Aiya Iluvatar

My February Newsletter Article

In the US Capitol, each state has a statue of a leading citizen.  The statue for my home state of Kentucky is that of Henry Clay, the 19th Century politician.  One of his most famous quotes is, "“Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, 'I will never compromise'; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise."  While holding some very strong political views of his own, Clay fervently believed that good governance was to be found in the middle, where people of good faith but differing views could find common ground.  Indeed, from the Declaration of Independence to the U.S. Constitution, compromise is an essential element in a representative democracy that protects the rights of the minority against tyranny of the majority. 

This is not only true in politics, but religion as well.  The great church councils hammered out details about the Trinity and the two natures of Christ that are codified in the Nicene Creed, which is itself a compromise between disputing factions within Christianity.  Every time we recite the Creed, we acknowledge the role compromise plays in a religion that holds many diverse views on some of the most fundamental tenets of our faith.

Compromise makes no one really happy - that may be the hallmark of it.  Clay was disliked by people on either side of the aisle in his day who felt he was wishy-washy, and Christians who disagreed with the early church councils splintered from the rest of the church.  They still live in Africa and the Far East.  Compromise is no guarantee to unity, whether in the church or in the world.

So why champion compromise?  Why resist extremes?  Why be reviled by those on either side who hold their values as absolutes that cannot be abridged?  Clay has the essence of it when he speaks of the "frailties of our common nature."  Only one human being was divine, and even he seemed to operate with a emptying of divine knowledge during his lifetime.  None of us can claim perfect insight, and so to hold a position with absolute certitude is to claim divinity for one's self in a way even Jesus declined to do. Compromise is how we admit that we do not see all ends.

This belief in the value of compromise is why I am concerned about the violent political (and sometimes religious) rhetoric being used in public discourse.  While rhetoric always has used military imagery, the language seems to have turned personal in the last few years.  Instead of seeing the opposition as a worthy opponent who probably has valid points and needs to be engaged, we have turned to language that infers the opposition needs to be eliminated.  Sometimes this has been in very personal and graphic terms.  While most of the violent language seems to be coming from the extreme right these days, we only have to think back a few decades to when it was primarily from the extreme left.  The use of violent rhetoric to dehumanize is rooted in  a tendency in humanity, not a particular political leaning, and it must be resisted no matter where it comes from.  When we promise in our baptism to "respect the dignity of every human being," we disavow the use of any action or discourse that dehumanizes the other.

Many commentators have decried the current lack of civility in our public discourse, and as Christians, we need to add our voice to that call.  Only in real conversation and a willingness to seek compromise can we honor our Lord who commands us to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.

David+

Anti-Muslim? Anti-American.

It still stuns me, so many years after 9/11, to see people so ignorant about Islam. The opposition to the Islamic Center (Not actually a Mosque) being built two blocks away from the WTC site on private property affects me in a visceral way. Let's look at some points:

5. Islam is a militant religion that is bent on conversion

Isalm does have a militaristic component, as does both Christianity and Judaism. One does not have to look back far in our own history to see wars fought between Roman Catholic and Protestant, conversions at bayonet point, and entire series of wars justified by "God's Will." We are not ones to judge, nor should we assume that all muslims are militant just because certain sects are. Just watch the movie "Jesus Camp" if you want to see American Christian children dressed in combat fatigues, and praising a cardboard cutout of George W Bush (Looks a lot like idol worship to me). We would never say that all Christians are like that. Don't judge an entire religion by the extremists. President Bush himself provided a decade of the best recruiting material Al-Qaeda could ask for by referring to our Gulf war as a "Crusade," bringing back Middle Eastern memories of Christian militarism.

4. Muslims are Terrorists.

Before 911, the worst terrorist attack in America was the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, who was a member of an extremist Christian sect. By the logic we use to label all Muslims terrorists, we should label all Christians terrorists as well.

3. Muslims are Anti-American

Gonna have to whip this photo out again:

There are at least 6,000 or so Muslims serving in our active military forces today. Many have given their lives in our wars, including Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not sure what better definition of someone being pro-American there is than to serve and die for us.

2. The area they want to put the mosque in is "Hallowed Ground."

If your definition of "Hallowed Ground" means pole dancing, off-track betting and McDonalds, you are correct. Check out this photo essay of establishments in the same area as the proposed mosque. The idea that that large an area of Manhattan is just going to be cordoned off is laughable. The idea of "Hallowed Ground" seems to be a bigger issue for people outside of New York rather than New Yorkers. Another essay points out that by that same logic we should not allow churches to be built near Native American holy places or near lynching sites in the South.

1. We have the right to do this.

OMG folks. This is America. Have you READ the first amendment? This is private property. As long as the use meets local code, you simply cannot prohibit religious use! Stop. Think for a second - do you really want the Government to determine what is appropriate and inappropriate religion in a geographic area? Think about the precedent. What if in the future the government decides your religion (or lack of religion) is inappropriate?

Sometimes I wonder if we deserve the freedoms we enjoy. The answer is, we don't, and that's why we have to work so hard to make sure they are protected.

David+

Ultra-Conservatives, kindly zip it!

WARNING: RANT!  I usually hold back on political commentary, but I'm amazed at the venomous crap being put out by people on Health Care reform.  I'm tired of people with two or more cars, a nice house full of consumer electronics, and (even more basic) food on the table every evening complaining about how their ultimately unsustainable lifestyle is threatened.  I'm tired of hearing how we are losing our freedom from a healthcare reform act that does not even include a single-payor option when those same people were silent while Habeas Corpus and electronic privacy were being violated every day.  

Come with me.  Let's climb down from our middle class tower and look around at the rest of America for a while. (And yes, I own two cars, a nice house full of consumer electronics, and eat three squares a day. I am climbing down with you.)  I can show you people who right now need medication, but have to choose food.  I can show you people who can't afford to send their kids to college due to a long bout with terminal cancer.  These are not apocryphal stories.  They are real ones that are all too common once you descend from the pinnacle of middle-class privilege and actually talk to the people who do your hair or flip your burgers or mow your lawn.  Dosen't move you?  Not your kids?  OK.  Let's talk fiscal issues.  I'll let you talk to a hospital administrator who tells me about how much uninsured healthcare he has to provide, and how it drives up healthcare costs for all of us.  We can find the heads of ALL the major organizations that represent doctors and nurses, and they will tell you why they support the health care bill. 

By all means, continue to complain about socialism, then draw your Social Security and go on Medicare when you reach the appropriate age.  Continue to fume about your "rights being threatened" and being persecuted as you keep the channel glued to Fox news and avoid having to hear anything that might upset your outlook.  Continue to enjoy your health insurance, and ignore the fact that more of the people who clean your house or wait on you at restaurants fall out of the system and have to make heart-wrenching choices every day.  That way, the next time you are having your hair cut, and the person cutting it falls strangely silent when you start to complain about healthcare and how your co-pay went up from $25 to $30, you won't even stop to think.

Someday people's eyes are going to be opened that when healthcare fails such a large portion of the public, it will ultimately fail us all.  

Until then, I'm the Man in Black.

David+

Missionary Imposition: Idaho Baptists Charged With Kidnapping

Had the inexperienced Idaho missionaries read so much as Haiti’s wikipedia page they would have learned that the nation has a history of slavery, colonialism and missions that warns against attempts to remove Haitian children from their home. 

via www.religiondispatches.org

It still astounds me that people attempt to do mission work without first understanding the local culture and history.  While I applaud the motivation of the SBC missionaries, if you really want to do mission, you go and live WITH the people you wish to serve, not take them home as what amounts to an evangelical trophy.  

Butler's critique is right on target when she speaks of the problem in Evangelical Christianity between "Me" and "We."  All too often in Evangelical rhetoric, it is up to "Me" to convert this person, up to "Me" to save the world. And if "I' don't do it, this person will not be saved.  It is a symptom of the sin of hubris, where God's kingdom revolves around my actions, rather than the action of Christ on the cross. Of course, this comes more from American individualism than the Gospel.  Paul tells us that we are all different parts of the same body, each with different gifts and tasks.   SOME are evangelists, SOME are teachers.  Some, I would submit, are missionaries and some are not.  Those who are called by the Holy Spirit to be missionaries are the people with the gift of discerning what is Christ-like in another culture and finding a way to proclaim the Gospel within it, transforming it from the inside rather than acting out of  a neo-colonialist agenda.  The rest of us who are members of the body of Christ should support those who are called to this task as we best can according to the gifts we have been given.

I hope that the missionaries can be released after due process, as they obviously did not understand on some level that they were kidnapping children, but that is for the Haitian government to decide.  Considering Haiti's history, I would not be surprised to see them treated with very little leniency.  Consider - if this group had decided to work WITHIN Haiti, how much further the resources of their church would have gone.  They could have affected the lives of far more than 33 children.  But they wanted the "safe" option, the option that did not require them to give up their jobs or home or church in Idaho, the option that would allow them to impose their cultural values on the Haitian children rather than bring their values into conversation with them.  It would allow them to be in control rather than the Holy Spirit.  And that, friends, is why these people are being treated as kidnappers rather than missionaries.

David+ 

Finally! "Nu-Clee-Er!"

 I watched the State of the Union address last night, as I have every state of the union since I was sixteen.  I see it as a patriotic responsibility.  I'm not sure whether President Obama can deliver on what he promises, especially considering that the congress seems unable to move despite the overwhelming Democratic majority, but it was refreshing to hear him speak.  For the first time in nine years, the SOTU did not contain a mispronunciation of the word "Nuclear," sounded like an oration rather than a junior-high composition project, and was not delivered in a condescending, sarcastic tone when referring to those in the opposition (although he did use appropriate humor to rib them.)  Whether or not Obama will be a great president remains to be seen, but it is good to have someone in the White House who can communicate clearly with both his own nation and others.

Corporations are people?

I've been mulling over the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision last week.  The part that I find most worrisome of this whole question is not the issue about campaign advertising, which hopefully can be dealt with by legislation, but the idea that a corporation is a "person."  This is nothing new - this appears to have started in 1886.  The problem, is that as I see it, this really stretches the definition of person in American constitutional law.  Going back to the Declaration of Independence, rights are inalienable - granted by God - to those whom God has created.  (You can equally substitute Nature here if you are atheist.)  A corporation, by definition, is "unnatural," that is, something that does not exist in the natural world, but is a construct of secondary human law.  It is very hard for me to imagine the founders thinking of corporations as persons.  They certainly had those, but did not go out of their way to grant them rights, nor did they to any other organization created by human law, such as marriages or fraternal brotherhoods.  Corporations might (and should) be granted certain rights by legislative process.  But to insist that their rights exist by default, that they are in effect as inalienable as those granted to human beings, seems to me to be a devaluation of the entire achievement of the Enlightenment vis a vis human rights.

On being a minister of Democracy....

So I volunteered this Election to be a poll worker at our 27, 28 and 29th wards here in Waukesha, WI. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but had never gotten around to it. We had a good number of workers and were not understaffed as is common in elections. I was given the task of dealing with absentee ballots. Waukesha is one of only a few municipalities in Wisconsin that does not centralize the tallying of absentees. They are instead sent out to the wards to be verified, logged, and placed into the optical scanner. We had a folding table full of Absentee Ballots - probably about 400 or so that had to be taken to the poll books and logged in in the lulls between in-person voters. I was placing a batch into the scanner and had a feeling it took me a while to identify. Finally, I figured out that it felt similar to distributing Eucharist. (OK, back off orthodoxy police. This is a comparison of FEELING, not a theological statement.) Processing someone's absentee ballot is a sacred trust. The right to vote is our most basic right. You hold in your hands the hopes of a person for the future of their government and their trust is that you will handle it with the reverence and care. It also means that I put at least 200 ballots in the ballot box - a legal ballot stuffer! It was not what I would call "fun," but it was very satisfying.

David+

anglican, christianity, politics, religion, election

The Sarumav

(I try to stay out of politics as a clergy-person, and I do not speak of things like this from the pulpit, but this has been weighing on my heart. You are intentionally reading my personal blog. It does not represent the opinion of anyone except myself as a Christian American Citizen. If you believe that a pastor should never make a political statement in any forum that is publicly accessible, you should probably stop here.)

It's hard to see a personal hero fall, and I've experienced that with John McCain. I've been a registered Republican since I first registered to vote, although I vote rather independently. I have been alarmed by the takeover of the party by the Neo-Cons from the traditional Goldwater Conservatives, whom I share a lot of fiscal views with. In my view, Neo-Con philosophy with it's nationalistic and interventionist bent seems to be tainted with a kind of neo-fascism that has very little to do with traditional conservatism.

In 2000, I was John McCain's man. When he made the speech that labeled people on the fringe as "Agents of Intolerance," I cheered. I voted for him in the Virginia primary and hoped against hope that he might be the nominee. Standing in the rain in a sea of cowboy hats at Bush's first inauguration, I could feel something was changing, and I didn't think it was good. Throughout the last eight years, which have seen the abridgment of civil rights, rampant greed in the corporate sector, and a war with unclear cause and objective (Iraq, not Afghanistan) I have been inspired when McCain occasionally broke ranks to speak out against the administration. When he became the Republican nominee for president, I was heartened. "Now," I thought, "The Republican party can pull back from the extreme right. John McCain will speak out against this crazyness and make things right in the party again."

But it was not to be. First, he cozied up to the extreme evangelicals like Hagee - people who made the "Agents of Intolerance" he mentioned a few years earlier look like Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Then he dropped his usual eloquent and well-reasoned style at Saddleback Church to deliver the short, pithy statements that that audience craved. He employed Karl Rove in his campaign - a sign that he was certainly willing to sign on to a neo-con agenda to get the presidency. He chose Sarah Palin as a running mate. Whether she's qualified or not (I tend to think "no," since she had never heard of the Bush Doctrine), there are many more aptly qualified Republican women out there. None of them, however, could deliver James Dobson, and that's what Palin did.

Most disturbing to me, though, has been the way campaign rallies have been handled of late. The crowds have been "whipped up" to the level of hate speech. The things that have been shouted at Republican rallies in the last few weeks have been shameful, and any responsible politician would see where it was leading and at least stop the rally and remove the offender before continuing. The Republicans have been happy to ride on the hate. I've heard the argument that it's just a few crazies and you can't do anything about it, but if that were true, why doesn't it happen at Democratic rallies? McCain had his chance to redeem himself in Minnesota when the woman said that Obama was a Muslim. McCain quickly took the microphone from her and replied, "No, Obama is a decent family man" completely missing the point and implying that Muslims cannot be decent, family men.

It took Colin Powell, two weeks later in his endorsement for Obama, to publicly point out the problem with his response, "Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?" Then he spoke of this incredibly moving photograph of a mother resting her head on her son's tombstone in Arlington:

We have to get it into our heads that Osama Bin Laden does not define Islam any more than Timothy McVeigh or David Koresh define Christianity. American Muslims died in 9/11 and they are dying right now as American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you freeze frame on McCain after remarks are yelled out at some of these rallies, you can see an almost pained look, as if he knows the monster he's helping create. But still, he doesn't speak out.

Since I respect him so much, I can only assume he has fallen prey to the "Saruman Syndrome." In the Lord of the Rings when Saruman tries to convince Gandalf to help him hand Middle Earth over to Sauron, he says:

"As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish ... There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."

Gandalf, of course, rejects this. The ends do not justify the means, and using evil transforms the user, no matter what the intention. I suspect McCain thinks he will simply ignore this hate speech until he is elected, and then he can discard it and continue with his REAL agenda, but most likely, it will be him that is tainted and transformed.

I miss you, pre-2008 John McCain. I hope that if you lose, you will be able to re-claim your soul and return to being the American hero and public servant I have always respected. I pray that if you win, our souls will not be tainted by the hate, fear and intolerance of your current campaign.

David+

McCain, politics, powell, tolkien, war

Political Stuff

Arriving here in Wisconsin in late January put us right into the middle of national politics. The isolated Wisconsin primaries actually have quite a bit of effect this time around. I got to go to a nice-sized Obama "town meeting" at an Ag center here in Waukesha. (A friend texted me, "I don't know why all these people are here.... I'm here because my pig is going to win a blue ribbon!") He really is an accomplished orator, and gives a stirring speech. He is able to combine elements that remind me of speeches by FDR, JFK and Al Sharpton (never would vote for him, but what a delivery!) in a very effective way.

Wisconsinites have also been courted by Clinton, McCain and Huckabee, who showed up at the Original Pancake House the day after we had Valentine's Day breakfast. The primaries are open here. I took great pleasure in voting for McCain in the primary, re-visiting my vote eight years ago in the Virginia primary. I still believe that if McCain had been the candidate that year, we wouldn't be in the mess in Iraq we are now. I am hoping the Republican Neo-Conservative nightmare is over and the GOP can get back to its usual business.

As a person who is really pretty fiercely independent, I am crossing my fingers that Obama wins the Democratic nomination. I think an Obama/McCain race would be one focused much more intensely on the issues and with a lot more decorum. The presidential debate might actually be the deciding factor in whom I would support this November.

A nice addendum - our area uses a paper ballot you mark and then place into a optical-scanning ballot box. People who need assistance use a voting machine that marks a paper ballot. I'm not sure I've ever been as confident that my vote has been counted.

Voting is the central sacrament of the American republic, and I don't think I've ever been as excited about it.

David+

McCain, Obama, voting

Cheney speaks against invading Iraq

OK, so if Dick Cheney said this in 1994, which foresaw everything that has happened, how did the invasion ever become a good idea in his mind?

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