Tread lightly on the things of earth

I’m quick to admit my foreseer is on again/off again, and regularly needs a swift kick to work at all. But I did foresee this outcome; it drives much of the deep grief I felt and feel …

The Religious Right’s embrace of its current worldview and consequent behaviors is starting to [measurably] bear its bitter fruit, as identified by The Barna Group in a new study, A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity:

As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.

The specific stats identified are very interesting even though (IMO) all the more grievous because the wounds are self-inflicted by people who name themselves Christian. If you’re short of time, I’d summarize the mass of data presented with this quote:

When young people were asked to identify their impressions of Christianity, one of the common themes was “Christianity is changed from what it used to be” and “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.”

As a former “insider” (Barna’s term), I hope one day to be part of a [hope-filled, life-affirming] solution [that is, toward a Christianity that does look like Jesus]. But for now, and likely for a long time to come, I remain part of the diaspora.

[via Sara’s excellent post]

2007-10-28 update: Traces of hope — maybe more than traces — in today’s thorough (and thoroughly blogged) New York Times Magazine story by David Kirkpatrick, The Evangelical Crackup.

By traces of hope, of course I mean that (according to Kirkpatrick) signs of life are starting to appear in the cracks in the bleak and barren landscape of conservative Christianity: renewed commitments to love, to peace, to spiritual formation, to social justice, to stewardship, to community. I see these Jesus-like directions nurturing the kingdom of God, not poisoning it, as much recent conservative theology has done (whatever the motives of its adherents — see Barna results above).

Back on Election Day 2004 I wrote —

Let today be the day that the curse is lifted.

Same prayer today. What’s changed? Today more of us recognize the curse as curse and are ready to have it lifted.

Remember Not One Damn Dime Day? Great name, I thought.

I want today to carry more heft. Because of promises broken, diety blasphemed, accountability scorned, budgets busted, and blood shed, let today be

Not One Damn Republican Day

For everyone’s benefit.

Amen.

I don’t think I’ve ever written down the basis of my religiopolitical conversion, at least not in succinct form …

My conservative worldview came to an end in 1994. Why? I enrolled in seminary and began studying scripture. My transforming realization:

• The primary goal of conservatism is to preserve the status quo
  (e.g., ensure rich stay rich, poor stay poor, and powerful stay in power)

• A primary goal of God in scripture is to turn the status quo upside down
  (a Bible theme start to finish, stated most famously by Jesus as “The last shall be first, and the first last”)

These goals represent opposite destinations. Hence, I infer that the conservative road and the kingdom road don’t ever converge.

Soon thereafter I had my own Damascus Road experience, wherein I was confronted head on, I believe, by the Holy Spirit, who said (paraphrasing):

It is not for nothing I am called “the liberating Spirit.”
Liberating people — setting them free — is what I do.

It is not for nothing that the root verb for what I do, to liberate,
is also the root verb of the word liberal.

You therefore know where my heart is.

And I have been a liberal Christian ever since.

Nothing is ever as simple as labels imply, conservative and liberal included. However:

• Night, while not always dark, tends toward darkness.
• Day, while not always sunny, tends toward light.

Look for trends in the cloud of variables.

Are night and day meaningless labels? Or reasonable (if imperfect) descriptions of trends?

Similarly, I assert that

• Conservatism, while not always destructive, tends toward destructive outcomes
  in part because of its adherents’ tendency to believe that ends justify means, a belief that invites immoral behavior. [I wrote about this phenomenon in ^EJM.] I see nearly every outcome emanating from the last six years of conservative stranglehold in the U.S. as supporting this assertion.

• Liberalism, while not always constructive, tends toward constructive outcomes
  in part because the verb to liberate often explicitly informs and undergirds its adherents’ motives

Conservative and liberal, while indeed labels and therefore imperfect, I think do reasonably describe trends.

So. Is this revelation true across the board, equally applicable for everyone? I’m not certain.

Does it shape every aspect of my thinking? To the uttermost.

2006-07-01 update: I’m pulling the first two comments to this entry into its body because I think they’re an important illustration of the (mis)understanding of conservative adherents.

Commenter Phinster writes:

Phinster: Brother, co[n]servatism seeks not to preserve the status quo, but to cultivate the individual’s spirit and allow each to actualize their own God given potential. Conservativism means (con-with) (serv)to be servant to your fellow man. Man’s purpose is to actualize their own perfect creation in our Creator’s own image.

To which I reply:

Mike: Phinster, I understand the idealism of your assertions, as I am an idealist myself, but the dictionary disagrees with you:

con·ser·va·tism n.
1. The inclination, especially in politics, to maintain the existing or traditional order.
2. A political philosophy or attitude emphasizing respect for traditional institutions, distrust of government activism, and opposition to sudden change in the established order. …

Building an argument for conservatism on your definition, which is roughly the opposite of what the word means, doesn’t work very well; it brings to mind Jesus’ warning about the foolishness of “building one’s house on sand.”

Conservative thought’s valuing of the individual isn’t as God values individuals; it instead extols individualism, which sets one individual against the other. [This tendency manifests collectively as “us vs. them,” a stance that characterizes Bush’s America yet is antithetical to the Gospel.] Hence in practice conservatism offers very little “serving with” and quite a lot of “ruling with (others like me)” and its corresponding “ruling over (others not like me).”

I agree that actualizing our potential as bearers of the Imago Dei is indeed our highest calling. But conservatism as I’ve witnessed it is not built to get us there.

2006-07-13, 22 update:
Further related thinking in new entry, On selective respect for authoritay. In it, I think about John Dean’s new book, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Dean divides conservatives into “the good, the bad, and the evil.” Then he explains the bad and the evil for the possible benefit of the good. I applaud this, and want to draw this kind of distinction, too, instead of lumping all together. But I’m not yet able: all I can do is divide conservatives into “the punch, the turd, and the radioactive bowl.” I’m sure the punch is delicious, but its proximity to the [turd and the depleted uranium] makes me no longer thirsty.

The prayer attributed to St. Francis — Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace — has hovered at the edge of my awareness since childhood, when I first saw it on a plaque in my small-town Methodist church fellowship hall.

I’m still working on forgiveness, whose longstanding shortfall in me toward those who support(ed) BushCo threatens my undoing. I want to applaud daylight dawning on anyone. Really.

On the one hand, Hunter masterfully, justifiably, and with much truth today puts words to the phenomenon of people insisting they’re right even when they’re demonstrably wrong. I like being right, too, but “right” needs to mean “the assessment nearly all people of good will, clear thinking, and command of facts inevitably converge to,” as is now happening about BushCo [as evidenced by its plummeting poll numbers]. When discernment [finally] trumps deception, of course that’s a good thing, a wise thing. The earlier on, the better.

OTOH, spiritual health and community are more important than [kudos for] “being right.” And forgiving, yea, even forgiving willful dumbassery, past and present, is a prerequisite for both. Vengeance, I finally remember, is not mine.

In the process of working on forgiveness, still becoming — on the inside, and maybe soon, on the outside — a Quaker (which may or may not entail giving up use of the word “dumbassery”). You know that eerie, wonderful homecoming feeling you sometimes get as you learn more about something? Like, “Dear God, have I been a Quaker all my life, but didn’t know it?”

What’s being impressed upon me today, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate, says well, speaking to the perennial assumption that has undergirded support for this war, that “if only we can get rid of those people, then we will all be safe and happy” (as reported by Anne in Friends Journal, Becoming an Instrument of Peace):

If only it were so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were simply necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who among us are willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

Anne’s experiential vignettes concerning becoming an instrument of peace in the midst of war are speaking to my condition today:

To walk a path of peace in a country that is deeply involved in war brings us to our growing edge.

Yes. As in, for example, growing a commitment to forgiveness where there was none. Then Anne pinpoints where I’m mostly still at in her observation —

My self-righteousness has the poisonous high of an addiction: I like it and I know that I have to root it out of my life. Over and over and over.

[I’m] busted.

Building bridges instead of burning them is such a better plan.

Walking a path of peace sometimes brings us not just to our growing edge, as Anne says, but to our dying edge, too. Rest in peace, Tom Fox. Thank you for your work, your life, and your example.

2006-03-13 update after more thinking:

So where does justice fit in? In all my “foolish talk” about forgiveness, am I whitewashing over BushCo immorality and crimes against God and humanity (e.g., fiscal irresponsibility, destroying creation, screwing the poor, spying illegally, bearing false witness, war, torture)? Are they not accountable?

Here’s where I’m at today: I think if “justice roll[s] down like waters,” then BushCo and enablers will be repaid. Here’s the kicker: But not by me. According to scripture, God says, “I will repay.” Who do I think I am? My job is to lift up, care for, forgive.

(Sometimes I daydream, wondering if it’s as hard for God “to avenge” as it is for me to forgive. In each case, the action seems to run counter to our natures. Mystery indeed.)

As to whether we should be confronting others in their complicity, I observe that all evidence needed to see is already in front of us. Are not those with eyes to see, seeing? Can anyone be forced to see? I think not: we have to be wooed to see. (Still thinking. Insight welcome.)

2006-09-27 update (months later during a Quaker Spirituality class):

I’m clued in enough to recognize in my class reading today that Quaker author Parker Palmer is most definitely speaking to me:

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless — a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other’s need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need. …

When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself — and me — even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.

—Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer (1999), pp. 48–50

What I’m not sure of is whether this applies in the case of forgiving, especially forgiving those who advocate torture, etc.

Months after I wrote the article above, my hellbent determination to forgive when no forgiveness is forthcoming does indeed appear to me “forced, inorganic, unreal.” Is my forced determination coming more from “my need to prove myself” than from “the other’s need to be [forgiven]”? I think it is.

For if I’m truthful, I must acknowledge I have reached the limit of my own capacity to forgive. What has been done in my name — making war based on false witness, torturing, maiming, killing — is for me, for now, unforgiveable. I hadn’t considered I may be causing harm by pretending otherwise.

I try to explain to my own family why [U.S. politics of] these past five years [has] pierced my soul, stoked my rage, caused my hope to ebb more than flow; in general, why [it’s] exacerbated my melancholy. I end up writing a half-vast sermon.

While I was discouraged, a friend reminded me why dissent is vital, why we must keep speaking out against religio-political cultures of corruption and oppression everywhere, and especially here in “the land of the free” (the U.S. description of itself):

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
—Dr. ML King, from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963¹

Yes. Some significant number of us frogs have to stay alert and show the others how to jump out of the pot before we all cook. (“Yes, I know you think it feels like a hot bath in here. But I’m tellin’ you, I see bubbles on the bottom.”)

Here’s another nugget of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) wisdom I recall as I ponder another correlative between prevailing political worldview and violent outcomes, the tenacious belief that ends justify means.

I consider that since “ends justify means” means anything goes as long as it gets you the results you want, it is a belief that is fundamentally immoral. (I think this is the historical philosophical assessment as well.)

MLK presents the same conclusion in a powerful, positive form:

“And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Christmas Sermon,” 24 Dec 1967 (38 years ago)

A “war on terror” can only reliably lead to more violence, more war, more terror. Any peaceful outcomes would be by chance; thus this “war” is not a very wise investment of a nation’s youth and much of its treasury if the goal is peace.

Hence I infer that the engines of war are driven by those who do not want peace: industrial war profiteering (e.g. Halliburton) is one obvious motivation for promoting unending war, another is that of apocalyptic Christians who think they’re “helping God out” by bringing on Armageddon.

Neither motivation, it should go without saying, coheres with the Gospel.

We can’t very well say “Peace on earth, good will toward men” and at the same time say “except now, because now war is the solution.” Unless we’re nuts.

And once we’re paying attention, I don’t think we’re nuts.

(See also Myth of redemptive violence.)

Some years ago as I was taking a course on Martin Luther King’s life, sermons, and writings, I suddenly realized I was already older than MLK ever got. What a knock upside the head that was. Now I realize I’m older than John F. Kennedy ever got. JFK’s life ended as mine was getting underway, and now I’ve been here longer than he was. I think I need to lie down.

¹While this “silent” quote is uniformly attributed to MLK, I see it is only hinted at, not directly present in, his April 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail.