Category: Politics

Troubling Theology

“Nothing surprises our God. He is perfect in omniscience. He knows everything that can be known including what is going to happen in the future. In other words, what happened on the Friday before last came as no surprised to God. Neither will it prove any kind of meaningful impediment to the advance of His kingdom. We serve the God whose plans could not be derailed by the unjust death of His Son. His church survived the Roman Empire. It survived Christendom. It survived the Enlightenment. It survived Darwinism. It survived Stalin. It survived Mao. The church is surviving ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda. Christians holding to the historically orthodox position on sex and marriage should in no way think that the legalization of same-sex marriage in this country on the basis of the opinion of five people will pose any kind of an existential threat to the church.”

Source: What I said to my conservative church about same-sex marriage | Baptist News Global Perspectives – Conversations that matter

This strand (fractal?) of a theology is so troubling to me.

When Pres. Obama heard the news about the ACA Supreme Court Decision on Thursday

obamawin

So, when the briefing finally ended, I asked Denis McDonough to come back into the Oval Office and showed him the clock stuck at 10:10am. I then showed him the back of my camera, where he could see the photo of the President first being told about the decision. The camera time read 10:10am.

via The White House on Medium

Talk about a coincidence on a historic day.

Our Week in Washington D.C.; Or How do I explain to my daughters how important this all is?

“The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the United States Friday in a closely divided ruling that will stand as a milestone in its 226-year history.

The justices ruled 5-4 that states cannot deny gay men and lesbians the same marriage rights enjoyed for thousands of years by opposite-sex couples. Within days if not hours, the decision is expected to trigger same-sex marriages in states that still ban the practice.

“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his 28-page ruling. “The Constitution grants them that right.”

Source: Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage

Saving this for posterity because I’ve been in Washington D.C. this week with my wife, our soon-to-be-born baby boy, and my young daughters (age 7 and 5). While we’ve been doing the touristy stuff, we’ve also been in the midst of two major Supreme Court decisions on “Obamacare” and marriage equality.

My girls have gotten to walk past the Supreme Court and stand with us while we took the chants and the applause in after these rulings. I didn’t hide my tears.

What a week. As the Confederate flags come down across Southern states and my own beloved South Carolina after the terrible massacre of innocents in Charleston, we see the rise of something different in our country.

Here’s to new beginnings based on love, reconciliation, and the bridging of divides that those in power have used to try to keep us apart.

Here’s to the future United States and a country that is better for my daughters and son than the one I grew up with.

Amen.

 

Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling

Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner.

Source: Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling – Bloomberg Politics

I’m really hoping that Sanders can convince Democratic primary voters that he’s not a socialist (that seems to be the drawback) and bring some competition to the seeming inevitability of another Clinton vs Bush race.

To support an oligarchy seems very much against the spirit of what I felt today while standing in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol here in Washington D.C. and pondering how George Washington could have been king.

I’m still not completely sure on my own allegiance to a particular candidate, but issues such as this are troublesome to me.

Oh Hillary, Don’t Do That

Bless her heart (we South Carolinians forgive Frank Underwood’s accent, but that’s just because he’s on Netflix)…

Hillary Clinton’s fake Southern accent gets lost in translation | Fox News: “And there’s nothing more unpleasant to the ear than a phony Southern accent. It’s downright disrespectful and a bit condescending. But because she’s Miss Hill’ry – the mainstream media laughs off her faux dialect.”

http://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=4262062331001&w=466&h=263Watch the video at video.foxnews.com

Are we sure Chancellor Palpatine didn’t write this?

“Though imperialism is now held in disrepute, empire has been the default means of governance for most of recorded history, and the collapse of empires has always been messy business
Back then it was states at war; now it is sub-states. Imperialism bestowed order, however retrograde it may have been. The challenge now is less to establish democracy than to reestablish order. For without order, there is no freedom for anyone.”

Source: It’s Time to Bring Imperialism Back to the Middle East – ForeignPolicy.com

Yes, western imperialism and colonialism helped cause this mess. Surely there’s a better way forward than re-establishing such hegemonic (and veneer thin) powers in the region.

Propaganda Marketing

The marketing strategy here is to get “influencers” to naturally and realistically spread your messaging/propaganda through their regular channels.

Source: MRBlog | ISIS and the US Government: The Propaganda War – The Marginalia Review of Books

Thomas does a great job breaking down the current efforts by our intelligence community to use hyperlocal and big idea marketing to counteract the spread of ISIS related media.

Marketing matters!

Is the Original New Testament Lost?

House of Cards is fun, but take a few mins to watch something a little more substantive this weekend (like this):

As you might expect, I argue that even though we have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament,  we do not have many *early* ones — and hardly any *really* early ones.  That is why we can not (always? ever?) know with absolute certainty what the authors of the New Testament originally said.   That matters for lots of reasons, one of which is that fundamentalist Christians but their faith in the very words of the Bible.  But what if, in some passages, we don’t know what those words were?   Dan, also as expected, argued that we have such extensive evidence for the New Testament — more than for any other book from the ancient world — we can trust that we have what the authors originally wrote.

via My Debate with Dan Wallace: Is the Original NT Lost? – Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog.

Why We Should Care About Archaeological Destruction

This is terrible…

The Islamic State group released a video on Thursday showing militants using sledgehammers to smash ancient artifacts in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, describing them as idols that must be removed, according to the Associated Press.

The destructions are part of a campaign by Islamic State, who have destroyed a number of shrines — including Muslim holy sites — in order to eliminate what they view as heresy.

via Islamic State Video Shows Militants Destroying Museum Artifacts in Iraq – Dispatch – WSJ.

While the world was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, the people of Mosul were watching a different show. They were horrified to see ISIS members burn the Mosul public library. Among the many thousands of books it housed, more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts were burned.

via ISIS Burns 8000 Rare Books and Manuscripts in Mosul – Yahoo! Finance

Let’s not forget that people of many faiths (ancient and modern) have used the defacement or destruction of art or cultural items as a way to “wipe the slate clean” of previous heresies. From Hatsheput to Josiah pulling down the high places in Israel to the burning of books, these tactics are power plays designed to show that the deity or deities are on one’s side in a presumed theo-political battle.

Lost in the fear that ISIS / ISIL / IS is imminently planning to attack the US is the cultural damage this collection of people are doing to museums and sites in Syria (Damascus, Antioch, Palmyra, Dura Europos) and northern Iraq (Mosul / Nineveh).

Specifically for the stories linked above, the modern city of Mosul sites very near Nineveh, the historical capital of the Assyrian Empire, at its height in the 9th-7th centuries BCE. Believe it or not, Assyrian artifacts caused quite a rage in the late 1800’s after Sir Henry Austen Layard’s discovery of Assyrian palaces in the 1850’s.

These artifacts directly impacted the development of the missionary movement as northeastern universities used these impressive pieces of art as proof of God’s providence (as the folks in Jerusalem were saved from Sennacherib’s invasion by God’s hand according to the book of Kings… the folks in the Northern Kingdom of Israel as well as Lachish were less fortunate).

While doing graduate studies at Yale, I somehow lucked into a dream job at the Yale Art Gallery. I was so fascinated by the Assyrian antiquities there and the story of why Yale, Harvard, Amherst, Williams etc were so passionate about securing Assyrian pieces for their own collections in the 1800’s that I wrote a book about it:

This accompanying text to the Yale University Art Gallery’s famed Assyrian reliefs details the 19th-century American frenzy for reliefs taken from Assurnasirpal II’s magnificent palace in Kalhu near the Tigris River. The discovery of the palace by the British in 1845 captured the Victorian public’s imagination, leading to the discovery of other architectural sites and the deciphering of the Assyrian language. Soon, American missionaries sought to procure artifacts for their alma maters, most often coveting reliefs that were religious in content. William Frederic Williams was one such missionary and former Yale faculty member. He, along with Yale Medical School graduate Henry Lobel, secured six slabs from Assurnasirpal’s palace, which were divided up between Yale, Amherst, and Union Seminary in Utica. Harrelson analyzes at length the two reliefs obtained by Yale. He touches on the technical aspects of the materials as well as the reliefs’ religious iconography, situating them within the palace as a whole.

via Asia Has Claims Upon New England by Sam Harrelson, Yale University Art Gallery

Along with the atrocities being done by groups such as IS to other humans, we should care about the destruction of irreplaceable pieces of world history whenever it happens. For those of us with a more jingoist mindset, we should especially care when these cultural pieces are directly tied to our own history and majority religion.

William F. Williams wrote back to his benefactors at Yale from the city of Mosul in the 1850’s that, “Asia has claims upon New England.” Perhaps that has never been more true in the modern context.

Thomas and I will definitely discuss this on the next Thinking Religion, so give that a listen if you’re interested.

I pray for peace.

Theological Eating

At the beginning of the year, I decided to stop eating meat and meat products. I have some experience with this from my days in graduate school (it was more of an economic decision then!), but I was still going into this new year / new eating pattern with the full understanding that it’s very hard to change patterns even if it is 1/1 on the calendar.

Yes, we are humans and we are organic animal beings that are meant to include meat and animals in our diet (and yes, I consider fish, shellfish, etc as part of the animal kingdom).

I want to explain why, as I’ve gotten a good number of questions about my decision. As an aside, the most contentious conversations I’ve had about my “theological eating” has been with more conservative Christians who, at first blush, deny the reality of concepts such as evolution, but are quick to point out that our species became who we are because of meat consumption…but that’s for another post).

I call this whole eating style “theological eating” for me. That’s corny and pretentious and a little ostentatious. But it reminds me of why I’m doing it. Merianna and I (and MH and Laura) are big “animal people” in that we are outnumbered by our animal co-habitators in our home (including a recently acquired tortoise that will outlive me and costs more to maintain than I do every month). I’ve always been very empathetic with animals going back to childhood.

I’ve also been very compelled to examine my own use of resources and materials. I’ve been terrible at the follow through, but I always had a huge amount of guilt when I ordered a Big Mac or a steak at Outback or bought a discounted slab of chicken breasts at Ingles or Bi-Lo. Part of that guilt was because of the animals themselves and my far-removed connection between their probably not-so-great life and death and my own plate. Part of that also has to do with the economic system that we perpetuate by exchanging our dollars for meat “grown” in such a manner. Part of this has to do with the realization of the advertising machine that corporations put into marketing their products to children, adults, and the elderly. Theologically, I can’t be honest with my own faith if I don’t address a very core issue of both the suffering of probably cognizant beings as well as my own participation in an economic system that I don’t support because of a story about a man who lived a long time ago.

I’m also using one small bowl (a bowl I “borrowed” from Wofford College in 2000… promise I’ll return) and one utensil (an awesome titanium spork… yep!) for most of my food intake at home.

This isn’t just about meat, either (but oh boy is it difficult to find good kosher vegan cheese…whew). I’ve also started heavily examining products such as cereals, grains, sugar, water…even beer that I put into my body and pay with my money. I’m extending this to areas such as how I buy tech gadgets (people that know me know that I spend a good deal of time, money, and attention on those), books, music, appliances etc. For the past year, I’ve pretty much worn the same “outfit” (as Merianna calls it) everyday of an awesome black shirt with a pair of slacks and brown shoes. When one cannot be mended anymore, I buy a new one (happened just this week and I had to get a replacement). Thoughtful and deliberate consumption, if you will. I’ll call it “theological eating.”

The unexamined life might not be worth living, but the examined life is not a walk in hippy park, either. I’m not making this lifestyle choice in order to make you feel bad about ordering a #2 at McDonald’s or plopping down $12 for a steak at Applebees, either. This isn’t out of disdain or judgement. We all walk our own path and mine is not for anyone else or better than yours (probably worse).

We live in an amazing period of our species’ existence. It probably won’t continue on some progressive curve upwards, and we should realize and enjoy our fortune of being born in such a time. That involves enjoying the resources around us.

Nevertheless, I feel like I need to be more deliberate about my choices, and that’s why I am hopeful this is the right path for me.