large companies, while endlessly teasing his faithful supporters with unreachable carrots.
It’s hard to know what effect his blundering trade war moves will have.  They could be the undoing of his whole charade.  Or they could create such a catastrophe that strong, authoritarian measures would be said to be needed.  It’s worked for other dictators.  Or he could do what he’s done before: teeter on the edge, back away, surrender, claim victory, and strut on. 

In the meantime, his faithful followers will continue to believe he’s defending them against elitist haters.  Their minds will not be changed by proving to them how wrong they are, how misled they’ve been.  They will only be changed by messages emotionally driven, well crafted, evangelically delivered that lay before them an understandable pathway to their personal prosperity and security.  It can’t be stage scenery.  It has to be the real thing.  I haven’t seen it yet.  Maybe it’s coming. 

The Galatian Fallacy: part 2

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Communities come in all shapes and sizes: families, churches, clubs, neighborhoods, towns, states, regions, nations, occupations, places of work, all shapes and sizes.  They have values shared among their members, and some of them are core, essential to their identity as a community.  When enough people recognize that community core values are being threatened, grass roots movements are likely to rise in their defense.  Sometimes, those core values,  however important they are to the community, are detrimental to their long term well being, obstructing alternative core values that could be even more beneficial to them.  Changing core values is difficult because they are core, essential components of self identity.  They are not easily given up.
The churches in Galatia were nominally Christian.  Giving up old religions, or no religion, to follow Christ was, I think, sincere.  They weren’t pretending.  But being known as a Christian didn’t offer social or economic rewards.  When it came to core values, their communities valued above all else public respect and recognition as seriously religious people.  However important Jesus was to them, following him was not a core value.  Paul’s letter, and his work among them, was meant to redirect their understanding of Jesus as the one above all who must be the most important core value in their lives.  Public respect and recognition as seriously religious people were not.
What was true for the churches of Galatia remains true for us today.  Within the Church there is tremendous tension between competing forces, each claiming the name of Jesus, and each suspecting the others of submitting to demands of popular culture.  Some want their churches to be symbols of patriotic America within the context of culturally traditional Christian values.  Others want them to follow Jesus by liberating the oppressed and restoring justice, proclaiming it the way of the cross.  Among both are those who use the name of Jesus to clothe agendas dedicated to core values displacing from the center the Word of God made Flesh, in whom and through whom all creation exists. 
Paul understood, and I try to understand, that Christians, by keeping Jesus at the center of everything said or done, discover there are always ways for conservatives and liberals to work their way through other issues, not always resolving them, but always maintaining the faith that binds them together as disciples.  There are also those who can only win or lose, kill or be killed.  For them Jesus is never at the center no matter how often his name is used.  For them there is always something of greater importance.  Whatever it is may be very important indeed, but when Christians allow anything to displace Jesus as the center, the center cannot hold.  Interpreting Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” Christians who displace Jesus from the center can no longer hear God speaking above the hubris of their own voices.  Whatever they’ve placed at the center cannot hold.  It unleashes a form of anarchy that comes when human rules and regulations displace what God has commanded.  With enough momentum, it leaves the best of us unsure about where our convictions lie, and fills the worst of us with “passionate intensity.”  
No doubt that turns Yeats scholars apoplectically blue.  They’ll get over it.  In the meantime he described well the Galatian fallacy Paul worked so hard to correct.  It’s the same fallacy that infects so many of our congregations and denominations today.     
It’s not hard to understand why we easily fall into the Galatian way.  Most of us want to live peacefully where a sociopolitical equilibrium predictably holds things together.  Jesus was, and continues to be, what is meant by today’s favorite management buzzword, a disrupter.  Jesus never ceases to call his disciples to follow him as he breaks down walls of separation, repairs damage caused by injustice, heals the sick and broken, doing it all in the name of God’s abounding and steadfast love.   There’s a temptation to let it become a branch of secular progressivism, which is just another way to displace Jesus from the center.  It can become the “passionate intensity” that defines the worst of us, both conservative and liberal.  Is “all things in moderation” the answer? 
The way out is not to be lukewarm.  As Jesus said to the church in Laodicia, “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot…because you are lukewarm I am about to spit you out.” (Rev. 3.15ff).  To follow Jesus is to follow on the way of the cross, which is the way of life and peace, but it’s a turbulent kind of peace, not at all the sort of peace  that comes with a comfortable sociopolitical equilibrium.  As John cites Jesus, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let  your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14.27)  It’s a strange kind of peace, a turbulent peace, but it’s God’s peace that Christians are called to live into.
Sociopolitical equilibriums are never in equilibrium.  They’re always coming and going.  Whatever they’re able to offer can be enjoyed for a time, but it can never be the center of all.  The center of all must always be God, and God alone, whom we Christians know by following where Christ has led.  The words Martin Luther King, Jr. used, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” describe the way of the cross.  It exists as a part of whatever sociopolitical milieu it finds itself in, but it’s always pushing that milieu toward God’s justice of love and reconciliation.  It will always be a disrupter.

Grass Roots and Galatia

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Decades ago, tagging along behind work done on grass roots opposition movements by Luther Gerlach (U.of Minn.), I learned how grass roots movements, if they survive at all, gravitate toward becoming institutionally organized, finding their place in a sociopolitical equilibrium they helped establish out of whatever preceded it.  Sociopolitical equilibrium never lasts long, a few generations, not much longer, often less.  It means grass roots movements are always afoot, opposing or promoting change, and causing trouble among those who favor the peace of the status quo.  The early church, illuminated by Paul’s letters, is a good example of how that works.
The first several generations of Christians formed a grass roots movement anchored in a shared understanding of who they were in relationship with God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Emanating from Jerusalem, but taking root in widely separated parts of the Roman Empire, each group took on locally appropriate ways of expressing the shared belief, but they couldn’t be easily synchronized with each other.  It led to conflicts, and resolving them led in turn to more institutionalized discipline meant to codify and preserve the movement’s most important beliefs, preventing them from corruption.  A good idea, but sometimes more institutionalized discipline is another source of corruption. 
An example of the process is Paul’s letter tot he churches in Galatia. “You foolish Galatians,” he railed, “who has misled you?”  The Galatian churches, desiring a more orthodox worship practices structured to be reliably passed on to the next generation, had adopted rules and regulations about how to worship, and who was in and who was out that imitated traditional Jewish practices, while no doubt also having some resemblance to the pagan practices surrounding them.  Paul recognized two parallel threats.  First, in using old models to define a new orthodoxy, they were surrendering the most important elements of who Jesus is, and what that means to follow him.  Second, they were closing doors that Jesus had forced open, and erecting walls that Jesus had broken down.
New moons and sabbaths, circumcision and ritually acceptable foods were anathema to Paul’s version of what it meant to follow Jesus.  The Galatians had to be reminded forcefully that for followers of Jesus there can be no Jew or Greek, no free or slave, no male or female.  All are equal in God’s presence, and they are to be equal in the community of the church as well.  The Galatians were rebuilding the walls of separation that Jesus had given his life to tear down.  By his resurrection he revealed that it was God’s will and by God’s doing that they were torn down.  An outraged Paul demanded to know by whose authority they were being rebuilt.
Grass roots movements tend to follow the same pattern, no matter what their origin or cause.  If they mature, not all do, they work on ways to sustain themselves, and that requires rules, organization, and hierarchy.  Can it be done and yet preserve the foundational values of the movement?  It isn’t easy because a part of the pattern is to ossify under leadership that aspires to power and authority exercised through rules and rituals of exclusivity.
Galatian churches are the rule, not the exception.  Congregations, synods, denominations, they all follow the Galatian model.  Maybe that’s why reformers like Luther called for the church to always be in the process of reformation.  It’s not that they turn their backs on following Jesus, but in defense of following him with greater purity of word and deed, they craft rules and rituals that rebuild the walls he broke down.  They’re rules and rituals that borrow heavily from the sociopolitical customs of the time and area, justified by a supposed connection to something biblical.  It’s religiosity taking the place of religion, which is why grass roots efforts of reform, such as today’s Reclaiming Jesus and the revival of the Poor Peoples Campaign, are so important to the future of the church writ large. 
The usual objection is that without the current rules and rituals there are no rules and rituals, so anything goes, and how disgusting is that?  It was the accusation leveled at Jesus, and it’s the accusation leveled at those who seek to renew a core focus on Jesus within worship practices that facilitate it.  If they are successful, they’ll help break down the old equilibrium to make way for a new one in which they will become institutionalized members.  In time, a new grass roots movement will rise to shake it up again, and that is as it should be.