June 2008 Archives

The Supreme Court continued its disturbing trend of devaluing children with its Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana decision. By a 5 to 4 majority (how familiar is that phrase becoming?) the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for even the brutal rape of a small child (the victim in this case was 8 years old when she was raped by her stepfather) unless the child has actually physically been murdered.

Justice Kennedy writing for the majority (Justice Kennedy is the majority in all of the 5-4 decisions.) and supported by the Court's liberal block (Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter) ruled that the "death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."

Justice Alito (joined by his conservative colleagues Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts) argued that "the harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapist is grave." Justice Kennedy's belief is that while child rape "may be devastating...in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person...," it "cannot be compared to murder in...'severity and irrevocability.'"

People who have had to comfort, counsel or treat victims of child rape would agree that Justice Alito and his conservative minority have much the better of this argument. Dr. Leonard Shengold, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, documents the catastrophic devastation of such childhood victimization in his book, Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation.

Dr. Shengold, drawing on a decades long career and clinical experience, furnishes a vivid description of how such brutalization of a child--"soul murder"--culminates "in their psychic and spiritual annihilation." My wife (a practicing psychotherapist) and I (a Baptist minister), based on our counseling experience, agree completely with Shengold's assessment.

The Supreme Court's decision did generate a meeting of the minds of Senators McCain and Obama. The Republican and Democrat candidates for president disagree on many things, but they are in agreement with their profound disagreement with this Supreme Court decision.

Senator Obama said, "I think that the rape of a small child, 6- or 8-years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution."

Senator McCain issued an even more fierce condemnation of the Supreme Court's ruling, calling it "an assault on law enforcement's efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime." In expressing his deep concern over the ruling, McCain further stated, "That there is a judge anywhere in America who does not believe that the rape of a child represents the most heinous of crimes, which is deserving of the most serious of punishments, is profoundly disturbing."

Disturbing indeed!

Last month 21 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, 17 from hostile fire. In May 2007, there were 127 causalities in Iraq. The "surge" is working and bringing with it a measure of military and political success that must be a surprise even to its most ardent proponents.

The surge has given the country the breathing space to begin to do some truly extraordinary things. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the Iraqi Army into Basra where it defeated the Mahdi Army, took the city, and seized the ports from the radicals (something the British Army failed to achieve in four years).

When the Mahdis reacted by starting conflict in other locations, the Iraqi Army routed them in every instance--Najaf, Karbala, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah. Then the Iraqi Army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's stronghold in Baghdad.

The determination and success of the Iraqi Army underscores the fact that 12 uniformed Iraqis (soldiers and police) have been killed defending their country from the death cult seeking to impose a Taliban-type regime on their society for every non-Iraqi coalition solider that has died.

On the political front, the Iraqi parliament has passed a pension law and a de-Baathification law (a major U.S. Democrat "benchmark" for political progress). They have also passed an amnesty law, a new budget, and provided for provincial elections before the end of the year.

Oil revenues are being shared among Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd provinces (another major Democrat "benchmark") and the oil revenues are soaring. Iraqi oil production is at its highest levels since the liberation began five years ago and the soaring price of oil has generated rapidly rising government revenues. Iraq now has an unexpected budget surplus (oil revenues have jumped from an estimated $35 billion to more than $60 billion). Yet the war's critics seem determined to ignore any signs of progress.

When President Bush addressed our troops in North Carolina, he outlined the conditions for "success in Iraq:" the Iraqi government must be able to protect its own people from attack, govern itself democratically with honest elections, and support itself economically.

My question for the critics of the war is this: What part of significant progress do you not understand?

With the observance of Father's Day and the heartbreaking, sudden death of Tim Russert, author of the best selling Big Russ & Me, the nation's attention has been focused on fathers. Russert's Big Russ & Me about Tim's working class, "Greatest Generation" father and his enormous influence on his "Baby Boomer" son helped countless American sons and daughters more fully appreciate how much their own fathers have influenced their lives. I know it served that purpose for me.

Sadly, for many children today, such a relationship with their father is an unknown and foreign experience. As late as the early 1960's, when Tim Russert was in his early teens, only 2.3 percent of white children and 24 percent of black children were born to single mothers. Now, approximately 28 percent of our nation's children live in a household without their fathers, up from 14 percent in 1970. The vast majority of such boys and girls see their fathers less than once a month if at all. For such children, Father's Day is more of an illusion than reality.

Over the past four decades, our society has conducted an unwitting experiment on whether fathers are optional accessories in rearing healthy, well-balanced children. They are not.

Having a father is rapidly becoming a luxury, rather than the norm it has been in the past. This development has had devastating impact on our children and on our society. Children who have fathers in the home are nine times less likely to drop out of school, five times less likely live in poverty, and twenty times less likely to end up in prison. The negative impact of fatherlessness is even more dramatic when girls are taken out of the equation and just boys are considered.

And when the children's fathers attend church regularly with their families good things happen. As W. Bradford Wilcox points out in his Report on Faith, Fatherhood, and Marriage (Institute for American Values), "Religious faith is linked to happier marriages, fewer divorces and births outside of marriage, and a more involved style of fatherhood."

Religion is not the only answer to the vexing problem of absent fathers, but research and experience show it is an excellent place to start mending this terrible hole in the nation's social fabric. As Wilcox reports, "Religious fathers are about 65 percent more likely than unaffiliated fathers to report praising and hugging their school-age children 'very often.'"

What better place to start the "refathering" of America than to encourage Dads to take their families to worship services on a weekly basis.

It's what I feared: Barack Obama and his campaign are so afraid of a "sensitive political climate" that they will eagerly disassociate themselves from anything Muslim, even if it goes against all the highbrow Obama talk about running a clean, dignified campaign to bring all Americans together. Case in point: the removal of two headscarf-clad young Muslim Obama supporters from behind the podium of where Obama was about to speak, so that they would not be seen standing behind him, cheering for him, on camera.

Here's the story: At a Detroit rally for Obama on Monday, Hebba Aref and Shimaa Abdelfadeel were among 20,000 supporters amassed to see Obama give a speech. Aref and Abdelfadeel said the groups they were with were separately invited by Obama campaign volunteers to sit behind the podium. But soon after other volunteers told the women, who wear hijabs (Muslim headscarves), that they were excluded from the invitation.

The reason? A volunteer told Aref (who's a 25-year-old lawyer) that there was a "sensitive political climate." Soon after Obama spokesperson Bill Burton said the volunteer's statement was "not the policy of the campaign," adding that "It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run. We sincerely apologize for this behavior."

Gee, thanks for the apology. (Disclosure--I am a hijab-wearing, born-in-the-U.S.A., on-the-fence Obama supporter). What I don't get is that if Obama simply does not run that kind of campaign, then why did it happen in the first place? Sure, campaign volunteers are prone to make mistakes. But folks, this was a big one. Obama is already dodging many bullets for his tenuous ties to Islam (let me first say it folks--he is NOT Muslim), but the last thing he should be doing is running so far in the opposite direction that Muslim-Americans end up feeling the back of his hand.

In an earlier post, I asked, "What's so bad about being Muslim?" Obama, you want to make sure that the voting public knows you are not Muslim, that you are a strong Christian? Fine. Absolutely fine! But this need to reject your Muslim supporters hurt. I said once, and I'll say it again: Why is a six million-strong voting contingency considered to be political pariahs?

Dilshad D. Ali, Islam Editor

LifeWay Research, the research and survey branch of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, has partnered with the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission to survey Americans on a host of moral and social issues facing American society.

One controversial issue surveyed concerned physician-assisted suicide. When Americans in general were asked their opinion of the statement, "When a person is facing a painful terminal disease, it is morally acceptable to ask for a physician's aid in taking his or her life"--30% "strongly agreed" and 20% "somewhat agreed" that it is "morally acceptable." While 33% of Americans "strongly disagreed" and 11% "somewhat disagreed," clearly a significant shift has taken place in American culture on this issue.

When Americans approve physician-assisted suicide in terminal patients by a 50% to 44% margin, it is clear that the morally relative "quality of life" ethic has made substantial progress in changing the hearts and minds of Americans away from the "sanctity of life" ethic upon which our nation was founded--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Interestingly, only 6% of Americans responded "don't know" about physician-assisted suicide, suggesting that most people have given the idea at least some serious thought--enough to state a definite opinion, yea or nay.

When the same poll asked Southern Baptist pastors this question, however, the results could not have been more opposite to the population at large. Among Southern Baptist pastors, 88% strongly disagreed and 9% somewhat disagreed that physician-assisted suicide was "morally acceptable" in terminal cases. Only 1% of Southern Baptist pastors "strongly agreed" and 1% "somewhat agreed" that such assisted suicide was "morally acceptable."

Once again, a cavernous worldview divide is revealed between Southern Baptist pastors and the nation they are called to reach on a fundamental ethical and moral issue of foundational importance--"What and who is a human being, is a human life ours to end, and should we allow those dedicated to healing (physicians) to become dispensers of death?"

The debate over same-sex marriage is certain to heat up again over the summer and into the fall election season. Why? First, following the California Supreme Court's mandate that same-sex marriages commence on June 17, thousands of homosexual couples will...

A Time magazine photograph of Barack Obama's hands, displaying his favorite charms, sported this caption: "Amongst the things that Barack Obama carries for good luck is a bracelet belonging to a soldier deployed in Iraq, a gambler's lucky chit, a...

Dear Readers-- Due to a planned technical upgrade taking place on Wednesday June 11th, the Beliefnet Blogs will not display any new content, and commenting will be disabled. We aim to be back up and running by the end of...

Senator Obama and his wife Michelle have now resigned their membership from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Given the outrageous and incendiary statements made from the pulpit by Rev. Wright and repeated with evident relish from the podium...

Since this is my last day as a guest blogger on "Casting Stones," I'm going to plug the book which prompted Beliefnet to invite me in the first place: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,...

Tony Campolo is one of the true heroes of contemporary Christian leadership, a guy a non-Christian like myself can count on to offer not only provocative and compelling analysis of the world but also honest and even pointed challenges to...

For all intents and purposes, the primary season (an unprecedentedly long and arduous endurance contest it was, particularly on the Democratic side) is now over, and the general election campaign has commenced. Before the nation plunges into the partisan atmosphere...

Not, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, in reading the transcript of his address, I loved everything he had to say. But it did strike me as funny that Obama hit every base...

I'm be talking with Natasha Chart and the folks at OpenLeft for a book salon about The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, my new history of the "avant-garde" of American fundamentalism. It's a story that...

Mark Silk, an eminent scholar of religion, politics, and journalism, takes issue with my Casting Stones post on the how the press is re-arranging its account of Obama's ascent now that his victory is assured:Jeff Sharlet is guest-blogging on Beliefnet,...

Remarks at AIPAC Policy Conference Senator Barack Obama June 4, 2008 As Prepared for Delivery It’s great to see so many friends from across the country. I want to congratulate Howard Friedman, David Victor and Howard Kohr on a successful...

With the nomination clinched by Obama, it's time to move on to the next stage of "journalism": speculation! What lies ahead? What can we expect from a President Obama? Well, it's hard to say, right? "Change." "Hope." That's good. But...

It looks like it's the end of the line for Clinton and the beginning of a new battle for Obama, and that means it's time for the press to do what it does best -- tidy up the tale, craft...

I've been invited to guestblog here at Casting Stones this week because I have a new book about faith and politics out, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. More about that later. I've decided to...