Easy Yolk

Demanding Economic Justice vs. Justifying Economic Demands

2012-01-27T09:07:00.000-08:00

...do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbour. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.
Deuteronomy 15:7b-8

Poor people have shitty lobbyists.
Jon Stewart

Mitt Romney dragged his feet too long. This week he finally "released" his tax returns for the past couple of years. Isn't it interesting that the Greek word that we English speakers translate as "forgiveness" (aphesis) means "release?" And, indeed, we would forgive him for making $21 million a year if he didn't spend so much time attempting to normalize and humanize his uber-low 14% tax rate.

First, Romney "justified" (from the Greek root word dikaios, referring to "innocence" or "justice") the low rate (at the expense of others earning far less) by reasoning that he actually pays a higher rate:

Well, actually, I released two years of taxes and I think the average is almost 15 percent. And then also, on top of that, I gave another more 15 percent to charity. When you add it together with all of the taxes and the charity, particularly in the last year, I think it reaches almost 40 percent that I gave back to the community. One of the reasons why we have a lower tax rate on capital gains is because capital gains are also being taxed at the corporate level. So as businesses earn profits, that’s taxed at 35 percent, then as they distribute those profits as dividends, that’s taxed at 15 percent more. So, all total, the tax rate is really closer to 45 or 50 percent.

According to Romney, he pays only 14% on his income (categorized as "capital gains"), but he is really contributing to the common good by investing in corporations (which, overall, have cut jobs recently in order to increase profits) and tithing to the Mormon Church.

Second, Romney justified his low rate by appealing to what is legal. He's just obeying the law of the land. But as Jon Stewart exposed earlier this week, Romney's part of a larger force of hedge fund managers and venture capitalists who successfully shape the law through lobbying activity and campaign contributions.

Jack Blum, the former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, lawyer and chair of Tax Justice Network USA, appeared on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman in the aftermath of the Romney Release. Here's how he put it:

There’s a recent study done by Citizens for Tax Justice, who put together numbers that show the companies that have taken advantage of these tax schemes are spending upwards of $2 billion a year in lobbying. That’s how they get the breaks. And it’s this congressional campaign money, it’s the ability to get access to the members, the ability to control and dictate what the tax laws will look like, that gives them the opportunity to engineer those laws, to take full advantage and save huge amounts.

Romney's Release is really significant because it clearly illuminates the desperate need for structural economic change. This is precisely what Martin Luther King called for more than 4 decades ago:

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

The specific tax code and (de)regulatory policies of the US economy produces millionaires like Mitt Romney and millions of (ex)homeowners who have been foreclosed upon. This is bad enough, but what makes this system truly scandalous is that Romney directly profits off the foreclosures of others (he's invested millions in Goldman Sachs funds featured mortgage-backed obligations).

Instead of justifying his wealth ("this is just the way things are"), the electorate (especially those from faith communities) should demand a President committed to economic justice. After all, real leaders are those who courageously transform "the way things are" because they are compelled that "the way thing are" is just not how things should be.

Romney's Release goes far towards illuminating just how bogus it is when "biblical" Christians talk about why it's not important to focus our efforts on what is "political" (changing unfair government policies) while boasting about the brand of "social justice" that too many households and faith communities equate only with paternalistic handouts to the poor and homeless. Nobody in this country should be rewarded (with lower tax rates) for making millions off the backs of the foreclosed upon.
_________________________________________
For more on the Romney Release:

The Corporate Sponsored God

2012-01-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

We stay together... pray together, we work together, and if the good Lord smiles kindly on our endeavor, we share in the wealth together.
There Will Be Blood (2007)

We’re very important. We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle...We're doing God's work.
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO

HALF of America pays NO taxes. ZERO. So their happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay taxes.
Rick Warren, Saddleback Church, twitter feed

Princeton professor of history Kevin Kruse wrote a helpful piece published in the NY Times earlier this week in the aftermath of Mitt Romney's recent "class warfare" comments:

When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.

Kruse roots Romney's mindset within a very powerful 20th century dynamic: the attempted corporate takeover of Christianity. Although the concept of the United States being a "nation under God" was first introduced nobly by Lincoln in the heart of the Civil War, new corporate-financed interest groups like The American Liberty League re-introduced the phrase during Roosevelt's New Deal 1930s:

During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices. Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state...Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

Kruse focuses on James Fifield, the minister of the 1st Congregational Church of Los Angeles, as a leading proponent of this capitalist Christianity:

Christianity, in Mr. Fifield’s interpretation, closely resembled capitalism, as both were systems in which individuals rose or fell on their own. The welfare state, meanwhile, violated most of the Ten Commandments. It made a “false idol” of the federal government, encouraged Americans to covet their neighbors’ possessions, stole from the wealthy and, ultimately, bore false witness by promising what it could never deliver.

In the Cold War 1950s, this powerful coalition combining profits and pulpits led to the addition of "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance as well as the introduction of the almighty prayer breakfast to the President's agenda. And on to the 80s, 90s and 2000s, we have witnessed the corporate agenda hating on "big government" married to the personal piety (family values) and eternal salvation of conservative Evangelicalism.

Consider the millions of dollars that have funded conservative Evangelical summer camps, publishing houses, colleges and megachurches. Wealthy donors expect the constant messages coming from these highly influential and emotionally infused sources (pastors, authors, camp directors, professors, deans) to legitimate an American way-of-life that idolizes (or is completely silent about) the profit motive and self-interest.

Consider the 100-year story of BIOLA University (The Bible Institute of Los Angeles) and their founding father: oilman Lyman Stewart. Their website echoes the history Kruse recounts:

Oil millionaire Lyman Stewart had a history of Christian philanthropy all over the Los Angeles area. He promoted religious education at local colleges, started the Union Rescue Mission and helped numerous churches with their financial needs.

Lyman and his brother Milton also financed the publication of The Fundamentals, a 90-chapter series of books that put the best conservative scholarship into the hands of a wide audience.

The Fundamentals were pamphlets that put the self-named Christian "Fundamentalists" on the map, spreading their corporate-funded "biblical" worldview throughout America. Today, one can clearly and consistently hear these well-rehearsed fundamentals (anti-evolution, biblical inerrancy, anti-Catholic & anti-Mormon--painfully ironic for them, since they will have to choose between the thrice-married Catholic Gingrich and the Mormon Corporate Hero Romney) on the lips of contemporary adherents.

And consider this chapter from the Fundamentals (from Rev. Arthur Pierson's "Our Lord's Teachings About Money"):

The Church boards are God's bankers. They are composed of practical men, who study how and where to put money for the best results and largest returns, and when they are what they ought to be, they multiply money many-fold in glorious results.

Surely, the net result of biblical interpretation, for the Fundamentalists, is overwhelmingly to the benefit of the owner-class, the 1% who benefit from "wise investment" for God's Kingdom. And surely, these conservative churches claim that wealth "trickles down" to the masses from job creating corporations doing God's work.

To be fair, most of the conservative Evangelical leaders I know (and I know many) are sincere in their quest to "lead people to Christ" and "make disciples" who take the Bible seriously. They have a very humane desire to make the world a more generous and peaceful place. However, most of them conveniently overlook the sources of their own paycheck and the underpinnings of the theology they espouse. They do not have an honest understanding of the recent historical trends that have largely shaped the way the Bible is interpreted within American conservative Christian traditions (including the tremendously wealthy Evangelical and Mormon strands).

What makes this an even more nerve-wracking conversation is that many famous conservative Christian leaders (aka "fundamentalists") make a huge deal over other Christians ("liberals") who "read their own agendas into the Bible." I do not disagree with this allegation on its own, but instead, wholeheartedly proclaim that we all read Scripture (and everything else) through a biased lens (what Walter Brueggemann calls the "zone of imagination") shaped by peer pressure, financial/economic interest, family expectation, etc. This is something all Christians must admit to.

Indeed, this unacknowledged lens is a gigantic obstacle to having any sort of constructive biblical dialogue within the American Body of Christ on vital issues like (homo)sexuality and economic policy. In fact, conservative pastors must admit that they simply cannot change their minds (and in many cases, cannot even have a nuanced conversation about them) on these issues no matter how logical or biblical it would be to do so--they would lose their job because their financial backers largely do not allow for any nuance. This is what Cornel West calls "priestly" (or Constantinian) Christianity--baptizing the status quo to benefit their own social, economic and political power and privilege.

No doubt, I would graciously concede that former Notre Dame professor George Marsden's balanced assessment rings true: "Since the early 1960s, however, most interpreters have agreed that fundamentalists' deepest interests were more ideological and theological than political" (in Fundamentalism and American Culture, 1980). But socio-economic-political interests have greatly affected the game, leading to the massive rise of conservative Evangelicalism (a softer brand of fundamentalism) in the past century. It must be noted and taken seriously for the dangerous trend it is.

This political season, as Super PACs are unveiling just how much wealthy and powerful interests are pulling the strings behind every commercial and stump speech, we ought to be on guard ("stay awake!"--Mark 13:33) for every sermon and published book that somehow baptizes the corporate interest with Jesus' gospel of the least of these (Matthew 25) by claiming to be politically neutral. It's all about philanthropy, not tax policy, the fundamentalists say. It's all about non-profits, not transforming economic structures. This conservative Christian gospel message caters perfectly to banking & corporate interests who benefit from supply-side tax policy, consistent high unemployment (the millions of "replacements" on the sidelines keep wages low) and low inflation. Just follow the money. From your local megachurch to multi-national corporate boardroom.

--> We are eagerly anticipating Dr. Kevin Kruse's upcoming release One Nation Under God: Corporations, Christianity, and the Rise of the Religious Right

Their Backs Against The Wall

2012-01-16T11:00:00.001-08:00

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
Howard Thurman

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
Martin Luther King

Some have said that without Howard Thurman there could not be a Martin Luther King. The first African-American dean at a majority white university at Boston University, Thurman took King and other students under his wing and his Jesus And The Disinherited (1949) became a staple devotional read for King throughout the Civil Rights struggle.

Thurman posited that if Jesus had a message for anyone it was for "those with their backs against the wall." Unfortunately, the dominant Western version of Christianity shelved that part. Rather embarrassing considering Jesus was a poor blue collar worker from a powerless ethnic minority in the Roman Empire.

Thurman's compelling interpretation of Jesus stresses a mystical element that is notoriously left behind in many prophetic brands of Christianity. Jesus started with the heart, calling for his followers to work through the fear and hatred that oppressed people always grapple with in Empire settings. No doubt, Thurman knew all about this, growing up in the Jim Crow American South.

Jesus called for a renewal of the heart--to replace their deep-seated hatred of Rome with a fervent unconditional love modeled by God who bestows it upon both the righteous and the wicked. Jesus called his followers to be "born again" (John 3), a phrase that mostly white Christian fundamentalists have used quite differently than Thurman and King.

King connected Jesus' backroom dialogue with Nicodemus to a ripcurrent of rebirth that would deluge human hearts and pour over into a transformation of the societal systems that were (and are) ravaged by the "triple evils" of racism, economic exploitation and war. He called for a higher synthesis of capitalism and communism, one that combined the truths of both.

This vision still awkwardly alludes both major political parties who refuse to courageously and truthfully echo what King actually proclaimed: "dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment." And today, African-Americans continue to experience much higher rates of unemployment and imprisonment that whites of equal criteria (whether resumes or rap sheets) suffer from.

At the epicenter of this rebirth was a patiently cultivated nonviolent Love that King proclaimed would turn the Game around and flip the Script:

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.

King didn't just come up with this shit on a whim and he wasn't just rhetorically joysticking when he said:

He who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

His vision of Jesus' world-transforming love was breathed into him by his family, by his church, by Thurman and Gandhi (who, incidentally, started almost everyday by reading Jesus' Sermon on the Mount). The Jesus of the Gospels was a revolutionary who called his followers to do what he did. In the words of Thurman, Jesus came to "make music in the heart" so that the whole world might dance to the sound of peace and justice.

On this MLK Day 2012, we pray for the wisdom and strength to dance with all those whose backs are against the wall. These are the ones who Jesus calls us to strategically and creatively fight for. For the undocumented. For the foreclosed upon. For the conned. For the berated. For the unforgiven. For the abused. For the neglected. For the hopeless. For the suffering. For the bullied.

*See more of Kadir Nelson's artwork here.

Yoder's Politics of Jesus: 40 Years Later

2012-01-12T11:29:00.001-08:00

...the ministry and the claims of Jesus are best understood as presenting to hearers and readers not the avoidance of political options but one particular socio-political-ethical option.
John Howard Yoder, Politics of Jesus (1972)

This year EasyYolk will be celebrating the 40-year anniversary of John Howard Yoder’s classic The Politics of Jesus with a series of posts connecting it to current issues and events. For those unfamiliar with his work, Yoder was an ethicist and theologian (1927-1997) who did the bulk of his teaching and writing at Notre Dame, a Catholic institution. Yoder worked closely with his Mennonite denomination, but seemed far more interested in dialoguing with other Christian leaders from a variety of traditions. He passionately advocated for a radical option that he believed ought to be normative for all Christians—a conviction that he never apologized for. Truly, his voice was received by many as confrontational and thus controversial, audaciously calling followers of Jesus to a gospel that was adamantly political (transcending personal piety and heavenly salvation), pacifist (rejecting violence no matter what) and participatory (following, not believing, Jesus’ teaching).

In the first chapter of The Politics of Jesus—-which was named the 5th greatest theological work of the 20th century by the mainstream Evangelical periodical Christianity Today—-Yoder laid out his 6-fold claim of Jesus’ irrelevance. These were the various ways Christians “set the authority of Jesus aside” in regards to political matters, the arguments that sincere Christians had learned to shelve the political Jesus altogether. Yoder posited that these claims replaced the political Jesus of the New Testament with a spiritual Christ of Western civilization, transferring him presently to the heart of the “believer” and into the future in a disembodied heaven where he transferred the soul of every believer when they died. This turned the gospel into a game of personal piety and individual salvation, blind to the systems of (in)justice that Jesus came to expose and confront, leading to his torture and death.

Here is Yoder’s list of typical Christian apolitical claims for Jesus:

1. The ethic of Jesus is an ethic for an “Interim” which Jesus thought would be very brief. The world was passing away soon, so Jesus believed.

2. Jesus was a simple rural figure, living in a completely different kind of society where knowing everyone and having the time to treat everyone as a person was culturally an available possibility.

3. Jesus and his followers were minorities living in a world they had no control over and exercising social responsibility was not on the agenda.

4. His message was spiritual, not social.

5. Jesus pointed people away from concrete issues of this present world to a focus on worshipping God.

6. The purpose of Jesus’ life was his death…so that sins would be wiped away and relationship with God could be restored (atonement).

Ultimately, Yoder penned Politics to debunk of all 6 of these counterfeit claims. His hypothesis was “that the ministry and the claims of Jesus are best understood as presenting to hearers and readers not the avoidance of political options, but one particular social-political-ethical option.” What that particular option is can be found in the teachings and actions of Jesus in the Gospel stories.

Indeed, Jesus was gathering around himself a sort of political party (think of church as a townhall meeting or caucus) that would model and advocate for a consciousness and lifestyle that reflected what the world would be like if God was in charge ("the kingdom of God"). This campaign compassionately energized the poor and marginalized while nonviolently criticizing (“as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves”) the mainstream parties that were just as political as they were religious: the Zealots, the Pharisees, the Essenes and the Herodians (“sheep among wolves”). Each of these parties displayed a unique platform of how to be God’s People in the face of the Roman Empire.

In short, Jesus campaigned for Israel to return to the Deuteronomic and prophetic (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos) call for social and economic justice. This meant an overturning of tax policy that favored Temple elites and locked everyone else in the economic basement. This meant a seat at the table regardless of gender, family of origin, ethnicity or disability. This meant resisting the temptation to embrace strategies of violent revenge. This meant that God’s will was accessed and enacted apart from organized religion. This meant that dismissing “politics” and “economics”—while embracing “religion” and “personal piety”—-was not an option.

As it turns out, Jesus did not come to this earth to get more souls into heaven. He came to bring heaven to this earth so that every soul might experience the God who created everything, liberated Israel from slavery and is still determined to heal all of creation through a People committed to that redemptive vocation.

The Evangelical Conundrum

2012-01-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

This is the $100,000 question: Can the evangelical leadership unify behind Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Rick Perry? There’s a conversation going on as we speak. We’re attempting to see if leaders can get on the same page.
John Stemberger, president of Florida Family Policy Council

The NY Times just couldn't resist publishing an article yesterday about Evangelical pastors and political leaders frantically attempting to unite on a Republican candidate who is not Mormon. Evangelicals, as is well known, overwhelmingly vote GOP (74% for McCain in 2008) because they have come to view abortion, gay rights, American exceptionalism and limited government tax & business policy as the "biblical" issues ("name one time that Jesus advocated for the government to solve a problem"). In addition to most Evangelicals adamantly believing that Mormonism is a "cult" (see this for one exception), they distrust Romney because he used to be more liberal on social issues before he became governor of Massachusetts (2003 to 2007).

Evangelicals are classically defined by the British historian as those Christians (like Billy Graham, Rick Warren, George W. Bush, James Dobson & Tim Tebow) who consistently articulate 4 main pillars of belief:

1. Biblicism: a particular regard for the Bible (usually an error-free textbook of timeless truths and principles that can be clearly mined by a self-evident reading)

2. Crucicentrism: a focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross (ie, "Jesus died for our sins")

3. Conversionism: the belief that human beings need to be converted (if not, one cannot have a relationship with God and cannot go to heaven when they die)

4. Activism: the belief that the gospel needs to be expressed in effort ("evangelism")

Evangelicals are by and large "ambivalent" in regards to electoral politics, according to the former Notre Dame historian George Marsden (as evidenced by Rick Warren who consistently claims that he is not "political" but vocally adovocates against abortion and gay rights because they are "moral" or "biblical" issues). They overwhelmingly say that "politics don't really matter, the gospel does" (defining "gospel" as a spiritual message with mostly future implications, beyond physical/earthly existence).

Evangelicals desperately want their George W. Bush back. Over the past 4 years, there have been a lot of rumors flying around Evangelical circles about how Obama is "baby killer" who going to raise everybody's taxes ("socialist") and give away the farm to all the gays and lesbians, destroying America from within. Trust me, I've heard several variations of all four of these issues (abortion, gays & lesbians, limited fiscal government, American exceptionalism) numerous times coming from politically ambivalent Evangelicals during the Obama years.

The really sad aspect of Evangelicals being wholly tied to these three issues when voting for Presidential candidates is that they are, quite literally, hardly biblical at all. As Duke Divinity biblical scholar Richard Hays brilliantly conveys in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996), there are less than a half dozen passages concerning gays and lesbians (Hays is actually quite conservative on this issue), no passages specifically addressing abortion, nothing even close that would patriotically equate America as a "new Israel" and literally hundreds demanding the sharing of wealth in Scripture.

Of course, this wealth redistribution is not specifically advocated to run through the government in the Gospels because Jesus and all his original followers were Jews, a politically powerless minority group within the Roman Empire. We live, however, in what is supposed to be a democracy, where at least 75% of voters consider themselves "Christian." The government will "redistribute" income & wealth one way or another: it's what tax policy does. But unfortunately, income and wealth have been dramatically redistributed to the wealthiest 2% of earners in the past 30 years, leaving the rest of us stagnant and locked in the basement.

Above all else, Evangelicals want someone who looks like and believes just as they do. Rick Perry, a fellow white Evangelcal, perfectly fits the bill, but he was such a bad debater that not even a full throttle focus on gays and abortion could save him. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are both uber-conservative Catholics, but, hey, that's a lot better than Mormon in their hierarchy of world religions.

What I greatly hope for during this politically charged 2012 is for ordinary Joe-Evangelical Christians to take this sudden political powerlessness and to reassess just how much their political imaginations really match a critical reading of the Bible.

**What about the systems of economic, social and political injustice that greatly affect millions of Americans no matter how much personal responsibility one possesses?

**What about the plight of poor, disabled and ethnic minorities that suffer in our country...the same population that Jesus recruited for his Kingdom of God movement?

**What about all the other avenues of a pro-life, family-values agenda: the overwhelming lack of opportunities for young people in inner-cities, the death penalty, repeated civilian "casualties" by predator drones, corporate health care death panels & the massive increase in immigration deportations splitting up families?

**What about corrupt "principalities and powers" like corporations, politicians & organized religion who have formed an powerful establishment demanding to be worshipped while holding on to the status quo despite the desperate need for liberation and relief for millions in our world?

**What about all the areas of American culture and political policy where we are not exceptional, failing to fulfill George Winthrop's vision that the United States should be a "city upon a hill," lighting up the world with actions of love and justice?

EasyYolk deeply respects the historic socio-political legacy of American Evangelicalism (their role in ending the slave trade, fighting for women's rights & battling economic inequality) and the enduring emphasis that Evangelicals place on individual responsibility and a critical & devotional reading of Scripture. The "parallel culture" of Evangelicalism is the Christian tradition that I initially discovered Christian faith within and continues to be the tradition that is home to many of my close friends and family members. I consider myself to be post-Evangelical because I am no longer compelled (via study, prayer and critical dialogue over time) by the way they articulate and live the 4 pillars.

However, I cling to hope this year. 2012 can be a great political year for the North American Body of Christ. Like me (but for different reasons), most Evangelicals will not be intrigued by any of the candidates--Obama, Romney or potential third party candidate Ron Paul--as the next American executive and powerfully symbolic head of the American Empire (whose power will affect all of us in many ways). This will be a great opportunity to form coalitions of many diverse communities of faith to powerfully lobby for "the least of these" (Matthew 25) which, by the way, might not exactly be advocating for our own self interests (which is not "Christian": Philippians 2:1-11).

Perhaps an important start to a more just and peaceful world would be to develop a healthy skepticism of our powerful faith leaders (both pastoral and political) who continue to ferment political convictions in old wine skins (mainline liberal Protestants and progressive Catholics who uncritically support Obama and conservative Evangelicals who are convinced Jesus voted Republican) in their quest for more power over the rest of us (these pastoral and political leaders, no matter how "Christian" they claim to be, are what Paul called "principalities and powers" whose motives and actions should be courageously exposed and confronted by followers of Jesus: see Colossians 2:13-15; Ephesians 3:10 & 6:12). A real coalition can only be formed with dialogue...which necessitates listening to other perspectives. Let's strive make 2012 the Year of the Third Way for the politically (and biblically) serious Christian.

Listen to the Voice

2012-01-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark 1:4-11

The very last line of the Hebrew Bible is a promise that God will send the prophet Elijah back to Israel to turn the Game around for God's People and the whole world(Malachi 4:5-6):

Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

So it comes as no surprise that we find, in the very first Gospel ever written, John the Baptizer dressed up as Elijah on the shores of the Jordan River, crossing faithful Jews over to a renewed vision for life. John was turning them around, calling for repentance (metanoia: changing the direction of their minds, hearts and lifestyles). John's vocation was simply to pave the way for "one who is more powerful" to recruit disciples to campaign for God's Imminent Reign (Mark 1:14-15) to crush the demonic ways of the Strong Man (Mark 3:24-27).

But Mark's Story totally resists triumphalism and violent revenge fantasies from God's chosen prophets. John is arrested and then given the death penalty. Same with Jesus. And the message from the Messiah is all about a confrontation with the powerful elites through the nonviolent weapons of compassion, service and humility in the form of creative teaching, inclusive meal sharing and an occupation of the streets and temple (Mark 11:1-19).

The opening scenes of Mark bring us Jesus' commission in baptism. As the heavens are torn apart (just like in Isaiah 63:19), the voice boldly affirms Jesus as both the King (Psalm 2:7: "You are my son, the Beloved") and the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 42:1: "...with you I am well-pleased."), a strange mix of two deeply enmeshed motifs from the Hebrew Bible. Jesus is the kind of king who is so radically committed to nonviolent service to the marginalized people of the world that he is tortured and killed by the powerful elites who are threatened by his presence and unconventional message.

As it turns out, reading Mark's Gospel as a script in the 21st century beckons us be Jesus' surrogates--both in the text and in the world. At baptism, we are reminded that, at birth (Gen 1:26-27), God has given both the dignified status of royalty and the rugged vocation of servanthood to all living beings. If Jesus was truly human, then he was no different than what we are and have the potential of becoming. This status and vocation, though, must be tapped so that we may be empowered, inspired and guided by God's Dream of healing and redemption.

We, too, hear the voice of affirmation echo from the heavens, directed specifically at each of us. If we have been "crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:20) and are "being clothed with Christ" (Rom 13:14), then we hear the voice directed at us. All the counterfeit identities that have been projected on to us by the agendas of others have been killed off, making room for a whole new wardrobe. The systems that organize American society (the family, the economy, politics, social mores), both historic and contemporary, have created winners and losers.

Consider the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling for a brilliant argument about the inferiority complex stamped on African-American children segregated into schools that were separate but far from equal to white schools--and today, consider the racist loan policies of banks and racist prison sentencing of the "justice" system and the homophobia of "traditional" marriage laws...to name just a few. All these deranged ideas that we've internalized are submerged in the waters of baptism and nailed to the cross at Calvary.

But Jesus' life, teaching and death (as summarized by these heavenly words of baptismal blessing) unveil that the authentic status of royalty is always combined with the suffering vocation of service. If the meek, merciful and mourning are blessed, then those who are living off of ethnic entitlement and economic elitism or are securing themselves with narcissism and arrogrance are living a false reality. True dignity embraces the responsibility of caring for the marginalized and oppressed of the world. Anything else is uncivilized.

"You are my son/daughter, the Beloved. With YOU I am well pleased." You are a king/queen. Now go and majestically serve the world. It only takes a lifetime of listening to this voice from heaven--over and over--and mimicing the way of the Heavenly One to be transformed into Something deeply human.

A Word from the Wise Man

2012-01-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War.
Glenn Greenwald

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage"...When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11

As as the Christian calendar transitions into the season of Epiphany, on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, I highly recommend Glenn Greenwald's recent article on the hypocritical nature of most progressives' outright dismissal of Ron Paul's 2012 Presidential candicacy. Paul has deeply unfortunate convictions, most notably about race and poverty (yes, far too important to dismiss), but Paul has boldly addressed the unquestioned violence and economic unsustainability of American imperialist policy during the fall and winter Republican debates leading to the vote in Iowa. He's the only GOP candidate will speak candidly and courageously about these issues, and lo and behold, he is near the top or leading every poll regarding the Iowa Caucuses.

But alas--and this is really Greenwald's greatest gift to our broken American political conversation--no candidate in EITHER major political party is stepping outside of the mainstream and tackling these vital issues, except Paul. Certainly not Obama. American wars and torture and surveillance and secrecy and Israel worship and authoritarian obsession with drugs are the wardrobe that Obama now unfortunately wears.

Hypocrisy enters the room, for progressives, when Paul is cast aside as a lunatic and then Obama is blindly obeyed and endorsed in our coming electoral season (which has been upon us for the past half year). We progressives just need to have a different, more honest, conversation altogether. Greenwald succinctly puts it like this:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

None of us can afford to blindly endorse Obama this time around. On these crucial policies, he has been no different than Bush...and every other GOP candidate except Paul. Over the past 3 years, his transition from campaigner to commander-in-chief has been well documented. We must lament that there has not been a candidate to emerge that has Paul's critique of empire and corporate power, without all his white supremacist baggage. But our lamentations must not lead us down the dead-end routes of apathy or cynicism. We certainly cannot afford that.

During this Christian season, may we listen to the beautiully sarcastic and secular Greenwald as a wise man from the South, bringing gifts of journalistic excellence to illuminate our minds. Greenwald is gay and lives with his husband in Brazil because US immigration policy does not recognize same-sex marriage. His unique perspective "outside the beltway" is desperately needed. I consistently read his posts as a spiritual practice, prayerfully & meditatively. And like all spiritual practices, they are transformative for the mind and body, culminating in action, from personal habits to persistent advocacy. Remember, the gospel is a groundshaking proclamation that God is on the move, working through the most unlikely voices, calling us to join the healing of the world by committing our lives to dignity, discipline, wisdom & creativity and infecting our neighbors (and enemies!) with peace, justice and compassion. Watch out, these acts are contagious.

We Expectantly Wait

2011-12-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

And so we expectantly wait
For life to reflect Reality and hope to fill every cavity.
When the lion and the lamb
Dance to a silent tune intuitively sung by all humanity.

Until then,
Addiction assaults an
Anxious audience
Caught in counterfeit dramas spun on cable channels.

Yet the manger conspires to
Redeem and reconcile.
The Game’s not over,
‘Til the phat lady sings peace and justice for all.

Please!
An epidemic of pathologies neuters pietistic pleas.
Global healing springs
From clusters committed to subversive practices of love and kindness.

This teenage virgin sings of lowly prophets
Cascading over corporate profits.
Meanwhile, predator drones are protested back to earth like manna
Making space for the generous yeast of Love rising into eternity.

Light the candle!
Burn our hearts with the Story
Of a blue-collar couple
Who shares Bethlehem dreams with the overlooked and left out.

And so we expectantly wait
For life to reflect Reality and hope to fill every cavity.
When sorrow melts into solidarity
And tears turn to triumph for all humanity.
Amen.

An Advent Sabbatical

2011-11-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7

Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid.
Luke 23:53

Advent is about learning to wait. It is about not having to know exactly what is coming tomorrow, only that whatever it is, it is of the essence of sanctification for us. Every piece of it, some hard, some uplifting, is sign of the work of God alive in us.
Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life

The season of Advent is here. According to Take Our Moments and Our Days, the Anabaptist prayer book:

Advent simply means “coming.” It is the season of yearning and
hoping; its cry is “Come, Lord Jesus.” The last of the seasons of the
church year to develop, Advent began as the period of preparation
before Christmas, just as Lent is preparation for Easter. Advent
begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day and lasts through
Christmas Eve day. From the beginning it has been a time of both
repentance and hope, a time we enter in a spirit both of self examinationand of anticipation.

In order to more intentionally embrace and pursue this time of self-examination and anticipation, EasyYolk is taking a hiatus until after Christmas.

May this be a season that surprises you with abundant opportunities to take personal inventory and breathe in the hope of "a whole new world" (2 Corinthians 5:17) brimming with peace, love, compassion, service and humility, the by-products of the spirituality and activism of the Reign of God inaugurated in that scandalous Prophet from Nazareth: birthed in a manger, murdered on a cross.

Giving Thanks

2011-11-22T16:32:00.000-08:00

I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.
Thich Nhat Hanh

In a world of failed supercommittees and family enmeshment, we need people committed to becoming solid, calm and fearless. These kinds of rare breeds are contagious and, as Thich Nhat Hanh, the great contemporary Buddhist monk, ordinary people (like you and me!) become solid, calm and fearless when we embrace a lifestyle of gratitude. In this spirit, EasyYolk offers a list of what we are truly thankful for this year:

1. Koinonia: 2 months ago, we lost my wife's father to pancreatic cancer. Times like these filter out the chaff from our lives and reveal the nourishing people who are consistently there time and time again. Our parents, siblings, friends (near and far) and our house church have all been an immense source of comfort, strength and solidarity. Perhaps no one says it better than the Dutch priest and scholar Henri Nouwen:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

We are deeply grateful for both the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (Pan-Can) and the Hirshberg Foundation for committing money and resources to battling pancreatic cancer.

2. Meals: Gratitude, intimacy and solidarity is best cultivated and celebrated with nutritious food and dark beer. We salute Native Foods in Southern California and Peace Food in New York City for their unique vegan creativity. New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado makes life even more drinkable. I first tasted their Fat Tire back in the Spring of 1994 on a road trip to Boulder, Colorado. NB continues to produce great tastes with a vigilant passion for the earth and people. They are alternatively empowered and employee owned. Try the 1554 and, if you are in Colorado or Kansas, get your mitts on the Abbey...and ship some out to California.

3. Alternative Media: The truth would be so much more elusive without Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Dean Baker and David Sirota. These real journalists provide the kind of accountability that is sorely needed if we are really going to take the rugged steps towards a legitimate democracy.

4. Jeffrey Stout's Blessed Are The Organized: Released on Halloween last year, Stout's masterpiece on the concrete manifestations of organized citizens confronting the powers came at just the right moment of Obama's (so far) failed presidency. A political science professor at Princeton, Stout defines democracy and sets off the alarms for Americans to reclaim what we've never really had:

Democracy, in the sense I am commending, opens up space for minority voices because it is committed both to freedom as nondomination and the avoidance of arbitrary exclusion. Neither of these things can be achieved, according to the tradition of grassroots democracy, unless a lot of ordinary people get organized and actually hold officials accountable. These are things that require action.

Only grassroots democrats, who are committed to keeping elites accountable, can rescue America.

5. Cornel West: Yet another Princeton professor has captured our hearts and minds for quite some time. West, an African-American public intellectual who is adamantly Christian, refuses to sit still, traveling from coast to coast, appearing on radio and TV broadcasts and getting arrested in Washington DC and NYC. He headlined 65 events for Obama in 2008, but has been overtly critical of the President for backsliding on everything from war to immigrant deportations to caving on taxes and deficit-reduction to drone killings. When Obama asked Harry Belafonte, another campaigner-turned-critic of Obama's, for he and West to cut him some slack, Belafonte responded with, "Who says we're not?" (See this and this).

5. The California Dream Act: 6 weeks ago Governor Brown signed legislation to bring more opportunity for undocumented young people who have graduated from a California high school after attending a CA school for at least 3 years, as well as meeting academic standards and show financial need:

Beginning in 2013, illegal immigrants accepted by state universities may receive assistance from Cal-Grants, a public program that last year provided aid to more than 370,000 low-income students.

The new law also makes students who are not legally in the country eligible for institutional grants while attending the University of California and California State University systems. And it permits them to obtain fee waivers in the community college system.

6. Ched Myers & Elaine Enns: These biblical scholars and activists of the Bartimaeus Cooperative are married to each other and continue to publish great resources for progressive Christians committed to living biblically in every area of their lives. Myers, the radical discipleship liberation theologian, & Enns, the Canadian Mennonite restorative justice practitioner, are a much-needed, often overlooked and more compelling alternative to more mainstream and popular Christian forms. Check out their 2 volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation (2009 & 2010). Great scholarship, intentionally readable and extremely practical.

7. Occupy Everything: The Canadian post-Anarchist periodical Adbusters challenged her readers to show up on Wall Street on September 17 with their tents...indefinitely. More than 2 months later, these courageous occupiers are still there, as well as occupying more than a thousand other places all over the planet. This activism has been snidely critiqued as a vision-less and unfocused demonstration, but we shouldn't miss the forest for the trees. Cries of "We are the 99%" echo all over the nation, calling out the obvious: American "democracy" has been hijacked by a ruling class ("establishment") of corporate, government and media elites who are hording resources and power. The widening income inequality gap is but one sign that the Reagan Revolution has been a disaster for the United States of America.

We could go on and on and on. Thanks to Chris McDougall for his continual exploration into the art of distance running. Thanks to Chris Dollar for making running fun for teenage boys. Thanks to Sheldon Good for believing in the vision of EasyYolk and posting some of this stuff to Menno Weekly's blog. Thanks to Sue Airey for continuing her theological journey into and through her 60s. Thanks to Dale Fredrickson for his obsession to communicate Scripture simply and prophetically (and for introducing me to John Howard Yoder back 2002). Thanks to my wife, Lindsay, for her one-of-a-kind compassion, pursuit of transformation, solidarity with the least-of-these and patience with my own struggles with relational prostitution, achievement orientation and love affair with Jayhawk basketball.

The Gospel According To Mark Driscoll: God Hates Us

2011-11-14T18:15:00.000-08:00

If you’re going to be a Christian, I want you to really be one, not just another Judas who hangs out with the team and then hangs himself. To do that, you need to know who the real God is and how the real God feels. Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is meritorious. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you. He hates them, too! God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you. He has had enough! He is sick of it! There’s no sense of urgency with you, but the cup is filled to the rim for him! The Bible speaks of God not just hating sin, but sinners, because sin is of our nature.
Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
Gandhi

I don't really ever find myself watching a Mark Driscoll sermon online, but a fellow Fuller Seminary grad posted it on Twitter the other day and I guess my curiosity got the best of me. Driscoll is the senior pastor at a megachurch in Seattle and even has a colonial outpost ("church plant") just a mile away from where I live in Orange County (what Mars Hill calls "one of the darkest places in America"). Incidentally, their worship leader is the lead singer for the rock band Thrice. Driscoll is well known in evangelical/fundamentalist circles. Not everyone loves him, but he's very influential.

Driscoll's sermon is posted here in it's entirety with a little context added for clarity. Shorter clips are posted here and here to get a little taste (if you don't want to digest the whole Driscoll meal).

I asked some of our more critically thinking and passionate conversation partners to respond to Driscoll's sermon. Their responses are helpful and hopeful.

This is from Rev. Dan Jones, a college pastor up in the Seattle area:

First of all, I find it disturbing that this “God hates some of you” tangent comes from a sermon that is supposed to be from the Gospel of Luke. Driscoll must go to other texts (both in the Psalms) to emphasize his point that God hates some people. This particular notion is not found in Luke’s Gospel. In fact, how this “God hates some of you” tangent found its way into the presentation of the Gospel is stunning. The fundamental message of the Gospel is the good news of God’s coming kingdom, which is characterized by justice, life, peace and love, not hate.

In regards to the thought that God hates some people, I cannot say for sure if God hates or not. Scripture seems to suggest God does hate. However, if we are to resist the easy temptation to use proof texts, then we must do the hard task of asking more appropriate theological questions. What is the difference between God’s hate/anger and human hate/anger? God’s anger is often portrayed in scripture with redemptive purposes. For example, God often chastised God’s own people for the sake of their own correction. God’s anger had a distinct purpose.

What kind of people could God hate? Driscoll says from the pulpit that God hates some of you, referring to those hearing his message. This creates an uncomfortable ambiguity to the hearer. If God hates some of us, then why? Driscoll does not fully explain. Is it because I’m gay? Is it because I’m a woman? A minority? Because I drink or smoke or play cards?

Luckily, if God does indeed hate some, the Old Testament would suggest that it was often directed toward those in power who took advantage of the marginalized. The book of Amos does a great job of highlighting this point.

In reality, the apostle Paul taught that Jesus Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus’ message and ministry was characterized by radical, world changing love, which culminated in his own death for all humanity. Is this the action of a hateful God?
________________________________________________
This from Tiffany Ashworth, an English teacher in Durham, North Carolina:

Several of his comments led me to think that his definition of justice differs significantly from mine and is mostly other-worldly. Perhaps this is why the idea of God hating people is not so troubling to him; he banks less on the hope for redemption of all things fallen than I do. To him, justice is about making sure people go to the right place when they die; this world then doesn’t mean much because what matters is the afterlife and the locations we find ourselves in—-outside this world—-at that time. But such a notion troubles me immensely because I do view God’s disdain for who we are as a sign of evil winning out. And his emphasis on where we go after we die also signifies to me a loss of hope, an implicit affirmation that God has given up on this world, his creation.

Over the years, the definition of justice that has most compelled me is one that prompts us to care deeply about this fallen, broken, despised world and our equally depraved selves within it. It is one that urges us to bear God’s image through probing others to embrace the healing and humanizing divine image present within them. And, in the process of returning to our true selves, we tend to this fallen creation in its various capacities while clinging adamantly to the hope that God’s justice is, indeed, real. Evil will not win. His kingdom will indeed reign, judging the evil in all levels of creation. So we work with urgency toward being God’s image-bearers now because when the time of final judgment inevitably comes, we want to be sure we are fit for the radical kind of holy life to which it does and will ultimately call us.
______________________________________________
And this from John Mestas, a pastor in Orange County offering us a Christian formula for deciphering God's wrath in the biblical text:

To understand God's wrath, look to the occasions in which Jesus was brought to anger. To understand God's love, look to the times Jesus extended, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. As Driscoll is so fond of doing, add up the times Jesus was angry, and add up the times Jesus was loving. Are you surprised by the results? Jesus literally died trying to display God's love. God created this world, God is sustaining this world, and God is redeeming this world. These are not acts of hate or wrath but of love.
_______________________________________________

Here's why we EasyYolk Christians find Driscoll's voice to be so horrendous:

1. His paycheck and patriarchialism lead him to take himself far too seriously:

My job is to tell you the truth and your job is to make a decision. (repeated later)

Where's the accountability, dialogue, etc? His congregation is apparently filled with passive decision-makers whose only role in the community is to decide between two equally disturbing options: either Driscoll's Version of God (salvation) or Hell.

2. He takes a lot of pride in "telling the truth" but his bluntness is never combined with a truthful telling of other equally historic brands of Christianity that disagree with his (and there are many). He has no room for the contested nature of Christianity (his Neo-Reformed perspective, dominated by a God of wrath, is the only Christian way, according to him). Augustine and John Calvin, those giants of the Christian sub-tradition that Driscoll claims to be a part of, undoubtedly would be troubled by much of what he says and how he says it.

3. He's hateful and divisive:

Don't let your hippy, hackey-sack Jesus be a replacement for the King of kings and Lord of Lords.

There's a lot to unpack in that statement. He's using a propaganda device to cater to conservative (politically and theologically) congregants who have been trained to feed off caricatures of "liberals" and "socialists" who are destroying America and the Body of Christ. They get the exact same language from Fox News as well as other conservative pastor heroes.

4. As stated before, the harm in his message is that he's got such a large pedestal within American Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism:

We started with 10 people in a living room and God-willing we will have 10,000 here today.

10,000? Lord, have mercy on us all.

5. Where's the Love? Driscoll infuses anger and hatred into a God enfleshed in the man who was defined as "a friend of tax collectors and sinners" and even forgave those who conspired to kill him. Jesus put a stamp on the very heart of God, who's tender mercy and forgiveness are poured out on the whole world and whose followers, likewise, are called to love "neighbor" and "enemy" alike. Driscoll, unfortunately, limits the vastness of God's overpowering love by using fear and manipulating a condition into God's unconditional grace and love.

6. He seems arrogantly (ignorantly?) sure about where people are destined after death:

If you die without Jesus, he will pour out that cup of wrath on you forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

What exactly does it mean to "die without Jesus?" I'm sure Driscoll spells this out in his sermons and writings (over and over again), but this is worth considering here. The power and love of God in Christ is severely limited if some people have Jesus (folks who believe in the same things Driscoll does) and others do not. Especially since God desires for "all people to be saved" (I Tim 2:4).

7. Lastly, Driscoll's understanding of God's wrath is misunderstood in light of the entire biblical narrative. God's wrath is consistently poured out on the people who are supposed to represent God's Dream of redemption for the entire world: Israel and the Church. In Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Vol. 1, biblical scholar and activist Ched Myers writes that, in Scripture, God’s Wrath is an “expression” not “negation” of love. Because of a radical dedication to unconditional love, God refuses both retributive violence and inaction. In Christ, we see the culmination of God's design for the healing of the cosmos: redemptive nonviolence and restorative justice. Myers concludes that God wrath is holistic, allowing us to reap the destruction we all consistently sow:

...this “judgment” looms in the end-game of our addictions or infidelities in the personal sphere, or of the arms race or environmental destruction in the collective sphere.

To sum, the wrath of God is another way of saying that God is defined by a commitment to covenantal love, bringing justice & healing to the world. God is both pissed off and grieved to the heart when people suffer at the hands of oppressors and abusers. God actively prods and compels us to join in the realization of the healing of the world as modeled and empowered by Jesus.

Comments & Dialogue

2011-11-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Gandhi

As we have noted several times over the past two years, and as reader "Timmy T" pointed out last week, we are committed to dialoguing with just about everyone about the vital issues addressed on EasyYolk. However, over the past few months, EasyYolk has not responded in the comments section. Readers have posted some vulnerably shared questions, comments and concerns only to be given the silent treatment!

I apologize for this state of affairs. I've left a few of you hanging. The reason is quite simple: I've attempted over and over to write in the comments section, signing into my Google acount (as I have for the past couple of years), and Blogger simply refuses to allow me to post!

Perhaps the best way forward, and in my opinion a better space for dialogue, would be the use of my Facebook Wall (or if you want to keep it personal, Facebook Message me). Of course, I prefer face to face conversation over a dark beverage. When two human beings sit and sip gently and nonanxiously, sincerity is easily identified and dignity, humility and compassion is passed across the table. But this is often unrealistic due to geographic and time constraints. Thanks for your patience with this matter.

Much Love & Peace,
Tom Airey

The Corporatization Of Our Lives

2011-11-07T16:05:00.001-08:00

Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.
Edward Gramlich, former Federal Reserve Official

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12

Over the past 7 weeks, with the Occupy movement exponentially growing, much ink has been spilled on the evils of corporations, on one side, and the defense of corporations as "job-creators" on the other. The protestors lament corporate outsourcing, job-cutting, sinfully high executive pay, low taxes and increased campaign contributions and lobby activity in Washington. Meanwhile, the corporate defenders proclaim the vitality of entrepreneurship, deregulation, trickle-down taxation and free trade for economic growth. This is a tremendously vital question for our time and warrants an answer to the timeless question: Which side of history are you on?

Over the past few decades, there has been a serious corporate squeeze going on. Through strategic advertising, corporations have manufactured demand for products ranging from various pharmaceutical drugs to meat and dairy to large military weapons to bottled water. Do we really need these products? Corporations have funded both "research" and commericials to make it clear that we, in fact, cannot and should not live without them.

Take, for example, something as "innocent" as running shoes. It has been ~~conventional~~ corporate wisdom since the late-70s that running is good for us and that we need shoes with plenty of cushioning in order to reduce injuries. As it turns out, more and more scientists and top runners themselves are discovering that just the opposite is true. And this, of course, makes sense: what did the human species do before Nike?

As a result of the massive upsurge in marketplace competition (what Robert Reich calls "supercapitalism"), corporations have strategically colonized more and more of our lives. They have mastered the art of consumer persuasion. Most of us are now totally convinced that we need to eat meat (lots of it) in order to get our protein, purchase the latest running shoe technology to support our knees, feet and backs and a supercharged $800 billion military to keep us safe from terrorism.

At the same time that corporations have worked tirelessly to convince us that we desperately need their products, they have spent millions (because they can) on campaign contributions and lobbying in order to influence economic policy at both the national and state level. And at the very same time corporations have worked tirelessly to change the political rules, they have continued to monopolize access to media channels. When Americans turn on the TV (as they do quite often), they are tuning into a corporate version of what is important and why we should all be talking about it at the water cooler the next day.

All this sounds so conspiratorial. But it isn't. It is the logical outgrowth of an economic system based on the profit motive and an American cultural narrative "with its compulsive stress on independence, its contempt for weakness and its adulation of success" (Robert Bellah in Habits Of The Heart: what he calls "dominant ideological individualism").

What does all this mean for followers of Jesus who take seriously the radical socio-economic and political demands of the gospel? According to the Apostle Paul, we must be the ones who engage the powers-that-be, "the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." These "principalities and powers," according to John Howard Yoder in Politics of Jesus (1972) citing Colossians 1:15-20 "were supposed to be our servants [but] have become our masters and our guardians" (see also James McClendon's Ethics and Walter Wink's 3-Volume series on the Powers). God created businesses and governments to order our lives (without them, there would be constant chaos and fear), but they are fallen and all of creation groans for their redemption (Romans 8). In an ultimate act of accountability, Jesus exposed these powerful forces in his death on the cross (Col 2:13-15): killing is what the "cosmic powers" of government, religion and business do to those who refuse to worship them.

Unfortunately, a conservative brand of evangelical Christianity has come to dominate the American religious landscape, conveying "cosmic powers" as Satan and his band of demons, flying around our world to get individuals to sin. This "belief system" either promotes corporate power or remains silent on the large influence that corporations have on not only "the economy," but as it turns out, our entire lives. This "born again" evangelicalism proposes that life really just boils down to one "spiritual" (not "economic" or "political") question: Are you saved? And by "saved," the born-again always means "do you know for sure that you aren't going to hell when you die?" Although this construal of "salvation" is contested within the 2000-year Christian Tradition, this is virtually always defended by the evangelical Christian as "what Christians have always believed."

In addition to individual eternal salvation, a form of personal piety is emphasized, sometimes summarized as "family values" or "traditional morality." Don't cuss, don't chew and don't date boys who do. Or for boys: don't date boys. Over the past 40 years, homosexuality, abortion and "big government" (except when used to criminalize homosexuality and abortion) have become the big sins to guard against, replacing the evils of alcohol, evolution and interracial marriage earlier in the 20th century. This "personal faith in Jesus" is committed to rugged, autonomous individualism at the expense of the common good and with all the focus on personality morality, issues of class and power are pushed to the sidelines.

This culturally respectable suburban brand of evangelicalism stays away from a prophetic critique of corporate power and influence largely because it would require biting the hand that feeds her. Church buildings are financed and pastor's salaries are divved up by the tithes and offerings of those who have earned great wealth from corporations, whether by tax write-offs, salaries or stock dividends.

Fortunately, establishment (or mainstream) religion always has her prophetic rivals within the American Body of Christ. Almost a century ago, as hard-core evangelicals (self-proclaimed "fundamentalists") railed against "political" inner-city churches fighting poverty and crime, the left-leaning social gospel magazine Christian Century offered this pinpoint analysis in its April 1921 issue:

When the capitalist discovers a brand of religion which has not the slightest interest in 'the social gospel,' but on the contrary intends to pass up all reforms to the Messiah who will return on the clouds of heaven, he has found just the thing he has been looking for.

Might as well have been written yesterday. Many of the top 1% of wealth-earners have discovered a religion that guarantees eternal life in heaven by acknowledging a mental assent to Jesus and cheers on financial success and charitable giving while remaining "neutral" on the most vital political and socio-economic issues of the day. And many of the bottom 99% go along with the rules of the evangelical game, wooed by celebrity pastors, content with the dualistic simplicity of religious doctrine and unburdened by the few demands placed on them (anything more would be works-righteousness, not justification by faith) while soaking in the relative social respectability of their belief system. And certainly the numbers help: it's always comforting to be a member of the majority.

The pursuit of profit is the bottom line for our deeply influential economic system. It dominates every aspect of our lives. Within the biblical narrative, on the other hand, God selects and shapes a people who are dedicated to a bottom line of love, peace and justice. When forces like corporations abrasively work to cripple God's Dream for the world, those who pledge allegiance to the biblical Script are called to creatively and consistently confront them.

And when cosmic powers like the federal government issue Supreme Court rulings that grant corporations personhood and give them unlimited influence over campaign funding and, at the same time, increase the number of tax loopholes so that many corporations do not pay taxes, then followers of the God of justice must raise our voices.

As Martin Luther King said in the final year of his life, not only are we "called to be a Good Samaritan, but also to change the road to Jericho." In order to grant economic opportunity to the Other 99%, we must engage the system.
_____________________________________________
Here are some of the largest American corporations and their tax advantages:

Here Comes The Groom

2011-11-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

…contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real.
Thomas Merton

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5As the groom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. 6But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. 8The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ 10And while they went to buy it, the groom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. 11Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ 13Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
Matthew 25:1-13

Immediately after Jesus subversively sermonized on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), he cast a warning to all those who assumed they are citizens of God's Dream for the World: just because one consistently and loudly calls out the name of the Lord doesn't mean that they "are in." "Kyrie, Kyrie," (Mt 7:21) Jesus has so-called disciples pleading, but they are not recognized by the Master: "I never knew you!" (Kyrie is Greek for "lord" or "master" and would have been used by Roman citizens in reference to Caesar and by Jews in reference to their god Yahweh). This "Kyrie, Kyrie" deepens the meaning of radical discipleship as it enters the echo chamber of Jesus' story-telling later in Matthew's 25th chapter. As it turns out, we followers of Jesus are defined by both our mentality ("Keep awake!"--25:13) and our active participation in the Movement ("only one who does the will of my Father in heaven"--7:21).

Keeping awake to Jesus' Dream for the world requires much focused attention in a culture that lulls us to sleep with a script dedicated to consumer products, militaristic national security, addictive copings and trivial entertainment. While we daydream about how we might bind our fear and anxiety with food, drink, sex and cheap consumer goods produced in Chinese sweatshops, we miss the Groom who is "with us" (Matthew 1:23) when we least expect it: when we reconcile with our brothers and sisters (Matthew 18:15-20) instead of resorting to gossip, revenge or just getting "over it;" when we generously share our resources with the most vulnerable of humanity (Matthew 25:31-45) instead of hoarding or investing for the greatest return; and when we inclusively invite others to join Jesus' Dream for the World (Matthew 28:18-20) instead of rejecting those with social baggage or who fail the "really bad sins" test.

A big part of our spiritual narcolepsy has to do with the counterfeit assumptions ingrained in us that have siphoned off "religion" from "everything else there is," a seed planted within the Tradition way back in the days of Constantine in the 4th century (and intensified in the Enlightenment framing of the world from 1650 until yesterday). Many of us wrongfully expect to only find God in a church building or when reading the Scriptures or during set-aside prayer times. And many of us wrongfully expect that our primary vocation on earth is to "get people saved" before the Groom in Heaven comes back and raptures us to the skies. The Gospels, in fact, declare that Jesus was (and is) revealing himself outside of the normal channels of organized religion. No wonder all those (scribes, Herodians, chief priests, pharisees, etc) with religious and political power wanted him dead.

Matthew's story consistently communicates this different message about out-of-the-box spirituality. It is about a God Who Is With Us (Mt 1:23) in the nitty-gritty and mundane moments of our lives. Our lives, like the bridesmaids in the Matthean episode, ought to be marked by a constant sense of anticipation and preparation for the Groom to re-appear and transform our moment. We are invited to make the Dream a reality, but we're going to need to focus on the fuel to keep our lights burning long into every dark corner. The spiritual substance that has historically caffeinated the saints comes in many forms: intercessory prayer, mindfulness meditation, intentional solitude, music/liturgy, Scripture fermentation, fasting, confession (what we call "taking personal inventory") and listening/responding to sermons. These "practices" exist so that disciples can be prepared to effectively seek and find the Groom at work during the game: the rest of life.

Perhaps what we call Christianity really just boils down to a lifestyle of actively seeking and finding the Groom's Kingdom-of-Heaven celebrations. The Groom's wedding parties celebrate God's Dream becoming a reality "on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10) for the outcasts, marginalized, oppressed and passed-over: socially, politically and economically. Perhaps we often miss the party because we are obsessing over the wrong invite list. Our culture trains us to magnetically seek learn the winning formulas from the financially successful, the muscular, the charismatic and religiously respectable. The Groom's wedding banquet celebrates a commitment to transcending wealth, wisdom and power with tender mercy (hesed in Hebrew), social justice (tsedeqah in Hebrew) and enacting his subversive teachings (mishpat in Hebrew).

Today, we commit ourselves to keeping ourselves awake to God's celebratory Dream for the world. The Groom is alive and coming...everyday.

A Creative Tax For A Better World

2011-10-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

Money is power. And wherever large amounts of money collect, so also new centers of power form. The latest historical manifestation of this is the modern corporation. Make no mistake, these new power centers are not democracies. We don't vote for the CEO's or their policies (unless we are: rich enough to be significant shareholders, informed enough to know what's going on, and compassionate enough to care about more than just personal profit), yet our destinies are increasingly in their hands.
Dr. Ellis Jones, author of The Better World Shopping Guide

A good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.
Martin Luther King

One of the arguments often made by "biblically based" churches in regards to the controversial issue of government "welfare spending" is that government programs are unChristian because churches should not be relying on the government to do the work of caring for the poor and vulnerable. Although we vehemently disagree with both the logic and practicality of such conventional wisdom, last Sunday, our church made a consensus decision to enact a corporate tax on our consumer spending. This "holy excise tax" is designed to both (1) disincentivize our demand for unneeded cheap consumer goods & services (mostly bought from companies that grow profit for investors by hiding the costs to God's precious Creation: stripping dignity from workers, animals, communities and the earth herself); and (2) raise revenue to give to organizations that care for our most vulnerable neighbors. After all, shouldn't the Christian community be the alternative political body that both models and sparks an alternative vision (The Kingdom of God) to adamantly care for the widow, orphan and immigrant (as well as the debt-strapped college grad, homeless vet and the former bread winner reduced to the ranks of the long-term unemployed)?

Our house church has committed to saving all our receipts so that we can accurately take inventory of our spending habits during each week. We've decided we want a spirituality that explores all the ways are we seeking a counterfeit form of salvation (or as we put it: "binding our anxiety") through consumerism and materialism. When we are caught in an addictive cycle of spending, our lives are shaped more by the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith ("the profit motive" and "self interest") than the Image of the Invisible God who rejected the acquistive lifestyle of Solomon by calling his disciples to live simply like the birds of the air and flowers of the field.

In the process of taking inventory, it has become clear to us that measures can be creatively taken to reduce our collective storing up of earthly treasures while, at the same time, making space for heavenly treasures, prioritizing financial gifts to "the least of these."

Our Open Hearts Christian community has decided on a voluntary corporate tax on goods and services purchased during the week. We are using the Better World Shopping Guide ("more than 5 years of intensive research, this work is based on a comprehensive database of over 1000 companies and utilizes 25+ reliable sources of data") which gives companies from a large variety of categories a grade from A to F, depending on the social consciousness of their business practices, considering human rights, the environment, animal protection, community involvement and social justice. Companies rated B have a 10-cent tax on each receipt, while companies rated C, D & F get a 25-cent tax. In addition, the BWS Guide has a list of the top 20 corporate villians, including Exxon Mobil, Walmart, Verizon, Kraft, Nestle and Bank of America--we pay 50 cents each time we support these Socio-Economic Goliaths.

Over the next few weeks, as we gather on Sundays and share our shopping struggles, we will make a consensus decision about where to donate our tax revenue. Perhaps we will set up an account at Kiva and give zero-interest loans to entrepreneurs in the Third World or perhaps we will purchase a llama ($150) or water buffalo ($250) for a Third World village through Heifer International or perhaps we will fund a college scholarship for an undocumented student here in Southern California who is denied the opportunity to legally work.

Perhaps the one clear success of the Occupy Wall Street Movement thus far has been her witness to the three-decade widening of income inequality in the United States. What has led to skyrocketing income for the top 1% (and especially the top .1%)? Just 2 days ago, "coming out" with their own nonpartisan study, the Congressional Budget Office cited soaring salaries of superstar actors, athletes and musicians, more liberal executive compensation, and the growth of the financial sector, but also noted that "the equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller." In addition, there are plenty of ways that the federal government continues to prop up the wealthy through subsidies, tax favors and overall deregulation, not to mention the Supreme Court's befuddling decision last year to allow unlimited corporate campaign contributions in Citizen's United v. FEC.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the very structure of our American economic system inherently creates winners and losers. Corporations offer cheap, sexy products that entice all of us through slick advertising, and, in a coalition with both media and government elites, have locked the other 99% into a game of stagnant wages, increasingly harried work environments, delayed retirement, long-term joblessness and rising prices for higher education, energy and medical care.

More than four decades ago, in the last year of his life, Martin Luther King proclaimed that "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Like King, we believe that this will ultimately come through a redirected change of fiscal policy and regulation, but perhaps sparked by a movement of families and faith communities tangibly modeling Another Way.

Occupy. It's What Jesus Would Do.

2011-10-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

With another high-magnitude global protest coming up on October 29 (the eve of the G-20 Summit), I thought it would be timely to address the Christian nature of activism and protest. There most certainly has been discussion from pulpits, blogs, articles and face-to-face dialogues over the nature of Christian witness in regards to Occupy Everywhere. Is this the kind of activity that Jesus and the early church would participate in if they lived in the 21st century? Those of us compelled by the EasyYolk of Jesus obviously think so.

The very nature of Jesus' ministry was a campaign of confronting the ruling class (the 1%) while energizing and humanizing those denied dignity and opportunity by the rules of the social, religious, political and economic game (the Other 99%). His proclamation of the Reign of God (basilea tou theou) echoed the yearning of the masses held down by those empowered by Caesar, Herod and Caiaphas who, clinging to wealth and power, made decisions that vociferously maintained The Status Quo which was always terrible news for the Other 99%.

Unfortunately, many Christians since the Constantinian disaster of the 4th century have portrayed the signficance of Jesus' life, ministry and death as a sort of sin amnesty and road to heaven after death for those who "believe" that Jesus was the Son of God (hijacking the Greek word pistis which meant a radical allegiance to a way-of-life, not a mental ascent to a metaphysical doctrine or principles). The idea that Jesus' kingdom was spiritual while Caesar/Herod/Caiaphas' was political was thoroughly debunked by John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus in 1972. Supported with biblical exegesis and theological sophistication, Yoder described the Reign of God as "a visible socio-political, economic restructuring of relations among the people of God, achieved by divine intervention in the person of Jesus." Yoder's masterpiece was named the 5th Best Theological Work of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2000.

When Jesus told the Rich Young Man to sell his "possessions" and give all the proceeds to the poor and then join Jesus' campaign, he was confronting a horrific economic situation in 1st century Palestine, where wealthy landowners were collecting foreclosed properties from debt-strapped tenant farmers. Jesus' bold confrontation was more than an endorsement of charity. It was a clarion call to overhaul The Status Quo. And after all, Jesus was taking the Bible seriously, demanding that these corporate landowners actually obey the Deuteronomic provisions of Jubilee.

The 1% hated Jesus because his populism threatened their bottom line. If the Reign of God was being inaugurated in Jesus, then the wealthy and powerful were in trouble. The Status Quo would be shattered. Wealth and precious resources would be shared, not hoarded. Religious practices like Sabbath and cleansing would not be used to keep the Other 99% in the basement and the moneychangers of the Temple would not be able to overcharge pilgrims during Jewish festivals.

Jesus creatively, symbolically and nonviolently confronted the antics of the ruling elites. He mocked how they took themselves so seriously by riding a lowly donkey to the cheers of the Other 99%. He quoted Scripture to religous leaders to challenge the acclaimed militaristic politics of King David. He theatrically turned the tables on the bankers who got rich off fees and interest charged to the poor and the middle class. He fed thousands by sharing small meals, modeling an economics of abundance. He occupied towns with his loyal activists who lived simply and shook the dirt off their sandals to all those who refused to listen to the Jesus' Dream for a New Economy.

In short, Jesus embraced the 99% and actively resisted the 1%. So should we. We should use creativity and imagination just like he did. We should use our words and our bodies and our resources just like he did. We should expose lies and deceit that continue to propel the 1% into financial dominance...just like he did.

Sometimes our creatively nonviolent practices will lead to arrest just like they did for him. Sometimes we will be mischaracterized just like he was. Sometimes our inconvenient truths will lead to torture just like it did for him. Sometimes our well-articulated Dream will lead to an untimely death just like it did for him.

The basic notion of neighborly love ought to lead us to occupy. Even simple-yet-symbolic acts of protest like walking, putting words to signs, camping and sharing a meal with those who join us plant a seed to proclaim that the Reign of God is in solidarity with the Other 99%. Many of Occupy's opponents chide the lack of demands, condescendingly calling for a honed vision. But in this highly fragmented society with multi-layered strands of injustice, this occupation invites all of us to expose the wounds strategically inflicted upon us by the 1%: escalating college debt, foreclosures, cut jobs, outsourced jobs, increased workload, privileged legislation at the hands of the legions of lobbyists and lawyers, war profits, mortgage-backed fraud and deceit, political backscratching, bailouts, trickle-down fantasies and unlimited corporate contributions.

Quite frankly, many (most?) contemporary forms of Christianity are dedicated to the socio-economic status quo, emphasizing personal piety, eternal salvation and personal charitable giving (on top of church tithing) which is sincere-yet-paternalistic. These mainstream pastors encourage prayer and personal responsiblity for the down-and-out and impoverished. For them, the church can help during hard times, but ultimately isn't called to be "political." This, in itself, is a deeply political statement. Appeals to political neutrality always means The Status Quo. In order to keep things the way they've always been, leaders do subtle work, under the radar, behind the scenes, to keep the Other 99% docile and focused on "spiritual" matters. Put more cynically, abortion and gay marriage have become lightening rods in these circles to distract disciples from the real issues.

But as Cornel West put it in the 5th chapter of Democracy Matters (2004), there have always been "prophetic" and "priestly" strands of Christianity (and every other religion in the history of the world). The ancient Israelites received direction (Torah) from God, after their liberation from Egypt, about how vital it was for them to cultivate an economic system that would tangibly meet the needs of the widow, orphan and resident alien. But priestly faith creeped into the Israelite mix, emphasizing cultic rituals and cleanliness litmus tests. Some folks apparently deserved full dignity...and others didn't.

And this is precisely what we hear from the 1% in regards to the poor and working classes today: "if you don't have a job, get off the couch and get a one" and "if the government got out of the way, then businesses could start hiring again." Priestly religion has always been about instituionalizing the righteous and the wicked and isolating the scapegoats so we can have someone to blame all our hardships on. Jesus died as a scapegoat between two wicked sinners to expose the shortcomings of priestly religion, calling us to a form of prophetic faith that rejected narcissism by pledging solidarity with "the least of these."

That loud voice you hear second-guessing the strategies and motivations of the Occupiers is the priestly megaphone of the 1% who have unlimited access to money and media outlets. But that other still small voice of the Occupation is the whisper of the prophetic God who is always on the side of the crucified. Always has been. Always will be.
_________________________________________
Epilogue:
Props to Gavin Fabian, an EasyYolk conversation partner here in Orange County. Here's what the Orange County Register had to say about his prophetic work:

GAVIN FABIAN OF IRVINE says he has joined the occupation to speak out against "economic injustice" and the "lack of empathy" that the super-rich in the United States have toward regular Americans. The Princeton University graduate, who is employed, wants "conservatives" to know that many people in this country have worked really hard but are still struggling financially. He wants unemployment fixed, more funding to public schools and higher education made more affordable. He wants "progressives" to exert energy in helping President Obama promote their agenda rather than just blaming him for not getting it done.

It's One or the Other: Caesar or God.

2011-10-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are the Caesar's, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
Matthew 22:15-22

The work of many recent biblical scholars (ie, Marcus Borg, Ched Myers, John Howard Yoder & N.T. Wright...among many others) has testified that this week's gospel passage has been perhaps one of the most misinterpreted biblical episodes in Christian history...with disastrous results. It has justified unquestioning autocratic rule (including Nazi Germany) and was quoted widely by opponents of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" has been widely used to quarantine life into two different realms of existence, completely separate from each other: politics and religion. Church and State are on two distinct planes, never to intersect or interact with each other.

This interpretation has Jesus encouraging followers to do one thing politically and one thing religiously. It assumes that Jesus' campaign was not about gritty social, political and economic realities, but simply about changing the heart so that individuals can go to heaven when they die. Seen this way, Jesus' response to the coalition of Pharisees and Herodians is used to baptize the power and legitimacy of both political leaders and pastors respectively. This is exemplified most crudely in the Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket when Gunnery Sargeant Hartman screams at his boot camp soldiers after they sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas: "You can give your hearts to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Marine Corps."

However, this apolitical charicature of Jesus falls flat on the ears of biblical scholars who, as N.T. Wright has put it, have learned more about 1st century Palestinian Judaism in the last 50 years than in the first 1950 years combined. Jesus would have never considered dividing life into "political" and "religious" categories. Jesus, instead, creatively indicted the Pharisees & Herodians who symbolically sold out by carrying a Roman denarius with Caesar's "image" above the words "Caesar Son of the Divine" inscribed on it.

This was the 1st century scandal because, for a faithful Jew, Caesar was not God nor an anointed Messiah ("son of God"), but instead a human being stamped with the "image of God" (Genesis 1) who created everyone and everything. As it turns out, in the the 1st century (just like the 21st), God and Caesar were not located in different categories, but on the same playing field ("the confrontation of two regimes"--John Howard Yoder), competing for the hearts and minds of everyone. One couldn't possibly pledge allegiance to both Caesar and the God of the Hebrews.

Enter Jesus, who inclusively extended "peace" and "salvation" to the world through his followers who called him (and not Caesar) "Lord" and "Savior." Caesar brought peace to the world through fear, violence and intimidation. He coerced loyalty and devotion from citizens and all those on the outer fringe of the Empire. Those rebels and vagabonds who refused were given the ultimate death penalty: crucifixion.

When Jesus told his interrogators to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" the clear implication was that this meant nothing would be rendered to Caesar because God was the One who was reigning, beckoning the whole world (even Gentiles, prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors and zealots) to join in the loving, serving, compassionate healing of the cosmos (what Jews beautifully call tikkun olam).

In today's climate, "render unto caesar" is often used (by pastors and political leaders alike) as a timeless truth to convince faithful Christians to obey the policies of the government ("the things of Caesar")--no matter how unjust--while at the same time to commit themselves to prayer, Bible study and following the preaching of the pastor-hero ("the things of God"). This counterfeit rendering desperately needs to be reclaimed by followers of Jesus who was brutally silenced, tortured and murdered by Caesar.

Today, Caesar (all those who idolatrously wield power through politics and/or the purse) continues to silence, torture and murder in the name of "national security" and "economic growth." Today, God continues to be devoted to sacrificial love and service, calling anyone with the courage and conviction to join the Prophetic Task of criticizing the powerful while energizing the disinherited of the earth. Today, we have an opportunity to take personal inventory: what are we rendering to Caesar...and what are we rendering to God.

Occupy Wall Street 3x Per Day: Go Locarian

2011-10-14T12:02:00.001-07:00

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
Wendell Berry

Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
James 5:4

Thousands of victims of the unjust economy are camping in cities all over the nation. Princeton professor Cornel West recently characterized the groundswell of protests as a place where "people are straightening their backs up." The signs and chants of "We are the 99%" seek to unveil the dehumanizing practices of both corporations that have placed profits over people (or better yet, shareholders & executives over workers, consumers & the environment) and the political leaders who have been listening to lobbyists and lawyers, leaving the "least of these" out in the cold.

Many of us who pledge allegiance to the Prophet of justice--who was murdered after overturning the tables of those making unjust profits (Mark 11:15-19)--are deeply resonating with the spiritual consciousness of Occupy Wall Street. We see it as our Christian vocation to be in solidarity with those who have been oppressed and stripped of dignity by the "principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:11,15) of the world. Many of us want to join the new culture fermenting in New York City and the scores of other city occupations all over the nation and many of us are doing just that. But we must also be challenged to allow these protests to spill over from the event itself into the rhythm of our everyday lives. This kind of holistic occupation against corporate greed & injustice can be fueled by a "locarian" diet: vegetables grown and harvested locally.

In the past few decades, corporate farms, driven by intense pressure from investors and shareholders to increase profits, have accelerated the production of animal products and farm commodities through government subsidies and low-wage/high-risk labor, leading to horrendous conditions for workers & animals, human disease and ecological poisoning. These external costs are masked by the artificially low prices they produce at the fast food restaurants and corporate supermarkets where so many Americans shop.

Unfortunately, our elected leaders lack the courage and resources to enact legislation that will protect all of us from these corporate maneuvers. That's where we come in. With our electoral system in crisis mode, only a massive boycott of these products will transform conditions for workers, animals and the earth. Instead of corporate meals cheapened on the backs of overworked and underpaid labor, we can devote the bulk of our diets to healthy produce grown on local, independent farms. Shopping at farmers' markets creates jobs, reduces emissions, supports our non-subsidized neighbors and tunes us into the Source of production: God, the earth and the precious workers.

A commitment to a mostly plant diet produced locally (locarian!) cultivates in us an empathy that places some of the most vulnerable citizens of the earth (including the earth itself) ahead of our own destructive impulses towards comfort, convenience and cheap consumption. It instills in us a creativity, planning and preparing meals that energize us towards more acts of peace and justice. And, ultimately, it puts our money where our deepest convictions reside: every dollar spent is a vote cast for the farmer who takes her vocation of caring for all of God's Creation seriously.

For some, a locarian shift will be dramatic and rigid, but for most, it will a slower evolution away from factory farms and animal products. Even when our eating is characterized as flexitarian or vegan before dinnertime--as opposed to a rigid vegetarianism or veganism--we still make our sacred mark on the corporate landscape. Like all spiritual practices (prayer, fasting, charitable giving, Scripture reading, etc), the more we participate the more we are healed and transformed...and the world with it.

*Check out the Better World Shopper for a quick-and-easy guide to businesses that place human rights, animal protection, the environment, community involvement and social justice ahead of the almighty dollar.

Pepper Spray, Cults And So Much More

2011-10-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

The peaceful policy of the youth is the only way out against terrorism. There is no other solution.
Tawakkul Karman, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

If you’re hungry, keep walking. If you are thirsty, keep walking. If you want a taste of freedom, keep walking. For us, women of Liberia, this award is a call that we will keep walking until peace, justice and the rights of women is not a dream, but is a thing of the present.
Leymeh Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

A few things we thought were important this week:

After three weeks of Occupy Wall Street, protesters are standing strong and tall and the rallies are growing in New York and all over the map. About 40% of Americans still haven't heard about Occupy, but even the ones who have heard are not really being helped by the establishment media who disregard the depth of anger and frustration of the other 99% of Americans, many of whom are no longer willing to sit on the sidelines and play by the rules of the elites. Although an unfortunate side issue for the core of Occupy participants, is there any doubt that police brutality (in the form of arrests and pepper spray) has done more to inform and gain sympathy from many who would never be exposed to what is going on otherwise? Independent media sources like DemocracyNow, The Raw Story, Alternet and Glenn Greenwald have done an excellent job of reporting from the ground. Unfortunately, too many folks are getting scripted by FoxNews which blatantly spins the protests as "socialist," "anti-American" or other unglittering generalities like "dirty" and "lazy."

Yesterday, Evangelical Megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit and then almost immediately told reporters that Mormonism is a cult. Jeffress explained:

I think it is going to be a major factor among evangelical voters. The thing is, they won’t be honest and tell you that it is going to be a major factor. Most people don’t want to admit — even evangelical Christians — that they have a problem with Mormonism. They think it is bigoted to say so. But what voters say to a pollster sometimes is different than what they do when they go into the privacy of a voting booth.

If Romney does become the GOP nominee, Jeffress will campaign for him:

I’m going to instruct, I’m going to advise people that it is much better to vote for a non-Christian who embraces biblical values than to vote for a professing Christian like Barack Obama who embraces un-biblical values.

Jeffress has a really good pulse on American Evangelicalism, especially the hyper-conservative Southern Baptist brand in Texas, and what he is saying about the Evangelical perspective of Mormonism is correct (we EasyYolkers, obviously, adamantly disagree with the Evangelical perspective of Mormonism). While Jeffress justifies his words by calling them "the historical position of Christianity," he unfortunately does not admit (perhaps his seminary education did not teach him?) the highly contested historical nature of "Christianity" itself.

Jeffress is speaking, without any glimpse of humility or love, as a "fundamentalist" and a "Southern Baptist" Christian and his own tradition itself is highly controversial within the diverse global and historical Body of Christin regards to their view of biblical inerrancy, the rapture, women, gays & lesbians, the condoning of war/violence, the belief in hell as an eternal destination for nonbelievers, etc. It is always helpfully humbling for Christians of all stripes (most of whom have tended to be triumphalistic and arrogant, especially since 1492) to recall that the original Jesus Movement (back in 30AD) was considered a cult because of their strange beliefs and anti-social behavior.

Props to the Nobel committee for selecting three Third World Women this year to share the Peace Prize. These women have worked tirelessly for the cause of peace and justice in Liberia and Yemen. The Liberian Leymeh Gbowee even called upon thousands of sisters to go on a "sex strike" a few years back. When all you have is your body, the most creative and strategic thing you can do is withhold it from the oppressor.

The latest unemployment numbers are stagnant which means mediocrity which means terrible news for millions. 14 million are still without a job with an average season of joblessness at 40 weeks. Obama is pushing his Keynesian jobs bill, but unfortunately the Republicans have offered nothing but long-term strategies like free-trade pacts and a reduction of taxes and regulations for businesses. We don't have time to wait for strategies that are economically suspect at best. Once again, like most everything else these past couple of years, the GOP has become the party of "no" while offering scant alternatives to Obama's mediocrity. When neither of your two choices will not do...then what? Occupy.

Lastly, Pentagon chief Leon Panetta almost admitted this week ("Having moved from the CIA to the Pentagon, obviously I have a hell of a lot more weapons available to me in this job than I had at the CIA.") that the CIA uses drones to do their dirty work...but not quite. Why the denial and repression? Shouldn't the government just admit doing what everyone already knows? Obviously, the federal government is hiding from the truth: killing enemies and civilians with remote control devices is shameful.

When Politics Becomes Pro Wrestling

2011-10-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

…both parties, Democratic and Republican, were equally guilty in what really was a conspiracy to run the government without outside interference. The only way the public could protest all the handouts and earmarks and fast-tracked tax breaks and other monstrosities was to vote for the other party—and the other party, it turned out, was inevitably whoring for the same monied masters.
Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement (2008)

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history…One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another...
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States of America
______________________________________________
*Re-posted from June 11, 2011

Perhaps it was on my 12-minute drive home after another "we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore" conversation with Charles "The Brain Demon" Cha or perhaps it was after my wife and I watched Inside Job (for the first time) and we just sat there on our couch with a pained look on our faces as the credits rolled. I'm not sure when it was exactly, but there came a time this Spring when I finally realized that the rhetorical battle between our two major political parties is simply no different than professional wrestling.

Indeed, I had a similiar moment in junior high when I was finally unconvinced by Patrick Flood's arguments that the entire Saturday morning WWF world of Macho Man Savage, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka was unscripted. But this latest enlightenment concerning the political arena is a lot more sobering for two reasons: (1) it took almost 2 decades of voting to realize it and (2) now...the victims are real people.

Sure, when Nancy "The Gavel" Pelosi proclaimed on CSPAN the other night that the Republicans voted "to abolish Medicare" or when Barack "Audacity" Obama falsely claimed "The vast majority of the money I got was from small donors all across the country," it was not quite as bad as the plethora of chants I've heard over the past two years from the right (from the likes of Sarah "Targets" Palin and Paul "The Slasher" Ryan) concerning "death panels" and "pulling the plug on grandma" and "Obama is a socialist."

But nonetheless, it's just a game for the vast majority of our political leaders. The goal is power, privilege and fame for this mostly wealthy white male club (despite the above examples of Pelosi and Obama) called the establishment ("that uneasy club of business executives, generals, and politicos"--Zinn). They will do whatever it takes to stay in the elite club with high-level corporate CEOs and establishment media stars while appearing to be "for the people."

These leaders are funded by corporations and other elites and, therefore, work for their interests. These interests are perversely perpendicular to that of the other 99% of the country, including, as Howard Zinn points out, our precious young men and women of the armed services:

Would not those young people hesitate before enlisting if they considered that they were not risking their lives for their country, but for government, and even for the owners of great wealth, the giant corporations connected to the government?

While mainstream media outlets beat the Red State versus Blue State drum and continue to play up the storyline of a wrestling match between traditionally pious church-going businessmen and tree-hugging, Prius-driving bleeding hearts, let us consider the often overlooked awkwardly bipartisan coalition formed on several fronts:

1. The Corporate Sponsorship of our Entire Political Process
2. An Obsession with Israel
3. Deregulating and Subsidizing the Banking, Drug, Health Care & Food Industries
4. An Uber-Patriotic Commitment to the War on Terror, American Exceptionalism, The Surveillance State and Torturing for the Sake of National Defense
5. An Aversion to Marriage Equality
6. An Abandonment of Vulnerable People Groups like Muslims and Immigrants
7. A Paternalistic Stance Towards the Developing World

Consider President Obama's untelevised "back room" deals--breaking a key campaign promise--during the health care reform days of 2009-10:

The deals really were ugly. One involved an $80 billion closed-door pact between Obama and the top pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, a pact to lower drug costs that critics charge was entirely too soft on the industry. Then came the $100 million deal to benefit Senator Ben Nelson’s home state of Nebraska to secure his vote.

Consider the rapid increase in gas prices back in the summer of '08 and in recent months. Every economist will tell you it is a really complex formula of supply and demand and "other forces," but we now know that commodity speculators had a huge role in both hyperinflationary cycles. These wealthy investors were betting (yes, betting) that gas prices would rise. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy that benefited these investors and the oil companies who continue to garner huge profits while taking in generous government subsidies. The only folks who lose are the other 99% of us.

Consider the bursting of the housing bubble and the financial investigations that have followed suit. Goldman Sachs and other investment firms bundled toxic securities and sold them willingly to investment funds, including workers' pensions. On top of that, Goldman et al bet against these securities and walked away with billions (while middle America lost trillions in retirement and housing values). Yet not a single person has been prosecuted for this mockery of economic justice.

As Chris Hedges, the patron saint of EasyYolk, would say, the only way we can truly embrace hope is break away from illusion. Our political leaders have completely sold out to the corporate sponsorship of their campaigns so that they can stay in power and enjoy the fruits of elitism.

Meanwhile, the establishment media--from ABC to NBC to Fox to MSNBC to CNN to newspapers and periodicals--keep the illusion alive by selecting the issues and framing them in the glossary of the Red-State-versus-Blue-State grudge match.

The political parties use wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage to stoke fear into "the other 99%" of us, averting our eyes from the real scandal at the apex of the American Empire.

And faith communities in the United States have an overwhelmingly strong tendency to either thoroughly marry themselves to one of the two major parties or play the enlightenment game of "not doing politics"--which of course simply blesses the horrific status quo.

All these institutions (what the Apostle Paul called "principalities and powers") are implicated in this form of politics that is more counterfeit than pro wrestling because it masks a crippling, confusing, dehumanizing reality for hundreds of millions of us. But really it's quite simple. Why do university education, health care and gas prices continue to skyrocket? Just follow the money.

But now is not the time to just give in and give up. We must rebuke every form of apathy, cynacism and addiction. We can't just amuse ourselves to death while America becomes a trickle-down train wreck. We must figure out a way to organize, to mobilize for people that are committed to virtue and honor and healing the world. This is always instinctual during times of severe devastation (ie, Japan, Haiti, Joplin, etc), but in a time of massive illusion like this we lack the sense of urgency. However, we need it more than ever.

We need to find the radical resources to repent and resist--or what Hedges simply calls rebellion:

Rebellion—-which is different from revolution because it is perpetual alienation from power rather than the replacement of one power system with another-—should be our natural state. And faith, for me, is a belief that rebellion is always worth it, even if all outward signs point to our lives and struggles as penultimate failures. We are saved not by what we can do or accomplish but by our fealty to revolt, our steadfastness to the weak, the poor, the marginalized, and those who endure oppression. We must stand with them against the powerful. If we remain true to these moral imperatives, we win. I am enough of an idealist to believe that the struggle to lead the moral life is worth it.

This all may seem drastic...because it is. Although all of us resisters may come from different cultures and adhere to different creeds, we desperately need to come together to create alternatives to the establishment. We live in the tension of a virtual corporate monopoly on our communication, news, transportation, banking, food, housing and education systems. But more and more people are imaginatively breaking out of these strangleholds to find more truthful and humanizing ways to eat, live, share, spend and learn.

This is exactly what Jesus and his disciples did. They transcended the various religio-political options of 1st century Palestine (Zealots, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes) by forming an inclusive "community of consumption" that dedicated themselves to healing the world through nonviolent love, humble service and social justice (confronting the privileged powers-that-be). This is the abundant life we were made for.

The Church of Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

Most importantly, here, people are straightening their backs up.
Cornel West

Two weeks ago, activists from all over the country converged on Wall Street in NYC to camp out & nonviolently Occupy Wall Street. They are still there and crowds are ebbing and flowing during the week. They are assembling and marching for several reasons, all intersecting at Wall Street, where banks and corporations have gained a much larger share of the economic pizza in the past three decades. Lobbyists, lawyers and lots of campaign contributions have given them the upperhand. Great for them, disastrous for the Other 98%.

For them, war equals profit without sacrificing their children (the military is comprised mostly of poor and middle-class soldiers in need of opportunity) or tax dollars (the War on Terror has completely been financed through borrowing while tax rates have decreased immensely for the wealthy). Low taxes and very little oversight and regulation allow them to maximize their self-interest while diminishing ours. Meanwhile, lower tax revenues inevitably lead to cuts in already diminished public education, desperately needed infrastructure and the social safety net (Social Security, Medicare, etc) that has kept millions out of poverty in the past). Over the past couple of years, billionaire funded Tea Party protests and a certain nightly cable "news" station have told a fearmongering story about Big Government and Evil Muslim Terrorists and Creeping Socialism. This bogus narrative greatly accelerates the Income Inequality nightmare that we are all witnessing. Unfortunately, Obama and the Democratic Party have not provided a robust alternative to these silly diversions.

Cornel West showed up last week (he described the goal of Occupy Wall Street as communicating the need for "a transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors."). So did Michael Moore and former NY Governor David Paterson. And then there was Rev. Billy Talen who brought his prophetic performance to the folks who he says are "building a new culture from scratch." A "church"--as opposed to a "march" or "protest" or "rally"--is precisely what journalist Matt Stoller called it after observing the crowds for a few days:

You can tell this is a somewhat different animal than other politicized gatherings. No one knows what to expect. There are no explicit demands. It’s not very large. And yet, celebrities are heading to Zuccotti Park. Wall Street traders are sneering and angry. The people there are getting press, but aren’t dominated by it. People are there just to be there, because it feels meaningful. The camp is clean and well-organized, and it feels relevant and topical rather than a therapy space for frustrated radicals. Just a block away is the New York Fed, a large, scary, and imposing building with heavy iron doors, video cameras, and a police presence that scream “go away”.

This church has free rent and shares meals together (reportedly a lot of pizza). This church is non-hierarchal. They give everyone the right to speak at their twice-per-day General Assembly in Zuccoti Park. This church has an all-donation library and will be hosting teach-ins in the coming weeks. This church is sharing medical supplies and services and has back massage circles. This church is doing precisely what the very first followers of Jesus did: building a new culture from scratch.

As Jesus' campaigned throughout Palestine, he proclaimed the Reign of God and taught marginalized people how to straighten their backs up. People mattered because God was on the side of the suffering and struggling. Jesus energized the "other 98%" while confronting the wealthy and powerful with a message that, if God was actually reigning, then Caesar was not and the priests who set up exclusive purity codes (discriminating against the diseased, sick, women and Gentiles) were not and neither were the Temple elites who overcharge the poor and widows to worship God.

These churches that Jesus' disciples established after the death, resurrection and ascension of their Master were town hall meetings that gave these counterculture revolutionaries a space for teaching, nourishment and strategizing. They set up an alternative political, economic and social entity altogether--a place where everyone was given dignity and courage & compassion were cultivated. We need more churches like this today.
_______________________________
Epilogue:
Not sure why banks and corporations are really the problem? Here's a laundry list of indictments from the Occupy Wall Street page:

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

The Amish Scandal

2011-09-28T14:42:00.001-07:00

Forgiveness is maybe what Christians should do every day, but it’s not what Christians do do every day.
Donald Kraybill, on the 5th Anniversary of the Nickel Mines Tragedy

As we approach the 5th Anniversary of the Nickel Mines School Tragedy this weekend, I highly recommend Sheldon Good's report on the unique nature of the Amish community's unflinching forgiveness in the immediate aftermath of murder of their children. Coming just weeks after the 10th anniversary of 9/11 it is haunting and illuminating to juxtapose the Amish response with that of mainstream American Christians to the thousands murdered on that day. The Amish not only forgave the murderer, but attended his funeral and raised funds to care for his widowed wife and orphaned children.

But, surely, there is danger in this kind of automatic response to unthinkable evil. Aren't the Amish flirting with a harmful repression of their anger? Isn't there an appropriate process of grief--one that includes anger and denial? Are the Amish just robots, casting off emotion that is appropriate when the lives of our children are ripped from this world?

Danger indeed. But the Amish (and other Anabaptist communities like Mennonites and Brethren) have consistently placed an obedient practice over fleeting emotion for 5 centuries. I suppose that the most healthy people do both. They place a priority on forgiveness and take their own personal inventory. They identify feelings of rage and hate and voice them in community. They go through their own process of grief while pledging allegiance to reconcilation and empathy.

Indeed, sociologist Donald Kraybill points to 5 distinctives that highlight the Amish Christian witness:

1. Deeds and words
2. Pain, not anger
3. Reconciliation, not revenge
4. Rooted in Christian duty
5. Shaped by faith community

John Howard Yoder has previously identified 3 "scandal factors" that are unique to Christian witness: forgiveness (not revenge), service (not domination) and enemy love (not ethnocentricity). This forms a communal and personal litmus test of what it actually means to be Christian. Most mainstream Christians have adopted simplistic phrases like "not perfect just forgiven" and, quite frankly, find Kraybill and Yoder's distinctives to be scandalous. They believe Christianity to be a belief system dedicated to a renewed heart and appeased guilt so that they can enter the gates of heaven when they die. A lifestyle committed to living out the scandal factors consistently and creatively is almost always construed by mainstream American Christians as "works righteousness" or "working your way to heaven"--depsite Jesus' clear call for all his disciples (then and now) to live his message so radically that it might lead to a nonviolent-but-deadly confrontation with social and political authorities (then and now).

The Anabaptists are often schlepped aside as social misfits by Respectable American Christians who claim their minority viewpoints are too radical to be practically implemented into American society. Most conversations about their pacifism, simple living and downward mobility bring up comical scenarios about what happens to spouses and children when rapists and murderers trample over the Anabaptist's irresponsible refusal to use weapons. But while the Amish forgive unconditionally (as they always have), mainstream American Christianity's approval of war and torture in the name of "Homeland Security" been both disastrous for Christian witness and a built-in recruiting device for al Qaeda murderers.

The Amish response to the killing of 5 of their children on October 2, 2006 was a crystal clear and refreshing glimpse into just how long and high and wide is the love of Christ. Although, for the Amish, it was a humble and dutiful gesture, it was and is irrefutably heroic in the perspective of everyone both inside and outside the Body of Christ. We pray that this weekend's reminder of their witness ripples out of Pennsylvania and infects the rest of us.

Funding a Counterfeit Culture War for Christ

2011-09-21T20:20:00.001-07:00

All pastors make choices that have political effects. The effects can be easy or hard to notice, intentional or unintentional, good or bad. They can result from intervening actively or from trying to mind one's own business. Whatever the proper relation of religion and politics might be, it cannot require pastors to refrain from affecting the political lives of their communities. Ministry matters--politically, as well as in countless other ways. A wise pastor understands how.
Jeffrey Stout, Blessed Are The Organized (2010)

Technology entrepreneur Ken Eldred is highlighted in a recent LA Times report on the political mobilization of American Evangelicals for the upcoming Presidential election showdown in 2012. Eldred has donated more than $1 million to Republican candidates in the past 5 years, but has adamantly denied that his new organization Champion The Vote has a partisan agenda:

I have the audacity to believe that we can be an influence on both parties. I personally believe that someday we're going to stand before God, and he's going to pull out a ballot and say, 'How did you vote in this election?' And there are going to be people who say, 'Why do you care about that, God?' And he's going to say, 'Because I created that country and I put you in charge.'

Eldred's claim is silly, deceptive, dishonest and truly audacious, especially considering the 7-point platform of Champion The Vote (and her sister organization United In Purpose):

• Right to life
• Religious freedom
• Traditional marriage
• God and government
• Morality and ethics
• Voter registration
• Prayer in the public arena

These issues are all deeply ingrained in the Evangelical and Republican ethos. Anybody who knows anything about the emergence of GOP political power in the past three decades knows that Evangelicals have had a crucial role in this legacy. The Republican party has effectively highlighted their vehemenent opposition to abortion rights (in the name of "right to life") and same-sex marriage (in the name of "traditional marriage") in addition to a fear-based narrative about the perceived extinction of God, prayer and religious freedom from schools, media and the public square.

The protection of religious freedom, unborn babies and the holy marriage covenant (three so-called "endangered species") has become the simplistic, emotionally fused political platform for Evangelicals to rally around. This is unfortunate on (at least) two fronts:

1. As Evangelicals have cashed in on this political marriage with the Republican party (note just how Evangelical the Bush Administration was from top to bottom) over the past three decades, their witness has suffered. The recent Barna poll revealed that younger (16 to 29) non-Christians believe that Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%)--and at least 50% of younger Christians believed the same thing! According to the GOP/Evangelical political platform, unborn babies should have a government protected "right to life," but not so for the poor (consider the CBO projections for the 2009 GOP health care proposal), the elderly (consider the CBO projections for the 2011 GOP Medicare "voucher" proposal), prisoners (overwhelming support for the death penalty), as well as Iraqis, Afghanis, Yemenis, Pakistanis (overwhelming support for "the war on terror") and Palestinians (overwhelming support for Israel).

In addition, the divorce rate in Evangelical churches basically parallels the 50% success rate in wider American society. Shouldn't this trend be more important than the millions of dollars spent on keeping gays and lesbians from getting legally "married?" It is well-known that the GOP, in fact, has used Evangelical fear & anxiety about gays and lesbians to win one election after another in the past decade. The intense focus on abortion, gays and the defense of Evangelical religious language, while remaining mostly silent on these other issues has been a bad turn of events in regards to the legitimacy and respect of North American Christians and their role in political matters.

2. This "culture war" that Evangelicals have been militantly fighting ultimately takes focus away from the rapidly growing class divide within the US economy in the past 3 decades. Multi-millionaire businessmen are funding these get-out-the-vote operations. The more-government social conservative agenda masks the limited government, "trickle-down" economic philosophy that the overclass (top 2%) of wealth earners promote. Because economics is far more complicated for average Americans than (perceived) black-and-white "moral" issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, businessmen like Eldred strategically cash in on forming a coalition with potentially 40 million "biblically based" Evangelicals (recruited from database that includes subscribers to faith-based magazines, members of NASCAR fan clubs and people on antiabortion email lists). Follow the money: the "culture war" greatly benefits the wealthy elite, shifting the focus away from the policies that are dwindling the middle class and keep the poor locked in the basement.

The joint efforts of Champion The Vote and United In Purpose form an abrasive wake up call for all Christian leaders regardless of where they reside on the political and theological spectrum. As Princeton political science professor Jeffrey Stout so beautifully communicated in his Blessed Are The Organized, every pastor and priest is political, no matter what their claims to political-economic neutrality and objectivity are (pastors who refuse to "talk politics" are, by default, endorsing the status quo). We Christians ought to care about social, political and economic policies because we have pledged to love our neighbors as much as ourselves and to be lobbyists for the least of these (who are deeply affected by policies and at the same time have little political clout). A biblically based political ethos must give the poor and most vulnerable of society a voice and priority over those whose money and positions of power have already created an unlevel playing field.

Champion The Vote and United In Purpose are organizations created by and for wealthy elites. Sincere Evangelicals, who want to be faithful with their money and their vote, have far too often become (for most) naively wrapped up in a hijacking of "biblical principles" to serve elite interests. 2012 is already here. Every follower of Jesus is called to engage politics consistently and congruently: our words and actions should match the reality of the world. Let's mobilize to support an agenda that (1) protects life for everyone and everything (regardless of race, record, nationality or species), (2) provides desperately needed accountability for powerful elites, (3) promotes faith & spirituality as vital resources in our quest for meaning and a compelling way-of-life and (4) privileges the perspective of society's most vulnerable.
_____________________________________
Epilogue: Props to Tea Party Jesus, a blog dedicated to exposing the rhetoric of Christian political leaders by placing their actual words into the mouth of cartoons and paintings of Jesus. The cartoon featured above is what Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) actually prayed at a Fourth of July tribute to American freedom.

When God Is Not the Landlord

2011-09-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. 2After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. 3When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; 4and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. 5When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. 6And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” 7They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” 8When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” 9When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. 10Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. 11And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” 13But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? 14Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. 15Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” 16So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
Matthew 20:1-16

Matthew 20 is this weekend's Lectionary Gospel passage. This post is from a Sermon preached on Matthew 20 at Rifle United Methodist Presbyterian Church in August 2010:

Throughout the Christian centuries, most interpretations of Matthew 20 have equated the vineyard owner with God and the workers with God’s People or humanity at large. In this schema, God is seen as “generous” and “equitable” with the people and expands the population of those who, by grace, are ushered through the heavenly gates. The grumbling worker at the end of the story is representative of Israel at large or the Pharisees, chief priests and other Jewish leaders who confronted Jesus during his life and ministry—the lesson being that we should all be thankful for God’s equal treatment and unconditional generosity and kindness.

This morning, however, I want to offer an interpretation of Matthew 20 from a “minority report” of the Christian tradition. Nothing in the parable forces us to assume that the vineyard owner in the parable is God. Instead, functioning like our cartoon of the trickle-down ponzi scheme, the parable is an exaggerated representation of what life was actually like during the time of Jesus and in the culture of the very first hearers of the parable of the vineyard owner some 50 years later. Instead of offering us timeless truths or simple principles of God’s Kingdom, the parable functions as a jarring illustration that animates the Christian disciple to subversively embrace an alternative way of life.

If the vineyard owner, then, is not God, then who is he? The original hearers of the parable would have no trouble connecting the dots. In first century Palestine, someone who owned a vineyard was quite wealthy. It usually was someone who collected properties from subsistence farmers who were forced to foreclose because they could not pay their debts. As the “investor” gained more and more land, he used it as “capital” to exponentially grow the business. A vineyard usually required 4-5 years of preparation before the wine business began to make a profit…a substantial profit.

Eventually, the wealthy landowner would hire these former subsistence farmers as day laborers to work during planting and harvesting seasons. Knowing the laws of supply and demand, the landowner would only hire them one day at a time, keeping the supply of workers large and thus keeping wages at their minimum. The landowner was a crafty businessman who played by the rules of “the bottom line.” In our parable, notice how the landowner tells the second group of workers: “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” The landowner always sets the terms of the business deal, establishing power and control.

On the other hand, the workers of the vineyard in agrarian societies were those who mostly fell into that pitied class of day laborers which made up less than 10% of the population. They were debt-ridden, homeless and usually lived only 5-7 years once they became workers who were truly expendable to the agrarian economy. They lived on daily wages, which allowed for the bare daily minimum, but, to add insult to injury, they did not get work everyday. They spent the rest of their hours begging to make up for the lack of a living wage. These “expendables”—just like the undocumented farm worker picking lettuce today in Yuma, Arizona—worked long hours in the hot sun and would rarely risk questioning the unjust, inhumane practices of those who hired them.

In our parable, notice what happens to the one worker who questions the paying practices of the landowner. He is shunned and humiliated in front of his fellow workers: “Friend,” the wealthy landowner responds, “I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go.” Clearly, the vineyard worker is not a “friend” of the landowner and this is exposed when we read from the original Greek (the word for friend here is hetaire, not the more common term which denotes a peer relationship: phile). When the vineyard worker questions the “justice” of the situation, the landowner naturally assumes the power position and speaks condescendingly to him.

Indeed, day laborers in ancient Palestine would have been treated worse than slaves because slaves were actually a real, human capital investment who worked for the owner every day. The wealthy landowner only treats his workers with dignity and respect if it directly benefits his economic bottom line.

What is rather peculiar in Jesus’ parable is the actual presence of the landowner both in the marketplace hiring workers and at the time of payment. Usually, both of these jobs were reserved for the manager, who only gets a cameo appearance in the parable. The landowner, in real life, would not do the leg work of finding day laborers and would not do the actual paying of workers. All the grumbling and groaning of injustice coming from the workers would be aimed at the scapegoated manager, leaving the landowner free to spend the day on other investments and, in the end, to enjoy the fruit of cheap labor without any of the hassle or burdened conscience of his dehumanizing business practices.

Jesus includes the landowner during both hiring negotiations and at payment time so that the hearers of the parable will recognize who is at the root of the unjust system. It is, no doubt, the landowner who first took over the foreclosed land from the debt-ridden farmer and then paid those who worked ALL day in the hot sun the exact same wage as those working a couple hours at dusk. This wealthy investor boasts, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

With this callous mentality, the landowner shatters the spirit of God’s jubilee provision for all humanity demanded in the Hebrew Bible—as Deuteronomy 15:7-8 attests: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” This kind of socio-economic behavior is deeply at odds with the creator and covenant God who is, in fact, viewed throughout Israel’s Scripture as the paradigmatic landowner, caring for the precious vineyard of Israel.

In order to receive our modern-day political cartoon (above) appropriately we must read it ironically. It prophetically exposes the shameful myth that a massive reduction in taxes on corporate and wealthy elites will effectively always "trickle down" to the rest of us. This cartoon unveils the injustice of GOP Presidential nominee Rick Perry mocking a successful government program (Social Security) that has successfully kept millions of elderly out of poverty while promoting an economic philosophy that caters to the most wealthy and powerful. We “get” the joke and roll our eyes, shaking our heads with disgust and a little laughter (the same way Jesus' audience would receive the parable of the landowner). Perhaps a community 2000 years from now will not have the socio-historical tools to understand the context ("ponzi?" "trickle-down?" "social security?") and will come up with a vastly different conclusion than we have today.

Along those same lines, the original hearers of the parable of the vineyard workers would have got the joke. They would have been struck by the deep contrast between the vineyard owner in Jesus’ story and the God of Israel especially articulated by Jesus’ vision for the imminent invasion of God’s Heavenly Reign in our world throughout Matthew’s Gospel. The two episodes prior to the parable of the vineyard workers within Matthew’s Gospel are Jesus’ call to receive little children (who had no status in that society) and Jesus’ command to the rich investor to follow him by first giving back all the properties that he had taken from debt-ridden subsistence farmers. And these episodes build on a consistent theme of the Gospel: “blessed are the meek”…the miraculous healing of “expendables”: lepers, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics…the divine investment strategy to “not store up for yourselves treasures on earth”…followed up by the financial advice of God’s Heavenly Reign: “You cannot serve God and wealth”…and the simple motto: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.” The landowner in the parable exhibits none of these markers of God’s Heavenly Reign and the audience of the parable can plainly discern this. Jesus’ promised flip of the script is really bad news for the wealthy landowner and the best news of all for the expendables of society: the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

In light of this prophetic word from Jesus, what then shall we do? Christians are those called to creatively enact God’s Heavenly Reign in the unique context of our community 2000 years later. After all, where the function of Jesus’ parable differs significantly from Lebron’s cartoon is that it calls us to action. This will take wisdom, discernment and a lot of imaginative brainstorming on 3 fronts.

This parable animates us, first, to criticize social and economic conditions and practices that mirror the mentality of the landowner—within our own selves, as well as our community, our nation & our world. Where are we caught up in economic events that are purely commodified, based only on an exchange of currency and goods or services? Where do we use our status, power or wealth for our own self-interest, and, in so doing, strip people of dignity? Where do we see the innocent and naïve and hard-working being taken advantage of? Let us be convicted by the landowner’s boastful proclamation to the courageous day laborer: “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.”

Second, this parable animates us to humanize “the expendables” in our families, our community, our nation and our world. If we pledge allegiance to God’s Heavenly Reign, it is our identity and vocation to be the home of the homeless, the strength of the physically disabled, the mind of the mentally disturbed, the healers of the addicted, the companion of the loners, the champion of the unemployed and the dignity of the undocumented. Let us be reminded of the humble articulation of the day laborer to who explained why he stood idle in the marketplace all day: “Because no one has hired us.”

And lastly, this parable animates us to energize our selves, our community, our nation and our world. When theologian Jonathan Wilson was asked what the point of reading the Bible is, he responded: “to teach us what the Kingdom of God looks like and how to look for it.” Wilson continues, “And often we need others to point us in the right direction, to say, not ‘there’s Waldo’, but ‘there’s the kingdom.’” If Jesus’ parable is true, then we have become equipped to presently discern God’s Heavenly Reign within this rather callous and undignified world—just as we cling to the hope that it will be fully enacted someday soon. This morning and throughout this week, let us be reminded of the fiercely hopeful declaration of Jesus to those original disciples: “the last will be first and the first will be last.” Amen.

Through the Lens of (My Own) Addiction

2011-09-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

We see that substance addictions are only one specific form of blind attachment to harmful ways of being. Yet we condemn the addict’s stubborn refusal to give up something deleterious to his life or to the lives of others. Why do we despise, ostracize, and punish the drug addict when as a social collective we share the same blindness and engage in the same rationalizations?...We despise, ostracize, and punish the addict because we don’t wish to see how much we resemble him. In his dark mirror our own features are unmistakable. We shudder at the recognition. This mirror is not for us, we say to the addict. You are different, and you don’t belong with us.
Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2008)

Misplaced attachment to what cannot satiate the soul is not an error exclusive to addicts but is the common condition of mankind...Our designated 'addicts' march at the head of a long procession from which few of us ever step away.
Gabor Mate

*This post originally appeared on EasyYolk in July 2010.

Although his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts gets its name from the Buddhist concept of real-life hell, Gabor Mate, a Canadian Jew born in post holocaust Budapest, quotes Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount to guide us in our confrontation with the complex world of addiction:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Mate, a doctor who has worked with drug addicts in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for the past 30 years, believes that his patients tell us much about our culture...and ourselves. With humble transparency that is shockingly rare for someone of his stature, Mate both analyzes the world that creates addicts and his own struggle with compulsive behavior:

My anxiety clothes itself in concerns about body image or financial security, doubts regarding lovability or the ability to love, self-disparagement and existential pessimism about life’s meaning and purpose—-or, on the other hand, it manifests itself as grandiosity, the need to be admired, to be seen as special. At bottom it is nameless and formless. I feel sure it was forged in my chest cavity somewhere between my lungs and heart long before I knew the names of things.

This is a professional doctor and accomplished author who has obviously spent a lot of time practicing self-reflection. He knows that to be human is to be addicted. However, he does not authentically reveal his own shit in order to justify or rationalize destructive and dehumanizing behavior, but instead to bring us all together in solidarity--to acknowledge our universal struggle with enslaving rituals and routines that hold us back from spiritual transformation. He defines addiction as “any relapsing behavior that satisfies a short-term craving and that persists despite its long-term negative consequences.” Thus, we are all implicated:

Addiction cuts large swaths across our culture. Many of us are burdened with compulsive behaviors that harm us and others, behaviors whose toxicity we fail to acknowledge or feel powerless to stop. Many people are addicted to accumulating wealth; for others the compulsive pull is power. Men and women become addicted to consumerism, status, shopping, or fetishized relationships, not to mention the obvious and widespread addictions such as gambling, sex, junk food, and the cult of the ‘young’ body image.

This is Mate's starting point in dealing with the ominous drug problem that plagues North America. We have collectively condemned and scapegoated the drug addict who lives on the streets. Thus, as long as we can see how bad these people have it, we (rest assured) know that we haven't hit rock bottom. And, indeed, Mate points out that the patients he works with are basically stuck in their predicament, mostly due to horrific early childhood years. Neglect, rape & abuse (in various emotional, physical and sexual forms) contribute to serious brain deficiencies that lead to overwhelming fear, anxiety and self-hatred that almost inevitably lead to compulsive behavior:

How much actual freedom to choose does any one human being possess? There’s only one answer: We cannot know. We may have our particular beliefs, spiritual or otherwise, about this aspect of human nature—-about how it is or how it should be. These beliefs may strengthen our commitment to helping others find freedom, or they may become harmful dogma. Either way, in the end we all have to humble ourselves and admit to a degree of uncertainty.

Addicts are made, not born, and every human being has vastly different experiences that make our judgment of them an inhumane route. Mate advocates for what he calls compassionate curiosity, a quest to understand our fellow brothers and sisters, no matter what form of addiction they succomb to. And this quest must be pursued in how we view our own addictions:

Instead of hurling an accusatory brick at your own head (e.g., “I’m so stupid; when will I ever learn?” etc.), the question ‘Why did I do this again, knowing full well the negative consequences?’ can become the subject of a fruitful inquiry, a gentle investigation. Taking off the starched uniform of the interrogator, who is determined to try, convict, and punish, we adopt toward ourselves the attitude of the empathic friend, who simply wants to know what’s going on with us. The acronym COAL has been proposed for this attitude of compassionate curiosity: curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love. ‘Hmmm. I wonder what drove me to do this again.’

He greatest genius is how he describes each pathetic drug addict and then turns the mirror on to the rest of society. He asks, "What do we see, then, when we look at the drug ghetto of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and similar enclaves in other urban centers?" and then answers:

We see the dirty underside of our economic and social culture, the reverse of the image we would like to cherish of a humane, prosperous, and egalitarian society.

We see our failure to honor family and community life or to protect children.

We see our refusal to grant justice to Native peoples.

We see our vindictiveness toward those who have already suffered more than most of us can imagine.

And this large-scale analysis leads Mate into a war on the War on Drugs, which started in the 80s with Nancy Reagan's "Just say no," by creating scapegoats for a society that was losing the Commies and still at least a decade away from al Qaeda. But the War has not only not worked, but has even exacerbated the issue:

The War on Drugs fails—-and is doomed to perpetual failure—-because it is directed not against the root causes of drug addiction or of the international black market in drugs, but only against some drug producers, traffickers, and users. More fundamentally, the war is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war metaphor itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight, and factually researched scientific understanding.

I could conclude this post here with a little transition to Proposition 19, the November 2010 California ballot initiative that advocated the legalization marijuana, but instead I'll go Mate-style and bring it back to me. In the past 18 months, my wife and I have had the great honor to participate in a 12-step style couples recovery group on Sunday nights in Orange County. Two of our couples began the painful journey of wrestling with powerful addictions in Fall 2009 and their "disclosure" has led to the establishment of our little transparent, self-reflective community. They are recovering sex addicts and too many conversations with men about Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner in the past couple years has revealed to me what society thinks of these "dirtbags." But these guys have committed to honestly confronting their past and attend group "meetings" and therapy sessions and share things with friends and family that our American and Evangelical Christian culture has taught us men to hide...no matter what. These guys have modeled what it means to truly be a man by embracing honesty and confronting their own demons.

However, I deal with my chronic anxiety in ways that are not labeled "pathological" in the DSV-IV manual, but as Mate reminds us, they, too, are freedom-robbing and dignity-stripping. I'm addicted to approval. I'm a relational prostitute (or commitment concubine), or as psychologist Edwin Friedman would say, a "peace-monger." I'll say "yes" to anything, as long as you admire me in the end! This leads to an exhausting and eventually resentful series of over-commitments. I'm also addicted to lean, muscle-toned, youthful body image (it's the SoCal way) and ambitious, resume-building achievement. I am consistently plagued by financial anxiety and OCD-like routines (Did I lock the car door?) And I sure do love my comforts--like Facebook, good theological reading, dark beer and coffee--to soothe my suburban stress away. Only by the grace of God (and surely nothing more) was I born into a "stable," nurturing home that gave me socio-economic opportunity to experience some freedom in this life. And I have hope that a lifestyle of Jesus' "easy yolk" will redeem me ("bought out of slavery" in the original language) from these old addictions and attachments that have become so much a part of me.

(Mis)Interpretion In a Post-9/11 World

2011-09-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

Christians are not called to be heroes or shoppers. We are called to be holy. We do not think that holiness is an individual achievement, but rather a set of practices to sustain a people who refuse to have their lives determined by the fear and denial of death...Our response is to continue living in a manner that witnesses to our belief that the world was not changed on September 11, 2001. The world was changed during the celebration of a Passover in 33 A.D.
Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Scriptures (2004)

On September 11, 2001, 15 ~~faithful Muslims~~ members of a violent cult from the Middle East ~~declared war~~ mercilessly attacked the American East Coast because they ~~hated American freedoms~~ resented rampant American imperialism and violence in their own backyards. For them (and so many others), the United States came to represent ~~a beacon of hope and freedom~~ a threatening bully that was willing to use massive force in order to ~~free the world of tyranny~~ hoard precious natural resources and bolster their own national (in)security. Ironically, the United States has responded to the 9/11 murder by declaring war and mercilessly ramping up their imperialist adventures on resource-rich Middle Eastern targets. The cycle of violence has intensified.

To add insult to irony, ~~some~~ a majority of American Christians, self-proclaimed followers of the ~~God of Violent Vengeance~~ Prince of Peace, over the past decade, have consistently supported ~~advanced interrogation techniques~~ torture, ~~Homeland Security~~ endless war and ~~collateral damage~~ civilian casualties in order to sustain ~~the American Dream~~ a military economy that has thrived from the World Wars to the Cold War and Beyond. In doing so, American Christians overwhelmingly support ~~liberty and justice for all~~ a status quo that favors ~~“the national interest”~~ the Establishment, ~~everyday working people~~ the corporate and government elites who benefit from billions in contracts and subsidies while, mostly, the sons and daughters of the ~~Establishment~~ working poor are recruited to put their lives on the line in combat.

In the decade since 9/11, it has become clear—-perhaps more than ever—-that theology matters. Here are 4 key passages whose ~~self-evident truths~~ misinterpretations have served tragic agendas:

1. Mark 12:17: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

These words of Jesus have unfortunately been abused to legitimate a division of spheres (separating “religion” and “politics”) that would never have been understand in 1st century Palestine. The “image” of Caesar, the self-proclaimed “Son of God,” was on Roman coins used in Israel—-should a faithful Jew use this currency and commit idolatry? Jesus’ firm response was/is subversive: either one will worship God or Caesar. Unfortunately, Jesus words have continually been manipulated by both church and government leaders to endorse the worship of both, quarantining religous beliefs as a private affair, having nothing to do with public policy.

2. Romans 13: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.

These words from Paul were written to a politically powerless Christian community of both Jews and Gentiles in the most powerful city in the entire world. Paul’s vision was that actions of this community would function like leaven, reflecting the gospel of the kingdom of God, a realm quite different than the kingdom of Caesar. Remember: every Christian was a diehard pacifist during the first 3 centuries. Quoting this passage after September 11, 2001 to compel Christians (75% of the American population) to blindly support US military invasions should never be condoned (especially when considering Paul's exhortations immediately prior to this passage).

3. Matthew 10:34: I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

I heard an octogenarian Christian quote this one recently in an attempt to persuade me that there will always be war and violence in a depraved world and that Christians are not called to waste time trying to bring them to an end. Jesus was simply being metaphorical here, explaining that his hard teachings would inevitably divide friends and families into groups that followed him…and those who would not.

4. John 18:36: My kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus’ words to Pilate are not an endorsement of a disembodied heaven separated from a sinful world. Instead, Jesus is pointing out just how different the kingdom of God is from the kingdom of Caesar and Pilate: Jesus’ way of suffering service and love trumps Rome’s violence and domination. As Martin Luther King proclaimed repeatedly, “Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

This week will bring plenty of celebrations and TV specials remembering events that "changed our world" 10 years ago. In a post-9/11 world, Christians must approach these biblical justifications of violence with fear and trembling. After all, the interpretive results are a matter of life and death.

Blessed Are The Organized

2011-08-31T14:11:00.000-07:00

…democracy isn’t dead, but only because it was never really alive. Our ancestors claimed to have a democratic republic, but what they really had was a system for exploiting slaves, women, and other disadvantaged groups while setting up equally effective mechanisms for dominating the peoples of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.
Jeffrey Stout, Blessed Are the Organized (2010)

Democracy, in the sense I am commending, opens up space for minority voices because it is committed both to freedom as nondomination and the avoidance of arbitrary exclusion. Neither of these things can be achieved, according to the tradition of grassroots democracy, unless a lot of ordinary people get organized and actually hold officials accountable. These are things that require action.
Jeffrey Stout

In Blessed Are The Organized, Princeton political science professor Jeffrey Stout recounts the story of dialoging the miserable economic results of the past 4 decades (or so) of policies with his twenty-something son. You know the basics: the American worker has been tremendously productive for their company, but the worker isn't even coming close to sharing the wealth. In fact, since the 1960s, more income went to the top 1% of Americans than the bottom 50% combined. At the end of this casual, fact-filled conversation, Stout's son proclaimed, "We're screwed!" (he actually used another word starting with "f").

In another story, Stout was traveling to colleges to explain the growing demise of "democracy" and a freshman at the University of Tennessee who was compelled by Stout's lecture asked what ordinary citizens could do to "revive the patient" today. Stout was stumped. In Blessed, Stout introspectively laments:

I had not explained how people currently addicted to fast “food” and “reality” television might actually take back the country from the plutocrats, militarists, and culture warriors now dominating our politics.

These two stories, beyond the real substance of a massive lack of accountability for corporate and government elites, highlight why Stout wrote Blessed. He was on a mission to tell the story of what has happened to democracy and what ordinary citizens have actually done about it in places like West Texas, New Orleans and South Central Los Angeles and what you and I could actually do about it in our distinctive locales.

Blessed is the book we so badly need as we wind down a basically failed Obama presidency. It transcends the partisan political monstrosity featured on our corporate TV stations and mainstream newspapers. It beckons us to join a movement that will actually hold leaders accountable so that our system will reflect a Lincolnian vision of democracy: freedom from nondomination and the rejection of arbitrary exclusion.

Stout utterly rejects surfacy and downright counterfeit notions of democracy. It's not a "democracy" just because we have elections and so-called "rights." This is exactly how the most wealthy and powerful among us would want us to believe about an equal opportunity America:

To maintain a position of dominance, even the most powerful people in the world rely on the inaction of others and the resignation that lies beneath it. The powerful became powerful by organizing others to work for them and creating incentives for profitably cooperative activity. It appears to be against the interests of the rich and the lucky for everyone else to be similarly well organized. The rich and the lucky benefit from making large-scale democratic reform appear hopeless. Paradoxically, they also benefit from making large-scale change seem easily achievable, for example, by casting a vote every four years for a candidate who promises something called “change.”

That paragraph deserves to be read another hundred times this week. We ought to print it out and tape it to our bathroom mirrors or dashboards. It unveils the truth about how dominance really functions in our democratic country. It is everywhere. And it is neither full of truth nor justice. It is best summed up by two words and the first one is "bull."

Stout breaks the whole scenario into a helpful litmus test. A Republic is only really democratic if:

(1) it removes arbitrary restrictions on who counts as a citizen

(2) opens up sufficient opportunities for citizens to influence and contest official decision and laws

(3) is animated by a spirit of mutual recognition and accountability

And, indeed, our political culture fails on all three counts. As far as #1 is concerned, what about the complete rejection of citizenship rights to undocumented workers who, out of economic survival and desperation, take dangerous and tremendously unhealthy jobs for below-living-wages creating an abundance of inexpensive products widely available for "real" American citizens? And what about the millions of mostly brown and black prisoners who have been stripped of voting rights once they are no longer locked up? These comprise the working and unemployed poor who have no voice in our system.

As far as #2 is concerned, laws and Court decisions have given multi-billion-dollar multi-national corporations the opportunity to overwhelmingly affect elections and policies. These entities control the mass media dominating the framing of any and every political issue. Consider Stout's explanation of the silly notion of a "neutral" press:

A press hiding behind a claim of evenhandedness cannot perform the role that justifies its constitutionally protected freedom. A press that pretended to be neutral on the difference between domination and accountability would be a press that had already sided implicitly with domination.

And as far as #3 is concerned, citizens have become too distracted/ignorant/alienated (for all sorts of reasons) to garner mutual recognition and accountability, let alone to care about what happens at the highest levels of government that thoroughly affect our quality of life (Stout: "Presidents, federal legislators, judges, bureaucrats, Wall Street bankers, insurance executives, media moguls, and generals are making decisions every day that have massive impact on our lives.").

Indeed, we are all screwed...unless we organize, mobilize and strategize. This is the only road to real "hope" and "change." Nothing will change if we go the route of "lifestyle liberals" who cast votes, attend rallies, sign petitions and donate money to express their anger at injustice.

Nothing will change if we go the route of "social critics" who effectively denounce domination, but who lack the energy or discernment to offer "a precise, accessible, and detailed description of the organizational options open to people who seek large-scale change."

Nothing will change if we go the route of "fugitive democrats" who lament that authentic democracy (according to Lincoln's definition) is unattainable. These fugitives do not aspire to govern, but to break off and "nurture the civic conscience of society" (Sheldon Wolin).

Nothing will change if we go the route of "anarchists" who "offer a vision of a coming community without rulers but neglect to explain what would keep the strong from enslaving the weak if the vision were realized."

And, of course, nothing will change if we go the route of "the Right" (members of the Tea Party and otherwise) who want their country back by reducing the size of the federal government until they can flush it down the drain:

This is the main lesson of the period that began with Ronald Reagan’s election as president and ended—or rather, should have ended—with the financial crisis of 2008. We now know that a state small enough to be drowned in a bathtub is also small enough to permit elites to exercise power arbitrarily over others. If we went ahead and drowned the nation-state, in the hope that much small political units would serve our purposes better, what would constrain the behavior of the economically powerful in the new situation? It is wishful thinking to suppose that there will be no developers, bankers, and billionaires looking for opportunities to exploit, or that all of the relatively small polities that crop up around the corpse of the nation-state will be havens of inclusive nondomination.

Our only hope for a real democracy is to tread the trail of grassoots democrats who adamantly acknowledge "that party politics in incapable, by itself, of preventing dominant classes from having their way with the rest of us." But these grassroots democrats refuse to give in to cyncicism or apathy or violence. They commit their lives to organizing themselves, educating themselves and strategizing to keep the powers accountable. This is ultimately done by building broad-based coalitions with groups of people who are committed to liberty and justice for all.

Grassroots democrats, first, utilize one-on-one canvassing, small group house meetings and breakout sessions so that leaders can listen to the experiences and needs of ordinary citizens. The leaders of effective grassroots organizations like IAF, The Jeremiah Group and One LA allow these citizens to set the agenda and movements gather steam as neighbors and strangers resonate with shared stories. These coalitions have one motto: No Permanent Enemies, No Permanent Allies. The goal is to hold every political and corporate elite accountable, regardless of political party affiliation.

Almost a decade ago, Cornel West called Stout "the most religiously musical, theologically learned and philosophically subtle of all secular writers in America today" (in Democracy Matters). Things haven't changed. Perhaps the most intriguing (for us progressive-postmodern EasyYolk Christians) section in Blessed is Stout's analysis of the powerful contribution of churches to grassroots democracy. Despite the rhetoric of many pastors from all across the theological spectrum, Stout claims that church leaders will be "political" no matter how much they pride themselves on being neutral or apolitical:

All pastors make choices that have political effects. The effects can be easy or hard to notice, intentional or unintentional, good or bad. They can result from intervening actively or from trying to mind one's own business. Whatever the proper relation of religion and politics might be, it cannot require pastors to refrain from affecting the political lives of their communities. Ministry matters--politically, as well as in countless other ways. A wise pastor understands how.

Stout exemplifies with the language of megachurch bishop TD Jakes who promised Hurricane Katrina refugees in the Astrodome that God would provide for them:

Bishop Jakes' message implicitly reinforced the dominant position of economic and governemental elites over the Katrina survivors. By merely consoling the survivors with the message that God would provide, Jakes made a choice. He could have instructed them that they had not only a right, but also a duty, to influence and contest the officials who, if left to their own devices, would determine the survivors' fate. He could have told the survivors that it was up to them to do their part, to organize themselves and demand accountability. But he did not.

The secular Stout is deeply appreciative of the massive contributions of the church--both historic and contemporary--to real democracy, which must inherently keep elites accountable. To hide behind the dualistic cloak of "religion" or "spirituality" as some sort of separate entity altogether from "politics" and "economics" is to play the Constantinian power game of multitudes of Christian pastors since 313CE. Stout apocalyptically unveils this reality and reveals the dire need for Christians to live out the Gospel in every area of their lives. This means that spirituality is politics...and vice versa.

In his ground-breaking The People's History Of The United States (1980), the late Howard Zinn constructively criticized the country he loved: "The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history." 1% owns 1/3 of the wealth and the rest is distributed to the other 99% of the population who are divided by all sorts of wedge issues like race and religion. Zinn prophetically called out the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbagemen and firemen to come together and form a coalition that creates policies that protect the People. Unfortunately, the employed (those who Zinn calls "the somewhat privileged" or "the guards of the System") are fearfully manipulated into an alliance with elites who set the agenda for everything.

Blessed Are The Organized is a crucially important work that, like all of Zinn's projects, analyzes our political system through the eyes of the underdogs. This perspective of the periphery is a rare sight in a world dominated by the elite agenda of the mainstream media. Indeed, Stout gets his title from the preamble of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 5) where it is unveiled that Jesus' vision of citizenship in the Heavenly Kingdom was nondomination and radical inclusion (almost 2000 years before Lincoln!). The meek and merciful, the peacemakers and those persecuted for justice, the pure in heart and the poor in spirit--all these are joined today by those who are "as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves" in their quest to organize "the least of these."

Overheard

2011-08-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

...we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.
Dorothy Day

Conversation Overheard (my paraphrase)
@ Wholesome Choice, Irvine, CA 2:45pmPST, August 27, 2011

John the Reverend: In light of massive changes in our world, not only since the time of Christ, but in the last 15 years (globalization, corporate dominance, rapidly rising income inequality), how would you characterize the nature of Christian political engagement today?

Ched Myers: (long pause) That’s the $64 million question. I would start with our call to look out for the marginalized in our world. I really believe in Matthew 25: we find Christ uniquely among “the least of these.” And within the world of marginalized peoples, we, first and foremost, look out for the immigrant/undocumented community. They are tremendously vulnerable and it is the Christian’s duty to look out for them and speak on their behalf. Second, we look out for low-wage workers and obviously there is a lot of overlap between the immigrant community and labor.

John the Reverend: Would you include the mentally handicapped?

Ched Myers: Most certainly. If I had a third marginalized group to prioritize, it would be both mentally and physically handicapped folks. But obviously there are a lot of different groups of people (ie, LGBTQ, the unemployed, homeless, etc) we could include within the marginalized tent of advocacy. Solidarity politics ultimately calls us to look out for them all including the Land which has been tormented and pulverized. Christians have never had to engage with anything like climate change before. This will continue to be a greater and greater challenge in the years to come. So we’ve got to be agents of solidarity with the marginalized of every kind.

A second key strand of Christian political engagement would be anything that births or concedes violence in our world. And, of course, we are ALL subtly and explicitly implicated in both the marginalization and violence of our world.

A third key strand is the language of the “principalities and powers” from the letters of Paul. We are called to witness to the ways that corporate and government elites abuse their powers. Consider the massive corporate profits in the past few years, while at the same time, laying off millions of workers (and wielding lobbyists and lawyers to gain serious policy advantage).

Consider also the recent GAO audit of the Federal Reserve. The Fed has never been audited in its 100 year history until now! But thanks to the work of Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders and even some Republicans, we know that the bank bailout in 2008 was not $800 billion, but $16 trillion. $16,000,000,000,000! The richest folks in the world (not only American bankers were bailed out) caused massive economic and emotional hardship that still continues to this day and they get $16 trillion to cover up their greed-induced mistakes (Bernie Sanders: "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."). And this is at the same time that Tea Party movement (basically the most conservative Republicans) is demanding that the federal government cut a couple trillion dollars from the budget over a decade?

This is massive hypocrisy from the powers and Christians are called to criticize this kind of activity and behavior. But Christians must live in the tension of both humility and criticism. We have to be both humble and critical (“as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves”) at the same time—-which is awfully difficult! Some Christians are so “humble” that they don’t feel like they can say anything about those in power. It just leads to apathy. On the other extreme, Christians can be so critical that it leads to arrogance and/or cynicism.

And the fourth Christian political strand is living with mercy and compassion. We are called to vote with our hands and feet. We should constantly be looking, right in front of our own noses, where we can participate with God’s Reign in our world. Take for instance this custodian that I’ve been watching for the past hour. He’s from south of the border somewhere, probably someone really important in his village, like a priest, and he chooses to come to El Norte and work this job for his family. He’s been whistling this past hour, making beautiful music with his lips while taking a job that most Americans would immediately refuse. That’s a beautiful picture of Christ.
______________________________________________
*It was precious time sipping Stella Artois with theologian-author-activist Ched Myers and the men of a nameless, website-less subversive house church community from Long Beach. We bantered about intentional community, our own journeys of faith (trying to put the “fun” back into “fundamentalism”), the two-week Tar Sands action in Washington DC (more than 300 environmental activists arrested and jailed so far), the lack of Christian participation within the environmental movement and whether we should vote in the upcoming Presidential election…or not. As Ched shared with us, we desperately need spaces like this to be in solidarity and strategize our discipleship.

*For more beautiful "artisans of social change" like Ched Myers, see Leo Hartshorn's compilation here.

Why I'm a Christian

2011-08-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

Religion's purpose is to mediate the sacred and to inform, engender, and nourish a transforming relationship to "the More."
Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity (2003)

…Christian identity is not primarily to be found in statements or debates or arguments, but in particular practices, commitments, and habits. Christianity is not principally something people think or feel or say—-it is something people do. The narrative of the Gospels is the story of what Christ did, and what God did in Christ, and the scriptural narrative shapes and inspires disciples to go and do likewise.
Stanley Hauerwas

Due to the rather presumptuous title of this post, in order to put readers at ease, right from the outset I would like to resoundingly reject what I have experienced are two polarizing and counterfeit notions of comparative religion. These are what Marcus Borg calls (1) the absolutist and (2) reductionist understandings of religion.

The Absolutist Christian (or Muslim or Buddhist or Jew…but usually Christian) is committed to a triumphalistic narrative that proposes that only his understanding of God is correct. All others are wrong. Only Jesus (his version) reveals Truth and Salvation.

The Reductionist Scholar, on the other hand, posits that all religions are just human constructions & projections about what/who God is, and, in the end, they are all just guesses and ultimately incorrect. The Reductionist believes that "we made it all up" to serve strong psychological and social needs (we humans desperatley need explanations, protection from vulnerability/death, reinforcement of social order and deep meaning).

As we’ve posted before, EasyYolk is committed to a Third Way, what James McClendon calls “perspectivism” and what Borg calls “the sacramental understanding of religion.” In this rendering, one’s religion (or "spirituality") is a glimpse of the Divine, a window into what is “More” or “Real.” Absolute Truth exists, but there is a multitude of competing claims to that Truth and, at least for now, the Judge is silent on which one is correct (as Paul writes to the Corinthians: we all see through a glass darkly).

Like Absolutist Christians, we believe that core convictions are important: if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. And like Reductionist Scholars, with humility and critical awareness, we acknowledge the human element that soaks through all religious endeavors: throughout history, as the sacred and transcendent have been experienced, humanity has made sense of it through the limited culture and language that is available.

To clarify matters further, if “Christianity” represents the Absolute & Universal Truth (as many of my friends and acquaintances believe) then whose version of Christianity represents that Truth? Sure, all Christians have some convictions in common: the Bible, the distinctiveness of Jesus and the reality of God. But core commonalities stop with these 3 generalities. From these 3, flow all sorts of streams and strands, creating virtually different religions along the way.

Some Christians believe the Bible is error-free and read self-evidently. Many Christians do not. Some Christians believe the significance of Jesus’ death was (and is) that it was a necessary sacrifice that appeased an angry God. Many Christians do not. Some Christians believe that God is a He and that all husbands/fathers ought to be the “spiritual leader of the household” with ultimate veto power and that the only ones who are capable of teaching and leading a church community are males. Many Christians do not. Many Christians believe in a literal heaven (for "believers") and hell (for "nonbelievers") as eternal destinations after death. Some Christians do not. Throughout Christian history there have been literally thousands of diverse denominations (this researcher counts 33,840), orders and traditions reading the Bible differently, understanding Jesus’ message and death differently and praying to God differently.

In light of the plurality of religious and spiritual options throughout the historical and contemporary world, I am compelled to stand within the prophetic Christian tradition (the minority report of monastics, Anabaptists, Quakers, Catholic Workers & the African-American freedom struggle of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King) which, above all else, has been committed to Christ’s socio-political-spiritual call to “take up the cross and follow” him. We “radicals” believe that God is revealed through nonviolent love, a pursuit of reconciliation, a robust ethos of forgiveness, compassionate acts of service and a rugged solidarity with the weak and vulnerable.

This prophetic vision of the Christian life is demanding and, quite frankly, difficult to market in a wider culture (that is mostly "Christian") physically & emotionally enmeshed with consumerism, convenience and creature comforts. After all, transformation is hard work. Change is possible but it must be intentional (this is at the very crux of Jesus' call for us "to follow"). And, we are experiencing more and more that people don’t think logically--they think emotionally. We are rooted in practically invisible family systems that hold us captive to patterns, roles and rules. We carry with us deep unresolved wounds. We are enslaved to the herd instinct (group think), the quick fix, the constant drive towards self-protection and our unacknowledged socio-economic privilege. Jesus came to expose these "powers" and to liberate us from their chains. No more addiction, abuse, apathy and accomodation towards evil. Jesus replaces our burden with an easy yolk that liberates.

In addition, our historically-rooted vision of Christianity is committed to standing against the glorification of our market-based economic system (at the expense of those who are left behind by capitalism: the poor & homeless, precious resources, dehumanized workers), against ingrained patriarchal attitudes (at the expense of wives, mothers, daughters), against fear-based justifications for a War on Terror, Homeland Security and Safe Borders (at the expense of Iraqi/Afghani/Pakistani/Yemeni/Palestinian civilians, American undocumented workers and Muslims), against racial resentment and entitlement (overwhelmingly at the expense of non-whites) and against multinational corporate privilege (at the expense of those not in the executive and investor class).

I am a Christian because I am compelled by the life and teachings of Jesus. I am overwhelmed by his love and compassion, his advocacy for the poor and marginalized and his willingness to suffering a torturous death for what he believed was Real and True. He was the ultimate Underdog, strategically fighting for redemption over every form of evil, including death (perhaps this is why our hearts burn when we watch movies like The Fighter & Shawshank Redemption). His resurrection was a vindication of his life and teachings and it holds promise for all of us who commit our lives to living out the Way of Truth and Beauty against all odds. Love wins in the end...no matter the odds.

I am a Christian because I believe "we all gotta get saved." And by that, I absolutely do not mean that we need to get saved from hell after we die. Jesus came to save us from the hellish existence of this present moment on earth...and beyond. He came to both show us and empower us how to be on the right side of history no matter how strong the opposition (consider the 16th century Dominican Bartolome de las Casas who almost single-handedly advocated for the abolition of slavery and harsh treatment of Native Americans before the Spanish Court--see image above). The abundant, meaningful and fulfilling life comes by following the Way of Jesus (his subversive and demanding teachings and lifestyle...which usually leads to a death like his because of the unwillingness of elites to give up privilege, status and entitlement).

Jesus' Way of salvation cannot be proven or argued rationally, but contains an embodied apologetic that prods and compels us to a greatness defined by unconditional love and suffering service. When people witness and experience this Way they are convinced that Beauty and Truth are alive and well.

To join the Cause of Jesus, I believe, is to really live life to its fullest, to be captivated by the Divine Essence. When we commit our lives to a litmus test of, above all else, comforting the afflicted (energize) and afflicting the comfortable (criticize) we are caught up in a historical Mission far bigger than ourselves. This brings overwhelming joy and peace because, as Martin Luther King put it, we have "cosmic companionship" in our quest for justice.

This is why I'm a Christian today. No heavenly rewards or gospel of prosperity. Just a lifestyle (albeit imperfect) that seeks to reflect the true Story about a world created & sustained by a Director who searches far and wide to invite forgiven-and-transformed characters to nonviolently participate in the redemption and healing of the universe.

Why Poverty Matters, Part II

2011-08-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift. The “home” that is also a car or a van. The illness or injury that must be “worked through,” with gritted teeth, because there’s no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day’s pay will mean no groceries for the next. These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations. And that is how we should see the poverty of so many million of low-wage Americans—-as a state of emergency.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed (2001)

The big question, 10 years later, is whether things have improved or worsened for those in the bottom third of the income distribution, the people who clean hotel rooms, work in warehouses, wash dishes in restaurants, care for the very young and very old, and keep the shelves stocked in our stores. The short answer is that things have gotten much worse, especially since the economic downturn that began in 2008.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Since When Is It A Crime to be Poor? (2011)

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.
Dorothy Day
_________________________________

On the verge of turning 60, Harper's Magazine journalist Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover to investigate the lifestyles of the working poor. From 1998 to 2000 she worked a variety of "unskilled" jobs and limited her budget to support inexpensive shelter and a "rent-a-wreck" car. Her ensuing book Nickel and Dimed portrayed the lifestyle of millions of Americans who resiliently battle pain, anxiety & shame every day of their lives.

Last week, in her updated aftermath written for the 10th Anniversary of the Nickel and Dimed project, Ehrenreich lamented that if she had attempted to pull off today what she did at the end of the prosperous Clinton years, she would simply not be able to get all the jobs she applied for back in the 90s. Just a few months after she published her book, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that found 29% of American families living in situations defined as poverty, meaning that they either could not afford or barely afford housing, child care, health care, food and transportation (rendering any entertainment, meals out, cable TV, Internet service, vacations, or holiday gifts obsolete).

Since 2008, impoverished families in the United States have continued their decline. As they get the safety net cut out from under them, they cope by purchasing less expensive (and more unhealthy) foods and get "creative" with how they get it (including "urban hunting," killing squirrels, rabbits and raccoons to barbeque). In addition, they schlep off health insurance options (if they even have them) and crowd into small apartments together (if possible). The last and worst case scenario is suicide which tragically has been on a four-fold rise in the past few years.

Ehrenreich's update goes on to describe the plethora of institutional obstacles (with the exception of food stamps) for individuals and families seeking government assistance. She closed her essay with some general solutions for us to think about:

Ten years ago, when Nickel and Dimed first came out, I often responded with the standard liberal wish list—-a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

Today, the answer seems both more modest and more challenging: If we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. Maybe, as so many Americans seem to believe today, we can't afford the kinds of public programs that would genuinely alleviate poverty—though I would argue otherwise. But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they're down.

Ehrenreich's research and analysis is important for us because she exposes the lie that poor people are just lazy and should get off the couch and get a job. Her work highlights folks who are poor and actually are fortunate enough to have a job (on average, there is only 1 job opening for every 5 people that apply). And to get to action steps, Ehrenreich moves beyond handouts (from both private and public sources) towards a focus on the way the American economic system functions. In short, we need to change the rules of the game instead of apply band-aids.

A program of truly Christian advocacy for the poor ought to follow the 4-step strategy of the South African Dominican monk Albert Nolan:

(1) Compassion stimulated through an experience of exposure

(2) Gradual discovery that poverty is a structural problem (this leads naturally to a constructive anger that recognizes the need to engage social institutions and policies)

(3) The discovery that the poor must and will save themselves (because they know better than we do what needs to be done and how to do it...this illuminates a humble need to learn from the poor instead of teach them)

(4) Recognizing the advantages and disadvantages of our different social backgrounds (we have different roles in our struggle against oppression)

Today, 64% of Americans cannot afford a $1000 emergency, 25 million are unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment and 90% of the folks who have a job are experiencing an increased workload with decreased wages. Meanwhile, US corporate holdings have increased 59% since 2008 and the richest 400 Americans have seen their tax obligations decrease from 30% in 1995 to 18% today.

The United States has (as she always has) a major economic class issue. This is what Robert Bellah laments is "the festering secret that Americans would rather not face." Americans of every class, religion and ethnicity have become dogmatically blinded by The Neocapitalist Vision: a compulsive stress on independence, its contempt for weakness and its adulation of success. More Americans than ever actually believe that privatizing services and deregulating every industry is the answer to every problem. Indeed, the bottom 99% of Americans continue to be flushed down the economic drain as the Establishment ("that uneasy club of business executives, generals, and politicos"--Howard Zinn) gets richer and more powerful.

Poverty in America is a stagnant Reality ("there will always be poor among you"--Deuteronomy 15; Mark 14) because followers of Jesus (still 80% of the US) are catastrophically wedged between 3 myths: (1) privatizing and deregulation gives everyone the best opportunity to succeed economically; (2) poverty is an individual issue (the poor are lazy...the middle-class/wealthy are hard-working); and (3) charitable donations from wealthy individuals and churches are the only answer. These falsities are widely believed and practiced by God's People who were founded on a fundamental convictions of just enough and everyone else.
___________________________________________
Epilogue: The American Dream Movement

Check out the Contract for the American Dream here. This movement transcends both major political parties (neither of which are advocating for legitimate policies to end poverty). Here are their 10 steps towards a society of structural justice: just enough and everyone else.

I. Invest in America's Infrastructure
Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.

II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs
We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.

III. Invest in Public Education
We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.

IV. Offer Medicare for All
We should expand Medicare so it's available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it -- but it's not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country -- paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.

V. Make Work Pay
Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.

VI. Secure Social Security
Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors' protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.

VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates
End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us -- or our kids -- must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country's wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.

VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home
Our troops have done everything that's been asked of them, and it's time to bring them home to good jobs here. We're sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.

IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation
A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, "flash trading," and outrageous bankers' bonuses -- and we'd have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.

X. Strengthen Democracy
We need clean, fair elections -- where no one's right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn't buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists' revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections

Why Poverty Matters, Part I

2011-08-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
Stephen Colbert

...let us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in adecent sanitary home.
Martin Luther King

*This is the 1st of a 2-part series on poverty and class in America.
_________________________________________

The very simple fact that we are 100 generations removed from Jesus' original disciples and I am attempting to convince (convert?) a mostly Christian audience that we simply must do something serious about the structural reality (ie, the desperate need to change government policies to give everyone an opportunity to live with dignity) of poverty in the US (and the entire world) is a sure sign that we've traveled a long way from the path of the Master. Jesus was on a mission, recruiting followers who would be energized to fulfill his Dream of God's Peaceful and Just Reign "from Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the world." Jesus taught that this Dream would be realized slowly, strategically and methodically, by a small group of disciplined radicals, modeled after the growth of a mustard seed or the covert yeast hidden in a loaf of bread.

Jesus yearned for a mustard seed community whose word and deed would ripple out into wider society, peacefully overwhelming the world with God's original plans for Israel, the freed slaves in the wilderness (Exodus 15). God yearned for a people who took just enough of the resources God gave them (called "Manna" in the Hebrew Bible & "daily bread" in the New Testament) leaving the rest for everyone else. Jesus' campaign, from the shores of Galilee all the way to Jerusalem, can be seen as an attempt to recapture God's vision of Manna & Mercy for both Jew and Gentile alike.

In fact, when Jesus rebuked his disciples on the night before his murder that "the poor will always be among you," he was quoting from Deuteronomy 15, a passage that re-emphasized God's call for Israel to care for the poor, stranger, widow and orphan (Dt 11:4-5):

There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession to occupy, if only you will obey the Lord your God by diligently observing this entire commandment that I command you today.

Indeed, a few verses later (v.11), God quite realistically echoes the call to care for the poor and marginalized because God's People would fail in this vocation, leading to exile:

Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.'

According to biblical scholar N.T. Wright, this is precisely the significance of Jesus' Kingdom Dream: to bring Israel (and with her, the entire "gentile" world) out of exile and into a faithful obedience to the vocation of being salt and light to the world. Surely, Jesus' Dream called for a renewed heart that re-imagined and re-energized a complete overhaul of social, political and economic policies that have historically crippled the poor and vulnerable.

However, Jesus' Dream has become a contemporary nightmare in North America. Most Christians have translated the Dream as only a renewed heart: a sincere quest for personal piety and a guaranteed ticket to heaven when they die. From now until death, however, their way of life has become marinated in a neocapitalist framework that has very little to do with either just enough or everyone else. In the words of UC Berkeley's Robert Bellah, who has perhaps studied the intersection of faith and politics more than anyone else in the past half century, we Americans

are united, as it turns out, in at least one core belief, even across lines of color, religion, region and occupation: the belief that economic success or misfortune is the individual's responsibility, and his or hers alone.

For most American Christians, this meme fits their uber-individualistic call to "follow Jesus" like a glove.

As we travel further and further away from God's Dream of a society of just enough and everyone else, we can reclaim the real biblical call to care and share by recalling the words of Martin Luther King, whose last year of life was dedicated to exposing the link between racism, economic exploitation and militarism. Back in the 1960s, our black and brown brothers and sisters were fiercely overrepresented in rugged unskilled jobs, prisons and Vietnam. Fast-forward almost a half-century and these sick trends have simply accelerated (click here to check out the Tavis Smiley and Cornel West Poverty Tour). King's Dream was no different than Jesus', leading Coretta Scott King to reflect on King's I Have a Dream speech: “At that moment it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared. But it only lasted for a moment.”

Indeed, it only lasted for a moment. Since King's assassination in '68, white conservative Christians have ramped up their political engagement, promoting a "family values" (anti-abortion and anti-same-sex-marriage) and "small government" (lower taxes and less regulation) platform that really only seeks to flush social programs (like Medicare and Social Security) that have been effectively keeping millions of elderly out of poverty for decades. The ease with which conservative Christians schlep off New Deal style programs with a "socialist" label or an argument like "it was actually World War II that ended the Great Depression" can be quite reasonably attributed to the astonishing rise of Fox News (only 1.38% of Fox viewers are African-American) as a primary shaper of their socio-politico-theological consciousness (consider the conservative Catholic Sean Hannity's interview just yesterday with the Mormon Mitt Romney: Hannity asked if Obama's economic policies were just because he is just "in over his head" or because he believes in "black liberation theology"). This is just a glimpse of what we get when just enough and everyone else is swept away by leaders who make millions off the fear, paranoia and resentment of their constituents.

In the decades immediately following Jesus' assassination, the leaders who extended his Dream all over the world, were convinced that the prophecy of Isaiah 2 had actually come about in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus and the continuation of the very tangible lifestyle of the inaugurated kingdom in church communities (according to the great scholarship of Gerhard Lohfink in Jesus and Community--1982):

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

If Jesus was the Messiah, then it was Time to enact God's Dream of Manna & Mercy through policies that refused violence (swords & spears) and promoted jobs (ploughshares & pruning-hooks). As it turns out, King's complex and interconnected understanding of injustice (race! capitalist exploitation! military adventures!) was masterfully echoing the teachings of the church fathers. When Jesus sent out revolutionaries to canvass the towns of Israel in the 1st Century, he exhorted them to be "as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves." Today, we must cultivate the imagination and purity of heart for political action that transforms systems of economic, racial and military injustice.
_______________________________
We highly recommend the art-filled writings of Dan Erlander whose children's books for adults are reshaping the theological imagination of our own apartment church:

Advocating 4 Amazon.com: A Bad Investment

2011-08-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

...the selfish spirit of commerce that knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
Thomas Jefferson

If we learned anything during the month-long madness of debt ceiling mania it was that now is the time to make a gigantic national priority list. What is it precisely that we want our federal and state governments to invest in? Like all budgets (including families and businesses), once our priorities are made clear, we need to figure out how to pay for them. Shall we go the way of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who, in his very first press conference, fearmongered that Washington cut Social Security and Medicare instead of cut $400 billion from the military budget over the next decade (and consider the $65 billion spent on F-22's too unsafe to fly)? Or is another direction more sane and humane?

It comes as no surprise to loyal EasyYolk readers that we believe in the prioritization of "the least of these," which today (as always) means the poor, children, women, the mentally & physically handicapped, veterans, the elderly, racial minorities, workers and small business owners. The Debt Ceiling Debate should protect programs (like Pell Grants, Social Security, Medicaid & Medicare...and many more) that have been successful in giving opportunity to these vulnerable citizens while shifting a little sacrifice towards those who have been fortunate (and prioritized by policy) to increase their share of the wealth during the Great Recession.

However, there's a cult in America which has been tremendously successful with their rhetoric, effectively framing the debate to convince the minions just how big the government (on every level) has gotten in recent years. Consider the Orange County Register editorial page, which today came out on the side of Amazon.com in their battle to collect zero taxes in states like California which, just last month, passed a law mandating the collection of sales tax for all customers logging in from California.

Note: this was not a tax raise, but a policy change for how taxes are collected for purchases from on-line retailers. As the OC Register pointed out in their editorial today, only 1 in every 100 Amazon California customers paid their sales tax at the end of the fiscal year:

Apart from the convenience and wide selection, Amazon purchases can cost much as 10 percent less than buying from a California-based company that the law requires to add state and local sales taxes.

If there's shame to apportion here, it should be for these illegal tax dodges by the roughly 99 percent of people who buy online from out-of-state retailers, but who refuse to comply with the law by writing the government a personal check for the sales tax. That's what the law requires. About one of 100 Californians comply.

See, the problem with this economy are people like me (and the vast majority of you) who make convenient purchases on-line and then play the tax-dodging game at the end of the year! Knowingly? I think not. If only 1 out of 100 Californians comply, isn't there a pretty good chance that this is a collection issue? The tremendously rare bipartisan coalition of California political leaders agreed with this assessment and changed the law, mandating that Amazon.com collect the taxes and send them to Sacramento quarterly (just like every business in California).

However, the OC Register adamantly put the stake in the ground, siding with on-line corporations and their shareholders and customers, leaving small businesses, brick-and-mortar corporations and the People of California with hundreds of millions of dollars of lower profits and revenues every year. That means loss of jobs and less money for programs that work for vulnerable Californians.

Reminder: out here in California, there has been a $600 decrease in per pupil spending in the past 3 years, a 65% increase in public university tuition rates over the past 5 years and vastly overcrowded prisons that the Supreme Court has recent mandated needs to be solved in 2 years (this either means new prisons built or a massive transfer of prisoners to jails and the streets). In short, revenue matters. Especially if it is another $600 million to $1 billion (as CA political leaders estimate will come as a result of the policy change).

And consider: from 2001 to 2009, according to the California Budget Project, the total adjusted gross income of California’s personal income taxpayers increased by 16.5 percent. In contrast, the net profits reported by corporations for California tax purposes nearly tripled, rising by 192.0 percent.

But if we ~~raise taxes on~~ force corporations to collect sales tax won't it create an anti-business climate and send entrepreneurs packing to states? This is what the OC Register claims:

We've seen this eminently principled economic decision play out countless times as California government has ratcheted up taxation on people and businesses. It's one reason so many have fled the state for less tax-greedy environs.

Not so says a recent UCLA study that exposed the complexity of the economic situation in CA. As it turns out, some businesses leave, some businesses stay and some businesses even choose to set up shop in California because of conditions that are favorable to their industry. And as it turns out, reading the OC Register is just like what Stephen Colbert once said about watching Fox News: it's like watching a Disney movie about the news.

But the truly great part of this tale is the one that makes it clear that the intensely profitable Amazon is clearly the big bad wolf. Amazon is refusing to collect sales taxes for the People of California and instead propagandizing this fight straight to the ballot box (so Californian). Again, in the concluding editorialized words of Amazon's greatest advocates--the OC Register:

Amazon hasn't abandoned California entirely. It is circulating a referendum petition for the ballot to repeal the so-called Amazon tax. Tax-collecting bureaucrats want to interpret the new version of the law as forcing online retailers to collect sales taxes, even without having a traditional physical presence in the state. The company says the law is unconstitutional. We hope the referendum is successful.

In the meantime, we applaud Amazon for minimizing its tax exposure, a prudent move for a for-profit business that benefits its stockholders and customers. And we deplore the money-grubbing government that presumes companies are greedy for wanting to keep what they've earned.

We, of course, call on the People of California to refuse to sign these petitions and to spread the word. We need action on this issue. Amazon will probably get the referendum on the ballot because they are contributing $3 million to (get this) "The More Jobs Not Taxes" referendum campaign (and, if on the ballot, will probably spend $10-20 million more). Amazon is so ruthless in its pursuit of profit that they are stationing petition-gatherers (who get paid $1 to $3 per signature) in front of Target, Ralphs and Trader Joe's (all competitors of on-line businesses).

It has become clearer and clearer to us during this past month that there are some very powerful and wealthy Americans who will self-interestedly rant "less government" over and over while making confident and aggressive claims for how effective and efficient the private sector is (no matter what the facts are). These powerful and wealthy Tea Party and/or Republican benefactors (and their TV and newspaper propagandists) have convinced millions that their policies actually look out for the interests of middle-class workers, small-business owners, families with children and the elderly.

These forces do not actually believe in less government (consider the military budget, regulation on abortion and marraige, corporate subsidies), but are hell-bent on erasing New Deal social programs (that have been successful at lessening the income inequality gap and keeping millions out of poverty) from the American economic landscape. And the results of surveys frighteningly reveal how much Americans benefit from these social programs and do not even know it. In the end, what will happen when we no longer have any money left for schools, roads, libraries, fire and police protection and so much more that government covertly and efficiently does for her People? Hopefully, we won't have to find out.

Presidential Politics: A Progressive Christian Dilemma

2011-08-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.
Howard Zinn

Updates Below

The Democrats aren't failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there's political hay to be made moving to the right. They're doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I've said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.
Matt Taibbi

As the Senate votes for a raise in the debt ceiling (and a decrease in government spending on poor and marginalized people) today and the President signs it into law, we take note that there are only 15 months left in the 2012 Presidential campaign. This will be a difficult decision for progressive Christians.

Many of us voted, campaigned and contributed financially to Barack Obama's historic campaign in '08. I'll never forget driving 4 hours on Halloween night (just 5 days before the election) to attend a rally for Obama in Las Vegas and then spending our Saturday afternoon canvassing for him in the Northwest Vegas suburbs. My wife and I were compelled by his rhetorical savvy, his brilliance, his charitable stance towards his opponents and his substantive message of a more just and peaceful country and world.

But after more than two-and-a-half years of governing, I'm not sure if either Obama lacks the backbone to push through progressive legislation or if he, in fact, just doesn't really want it (this latter option is what Glenn Greenwald persuasively posted again yesterday in the aftermath of the debt ceiling debacle). And despite deceptively painful rhetoric from the right about Obama being a "socialist" and/or "a facist," he's really governed as a "moderate conservative" as former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett recently suggested through a matter-of-fact telling of history--here's his evidence:

•His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
•He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
•He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
•He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
•And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans

But there's a counterfeit left-right balance narrative that the media loves to prop up, making a real diagnosis of Obama more difficult. Here's how Nobel Prize winning economist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman wrote last week:

As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases...But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? “Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric.” A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he’s in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!

After Obama declared on the very first day in office that he would close down Guantanamo Bay in less than a year (it still has not happened), he has effectively continued Bush/Cheney's War on Terror (which is doubly sad because war is terror). Violence has escalated: the Patriot Act has been renewed, undocumented workers are being deported at record rates, drone strikes continue to kill civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and Israel continues to do whatever Israel wants to do with American donated weapons and no peace deal in sight (all in the face of many passionate American Jews who are certain that Obama hates Israel). This is "big government" in all the wrong places (you can include on the "big government" list Obama's Race To The Top Education program that obsessing over testing just like Bush's No Child Left Behind).

Meanwhile, after well-documented greed and fraud on Wall Street (see this and this), there has been very little financial regulation and, still, not one executive has been prosecuted. In addition, oil, food and drug industries continue to bankroll with very little consumer protection (the era of deregulation continues). And tax increases on wealthy incomes and estates and corporate profits are nowhere in sight during a debt crisis (spending cuts are apparently the only way to decrease this deficit). This, no doubt, has a lot to do with the fact that Obama is beholden to this same moneyed class who put him in office in the first place. As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone laments:

It strains the imagination to think that the country's smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by "surrendering" at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

All this (and much more) leads me to the conclusion that progressive Christians who place a priority on peace and justice for poor, working, marginalized and oppressed peoples cannot support Obama because he has caved over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe that Obama is "just as bad" as Bush (or McCain or Perry or Bachmann). These political leaders (who are all professing Christians) fail the test of Jesus' compassionate action for the people which is a crucial litmus test for all who bear his name.

These leaders are indifferent to the plight of the poor, the working class, the middle class, immigrants, African-Americans and the LGBT community. They continue to parrot the small government "trickle-down" economic narrative that has failed "the other 95%" of the world (the same audience of Jesus' teachings and actions). Their devil is in the details, like the cynical GOP health care plan that would increase the number of Americans without health care by about 7 million over the next decade or the Paul Ryan debt-reduction plan that would place a large financial burden on Medicare recipients over the next decade (a 300% increase in costs for seniors).

Indeed, Christians who take the Bible seriously and vote Republican have a lot of convincing to do in regards to their interpretation of the Bible and the success of social, economic and foreign policy for "the other 95%" of our country and the rest of the world. Claiming that charitable giving by churches and individuals will do the trick is not acceptable because "charity" does not give "the other 95%" a real opportunity for sustainance, it is paternalistic and poverty is a structural/systemic issue. Biblical scholarship and social scientific research exposes gaping holes in this mentality.

When Jesus stormed into the Temple in Jerusalem and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, it was a staged political protest, drawing attention to the unjust practices of those currency exchangers who made low-income pilgrims from other parts of the Empire pay high interest rates in order to worship God. Jesus "cleansed" the Temple which legitimized the status quo, blessing the platforms of those in positions of power and privilege, earning their advantage at the dire plight of the poor and marginalized. The Temple elite instituted a system that substituted worship for justice.

When Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom was "not of this world," it was a declaration of a different kind of life than what Hellenistic culture sponsored. Where the Roman and Jewish leaders (the Reign of Caesar) advocated a life of climbing one's way to the top, Jesus pleaded with his fellow citizens of the Reign of God to humbly serve each other ("the greatest of these will be the servant of all"). And when Jesus told his Jewish audience to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar and God what is God's," he was prodding them to make a radical choice about everything in their lives: either choose the way of Caesar or the way of God. One or the other.

When Jesus ate meals with lepers, prostitutes and tax collectors, he violated deeply ingrained social mores and laws that made it inappropriate and/or illegal to associate with these "sinners" (and who decides who "the sinners" are in any society: a combination of faith communities and governments). Jesus was extending the table of God's Reign to the outcasts (and this extended far beyond matters of the heart). No wonder he was crucified.

We progressive Christians who place compassion, peace and justice (individually and systemically) at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian need to lay down the gauntlet in 2012. Because the United States has been historically a two-party system, a third-party candidate is probably not in a position to win in 2012. But the symbolism is important. We must take a stand. When Presidential candidates use prophetic language (as Obama did over and over and over in 2008) during campaigns, we expect them to use every bit of strategy and rhetoric at their disposal to deliver once we elect them to office.

Perhaps Obama will lose in 2012 because the liberals (including progressive Christians) will rebel, sit-out or cast their ballots for Nader or another candidate (Bernie Sanders? Russ Feingold?). This would send an extraordinary message to the Democratic Party. As the rest of the nation moves to the right, we expect the Democratic Party to be a voice in the wilderness, a light in the darkness.

2012 is not a year for "lesser evil" arguments about the Presidency. It is time for a thoroughly principled protest vote. We must bond together and work for a third-way (one much different from Americans Elect, a new net-based political party claiming to be "moderate" and "independent"). We are looking for working professionals and clergy and blue collar workers and the unemployed who will advocate--through word and deed--for this political Third Way. And remember, being "political" is not relegated to what we do with ballots, but also what we do with our consumption and our free time and the way we eat and who we eat with.
__________________________________________
Epilogue: A Review of EasyYolk's Theological-Political Consciousness

1. We represent a spiritual-political movement that vigilantly promotes LIFE

In the womb, from the bomb and in the slum, God cares about all of creation, from humanity to plants to every creature on every hill. We are finding more and more that this life-stance often confronts "the bottom line" head on. Sometimes, we need to intellegently regulate the marketplace in order to protect vulnerable and oppressed life.

2. We represent a spiritual-political movement that vigilantly promotes limiting the POWERS

Like Jesus, we go to battle with forms of government, media, business and, yes, religion that go beyond their God-ordained vocations. When these powers seek more and more power, they become god-like, a form of idolatry that inevitably leads to the de-humanization and destruction of our world. With the Tea Party movement, we say "amen" to less taxes on the poor and middle class, as well as lowering the national debt, and with the anti-war movement, we say "amen" to less spending and power for the "military-industrial complex" (so coined by GOP President Eisenhower).

3. We represent a spiritual-political movement that vigilantly promotes "The Other"

Some people, in different pockets of our globe, hate the United States of America, not because of our freedoms and our Christianity, but because we have used these freedoms and faith to grow our wealth at the expense of others. We have systemically dominated "the other," both at home and abroad. The immigrant, the homosexual and the Muslim often attest to the stripping away of rights and dignity under the guise of security, sanctity or suspicion. These are not the marks of a country that believes in the humane treatment of all God's children. We need a new brand of diplomacy and a new definition of patriotism.

4. We represent a spiritual-political movement that vigilantly promotes FAITH as a vital contributor to democratic living

Various faith movements and organizations have led the charge during this 200+ year American experiment. The sick have been healed, racial minorities and women have been given rights, diseases have been cured and children have been educated and protected when religious communities have thrived. Faith should be encouraged and freed to do what it does best: join God in the redemption of the world.

These dialogical "entry points" help build consensus and focus our efforts. We believe they reflect the best of biblical interpretation and confront the worst strands that world history has offered humanity.

Unfortunately, both sides (liberal and conservative) take on the simple script that our media-of-choice feed us. Conservative Christians virtually all accept a narrative that glorifies the completely unregulated free market as the equal opportunity provider. What about poverty, you may ask? They quote Jesus: "the poor will always be among you." What about government intervention, you may ask? They say, "Jesus preached personal responsibility, hard work and individual charitable giving. He didn't say a thing about government."

On the other side, liberal mainline Christians tend towards a narrative of massive government intervention on behalf of the oppressed, poor and marginalized, protecting them from greedy and neglecting elites. They quote Matthew 25 as their proof-text: it's all about "the least of these." And what about the most controversial question of our day? "Jesus never said anything about gays and lesbians." Our culture is just a ping-pong match of competing bumper stickers that are all half-truths responding to cleverly framed questions.

Theologically, we are post-fundamentalist. We do not subscribe to "inerrancy" or "infallibility" doctrines of the Bible. We do not believe that the Bible is a truth encyclopedia of self-evident principles, systematically and formulaically quoted for simple answers to all of life's complex questions. We understand biblical authority more like an actor approaches an Oscar-winning Script. There must be room in God's Word for interpretation and imaginative performance in all our diverse contexts. Contradictions and inaccuracies cannot simply be explained away (as they are on this site: "solely because of the intricacies of Bible translation"). But the inerrancy of the Bible, as modern fundamentalists understand it, is about 150 years young (as are Left Behind notions of "the Rapture"). Over this past century, the Bible became a point of argumentation between fundamentalists ("who take the Bible seriously") and liberals (who are a bit more laissez-faire about authoritative truth).

EasyYolk is determined to find the Truth about God's created world in Scripture--as we also factor in the role that interpretation plays--as well as experience, social-scientific reasoning, and the 2000-year tradition of the church (for better or worse). But we also affirm that the Bible does not clearly answer all of life's questions. That doesn't mean the Bible is lacking. It's just not the sort of text that fundamentalist Christians have made it out to be. In short, we take the Bible very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that when our conservative brothers and sisters quote Jesus ("the poor will always be among us") to "get the government off their backs," we intend to critically engage with that proof-text, pointing out that Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 15 where God explains to the nation of Israel that they must prioritize taking care of the poor and, in fact, the poor will always be among them due to their own unfaithfulness. Economic systems impoverish people. God taught this to the nation of Israel and Jesus taught it to his disciples

EasyYolk is a spiritual path that takes the Bible and the real problems in our world more seriously, passionately, humbly and complexly. We attempt to take a position that Friedman, and his mentor Murray Bowen, calls "differentiated." This is a challenging goal that resists the natural "herding" instinct that soothes our battle with chronic anxiety. The "emotional reactivity" coming from traditional "conservatives" (a supermajority of our readers and the single largest ideological group in America: 40% to 21% for liberals) can certainly be seen and heard while they read our posts, echoing their sources, whether Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, Will, Steyn, Palin or their friends, family members and fellow church congregants who, through a strange sort of osmosis, get their talking points from the top. And, yes, we see this from folks on the left (but not as much due to numbers) who are "fused" with Moore, Stewart, Olbermann, Maddow and Maher (we're not saying that the substance of "right" and "left" are equal and opposite mirrors of each other, but their tone certainly is--more on that in a later post).

We are committed to what the late Senator Paul Wellstone called "the politics of conviction." We will do whatever it takes to speak the truth in love, gentleness and humility (that's right, sometimes we are wrong). Real change will come when others sign on to honest dialogue (which requires listening), creative thinking, biblical scholarship, social-scientific reasoning and a rigorous self-assessment that analyzes how one's own political bias serves one's own financial, social and, yes, psychological agenda.
_______________________________________
Updates:

From David Sirota (August 9, 2011):

On health care, for instance, Obama passed a Heritage Foundation-inspired bailout of the private health insurance industry, all while undermining other more progressive proposals. On foreign policy, he escalated old wars and initiated new ones. On civil liberties, he not only continued the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects but also claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without charge.

On financial issues, he fought off every serious proposal to re-regulate banks following the economic meltdown; he preserved ongoing bank bailouts; and he resisted pressure to prosecute Wall Street thieves. On fiscal matters, after extending the Bush tax cuts at a time of massive deficits, he has used the debt ceiling negotiations to set the stage for potentially massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare—cuts that would be far bigger than any of his proposed revenue increases.

The Face of Christian Fundamentalism

2011-07-31T16:26:00.000-07:00

...the closest thing to a political principle that most fundamentalists seemed to share was a profession of individualism that paralleled their theological dictum that the individual was the basic unit in the work of salvation.
George Marsden

The movement promises to followers what many never had: a stable home and family, a loving community, fixed moral standards, financial and personal success and an abolition of uncertainty and doubt. It offers a religious vision that will make fragmented, lost individuals whole. It provides moral clarity. I also promises to exterminate, in one final, apocalyptic battle, the forces many of these people blame for their despair.
Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2006)

...Constantinian Christianity in America places such a strong emphasis on personal conversion, individual piety, and philanthropic service and has lost its fervor for the suspicion of worldly authorities and for doing justice in the service of the most vulnerable among us, which are central to the faith.
Cornel West, Democracy Matters (2004)

In the context of almost a decade of two unjust wars (see this for historical criteria since the 4th century...before then, ALL Christians were pacifists) in the Middle East launched by the Christian commander-in-chief of the strongest military in the history of the planet and this week's prayer vigil called "The Response" hosted by Rick Perry, another Christian-Governor-of-Texas-who-wants-to-be-President-but-has-not-officially-declared, we pause to consider what exactly defines Christian Fundamentalism (as opposed to progressive, prophetic, liberal, irenic brands of faith) and why it is cause for concern.

As we consistently post, not all Christians are the same, but there is a big divide between Fundamentalists (who come in a variety of styles themselves) and the rest of us. In fact, Chris Hedges' Truthdig column this week claims that this is the real danger that our society faces and it is something that transcends religion: "the widespread mental habit of fundamentalism." According to Hedges, it's not even just Christians, nor is it just religious folks: it's a whole culture of church leaders, media entertainers, political experts, scientists and anti-religious philosophers. We'll let Hedges and others tease out what the other Fundamentalists look like. Here is our list of the 5 most important indicators of what 21st century Christian Fundamentalism looks like.

1. A Rigorous Resistance to Nuance, Doubt and Complexity

The world is always black and white for Fundamentalists. Evil is easy to find and uproot. The quest for certainty is stronger than ever. Truth is easily delivered because the Bible is both error-free and self-evident. Fundamentalists never interpret the Bible, they read it--plainly, simply and clearly--under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and/or their favorite pastor-hero. Marriage is always between a man and a woman because that's "what the Bible clearly says." But when we read critically and carefully, things do not look so clear:

And it just gets more and more complex from there: from war to poverty to abortion to women to slavery and on and on and on.

Here's Hedges from this week's column:

This fundamentalist ideology, because it is contradictory and filled with myth, is immune to critiques based on reason, fact and logic. This is part of its appeal. It obliterates doubt, nuance, intellectual and scientific rigor and moral conscience. All has been predicted or decided. Life is reduced to following a simple black-and-white road map. The contradictions in these belief systems—for example the championing of the “rights of the unborn” while calling for wider use of the death penalty or the damning of Muslim terrorists while promoting pre-emptive war, which delivers more death and misery in the Middle East than any jihadist organization—inoculate followers from rational discourse. Life becomes a crusade.

2. An Emphasis on an Interior and Future Salvation

The supernatural significance of Jesus' death is important to ALL Christians. For Fundamentalists, the cross, since that very first Good Friday and Easter, gives everyone in the world the turn-or-burn decision to either accept it or reject it. The consequences for rejecting it (for any reason whatsoever) is eternal punishment in hell after death. Fundamentalists call it "good news" because they are granted a relationship with God and get to go to heaven when they die. Everyone else is wrong...and damned. One way to understand this is to look at it through the perspective the two most popular American Christians from the 20th century. The Fundamentalist version of the Christian gospel was embraced by Billy Graham:

But the most important issue we face today is the same the church has faced in every century: Will we reach our world for Christ? In other words, will we give priority to Christ's command to go into all the world and preach the gospel?...The central issues of our time aren't economic or political or social, important as these are. The central issues of our time are moral and spiritual in nature, and our calling is to declare Christ's forgiveness and hope and transforming power to a world that does not know him or follow him. May we never forget this.

But Martin Luther King interpreted the cross very differently, mystically and socio-politically rooted in this world, as he led oppressed and marginalized people out of second-class citizenship and poverty:

The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.

3. A Claim of Political Neutrality

John Howard Yoder's 1972 classic The Politics of Jesus exposed all the ways that Christians have subtly emasculated the political Jesus of the Gospels. His "6-fold claim of Jesus’ irrelevence" ultimately had the impact "to set the authority of Jesus aside.” But what hovers behind all this Fundamentalist resistance to "politics" is what Ched Myers calls an "ideological bargain Christian theology has struck with secular capitalism:" In his Binding The Strongman (1988), a profound commentary on the Gospel of Mark, he writes that this apolitical mentality from church leadership "has conceded authority over the public sphere to the state in hopes of retaining a modicum of authority over the private sphere."

Since the early 20th century (what church historian George Marsden calls "The Great Reversal"), Fundamentalist Christian pastors, especially in mostly white suburbs, have steered away from controversial political subjects which has mostly had the effect of baptizing the status quo. Fundamentalist churches focus on the poor and marginalized through philanthropic giving, a form of paternalistic charity that makes solidarity with the vulnerable a difficult position to attain. This mentality leads to what Hedges (in American Fascists) calls "a disastrous disengagement with the larger, more complicated systems and imbalances that fuels poverty and injustice."

The claim of political neutrality is actually what Marsden calls "political ambivalence," an inconsistent and incoherent picking-and-choosing of political issues, often framed in "biblical" or "moral" terms to secure them from "politics" (compare/contrast this with this).

4. A Consistent Placement of Blame on Convenient Scapegoats

It was the commies and secular humanists during the Cold War era and now it is the gays/lesbians, Muslims (without differentiating between brands), big government and nonbelievers. Surely, everyone is sinful, but the real threats come from particularly sinful folks outside the confines of the church. Fundamentalists "prove" that gay rights advocates threaten the "sanctity of marriage" by giving examples of the "perversion" and "promiscuity" of some gays and lesbians (the American Family Association is sponsoring a boycott of Home Depot for supporting "the gay agenda"...the AFA is also a featured sponsor of Perry's Response) and they "prove" that Muslims are inherently violent by providing a few verses (out of context) from the Koran.

5. A Belief in the Coming Apocalypse

The belief in the Rapture goes hand in hand with refusal to engage in peace and justice efforts within economic and socio-political structures. If God is coming to rescue his followers from all the evil of this world then there's no real reason to spend a lot of time and effort on transforming the world's systems. The real work is getting people saved so that God rescues them too.

The first Christian disciples, however, thought much more holistically about a future hope, as biblical scholar N.T. Wright clarifies:

...the Gospels thus demonstrate a close integration with the genuine early Christian hope, which is precisely not the hope for heaven in the sense of a blissful disembodied life after death in which creation is abandoned to its fate, but rather the hope, as in Ephesians 1, Romans 8 and Revelation 21, for the renewal and final coming together of heaven and earth, the consummation precisely of God's project to be savingly present in an ultimate public world. And the point of the Gospels is that with the public career of Jesus, and with his death and resurrection, this whole project was decisively inaugurated, never to be abandoned.

Conclusion: Our Concerns

In 1921, at the origins of the Christian Fundamentalism in the United States, the progressive Christian magazine The Christian Century communicated a vital concern that still holds true today:

When the capitalist discovers a brand of religion which has not the slightest interest in "the social gospel," but on the contrary intends to pass up all reforms to the Messiah who will return on the clouds of heaven, he has found just the thing he has been looking for.

This unveils the real horror of Christian Fundamentalism: it does not reflect the Jesus of the Gospels who turned the tables on those Roman and Jewish elites who powermongered the other 99% of 1st century Palestine. Jesus equated love of God with love of neighbor and continued the prophetic Jewish strand of calling God's People to live simply and share their possessions while confronting the powers-that-be.

A faith that mirrors the Jesus of the Gospels is humble and transparent, willing to be vulnerable about struggles and weaknesses and questions/doubts about the Bible and everything else there is. It is a here-and-now way of life that engages with both symptoms and systems of evil (addiction, abuse, apathy individually and collectively, personally and policy). This faith refuses to scapegoat our neighbors, strangers and enemies because Jesus' death on the cross exposed the idiocy of the scapegoating mechanism. And finally, authentic Christian faith resists the temptation to discount the nonviolent struggle against injustice by claiming that God will do all the work in the future (either the Rapture or Heaven).

Today, Christian Fundamentalism thrives in the American suburbs largely because it is an easy-to-understand message about eternal salvation and personal piety while demonizing those very different from themselves. It gives meaning, fulfillment and a sense of community through inspirational sermons, emotion-driven worship music and "small groups" of men and women who have similiar interests and convictions. It strives for the status quo, harkening back to a mythical era when America was a Christian nation. No doubt, we will keep praying for America and the rest of the world. But we'll be sitting out Governor Perry's Response.

Today

2011-07-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

I thank you God for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and for a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.
e.e. cummings

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.
Thomas Merton

[Mindfulness] has to do with examining who we are, with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

1. Today, I will resist being defined by what I accomplish.

2. Today, I will resist being defined by what others think of me (whether admiration or disapproval).

3. Today, my identity will be transformed by meditatively immersing myself in the unconditional Love of God (the Breath within the breath).

4. Today, I will pursue authenticity by being playful and letting my guard down.

5. Today, I will come out of hiding and pursue intimacy.

6. Today, I will resist the autopilot of my mind. I will be focused & present: awake, aware & alert.

7. Today, I will embrace a prophetic vocation: confronting & resisting systems that bring pain, anxiety, addiction, loneliness and unfulfilled longings…energizing the world with another Way characterized by compassion, service, love, simplicity, gentleness, cooperation and grace.

8. Today, when anxiety is triggered, I will resist the coping mechanisms that dehumanize me and my brothers and sisters: fight, flight, fusion or caretaking.

9. Today, I will resist allowing fear and anger to continue their cycle of violence.

10. Today, I will be differentiated from & present with others.

11. Today, I will resist the magnetic lure of nationalism, sexism, consumerism & white privilege.

12. Today, I will be in solidarity with the marginalized & vulnerable.

13. Today, I will resist eating animal products, processed foods, anything grown with pesticides & plants "harvested" on factory farms.

14. Today, I will eat whole foods, produced locally and organically, brought to market by workers paid a living wage.

15. Today, I will resist the herd instinct & the quick fix.

16. Today, I will listen for understanding & make “I-statements” with gentleness.

17. Today, I will resist making decisions on the basis of my own economic self-interest, convenience or pain avoidance.

18. Today, I will join with God in a adventurous vocation of loving, creating, serving and healing.

19. Today, I will respect and learn from friends and neighbors from other (non)faith traditions.

20. Today, I will resist the temptation to purchase consumer goods to relieve stress and anxiety.

21. Today, I will seek and find God in nature & in the faces of my fellow human beings.

A More Feminine God

2011-07-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

The only guide we have is this nonauthoritarian, powerless Christ who has nothing but love, who exerts no power, has no armies to call on, shouts no one down, as God did Job out of the whirlwind, who has nothing with which to save us but his love. His powerlessness constitutes his inner authority. We are not his because he sired us, created us, made us. We are his because love is his weaponless power, and that power is stronger than death.
Dorothee Soelle

In the summer of 1980, Dorothee Soelle, the professor of systematic theology at Union Seminary (as well as mother, theologian, activist and poet) gave a university lecture that laid out a common ground for feminists, mystics and advocates for radical liberation: a set of convictions that led to an authentic lifestyle characterized by a vigilant "search for nonauthoritarian relationships and conditions."

This "search" led Soelle to actively protest the Vietnam War, nuclear weapon build-up and 3rd World injustices of the Cold War era through her poetry, theological writings, outspoken lectures and her creative political nightprayers that she wrote with her husband, the Benedictine monk Fullbert Steffensky. And now, her work is more current than ever in a post-9/11 world of massive economic injustice, ecological degradation and the continual political and theological rhetoric of Christian fundamentalists (what she called "Christofacists") who are obsessed with strong-arming America back to a mythical Christian nation status that never existed. Soelle's legacy is to call all Christians to embrace feminism, mysticism and a rugged focus on liberation at the very heart of their faith.

Soelle masterfully critiqued the very nature of salvation as framed by Western Protestant Christianity:

Redemption is not the granting of salvation to a specific individual. It is instead an occurrence that takes place in this world and for everyone of this world. It does not touch just some individuals but has instead a liberating character for all humankind.

God is in the business of liberating humanity from every aspect of our lives: economic, political, social, psychological, cultural and religious life. With that said, Soelle compelled her students to embrace a more mystical faith in God: a focus on experiencing God outside of doctrines, beliefs, Bible-reading and pastoral sermonizing. To be mystical is to immerse ourselves in the Movement of God, the Living Wind and Source of all things, in our unique context instead of seeking to honor a remote, sacrifice-demanding God because he is a powerful and dominating Father who is all to quick to deal out punishments.

Soelle's narrative approach proposed that we start with real life issues like "my father-in-law has pancreatic cancer" and "the California Legislature just cut another $500 million from public universities" and then setting these experiences "against the promise of a whole life, the promise of the Kingdom of God," instead of the overwhelming tendency to start Christian faith with principles like "Jesus was the Son of God" and "God created the heavens and the earth" and then applying them to our lives. Christian faith, for mystics like Soelle, is all about improvising with the Character of self-donating love present in our struggle for peace and justice.

At the heart of mysticism is a belief in a God who vulnerably joins humanity in a solidarity that

...asks that we change the image of God from that of a power-dispensing father to one of a liberating and unifying force, and we cease to be objects and become subjects involved in this process of change, that we learn cooperation rather than wait for things to come to us from on high.

Soelle subverted these "phallocratic fantasies" of God with a more holistic and inclusive feminism because, let's face it, it's "not limited to people with female reproductive organs." Jesus himself was a feminist not just because of his attitudes and treatment towards women, but because he sought to tear down hierarchical rules of 1st century Palestinian Judaism within the paterfamilias of the Roman Empire. In short, he addressed both symptoms and systems. And so should we:

What we need is another culture with goals and values different from the ones currently in force. The essence of feminism is not just a big “Me, too!” It is the creation of something new.

A more feminist faith will liberate women from the internalized helplessness that is soaked into their consciousness in a patriarchal society, but it will also liberate men from the entitlement of unearned privilege and unacknowledged oppression of women. It will allow all of us, regardless of gender, to hear the woman's voice much clearer in our marriages, the marketplace, our government and our faith communities (the church, Soelle laments, has been "the lubricant" of women's oppression in our culture).

Our world desperately needs Christian communities that flip the Western patriarchal, institutional and personal salvation scripts and embrace more mystical, liberationist and feminist strands. Three decades ago, Soelle inspired her students to leave the world (all that comes with the American Dream), leave the self (our apathy, our image-obsession, our restlessness) and leave God (the commanding, dominating, authoritarian version in our imaginations) behind in order to live out the good news of the weaponless power of the death-transforming love of Christ. We find God when we pour out this love into all the spaces in our lives where the vulnerable, marginalized and oppressed reside.
_________________________________________
*Today's image of God as an African-American woman is from a sketch that artist Leo Hartshorn drew for a tattoo for one of his friends. Check out his blog for more of his beautiful work.

Living Buddha, Living Christ

2011-07-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

We do not have to die to arrive at the gates of Heaven. In fact, we have to be truly alive. The practice is to touch life deeply so that the Kingdom of God becomes a reality. This is not a matter of devotion. It is a matter of practice.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995)

Back in the 1960s, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, scholar and activist Thich Nhat Hanh worked tirelessly relocating refugees of war & rebuilding schools and hospitals, as well as traveling around the United States educating many about the injustice of the American Imperial Adventure in his homeland and convincing Martin Luther King and others to oppose it. He eventually was exiled by the Vietnamese government and settled in France, authoring more than 100 books while touring all over the world.

Nhat Hanh grew up in the context of the French colonization of his homeland. It was well-known by his fellow countrymen that Christian missionaries like the late 17th century Alexandre de Rhodes referred to Buddha as "sinister and deceitful." This hostile climate eventually led to President Diem's ban on the great Buddhist national holiday Wesak in 1963. Nhat Hanh did not really get an opportunity "to touch Jesus Christ and his tradition" until he meet followers of Jesus like King, Thomas Merton and the Dutch Hebe Kohlbrugge, who rescued thousands of Jews during WWII and then committed herself to help Vietnamese orphans and needy children during the Vietnam War (she gave back her WWII medals when her country refused to support her work in Vietnam).

In 1995, Nhat Hanh addressed the value of interfaith dialogue in his Living Buddha, Living Christ by doing what came naturally to him--meditating on nature:

When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain and there would be no flower.

For Thich Nhat Hanh, the flower exemplified Interbeing, the interconnectedness of all living beings and it revealed that if his own tradition (Buddhism) really possessed the truth, then naturally it contained aspects of all other faith traditions. And, he proclaimed, the same must also true about Christianity. His 200-page gem goes on to show just how true this really is, explaining how Buddhist mindfulness is really just the mirror image of the work of the Christian Holy Spirit:

When mindfulness is in you, the Holy Spirit is in you, and your friends will see it, not just by what you say, but through your whole being.

Nhat Hanh, quoting Christian theologians from Origen to Aquinas to Merton, beckons Christian readers to consider the authencity of the concept of God's image in all humanity. If this is true, for Buddhists and Christians alike (and Hindus and Taoists and Atheists, etc), then the realization of the Way of Jesus is possible for everyone. Indeed, Nhat Hanh claims that his devotion to the practice of breathing, walking and eating mindfulness throughout the entire day has allowed him to experience God's Spirit more and more since he became a Buddhist monk at the age of 16.

Now, at 84, Nhat Hanh continues to practice radical nonviolence (combating poverty, ignorance and disease; going to sea to help rescue boat people; evacuating the wounded from combat zones; resettling refugees; helping hungry children and orphans; opposing wars; producing and disseminating peace literature; training peace and social workers; and rebuilding villages destroyed by bombs) as an overflow of his commitment to the radical lifestyle of meditation:

Meditation is not a drug to make us oblivious to our real problems. It should produce awareness in us and also in our society. For us to achieve results, our enlightenment has to be collective. How else can we end the cycle of violence? We ourselves have to contribute, in small and large ways, toward ending our own violence. Looking deeply at our own mind and our own life, we will begin to see what to do and what not to do to bring about a real change.

Meditation is not just sitting on a pillow 24-7 breathing happy thoughts. It, instead, is the mustard seed that leads us to realize the Kingdom of God in this lifetime:

If while we practice we are not aware that the world is suffering, that children are dying of hunger, that social injustice is going on everywhere, we are not practicing mindfulness. We are just trying to escape.

Nat Hanh's work is tremendously valuable to Western Christians whose tradition lacks a commitment to mystical practice. The uber-growth of North American Evangelicalism has led to strong emphasis on (a form of) Bible study and "the quiet time" (prayer, journaling, etc) which has the ultimate goal of worshipping Jesus or glorifying God as an end to itself.

Enter Buddhism which inherently equates true religion with experiencing the Ultimate Reality through awareness which inevitably leads to love, acceptance, understanding, kindness, tolerance and gentleness (compare James 1:27). In fact, the title of Nhat Hanh's work refers to this Buddhist understanding that the Buddha (who mindfully walked this planet 2500 years ago) can only continue to live in the meditative lives of Buddhists today if they actually do what he did. This is precisely what Nhat Hanh expects of Christians:

[When Jesus told his disciples] “I am the Way," the “I” in His statement is life itself, His life, which is the way. If you do not really look at His life, you cannot see the way. If you only satisfy yourself with praising a name, even the name of Jesus, it is not practicing the life of Jesus. We must practice living deeply, loving, and acting with charity if we wish to truly honor Jesus...The living Christ is the Christ of Love who is always generating love, moment after moment. When the church manifests understanding, tolerance, and loving-kindness, Jesus is there. Christians have to help Jesus Christ be manifested by their way of life, showing those around them that love, understanding, and tolerance are possible.

Nhat Hanh, in true EasyYolk fashion, laments the construal of Christianity as "praising Jesus" in response to a guarantee of eternal life in heaven after death. The only way to continue the life of Jesus on earth (He is risen indeed!) is to live out his nonviolent Way, pledging allegiance to a life of forgiveness, humble service and even unconditional love for our enemies. When Christian communities effectively do this, then (and only then) is Jesus alive.

And this is why the Holy Spirit is so important to Nhat Hanh. He is convinced that a focus on beliefs, doctrines and concepts about God does not effectively lead us to the Promised Land of creatively living out the Kingdom of God within our contexts. We can live this radical way only when the Divine Resource planted within all of us is cultivated through a life of prayer and mindfulness. This is a holistic vision of discipline, intentionality and passion, the goal being every moment (in our marriages, at our jobs, eating, working out, etc) of our lives soaked in the awareness of God's Presence within us, within others and in nature all around us.

The writings of Thich Nhat Hanh are a rich resource for all followers of Jesus and Buddha (and everyone else) who believe in both the peaceable fruit of interfaith dialogue and the possibility of bringing heaven to a world weighed down by aggression, addiction, abuse and apathy. His message of mindfulness leads to a movement of unarmed truth and unconditional love that will have the final say in Reality.

*For more on mindfulness meditation, see this.

Jesus: The Final Scapegoat

2011-07-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Gospels show that faith emerges when individuals come out of the mob.
Rene Girard

...the women around Jesus are just as important but in a different way: they are that part of humanity which has nothing to do with scapegoating him.
Rene Girard

The 87-year-old French anthropological philosopher Rene Girard has a couple of important contributions for all of us who are deeply jaded or downright irate with mainstream Christianity, longing for a more compelling way to follow Jesus: mimetic rivalry & the scapegoat mechanism. Before you stop reading this post because of the big words contained in that opening sentence, hear me out--I'll make this very simple.

Mimetic rivarly (or mimetic desire) is the universal human condition: the nonconscious imitation of others. As Girard would say, we are not really individuals at all, but instead "interdividuals." We mirror each other and inevitably end up grasping for the same things: status, resources and trophies (etc). The things don't create the desire. We do. And then it snowballs exponentially into violence: "You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them" (James 4:2).

Mimetic rivalry creates violence and in order for communities to survive this violent chaos these tribes, cities and nations have historically identified and isolated a scapegoat, an innocent 3rd party to channelize and appease collective anger and violence. This "sacred violence" has been used in religious rites to appease God(s): an innocent victim to take upon the sin of the community.

Enter Jesus whose death has been mostly interpreted by mainstream Christian communities as just this kind of sacrificial death. In this construal, God needed Jesus, the innocent victim, to die in order to satisfy the honor of God or appease God's anger or to become the substitute of the collective sins of the people.

Along with biblical scholars and Christian theologians like Joel Green, Ched Myers and James McClendon, Girard acknowledges that there is some of this language in the New Testament and within the writings of the Church Fathers, but he proposes that the real signficance of Jesus is that God forever terminated this wayward human understanding of sacrificial death. There was (and is) nothing divine about it. In fact, Girard proposes that Jesus' death on a cross clearly revealed how unsacred violence really is:

I think the power and truth of Christianity is that it completes the great forms of monotheism, as in Judaism and Islam, by witnessing to the God who reveals himself to be the arch-scapegoat in order to liberate humankind.

According to Girard's studies and therefore his reading of the New Testament, the scapegoat mechanism is a cultural factor not approved by God. Scapegoating has always had a powerful grip on communities and this herd instinct was in full effect during the last hours of Jesus' life, the Passover crowds turning on him and echoing the leaders' calls to "Crucify him!" After all, according to John's Gospel, "Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people" (John 18:14). Caiaphas, the powerful and privileged religious leader...not God.

Girard's minority report of the meaning of the cross is compelling because it confronts the powerful and universal human penchant towards scapegoating. Indeed, a faith that has turned Jesus' death into a sacrifice to appease God takes humanity off the hook. The signficance of the cross is already worked out with no real direct application to our lifestyles. However, Girard's focus on the waywardness of the scapegoating mechanism implicates humanity and calls us to repent from ever scapegoating again. In fact, to be like God is to seek out the scapegoats of our society and resurrect them from the powers of death.

Followers of Jesus today can take upon themselves the vocation of the women in the Gospel stories, the characters who had nothing to do with scapegoating Jesus, following him all the way to the brutal cross. Mimicing the women, instead of the scapegoaters, we proclaim God's precious gospel: that there is nothing sacred about scapegoating and that it compounds the cycle of violence in our lives.

If God intended for Jesus to be the final scapegoat, then we contemporary American followers of Jesus ought to, first of all, be very careful how we simplistically isolate and blame certain individuals and groups of people for complex problems in our world. The collective exaltation over the death of Osama bin Laden, blaming the President for the downward spiral of the economy and the overfocus upon the addict ("the difficult child") within the family system are just a few examples of the way we bind our anxiety and violence by pinpointing one person.

And second, we ought to re-examine how we understand the supposed sacred nature of sacrificial violence. American soldiers who die in battle "for our country" and women who stay in emotionally and physically abusive relationships "for the children" are just two examples of counterfeit notions of "taking up the cross" of Jesus.

Now more than ever, the death of Jesus matters. And, now more than ever, the primary signficance of Calvary matters. Was Jesus a once-and-for-all sacrifice or the final scapegoat? Or as Marcus Borg and John Domminic Crossan ask: was this violence a divine necessity or human inevitability? The answers to these kinds of questions paint the picture of what following Jesus looks like in real time, ultimately shaping the outcome of our lives.

The Genius of the Voluntary Gas Tax

2011-07-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen from $2.72 a year ago to $3.56 today. Our national gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon--low compared to European taxes--is factored into that price (most states have additional taxes added: 68.9 cents per gallon in CA). Societies levy this excise tax for two basic reasons: to raise revenue to build, maintain and repair national highways and to compensate for external costs like pollution and ozone depletion that are hidden in the low prices of American gasoline. Economists, of course, debate how effective gas taxes are at both funding projects and limiting the amount of carbon spewed into our air.

Some microsocieties, even smaller than counties and cities, are creatively taking matters into their own hands with the ultimate economic weapon: the voluntary gas tax. That's right, a community of more than 3 dozen in Harrisonburg, Virginia have committed themselves for over a decade to tax their gasoline to raise consciousness about oil addiction and raise revenue that supports projects ranging from earthquake survivors in Pakistan to local residents for heating bills. Indeed, as they say in Harrisburg, this is "the craziest tax you've never heard of!" But like leaven in the loaf, the VGT has spread to funky outposts like Goshen, Indiana and Davis, California, critically transforming lifestyles while creatively funding those in need.

We got an opportunity to sit-down and e-chat with Earl Martin, one of these beautifully insane self-taxers from Harrisonburg.

EY: When did your community start the voluntary gas tax and what was the initial response from within the community?

EM: We think we started in the year 2000. A community of folks who lived here in our house would often discuss the fact that we were paying but a fraction of the real cost of gasoline. Finally, we said to each other: Let's do something about this. Let's tax ourselves for the use of gasoline. So we started and invited other friends to join us. Initially, the larger community here in Harrisonburg hardly knew that we were doing this. But as we had opportunity to talk with more people about it, we discovered a good amount of curiosity, some incredulity, and quite a bit of support and encouragement.

EY: What are the theological, political and/or philosophical convictions that form the foundation for your gas tax?

EM: I'm not sure that we ever spelled that out clearly, but I believe there is a strong sense of being fair to our planet and finding a sustainable way to live that undergirds our initiative. Theologically, most of us might feel that God loves all of creation and all the creatures in that creation. Hence, for us to be kind to creation, and especially for us to be kind to our children and grandchildren and all who come after us, it is imperative that we be much more careful in how we consume earth's resources.

Most of us are also committed to nonviolent peacebuilding. We believe that the drive of the US to acquire cheap oil has often caused our country to wage war against others.

EY: How is the tax revenue collected?

EM: We have gatherings twice a year. Potlucks in someone's home. At that time we come, having calculated that mount of gasoline we used in the previous six months. (Many folks keep their credit card receipts and add up the gallons. Others note their car's odometer differential and divided by the miles per gallon of their vehicle.) Most of us pay 50 cents/gallon for the gas we consume. Some have contributed at least symbolic amounts for their air travel, but we've not done much with that or with heating fuel.

EY: How does the community make decisions about how to use the tax revenue?

EM: At our bi-annual gatherings, we come with suggestions for how to use the funds. After we've computed how many funds we have available, we discuss the various ideas folks have for disbursal. We have contributed heavily toward local projects, e.g., promoting bike paths and increased bicycle use, but also often give to national and international projects. A project a few years ago was to give $500 to the local Habitat for Humanity chapter for some energy-saving feature in their construction. With that money they sent their project manager to a seminar on solar hot water heaters. They tried such a heater on their next house, and liked it so much, they've installed them on all subsequent houses.

EY: Have you seen significant lifestyle changes come about as a result of the gas tax?

EM: Hard to say. I do think that most of us think more carefully now on whether or not to make a road trip in a car. Lots of our group use bicycle as primary form of transportation. A few do not own cars. But some do use vehicles in employment, like my carpentry work van, and still do consume considerable amounts of fuel.

EY: What piece of advice would you give to a community first starting a voluntary gas tax?

EM: Get ready to have a good time. One of the fun things has been to discover that the people who are ready, even enthusiastic, to charge themselves a voluntary tax are probably not the stingiest or curmudgeonly folks in town. So it's a fun bunch of folks to be working with. From there on, the sky's the limit: leverage that money to cultivate creative things in your community and beyond. Be as evangelistic (or not) about the venture with your neighborhood and the world as you want to be. Share your notes with us and we'll share with you. If you get something going, we'd love to add a link to your group on the web site.

*Earl and the folks of VGT Harrisonburg can be reached at voluntarygastax@gmail.com.

14 Ways to Resist the Mainstream

2011-07-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

...they experienced a new ease and a profound freedom known only to those captivated by truly important things.
Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus and Community (1982)

The priority agenda for Jesus, and for many of us, is not mortality or anxiety, but unrighteousness, injustice. The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which men may live together in love.
John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution (1971)

If we are truly going to survive and flourish, we've got to build our lives on some teachings that have stood the test of time. When we live these out with a community of sincere truth-seekers it's just like building our house on a firm foundation that defies floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes. We will experience a rare brand of joy and freedom that can only come from a committed countercultural movement that refuses to be prostituted by power, wealth and an addiction to the admiration of others.

1. Be salt and light (a source of both seasoning and guidance)

The mainstream has convinced us, in a myriad of mediums and messages, that we need to protect ourselves and comfort ourselves and reward ourselves. This self-absorption has soaked right through us, leaving us unfulfilled and void of meaning. Narcissism sucks. Many of us are so bogged down with unresolved pain and guilt that all we can do to cope with the overwhelming burden of life is to seek our own salvation through various strategies of pain avoidance, leaving us with very limited reserves of empathy and service to others. An alternative lifestyle that spreads unconditional love to everyone around us--while bringing us true joy and fulfillment--will involve disciplines like prayer, fasting and simple living that shift the focus away from ourselves on to the real needs of our friends, acquaintances, co-workers, strangers and rivals.

2. Seek forgiveness & reconciliation (channelize anger, don’t repress it or project it)

The myth of redemptive violence has enormous strength in American culture, from our post-9/11 wars to our harsh punishments for drug & violent crime offenders to all our personal revenge fantasies. When we are victimized (in any form) and project violence on to others, the violent cycle continues to intensify (with no end in sight) one generation after another. And when we repress that violence, we internalize outcomes leading to addiction, mental disorders and even cancer. This fermenting rage needs to come out in healing conversations with friends, counselors & pastors, as well as with the victim or perpetrator. In addition, we need to seek out "aqueducts of anger," outlets like political advocacy, education & research, art & creativity, fundraising for peace & justice projects & campaigns, food and fitness that make the world a more healthy and adventurous place to live in.

3. Embody sexual discipline

One of the greatest ways to resist the corporate takeover in America is to simply refuse to buy into advertising that is mostly dominated by sex and sensuality. It is subtle and works effectively to penetrate our subconscious and get us to buy, buy, buy. Corporations know all about our collective addiction, obsession and fetishization of everything sexual and they use it against us. The road to sexual discipline may start by unplugging the TV altogether and being highly selective with the movies we watch. Take a 30-day TV fast. Throw away the men's fitness and women's health & beauty magazines. Ultimately, the epidemic of sexual dysfunction in the West is a symptom of our inability to experience deep intimacy and find meaningful community.

4. Say what you mean and mean what you say

Honesty, transparency and authencity, when modeled and experienced, are better than when your spouse fetches you a cup of cold water in the middle of the night. And it is tremendously contagious: when we dare to speak the truth--about ourselves and our world--it becomes an epidemic of full disclosure.

5. Refuse revenge, but demand dignity (nonviolent resisters put up a boundary!)

Nonviolent resistance to evil does not mean we become a doormat. When we face unjust leaders and abusive lovers with our truth and our bodies, they are confronted with humanity. Back in the 1950s, when the Civil Rights marchers descended upon Birmingham and took on firehoses and police dogs, the rest of America watched it on television that night after work and public opinion dramatically changed.

6. Humanize your enemies. Extend love to those who dish out hate.

We cannot afford to live any longer with resentment and hatred. There are consequences for either repressing negative energy or releasing it into violent behavior (see #2). When we work to understand our enemies, we realize that they are just as human as we are, full of anxiety and self-protecting copings. When we get to the root of evil, we can more fully see the pain in their eyes...and eventually forgive them.

7. Resist a bloated religious identity: practice prayer, fasting & generosity in secret.

There is a strong pull within our culture to find our religious identity by attaching ourselves to celebrity pastors and large congregations. Others find it with uber-spiritualized language that attributes every agenda and motivation (no matter how self-interested) to God's Sovereign Will. Perhaps it is best to refuse to allow our left hand to know what our right hand is doing and to find a little secret space to pray to the only One who knows every longing of our hearts. We will be strengthened when we resist finding legitimacy through famous men and large numbers.

8. Don’t hoard wealth. Live simply.

This is tremendously revolutionary in a culture sustained by advertising and commercials that exist for one reason only: to coax us into buying shit we absolutely do not need. There's enough for everyone on this planet...only if those of us living in the West start sharing a lot more of it.

9. Don’t be consumed with anxiety over finances, food and clothing.

Scarcity is what defines the mainstream. So let's live abundantly and simply. We can embrace generosity when we take into consideration the needs of others who live with far less than ourselves. We have a lot of pressure to keep up with the Joneses, magnified by advertising. Let's say "NO!" to the extras that we, not only do not need, but actually add more anxiety to our lives. We don't need more stuff: things are thieves of time.

10. Take your own inventory.

One of the best strategies to resist transformation is to fetishize the weaknesses of others. This includes workplace gossip and celebrity scandals. We use these spectacles to prop ourselves up, rationalize our own dysfunction and distract us from our unresolved wounds. Only when we take the time to ask ourselves hard questions about the roots of our addictions and counterfeit copings can we truly grow into a force that transcends the establishment. And, of course, when we come out of hiding, others follow. Transparency is contagious.

11. Don’t offer wisdom or advice to folks who are unwilling to change

Mark my words: as soon as you start taking some of these tangible steps to break out of the establishment, friends, family & co-workers will inevitably engage you with debate and cliche. Save your breath for sincere and eager pilgrims who possess the courage to seek transformation no matter what it takes. Don't waste energy on folks who get off on trying to convince you of convictions and practices that have large followings and celebrity endorsements, but leave practitioners unfulfilled and void of meaning.

12. Treat others as you would want to be treated

An economy built on self-interest creates self-absorbed consumers who struggle to acknowledge others besides what kind of function they play in society. Let's flip the script and unmask these brothers and sisters so that we can truly give them dignity. For example, that's not "the busboy"--that's "Juan," our neighbor who migrated from hundreds of miles to the South so that he could have the opportunity to support his wife and kids.

13. Judge the teachings of a leader by how compelling her lifestyle is

Truth is always embodied. What does the life of that celebrity, this political leader, that famous author and this pastor really consist of, beyond the rhetoric and good looks? The teachings of these powerful and privileged opinion leaders need to be held accountable. There is a wide canyon between the words and actions of most of our leadership. This basic litmus test will lead us to the Promised Land.

14. Beware of over-spiritualizing with God-talk. Let your actions speak for your faith.

We should be very careful about speaking on behalf of the Mysterious One.

--> These 14 practices are an EasyYolk paraphrase of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. For the original manuscript, see Matthew 5-7.

U-Turn: Cynicism, Apathy, Relativism and Absolutism

2011-06-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

I have tried to say that prophetic ministry does not consist of spectacular acts of social crusading or of abrasive measures of indignation. Rather, prophetic ministry consists of offering an alternative perception of reality and in letting people see their own history in the light of God’s freedom and his will for justice.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

More and more, I am becoming highly selective in my quest to spend time with fellow pilgrims who have also sworn off (albeit imperfectly) the four counterfeit cul-de-sacs that haunt humanity: cynicism, apathy, relativism and absolutism. These four horsemen of the postmodern apocalypse ride roughshod over millions, leaving them scant resources for what we all yearn for: a robust spirituality that equips, sustains, guides and comforts us through life. These bridges to nowhere have a strong emotional appeal, promising risk-free security, but it mostly results in addiction, abuse, unacknowledged privilege, violence, psychological disorders…and/or a severe lack of empathy.

Cynicism, apathy, relativism & absolutism are the four ways people protect themselves from the complexity, confusion and chaos of life. Cynicism wakes up the neighbors with loud music blared from her car at 2am with lyrics like these: “I doesn’t matter what I think or what I do. Nothing will change anyway.” Apathy is Cynicism’s fraternal twin. The neighbors never hear or see him. Relativism is at her best at a party of acquaintances when the conversation turns away from gossip and celebrity towards spiritual and political convictions (stuff people argue over…stuff that really matters). All ideas--no matter who bizarre--are kosher. Relativism drives away from the party in an SUV with a bumper sticker that says, “I’m OK, You’re OK.” Absolutism is the guy you don’t want to invite to the party because he can’t acknowledge that his opinions (which he calls “the Truth”) might be false. He and his tribe have a monopoly on objectivity and facts. Everyone else can't see straight. Party pooper.

We reject cynicism & apathy because they do not provide resources for transformation and growth. They do not result in real-life solutions to the myriad of problems that affect us and our neighbors. We acknowledge that apathy and cynicism tend to plague (but are certainly not limited to) the marginalized, oppressed and poor. They are often the outcome of trying and trying, but never getting an opportunity, no matter how much harder they try. They are cul-de-sacs.

We resist relativism and absolutism because not all paths are equal (relativism), but we can never be 100% sure that our path is perfect (absolutism). After research, prayer and dialogue, we become compelled by certain convictions and sink our teeth into them humbly, knowing that they may change when we become aware of new information. Relativism and absolutism are favorites of the powerful and privileged who conveniently hide behind opinions and agendas that become unquestioned facts through either dogma (absolutism) or uncritical tolerance (relativism). The status quo must always be challenged because there are always losers when only a few voices are heard. Those few voices are bridges to nowhere.

A generative spirituality, on the other hand, is a liberation highway of empathy, presence, humility and conviction. When these four come together, there follows a passionate solidarity with and advocacy for people who have suffered from bio-psycho-social disabilities, unjust government policies and dysfunctional family systems. A spirituality consisting of these four ingredients thinks critically and creatively and promotes strategies with outcomes that comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

This generative spirituality is a narrow road less traveled, a minority report of options under the headings “religion” or “spirituality” or “worldview.” This road leads to an abundant life (Matthew 11:25-30; John 10:10) only through the exposure and acceptance of inconvenient truths and by embracing a lifestyle that actively comforts the afflicted (whom Jesus called "the least of these") and afflicts the comfortable (the mentality & practice that Jesus called "taking up the cross").
_________________________________________
Epilogue: Wendell Berry's prophetic work can help us take inventory of ways that apathy, cynicism, relativism and absolutism have gripped us and how to break out of their powerful grip. This is a short piece he wrote for The Progressive magazine:

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Adventures in White Heterosexual Male Privilege

2011-06-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire

In our last post, we promised, as we kiss SoCal June Gloom goodbye, to hit up what we believe to be the most important and sensitive issues in our world: race, sex, money and food (we promise to address these in reverse order). As noted, these topics quite often produce awkward debates, predictably when white heterosexual males are participating. As a sidebar, we would like to give one example of this white heterosexual male privilege: Franklin Graham.

The 58-year-old son of famous preacher Billy was in the news yesterday because he is bringing his Festival de Esperanza to Los Angeles in a mission to get thousands of his brown brothers and sisters saved. No doubt this is more than a little ironic since a supermajority of Latinos are already Christians, albeit Catholic & Pentecostal as opposed to Graham's American Protestantant Evangelicalism. Here's how the LA Times ended their article on Graham yesterday:

[Graham] has repeatedly spoken out against Islam, once calling it "a religion of hatred." He has raised questions about the sincerity of President Obama's Christianity, and heaped praise on several of the Republicans seeking to challenge Obama in 2012.

Asked Friday about his position on immigration reform, he said only that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed to allow people to "travel freely back and forth" across borders. He didn't say how that might be accomplished. He said he had no position on the federal Dream Act, legislation that died in the U.S. Senate last year but would have given legal status to many young undocumented immigrants who now attend college or serve in the military. "I'm not a politician," he said. "I'm for law, and I believe that our laws need to be obeyed, whatever they are."

This has to be one of the most absurd quotes of the year. It is amazing what white heterosexual males in power say to get out of a jam. Graham, quite frequently, speaks freely about his political convictions, even recently telling CBS News that he thought Donald Trump might be his pick for 2012. He has even ambivalently questioned Obama's own religious convictions:

The seed is passed through the father. He was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim; the seed of Muslim is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim; his father gave him an Islamic name. He has renounced Islam, and he has accepted Jesus. That's what he has said he has done. I cannot say that he hasn't, so I just have to believe the president is what he has said.

Graham strategically blows the dogwhistle, calling out to his fellow white (mostly Southern) heterosexual (or closeted) Evangelical followers (a vital aspect of what psychologists like Edwin Friedman call "the herd instinct"). He makes it clear that he's Republican and what issues are important. But when he comes into our backyard in SoCal, Graham tapdances around the real political issues, refusing to take sides on immigration reform and the Dream Act, which would allow millions of young Latinos (who did not choose to come to the States) to step out of the shadows and provide a pathway to citizenship.

We don't mean to use Graham (or his father) as our whipping boy, but understanding his mentality is vital because it highlights how white heterosexual male privilege works. It overwhemingly advocates for the status quo because anything else might threaten their own power. This is the real reason why Graham's political platform is to criminalize abortion, reject marriage equality, promote tax-cuts for the wealthy and trust our political leaders in the War on Terror.

Yet when we actually engage critically and constructively with the biblical text, it turns out that these political stances do not fare so well, especially when we contrast the half-dozen (or so) generalized passages about fetuses (not a woman's legal choice to abort) and promiscuous gay sex (not same-sex marriage) with the thousand (or so) specific passages about the immorality of poverty and the clear portrait of Jesus as the enemy-loving Prince of Peace in the Gospels (not to mention the unanimous pacifism of the first 300 years of Christianity).

Indeed, Graham actually does much to alleviate pain in the world through his organization Samaritan's Purse. But, like most white heterosexual Evangelical males, Graham is obsessed with charity and a disembodied heaven while refusing to engage with real time systems of injustice. This amounts to a paternalistic form of politics that keeps marginalized people (like Socal Latinos) in their place. Heaven forbid that Graham would work to create a world that does not need his handouts.

Too many of my own students are undocumented (a serious obstacle to college and career) and more than a few have lost their parents to deportation. This turns out to be the exact opposite of "family values." The system is screaming for a major overhaul and we desperately need faith leaders to stop dodging questions and advocate for real salvation. White heterosexual males should use their power and privilege for Something besides their own self-interest. The least of these need lobbyists who search for Christ where he said we would find him (Matthew 25).

The Externalities of Eating

2011-06-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

People are starving because so many of us eat meat. If meat were to become more expensive, and folks began trending towards plant-based diets, world hunger would be substantially alleviated.
Ezra Klein

So many people tell me, 'I could be a vegan if it weren't for bacon,' and I tell them, 'Be a "vegan" who eats bacon.'
Tal Ronnen, vegan chef

If you can't buy a Prius you can certainly eat like one.
Jonathn Kaplan, the Natural Resources Defense Council

School's out for summer, so let's have some awkward conversations over dark beverages. If I were to rank issues in regards to their sensitivity (the ability to create emotional reactions from "feeling judged"), here are the top 4:

1. Race
2. (Homo)Sexuality
3. Economic Injustice
4. Food

Our goal here is absolutely not to be over-critical or bring judgment or to provoke wealthy white heterosexual meat-eaters. As always, we want to create a more loving, nuanced space to dialogue vital topics that are usually framed in highly dualistic (either/or) and scripted manners. More than anything, we take seriously our role as seed-sowers, locating these issues on our collective radars so that we can intentionally take them a step further into more humble & compassionate lifestyles (the opposite of self-absorption). With that said, let's eat...or at least talk about eating.

The thing that makes food so important is that we do it a lot...and have to in order to survive. And that's the problem. Everyone else does too. And because we live in a globalized world, what I eat in Orange County not only affects what James Adagibe eats in Aba, Nigeria, but it affects the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the poisonous fertilizer in the soil that runs off into bodies of drinking water (etc, etc, etc). This is what economists call "negative externalities" or "spillover costs."

With that said, if every American ate a plant-based diet, we would greatly reduce world hunger, food-borne illnesses, water scarcity, worker injuries/illnesses, animal cruelty &, of course, our own health. All of this transformation and healing by simply eating differently. But that's the catch. We are tremendously patterned to eat meat and dairy products because "we need protein" or "we want to feel full." Quite simply, we like the taste and the short-term outcomes.

Tal Ronnen is a sort of rock-star vegan chef who was hired by the Wynn Hotel and Casino to revamp the menus of their restaurants and who recently did Ellen DeGeneres' all-vegan wedding reception. He advocates for chefs to embrace vegan recipes that are high in protein, not just shoots, leaves and something that tastes like cardboard.

I just can't do the 'throw some vegetables and a starch on a plate' thing. That's the problem with most vegan dishes. It's a portobello mushroom cap, or a pasta primavera, and when you're finished with dinner you have to hit the drive-through. You have to give people something that will satisfy them. And that's a protein-based plate.

It seems as though restaurants are starting to take this very seriously, spawning establishments like Veggie Grill and Native Foods, places that produce dishes that are great tasting, filling...and vegan.

Over at the NY Times Food Blog, Mark Bittman recently provoked his readers to take on a different mentality of eating:

...veganism, or at least near-veganism, or a very very plant heavy diet, or “less-meatarianism” or whatever you want to call it: a diet of mostly plants, none or very few animal products, and certainly no junk or ultra-processed food.

Bittman included some great resources that drive home why this is such an important challenge for families, communities and nations. Here are some highlights:

--> The meal plan of the average American family accounts for 2.8 tons of CO2 emitted annually, compared with 2.2 tons for driving. Worldwide agriculture contributes some 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, far more than transportation.

--> More than 37% of the world's land is used for agriculture, much of it ground that was once forested--and deforestation is a major source of carbon. The fertilizer and machinery needed on a modern farm also have a large carbon footprint, as does the network of ships and trucks that brings the food from the farm to your plate. On average, it takes seven to 10 times as much fossil-fuel energy to produce and ship food as we get from eating it.

--> Raising cattle takes a lot more energy than growing the equivalent amount of grains, fruits or vegetables: most produce requires about 2 calories of fossil-fuel energy to cultivate per 1 calorie of food energy; with beef, the ratio can be as high as 80 to 1. What's more, the majority of cattle in the U.S. are reared on grain and loads of it--670 million tons in 2002--and the fertilizer used to grow that feed creates separate environmental problems, including surface runoff that leads to dead zones in coastal waters like the Gulf of Mexico.

--> It takes about 16 pounds of grain to "produce" one pound of animal flesh. That's grain, of course, that the poor can't eat, because it's bought by richer countries in order to feed livestock. And what grain remains is pricier, because the market for grain is tightened by the 756 million tons going to animal feed.

--> And for visual learners:

Changing our diets is not a mercenary affair. It has tremendous benefits for us. We not only feel better physically. We feel better spiritually and emotionally. Our diets become adventures, trying new combinations of plates that are masterpieces, crafted with regard to our fellow human beings, the earth and animals. But eating should not be an all-or-nothing affair. If you believe that bacon or buffalo wings are too sacred to give up, keep them. And the rest of the time, be vegan.

Progress-Not-Perfection is the motto for our journey towards a more radical discipleship. The two most important steps are the first two: exposure and intentionality. Once we learn these "inconvenient truths" and realize how linked they are to our faith, then we can put together a strategy of more sustainable and healthy eating. We need not give up the whole enterprise when the In-n-Out double-double just sounds too good to pass up.

Rebuilding the Dream

2011-06-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

We have a whole generation of young people who graduate off a cliff into the worst economy in two generations. And it doesn’t matter if they went to school, didn’t go to school, if they dropped out, or they stayed in, if they got good grades, bad grades. They wind up, way too many of them, on the same couch anyway.
Van Jones

Tonight, Van Jones and others will launch a new progressive movement that seeks to build a grassroots coalition that confronts corporations and the oil industry from killing the American Dream and to fight for all those massively disenfranchised by the corporate agenda. "Who are the disenfranchised?" you ask. Jones cites 5 key groups:

1. The Veterans: especially young soldiers coming back from war who return from war "into an economic battlefield with no support." Jones claims that these vets are committing suicide at 17 per day!

2. The Foreclosed: millions of Americans have lost their homes or are just holding on to grossly underwater mortgages. Wall Street gets bailed out, but these folks get very little relief.

3. The 99ers: that's how many weeks the unemployed can receive jobless benefits from the federal government. Then they are on their own.

4. The Young Grads: they are in their early 20s with a college diploma and have nowhere to work.

5. The Public Employees: Jones calls them "The people who never abandoned America in a crisis." Now these card-carrying union members are being scapegoated as the ones whose pensions are sucking state budgets dry.

This American Dream Movement is precisely the kind of movement that we've dreamed of in the past couple of years: a coalition that lobbies and protests and rallies around the marginalized and oppressed in America. It seeks to be the flip-side of the Tea Party Movement which hit its zenith in 2009 with a 150,000+ march on Washington DC barking and echoing Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Tea Partiers are rightfully angry but have wrongfully scapegoated the government and her workers for all of society's ills. Sure, like all institutions, "the government" has her share of corruption, but it was actually deregulation that put our entire economy in the extremely vulnerable position that it is in now.

Because corporations now have a vast majority of the wealth and power, the rules of our "democracy" basically demand that our political leaders bow to the Walmarts and Goldman-Sachs of the world so they can stay in office for another couple of years. We are hopeful that this American Dream Movement will be able to save our democracy from the tsunami of corporate cash and will be able to flip the script on which voices are heard and privileged when making vital policy decisions. This can only come from intentionality and a creative strategy. Let's tune in tonight.

*For more info, check out this interview with Van Jones and watch the action live tonight on Alternet at 8:15EST.

Defying Peace & Justice

2011-06-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return. It's become increasingly clear that our efforts to rein in the narcotics trade in Latin America, especially as it relates to the government's use of contractors, have largely failed.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.)

The War on Drugs fails—-and is doomed to perpetual failure—-because it is directed not against the root causes of drug addiction or of the international black market in drugs, but only against some drug producers, traffickers, and users. More fundamentally, the war is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war metaphor itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight, and factually researched scientific understanding.
Gabor Mate

A quick list of recent events and issues that continue to be obstacles to the hard and holy work of releasing peace and justice on earth:

1. President Obama: that's right, as the GOP Congress demands that he comply with the War Powers Act in regards to Libya, he's digging in his heals with the claim that the situation in Libya (US as an accomplice to NATO operation) does not apply. The WPA places a 60 day ceiling on foreign interventions without congressional approval. It's been 90 days...and counting. Obama is apparently going up against his top lawyers including Attorney General Eric Holderman who reportedly says this situation has everything to do with the War Powers Act. As Obama advances the "imperial presidency" on this front, we ask why he doesn't use his executive muscle to protect and support illegal immigrants who came to the US with their families when they were very young (the DREAM Act) and to bring marriage equality to the LGBT brothers and sisters (overriding DOMA).

2. US Weapons Manufacturers: as the wars in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan rage on, a few American companies are cashing in. And, on top of that, countries like Saudi Arabia and India have accelerated their purchases of military weaponry. Demand from foreign countries has jumped 50% in one year. And the U.S. government even supports some of these purchases with cash prizes (like $2.78 billion to Israel last year). The only problem with all of this is that these weapons are purchased and then used on these people and these people. And this is just the start of a long conversation about civilians dying from U.S. manufactured weapons all over the world:

Egypt is one of the largest customers for U.S. arms. But questions about its purchases were raised by critics in recent months when a column of American-made Abrams tanks rolled into Tahrir Square as protesters rallied against President Hosni Mubarak's regime. And both Bahrain and Tunisia bought U.S.-manufactured guns before their security forces fired on protesting crowds this spring. (LA Times)

3. The Pentagon: in order to hit military recruitment goals, the U.S. Defense Department has ramped up an enticing ad campaign reaching out to our children. I see this a lot this time of year. 18-year-old guys, ready to graduate from high school, are staring at higher college tuition and unemployment rates. They see exciting commercials that resemble a blend of shoot-em-up video game and Lord of the Rings adventure and enlist.

4. The War on Drugs: two government studies and outside experts are reporting that the US government is failing miserably to contain the drug trade in Latin America despite spending $6 billion in the last 5 years. Specifically, the government has contracted the work (training local law enforcement officials, providing logistical support for intelligence and flying airplanes that spray herbicides to kill coca crops) to 5 companies: DynCorp, Lockheed, Martin, Raytheon, ITT and ARINC. Just like the War on Terrorism, these American companies profit greatly on a project that is throwing money at the wrong strategy. Globalization means that "effectiveness" in counter-narcotics in Columbia simply pushes the problem to Peru and "effectiveness" in combating drug cartels in Mexico simply pushes the problem to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

5. Corporations & Banks: Did you know that when you make a purchase with a debit card, the retailer has to pay a so-called swipe fee of 1% to 3% on the transaction? The fee goes to banks to cover "processing fees." This adds up to $20 billion in swipe fees annually for banks. And remember, this is a capitalist system so the costs are always passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices for goods and services at businesses that accept debit cards (basically everywhere). Under the new financial protection law, starting on July 21, banks will charge a flat-rate of 12 cents per swipe which is an improvement on the 44-cent average that it has been (the Fed determined that average processing fees for banks are about 4 cents per swipe). For years, Visa and Mastercard (a credit card duopoly) set the prices so banks did not even need to compete against each other (thanks to Gus West, the president of the Hispanic Institute for this research).

Michael Hiltzik reminded readers yesterday what President Franklin Roosevelt's convictions were back in 1934:

Government, FDR countered, involved itself with "people who want to keep themselves free from starvation, keep a roof over their heads, lead decent lives, have proper educational standards" ... and who needed protection from those determined to "enrich and advance themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens."

Today, it seems that a democraticly elected government will only stand in the gap of economic justice if the people demand it. That should start with people of faith. Unfortunately, it isn't. A friend of mine told me this weekend that everyone is just out for their own economic interest and that, if he were a Wall Street banker, there's no doubt about it, he'd be a Republican too. Shouldn't our faith commitments transcend our economic interest? If our faith commitments do not transcend our economic interest, is it really faith?

Let me conclude with a quote from the first sentence of conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren's uber-best-seller Purpose Driven Life: "It's not about you." Indeed, I couldn't think of a better litmus test for our political and economic convictions. But Christianity must be animated in such a way that both personal lifestyle and public policy privilege the poor, oppressed, disadvantaged, marginalized and afflicted. Only if narrated as such will it ever have a chance to produce outcomes that are worthy of being called "Christ-like."

Saving California

2011-06-16T16:03:00.001-07:00

Between 2001 and 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, the total adjusted gross income of California’s personal income taxpayers increased by 16.5 percent. In contrast, the net profits reported by corporations for California tax purposes nearly tripled, rising by 192.0 percent.
California Budget Project

Turning California into a Third World nation where the environment is neglected, a lot of people are genuinely desperate and a lot of the young have a hard time getting an education or just can't get one doesn't benefit anyone.
Rebecca Solnit

Boosting our local economy by helping real small businesses create jobs should be our goal. We can either cut taxes for CEOs and Wall Street traders, or we can invest the money to generate more customers for small business by keeping teachers, police officers, and other Americans on the job rebuilding the crumbling transportation, water, and energy infrastructure small business depends on.
Frank Knapp, CEO and President of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce

Out here in California, our political structure would be considered a laughing stock if the effects were not so painful. Yesterday was the deadline for the Legislature and Governor Brown to come up with a budget or else...each legislator loses pay for every day that they do not compromise for one until it is a done deal. Democrats passed a budget that would raise car fees ($12 per car), use smoke-and-mirrors accounting tricks and cut into university funding even more. Governor Brown vetoed it today, refusing to "kick the can down the road" any further.

Conservative politicians and pundits blame the huge budget deficit on bloated government, mainly public pensions. They have all signed "no tax pledges" so they refuse to raise revenue...anywhere. Democrats have large majorities in both houses of the State Legislature...sort of. They are 2 seats away (in each house) from a 2/3 supermajority, the precise amount needed to raise any taxes. That means that 4 GOP legislators are needed to do that...which means that it is not going to happen...which means more budget cuts.

In California, the GOP is far and away the party of corporate sponsorship, routinely echoing the refrain that businesses are overtaxed and overregulated, despite studies showing that overall tax burden on businesses have actually declined significantly in the past 30 years. This lower burden is due to tax credits that benefit corporations (research & development), the same tax rate for small businesses making $100,000 & for large corporations like Google (bringing in $7 billion in profit last year), the strange fact that CA does not have an oil extraction tax (conservative states like Texas, Louisiana and Alaska all do: TX = $884 million) and Proposition 13, which (since 1978) has greatly benefited commercial property taxes due to the infrequency of selling property.

Republicans (in California & nationally) continue to fight off these studies by sticking to the no-tax script, arguing in the face of reality (see chart below) that "lack of revenue is not the problem."

Of course, for them, government spending is the real problem. The legendary Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform basically fear-mongers Republican leaders into signing a no tax pledge. This has even led to even the condemnation of the consideration of a compromise with the Dems to close corporate tax loopholes at the national level. From 2001 to 2009, according to the California Budget Project, the total adjusted gross income of California’s personal income taxpayers increased by 16.5 percent. In contrast, the net profits reported by corporations for California tax purposes nearly tripled, rising by 192.0 percent. So witness the ugly cycle: Norquist's uber-powerful organization intimidates GOP leaders who in turn have held Sacramento hostage with their demands for pension reform, spending caps and environmental regulation while refusing to extend vehicle, sales and income taxes until voters can decide in mid-September.

Many everyday Republicans that I know also chant the "no more taxes" mantra, while at the same time, say they proudly support public schools, the environment and lament the rapid increase of tuition at community colleges, Cal-State and UC schools. It's a rather strange combination. In the past 3 years, per-pupil spending in California's K-12 schools has decreased by $600 while tuition/fees at UC schools have risen 65% in the past 5 years.

More and more, though, I'm realizing that Republicans (both leaders and followers) should not take all of the blame for this mess. Pensions do, in fact, need reform. And raising revenue needs to be done much more creatively and progressively, pinpointing businesses (CA is home to Chevron, profiting $6.2 billion in the 1st quarter of 2011) and individuals (millionaires have greatly benefited from a decade of Bush Tax Cuts) that can overwhelmingly afford it, while seeking products like plastic bags and sodas that we can place a small tax on to start weaning us all off of. The Dems should be taking this lead...but aren't.

We are starting to hear some viable arguments about the ability of the Legislature to place the tax extensions on a September ballot without a 2/3 vote. Two key points are being made: (1) the taxes are technically "extensions" not "raises" and (2) the Legislature is not technically taking action--the people are! The whole situation is sad really. The history of budget deficits, unfortunately, has grusomely worked against poor, working, vulnerable and marginalized peoples. This is precisely why it must be high on the ethical priority list of every faith community in the state.

The biblical Script adamantly calls humanity to care for the least of these. Many churches have responded creatively and consistently to the pain and struggle that the Great Recession has rendered in the past 3 years, but we must additionally come together to advocate for public policy that reclaims some of the lost ground since the late 1970s when we had great K-12 schools and the best public universities in the world (literally). Poor and marginalized people need an opportunity, not a handout. There's a big difference between the two. Many of our wealthy brothers and sisters share this conviction and are honorably fighting to raise their own taxes (and if you are asking why they don't just donate to the government, read this). Perhaps megachurches in wealthy suburban locales will join them?

It's time for every Christian in California to wake up. If the Republican Party could get what they really want, they would privatize schools & parks so that eventually only the elite could afford an education and a weekend trip to Yosemite. Even a cursory reaing of the biblical text reveals that Christians, Jews and Muslims must advocate for the poor and marginalized. If we don't lobby for the least of these, who will? Unfortunately, many of the conservative faithful dodge this responsibility with supply-side fantasies that have not worked out so well for the least of these or simply fetishize their so-called "real biblical issues" (abortion and gay marriage) which aren't mentioned (as framed in today's debates) in the biblical Script anywhere. We just tend to be a people a little slow to learn all of this:

_____________________________________
Epilogue: At the end of his masterful The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996), Duke professor Richard Hays proposed that we should re-prioritize our ethics:

If our moral concerns were shaped in accordance with the New Testament vision of Christian discipleship, we should direct our energy and attention to four fundamental issues: (1) the renunciation of violence, (2) the sharing of possessions, (3) the overcoming of ethnic divisions, particularly the division between Jew and Gentile, and (4) the unity of men and women in Christ.

Which, of course, brings up another embarrassing issue for Californians who care about justice: what kind of revenue will it really take to deal with our vastly overcrowded prison population (obnoxiously overrepresented by Latinos and African-Americans)?