PublicChristian

In many respects, Americans are freer today than ever before, with more Americans than ever before enjoying unencumbered access to the promise of American life.

I’m quoting Andrew J. Bacevich, retired US Army colonel, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, writing about American freedom, and values in American life today.*

He’s arguing that we’ve used our freedoms to become self-indulgent and arrogant, and to try to force the rest of the world to support that self-indulgence and arrogance.
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Here are two very important words of advice we are not allowed to follow:
1. Pick your parents very carefully.
2. Pick the century and year of your birth carefully.

Jeremiah, often called “the Weeping Prophet,” perhaps did ok in picking his parents, but he picked a horrible time-frame in which to work!

Below is a list I found of short descriptions of this prophet.*

1. He was at once gentle and tenacious, affectionate and inflexible.

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4  Men of perverse heart shall be far from me;

I will have nothing to do with evil.

5  Whoever slanders his neighbor… ,
him will I put to silence;
whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart,
him will I not endure.

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I. Pessimistic

Here’s a sad quote from a good Catholic philosopher, going from his own knowledge of history:

In nearly every historical case we can think of, the bias of a group lasts the lifetime of the group… Truly moral communities hardly ever result from the reformation of a previously selfish community. They nearly always spring from prophetic leaders who gather members from among the disenfranchised in other communities.

That is, the institutions of the religious right are unlikely to reform themselves, and are likely to continue losing people to more carefully Biblical fellowships.
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Here’s Obama on the significance of the Gospel:

In an interview with Christianity Today magazine, Obama said this about his decision to accept Christ,

What was intellectual
and what was emotional joined,
and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ,
that he died for our sins,
that through him we could achieve eternal life

- but also that, through good works
we could find order and meaning here on Earth
and transcend our limits
and our flaws and our foibles

- I found that powerful.

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Did you see the recent comment from “Donna”? It stirred me up! Come on people! Christian integrity and humility should compel you to allow that those who voted for Obama are NOT thereby proven to be ignorant or reprobate!

I know that my response refers to the behavior and attitudes of the “religious right” as if they could be sterotyped. But in fact, in my experience, these problems VERY consistently show up in people who get their input from those sources - they are stereotypical responses. On the other hand my experience with Christian Democrats shows them almost always to be much more welcoming and open to information and to real discussion.

Here’s my response (The numbered headlines are quotes from Donna’s comment.):
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Some Biblical perspective.

First, our hope has to be higher than human society, politics, government, churches, or wars.

Psalm 146:

3 Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them—
    the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

Second, it matters greatly to the Divine Spirit what kinds of values we support.

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From an AP article at the Atlanta Journal Constitution site, on Friday October 24, 2008:

Wall Street joined stock markets around the world in a huge selloff Friday, sending major market indexes to their lowest levels in more than five years on the belief that a punishing economic recession is at hand.

The market has been coming back up. But a lot of damage has been done.

I have a couple of questions:

1. What should be a Christian’s attitude as things seem to be - at least to some extent - falling apart? I wrote about that recently.

2. Is there any value in placing blame? Let’s talk about that. » Continue Reading »

The ideal number for me as a Catholic is zero … and there are plenty of people I’d be willing to work with if they want to get down to … that ideal number which is zero.

Just below there’s a video clip (2 minutes, 11 seconds) of Scott Kleeb fielding a question in Omaha last week. (Kleeb is the Dem candidate for the Nebraska US Senate seat being vacated by Chuck Hagel.)

The guy in the audience keeps shoving the term “pro-life” at Kleeb and Kleeb jumps on it pretty hard, saying that all this putting of labels on people and stirring up arguments about terms is not helping! We’ve spent 30 years fighting about it and making political hay out of it.

And under recent Republican domination of our government, abortions have not gone down significantly, and there is evidence they have gone up.

All of us, every single one of us in this country wants to get to zero.

It’s time to actually start working on it - together.

… we can work together despite whatever differences we might have for a shared and common goal. That’s what this moment is. These moments don’t come around very often and we have to take advantage of them.

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I.  Young Adult Attitudes Toward American Christianity

Recently I wrote about how young adult “outsiders” - people not involved in churches - think of Christians in this country, based on research overseen by David Kinnaman and reported in his recent book.

[My posts: "They Will Know", "World's View".   Kinnaman's book is unChristian, based on an extensive research project by The Barna Group. It's valuable but not pleasant reading.]

At the end of each of his main chapters Kinnaman includes comments from other Christian leaders. Here’s some of what Brian McLaren had to say (p 172). (Here are a few posts on this site that mention McLaren’s writing.)

II.  How We Got There - The Role of the Prophets of the Religious Right

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I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.

I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have.

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[This is lifted verbatim from BiPM's column this morning. Emphases are mine.]

They said his name’s too foreign and exotic. It isn’t.
They said he’s too young. He isn’t.
They said he’s a scary Muslim terrorist. He isn’t.
They said he was sworn in on the Koran. He wasn’t.
They said he’s not a Christian. He is.
They said he’s too distant and aloof. He isn’t.

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[Quotes from Politico.com ]

Senator McCain on Friday (Oct 10, 08) seemed to be pushing back against the fear and hate Sarah Palin is encouraging against Senator Obama.

When a crowd member said at a town meeting in Lake­ville, Minn., on Friday that he feared what would happen if Obama were elected, McCain said that Obama is “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

The crowd booed.

Why wouldn’t it? McCain says there is nothing to fear from Obama, while McCain’s running mate says Obama pals around with terrorists who target America.

“The crowd booed.” What does that tell us about “the crowd”? This is behavior that needs to go away. Seriously. How can we protect America if we treat fellow Americans that way » Continue Reading »

Here’s a 24-year old (”Jeff G.”) talking about his relationship with God.

God, for me, is like someone who’s already up when you’ve come downstairs in the morning and you’re stumbling to get that cup of coffee and he’s already there with his. And you sit on the front porch in a rocking chair and the sun is just starting to rise over the horizon and he says, ‘It’s a beautiful sunrise!’ And I say, ‘Yeah.’ And that’s it.

Yes!
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Phil Johnson over at Seeing the Forest sees one of the important differences between these two campaigns for the Presidency.

Compare the reaction of Obama and his campaign to last nights “that one” comment by McCain, to McCain and his campaign’s reaction to Obama saying that McCain’s policies put “lipstick on a pig.”

Basically the Obama reaction was to ignore it, while the McCain campaign and supporting Republican noise machine went into a several-day hissy fit.

I was visiting with a college student recently who told me it seems to him that our government is constantly trying to scare us to death » Continue Reading »

Bad News

Warren Buffett, the widely respected Omaha multi-billionaire, used the phrase “Pearl Harbor” to describe the significance of our nation’s current economic crisis, a phrase he has never before used about the economy. Many other very reputable people feel the same way. “Pearl Harbor” was a very damaging air attack on our forces in Hawaii and it got us involved in World War II. It was a surprise, deadly, and very frightening

It took a demanding and costly effort, but we did pull out of it.

The sense of things now seems to be that again we are in for some rough years, » Continue Reading »

This is a reveiew of Reputation: Portraits in Power, by Marjorie Williams, 2008, PublicAffairs. I wrote it for LibraryThing.com

I think this book - or rather this collection of 12 short biographical portraits - is just excellent.

Marjorie Williams wrote these for the Washington Post and for Vanity Fair during the 90’s. They are long enough to be substantial and short enough to be easily accessible. I love to find books like this, where you can get a frequently elegant introduction to a certain era or a certain place through the very real lives of very real people. It seems to me to be much more effective than the summary or analytical works that are so much more common.

A person must have a lot of depth and profound powers of observation to write so penetratingly and believably, » Continue Reading »

It’s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.

- Bono

Thanks to enewsletter from Sojourners for the quote.

One would hope that this bailout will contribute to some children eating better, » Continue Reading »

I have to urge you to go read this diary by greenrose2 over at dailykos.

It’s titled “an unsung moment of the debate.”

… it was in watching the replay that I picked up my absolute favorite unsung moment of the debate.

It came when Senator McCain was stumbling with Ahmadinejad’s name. He was stumbling hard, almost unable to get the name or any semblance of it pronounced. Very quietly, but audibly Senator Obama can be heard saying something. In the first viewing, I knew he had said something there, but was unable to decipher exactly what he had said. In listening to the replay it’s easy to hear his comment.

Was it a put-down, an insult, some sort of mocking coming from Obama? Nope. » Continue Reading »

Our highly reputable (not) Bush Administration wants $700 BILLION (take my word for it - that’s a lot of bucks) to hand out when and if it pleases to whomever it pleases without accountability either now or in the future.

Are you kidding me?

Nope. Not kidding. Just like with massive tax cuts early in Bush’s tenure, “No Child Left Behind” (very inappropriately named), weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, the invasion of Iraq, FISA overhaul… One after another astronomical and unjustified commitment of American resources and prestige has been sold to Congress, Republicans AND Democrats, with the only rationale being FEAR. And we are stuck holding the bag.

Bush says, in effect, “Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.”

Last time around, » Continue Reading »

Mark Twain supposedly said,

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

He also asked, » Continue Reading »

The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power.

The path of Christ, the political commitment to
- truth,
- servanthood,
- proclamation, and
- suffering love,

is
despite appearances,
the channel of the power of God.

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Contemplation and Public Action

The public good is most in danger when the voluntary visits to contemplation are neglected in favor of immediate communitarian action.

That’s from James V. Schall, Professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University [in his Another Sort of Learning, 1988, Ignatius Press].

We don’t have to go off and become full-time contemplatives. But times of stepping aside from the race do help provide for safer involvement in public life. He says, in fact, that “the public good is most in danger” » Continue Reading »

Once and Future Crash(es)

In 1954 John Kenneth Galbraith published The Great Crash: 1929, analyzing the stock market crash of late 1929, with suggestions about preventing its recurrence. [Quotes are from the 1961 Riverside Press edition.] It shows the high intelligence, serious economic analysis, and the touch of humor that is characteristic of his work.

Rationalization

He said that a new “speculative rampage” in the future (for example, now) would require some sort of rationalization. Since the results of the rampage of the 1920s were so horrendous, no one would want to be accused of setting us up for a replay. So they have to rationalize.

And part of that future rationalization will be to explain why we need less regulation and oversight of financial institutions and of the markets. (Here you should be thinking “Reagonomics.”) » Continue Reading »

Through LibraryThing.com I now and then get review copies of books newly or nearly published, in exchange for writing a review. This is one of those. It’s not very political, to say the least, but it does have a lot to do with humans living in society together.

The book is Essentials of Premarital Counseling: Creating Compatible Couples, by Sandra L. Ceren, Loving Healing Press, 2008

I enjoyed reading this book, profited from it, and will certainly use it as a reference, and to help me keep perspective in my own counseling situations. » Continue Reading »