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Oct

30

TheOtherJournal is like None Other!

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I recently followed a link to the Other Journal where I found that they had a series of interviews with many Christian thinkers on politics. The thinkers include:Tony Campolo, Amy Laura Hall, Pam Cochran, Dan Allender, Walter Wink, Stanley Grenz, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Stanley Hauerwas.

I’m going to colorfully summarize the main ideas of each of the authors.

Tony Campolo argues that in the US, Evangelical Christians are not counter-cultural enough. He decries the effects of ideological short-cuts we often use that keep us from being more critical of our political leaders, make us overly supportive of the Republican Party, and insulate us from the world, while letting us be overly consumeristic and hypocritical about gay marriages when the real problem is heterosexual divorces.

Amy Laura Hall deals with questions of the family and policy and reproductive technology. She contrasts how Jesus primarily associated family with the Church, rather than one’s direct blood-relations, pointing out that our foundational relations should rest on eucharistic, not genetic, blood-ties. She is critical of the BushAdmin for failing to support basic social structures that bolster the Church and the Family and she is critical of liberal evangelicals for accepting the inevitability of the Culture of Death and not protesting against later-term abortions. Finally she critiques how our consumeristic mentality has led to the development of reproductive technologies where we calibrate our children to fit into our hopes and dreams, rather than recalibrating our lives around our children.

Pam Cochran argues that USEvangelicals confuse the traditional USAmerican notion of family with the biblical notion of family, which is implied as being more inclusive. She argues that maintaining the traditional family is not the only way to strengthen civil society and that we need to reconsider our current strategies of expending an incredible amount of energy trying to pass legislation with little success and to give more attention to other pressing issues.

Dan Allender describes the political election process as the political equivalent of rape with character assassination being a common tool of voter manipulation. We are in denial about our problem, the failings, of our own system and disassociate ourselves from these problems. But rape is a very significant problem in our world today and, while no obvious solutions present themselves, we must face its ugly reality and grieve over it and face our own responsibility for acts of omission to the graphic violence and dehumanization in our world.

Walter Wink argues that the real issue in the debate over homosexuality is how we interpret the Bible and how the Bible informs our lives today. He then proceeds to hermeneutically size up the biblical passages commonly presumed to deal with homosexuality and centers on Rom. 1:26-27 as the centerpiece of any discussion. He then argues that Paul didn’t understand the notion of one having a homosexual orientation and how homosexual behavior is natural. He empties a sack of Hebraic sexual mores that show how what the Bible teaches is not considered authoritative today, demonstrating his premise that what is considered natural is more important than what is biblical. His exegesis of the Bible is quite poor at times, implying that because we reject OT law in light of NT teaching that we can reject NT teaching in light of our modern-day understandings, and he also does a poor job of characterizing the facts of homosexuality. He ends with a plea for a broad tolerance.

Stanley Grenz starts by describing how emotionally charged and potentially divisive the issue of homosexuality has become. His response to the situation is to set up a Christian Theology of human sexuality apply it to distinguish friendship and marriage and then point out why same-sex intercourse is a deficient act occurring in the wrong context. Grenz’s theology emphasizes God’s creation of us as sexually male and female, or incomplete and with an innate drive to bond with others. By this understanding, all of our relations with others can be seen as in a way sexual, though the types of sexual acts of bonding should differ widely with the type of relationship. Grenz distinguishes between the inclusiveness of friendship and the exclusivenss of the marital relation. He points out how Jesus himself emphasized the company of disciples as more important than family relations derived from past and present sexual acts, which isn’t to say that the sexual relation proper does not have important meaning, but rather that its meaning depends on its context. The intended context by God for this sexual act is in heterosexual marriage, where it is the symbol of the exclusive bond between the partners. What makes it such a symbol is that it is the union of two who are sexually “other” into a sexual bond that is inherently bilateral. Grenz points out how this is not the case with same-sex intercourse and concludes that the marriage of male and female is the only appropriate expression of that exclusive sexual bond. I emphasize appropriate, because, at this point, I would prefer to substitute ideal and argue it is wrong to emphasize our ideals without a full consideration of the context. We Christians do accept other non-ideal relationships as a means of making the best of a fallen situation. Grenz, reacting to his liberal Canadian political situation, rules same-sex, sexual bonding out of court, even when it involves a mutual, life-long commitment and spends the rest of the essay interacting with a variety of arguments from this basic perspective that affirms that for people with homosexual orientations to be moral, they should be abstinent and seek to be changed.

I anticipate critiquing Wink and Grenz’s papers, later.

Jean Bethke Elshtain weds a neo-conservative viewpoint with a Christian concern for adapting the concept of Just-War to the 21st Ctry. She argues against the prevalent academic bias, as well as many Christian “neo-pacifists”, against going to war as a product of group-think rather than a consideration of the facts. She argues that the just-war tradition needs to be revamped to set out what ethical-post-regime-change commitment ought to be. I.e., what exactly does it mean when we own a country because we broke it. She glosses over the inherent ambiguity over what are the facts used to justify military action abroad and discounts the role economics/power plays in geo-politics. Her most interesting points look at the political-economic and social factors that have contributed to radical middle-east terrorism. Overall, she comes across as a BushAdmin partisan, in part by how she selectively frames issues. For example, with regard to Iraq, she frames the issue as to regime-change or not to regime-change, not: do we continue sanctions, improve our intelligence, trust that our commitment to retaliate against a 9-11 terrorist attack against the US with regime-change, as demonstrated with Afghanistan, will deter Hussein from supporting terrorist groups, do we counter Hussein’s pursuit of WMD-related capabilities by shining extra scrutiny on potential illegal ways they are violating existing economic sanctions? Bethke takes the priestly role upon herself of pointing to what is good, rather than simply outlining the alternatives and their likely consequences based on the “facts”. It would be interesting to hear how Bethke would respond to the recent criticisms of Neo-Conservativism made by Fukuyama.

Stanley Hauerwas argues that the Church too readily copies the forms of politics that surrounds it. This seemingly underlies his past critique of how Bethke has adjoined Just War-speak with a neo-conservative political perspective. Hauerwas sets forth a form of libertarian pacificistic political philosophy that is critical of both secular and religious powers that be, argues we should try to be more creative in coming up with alternatives to the use of state-based violence to solve today’s problems, and is very critical of the way religious language is used by politicians. Although, he wants the freedom to keep his own Christian speech when involved in policy-debates. His interview exemplifies his own attempt to be political in a different, Christian way.

dlw

Oct

30

Bin Laden is a Sly Dog!

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Bin Laden is a smart man. Like he wouldn’t know that his plagiarizations from Michael Moore’s movie would help Bush! And, more importantly, there’s plenty of good reasons to think he actually would prefer four more years of Bush-Cheney. Anonymous, author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes who has hunted and studied Bin Laden, wrote in his more recent book that he thought it quite possible,

that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place. Bush is good for the Islamists the world over who want to make war on America and the West.
“I’m very sure they can’t have a better administration for them than the one they have now. One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president.”

Or Bin Laden could try to give the kiss of death to Kerry so Bush-supporters can spam all the undecided voters in the swing states with stupid quotes like 99 out of 100 terrorists prefer Kerry over Bush as president.

More evidence in that I was right on. Apparently after the March bombing in Madrid, al Qaeda wrote the following endorsement of Bush.

“A word for the foolish Bush. We are very keen that you do not lose in the forthcoming elections as we know very well that any big attack can bring down your government and this is what we do not want.

“We cannot get anyone who is more foolish than you, who deals with matters with force instead of wisdom and diplomacy.

“Your stupidity and religious extremism is what we want as our people will not awaken from their deep sleep except when there is an enemy.

“Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation.

“Because of this we desire you [Bush] to be elected.”

So remember that if the Boston RedSox’s can break the curse, so can Kerry. So lets spread the word that Bin Laden is playing mind-games with the US, trying to keep us from electing the better man for the job of hunting him down.
dlw

Oct

29

Why I oppose the NAE’s politics of Homosexuality.

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The NAE, like Ron Sider, frame their agenda for discerning a biblically-balanced political lobbying strategy as resting on the foundation of the Biblical normative framework and factual understandings of the issues. Yet, there approach to the politics of homosexuality does not, persay, evidence a thorough factual understanding of the issue.

I critique the NAE on this subject, as well as the politics of abortion, because I believe that the discernment of right political conduct requires making fallible judgements about what can and cannot be changed about the fallen world we live in. Specifically, I think there are good reasons to wish to counter the political activism of gay-activists to enthrone gay-rights as equivalent to civil rights by making gay-marriages legal. The main two reasons are the biological determinism and sexual libertarianism often promoted by gay-rights activists. Another reason would be how so many people associate with gay-marriage an affirmation of their side of the cultural wars and everything else associated with that. In other words, like the pro-choice and pro-life stale-mate, gay-marriages at this point have the potential of paralyzing our politics.

However, I belive the best way to take the political winds out of the sails of gay-rights political activist groups is to grant them gay civil unions that are geared to longer-term relationships. We don’t need to have this dragged out at the state-level as George Bush would prefer it.. I’m sure there are many economic conservatives in the republican party that want it dragged out so as to ensure them a plentiful way to buy social conservatives votes for cheap. I think the solution to preventing this situation is better education on the facts surrounding homosexuality.

The facts surrounding homosexuality are somewhat complicated, because there is a range of factors that lead people to commit homosexual acts. A good summary of recent scientific work in this area is found in this lengthy chapter, taken from Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden, a transgendered Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. The main flaw in the chapter is that it gives short shrift to Günter Dörner’s fetal endocrinological explanation of why some people have homosexual orientations, which is currently the best explanation for homosexual orientations. It is the best study in part because recent twin-studies have shown that genes do not play a determinative role in affecting sexual orientation.

Dörner’s idea is that sexual orientation is mediated by the hormonal balances formed in our brains while we are fetuses. This idea first arose when he found a higher incidence of homosexual orientations among Germans who were in the womb during the period when the Allies were bombing Germany. It seems that extreme stress during the fetal stage was able to increase the probability of someone later developing a homosexual orientation.

In article

Dörner, Günter; Poppe, Ingrid; Stahl, F.; Kölzsch, J.; Uebelhack, Ralf
Gene- and environment-dependent neuroendocrine etiogenesis of homosexuality and transsexualism
Institute of Experimental Endocrinology, Humboldt University Medical School (Charite), Berlin, Germany.
Experimental and Clinical Endocrinology; 98(2):141-50

they find that

Sexual brain organization is dependent on sex hormone and neurotransmitter levels occurring during critical developmental periods. The higher the androgen levels during brain organization…the higher is the biological predisposition to bi- and homosexuality or even transsexualism in females and the lower it is in males.

The idea is that most males and females have different hormonal balances in our brains. Initially, while we are fetuses we all have female hormonal balances and then for most males there is a shifts to a male hormonal balance. But for some males their hormonal balance does not shift or it does not shift “completely” and for some females there is a hormonal shift. In these cases, the persons later in life develop an attraction to people of the same sex instead of or in addition to people of the opposite sex. This explains bisexuality and it explains how it is possible for identical twins to have different sexual orientations, as is measurable by the physiological impact of viewing same-sex pornography.

The long and short is that there is such a thing as people with homosexual orientations (as there are also people who choose to commit homosexual acts) and evidence shows that it is hard, though not impossible, to change one’s orientation later in life. As Christians, we are compelled by our commitment to truth to understand the difficulties of having a homosexual orientation. We also need to understand that the notion of a person having a homosexual orientation was not current at the time of the Bible. Back then in gentile pagan cultures, an ass was an ass was an ass… and if one had the power, there was pretty much De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum, no disputing over one’s tastes, or how one lorded over those beneath them(as I think is well illustrated by the Federico Fellini’s movie Satyricon). The apostle Paul likely did not consider the ethical situation of how to best minister to people with a homosexual orientation that is a persistent thorn in the flesh and who lack the gift of lifelong celibacy that he had. This is the ethical dilemma we must face today.

And so I find the unqualified treatment of homosexuality in the NAE to fall short of a comprehensive factual understanding of homosexuality. They seem to inadvertently conflate our modern understanding of homosexuality with the condemnation of those that committed the homosexual acts prevalent in the pagan, gentile world from when the Bible was written. I don’t see any good reason why we should deny civil unions to homosexual partners committed to a longterm relationship. I don’t see homosexuality as responsible for the decline of marriage. I myself believe the hedonistic consumerism of our cultural as propagated by the flagrant heterosexuality of Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry as more responsible for this. And I’d much rather do something about their ability to manipulate our lives with their advertisements and their oligopolistic control of the film industry than spend another thirty years trying to pass yet another amendment to the constitution. I’m a bit more concerned that our basic freedom of speech will be misinterpreted as meaning freedom of $peech and I don’t see that set out in the NAE’s “Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility”, which leads me to ask how come no provision has been made for further amendments?

dlw

Oct

28

Brian McClaren did a Better Job than Ron Sider!

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Both writers were featured in yesterday’s Prism E-pistle. But McClaren’s interview shed more light on changes needed in the “evangelical” world to improve our habits of political deliberation.

Sider put himself between a rock and a hard place by implicitly claiming that on the basis of the Bible’s normative framework and a factual understanding of the issues that it is possible to infer what should be the Christian positions on various election issues. As an editor of an evangelical magazine, this exposed him to potential attack from the supporters of the candidate he does not endorse. It also potentially loses him readers of his magazine. I don’t want to say he was being disingenuous about his own personal difficulty in deciding who to vote for in the coming election, but it is convenient for him that he concludes that he cannot give his readers a definite recommendation of who to vote for. I mean, we see how the credentials of Harold Stassen as a prolifer were attacked in response to his argument that the increase in poverty under the BushAdmin likely led to an increase in the number of abortions. Fortunately, Stassen is able to defend himself and his findings. But I have no doubt that he and other Fuller professors are receiving heat for being prophetically outspoken about things that are wrong about the BushAdmin. And so it seems that Sider, like Mark Noll, comes down with no definite answer for Evangelicals on the question of Who Would Jesus Vote for.

But do we really need to all agree on what the right answer is? McClaren’s alternative approach is to affirm the need for Christians to be salt and light in their respective parties. We need to exercise more leadership within our respective parties so as to pull the party towards wiser and better policy. We also need to be critical of our parties’ failures. I.e., we can be partisan but not overly partisan. In saying this, McClaren criticizes the effects of how many in the religious right do not have extensive habits of political deliberation. They are ceding their political leadership to people who need to be held more accountable. McClaren is also implicitly criticizing the naive view of single-issue voters that they can vote based on their apolitical issue and otherwise avoid involvement with political stuff.

The difference between the two writers really comes down to a difference in their methods. McClaren uses a more socratic method to challenges both Christian Republicans and Democrats about certain aspects of their parties platforms. And even more importantly, he points to the fact that how we deliberate on political issues is part of how we are salt and light in our world. McClaren makes the serious statement that

Whoever wins the election, the Christian community better sit up and do some serious thinking in the next couple years - thinking about our identity, our role as salt and light in the world.

He also makes a balanced criticism of how the Christian media is overly partisan in his remark about how, “radio preachers[James Dobson] can give good leadership on parenting and misguided leadership in engaging in culture wars.” All of this directs more attention to the process by which we draw on our faith and how we use our minds to take positions on right political conduct.

By contrast, Sider’s letter illustrates the need to consider more issues, but he invests too much in trying to stack up all the issues from a viewpoint that reflects the authoritative, normative framework of the Bible. But we are not God and we see but in part, as through a mirror darkly. Therefore, we must make political leaps of faith, though not without deliberation or reconsideration of past decisions made.
dlw

ps,I really liked a couple of the other quotes from other articles in yesterday’s Prism E-pistle. I liked Andy Crouch’s statement that,

Such is the state of our presidential politics: an evangelical president flummoxed at any suggestion of his own fallibility, and a Catholic candidate who sidesteps his church’s teaching authority. And in both our political parties, concern for justice often serves as cover for self-justification; righteousness curdles all too quickly into self-righteousness.

And I liked Jeremy Ritch’s observation that,

Among Christian youth, there is a new way of seeing the world. They seem determined to break stereotypes that Christians are homophobic, close-minded, and in league with the Religious Right. This generation is more interested in human rights issues, and in getting past Democrat and Republican politics. They seem to want change and are willing to stand up and be heard. As Christians, they are more interested in compassion and understanding than in dictating morality.

I can definitely relate to that viewpoint and it is heartening to hear that I am not alone in this regard.

dlw

Oct

27

A Commentary on the Angst of Ron Sider.

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Sider’s prolegomena to his letter in Prism E-pistle, “A CONSCIENCE DECISION: How faith informs the vote“, is that the Bible gives us Christians a normative framework for judging political decisions, but we need to use reason to deliberate on our political decisions. He omits the need, as it was pointed out by the NAE, to develop more specific normative frameworks to guide our political action. He also skirts over the problem of how to correctly frame the many controversial issues that we face. He also doesn’t settle on how we should vote in the presidential election. For Sider, similar to Noll, ends by saying he cannot ultimately recommend whom we should vote for. But, as with Noll, does he over-weight his deliberation with more dubious pro-Bush positions?
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Oct

25

A Theological Critique of How the BushAdmin has misused Religious-speak to Advance its Policies!

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Marshall Allen writes a report on how many Fuller Professors have signed a document, along with Jim Wallis, that opposes Bush’s alleged convergence of God, church and nation and what they are calling his “Theology of War”.

They have written a statement of beliefs, called “Confessing Christ in a World of Violence”. It goes as follows…
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Oct

23

The BushAdmin Lies About Letting Bin Laden Get Away at Tora Bora!

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Josh Marshall aptly points out that the BushAdmin is lying about the fact that the US let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora because we ‘outsourced’ the job to local warlords and militiaman. He acknowledges that it may have been a mistake that reflected our lack of experience in such warfare, but reiterates that it is a lie to deny that it happened.

Which gets at the bigger question of whether we let the ends justify the means. Now, many people seem to use the term pragmatic as an epithet, nowadays. But this does not reflect pragmaticism as developed by C. S. Peirce. We should judge actions based on their likely consequences, not our intentions, but we should judge our actions based on all of their likely consequences and we should be open to learning about additional, unintended consequences of our actions. The need to consider the many different, likely consequences of different actions and to weight their seriousness is an integral part of habits of deliberation.

Too many in the religious right have not thought through the likely consequences of voting for Bush based on their single issues. They frame it with statistics about the number of abortions taking place or the decline of moral values, backing up their beliefs with several references to scripture, but they do not connect the dots very well. They do not exhibit an understanding of the political process and its need for fallible judgments about what can and cannot be changed. A good example of this sort of thinking is found in this article on the likely consequences of a Kerry presidency.

Pro-lifers, like Charles J. Chaput the archbishop of Denver, refer to the “choice” in abortion as the choice to end an unborn human beings life as a fact. When the belief that the newly-formed zygote is a human being is not by any means factual as factual is defined in scientific or philosophical terms. A belief is not a fact if one group believes and accepts it, while others do not accept it. Facts are usually widely accepted by all who have examined the evidence and there is not a consensus that: having human dna, being biologically alive, with the potential to develop into a “fully developed” human being makes one a human being. If there is anything factual it is that there is some ambiguity as to when we become human beings. But the fact that there is some ambiguity does not mean that we can’t agree to rules that will guide us in when a woman can elect an abortion or strive to set up a culture of life that will reduce both poverty and abortion.

But as for I and my blog, we see no evidence that the BushAdmin stands for higher values or the culture of life and we will vote for Kerry.
dlw

ps,
On a happier note, it appears that the boxed trilogy set of the Matrix Movies is coming out soon with extensive commentary by Cornel West and Ken Wilber. I’m glad I waited to buy the movies. Now if I only had any money.
dlw

Oct

21

One must tend one’s own Garden.

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A senior at my alma-mater, now Bethel University, J. Christopher LaTondresse writes in the recent issue of Sojourners about how prevalent political group-think is at Bethel University. I experienced this myself when I first parked there(I now attend its seminary.) with my Christians for Kerry-Edwards bumper-sticker on my car. I found a slip of paper with some stats on abortion and a statement about homosexuals put on the front of my car and an insinuation about my Christianity.

I don’t go over to the college, errr University, much anymore, but his description of the situation reminds me of why I used to think I would never have anything to do with that institution anymore. I am proud that he and others are trying to change the tone of the debate at Bethel and therein are challenging more of his fellow students to deepen their habits of political deliberation.

I doubt that many of the leaders of the student republican party are truly single-issue voters, but I do think they play up the single-issue stuff to behoove more of their fellow students to vote Republican. It is the success of single-issue campaigners that behooves me to continue my call in the wilderness for us to depoliticize the issue with my procedure idea.

dlw

Oct

20

PRINCIPLES FOR POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

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I am thankful for the wisdom of my sisters and brothers in Christ over in Britain, who have a Christians in Politics website offering advice that it would behoove for us in the US to take seriously.

PRINCIPLES FOR POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT
These principles are offered for political involvement:
Be an insider. Be tactical. Be patient. Be a person of integrity.

“BE AN INSIDER” Why wait until elections arrive to stand up for your beliefs? Real influence comes from working inside political parties. By being a party member you have a direct say in choosing local and national candidates and electing the party leader. You can also participate in policy discussions or even stand for office yourself. Some people choose active involvement; others attend only very important meetings. It’s your choice but isn’t it time that your voice was heard?
“BE TACTICAL” It may not be possible for you to change the world but solid achievements are possible if you set realistic goals. At a local level you can improve street lighting in a crime blackspot or can improve the goverance of a school. At a national level you can campaign for better recognition of faith-based social projects or for faster debt relief for the world’s poor. It’s certainly better than doing nothing! After all, Edmund Burke once warned - ‘All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing’.
“BE PATIENT” You won’t achieve much overnight. William Wilberforce - the leading campaigner for the abolition of the evil slave trade - gave forty years of his life to this great cause. If something is worth fighting for, it’s worth persevering for, too.
“BE A PERSON OF INTEGRITY” Politics is a noble calling but not currently held in high public regard. It needs more men and women of integrity to lift its standing. Men and women who are committed to justice and liberty; who act in ways that are consistent with what they say. Who treat their colleagues and their constituents with respect and honesty.

Oct

20

Historic Precedent for why we need to hold political partisan Leadership accountable.

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There is now online an important historical chapter on the Disputed Election of 1876 in the US. It suggests how yet another heavily disputed election could tear up even further the social fabric of our country. The answer is for people of both parties not to put their partisanship over their commitment to the greater good of the US.

This also is a good reason for the Kerry campaign to consider coming out in favor of my proposed procedure for facilitating compromise on when legal personhood begins. It would puts some meat behind his personal claim of being against abortion. And it would make a significant difference in such a tight race that can so easily turn into an unhealthy protracted disputed election.
dlw

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