April 2009 Archives

The Hate Crimes Bill passed the house yesterday 249-175 and so we have taken another step towards decency in our country and respect for all of our citizens.  This has been seen as a threat by conservative religious and legal groups, but others of us see it as evidence of the goodness of our democracy that nobody should be singled out for abuse and violence for who they are.  

It has been gratifying to see new Evengelical voices supporting this legislation. One of these is Dr. David Gushee, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University who has offered crucial contributions to the Christian opposition to torture. Now he is speaking up about this current Hate Crimes legislation writing through the folks at Faith in Public Life:  

"As a Christian, I believe in the immeasurable and sacred worth of every human being as made in the image of God and as the object of God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ. In our sinful and violent world, there are tragically very many ways in which this sacredness is violated. This bill deserves Christian support because its aim is to protect the dignity and basic human rights of all Americans, and especially those Americans whose perceived "differentness" makes them vulnerable to physical attacks motivated by bias, hatred and fear. The bill simply strengthens the capacity of our nation's governments to prosecute violent, bias-related crimes. I am persuaded that the bill poses no threat whatsoever to any free speech right for religious communities or their leaders. Its passage will make for a safer and more secure environment in which we and all of our fellow Americans can live our lives. For me, the case for this bill is settled with these words from Jesus: "As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me" (Mt. 25:40)."

 

The legislation does raise the interesting question that most vexes the religious right.  If a person were to commit a violent crime directed specifically against a gay person and then claim that a pastor incited the violence through repeated condemnation of gay people, describing them as agents of satan and urging battle against them (this is not at all far fetched) would the pastor be subject to prosecution for contributing to a crime?

My guess is that it would be hard, and should be hard, to make a direct link. But hate speech from the pulpit probably indirectly contributes to such crimes if only in offering an ideological framework.   Dr. Gushee is persuaded that this legislation poses no threat to free speech and I believe he is right.  But hopefully religious leaders will think twice about demonizing specific groups from their pulpit.   A few weeks ago I wrote about the practice in South Africa of  'corrective' rape of lesbians.  I wonder who pounded it into them that being a lesbian was wrong to begin with, and if they have some responsibility in these crimes of hate.

Ultimately I come down in favor of free speech almost always (fire in the threatre etc excepted).   But this is a salient issue.  Should clerics be allowed to incite viiolence, terrorism or sedition from the publpit?  Clerics should not be prosectuted from what she or he says in the publpit no matter how vile, but they should be thinking about how their words may translate into action by people who are sitting in the church, synogogue, mosque or temple. 

One of my favorite movies is the old film, Anne of a Thousand Days.  After her turbulent affair and brief marriage to Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn awaits execution in the Tower of London and reflects on the fleeting 1,000 days she spent as Queen of England.  "One thousand days," she ruminates sadly on the events of her marriage.  "Only one thousand days."

If one thousand days seems short, what is this business about 100 days?  Barack of a Hundred Days?  One hundred days into a presidential term seems--pardon my skepticism--relatively inconsequential.  Sure, some policies can be established, ideas generated, new partnerships formed, directions set, and tone changed.  But 100 days is a wink of human time, especially in relationship to the enormous challenges facing us:  the world is undergoing a massive period of economic, technological, philosophical, religious, and social transformation on a historical scale not seen since the 17^th century. 

One hundred days?  The media wants to talk about 100 days?  It hasn't even happened yet, and I'm already tired of a week's worth of media chatter on 100 days.

I think President Obama has done pretty well with these 100 days--about 6% of what will be his current term.  But no matter the success, progressive Christians would do well to take the longer view as in the words of Psalm 90:4, "For a thousand years in your sight are like a day gone by."  Or, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "the moral arc of the universe is long."  One hundred days is the briefest bits of time, almost imperceptible in any meaningful historical way. 

Of course, 1,000 days may change history--as they did in the case of Anne Boleyn.  Or, these 100 days may wind up being among the most significant in American history.  But--and this is an important but--we won't know that for quite some time.  The importance of individual days are most typically revealed only in the longer term.

Patience is an under-rated virtue these days.  But anyone who works for justice and social transformation knows that change does not occur on neat timelines or in pre-packaged media holidays.  No, working on behalf of a better world--a fairer, more just, more equitable world--a world where human beings in all sorts of circumstances might flourish--is tough business.  Even in the most optimistic times of American history, progressives recognized this.  In 1922, at the height of pre-Depression enthusiasm, the liberal Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, wrote:

The course of human history is like a river, sometimes it flows so slowly that one would hardly know it moved at all; sometimes bends come in its channel so that one can hardly see in what direction it intends to go; sometimes there are backeddies so that it seems to be retreating on itself.

Human history happens in fits and starts, Fosdick said, "a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces."  But, with faith, he argued that change "is not aimless, discontinuous, chaotic change," but a "path" of God's justice that moves history toward its spiritual culmination. 

1,000 years.  1,000 days.  100 days.  All are but moments as the moral arc bends.  Work for change.  Keep the long view.  And remember that old-fashioned virtue: patience.

Dear God,

Please take away the swine flu.

Amen


According to Martin Luther King, Jr. there is a power in us more powerful than the power of bullets.

King knew that that power was the power of the Spirit. Call it a religious power, a spiritual power, the power of consciousness or whatever - it has to do with the power of the mind, joined with the power of a Divine Creator.

So don't be fooled when it comes to this conversation about the swine flu. This flu wasn't created on the level of the body, because no disease is. It was created on the level of the mind, and it is there that we will root it out at the causal level.
      

For weeks, millions of people have been convinced by the media -- based on endless reports about the drug cartels -- that "Mexico is a dangerous place." It is a basic truism of spiritual philosophy that, as it is written in A Course in Miracles, "all thought creates form on some level." You get enough people agreeing in consciousness that Mexico is a dangerous place, and that dangerous thought will make it so.
     

So does that mean the media shouldn't have reported about the drug cartels? Absolutely not. But it does bear noting that today's media seems to have abdicated any sense of perspective, grabbing always for the most sensationalized, fear-producing angle of any story.  And we should try to filter the fear thoughts than can get into our minds as assiduously as we try to filter the germs that can get into our bodies.
      

If you get this - if you're already grounded in faith (or at least have read "The Secret") - then take an active part in transforming this thing. The Western allopathic medical community is doing everything it can to treat the disease on the external planes, and of course we're grateful for that. But each and every one of us have work to do on the internal planes, to transform the disease on the level of cause as well as ameliorate whatever effects it has already produced.

l) Pray it away. Just pray it away, asking God as you understand Him, the Divine Physician, Jesus or whatever other form of divine imagery works for you. Simply ask that it be removed from our midst.
       

2) Send love to Mexico. Between what's actually been happening there with the drug wars, plus all the "Mexico is dangerous" thoughts we've loaded onto it over the last several weeks, it needs a major dose of love - the most powerful medicine of all - to dissolve the fear thoughts that have produced this flu.
       

Do your part. This thing can be turned around right now, and sent back to the nothingness from whence it came. Each of us needs to stop pretending we're powerless, use the power in our hearts and work the miracles we're entitled to. Prayer is the medium of miracles; in whatever way works for you, pray right now.
      

I remember reading something by that famously spiritual sage Dan Savage about abortion.  He was reporting an argument he had with another guy about abortion, with Savage taking the position that if a woman hadn't gotten around to having an abortion by the time she was in her third trimester then she should go ahead with the birth.   

It struck me at the time that this famously liberal, gay sex columnist was taking the stance that as the fetus progressed it became more deserving in rights, and at the time I chocked it up to his Catholic upbringing.  But now it makes more sense to me.  As a fetus progresses from a potential life to a viable life, the rights of the mother to terminate that life should, in my opinion, decrease.  This idea was reinforced after reading Steve Waldman's seminal piece called Safe, Legal & Early - A New Way of the Thinking About Abortion.   

He writes:

This belief that life within the womb is on a continuum is not explicitly reflected in the political debates about abortion. We debate whether we should have parental notification--not when we should have it. We question politicians on whether they'd provide government funding for abortion, not ever asking whether subsidies should be provided for early abortions but not late.

My fantasy is that if the political system embraced the safe-legal-early doctrine, a few activists might even accept the legitimacy of part of their opponents' argument. Pro-choicers who accepted this framework would be implicitly conceding that, for at least part of the pregnancy, there's a "baby" in the womb--and the woman's right to terminate that life is neither absolute nor nine months in duration. With early abortions not only legal but easier, pro-choice activists could then have the confidence to accept what many of them have publicly avoided but privately wanted: reasonable, tightly written prohibitions on third trimester abortions while genuinely protecting the life of the mother.

Open minded pro-lifers would take note of these concessions from their "enemies," viewing them as a sign that these pro-choicers--far from being hideous baby killers--fully embrace a moral dimension to the abortion decision.

Meanwhile, any pro-lifers who accept this framework would be making a concession, too. They'd be saying, in effect, that if the other side can concede that something precious is alive - and becoming more alive with each day - then they could, in turn, acknowledge that reasonable people, of different faiths, can disagree about when exactly that baby becomes alive enough to have legal rights.