The Marginal Christian's Handbook.

Torture: An Issue for People of Faith

[Cross-posted at Versus & Buck Naked Politics]  At Slacktivist, Fred Clark wrote a searing response to Mona Charen's distressing recent column on torture.  Thanks, Slacktivist, for doing this---so other blogs don't have to.

And since it's Christmas, I also found via Slacktivist this site:  The National Religious Campaign Against Torture. For some reason, the group limits membership to organizations (i.e., to churches), but you can sign a statement and get other information on opposing as immoral the government's use of torture.  Speak Truth to Power, people!  Read NRCAT's statement below and then please go there and sign it.  After all, it's Christmas.

Lessons on Christian Life and True Charity: Annie Lamott and Oprah.

  I posted this note as an entry to my journal blog ("The Flatland Chronicles") and then realized that it is almost entirely about matters of faith and the meaning of the Christianity that Christ taught. I have written a lot here about charity and the meaning of charity, and plan to write (when I have time to do it justice) about Lamott's   Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith.

In the meantime, here this note gives some suggestions for further additions to a marginal christian's reading list as well as some further thoughts on christian charity and how you go about doing it.

To read all about it, JUMP NOW TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

How the Democrats could win back Christian voters.

From Salon:

[quote begins from Salon article by Michael Scherer, "How Would Jesus Vote?"]

Pastor Chris Stephens runs his church services like a rock show. Colored strobes dance across the stage, electric guitar solos punctuate the hymns, and his sermons are filled with exhortations like, "We need a God explosion." The roughly 2,000 worshipers who belong to Faith Promise Church know to expect a blunt-talking believer when they come to Sunday services, a man unafraid to take a stand for Jesus.

So it was no surprise two years ago when Stephens devoted a sermon before the presidential election to a discussion of God's hopes for the ballot box. "If you are a Democrat or a Republican before you are a Christ-ocrat, you are an idol worshiper," he told his congregation. As he explained it, God cared most about just a few core issues in 2004: ending abortion, opposing gay marriage, appointing conservative judges and ensuring the freedom to pray in the public square. Christian voters, he told his congregation, ignore these issues at their own peril. "If you reject Christ, if you have never been born again, you are not going to heaven," he said at the end of the sermon.

[quote ends from "How would Jesus vote?"]

The real issue with which this article is concerned is the apparently successful attempt of an allegedly "moderate"  gay marriage-opposing, right to life "Democrat" to peel off the evangelical base from a "right to choose" Republican. 

I don't think Democrats have to take that stand to win back Christian voters.  I don't mean the extreme or extremely stupid kind who are governed by emotion, but the thinking, caring ones.  Those people vote Republican out of various fears, some more worthy than others.  But the Christian who is not a Christocrat but a believer whose religion really matters to him or her could very easily, by making the correct argument, cause at least some of those people to rethink the notion that Jesus wants Christians to be Republicans.

Rather than argue about abortion or gay marriage, Democrats need to cite the substantial amount of text in the gospels that focus on private prayer, on making sacrifices (e.g., the widow and her mite) for the benefit of the community and especially the poor, and on his insistence that mere belief in what he propounded would NEVER be enough. 

The very ads used by the Republicans to discredit opponents could be turned against them in such a case.  In the Tennessee campaign with which the Salon article is specifically concerned, the GOP has used ads with definite racist implications intended to ring those fear-of-the-other alarm bells in white Republicans.  Would Jesus approve of that?  I think not, my friends.  I think not. 

The religious left needs a credible ministerial voice to remind people that Jesus was all about acts, not words or beliefs.   Regardless of ambiguous statements that he came to fulfill the law, he was clear that the law which he fulfilled imposed two basic duties:  to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind ("the first and greatest commandment"; and love your neighbor as yourself (the second commandment which is "like unto it.")   From these injunctions, he said, "flow all the law and the prophets." 

Out of the mouths of babes.

Get this:

JESUS CAMP.

It's the sheer frivolousness of this that gets me down----the light, unanalytical handling of sacred things and sacred text----and the complete disregard of the need to approach spiritual matters mindfully, with reverent care rather than happy clappy frivolity.

I am particularly amazed that these self-styled teachers don't take seriously what Christ seems repeatedly to have said about people who make a feature of their own righteousness---"They have their reward now."  Therefore, he said, no further rewards await them in the kingdom of heaven.  He speaks of silent prayer in private.  Do they think he didn't mean it or that somehow or another he changed his mind?

Yes, I know the arguments about why what he said about sanctimonious hypocrites and displays of piety doesn't apply to them.   But I don't believe it.   If one thing in the gospels is clear, it's that Jesus was not at all fond of the conspicuously self-righteous.   

No intelligent person can stomach piety and mawkish sentimentality in the spiritual realm; and Jesus was obviously an abnormally intelligent man.  If you read the words attributed to him in the gospels, it's that following his rethinking of the ancient laws is a difficult and challenging undertaking.

I hate to see indoctrination of the sort apparent in this film.  It's disturbing to see little children being taught that "speaking in tongues" means shouting out lugubrious nonsense that would embarrass a chimp. 

God knows---and doubtless shakes his head in wonderment at the spectacle---that well-meaning religious people everwhere believe that religious training means indoctrination.    It means drilling out-of-context quotes from random books of the Bible into heads too young to understand the context even if they were given it, and it means teaching them to "believe in" events that defy human understanding.

It's the way it's been approached by organized religion since early in the church's history:  begin force-feeding them the received wisdom when they're still too young to understand what's being done to them.

It's sad to see children being told how to have a religious experience, partiularly in circumstances in which they are subjected to groupthink and peer pressure.

It's sad because they'll never know the authentic experience from the enforced exercise in mass hysteria.    They're being told or shown how to feel and what they're being told isn't particularly consistent with the actual teachings of Christ in the Gospels.

Christianity, Christ, and Mel Gibson

[published on August 4, 2006]

I was furious when I first heard about Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish diatribe; and I said so.  For one thing, everything he said made it crystal clear that the charge of some people that his Passion for Christ film was anti-semitic cannot be justified solely by reference to that most anti-semitic of the Biblical Gospels, the Gospel of John.

As I noted before, I did not see The Passion of Christ.  Because of a fascination with the shroud of Turin (a fascinating artifact, whatever it is and wherever it came from), I have read a great deal on the subject of Crucifixion and the realities of Roman tortures and execution, up to and including scourging by means of the flagram and the use of the spear for ensuring the death of Crucifixion victims.  Having read enough to understand that it was a messy, prolonged, humiliating, and cruel way to die, I had no stomach for seeing a film billed as a "realistic" depiction of Christ's execution. 

I therefore am in one sense not in a position to comment on whether it was or was not anti-Semitic.  On the other hand, I have read the Gospel of John closely---probably more closely than the others, due to its comparative strangeness and also for the abundance of profuse and often puzzling details.  A person who was basing a Biblical story on that Gospel and was sticking closely to that version of events would indeed find it pervasively anti-Semitic.

Before basing a film on this Gospel (or any of the others), such a one would have done well to study some contemporary religious sources in order to understand the historical context of that book.  At a certain point in history, the emerging Christian religion would have been wise to distance themselves from the Jewish population from which Christianity arose.  Furthermore, a person who took a little time to understand the historical context would realize that Jesus was executed as a subversive by the Romans.

The Jewish leaders turned him over to the Romans because his triumphal ride into the city doubtless made it clear to them that if they did not put a stop to him, the Romans would do so in any case.   Furthermore, they would doubtless not stop with Jesus only.   His claim to be King of the Jews----which the ride into the city asserted he intended to claim---was a deadly serious one, from the standpoint of the Romans and Herod.

There are always two sides to every story.  The gospels adopt a mocking tone when they refer to the Pharisees and their constant questioning of Jesus.  According to those accounts, the priests and scribes are constantly trying to trick Jesus into blasphemy. 

Jesus IS "the Christian Left."

According to this Washington Post article\, progressive Christians are starting to mobilize to push back against the religious right.  There are plenty of people as sick as I am at their hijacking of our religion to push political agenda that we're all very sure the Man Himself would never have endorsed. 

[quote from Washington Post article by Thomas Ferraro]

Some, like the Rev. Robin Meyers of the United Church of Christ in Oklahoma, marry gay couples and seek to reduce abortions while rejecting calls by the right to outlaw them.

"I join the ranks of those who are angry because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian," declared Meyers, who has written a new book, "Why the Christian Right is Wrong.

According to scholars, the religious left has become its most active since the 1960s when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy -- black and white -- were key figures in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.

>[quote from Washington Times article by Thomas Ferror ends]

The bad news is that the religious left is, mirroring the Democratic party, exceedingly loosely knit, lacking the awesome skills of the Right in creating a narrow, monolithic point of view with which to address voters. 

The Greatest of These is Empathy

[published on September 18 2005 in "The Flatland Oracles" blog, my previous blog]

Getting angry at the sight of another’s pain is the most natural response in the world. Why are we being forced to see it? What’s the good of our seeing it?  What do they expect us to do about it?  Isn't it obvious that there is nothing we can do about it?

Unabashed grief strikes us as embarrassing and unseemly---e.g., the widow or mother who abandons herself to emotion and howls with pain at the graveside. Our first response is to distance ourselves because what can you do or say or feel yourself in the face of it?

Even Christ got fed up and impatient being followed around by people who wanted him to fix their problems. If you can heal the sick, everyone is going to expect you to be at it all the hours there are and when are you going to have a minute to yourself, to think, to pray, to teach? Like the poor, the sick, maimed, and miserable are always with us.

I was so angry with my mother after my dad died. She just sat. I was there with her and she just sat in the chair staring ahead in the blank way people in pain do, as if they are looking at a wall a few inches away that is between you and them. I wanted to break through it, so I yelled at her. I wanted her to remember me and to care about me. I remember how listlessly she glanced up at me; it was with the expression of  a mortally injured animal---uncomprehending grief, pain, and terror. Her misery was something she couldn’t articulate or share. I was sad, but she was shattered.

There by the Grace of God Go Those Others: The Hardest Part of Christian Charity

[published on September 17, 2005]

What is a Christian's first duty to people who have suffered unimaginably and lost ? 

PICK ONE-- The greatest of these is:

1. A voluntary donation to a recipient who won't spend your hard-earned money on alcohol or drugs;
2. Involuntary donations through taxes;
3. Compassion; 
4. Pity;
5. Empathy.

(HINT:  It's the one that produces neither self-satisfaction nor self-pity, but  grief and terror)

Part of the shock of New Orleans for those of us who consider ourselves middle class has been in being forced to confront some aspects of life that we may normally be able to keep at bay.

One of those aspects is the terrible loneliness of the individual who is severed from the community.

When you pass a homeless person in the street, do you ever really stop and ask yourself what the world is like to him or her? I don’t mean just the problem of being without money and not knowing how you are going to find shelter or where your next meal is coming from. I am talking about the almost unthinkable isolation of being in need and completely alone.

What is it like for the elderly lady who is hobbling along behind the grocery cart where she keeps all her worldly goods? What would it be like to be her? What would it like to be alone, homeless, and ill?

Measure for Measure: How Much Charity Can I Afford?

When you're a bystander, far from affluent, and one of nature's misanthropes, how do you make yourself reach out?  I'm having the same trouble as the rest of the people I know balancing grace against fiscal and psychic realities.  Should I be trying to?

1.  Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others. I’m disturbed by the attempts I see from very good people who are sickened by the misery of New Orleans to limit and control their emotional responses.  I'm even more disturbed by my attempts (and I realize that though sickened, I am not one of the very good people).                

I realize that empathy is painful and inconvenient, but it is also the price you pay for an expanded consciousness---in a word, for God-consciousness. 

You can help the people of New Orleans by offering such help as you can offer, whether it’s much or little.  You can only help yourself by fully realizing that there is nothing but an imaginary gap in time and space between their reality (including their suffering) and yours.                

This is not the time for Christian stoicism.  I had to stop for a few deep, healing breaths when I read the account of Laura Bush’s alleged Christian stoicism in the face of the suffering of others---and I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume that she said plenty of other things that were not quoted.  I have to stop again, repeatedly, when other very good people in whose goodness I believe recite what I’ve recently  seen mislabelled  as ‘the comforting platitude’ that ‘the poor are always with you.’                

Deep, healing breaths!  Deep, healing breaths!                

That statement is not a platitude and it was never meant to comfort anyone.  It was uttered in a specific context. 

The Barbarians at Our Gates Are Us: The Duty of a Christian to Oppose the Death Penalty

  There are voices of reason still on the Supreme Court.   

Justice: 'Serious flaws' in death penalty. John Paul Stevens sharply condemned the country's death penalty system, steering the debate over President Bush's Supreme Court nominee to a new subject. His remarks also provided the first sign of internal dismay over the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor. [CNN.com - Law]

In a speech to the American Bar Association over the weekend,  Justice Stevens expressed the concerns that he shares with all opponents of the death penalty.  Many of them are spelled out in the CNN.com article, quoted in pertinent part below:

Stevens said DNA evidence has shown "that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously." "It indicates that there must be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice," he said.

Death penalty cases dominate the work of the high court. Week after week justices deal with final emergency appeals, sometimes filed in the late night hours. In their last term which ended in June, justices overturned the death sentences of four inmates, ruled that states cannot put to death killers who were not at least 18 years old at the time of the crime and held that it was unconstitutional to force defendants to appear before juries in chains during a trial's penalty phase.

Justices already have four capital cases on their docket when they return to work in October, including a potentially significant issue of letting inmates have a new chance to prove their innocence with DNA evidence.

Other Supreme Court justices, including O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have also spoken out about concerns that defendants in murder cases are not adequately represented at trial. 

But Stevens told the ABA that the problems were more dramatic. He said the jury selection process and the fact that many trial judges are elected work against accused murderers. He also said that jurors might be improperly swayed by victim-impact statements.

According to me, not a single one of the questions that the Court has recently decided should even be before the Court in a civilized country because they shouldn't have been issues in the first place.