Didymus Contra Mundum

What the right-wing can't tolerate

2011-10-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

It's interesting sometimes to see what right-wing Tea Party bloggers can't tolerate, and what they have to censor and delete, with no further conversation allowed. For an example, the other day I commented on a blog post on The Black Kettle, “This Is A Marxist Revolution That’s Global In Nature!” He had posted a video of Glenn Beck's recent appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show. Here's the video:

I responded to this video with a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment:

Comedy!!! I wish it was true. I’m a Marxist, an actual one, and I wish this really was “a Marxist revolution that’s global in nature!” But alas, it isn’t (well, not yet). Honestly, if Van Jones, George Soros, Obama and Co. were to gain from these protests rest assured that the Marxist revolution you fear so much will have lost ground, because those Democrats aren’t socialist.

But I doubt you are understanding any of what I’m saying. So please continue doing what you are doing, call people “Marxist” who aren’t, call the Democrats “socialist”. Many people have woken up to the fact that Beck and FOX are all a bunch of liars, and the more you use those terms the more people take an interest in learning what Marx really said. So… Thank you, for spreading the word. :)

The blogs author responded to my comment, "I’ve read Marx, thanks. Anything else you want to say?" I responded back to him by asking a couple of questions.

Cool! Which books by Marx have you read? And which one of his books spells out the theory behind what Glenn Beck is seeing?

And it was this comment that apparently was unacceptable. He deleted the questions (but left my original comment in place), replied with, "Oh, I see I have a troll here. See ya." And promptly blocked me from further commenting on his blog.

Now, considering his response to me, i.e. "I’ve read Marx, thanks. Anything else you want to say?", what about my questions to him was so unacceptable? I'll let you decide.

A facebook conversation with a Utah state senator

2011-09-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd post some excerpts of a conversation I had with a Utah state senator on facebook (with a few edits for clarity). I tried to answer some of his questions clarifying what socialism really is, as opposed to the right-wing propaganda version that's getting all the press these days. I doubt he took in much of what I said, since, after all, I'm a socialist and he's a Libertarian leaning Republican senator. I've edited out all of the conversation with others, particularly one right-wingnut friend of his who made it a personal mission to call me an idiot all the time.

Also, I noticed he likes to occasionally delete certain comments, so to keep it around for maybe some later use (to remind him) here it is.

Thomas: Ahh, I'm a socialist and I know that big business benefits from big government, that's why I'm opposed to both. [This was a response to a now deleted comment of his.]

Senator: You are a socialist that is opposed to big government? How does that work?

Thomas: Senator, read Karl Marx, 'Communist Manifesto'. Marx there describes the government as "but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." The bourgeoisie being the ruling class of big business capitalists. We socialists (as did Marx) are pursuing a revolution to basically overthrow that ruling class of big business capitalists and their government that does their bidding. This is one of the basics of Marxist socialism.

Senator: True free-market capitalist do not support collusion with government, those are socialists.

So you think socialism is basically a committee of the people who decide policy? Are these elected people or who decides who is on the committee?

Thomas: Senator, a couple of things:

1. Where are these true free-market capitalists? Companies like Goldman Sachs, Haliburton, Exxon/Mobile and the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance companies, the defense industry, the prison industry, and men like Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, Charles & David Koch, Dick Armey, etc. who move in and out of the central leadership of corporations, political offices, and jobs as lobbyists for big industries and corporations. These are the capitalists of America.

They all seem to love free-market capitalism when it benefits their bottom line, they want deregulation and less taxes.

But they all love the government just the same when it benefits their bottom line to do so, subsidies (like the ones for industrial agribusiness), tax protections, laws that protect business' and the removal of laws that protect workers rights, the prison industry likes more anti-immigration laws, the defense industry likes their contracts, the pharmaceutical industry really likes more copyright protections, I heard the oil industry and Haliburton have profited a bunch from a certain war.

When you call for there to be "true free-market capitalism", remember, these are the two-faced plutocrats who love to hear you say that. And as a Republican state senator I'm sure you will do your part to give them the kind of small government they like, but you will also help them get the big government they also like.

2. Socialists, like myself, do not support this "collusion with government". We like to see the grimy hands of plutocratic big business out of government. I'd like to see the government actually be as Lincoln spoke of, something that is "of the people, by the people, for the people". And to try and give a short answer to the couple questions you asked: I think socialism is very democratic, and can and will take many different forms depending on what the workers, i.e. the people, decide on how to structure themselves. Something that will prevent the kinds of inequality that we have today from developing, so that no new ruling class can develop.

The image 9/11 patriots delete...

2011-09-11T21:22:00.001-07:00

Yup, I posted this earlier this afternoon on a comment thread of a certain Tea Party politician today, part of a conversation I was having with others there. One guy said I was "pathetic", and called it "poison", after I posted it, but then it was deleted, censored, without comment by the page owner, who professes faith in Christ. Yet he left in place all my other comments, only deleting the one with the picture I had asked people to give some meditation on. But something about this picture he found worthy of deleting.

Of course the picture was made to be controversial, to jar you a bit, hopefully make you think. Now it's true, not everyone will let Jesus wash their feet, but Jesus is willing to wash anyone's feet, including each of the individuals sitting in those chairs, and he commands us to do the same (John 13:1-17). So this picture isn't portraying something unbiblical, it's just putting names and faces to what Jesus meant when he told us to "love others as I have loved you", and "love your enemies".

And yet he deleted it.

The "10 planks" of communism, a right-wing conspiracy theory

2011-06-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm always running across mention of these "10 planks" (or "10 points") of communism on politically conservative and right-wing extremist sites (check out this Google search to see just a little how popular they are), which try to prove that the United States is somehow well on it's way to being a communist state. It's absurd, but so many right-wingers, conservatives, Tea Party'rs, and Libertarians, take it as absolute gospel truth.

The so-called "10 planks" come from the end of the second chapter in Marx's Communist Manifesto. But honestly, they use them as if there was nothing else in the Manifesto, as if they've never read any other part of the book, and consider themselves experts on communism for having found the secret formula for a communist take over. So I'd like to briefly address a couple of points regarding these so-called "10 planks".

First, context. The context they should be in is in the few paragraphs above the "10 planks", in which we read: "We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy." Basically, what this is saying is a revolution needs to happen first. The ruling oligarchy of the bourgeois needs to be removed from power, and governing power needs to be put into the hands of the working class. A revolution is not just electing one of the two bourgeois parties to office again and again so they can continue capitalist exploitation as usual. These sites ignore this and try to reframe these "10 planks" without this revolution, and take what was thought of as some useful ideas on how the working class can break down the power of the bourgeoisie, and turn it into some kind of "evidence" that we all are currently living in a communist state, and that Obama is a communist (he's not), and dumb stuff like that, etc.

Second, these "10 planks" aren't that important. Why? Because Marx and Engels changed their minds, their thinking evolved. In the Preface to the 1872 German edition of the Communist Manifesto we read: "The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today." (You can read the whole preface here) Basically, Marx had learned after watching the revolutions of 1848 in France, and the 1871 Paris Commune, that those "10 planks" he had written about in the Manifesto wouldn't exactly go down all that well in actual practice.

So, in other words, the idea that these "10 planks" are a communist formula that proves the United States is a communist state is a bunch of baloney.

Another letter to the editor in the paper

2011-04-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

In the Salt Lake Tribune:

Plague on both houses

I’m not too pleased with Josh Kanter’s op-ed “Defining charity: the LDS Church and Carl Wimmer” (Opinion, April 9). OK, it does bring up some good points, like the fact that the policies of state Rep. Wimmer, R-Herriman, and the Republican Party are hypocritical and inconsistent.

But the solution this article offers, which is nothing more really than “vote Democrat,” is unsatisfactory.

Why? Because the Democrats work so hard at caving in to so much that the plutocratic Republicans want that in the end they don’t really represent us at all.

They are just a party of lesser evil, and I’m tired of the lesser evil. I want something good.

The solution isn’t the Democrats. The solution is getting rid of both the Republicans and the Democrats.

Thomas Rasmussen
South Jordan

Commonweal article: Was Marx Right?

2011-04-11T12:15:00.001-07:00

Interesting essay by Terry Eagleton, 'Was Marx Right?', adapted from his new book Why Marx Was Right. A couple of highlights:

"Marx himself was a critic of rigid dogma, military terror, political suppression, and arbitrary state power. He believed that political representatives should be accountable to their electors, and castigated the German Social Democrats of his day for their statist politics. He insisted on free speech and civil liberties, was horrified by the forced creation of an urban proletariat (in his case in England rather than Russia), and held that common ownership in the countryside should be a voluntary rather than coercive process. Yet as one who recognized that socialism cannot thrive in poverty-stricken conditions, he would have understood perfectly how the Russian revolution came to be lost.

"Imagine a slightly crazed capitalist outfit that tried to turn a premodern tribe into a set of ruthlessly acquisitive, technologically sophisticated entrepreneurs speaking the jargon of public relations and free-market economics, all in a surreally short period of time. Does the fact that the experiment would almost certainly prove less than dramatically successful constitute a fair condemnation of capitalism? Surely not. To think so would be as absurd as claiming that the Girl Scouts should be disbanded because they cannot solve certain tricky problems in quantum physics. Marxists do not believe that the mighty liberal lineage from Thomas Jefferson to John Stuart Mill is annulled by the existence of secret CIA-run prisons for torturing Muslims, even though such prisons are part of the politics of today’s liberal societies. Yet the critics of Marxism are rarely willing to concede that show trials and mass terror are no refutation of it."

"Socialists will no doubt continue to argue about the details of a postcapitalist economy. There is no flawless model currently on offer. One can contrast this imperfection with the capitalist economy, which is in impeccable working order and which has never been responsible for the mildest touch of poverty, waste, or slump. It has admittedly been responsible for some extravagant levels of unemployment, but the world’s leading capitalist nation has hit on an ingenious solution to this defect. In the United States today, over a million more people would be seeking work if they were not in prison."

But do read the whole essay. It's worth it.

Now the U truly is red, commie red that is!

2011-04-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

Great article in the University of Utah's The Daily Utah Chronicle the other day, Revolutionary students start crucial dialogue, on the founding of the Revolutionary Students Union there (check out their website). Finally, the U of U has a radical student group, that school needed one bad. Also, the illustration that went with the article is great.

Please note: The RSU folks would like me to note here that the RSU is a non-tendency anti-capitalist student organization, so they aren't all just a bunch of communists, other anti-capitalists are welcome as well.

Here in Utah, even the RINO's are socialists and communists

2011-03-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the New York Times the other day about certain Mormon politicians who aren't getting enough love from the Tea Party'rs out here in Utah.

“On a good day, he’s a socialist,” said Darcy Van Orden, a co-founder of Utah Rising, [...], referring to Mr. Huntsman. “On a bad day, he’s a communist.”

When people here start calling a potential LDS Republican Party candidate for president in 2012 a socialist and communist, you know we have (1) a very loose definition of what a socialist/communist is in this state and (2) we have some real right-wing extremists here, and I mean of the fascist variety.

The article goes on to mention:

The prospect of two Mormon candidates for president and a bruising Senate fight could give those homegrown views an even louder voice, said the Republican Party’s state chairman, Thomas E. Wright. “Every Utahan’s voice is going to be heard across the nation,” Mr. Wright said.

I will have to differ with the Republican Party’s state chairman here, because of the way the election process works in this state, only the voice of Utah's extremist right will be heard across the nation.

RadioActive! The Case for Book of Mormon Socialism

2011-03-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

Check out KRCL's show RadioActive! from the other night: The Case for Book of Mormon Socialism. It's well worth the listen!

Blurb from KRCL:

The Book of Mormon advocates a Zion society where people have all things in common and the poor and needy are taken care of. As the United States struggles with high unemployment, upside down mortgages and a growing income gap between the rich and poor, what role does government have to play? Should Mormons embrace and support government programs of redistribution? William VanWagenen from the Mormon Worker, David Knowlton from Utah Valley University and environmental writer Ed Firmage Jr., discuss the intersections of socialism, capitalism and Mormonism.

Also, make sure you read Troy Williams' opinion article in the Salt Lake Tribune from last week: The case for Book of Mormon socialism.

Concerning Skousen's Naked Communist

2011-02-28T12:28:00.002-07:00

I actually picked up a copy of Cleon Skousen's book, The Naked Communist, at a used bookstore just a few days ago. I had grown up with a copy on my dad's bookshelf, and read portions of it a long time ago. I hope to read some of it again here soon.

When I mentioned this on facebook one of my frienemies there said that he'd be interested in hearing my reaction to the book, and to post my thoughts.

I responded with an analogy that I hope will resonate with you as well:

"You're a Mormon, right? Well reading Skousen's book is kind of like reading anti-Mormon literature. You know the kind: it calls the LDS Church a heretical cult, that follows false-prophets, and worships demons. It exposes the unholy blood sacrifices you guys conduct in your temples, and tells tales of Danite executioners sent out by Brigham Young to exterminate critics of the church. They are loaded chuck full of quotes from LDS Church leaders, all used as undeniable evidence of Mormonisms utterly satanic deception.

"But honestly, even from where I stand as a non-Mormon I can tell that those books are junk, and that you're not going to learn anything meaningful about what Mormonism actually is and what Mormons actually believe from reading them. It's the same with Skousen's book and communism."

Are you saying that you can't learn anything from Skousen's book?

"Well, can you learn about Mormonism from an anti-Mormon book? No, not really. You'll learn mostly what a handful of people who hate Mormonism want you to believe about Mormonism. It's the same with Skousen's book. You're not going to learn about communism from it, just what some people who hate communism want you to believe about it.

"This is what Skousen's book does. It turns you into the practical equivalent of one of those anti-Mormon protesters with their signs you see protesting at the LDS Conferences. You know the guys I'm talking about with the signs that say stuff like,"Warning! House of the Devil", "Jesus warned against false teachers", "Cult", "Liars, Deceivers, Seducers", etc. They're buffoons. They think they know all the truth there is to know about Mormonism from the anti-Mormon literature they've read and even written. It's the same with Skousen and anti-communism. Look, there is a lot of good criticism of communism to be read, and I recommend people read it. George Orwell's books, Victor Serge's, and much by Leon Trotsky, as well as others. But honestly, Skousen is embarrassing to take seriously as real criticism of communism, it boarders on the comical."

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Side note: Btw, I've heard from a good source that Paul Skousen, Cleon's son, in his quest to write a better "Bathroom Reader" (I guess) is writing a new book, The Naked Socialist, and also plans to reissue The Naked Communist, updating it some for today's readers. So the comical nuttiness will continue.

Got one of my letters to the editor in the paper

2011-02-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek. In the Salt Lake Tribune:

Socialists’ best friend

Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, has been getting a lot of flack lately for his pursuit of those pesky “socialists” who have infiltrated education throughout Utah (“‘Big trouble’ in education system, Eagle Forum told,” Tribune, Jan. 16). But as an actual socialist in Utah, I thank Buttars.

Yes, I thank him for all the free advertising he gives us actual socialists, because every time he says that “s” word, people go look it up, figuring if he dislikes it, then — darn! — it must be good! Chris Buttars is the best boon for socialist recruitment in Utah in years!

Thomas Rasmussen
South Jordan

New Book: A History of Utah Radicalism

2011-02-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

Now this looks like it will be an interesting read. A new book out, A History of Utah Radicalism
Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary, by John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, both of whom have written articles on Utah's socialism in the past. But it doesn't look like it will be available till June.

Blurb from USU's page:

Utah, now one of the most conservative states, has a long tradition of left-wing radicalism. Early Mormon settlers set a precedent with the United Order and other experiments with a socialistic economy. The tradition continued into the more recent past with New Left, anti-apartheid, and other radicals. Throughout, Utah radicalism usually reflected international developments. Recounting its long history, McCormick and Sillito focus especially on the Socialist Party of America, which reached a peak of political influence in the first two decades of the twentieth century—in Utah and across the nation.

At least 115 Socialists in over two dozen Utah towns and cities were elected to office in that period, and on seven occasions they controlled governments, of five different municipalities. This is a little-known story worth a closer look. Histories of Socialism in the United States have tended to forsake attention to details, to specific, local cases and situations, in favor of broader overviews of the movement. By looking closely at Utah's experience, this book helps unravel how American Socialism briefly flowered and rapidly withered in the early twentieth century. It also broadens conventional understanding of Utah history.

Editorial cartoon from today's Salt Lake Tribune

2011-01-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

Pat Bagley's editorial cartoon from today's Salt Lake Tribune.

Like it was right out of the Communist Manifesto: "... the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Communism?

2011-01-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Christian Left, on facebook, asked a great question yesterday: Why do 'conservatives' label anything they don't like "Communism" or "Socialism"?

We are all socialists now?

2011-01-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

A small rant: We are all socialists now? One of the erroneous ideas about socialism that I've seen widely spread in conservative circles in the U.S. is that when the Federal government takes over a company, nationalizes it, or buys up the controlling share of stock in it, that it's accused of socialism.

But just nationalizing a company or an industry isn't socialism.

The Federal government has handed the running of companies like GM and AIG over to CEOs who are running things like other companies in our capitalist system (i.e. no real difference in management). The only thing is that public financing is taking a hit as the government buys up junk to save it from collapse.

That isn't socialism.

Some basic things about socialism 1) people's control of the means of production, and 2) a classless society, aren't there. Since our government isn't actually run by the people (despite what Lincoln said at Gettysburg), but rather by a corporate plutocracy (the bourgeois, as Marx would call it), the people aren't really in control of those companies. They remain in the exclusive hands of that upper class that actually rules this country.

Those unkillable zombie lies

2010-12-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago Paul Krugman mentioned on his blog:

Barry Ritholtz expresses amazement at the way the Fannie-Freddie-CRA lie — the claim that gubmint bureaucrats forced all those poor bankers into making bad loans — not only persists, but seems to be growing in influence.

But this story is hardly unique. Ever since I began writing for the Times — and probably before, but I wasn’t paying so much attention then — I’ve been struck over and over again by the unkillability of zombie lies.

He concludes by mentioning that he has been rereading George Orwell’s essay, Looking Back at the Spanish War, and that it "feels familiar". I hadn't read that essay yet by Orwell, so I went and got a copy and finally sat down to read it last night. Indeed, it does feel familiar. Orwell describes so well the same kind of lying going on these days:

"Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues — namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could not have been otherwise.

"The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (vide the Catholic Herald or the Daily Mail — but these were child's play compared with the Continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point — the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. There may have been a handful of airmen and other technicians, a few hundred at the most, but an army there was not. Some thousands of foreigners who fought in Spain, not to mention millions of Spaniards, were witnesses of this. Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their’ legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level.

"This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are that those lies, or at any rate similar lies, will pass into history. How will the history of the Spanish war be written? If Franco remains in power his nominees will write the history books, and (to stick to my chosen point) that Russian army which never existed will become historical fact, and schoolchildren will learn about it generations hence. But suppose Fascism is finally defeated and some kind of democratic government restored in Spain in the fairly near future; even then, how is the history of the war to be written? What kind of records will Franco have left behind him? Suppose even that the records kept on the Government side are recoverable — even so, how is a true history of the war to be written? For, as I have pointed out already, the Government, also dealt extensively in lies. From the anti-Fascist angle one could write a broadly truthful history of the war, but it would be a partisan history, unreliable on every minor point. Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth."

Chris Hedges' "Hope" speech, 12.16.2010

2010-12-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

Chris Hedges' "Hope" speech in Lafayette Park before getting arrested in front of the White House, December 16th 2010.

Film: Marx Reloaded

2010-12-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to the release of this film.

"The worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents"

2010-12-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." - George Orwell

I read this quote from George Orwell this morning, and I think he makes a good analogy. The point he's trying to make here is very true. Christians are often the worst advertisements for the faith. Besides all the dark and cruel history of corruption, bloody crusades, exclusive elitism, and just plan nastiness in the church, the average saint today is often acting far more like a sinner than he'd like to admit to. Hypocrisy and sin may abound in the church today, as they have always done in the past, but that doesn't mean the Christian faith itself is false. The truth of the Christian faith stands outside of whether its adherents are acting very faithfully or not. And its power is not in how perfect the adherents who claim it are, but in its capacity to transform people, and in turn transform our communities, toward the good.

Socialism is similar. A long history of embarrassing adherents, many of whom often didn't even pay lip service to the name "Socialist" that they claimed, but just as with the Christian faith above, even though the adherents of the idea of socialism aren't always on their best behavior doesn't make the idea itself false.

Getting the basics

2010-11-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some basic books I could recommend to get a better picture of what socialism really is. Of course there are just about as many flavors of socialism as, by way of an analogy here, there are different denominational flavors of Christianity; you might say that just as there are conservative Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants of all shapes and sizes, including fundamentalist Evangelicals and liberal Episcopalians... there are a variety of socialists, not always agreeing with each other and often at cross purposes with other socialist "denominations". These books don't try to cover that whole spectrum, but focus on one of the more popular "flavors" out there.

The first two books are The Case for Socialism, by Alan Maass, and The Meaning of Marxism, by Paul D'Amato. These two books will go a long ways in overcoming the many popular misperceptions of what socialism really is, what Marx really advocated, what a revolution really means, and why it's necessary. (Edit: Btw, for another fine example of those popular misperceptions, from the Letters in today's Salt Lake Tribune, A pinch of socialism)

The next book is The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. This edition, edited by Phil Gasper, would probably make a good group discussion book, because of the additional material, annotations, and discussion questions.

Reds in the Beehive - in the early 1900's

2010-11-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

One of the things I hope to do here on this blog is explore some of the interesting history of socialists in Utah. Yup, socialists in Utah were not always so rare. In an article, Hornets in the Hive: Socialists in Early Twentieth-Century Utah, by John S. McCormick, in the Utah Historical Quarterly (Volume 50, Number 3, Summer 1982) we find a brief historical overview of the Utah branch of the Socialist Party, which was organized here in Utah in 1901, and found its heyday between 1905 to 1912.

As I read through the article I pulled out a few things to share that I found interesting.

In the fall of 1901 Socialists elected three people to office: Hans P. Hansen as justice of the peace in Elsinore; Henry East as marshal in Lehi; and Jonas Mattson as president of Salina's town board.

A socialist as an elected official in Lehi! The same area that today has wing-nuts trying purify anything that they think even remotely smells of that demon "socialism"? (I am of course thinking of the fundamentalist wing-nuts behind Save Alpine School District and Utah's Republic sites.) But it does appear that the good folks out in Lehi had a bit different perspective at one time to actually elect a socialist to be their marshal.

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In the next twenty-two years the party elected at least ninety-four more officials in nineteen locations throughout the state. The high point came in 1911 when it elected thirty-three people in ten communities, including entire city administrations in Eureka, Mammoth, Murray, Stockton, and Joseph, the mayor and city treasurer in Cedar City, and city councilmen in Fillmore, Monroe, Bingham, and Salt Lake City.

That's hard to even imagine today.

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Utah's Socialist party was most visible during election campaigns when it sponsored regular speeches and rallies, distributed literature, took out advertisements in local newspapers, and otherwise engaged in conventional political activity.

Really? Wow!

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In 1902 Salt Lake City Socialists sponsored a "soap-box campaign" with local party members and national party speakers addressing crowds from a soap-box at the corner of Main Street and Second South in downtown Salt Lake every night for two weeks before election.

Right there on Main and 2nd South... every night... for two weeks... just before an election... socialists on soap-boxes... I wonder how pulling a stunt like that would go over today?

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During the campaign of 1904 Socialists in Nephi held a series of weekly rallies and published a regular "Socialist Column" in the Nephi newspaper.

Actual socialists, not just people accused of being "socialists" by Tea Party'rs, had a column in a local Utah newspaper. Comedy!

(And if you read the whole article you'll note there were others as well.)

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In 1911, ... [the Socialist party] pledged aid to striking railroad workers, held a rally and parade through downtown Salt Lake City

Socialists on parade... right through downtown Salt Lake City... hmm... Well, suppose that one isn't too shocking. We do have a gay pride parade every year.

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Concerning some demographics it mentions "that over 40 percent of Utah's Socialists were Mormons", and that

many were active and faithful members who held important positions on the ward and stake level. At one time, for example, the bishop of the Eureka Ward, his first counselor, and one of the ward clerks were all active Socialists.

---

The article goes on to briefly tell a little about several interesting socialists in Utah. I'll have to do some more research to see if I can find some more on them. As for some of the old newspapers referenced in the article, I bet some of those old articles can be found and read here at this site: Utah Digital Newspapers.

One last little thing for now:

[In 1904], Socialists in Richfield held a series of what the newspaper described as "rousing rallies." At one of them, a California Socialist named Harry McKee, who made regular speaking tours of Utah, "presented the clearest and most logical exposition of socialist principles of any speaker that has ever visited the section." During the course of his remarks he argued that the common charge made against Socialists "that they were anarchists and that they believed in destroying the government was made by people who did not read or study the principles of socialism. He advised them to read more and talk less."

Amazing! The advice to those who speak out against us is still the same after over a 100 years - "He advised them to read more and talk less."

At the Rally to Restore Sanity today, in SLC

2010-10-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

At the Rally to Restore Sanity, in Salt Lake City, today. Had fun doing a little advertising, hanging out and talking to people.

The Mark Steel Lectures on Karl Marx

2010-10-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a humorous way to get to know a little on Marx himself. Check out this program originally aired on the BBC back in 2003, The Mark Steel Lectures, episode on Karl Marx.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

See, he's not such a bad guy.

Some of the strange muddled scary thinking on the right-wing

2010-10-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

I've been reading some of the comments on the right-wing pages as I skim over what people have been saying about the One Nation rally yesterday. One thread caught my eye, although it's actually not too uncommon to see comments like these, these ones capture well the strange warped fears of some people in this country. These particular ones were made on the facebook page of a rather popular Christian Right historian by a few of his supporters a few days before the rally. [edited to capture the thought]

DWC: What's frigtening is when you turn on the news at night and see the rioting in Spain, Belgium, Greece, France and other so-called civilized countries. And, this is all due to reduction in benefits for union and government workers. Just look at this get together about to happen this weekend in DC, and you'll see the faces of the people who will be burning cars, tossing Molotov cocktails and throwing rocks at the police when the same thing happens here. No doubt it will--it has to for the country to survive. [...]

MM: I'm glad I'm sitting on an arsenol! Too bad ya cant legally bait or lure them somehow! Let's get them all to riot in Texas somehow!

DW: When a good house-cleaning is overdue, the trash that is someone's treasure (the unions) needs to be put on the burn pile, so people can got to work in OUR factories with HONEST wages. Someone please explain to the elite what "unsustainable" means.

GW: And there lies a major problem. States will have to either suck it up and do what is needed, or give up their sovereignty as outlined in the constitution to the beast. I see California, Illinois, New York and a hand full of other states bowing. Hopefully 3/4 of the states will not, to avoid the amendment that will "legally" put the nail in the coffin. [this one alludes to the article linked in the original post, but I think you catch his drift easily enough]

CD: I don't know any of you, but I think what [MM] might have meant was that if they riot in Texas then there will be plenty of well-armed citizens to assist the police in stopping it...

Scary stuff, ain't it?

Chris Hedges on resistance

2010-09-02T21:28:00.001-07:00

Chris Hedges paints a dark picture here, but it is one I think we would do well to pay attention to. Talk given at the Veterans For Peace 2010 Convention, on August 28, 2010. (Hedges speaks for the the first 35 minutes or so of the video.) And thinking about resistance here's an article with some other ideas on what to do: Ten Things the Past Can Teach Us Today, in The Nation. One idea in particular I think I'll do,

1 Know the enemy. War and economic exploitation are not particular to the personality of Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld, and changing the characters has not changed the plot. Read, or reread, Marx for what is still the most thoroughgoing critique of capitalism; read Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land for a social democratic vision of "the possibility and virtue of collective action for the collective good."

James Baldwin: public intellectual

2010-09-01T09:55:00.003-07:00

I took in this book review of a new collection of several of James Baldwin's previous uncollected writings. It sounds like it will make for some interesting reading. But reading the review made me kind of nostalgic for the kind of public intellectual he was, one who could be described as Baldwin is here as one who "cared deeply about democracy's very heartbeat — and often turned America's presupposed must-have checklist on its ear." Oh, to have fewer pundits and have more really public intellectuals of whom it could be said:

Language — written and spoken — was his blade, and it was his balm. "We live in a country in which words are mostly used to cover the sleeper, not to wake him up," he writes in a 1962 essay, "As Much Truth as One Can Bear." He wanted to force the uncomfortable topic, to keep the country "awake," we'd been dozing too long, the hour was late.

And one who can see and ask the bigger questions.

"I'm tired of not only being told to wait, but of people saying 'What should I do?' .… One is not attempting to save twenty-two million people. One is attempting to save an entire civilization and the price of that is high. The price for that is to understand oneself."

"Bobby Kennedy recently made me the soul-stirring promise that one day — thirty years if I'm lucky — I can be President too. It never entered this boy's mind, I suppose — it has not entered the country's mind yet — that perhaps I wouldn't want to be.… what really exercises my mind is not this hypothetical day on which some other Negro 'first' will become the first Negro president. What I am really curious about is just what kind of country he will be president of?"

This last question of his in the quote above - it's a hard one to answer. So many pundits working overtime to cover the sleepers, too few trying to wake them up. We who are not intellectuals badly need public intellectuals like Baldwin to help us really work through what is going on, to process it, so we can move forward with a lot more clarity, both as a society and individually.

Martin Luther King, Jr. vs. Beck's Tea Party & Co.

2010-08-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

A couple of interesting things I found today:

First, here's a look at some of MLK's thoughts on how his Christian faith translated into economic justice (from Essence Restored). Often forgotten and ignored we would do well to spend some time meditating on these thoughts of MLK as his image is refashioned to fit the Tea Party's agenda.

Second, check out some of the comments made in interviews by those attending Beck's Restoring Honor event last Saturday. Some of which make an interesting compare and contrast with the above blog post on MLK's economic justice.

Edward R. Murrow on McCarthyism (March 9, 1954)

2010-08-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

We had better learn our lessons from the past. Same stuff is happening again today.

Utah Tax Day Tea Party, set to 'The Internationale'

2010-04-15T22:22:00.003-07:00

Made this video from pictures I took earlier today at the Tax Day Tea Party rally down at Utah's capital building, and set it to some appropriate music... The Internationale, as performed by the Soviet Union's Red Army Choir. :)

The sad state of affairs of many of the conservative Christians here in America

2009-08-19T16:37:00.004-07:00

Check out these two videos and pay attention to the anti-Obama woman who yells "Heil Hitler" at this Jewish man at a town hall event in Las Vegas. Check out how over the top rude she is. Note that as the video goes along others physically back her up, defending her from the Jewish man she offended.

Now watch this video of that woman earlier as she explains a little more about why she is there at this town hall event.

She believes in Biblical values? What a disgrace! She makes a mockery of Jesus by her rudeness.

Unfortunately, she is not alone. Double unfortunately, she'll probably be showcased on FOX News tomorrow as one of their new experts on healthcare.

Obama and apocalyptic scenarios of America's future

2009-08-01T21:42:00.006-07:00

I have this friend on facebook, Shane McKenna, he’s one of those birther, tea party, Patrick Henry Caucus types. We banter back and forth a bit in the comments sections of his posts. Anyway, I posted this little scenario in one of his posts to try to humorously describe what I feel he is basically doing. Here’s what I wrote:

This morning my sink was clogged, and as I sat there thinking about what I'm going to do to fix it, I asked myself "What would Shane do?" Hmmm...

First, he'd blame Obama for clogged sinks. Not just his own sink, but for all clogged sinks everywhere.

Then he'd go post about it on facebook. Whipping up into a spiteful froth all his new friends to also blame Obama for all the wasted sinks out there, and all the money wasted on repairing them.

Then he'd go get a bottle of Liquid Drano, pore it down the sink’s drain, and wait 15 minutes.

Then he, and all his new friends, would declare victory over Obama. A small victory, but a significant one.

This apparently really got his creative writing muse going, and he responded with a story of his own, posted both stories together in a separate note to say that my story inspired his. It paints a dark picture of our country’s future with Obama. Check it out and let me know what you think. (BTW, as an editor, I made a few spelling corrections.)

It had been a rough night, I thought as I awoke. I rolled over in the cramped space of our tent, my memory took me back to those leisure days in our modest yet comfortable home just one year ago. The only reason I sleep these days is from the sheer exhaustion, of labor and worry. No time to bemoan the present circumstance, I must get moving if I am going to make it into line for morning rations. Enough food for my wife and kids to get through the day. I won't take any food till the feeding break in the labor house.

The number of tents seem to grow each day, some are here to stay for a while, but most won't find their skills useful here and will move on in a few days. As I make my way to the wash station, others are starting to rouse out of their tents as well. You don't have time to doddle, if you want to get washed up and get some food, but still, many waste away with despair, and the harsh new realities of life. You just can't let your mind go there, you have to focus on being efficient, and prompt, or you go without.

People are crowded around the sinks, but no one is washing...there clogged again. The sinks constantly get clogged, and the travelers observed that sinks in all the camps get frequently clogged as well. Not that I have a lot of time to think about clogged sinks (except when I am ordered to clean out the drains), but this is happening all over. I understand the obvious cause, the pressed food that they give us expands rapidly in water. The cracker like food is disgusting, but they claim that it contains all the nutrition required. Frankly, I doubt that, but it is all we get, so we choke down every scrap. I noticed that if you have a few crumbs in a cup, and put water in the cup, the bits of cracker will expand to about 5 times their original size. I suspect the hydrophilic action was developed to make our bellies feel full, without actually using much food. The few times I have been assigned to take the drains apart a heavy gelatinous sludge is what the scant leftovers turn into.

I don't have time to ponder the sinks right now, I have to get in the food line early if my family is going to eat today. Once in line, I determine to ask the camp steward, for a rinsing station, that way the problem of the sinks will be solved. Why can't we just have a hose at the edge of the concrete pad, then our dishes could be rinsed off before washing, I inquired. The steward, a tall man in the familiar brown shirts, and jackboots, did not acknowledge my request, he just watched the progress of the line. His assistant, a suspiciously portly woman, sneered with disdain, and quipped sharply her reply, “if you scum would brush off your dishes, the food would not plug the drains. The crumbs must be brushed into the trash, if we rinsed them into an open drain field we would have a bacteria problem, she continued.

Bacteria problem? That statement puzzled me, what sort of bacteria problem could be cause by a few crumbs of soy, and algae crackers? I've got to learn to keep my mouth shut, I thought to myself, questioning the stewards is what got me put into behavior modification classes. It's not enough that we work 10 to 14 hours everyday, but I have to listen to Thomas spout the party line everyday at mealtime. I bet the steward will have him castigate me today, and Thomas will be more than willing to regurgitate Obama's Imperial decrees. I am already dreading his pontifications, I don't know which is harder to choke down, the Obama propaganda, or the soylent green.

Honestly, what do you think of this apocalyptic scenario? And do you think I’d make a good “party line” kind of guy, regurgitating “Obama's Imperial decrees”, castigating “students” of my “behavior modification classes” during their mealtimes? Or are you like me and think this stuff is just total comedy?

Note: It occurs to me that not everyone reading this will catch his movie tie-in. Soylent Green, made in the early 70’s was a futuristic dystopian film in which old people are voluntarily euthanasized, and their bodies are then processed into a food for the common people called soylent green. Hence you have the famous movie line by Charlton Heston, "Soylent Green is people!"

Obama’s speech in Cairo

2009-06-04T09:32:00.003-07:00

It is well worth your time to watch.

Anti-abortion rhetoric and murder

2009-06-03T10:56:00.003-07:00

Bagley says it best.

This time made it into the Salt Lake Tribune

2009-05-24T14:15:00.002-07:00

My Letter to the Editor in the Sunday Edition of Salt Lake Tribune:

Trading tyrannies
As I read about the new Patrick Henry Caucus and its push to reclaim state rights ("Crowd cheers state rights," Tribune , May 21), I confess that I find the "liberty" they are preaching doesn't sound very liberating to me.
Trading in a federal tyranny for a state tyranny doesn't sound like a good trade, especially since the state's tyranny has proven itself to be less inclined to protect the rights of minorities.
Thomas Rasmussen
Eagle Mountain

Another 'letter to the editor' in my local Daily Herald

2009-05-20T05:57:00.002-07:00

The Daily Herald put in another one of my letters. Another one of life’s little victories. :^)

Following Huntsman
Governor Huntsman is popular, I think, because he makes people feel included, even when they disagreed with him, and people can see how he represents them.
But Governor Herbert concerns me. I'm tired of politicians with polarizing ideologies that condemn those with other points of view, making them feel like they have been declared enemies of God. I hope Herbert will imitate Huntsman's understanding and pragmatism, and not be just another right-wing ideologue.
• Thomas Rasmussen, Eagle Mountain

Highlights from Obama’s speech at Notre Dame

2009-05-17T15:00:00.001-07:00

I agree.

One of my ‘letters to the editor’ in the local paper today

2009-05-13T08:55:00.003-07:00

Cool man! I am again a published author. :^)

The Daily Herald published my 'letter to the editor' regarding Rep. Chaffetz’s letter to president Obama.

Congressman is naive

It amazes me how naive Chaffetz is in his letter to President Obama. He makes Guantanamo detention center sound like a resort destination. Afghanis who might be reading this letter might actually be encouraged to go out and commit war crimes just so they can get a free one-way ticket to sunny Guantanamo Bay.
Thomas E. Rasmussen, Eagle Mountain

Short film: Absent Spaces

2009-05-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

Obama nuts and the rhetoric of violence

2009-02-25T22:36:00.005-07:00

The things that people believe sometimes... just amazing! I'm speechless, so I'll just post a couple of videos that I've found, a little from Alan Keyes and a report from the Daily Show, and let you enjoy. No, wait, I do have something to say. It's true these guys have freedom of speech, and that's one of the things that makes this nation great, but... do they have the right to promote violence? Because that's what the rhetoric being used here is about - violence. I mean they're talking about Obama being "Hitler", or the "Anti-Christ", infanticide, he's an abomination, he's going to destroy the nation, civil war, he's illegitimate, a usurper of the presidency. This is the kind of rhetoric that makes mentally unstable people do bad things. Think about that guy, Jim Adkisson, who was just sentenced to life for going on a shooting rampage in a "liberal" church out in Tennessee last July, and read what he wrote just before he went on his killing spree (HT: crooksandliars). Think about it, this is disturbing stuff, with this kind of talk going round violence is just around the corner.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Unusual Suspect

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Israel & Palestine: 'Is Peace Out Of Reach?'

2009-01-31T18:28:00.005-07:00

CBS's 60 Minutes actually put together a really good segment the other day on some of the inner mechanics of the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Here's a link to the segment: Is Peace Out Of Reach?

Watch CBS Videos Online

One part I'd like to highlight here is something Bob Simon points out:

The settlers now number 280,000, and as they keep moving in, their population keeps growing about five percent every year. But the 2.5 million Arabs have their strategy too: they're growing bigger families.

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.

That's right, ultimately there are only three options:

1. Ethnic cleansing: it's something short of genocide, but it's still a 'crime against humanity'. It's going to cost a lot of Palestinians their lives, decimate the rest, and will cause major economic problems for them and the neighboring countries that already are having problems with Palestinian refugees. It was intolerable when Serbia tried to 'ethnically cleanse' Bosnia and Kosovo, and with Sudan in Darfur, but Israel...

2. Democratic option: I would think that this would be the option Americans would support the most. After all, we didn't support a separate white country in South Africa (with all the resources), and a separate country (with nothing but desert) for the blacks. We supported one country, whites and blacks together, one democracy, with a system set up to protect the now minority white population. Imagine, here in America, instead of finally electing our first black president we were to instead create separate countries for blacks and whites. The blacks would be stuck out in the desert somewhere... we'd give them the state of Nevada or something, and stick them in over populated refugees camps. But Las Vegas, with it's water basin, (as well as the whole rest of the country) would be kept as a walled off white enclave. This would be absolutely unacceptable in the United States, but with Israel...

3. Apartheid: This is what we have now. And Bob Simon is right "apartheid regimes don't have a very long life". This is not an option that can last for very long, before we have to face one of the other two.

Now this is the thing that gets me. I understand realpolitik. I understand we live in a sinful and fallen world, where power wins and justice is often just an illusion. Unfairness and oppression are a part of the fallen world we live in. But it is my conviction that Christians should stand above this. They should know better. But unfortunately, many of my fellow American Christians have no problem with apartheid in Israel. And what's even more sad - I doubt many American Christians would have any problem supporting Israel in the crime of 'ethnically cleansing' the Palestinians. It doesn't even bother their conscience.

Hold Israel to the same standards we do everyone else

2009-01-31T16:07:00.005-07:00

I thought I’d post here the idea I posted on Obama's Change.gov site (now turned off). I doubt it had enough positive votes to make it into that Citizen's Briefing Book they were putting together.

---

Hold Israel to the same standards we do everyone else

We should hold Israel to the same standards we do other nations. The favoritism we as a nation have shown Israel has blinded us to the injustice being done against the Palestinian people, and the disproportionate violence being done.

This favoritism shown to Israel needs to end, and needs to be replaced with a balanced perspective that calls a crime just what it is, a crime, regardless whether it was committed by Hamas, Israel, or some other power (even our own). If we don't do this, then no lasting peace can be obtained; because there is no real peace when one side is favored unjustly over another.

---

Below is some of the discussion that my idea generated, which I put into a dialogue format. It's mostly ‘pro-Israel’ comments that I responded to. It allowed me to flesh out my idea a bit more in relation to the extreme 'pro-Israel' bias these commenters have:

[m:] Israel is held to a higher standard than the other nations. Just consider the opprobrium heaped upon it for decades by the UN, and the countries that comprise that body, who have no human rights and are oppressive dictatorships.

And let us not forget that the blockade of Gaza is the only reason that worse weapons are not in the hands of Hamas, an organization dedicated to the elimination of Israel.

Do you not understand that Hamas will not negotiate anything with Israel? It is not interested in peaceful coexistence or a two state solution. It doesn't matter if Israel was the size of a postage stamp, which it is. It is the enemy and must be destroyed. Try living with that.

[Didymus:] Does the word massacre mean anything to you? Because that’s what Israel is doing to Gaza. I mean if you use your overwhelming military superiority to kill over a 1000 people, with no end to the killing in sight, just because rockets have killed 7 people over the last three years, that's what is called a massacre. And if Obama turns a blind eye to this massacre he'll have no peace there for certain.

[M:] Please read the history books. Israelis have always been held to a higher standard. And they have lived up to it. What nation would tolerate their citizens bombed daily day after day and not act? Can you imagine how many more Israelis would have been killed if they didn't have shelters? When a little Palestinian kid is given a gun and told to shoot at Israelis, he's no longer just an innocent child, he is enemy. Where in the world do you see this other than in Palestine? You talk about massacre? The Palestinians would kill every Jew with their hand if they were allowed. Open your eyes and see the reality of this brilliant Israeli nation. They have built life in the desert. They love life and respect others. What have the Palestinians done? For how many years are they going to blame Israel for their misery?

[Didymus:] You must be smoking some good stuff there man. There's like this propaganda haze just kind of hanging around here after you showed up. Strong stuff.

All kidding aside... Let me ask you this, how many Palestinian dead will it take before you think Israel will be safe? Obviously it's already over 1000. Since the Palestinians are not growing in their appreciation for your "brilliant Israeli nation" as Israel has blockaded, bombed them, etc., how about 10,000, is that enough? Maybe 100,000? A million? Or maybe just kill them all, since as you say they seem to only want to "kill every Jew with their hand if they were allowed".

Of course I don't think Israel is out to kill all that many Palestinians, but your comment, [M], contains the logic that leads to genocide.

[E:] For eight years Israeli citizens living in the south of Israel suffered daily bombardment from the Palestinian terror organizations in the Gaza area. When Israel removed all Jewish people from the Gaza Strip two years ago, Hamas violently rose to power and, armed by Iran and Syria, turned the cities of the Israeli south into a war zone. There were no statements about war crimes, disproportionate force, suffering civilians emanating from the peace lovers around the world because after all the victims were Jews. There were no reporters writing heartrending reports about families that lost blood and property from these bombardments. In general, the world, as it is its wont for many centuries, was quite indifferent to Jewish suffering. But when Israel responded over the last two weeks to attempt to prevent the continuing bombardment then the world woke up.

The Human Rights Commissioner (a misnomer if there ever was one) for the United Nations, speaks of international law and war crimes. But she speaks only of war crimes as regarding the Israeli military. Hamas and the Palestinians are never mentioned in this type of context. They can do no wrong but the Jews can never do any right. A rocket on the Israeli town of Sderot is understandable and somehow justified. A tank shell against a house that houses Hamas terrorists is never justified.

Hamas cynically exploits civilian populations, its own as much as Israel's. Ambulances end up as means of smuggling weapons. Hospitals are command centers for firing rockets. Trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the civilians of Gaza are fired upon by Hamas mortars and Israel is blamed for the “humanitarian crisis.”

None of this is emphasized in the news reports of the world media if it is reported at all. Hearing lectures on morality from a world that tolerates piracy in Somalia, mass murder in Congo and Darfur, dictatorships from Libya to Tunisia understandably make little impression on Israel.

Cynicism when practiced for far too long reaches its own limits. It is unlikely that Israel will place great trust in the United Nations or in any of the other current mediators and peace lovers who are narrowly focused only on their struggles as though all of the world’s problems and misfortunes stem from this small country.

Israel is the canary in the mine. They are fighting the world’s battle in Gaza. Terrorism left unanswered only strengthens itself and spreads. The world knows this to be true. But its ingrained cynicism and its historic anti-Jewish attitude blinds itself not to follow its head but it's cynical heart.

[Didymus:] Hamas violently rose to power... Ahh, no, they were democratically elected to power, the violence part came later in a dispute with Fatah, which merely split the Palestinian Authority.

aaah... why both with the rest of your comment. It's just the same extremist pro-Israeli blather. 'Israel is so good, they never hurt anyone. Their bombs only kill terrorists. (They even wear these cute little white hats)'. While the Palestinians are always just 'pure unadulterated evil, even their kids are evil, all they dream and think of all day long is killing Jews and how they can be even more evil'. The Israelis never want war; it's always just the Palestinians who for some odd reason want to be slaughtered in mass.

Whatever dude.

[JFF:] It doesn't matter if 1 or 1,000 people have died in Israel as the result of Hamas rockets. It is TERRORISM and it affects the lives of people that live in Israel - even if they do not get killed or injured by the rockets. So Israel DID have the right to defend herself from these attacks to stop the TERROR caused by Hamas. If you want to get upset, get upset that Hamas uses women and children as human shields instead of getting the civilians out of the area.

[Didymus:] Defending yourself is one thing, massacre is another. You're justifying a massacre and calling it good... that's sick man.

[mo:] Isn't this genocide? "The Palestinians would kill every Jew with their hand if they were allowed” This is Hamas's stated goal. Are you blocking your ability to think logically? That's sick dude.

[Didymus:] You asked, Isn't this genocide? "The Palestinians would kill every Jew with their hand if they were allowed"

No, it isn't. For two reasons: First, it isn't true that every Palestinian wants to kill every Jew in Israel. That's propaganda talk, working to vilify Palestinians. Second, hating someone and wishing they were dead isn't genocide, actually killing a million people is. Palestinians don't even have the capacity to genocide the Israelis, but the Israelis are right now actively massacring Palestinians.

You asked, Are you blocking your ability to think logically?

You should probably go look in the mirror.

[E:] Yes, Gazan’s are unfortunate, but not because of Israel. Their own Hamas leadership has brought them into harms way. They voted for Hamas to get away from the corrupt Palestinian Authority only to get stuck with hard line radicals.

[Didymus:] That's right, blame the victims. When someone gets shot, it’s not the shooters fault, it's the victims fault for being in the way of the bullet. If people would just be smart enough to not stand in the way of people trying to kill them there would be less people shot.

Way to go man.

[hpw:] [FP] is 100% right. The rest of the world, particularly the Arab world & Europe, holds Israel to a ridiculously unfair double-standard. We should continue to support Israel 100%. They are working as hard as possible to minimize civilian casualties (not made very easy by the way Hamas purposefully uses Palestinian civilians as human shields -- Hamas actually exerts great effort to make sure that Palestinian civilians will die in crossfire, because it's part of their sick, twisted P.R. war), while Hamas's rockets are launched with the intent of killing as many Israeli civilians as possible. There are far far fewer Israeli casualties because Israel is good at protecting her own citizens, and because Hamas actively desires that Palestinian civilians die to make Israel look bad.

You far-leftists that look at this situation and decide that Israel must be demonic and trying to "murder" Palestinians are completely delusional. Either Hamas is playing you for a bunch of suckers, or you just hate Jews. Or some combination of the two.

[Didymus:] Your ignorance and propaganda fueled comment is embarrassing to read.

Just because we (and if we're 'far-leftists', you're an 'extreme fascist') don't give carte blanche to Israel to do whatever it wants in this conflict doesn't mean we support Hamas, or hate Jewish people. It means, as I mentioned above, that we think justice should be applied in a balanced and equitable way to create a real peace, and not just a huge pile of Palestinian bodies, which you might think of as "peace".

[M:] I suppose using your simplistic backward logic, to create balance the Israelis would have to start shooting rockets randomly into Gaza, which is exactly what Hamas has been doing to Israel. I wonder how the world would react to that. The Palestinians broke the ceasefire. Now they are paying a price for it. They shoot rockets randomly every which way they can. If they could, they would fire farther and stronger. They have said so themselves. Israel is going after Hamas. If they are hiding among civilians, then Hamas is to blame for their death. I am positive that not all Palestinians are supporters of Hamas. It is sad to see any human life lost. But make no mistake about it, the blame falls on Hamas and on people such as yourself who give credence to such a terrorist group by denying Israel their right to self-defense. I don't think you are a far-leftist. I just think that you have chosen to ignore the facts.

[Didymus:] I could correct some of your "facts", but since I don't agree with or support Hamas's nor Israel’s reasons for shooting at each other, I won't bother.

You said, it is sad to see any human life lost.

But you obviously don't think it's all that sad since you apparently have no problem with all the 'collateral damage' that is going on. And now you're even blaming me for their deaths... Wow!

This is the favoritism that I'm talking about above: you're totally blind to any sin Israel does, and you’re totally blind to the value Palestinians have. You paint with broad propaganda brush strokes: 'Israel good, Palestinians and Hamas bad', and you can't see you're painting the whole conflict into a corner that only leads to a bloodbath.

[ds:] Israel is a sovereign nation that is defending itself. It is using brutal and deadly force to do so, but Israel has shown tremendous restraint in trying to deal with terrorism against its people who have a legal right to be where they are.

Let me also clarify that Israel's fight is against Hamas - the terrorist organization that currently controls Gaza - and not the Palestinians - the people who live in Gaza. It is unfortunate for the Palestinians that they have elected representatives of a terrorist organization to positions of power and leadership in their country. I believe that is why so many Palestinians have been killed and why Israel has not spared them in the late 2008 - early 2009 military operations into Gaza.

If Hamas had not sent rockets into Israel then Israel would not have been pushed to respond in this way. Furthermore, it is Israel - always Israel - who wants peace and who makes the first move toward peace in negotiations. Israel and the Palestinians are equally victims here of the terrorist activities of Hamas

[Didymus:] Tell you what... look at it this way, if you saw some guy walk up to me and just punch me hard in the gut for no reason at all, and then I got up I pulled out this shiny 9mm Glock (a nice piece) and blew that guys brains out like an aerosol can, would you say I was justified in doing that? Well, he did punch him; he has the right to defend himself. If I then shot his wife and one of his kids right after that, would I still be justified in my violent response? Well, I mean come on, the guy who punched him did it for no reason at all, what would you expect. What if, after I wasted this guy’s whole family, I was to shoot their pet dog as well, would I still be justified? Well, maybe that's going a little too far, I like dogs.

Your reasoning here does not compute. It's a disproportionate response. Defending yourself is one thing, carrying out a massacre is altogether another.

[ch:] The people in the Middle East and world need to stop supporting the terrorist (hammas, hummus, whatever etc.), and start supporting a real dialogue between the people of that area and Israel. Every time they want Israel to stop defending itself. Gaza is not a crowded area (that is the reason they give for the terrorism), look it up. The Palestinians who lived in the area moved because of their hatred of the Jews not because anyone told them they have to leave. If you leave on your own, tough! If they do not want to live in peace with Israel, let Israel wipe them out!

[Didymus:] Thank you [ch] for being so blunt ("If they do not want to live in peace with Israel, let Israel wipe them out!") your support for this merciless massacre is noted.

[R:] HAMAS = Hezbollah = Al Qaeda = Islamic Jihad = Hatred and Intolerance and genocide training = 9/11 = Mumbai = London Bus Bombings = Spain Train Bombing = Terrorism by radicals who hate anyone who is not radical = scary stuff....

Its all the same scary ideology. Wake up. Study this creepy stuff on the internet. Look up multiple sources. Its all the same ideology. Radical Islam. The Palestinian people need a change in leadership. They need to enter this century and move into the future. Good-bye Hamas, hello peace.

[Didymus:] The Gazans know who is shooting at them, it isn't Hamas. They know it's the Israelis who are shooting at them. It's because they are being massacred by the Israelis that Hamas is not only not going to go away, but is now even more popular amongst the Gazans themselves today (and no amount of propaganda will make that sad fact go away).

[D:] Disproportionate response is a term of art used by those who want to protest a just and legal response to violent attack. As a veteran I can assure you that there is no such thing. When attacking a well established defense one must use a minimum of 20:1 odds to have a chance of victory. The calls for proportional response call for Israel to set up roadside bombs, kidnap members of Hamas, have riflemen firing indiscriminately at cars on the roads while firing rockets and mortars at homes and schools.

Israel's military is conducting themselves professionally and with great restraint against a group of terrorists who have made a practice of using civilians, hospitals, mosques and other non-combatants for cover.

[Didymus:] Disproportionate response is a war crime. A "victory" obtained through a disproportionate response is no victory at all. Through a disproportionate response one only becomes the animal one hates. There are some things that need to be worth more than "victory".

[R:] The majority seems to believe Israel should stop bombing. Given that Israel would like to survive as a nation and Hamas has been sending rockets into Israel for the past seven years, what does the majority feel Israel should do? What should Hamas do?

[Didymus:] You asked, what does the majority feel Israel should do? What should Hamas do?

Both sides, Hamas and Israel, should stop shooting at each other - period. Both sides need to talk, and I mean talk, give and take, work at understanding, both need to make concessions to the other.

The rockets Hamas are launching into Israel are not a viable threat to Israel's existence. Thousands of rockets have been launched and a lot of grass has been killed, as well as, unfortunately, seven Israelis (murdered) over the past three years. But this does not justify massacre.

Think of it this way… if some one murders a family member of yours is it appropriate to not only kill that murderer, but to kill several members of his family as well? So if some guy murders your brother, and you go and kill that murderer, and his father, mother, his three year old son, his infant daughter, and you rape and torture his wife… is that an appropriate response, or would that be a little disproportionate?

We’ve been Obamanized!

2009-01-20T20:40:00.002-07:00

I picked up the image from Obamicon.Me

Finally! The end is near!

2009-01-19T19:35:00.004-07:00

Only a few more hours to go and the Bush administration will be out. Out, I tell you! And good riddance to them!

Cheers! Here’s to the end of an eight year long mistake. It's finally over.

Obama's Change... it's like cocaine, addictive

2009-01-14T20:57:00.004-07:00

Dude, I've been playing around today with Obama's Change.gov site today, in particular its Citizen's Briefing Book. What can say about it... it's like cocaine, it's so addicting. You all should sign up.

And when you do, vote 'yes' on my proposals for Obama. Located here after you sign up, then comment and let me know who you are so I can vote on your ideas.

This is democracy at its best - pure entertainment and fun!

Bill Moyers says it so well

2009-01-11T21:56:00.002-07:00

Found this over on Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon.com. From Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. His comments on our current politics of war, Israel's war in Gaza, and the ultimate ends of all this killing:

Well, it looks like Christmas is over…

2008-12-27T23:18:00.004-07:00

… and it’s back to business as usual. Israel has apparently over reacted yet again in Gaza. Hay, what are a few air strikes on densely populated Gaza going to do? They’re just Palestinians, right? It’s not like they're people or something?

Sarcasm aside… maybe it’s the music of Arvo Pärt I’m listening to, or maybe not, but seeing the pictures of this attack on Gaza today, to read some of the responses… it saddens me.

My wife and daughter performed at church this morning

2008-12-21T21:25:00.004-07:00

Maria and Maya signed Silent Night (with Rachel, who is the one who really knows sign language) for special Christmas church services this morning. Maria has been practicing for a couple of weeks now, and I think she did a really good job. My daughter on the other hand… well she’s two and kinda got distracted with… ah… everything. Overall, a great performance! (And this is the first time I’ve created a YouTube video… so bear with me.)

Latest news on Obama supporters

2008-11-06T19:18:00.001-07:00

Here’s the latest news on what is happening with Obama supporters since the election (and I think this applies to anti-Obama extremists as well, although they are far fewer in number.)

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Some pictures found today

2008-10-17T19:59:00.004-07:00

I know that many McCain/Palin supporters have been real potty mouths lately, but wow… they are really taking this campaign down to the toilet. No, I mean really.

Now this guy has got the right idea:

GOP Red-meat rhetoric

2008-10-10T19:01:00.004-07:00

They’re finally getting around to reporting on what is coming out of the “Republican” extremist camp. (I can’t say they're McCain supporters since they boo him if he tries to tone them down, but they do appear to be very pro-Palin.) There are a couple of YouTube videos out now that have been recently been made by Obama supporters that show what's being said, and I’ve run across several blogs (including a local blog I occasionally comment on) that actively promote extremist rhetoric. Here is some of an AP story just out that describes a little better what’s happening:

McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd

By Philip Elliott and Beth Fouhy, Associated Press Writers

LAKEVILLE, Minn. - The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.

McCain changed his tone Friday when supporters at a town hall pressed him to be rougher on Obama. A voter said, "The people here in Minnesota want to see a real fight." Another said Obama would lead the U.S. into socialism. Another said he did not want his unborn child raised in a country led by Obama.
…

On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:

"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."

He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. …

The Secret Service confirmed Friday that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday, meaning Obama. There was "no indication that there was anything directed at Obama," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told AP. "We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of an abundance of caution."

Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters "it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited" to scrutinize Obama's iffy associations.

But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.

"Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as 'dangerous' 'dishonorable' and 'risky' to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate," she said.

With so much extremist rhetoric to swim in, I doubt it would take much to tip a few of these folks over into violence. And it only takes a few to make big trouble.

This extremist rhetoric needs to be toned down.

An Obama presidency, and what I really think

2008-10-03T20:49:00.004-07:00

I think it’s beginning to look like we’re going to have an Obama presidency here soon, (at least that is the way things look over at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ right now). But I must admit I’m not too excited about it. Come January 20th I will be celebrating the fact that George W. Bush will no longer be president, not for who will be replacing him.

Okay, maybe I’m being a little cynical, but honestly, between the two parties, there really isn’t that much difference, and our democracy really isn’t all that democratic. Yes, it’s true, we live in what is called a representative democracy, where the people of this nation get to choose those who will represent them, but to just say this and leave it at that doesn’t paint a true picture of what our government is today. I think it would be more accurate to say that we have a “limited” representative democracy set within a plutocratic empire, where the plutocracy limits what choices of representatives we have to choose from. In other words, we get to choose, but money gets to dictate the terms. So whoever becomes the next president, I’m not actually expecting much.

By the way, if you hadn’t already noticed from the picture in the middle of the post, I have decided to vote for Ralph Nader. Ya, I know, it’s a protest vote. I live in Utah, and this state's electoral votes are unfortunately going to go to McCain.

Bono and the bailout

2008-09-25T17:42:00.001-07:00

From the blog faithasawayoflife, he quotes Bono of U2, who spoke recently at the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative:

I am not qualified to comment on what has happened in the last week where this city has changed shape, certainly psychologically, and in terms of some people's wallets. And I'm not qualified to comment on the interventions that have been put forth. I presume these people know what they're doing. But it is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable, treatable disease and hunger.

So very true.

Yup, that Ike, it was a bad storm...

2008-09-15T20:53:00.002-07:00

... real bad!

Fish remain stuck in a fence as flood waters caused by Hurricane Ike recede, in West Orange, Texas, Monday, Sept. 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Bagley toons the truth on Sarah Palin

2008-09-10T19:54:00.002-07:00

From Pat Bagley and our local Salt Lake Tribune:

The real difference between the Democrats and the Republicans

2008-09-06T10:03:00.001-07:00

A really revealing New York Times article on economics and income disparities under the various Republican and Democratic administrations. This really highlights the real practical differences between the two parties.

Here's a link to the book the article mentions: Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, by Larry M. Bartels

Sarah Palin: Scary stuff (part 2)

2008-09-06T09:16:00.003-07:00

Things just keep coming in. Time magazine has an article, which mentions:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

What?! She tried banning books? I do hope the media will do more investigation into this matter. Banning books is most inappropriate in this country. If you don’t like foul language in a book, that’s fine, then don’t read it, but banning it so other can’t read it is just another way of shoving your ideology down other peoples throats.

Support Banned Books Week and flip Sarah Palin the bird! It’s coming up, September 27th to October 4th.

Some additional reporting has been done (Added 9/16/08):

Palin the Librarian, from The Nation
More on Sarah Palin's Attempted Book Banning, from Talk to Action

Sarah Palin: Scary stuff

2008-09-05T17:21:00.002-07:00

When I first heard that she was to be McCain’s running mate I thought she wasn’t to bad of a pick. I had heard of her taking on corrupt politicians in Alaska and thought she’s not that bad. Of course I don’t plan to vote for the Republican ticket either way so it didn’t make much difference to me. But in the past week I’ve heard many things. Most are forgettable; I’m glad she had her baby with Down syndrome, Maria and I would have done the same; her 17-year old daughter didn’t abstain from premarital sex and is now pregnant, I agree with the guy who said, “life happens”, we’re are all sinners and that means we all sin; and I’m not really bothered by Sarah Palin’s lack of experience, I think “experience” is overrated in presidential politics, I mean look at George W. Bush, he now has eight years of experience actually being the president and it hasn’t helped him at all.

But there are a few things I’ve heard that do concern me about Sarah Palin. NPR has a report out today examining her religious background, here she is on the Iraq war:

"Pray our military men and women who are striving to do what's right for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," Palin said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

Poloma [Margaret Poloma, from the University of Akron, and who has written several books on Pentecostalism and is herself a Pentecostal Christian] says some people might hear that and say Palin believes this is a holy war, or that Pentecostals think this is a holy war.

"I would think it's fair to say. Yes," Poloma says.

Another president who believes that their own plans for war and God’s plans “for war” are one and the same is precisely what we don’t need right now.

And I noted this little comment in the report:

Darrell Bock, a New Testament scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary, says some Pentecostals hold to their convictions in the face of opposition because they believe they are in tune with the will of God.

"What faith does in this case is fuel a sense of mission and direction," Bock says. "It can also produce a little element of certainty about that direction."

And I’m thinking, wait a second, we’re just winding up eight years of disastrous religious certainty in the Whitehouse, and now we might just have in there a pit bull with lipstick who believes she is on a mission from God. Ahh… I’m sorry, but I really would like a president right now who has a few doubts.

Journalists arrested at the RNC

2008-09-04T20:35:00.002-07:00

I thought I’d pass this along. Amy Goodman and others from Democracy Now! were arrested while reporting events during the RNC. Apparently some folks don’t like unsightly blemishes with their political entertainment. Others trying to report on events around the RNC, especially ones with video recording equipment, were raided before the convention as well.

In her opinion article today regarding their arrests Amy Goodman notes, “When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, "By embedding reporters in our mobile field force." In other words, in practice the police want you to report what they want you to report only, see things only from positions they want you to be in, only from their perspective, a perspective they have some control over. But if you try to report from any other perspective, press badges mean nothing. They’ll arrest you and charge you with felony riot.

So much for the first amendment and freedom of the press, since it ain’t worth much to the St. Paul police department and the RNC.

[Additional Note: Here is an excellent follow-up interview done by David Brancaccio with Amy Goodman on PBS’s NOW, additional links are provided.]

If the shoe fits?

2008-07-07T18:26:00.005-07:00

I thought I’d comment briefly here, as opposed to his blog's comments section, on two YouTube creationism videos posted by Andy over on his blog (since I would have more editorial control here than in his comments section).

Speaking as a Christian who believes in evolution, I find videos like these a bit confusing and sad. I understand what they are trying to say in criticizing evolution, but the “evolution” that is being portrayed in them isn’t evolution, it’s some thing else. Take the video with the fish jumping up onto the island thinking he’d become a man, with legs, arms, and lungs, but he dies instead, because he doesn’t instantly metamorphosize into a man… since instant morphing doesn’t have anything to do with evolution, it is hard to see how the cartoonist reaches his conclusion that “evolution is impossible”. And in the Dilbert video, things like the same old disingenuous misuse of the definition of the word Theory, you would think someone would have looked that up in a dictionary by now and noticed the difference between the scientific use of the word theory and someone’s whatever theory on something. Since both these videos get evolution so completely wrong it actually crossed my mind that they were originally created by evolutionists to mock the biblical-literalist point of view, and that in an ironic twist the biblical-literalists actually adopted them as their own to push their view. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately… I don’t know), that doesn’t appear to be the case.

If biblical-literalists want to rip on evolutionists… fine, but you’d think they’d actually want to attack what evolution is actually saying, and not some straw man they prop-up as a target. That would at least be intellectually honest.

Lake of Fire

2008-06-18T21:37:00.002-07:00

I watched the Tony Kaye film Lake of Fire the other night, on the complex and often heartbreaking issue of abortion. It’s an important and well-made film, often portraying with force the emotional intensity of the issue.

However, I can’t recommend it for everyone, but really only for the discerning viewer. This not because I’m prudish or anything, but I can see where this film may have the opposite effect of understanding the other. I could see where people of one side will walk away from this film thinking even more ill of the other side; pro-lifers will think “abortionists” are even sicker and more sinful than they imagined, and the pro-choice crowd will grow in their affirmation that they are only up against fanatics no different than Al-Qaeda. I think this is an unfortunate drawback of the film. But the discerning viewer I think can gain a greater understanding from watching this film of the emotion, and the complex disconnected reasoning that drives the different parties in this issue to such extremes.

Exposure to a broad range of ideas to keep reading, writing, and talking

2008-06-15T19:35:00.002-07:00

I was emailed the following article, Why Does ID Get (Nearly) All the Christian Press?, earlier this week, and it has encouraged me to think a little more on some ideas I hinted at in a reply I sent back. I thought I would post my reply here for anyone to add any of there thoughts, or develop them further.

The article mentions at the end:

Given the nature of the problem, none of these potential solutions is likely to occur to a great extent, nor is it fair to hold the involved parties responsible to fix the problem (except, perhaps, the editors). Ultimately, it is incumbent on those of us who do have exposure to a broad range of ideas to keep reading, writing, and talking about all the options. For the time being, this vigorous discussion may have to occur only in more specialized venues. However, over time, the best model will slowly emerge, and once generally accepted by our community, it will come to the attention of the broader Christian community.

I think the key word above is exposure, “exposure to a broad range of ideas to keep reading, writing, and talking about all the options”. A few of ideas come to mind:

Letters to the editors of those magazines, asking them to broaden their perspective, write up an article or two on theistic evolution.
I was thinking about our local Christian bookstores, and asking them to carry a better selection of books. Go see the managers/owners and have a chat. Introduce them to other Christian book publishers that publish books I buy. Let them know we want to see a more diverse perspective on their shelves (or I’ll continue buying from Border’s, B&N, or Amazon). Maybe I can put a post or two on the blog, and let them know the local bad press they’ll get until they diversify.
I’ve been thinking how we (Salt Lake Emergent Cohort) could introduce ourselves to our local theological seminary, and to encourage them to bring in speakers who we could appreciate. Not passively wait for, but actively create “vigorous discussion” in “specialized venues”.

I don’t necessarily agree with the author of the article, that “over time, the best model will slowly emerge”, without people actively pushing for, and publicizing, theistic evolution.

Of course, I’m thinking of more than just theistic evolution here.

Okay, I admit it, bad idea

2008-06-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it, the idea I had in my last post wasn’t such a good idea. At least I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, but I was to busy with work, driving, sick, twice the wife’s car broke down, and just plain tired. So, no blogging. But I have a few things coming up here that will probably get me posting more here soon.

Postmodernism 101 – Why read about postmodernism?

2008-04-30T20:04:00.007-07:00

This is the first part of a series of posts based on the book Postmodernism 101: A First Course For The Curious Christian, by Heath White. I figure it will help me retain the stuff I’m reading better if I blog it, so here goes.

But first, Why did I pick this book? Well, the topic sounds useful and interesting, postmodernism is something I want to understand better, the endorsement blurbs are from several theologians, philosophers, and authors, whom I am familiar with and respect, (Robert Webber, Brian Walsh, Leonard Sweet, and John Franke), and the book is published by Brazos Press, a publisher who’s books I’ve generally come to like.

I’ll try to post per chapter at least once a week, but I don’t really have any particular schedule for the postings since I live with a two-year-old who destroys all of my schedules.

In this introduction, I agree with White, that our culture, our common worldview, is changing in some very significant ways, that “postmodern ideas are driving the change”, and I think the more we understand postmodern turn the better off we will be.

White notes, that we need to understand that these changes aren’t taking place all at once, but are a gradual, ongoing development. Modernist and postmodernist views, as well as premodern, are moving alongside each other, and often grating against each other.

White makes a great point worth noting here,

You may have thought your church ran on nothing but the bible and common sense. Part of what will come out, as you read through this book, is that “common sense” changes: common sense is simply an inherited and unquestioned worldview. The common sense of a person influenced by postmodernism is not the common sense of a modern, and a premodern person has yet a different kind of common sense.

… but one man’s “common sense” is another man’s heresy, and our own “common sense” is pretty hard to see in ourselves. So it’s important to understand the dynamics of the postmodern turn before we tear into one another.

White also highlights some of the different ways Christians are reacting to this change. There is what he calls the moral concern, which sees postmodernism dislocating the moral center of America and therefore needs to be resisted, the evangelistic concern, which tries to adapt where needed to postmodernism in order to spread the gospel. But I see myself as well within his third category, the theological concern. The modernist view is collapsing, it no longer fits, and had problems to begin with, but postmodernism opens doors to rethink things and take a new look with a different set of eyes. We need to clear the fog of modernism that clouds our view and critically rethink our approach to church, fellowship, worship, to the Bible itself, etc.

Hit and miss

2008-04-19T18:46:00.003-07:00

I celebrated the Eucharist with the head of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Jefferts Schori, this morning. It was interesting to see this newsmaker in person and hear her talk on “religion and civic life” and how the Episcopal Church is becoming more politically active. And it’s been a while since I have done a liturgical service. (I was in one at a United Methodist Church a few months back, and before that over two years ago at the SS. Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church, for the entire Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) I need to get out more often.

But I missed seeing Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi (Nobel Peace prize 2003) who was up at the University of Utah giving a talk yesterday. If I had known about it I might have taken time off work. It’s not often you get to see a Nobel laureate in town. So far I’ve been able to see two Nobel Prize winners here in Salt Lake, one a peace prize, Jimmy Carter, the other in literature, Wole Soyinka. I hope we get more of them out here so as my daughter grows up she will be able to meet them to, and make them her heroes as well.

Just watched ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ and it was worse than I expected

2008-04-18T22:10:00.003-07:00

I’m still collecting my thoughts on the film, but speaking both as a Christian and also as a firm and outspoken believer in “Darwinian” evolution, I have to ask those who agree with this film - Should I go to church next Sunday, or should I be expelled from church?

I have to ask this since apparently based on this film, and unbeknownst to me, I am at best a confused “liberal” Christian, which is to say not really a Christian, but a fake one, or at worst an atheist subversive in the church, there to take peoples faith away, and possibly even to promote genocidal eugenics. I noticed there is no place for theistic evolution (i.e. those who believe in “Darwinian” evolution, that believe God and the Bible are also true, and see no conflict between the two) in Ben Stein’s movie.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

2008-04-17T21:00:00.005-07:00

Expelled is finally here. Oh well, I’ll go see it, a get to know my enemy kind of thing. I hope the audience won’t mind if I cuss a little while watching it. It appears to be opening in several theaters. I plan to go see the 7:05 pm showing Friday night at Jordan Commons, (9335 S State Street, in Sandy). If anyone wants to join me, email me through my profile.

Review from God’s Politics.

Salt Lake Emergent Cohort started

2008-04-07T22:57:00.002-07:00

Well, a few friends and I are starting an emergent cohort here in the Salt Lake City area. I have our blog site up and running, and am waiting now for Yahoo, Open Directory Project, Technorati, and Emergent Village to post it, as well as Google’s crawlers to pick it up. I've done this with several of these sites before with another blog, it may take a while. (If anyone reading this knows a few more places I can post it let me know.)

Mikhail Gorbachev, Christian

2008-03-20T21:15:00.002-07:00

Well… this is good news. Reported in the UK’s Telegraph, and mentioned on Ben Witherington’s blog.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.

"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added.

"It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb," said Mr Gorbachev.

"I feel very emotional to be here at such an important place not only for the Catholic faith, but for all humanity."

He also asked the monks for theological books to help him understand St Francis's life.

Father Miroslavo Anuskevic, who accompanied the former Soviet leader, said: "He was not recognised by any of the worshippers in the church, and silently meditated at the tomb for a while. He seemed a man deeply inspired by charity, and told me that he was involved in a project to help children with cancer.

Some interesting news from the World Christian front

2008-03-18T15:00:00.004-07:00

I was reading about the 2008 Christianity Today Book Awards, checking out the various titles. One book really looked interesting, in the Missions/Global Affairs category, that I may try getting here soon - Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, by Lamin O. Sanneh.

A reference to an article by Philip Yancey (CT: It's Not About the Crusades) shares a brief outline on the author of the book, Lamin Sanneh, his conversion from Islam and his unique perspective on developments in world Christianity. The article also has a couple of really interesting bullet points of information that I thought I’d note here:

Western Christians feel deep guilt over the Crusades, even though, as Sanneh says, Arab historians give the Crusades (which they refer to as the wars with the Franks) little notice. These incursions, mostly rebuffed by the Muslims, pale in comparison to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan.

Seventy-five thousand people a day become Christians, according to some estimates, and two-thirds of them live in Africa. These buoyant new believers do not carry around burdens of history such as the Crusades and the Inquisition. They experience the gospel as Good News and celebrate it in new and creative forms.

The death of an Archbishop

2008-03-14T13:55:00.005-07:00

An interesting footnote to the life of Paulos Faraj Rahho, Iraq's Archbishop in the Chaldean Catholic Church, found in the New York Times,

Church officials said Thursday, however, that Archbishop Rahho was shot in the leg when he was abducted on Feb. 29. Gunmen sprayed his car with bullets, killed two bodyguards and shoved the archbishop into the trunk of a car, the church officials said. In the darkness, he managed to pull out his cellphone and call the church, telling officials not to pay a ransom for his release, they said.

“He believed that this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions,” the officials said.

His body was retrieved yesterday.

Emergent church in Utah

2008-03-08T14:54:00.003-07:00

I thought I’d post this query here to see if it gets caught up in a Google search dragnet. I am thinking of assembling an Emergent church cohort, or something like it, here in the Salt Lake City area, Utah, and I’m currently looking around for folks who might be interested. (Or, if I can find one that already exists, that would be good to.)

If you have no idea what I’m talking about check out this site to peruse at your leisure: Emergent Village.

If this interests you leave a comment below, or email me, and we’ll get together for coffee and conversation.

A Hermeneutics quiz and a funny/scary sermon

2008-02-25T15:37:00.002-07:00

Here’s a couple of fun and funny things I thought I’d share.

First, a Hermeneutics Quiz, by Scot McKnight, out of Christianity Today. I had picked up the magazine, Leadership, Winter ’08 issue, when it came out, and took this little quiz for fun to see what I came up with. I scored a 78, well within the Progressive area, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. (For any readers who show up here, let me know what you scored and what you thought of the quiz.)

My Answers were: Q1: 4, Q2: 4, Q3: 5, Q4: 4, Q5: 2, Q6: 3, Q7: 3, Q8: 3, Q9: 5, Q10: 3, Q11: 3, Q12: 3, Q13: 4, Q14: 4, Q15: 3, Q16: 5, Q17: 5, Q18: 5, Q19: 5, Q20: 5

Also, here’s a YouTube video… I could not stop laughing. This guy is for real! I’m glad we don’t have sermons like this:

Who I will vote for…

2008-02-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, I’ll vote for him, but if Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, I’ll vote for Ralph Nader.

A Parthenon of Books

2008-02-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

I found this in the New York Times yesterday; I thought it a fascinating story.

In December 1983 the Argentine Conceptual artist Marta Minujin and a group of helpers spent 17 days building a full-scale model of the Parthenon in a public park in Buenos Aires. Except for a metal scaffolding, it was made almost entirely of books wrapped in plastic. All the books had been banned by one of the most oppressive juntas in the country’s history, which was just being dismantled after Argentina’s first democratic election in a decade. “The Parthenon of Books/Homage to Democracy,” as Ms. Minujin’s work was titled, stood for about three weeks. Then the public was allowed to disassemble the piece and keep the books.

A thoughtful little poem by Rumi

2008-01-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

I like this short poem by Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet and Sufi Islamic theologian, as translated by Coleman Barks:

I called through your door,
"The mystics are gathering
in the street. Come out!"

"Leave me alone.
I'm sick."

"I don't care if you're dead!
Jesus is here, and he wants
to resurrect somebody!"

The best Christian response I’ve found to Islamic terrorism

2008-01-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Christian de Chergé, who was the superior at a Trappist monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria, was kidnapped, along with six other Trappist monks, and held hostage for two months before he was beheaded by Islamic fundamentalists in May of 1996.

He wrote a last testament a few years before his death when it was first announced by Islamic fundamentalists that they would begin killing all foreigners in Algeria. He requested that it be opened only upon his death. I thought I would post de Chergé’s testament here for your meditation on what I see as a real Christian response in the face of terrorism.

When we have to face an A-DIEU...

If it should happen one day - and it could be today - that I become a victim of the terrorism, which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept that the Sole Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to link this death with the many other deaths, which were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil, which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly.

I should like, when the time comes, to have the moment of lucidity, which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder.

To owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, would be too high a price to pay for what will, perhaps, be called "the grace of martyrdom", especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I am aware of the scorn, which can be heaped on Algerians indiscriminately. I am also aware of the caricature of Islam, which a certain Islamism encourages. It is too easy to salve one's conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of its extremists.

For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: they are a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received from it, finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel learnt at my mother's knee, my very first Church, in Algeria itself, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.

My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naïve, or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!" But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then be satisfied.

This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills -- immerse my gaze in that of the Father, and contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, and filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, playfully delighting in the differences.

For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have willed it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything.

In this thank you, which sums up my whole life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families -- the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And also you, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, I also say this thank you and this "A-Dieu" to you in whom I see the face of God. And may we find each other, happy good thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both... Amen ! Insha 'Allah !

Algiers, 1st December 1993

Tibhirine, 1st January 1994

Christian +

Translation obtained from here.

The Crusades, Religious Right propaganda, and self-appointed censors

2008-01-14T00:15:00.000-07:00

A few months back a major initiative was undertaken by 138 significant Muslim leaders to open a dialogue with the Christian community in order to effect peace and understanding between the two religious communities (A Common Word Between Us and You). There have been several responses, including one in particular from 300 “leading Christian scholars” in the evangelical community (Loving God and Neighbor Together). I think this effort holds a lot of promise and I look forward to seeing future developments.

Not everyone, however, thinks it is all that good of an idea, and the evangelical Christian response has received some criticism. One of the more outspoken critics is Albert Mohler, Jr., a leader and radio talking head in the Southern Baptist Convention, and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In an article on the Christian Post, he has criticized the Christian’s response on several points: he doesn’t think they should apologize for the Crusades, nor excesses in the current “war on terror”, and he apparently seems to think that the Christian response has in some way compromised on some points of the Christian faith to which he holds dearly. The article quotes him,

“I am sure that all kinds of sin went on with the Crusades on both sides,” he said. “But I am not going to apologize for the Crusades because I am very thankful that the Muslim effort to reach a conquest of Europe was unsuccessful.”

“Otherwise, we would be speaking Arabic on this program right now and we would be talking about the Muslim continent of Europe and potentially even of North America.”

The war on terror, he also noted, is the responsibility of the United States so he was “not sure” why Christians are apologizing for that as a sin against Muslims.

“I don’t think that is the right way to put it,” Mohler said. “I don’t think we associate the United States of America with the Christian church. For whom are we apologizing and for what are we apologizing?”

I disagreed with Mohler, and posted the following comment on the article:

1. Since Mohler is an educated man, and even a surface review of the Crusades will reveal that they had nothing at all to do with a Muslim conquest of Europe, his comments concerning the Crusades can only be described as either willful ignorance or deception.

2. Mohler’s comments concerning the war on terror ignores the overwhelming support American Christians gave to the war (and unfortunately still give to the war, displaying a full blown lack of repentance) making the war in Iraq practically a modern day Christian Crusade.

3. Mohler’s comments display a total lack of understanding of why 300 other Christian theologians would sign the document. Trying to find avenues for peace is more than just shoving our doctrine down their throats and demanding they accept our point of view or else.

Why doesn’t Mohler just say that he thinks Christians need to enter this conversation as conservative Republican warmongers as well as being Christians? I find Mohler’s Orwellian remarks (war is peace, ignorance is strength) repugnant. He should be ignored.

This comment generated some conversation, which I thought I would repost in part here (with some edits for clarity) since a self-appointed censor has taken upon himself to suppress several of my comments and responses to others (or maybe it was just someone who pushed the wrong button on my posts, either way I’m not happy). So…

One guy responded:

The Crusades were initiated for the specified goal of recovering Jerusalem and Christian lands, religious sites, etc, from the Muslims. It was the Muslims who invaded Christian lands and *conquered* them by the *sword*. They desecrated many Christian holy sites, they plundered Christian churches and turned them into mosques, enslaved Christian populations, and on and on. The Crusades were initiated as a defensive war against the aggression of the advancing Muslim armies (which did, ultimately, end up conquering Constantinople - but they would probably have achieved this two hundred years earlier if not for the Crusades). Do a little research. Stephen Runciman's trilogy "A History of the Crusades" is a good place to start.

Were atrocities committed by the Crusaders? Absolutely. But there were atrocities on both sides, and the Muslims were just as guilty of this as the Crusaders were. It does not change the fact that the Crusades partially achieved the goal of recovering Christian holy lands and sites and stopping the advance of Islam into Europe.

It is beyond belief that these evangelical leaders would take it upon themselves to "apologize" for the Crusades, the War on Terror or any other action that has been in resistance to Muslim aggression.

Wow! Feel free to denounce me as a heretic, because I don’t want my Christianity to have anything to do with your Christianity.

I wasn't denouncing you for anything nor was I calling you a heretic. I simply was setting you straight about the Crusades. As for your Christianity being different from my Christianity I'm not sure what you mean by that. I happen to be Protestant not Catholic so I doubt our theology or doctrine differs much. Maybe you think your understanding of it differs from mine. Either way I wish you well.

No, trust me, we differ a whole lot.

Yeah, your Christianity must differ a whole lot from mine. If you think Mohler is wrong, if you think Christianity is a pacifist religion, or you think Jesus message was "peace at all costs" even if it means denying the Trinity to appease Muslims, then yeah, it differs from my Christianity a whole, whole lot .

Jesus stood up to the powers of darkness, whether Pharisees and teachers of the law, demons possessing human beings, or moneychangers in the temple who had turned his Father's house into a market. Jesus was no pacifist. He said he didn't come to bring peace, but division (division over *him*). I won't deny the Trinity, deny the Son, or allow Muslims to define "God" for me, thank you very much. Their "Allah" is not YHWH, in my opinion. So, I'll stand up for Christ, regardless of what offense that causes Muslims or anyone else. Standing up for Christ in opposition to worldly powers, and the powers of darkness, has always led to confrontation and conflict. It's what caused all the early persecutions of the church and causes Christian persecution even to this day in many places around the world.

The evangelical leaders who signed that letter didn't know what they were doing or what kind of message they were sending to the Muslims. It might have made them feel good, but it did nothing good for Christianity.

Justifying a crusader war/mass murder, responding to evil with evil, is not standing up in opposition to the world – it is being the world.

Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” But your comment turns that on its head and basically said, ‘resist the evil person… let him know who is boss.’

When Jesus said, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you”, personally, I think he meant it, and that he would include Muslims. Another thing I think you should notice, Jesus didn’t use an M-16 on the demon possessed, he didn’t drop a 500lbs bomb on the moneychangers, because that wouldn’t be standing up to the powers of darkness, it would be becoming the powers of darkness.

Honestly, if you where really radical for Jesus, when the enemies of God came for you… you would die for them, and not try to justify war against them.

Think for moment… imagine if the Muslim armies had taken all of Europe, and forced us all to learn Arabic. The Catholic Church would of never have become what it did become, it never would have become politically powerful, fat and rich. There never would have been a Reformation, there would have been no need. The church, persecuted, but responding with kindness; hated, but responding with a radical love for their neighbor. Hmm… They probably would have converted the Muslims a long time ago to Christianity, just as they did the pagans of the Roman Empire.

[He may have responded to me with something, but they had been deleted before I read them.]

Another guy responded in a general comment:

My sincere congratulations to Reverend Mohler! My sincere congratulations for what he said and for not signing the letter and for not apologize for the Crusades.

Our God is not Allah, our God reveals Himself through the Trinity and the incarnation of Jesus Christ and we must feel proud to be Christians and when speaking or writing with Muslims or other Religion we must speak and write as Christians. We don’t have to be ashamed of the Crusades; The Crusades were self-defense wars. Here are some facts and dates: Cyprus was the first Christian land to be invaded by Muslim Arab warriors in 649. In 653 they invade the island of Rhodes. In 668 they invade Sicily. In 668 and 717 they attacked Constantinople (the city of Constantine, the first Christian King, today Istanbul) but didn’t conquered it. In 711 they invade Spain. In 718-732 they continuously attacked the Languedoc (south of France). In 732 they were stopped at Tours by Charles Martel. In 898-973 they attacked Saint Tropez and the south coast of France, murdering and looting. In the mid 1300s they invade Greece. In 1389 Turks Muslims submit and invade the Serbians, the Wallachians, the Bosnians and the Albanians after the battle of Kosovo. In 1009 the Calif al-Hakin bi-AMIR Allah ordered the Church of Holy Sepulcher destroyed to the ground. It was only in 1027/8 that was authorized by the Muslims its rebuilding. The first Crusade appeared only in 1095 after the Byzantine Emperor called for help against the Turks Muslims. The second crusade took place in 1147-1149 because Muslims invade and conquered the Christian town of Edessa. The third crusade took place in 1187 because Saladin did recapture Jerusalem. The fourth crusade was in 1202-1204 again because Jerusalem was occupied by Muslims. The fifth crusade was in 1217-1221 to recover the Holy land. The sixth crusade was in 1228-1229 to deliver Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem. Seventh crusade happened also because of Jerusalem in 1248-1254. Eighth Crusade in 1270, happened to help the Christian states of Syria against Turk Muslims. The last Crusade, the ninth, took place in 1271-1272 to help the Christians in Syria against the attacks of Turks Muslims. So we have nothing to be ashamed and we have nothing to apologize and we must feel proud to be Christians and proud of our Civilization.

The idea that the Crusades were wars of “self-defense” is laughable, and that we should not be ashamed of them is weird, but to say we should be proud of them is just plain sick.

Your “facts and dates” paint a picture that is mostly propaganda. It ignores the motivations for the wars, and their offensive nature; it ignores the often positive conditions that Christians enjoyed under the Muslim rule before the Crusades (think of John of Damascus, a Doctor of the Church, where he lived, and even was able to write what he did, and the Christians actually living in the Holy Land didn’t support the First Crusade when it came); it ignores the fractured condition of the Muslims at the time, since they were fighting amongst themselves, (that was the real innovation of Saladin, to unify the Muslims, which he was only able to do because of the First Crusade’s successful campaign); it ignores the counter productive nature of the Crusades altogether. The Fourth crusade that you mention was sent “again because Jerusalem was occupied by Muslims”, never got to Jerusalem. They sacked the city of Constantinople, and destroyed the Byzantines instead. It was just Catholic Christians killing Orthodox Christians in 1204, probably the lowest point in all of Christian history.

You ignore the fact that the First Crusade was the only successful crusade of the bunch, all those that followed ended in defeat for the “Christian” armies, and only succeeded in solidifying Muslim hatred for Christians.

Readings

2007-12-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

Out on Christianity Today, an article by Ron Sider, Courageous Nonviolence, which gives the challenge to…

Christian leaders from all traditions should together issue a call for something that has yet to happen in Christian history: the training and deployment of thousands of CPT-type peacemakers who are committed to using the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi and King, inspired by Jesus, in unjust, violent settings around the world.

In today’s New York Times, Opinion section, The Vatican’s Relative Truth, which highlights the problems Pope Benedict XVI is having in getting his message across (an all too common a problem for all of us, unfortunately).

Part of the problem is that so far, this cerebral pope has a track record of blurring such compelling arguments during his biggest turns on stage. When he visited Auschwitz in May 2006, for example, he offended some Jews by asserting that the Nazis tried to destroy Christianity too. Four months later, he set off a firestorm among Muslims with a lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad brought “things only evil and inhuman,” such as “his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” And in Brazil last May, the pope incensed indigenous people in Latin America by suggesting that Christianity was not imposed on them.

In each case, Benedict was actually trying to make a deeper point worth hearing. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power; his Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence; and in Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone’s spiritual experience.

And finally, a sermon by Stanley Hauerwas on the real meaning of the Reformation. Here are a few highlights:

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ‘Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning [Luke 18:9-14]. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgement of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

...

I think Catholics are able [to keep within the same church Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans, as well as Irish and Italians, etc.] because they know that their unity does not depend upon everyone agreeing. Indeed, they can celebrate their disagreements because they understand that our unity is founded upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the Eucharist possible. They do not presume, therefore, that unity requires that we all read Scripture the same way.

Great quote from Karl Barth

2007-12-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

“Strange as it may seem, it is still true, that those who fail to understand other churches than their own are not the people who care intensely about theology, but the theological dilettantes, eclectics, and historians of all sorts; while those very men who have found themselves forced to confront a clear, thoroughgoing, logical sic et non find themselves allied to each other inspite of all contradictions, by an underlying fellowship and understanding, even in the cause which they handle so differently and approach from such painfully different angles. But the cause, it may be, is nothing less than Jesus Christ and the unity of the Church.”

—Karl Barth

Since it’s the Advent season…

2007-12-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here is something that I found worth meditating on. It is an Arabic Nativity Hymn. I hope you enjoy.

That’s not the Holy Spirit talking

2007-12-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

On The Media has an interesting report on some new technology that emits highly focused sound that resonates within your skull. Even if you plug your ears you will still hear it loud and clear.

I heard this report on the radio going into SLC today… what a scary thought if this technology were to make it into the hands of certain individuals who want to make sure you hear every word they want you to hear, when they want you to hear it.

I wrote letters to my Bishop and Stake President

2007-12-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

I wrote letters to my Bishop and Stake President today (at least I hope I did, the LDS church office can sometimes be a bit behind the times on names and address’s). Here’s the letter I sent them. We’ll see if I get a response.

Dear Sir:

I recently had over a couple of the local LDS missionaries and welcomed them into my home, but I do not think our brief discussion went very well after I declined their request to read the Book of Mormon and pray until God told me it was true. Due to some of the things that were said I think that several incorrect assumptions were made concerning my point of view.

As I had mentioned to them I am a former-Mormon (I left the church in 1987, formally had my name removed from the membership role in 2001, and currently attend another Christian church), but I am not a bitter anti-Mormon and I do not want to be tagged with that label. I am a supporter of work that promotes dialogue between the LDS community and other Christian communities; such as the "A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation" presentations, and Standing Together ministries that promotes interfaith dialogue, and such books as How Wide the Divide?, by Dr. Craig L. Blomberg and Stephen E. Robinson, A Different Jesus?: The Christ Of The Latter-day Saints, by Robert L. Millet (a professor of religious education at BYU), Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate, by Robert L. Millet and Gerald R. McDermott.

I plan to read Robert Millet’s book here soon (A Different Jesus?), and visit my local Ward if I can. But I do not want to be labeled an “anti-Mormon” just because I disagreed with and declined the missionaries’ request.

Sincerely,
Thomas E. Rasmussen

P.S. If you know anyone who would like to read either one of Robert Millet’s books mentioned above, let me know. I would like to read and discuss those books with someone in the LDS faith.

This brought back memories

2007-12-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Brian McLaren makes a good point on his recent post on TPMCafe,

It’s as if religious people, among whom I guess I would be counted, have got a boxful of puzzle pieces (the stories and verses of the Bible), but somebody switched lids on us so we’re trying to assemble them according to the wrong picture. As a result, we read the Bible and articulate our faith primarily as an answer to the question, “How do we get individual souls into heaven after we die?” Instead, I’ve become convinced that the primary question that lies behind the Biblical text, and the life of Jesus, is more like this: The world is in a mess because of human ignorance, greed, lust, pride, bigotry, injustice, and so on. What is God doing, and what can we do, in response?

If I’m right, then Jesus wasn’t simply interested in personal, private morality or in passing out tickets on the train to heaven. He was interested in forming a movement of peaceful activists who seek justice, show compassion, and learn to live in loving relationship with God, neighbor, stranger, enemy, and all of creation.

This brought back memories. I remember in the ICoC this was the focus - How do we get individual souls into heaven… as many as possible (thinking of that exponential growth model in the Discipleship study). Everything was subordinated to this, and if something didn’t aid this drive then it was ultimately put aside, given only lip service depending on how biblically necessary it was (i.e. we did some HOPE project thing once a year because giving to poor and needy was something the Bible said we needed to do). But always the drive was on… to share, to study the Bible with others and to baptize as many as possible.

I think McLaren is right, and I’m glad my thinking has changed since I left the ICoC.

The power of stories, and some good reporting

2007-12-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

First, Brian McLaren is guest blogging over on TPMCafe this week, mostly discussing topics related to his new book. One thing he said has really got me thinking,

… I suggest that these first three crises, which I call the prosperity, equity, and security dysfunctions, turn like three gears, teeth in teeth with the others, and they are together driven by a central drive shaft which I call the religious dysfunction. Our world’s religions are failing to provide a story strong enough to inspire enough of us to deal effectively with the first three crises. In fact, all too often our religions provide destructive narratives – I call them framing stories – which reinforce our solution deadlock and drive our social machinery all the more recklessly and passionately toward suicide. To put it starkly, there are figurative religious suicide bombers as well as literal ones, and they are armed with stories.

This is important to note because our stories, the narratives that we live by and that guide our thinking, are extremely powerful. We think that Islamic suicide bombers who blow themselves up and snuff out innocent lives are crazy and evil, and that since we don’t do that - we are good. Yet, we don’t see that it is our own “framing stories”, our own “destructive narratives”, which have underwritten our war in Iraq and Afghanistan, our War on Terror, global warming, etc.; we have warped just war theory, we have accepted misinformation and lies without critique, we have nationalized and commodified our Christianity and sold ourselves out to the powers of wealth and greed. Rather than bringing goodness, understanding, and health to our world, our stories have basically used us, wasted our world, and killed a lot of people.

Next, a couple of articles (here and here) over at Truthout concerning the Orwellian language in H.R. 1955, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which recently passed in the House. Some highlights from both articles:

Civil liberties activists have criticized the bill, some comparing the Commission it would establish to the McCarthy Commission that investigated Americans for possible associations with Communist groups, casting suspicion on law-abiding citizens and ruining their reputations. The Commission would be empowered to "hold hearings and sit and act at such times and places, take such testimony, receive such evidence, and administer such oaths as the Commission considers advisable to carry out its duties."

Odette Wilkens, the executive director of the Equal Justice Alliance, a constitutional watchdog group, compared the legislation to the McCarthy Commission and to the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which infiltrated, undermined and spied on civil rights and antiwar groups during the 1950s and 60s.

"The commission would have very broad powers. It could investigate anyone. It would create a public perception that whoever is being investigated by the Commission must be involved in subversive or illegal activities. It would give the appearance that whoever they are investigating is potentially a traitor or disloyal or a terrorist, even if all they were doing was advocating lawful views," Wilkens said.
…
The bill specifically identifies the Internet as a tool of radicalization. "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

In a press release, Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington American Civil Liberties Union legislative office, took issue with this characterization. "If Congress finds the Internet is dangerous, then the ACLU will have to worry about censorship and limitations on First Amendment activities. Why go down that road?" Fredrickson asked in a press release.

The ALCU has "serious concerns" about the bill. Fredrickson said, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."

According to Wilkens, the bill, in its current form, lacks specific definitions. which would give the Commission expansive and possibly dangerous powers. The Committee would be set up to address the process of "violent radicalization," which the bill defines as "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." According to Wilkens, the bill does not adequately define "an extremist belief system," opening the door for abuse.

"An 'extremist belief system' can be whatever anyone on the commission says it is. Back in the 60s, civil rights leaders and Vietnam War protesters were considered radicals. They weren't committing violence but they were considered radicals because of their belief system," Wilkens said.
…
H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House - a companion bill is in the Senate - is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment: It begins, "AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes."

[The RAND Corporation, “a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex”, that is indirectly linked to the author of the Bill and maybe behind the Bill’s guiding philosophy, mentions in a 2005 study of theirs, Trends in Terrorism,]

RAND maintains "homegrown terrorism" will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who "challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world's ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare."

Further, RAND claims anti-globalists and radical environmentalists "exist in much the same operational environment as al Qaida" and pose "a clear threat to private-sector corporate interests, especially large multinational business." Therein lies the real "other purposes."

Predictably then, H.R. 1955 is not about protecting homegrown Americans. That protection is only incidental to its "other purposes" of protecting homegrown corporate interest and its unconscionable manipulation of the American political process to fill its coffers. Any thought or speech or action - however protected it might be by the Bill of Rights - that threatens corporate hegemony and profit will no doubt suffer the "other purposes" clause of the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.

Something to think about as you start speaking different stories than those spoken by the nationalized and commodified form of ‘Christianity’ that dominates so much ‘Christian’ discourse today.

Lastly, Bill Moyers Journal, has a great report and discussion on the terrible Christian Zionist lobby CUFI. I think Christians need to oppose this group, and their destructive narrative, more publicly. No one should think that they speak for true Christianity as they claim.

Some good things to read, listen to, and watch

2007-11-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

Yup, this post is a grab bag full of fun things.

First, some stuff worth studying from Emergent Village:

1. Walter Brueggemann's 19 Theses

2. Podcasts from the 2007 Theological, Philosophical Conversation, with philosophers Jack Caputo and Richard Kearney:
Session 1, Part 1
Session 1, Part 2
Session 2
Session 3, Part 1
Session 3, Part 2

Also, I just finished Caputo’s newest book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (He’s one of the speakers in the Conversation above) I highly recommend it.

On a more humorous note, here is the best reporting I’ve found from the front lines of Creation Science, it’s Your Creation Museum Report, from Whatever, pictures are included! (BTW, if you don’t like the word horseshit, you probably don’t want to read this.)

Ah yes, it’s the Christmas season again, and it’s time for some Christmas movies. This one looks like it will be the choice one of the year – What Would Jesus Buy? That’s right… Reverend Billy warns us of the SHOPOCALYPSE!!! Give us the power too STOP SHOPPING!!! It’s comedy and conviction wrapped into one!

In the best music video category we have Left Behind, a song of the Rapture:

And for those who can handle it, since it’s a pretty tough read, I’ve been having an on again, off again, semi-serious discussion with the activist types of fundamentalists under this article over on the Christian Post (and to a much lesser extent this related article). If you do try reading it, please don’t read it in detail (I wouldn’t want you to waste your time), just skim it, you’ll understand things quick enough. I post it only because I think it demonstrates the real difficulty in really being able to discuss, to converse, and to understand the other (especially online), when at least one side has an absolutist point of view. This is something to meditate on when it comes to the following items for your consideration:

It appears that some major leaders in the global Islamic community have made a major overture to the global Christian community (A Common Word Between Us and You), and several leaders in the Christian community have responded. One response of note is this one coming from Yale Divinty School. I have not been able to read it all yet, but I think this developing conversation will be interesting to watch.

American "Christians" and Waterboarding

2007-11-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

In today’s Salt Lake Tribune, there is a good opinion article, by David R. Irvine, that tears into our government’s acceptance of the use of torture. But I would like to highlight one point here that he sheds some light on:

Of all the candidates running for president, only John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have renounced legalized torture as an instrument of national policy. It is bizarre that the candidates so assiduously courting the "Christian" vote are afraid of losing that bloc's support if they speak out against torture. Perhaps they don't really understand the similarities between the CIA's "Palestinian hanging" interrogation technique and crucifixion. [emphasis added]

It is sad to see just how much America’s “Christian” community has become a negative force, now known for its acceptance of torture, so that presidential candidates, who will tell you whatever your itching ears want to hear just so you’ll vote for them, won’t “speak out against torture” for fear of losing the “Christian” vote.

Huckabee: "It’s a theocratic war"

2007-11-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

Republican presidential wanna-be Mike Huckabee made an interesting comment in an interview with CBN News the other day:

People look at my record and say that I’m as … strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamo fascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s a theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well. And know the threat of it is absolutely overwhelming to us. [emphasis added]

I’m curious, what class did he take in getting his theology degree that would help him fight a war? Are they teaching at Southern Baptist seminaries now Crusading 101, by Prof. Urban, Jr.? Or maybe it was that class on evangelism he took with Prof. Richard Lionheart that he thinks really honed his “presidential” skills?

Honestly, the last thing we need is a leader who thinks we’re in ~~an apocalyptic crusade~~ a theocratic war.

Do we love Osama Bin Laden?

2007-11-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

Greg Boyd’s recent blog post asks some good questions and makes a very good point. A couple of highlights:

If love is to be placed above all else, if everything else is to be considered worthless apart from love and if everything hangs on fulfilling this one law, how can we avoid the conclusion that refusing to love even our enemies is the worst heresy imaginable? To miss this all important point renders whatever other truth we may possess worthless.

Ironically, while millions were tortured and murdered for having "heretical" views on things like baptism and communion, there's not one episode I know of throughout church history of anyone so much as having their hand slapped because they lacked love.

Just to bring his point home he asks I think a tough, but practical question, “Do we love Osama Bin Laden?”

So… I have to ask myself first.

Q: Do I love Osama Bin Laden?

A: …hmm. Yes. Now it is true that he is a tough guy to love, especially since he wants to kill me and my family, and Justice tells me he is a murderer and needs to apprehended and put in prison. But I do not want him executed, nor do I wish him any ill will, and I’ll pray for him, for no one is beyond the hope of redemption.

Do you love Osama Bin Laden?

What do you get when you mix politics and religion?

2007-11-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

I found these comments in a recent NYTimes article (‘The Evangelical Crackup’) by Rev. Gene Carlson worth noting,

Wondering how those theological and political debates were unfolding in conservative Wichita, I sought out the Rev. Gene Carlson, another prominent conservative Christian pastor who left his church last year. He spent four decades as the senior pastor of the Westlink Christian Church, expanding it to 7,000 members. He was one of the most important local leaders of the Summer of Mercy abortion protests. He tapped Westlink’s collection plate to help finance its operations and even led a battalion of about 40 clergy members and hundreds of lay people to jail in an act of civil disobedience.

Sitting with his wife in a quiet living room with teddy bears on the bookshelves, Carlson, who is 70, told me he is one member of the movement’s founding generation who has had second thoughts. He said he still considers abortion evil. He called the anti-abortion protests “prophetic,” in the sense of the Old Testament prophets who warned of God’s wrath. But Carlson was blunt about the results. “It didn’t really change abortion,” he said.

“I thought in my enthusiasm,” he told me with a smile, “that somehow we could band together and change things politically and everything will be fine.” But the closing of Dr. Tiller’s clinic was fleeting. Electing Christian politicians never seemed to change much. “When you mix politics and religion,” Carlson said, “you get politics.” (my emphasis added)

"Jesus - Still Too Radical?"

2007-11-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

Here are a few things I picked up this week and enjoyed, as well as links to some books worth reading.

From Greg Boyd’s blog site check out this artwork (above) for a church conference, and the interesting story that goes along with it.

Here is a blog post (from IVP's Addenda & Errata) that brings up an interesting hermeneutical issue. The book they recommend (The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, by Mark Noll) looks interesting, I’ve seen it before, and now I want to read it even more.

I just finished a book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?, by James K. A. Smith, which examines how postmodern philosophy has a lot to offer Christianity. I highly recommend it. Here’s a link to some notes, and an mp3 conversation with the author, which outline the book.

And on a humorous note, here are two Youtube videos (here and here) of def poetry jams with Taylor Mali, an English teacher who makes some good points.

The Apostle Paul’s funky hermeneutics

2007-10-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

I found this little thing that grabbed my attention in an interesting book review article, Messy Revelation, on Christianity Today’s website.

In Romans 11:26 the Apostle Paul quotes scripture from the OT to prove his point. Paul writes,

… and so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob” (RSV)

The scripture Paul is quoting from is Isaiah 59:20, which basically reads,

And the deliverer shall come for Sion’s sake, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.

I highlighted the real difference between the two verses. I had to look this one up. I have an LXX Greek OT Bible and a Nestle-Aland Greek NT and Paul really is quoting Isaiah 59:20 of the LXX except for one word, an altogether different word in the Greek text. The word that shows whether the deliverer is coming to Zion, or for Zion’s sake, is now coming from Zion. Now I think it is important to note here that what may seem a slight change of direction is a fulfillment of prophecy.

I personally agree with the above book review article, this isn’t some kind of scribal error, nor is Paul quoting from an error filled copy of the LXX – Paul made a modification in the verse’s wording himself to basically make it say what he needed it to say. So here’s a question for you: How can one take Paul’s words in Romans as literal inerrant truth when he is interpreting another part of the Bible not only non-literally, but is actually modifying what the Bible actually says? For me at least this is a Catch-22 for the literalist hermeneutic, because no matter how you cut it, our 21st century rules of interpretation say that this is just plain wrong!

But in Paul’s day the rules of interpretation appear to be different than ours. Nobody appears to have criticized Paul for what he did here, even though I am sure his audience knew about it, and could have looked things up for themselves as the Bereans did. Everyone seems to have accepted it as a perfectly acceptable thing to do (and I think I will too.)

But what do you folks think is really going on here? What terminology would you use to describe what Paul is doing here? I’d like to hear some other opinions.

[I originally posted this question on a Christian forum a year ago, but I thought I would repost here if anyone would like to respond.]

Given that the times have changed, should our interpretation of the Bible change with it?

2007-10-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I would again post here a few comments (with a few edits) that I made in another blog, please forgive me, but I like to collect my notes. Here I’ve responded to the following question in the original post [Quotes from others are in italics]:

Given that the times have changed, should our interpretation of the Bible change with it?

Interesting question. I think in one sense, no, it should not change, but in another, yes, it should. It should not change in the sense that people are still people, sin is still sin, the sinful nature is still sinful, and repentance is still required. We need to be able to read our Bibles and be transformed into the likeness of Christ, to know God and be known by him.

But I think that our interpretation of the Bible should change, indeed it needs to change in other ways. A couple of things come to mind – we 21st century postmodern Americans, whether we know it or not, live in something like a box… we all think like 21st century postmodern Americans (give or take a few conservative and liberal biases here and there) and we all use our good old American common sense to interpret the plain reading of the scriptures. In this we can often miss what scripture really is saying, because they were written with 1st century interpreters in mind (at least the NT was), and not 21st century Americans. In other words, I have found that, even though we think we are just reading the plain meaning of scripture, what is plain for some is not plain for others, and it is often we who are reading it wrong.

The other thing that came to mind was Galileo. Before him, in general (common sense) people saw the earth we walk on as the center of the universe; after all, if it was moving we would all be hanging on for dear life. And the church in its plain reading of scripture, with individual verses backing it up, not to mention the natural evidence that we could see with our eyes that we needn’t hang on to the earth, since it was obviously standing perfectly still, agreed with the common sense of the day that the earth was the center of the universe. Case closed.

But then Galileo came along and changed all that. The earth was no longer the center of the universe. Now it is common sense that Galileo was right, and those verses that once upheld the centrality of the earth are interpreted in a new light, from a new perspective, a perspective that didn’t exist before.

Speaking as a Christian who believes in evolution, we need to today (re-)interpret the Bible again in a new light, from a new perspective.

One fellow responded:

Didymus, Galileo wasn’t right and no scientist today thinks that he was. He believed in heliocentricity. He wasn’t even the first to come up with an alternative to geocentricity.

We do not interpret the bible differently because we feel differently today. If they were wrong then, they are wrong now. If they were right then, they are right now. It is absolutely imperative to interpret the Scriptures how they were intended to be interpreted.

I responded:

Without getting into semantics over the value of Galileo’s contributions to science, I have to respectfully disagree with you.

We do not interpret the bible differently because we feel differently today. If they were wrong then, they are wrong now. If they were right then, they are right now. It is absolutely imperative to interpret the Scriptures how they were intended to be interpreted.

Here I would have to say that, even in light of the above comments that I made, that I wholeheartedly agree with you. I to think it is an absolute imperative to interpret the scriptures as they were intended to be interpreted. But I question if we are really doing that. I think there are many who dogmatically hold to interpretations of scripture that were never intended to be dogmatically held to.

The blog owner then responded with:

I think there are a few reasons there's more resistance over Darwin than over Galileo (or Copernicus if you'd rather).

For starters, the Bible never says, "The earth is the center of the universe". There are verses from which people had surmised that as an indirect implication, but it's hardly a necessary implication. Absorbing the new model of the solar system only touched on second-generation or third-generation implications of the texts rather than the texts themselves. That's one reason Galileo (or Copernicus) didn't cause a stir on the same level as Darwin.

I think what amazes me (and saddens me) most is the sheer hatred and contempt with which many treat people on the other side of the divide. Smearing entire opposing camps with "moronity" and "imbecility" gets a pass on even fairly mainstream blogs. And I've known one Christian evolutionist to seriously suggest that fundamentalists may be demon-possessed. Now, I ask myself, is that any way to open up a reasoned discussion? Hmm.

I replied:

Yes, I actually did mean Galileo, not Copernicus. Copernicus discovered the idea, but didn't make waves. Galileo, OTOH, butted heads with the church over the matter. Like many Christian evolutionists today, he challenged the church's interpretation of the Bible, but not the Bible itself.

For starters, the Bible never says "the earth is the center of the universe". There are verses from which people had surmised that as an indirect implication, but it's hardly a necessary implication. Absorbing the new model of the solar system only touched on second-generation or third-generation implications of the texts rather than the texts themselves. That's one reason Galileo (or Copernicus) didn't cause a stir on the same level as Darwin.

Here’s something to think about, just to further our understanding – concerning what you said about heliocentricity above, I can say about evolution:

For starters, the Bible never says, "that evolution is not true". There are verses from which people had surmised that as an indirect implication, but it's hardly a necessary implication. Absorbing the new model of evolution only touched on second-generation or third-generation implications of the texts rather than the texts themselves. That's one reason Darwin didn't cause a stir on the same level as [some future String Theory guy saying there are an infinite number of realities going on (and was Jesus crucified in all of them).]

Anyway, it’s not as much a leap as one might think. Take Origen, 2nd century theologian, for example, although he was in the minority on this point in his time, today he might be thought of as being way ahead of his time, when he wrote:

What intelligent person can imagine that there was a first day, then a second and third day, evening and morning, without the sun, the moon, and the stars? And that the first day -- if it makes sense to call it such -- existed even without a sky? Who is foolish enough to believe that, like a human gardener, God planted a garden in Eden in the East and placed in it a tree of life, visible and physical, so that by biting into its fruit one would obtain life? And that by eating from another tree, one would come to know good and evil? And when it is said that God walked in the garden in the evening and that Adam hid himself behind a tree, I cannot imagine that anyone will doubt that these details point symbolically to spiritual meanings by using a historical narrative which did not literally happen.

Origen, De Principiis, 4.1.16 translated in Borg, M.J. (2001) Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally. Harper Collins, NY, NY p70.

And I've known one Christian evolutionist to seriously suggest that fundamentalists may be demon-possessed.

I know the feeling; I have had more than one Christian question my Christianity because I believe in evolution. Thinking about it… just last month my pastor spoke a little about evolution in Sunday service. He mischaracterized evolution (created a straw man), and proceeded to tear it down. I was being challenged to change my beliefs from beliefs I already did not hold. It gets a bit frustrating at times.

The Market As God

2007-10-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting and thought-provoking article by Harvey Cox, The Market As God, originally published in the March 1999 issue of The Atlantic. In which Cox argues that the Market has become in fact a new religion. The article creates some interesting new words, like econologian, which is a conflation of economist and theologian. It asks interesting questions, such as, “Does anyone doubt that if the True Cross were ever really discovered, it would eventually find its way to Sotheby's?” Some interesting ideas on the commoditization of the spiritual,

It used to be thought — mistakenly, as it turns out — that at least the innermost, or "spiritual," dimension of life was resistant to The Market. It seemed unlikely that the interior castle would ever be listed by Century 21. But as the markets for material goods become increasingly glutted, such previously unmarketable states of grace as serenity and tranquillity are now appearing in the catalogues. Your personal vision quest can take place in unspoiled wildernesses that are pictured as virtually unreachable — except, presumably, by the other people who read the same catalogue. Furthermore, ecstasy and spirituality are now offered in a convenient generic form. Thus The Market makes available the religious benefits that once required prayer and fasting, without the awkwardness of denominational commitment or the tedious ascetic discipline that once limited their accessibility. All can now handily be bought without an unrealistic demand on one's time, in a weekend workshop at a Caribbean resort with a sensitive psychological consultant replacing the crotchety retreat master.

The article also notes how the world’s traditional religions have accommodated the new Market religion, and been absorbed into it. “Like previous religions, the new one has ingenious ways of incorporating pre-existing ones. Hindu temples, Buddhist festivals, and Catholic saints' shrines can look forward to new incarnations. Along with native costumes and spicy food, they will be allowed to provide local color and authenticity in what could otherwise turn out to be an extremely bland Beulah Land.” I have to question, I wonder just how much our American Christianity, in all its various manifestations, has just become a bit of local color, a dash of authenticity?

Cox says that the “disagreements among the traditional religions become picayune in comparison with the fundamental differences they all have with the religion of The Market.” He mentions, “I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion.” I wonder if we are often missing the real target in our disputations/conversations?

Anyway, it’s a good article if you’re interested.

“I tell people, ‘America is changing, get over it.’ ”

2007-09-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

For small group as requested, here are the links discussed about last night:

For the micro-credit site on the Internet, here is Kiva, and here is my family’s lender page that shows the folks we lent to.

Here’s the Small Fortunes video site.

Here’s information on the Intersect/Culture DVD that I ordered (but haven’t received yet), and a link to the Christian Vision Project that it is related to. If the intro video isn’t working for you on the link here is the YouTube version of it:

Also, a great article in the New York Times today on a church out in Georgia that is learning to deal with diversity as it should, The World Comes to Georgia, and an Old Church Adapts.

Where Intelligent Design, Creationism and the church’s anti-science attitude ultimately takes us

2007-09-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

On the program The View the other day co-host Sherri Shepherd apparently told co-host Whoopi Goldberg that she didn’t believe in evolution. Whoopi Goldberg then asks Sherri Shepherd a really good question…

Wow. When I first watched this clip I was unable to finish whole complete sentences for a while, I didn’t know what… I still don’t… know what to say. It’s just that… I ah… I give up… I’m going to bed.

HT: Crooks and Liars

D. James Kennedy and the “fascist element” in the church today

2007-09-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

I posted yesterday a comment on a Christian Post article regarding the passing of D. James Kennedy:

I’m not saying I’m glad to see him go, but maybe with his passing there will be a little less of the fascist element that is in the church today.

Apparently it has offended several people since I seem to have earned several thumbs down, and (as of the time of this blog post) at least one commenter asking for an explanation for my “fascist element” comment.

I responded that a good working definition of fascism comes from historian Robert O. Paxton (author of the book Anatomy of Fascism),

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

By putting a “christian” spin on this definition you will basically have what D. James Kennedy was teaching.

I think we Christians need to take a serious look at things, especially those on the American religious right, and fans of D. James Kennedy in particular. What is really being pursued here? When I watched some of Kennedy’s programs on television, and read his articles, and then examined what happened in Nazi Germany, and how the church there was implicated in its crimes through manipulation and lies. The parallels are scary. (One easily obtained resource I recommend is a DVD, Theologians Under Hitler)

Bush’s new job title in ’09: Televangelist

2007-09-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

Reading some of the excerpts from the new book out on President Bush, Dead Certain, by Robert Draper, in the New York Times, the article mentions:

[I]n an interview with a book author in the Oval Office one day last December, he daydreamed about the next phase of his life, when his time will be his own.

First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. But he added, “I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

After reading this I had a nightmare epiphany – what does this sound like, wanting some speaking gigs to make some money, which won’t come except at some… churches, a Freedom Institute to proselytize democracy American-style. Oh no! It could happen. He will replace the late D. James Kennedy.

Greenpeace is getting edgy…

2007-09-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

…okay, maybe they have been edgy for awhile, but this commercial they made almost makes me think they are not for arms control.

For the one reader I have on this blog, or anyone else passing by, what are your thoughts on this commercial? What do you think of it in the context of the Christian faith?

For myself, on the one hand, I can understand where the kid is coming from, I have a baby daughter and I am concerned about what the future holds for her. Global warming paints a pretty bleak future. I’d like to leave this earth as a better place than when I came into it. Christianity, from what I read in my Bible, seems to be rather well suited to lead the way in making the necessary changes needed to stop global-warming, since self-denial and self-sacrifice for others is built right into its foundation. Unfortunately, just as in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees dominate the religious seen. Much of Christendom today I think has a malformed theology that doesn’t see God’s concern for the earth, and how that concern relates to his concern for people and justice.

On the other hand, I’d never want my daughter to have the bad attitude this rebel-wanna-be in the commercial has. Part of me wanted to say at the end of the commercial, “… until the corporate world buys you out with slick advertising like they have every other teen out there (as well as everyone else)”. I bet he even shops at Wal-Mart, because, hey… the prices are cheap.

Now I don’t know if the commercial will be effective in its goal to get more people involved in stopping global-warming, if it does great, but it struck a cord with me in another more negative way. The attitude the kid had in the commercial, the self-righteous rebel, he’s going to have his future (his way), you’re either with him or you’re the enemy, I can’t help but think that this attitude is part of the problem, not the solution.

Anyway, just some of my thoughts.

The truth about the Truth Project: What is the truth?

2007-08-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a little research on that Truth Project study series that my church will be presenting in September, and what I found concerns me a little. The description of the first lesson starts out with “The Truth Project begins by defining truth as ‘that which corresponds to reality.’” This gives me the impression that the lessons that follow will present their interpretation as being based on “reality”, and that other interpretations are in turn not based on reality.

What is this “reality” that the “Christian worldview” is based on? I’ll highlight just a few of my concerns. First, (a “Christian worldview” favorite) Lesson 5 - Science: What is True? Truth Project’s Answer: “Science… brings to light innumerable evidences of Intelligent Design. But Darwinian theory transforms science from the honest investigation of nature into a vehicle for propagating a godless philosophy.” It doesn’t sound like theistic evolutionists, like myself, are going to get much airtime here. The second half of the lesson mentions that “a careful examination of molecular biology and the fossil record demonstrates that evolution is not a ‘proven fact.’” It sounds like the Truth Project favors Michael Behe’s version of reality over Francis Collins’ version.

Now that we are on the topic of different interpretations of reality, Lesson 6 - History: Whose Story? From it’s description: “Does the past have an objective actuality and significance? Or does it, as postmodernist philosophy asserts, exist primarily inside our heads?” I get the impression that we will be fed the “one true” interpretation of history (and from some of the articles on the Truth Project website and Lesson 10 it looks like that history is Amerocentric, and politically biased toward right-wing politics).

Lesson 9 - The State: Whose Law? Is described as:

“Of all the social spheres, the state, to which God grants the power of the sword for the punishment of evil and the preservation of the good, has the greatest potential to go awry if it oversteps its authority. The civil magistrate must always remember his place under the sovereignty of God – otherwise, havoc will ensue.”

Is that Constantine I smell? It doesn’t sound like the separation of church and state is going to be put in a positive light here. (BTW, An interesting book to read on Constantine, the Arian controversy, and a bad mix of politics and religion, When Jesus Became God, Richard Rubenstein.) But it gets worse…

Lesson 10 - The American Experiment: Stepping Stones (This one concerns me the most.) It’s described as:

America is unique in the history of the world. On these shores a people holding to a biblical worldview have had an opportunity to set up a system of government designed to keep the state within its divinely ordained boundaries. Tour #10 follows the history of this experiment and explores what happens to freedom when God is forgotten.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out how biased this “reality” is. The statement, “On these shores a people holding to a biblical worldview have had an opportunity to set up a system of government designed to keep the state within its divinely ordained boundaries” spells out that strange form of Amerocentric Christian Nationalism that is the religious-right (and don’t forget the basic lesson from lesson #9, “don’t you forget those ‘divinely ordained boundaries’ either”.)

Now I know I haven’t seen the studies yet, so maybe my concerns are unfounded, but I do hope that other points of view are presented. I hope that theistic evolution will at least get some mention, and not as something misguided. Maybe we can get a little less American Christianity, and get a little more World Christianity (I am in part thinking of books by Philip Jenkins, here and here). And I hope that we could also present something other than the religious-right’s interpretation of reality.

Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007

2007-07-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

I had a bit of a slow day at work so I thought I would post a few comments on articles concerning Hate Crimes Prevention Act that certain 'Christian' groups are losing so much sleep over. I thought I’d repost them here for those doing Google searches on the topic. Here’s an article by Chuck Colson, Introducing the Thought Police, and my thoughts on it:

Why do we tolerate this fear mongering? I mean come on… 1984? Thought police? “outlawing peaceful speech”? Soon it will be a “crime” even to “declare the word of God”? Persecution!? What is this saying really if not simply: “Live in fear Christians! Live in fear!!!”

The rhetoric coming out of churches regarding this hate crimes bill is unbecoming of simple Christianity. When Christians here in America are tied to chairs and then tortured and mutilated like those three Christians were in Turkey a few months ago, that’s persecution. When a policeman ties a dog leash around your neck and you’re dragged naked across a cold floor while pictures are being taken of you for sport like as in Abu Ghurayb, all just because you are preaching the gospel of Christ, that is persecution. But when you are arrested, finger printed, spend a night in jail, and forced to pay a fine of maybe a few $100… That might better be called entertainment, not persecution, not 1984, not the Thought Police.

Here’s another article from the Christian Post that details some of the work Coral Ridge Ministries is putting out to stop the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Evangelical Ministry to Send Bush Over 33,000 Petitions against Hate Crimes Bill, and my thoughts I posted on it:

As I mentioned in a comment on Chuck Colson’s article here on the Christian Post this rhetoric that churches are putting out is ridiculous and just a bunch of fear mongering. I mean look at this: “This is the single most dangerous piece of legislation we have seen in the recent past, because of its threat to silence the Church…” you have to be kidding me – silence the church? And this: “I shudder to think what the impact on free speech will be if this law is enacted”, don’t worry, the ACLU will come to your defense (no mistake, they will to, they seem to like it when people say whatever they darn well please no matter what side your on or how many people it ticks off). And lastly this: “Ultimately, ‘hate crimes’ laws pave the way to label the Christian message as ‘hate speech’ and lead to criminalizing Christians…” – this is simply a bunch of baloney. Come on, “criminalizing Christians”? The Christian message as “hate speech”? I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but the President calls himself a Christian, so does every member of congress except what… two guys, the entire Supreme Court goes to church. Chances are, I’d say we are not even close to “criminalizing Christians”.

The fear mongering and propaganda that some church groups are coming up with is just plain wrong. Christians have nothing to fear from this bill. Nothing will silence the church’s voice. A common law doesn’t overturn the first amendment. The idea that being a Christian will be criminalized in this country is absurd. This isn’t persecution. We need to stop listening to these preachers of fear who are just trying to scare us into following their political agenda.

Update 7/20/07:

To the following comment made on the second of the two articles above:

Stopping viewpoints stating homosexuality is abnormal and that a person can be restored to the way God created them is wrong. This bill would hurt individuals and families. How will homosexuals know the truth that God can forgive their sin, heal and change them? This bill is unAmerican and would confuse millions of people by leading them down a path that is against God as well as science. The majority of Americans are not homosexual and do not support this bill.

I responded:

Propaganda. “How will homosexuals know the truth that God can forgive their sin, heal and change them?” You can tell them, this bill isn’t stopping you. “This bill is unAmerican and would confuse millions of people by leading them down a path that is against God as well as science” This bill isn’t un-American, it’s a bill to be debated and possibly passed into law by Congress, it’s all-American. It isn’t against God, it doesn’t support anything anti-God. Plus, I doubt that God is bothered by this bill no matter what it says, he might even support it, especially since he is on record in his opposition to hate crimes. And to think this bill is against science is just simply absurd. “The majority of Americans are not homosexual and do not support this bill.” Dumb logic.

Think man… just because a law is designed to protect a sinful person from a hate crime doesn’t stop you from being a Christian. And lies and misinformation should never be used to promote a political cause, especially by Christians, who should know better!

An additional comment directed to me was:

didymus, I respectfully submit that you don't understand 1)the bill that's being debated and 2) the larger cultural context on our continent and in Europe. Point 1: The bill seeks to punish "intimidation," which could be construed as preaching the biblical message that homosexual lust is a sin, and that the wages of sin is death. Also, versions of it would punish "incitement" to commit a crime. This means that if a pastor preaches Romans 1 on Sunday and someone who heard it assaults a homosexual on Monday, the pastor can also be tried for inciting a hate crime. This is not fiction. Which leads to point 2: This has become a reality in other countries. Pastors are tried and sometimes convicted for preaching the Bible, notably in Canada, Belgium, and Sweden. Aside from this particular bill, there is concern about the eroding rights of those with sincerely held religious beliefs vis-a-vis the GLBTQ agenda. From the rash of pride parades across the country this summer (each city finding a unique way of stifling Christian speech), to the Harper children not being allowed to wear their scripture-quoting t-shirts to school the day after the Day of Silence celebrating rights for sexual deviants, to the president's appointee for surgeon general being denied a hearing because of "hate speech" for pointing out that a person's back end has no natural lubricant, people are being told that, free speech or no, their message against the deviancy of homosexuality is not welcome. This bill is just one more shove toward that slippery slope.

My response:

A couple of points I would like to make:

1. When was the last time a Christian was beaten and killed for being a Christian here in the United States? I know a number of folks who have been beaten, lynched, dragged to death for being black, others have been beaten and killed for being gay, but I can’t think of any Christians martyred for being Christians here in the U.S. Can you think of one? Maybe a Christian who got lynched to a traffic light in downtown San Francisco for sharing his faith, hanging there while people waited for the light to turn green? I can’t think of any.

Let’s face it, we are sissies, we are afraid of the wimpiest “persecution”. Our pastors are scared of being fined, of spending a few nights in jail for Christ, we are scared that our church might lose its tax-exempt status. Sad.

2. Scripture can and is unfortunately often misused. What passes for sharing our faith is often far from anything expressing the gospel and love of Christ. I’ll explain by way of examples. First, an example from outside of the homosexuality issue, here in Salt Lake City, a couple of times a year, every time the LDS Conference comes around, a handful of “evangelicals” come out to share their faith with the locals at their conference. They bring their signs with their slogans and scripture references and promptly make fools of themselves. They yell, they holler, and they declare, and sometimes they even publicly tear up underwear (that really ticks the Mormon guys off), but mostly they condemn them and call it love. Because of this evangelicals in this town are not known for their love, but for being jerks. In the gay and lesbian community it is much the same. They don’t hate us because we are sharing the gospel of Christ with them, they hate us because we are being jerks.

Let’s look at an example that [another commenter] brought up in his list, where “in 2001 the Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatchewan upheld the ruling… that stated that certain bible passages could be viewed as "hate" literature after a man published an ad in a newspaper that simply listed 4 bible references but not quoting the actual verses, with an equals sign to a picture of two men holding hands overlaid with the universal nullification symbol”. I think the court was correct in upholding that ruling and fining the author of the ad. Why? Because the ad doesn’t express anything about the gospel of Christ, about his love for them, that he died for them, in spite of their sin, it only expresses condemnation.

Imagine if I took out an ad in the New York Times, and skipped all the symbols, and just put there on a plain white background this one scripture reference:

MATTHEW 27: 23-26

It’s just a scripture reference, but not one to be played with, or taken lightly. So many people have paid with their lives for the misuse of that one reference.

The Christian message, the gospel of Christ, is not what is being attacked by this bill, but rather our misuse of scripture to condemn those we don’t love.

Update 7/21/07:

A comment was posted regarding my opinion over the newspaper ad with the Bible references mentioned in the points I make above:

Didymus, while I appreciate your desire to stress the gospel.... not just stress the sins. Did you realize what you just said?

This is what I understood you to be saying (so please correct me if I am wrong) That because someone was not stressing the gospel (death burial and resurrection of Christ) using bible verses...the Government of Canada had a right to restrict his free speech?

I hope that wasn't what your saying and that I simply mis-understand you.

On my personal opinion on this issue, while I don't find it appropriate to Over-stress one particular sin (homosexuality), I see nothing wrong with expressing something as a sin, especially in a world who does not even regard it as sin.

The recognition that something is against the law of God is incredibly important. The law allows us to become conscious of sin (Romans 3:20).

"What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." Romans 7:20

We need the law, to know that there is sin, to know that we need a savior. It is essential to the Gospel, now I am not saying that people nowadays are approaching this issue in the best possible way. We must both learn to distribute law.... AND grace.

My response:

Yes, you misunderstood, or more likely I was not clear in my comment, so the fault is not with you. Let me try to clarify. They were correct in upholding that ruling against the author of the ad not because he was not using the gospel, but because he was condemning them, and condemning them in way that creates fear for ones physical safety.

Imagine if I took some ad space out in your local paper and took a picture of you and your family and wrote above it “CONDEMNED BY GOD!” and then crossed out the picture of you and your family. What would you think of that when you opened up the paper and saw that? Would you think it still safe to walk the streets of your hometown? As you go for your morning coffee at the local Starbucks on your way to work, some stranger sitting at a table might do a double take and say to you “hay, it’s you… man, somebody out there really does not like you, and I mean they really do not like you. Good luck man.”

Another example, this one outside of the homosexuality issue and a little closer to home for me, back in 2004 when things where heating up for our State’s primary elections, anti-immigration rhetoric was in full swing out here, one day I caught my wife scraping off from the back of her car her Colombian flag sticker. My wife loves her country, but here she was scraping off her country’s flag. Why? Fear, too much anti-immigrant talk going on. A couple of months back, the local Utah County Republican Party affiliate had their convention. One delegate to the convention put forward a resolution that declared that illegal immigrants are plot of Satan to destroy America. A plot of Satan to destroy America! It didn’t pass, but a message was sent. Again, not to long ago, just across the street from my home, a car pulled up next to another car and they yelled at the occupants of that car, “go home %@*#, go back to your own %@*# country!!” Now I’m a white dude from California, so this place is safe for me, but this kind of rhetoric makes me think twice about just how safe my community is, really, for my Colombian wife and very brown skinned daughter.

I think the situation is similar with the gay and lesbian community. They are living in fear of the in your face Christian community, the forcefully advancing (right into your parade) Christian community, the Christian community that has declared you an abomination to both God and country, the Christian community that has at various times declared you as the cause of God’s wrath on this country, and all of its other ills as well, including even Islamic terrorism, a Christian community that has crossed you out.