I’m not sure what your definition of “family” is, but I have a hard time imagining familial ties requiring acknowledgment or affirmation to be validated. Family is family, right? I’m not sure what particular theology Governor Bentley subscribes to (yes, yes, some brand of conservative Baptist), but parents don’t need their children to call them mommy and daddy to love them.
I don’t need my sisters and brothers to do or say anything for them to deserve my love. I want to sit at the same Thanksgiving table…
* * *
Alabama governor touches off controversy with Christian comments By: CNN Political Unit (Update: The governor later apologized)
(CNN)– Alabama Republican Gov. Robert Bentley is kicking off his first term in office with a bit of controversy, telling a church audience Monday that he only considers Christians to be his “brothers and sisters.”
“Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters,” he told parishioners at a Baptist church in Montgomery Monday shortly after being sworn in. “So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.” “There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley also said, according to the Birmingham News. “But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
Rebekah Caldwell Mason, Bentley’s communications director, was not immediately available for comment but told the Birmingham News that Bentley “is the governor of all the people, Christians, non-Christians alike.”
Bentley also celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his speech and said he will govern in accordance with King’s teachings.
‘I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind,” Bentley also said.
* * *
But I must confess, again, because it bears repeating, that I have made demands of loved ones and strangers. I have required conversion before I called neighbors “brother” and “sister.” I cannot criticize Governor Bentley for his exclusivism and arrogance without first owning my own past. I have committed these sins. I am sorry for it. I can still do better. All of us can. Thanks be to God that there is grace for me and for Governor Bentley and for Sarah Palin and Jeremiah Wright.
My sisters and brothers are Muslims and Hindus and Southern Baptists and Atheists.
It’s been repealed! (in case you were living under a rock)
Okay, confession: I was all Christmas-hyped over the weekend, watching Chevy Chase and Charlie Brown, and Jack Black (a la The Holiday), so I actually WAS under a rock. I didn’t even realize until I hit CNN Monday morning.
This is a huge step toward social equality and I couldn’t be more pleased that this wretched Senate managed to actually get something done!
“If this is gonna be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition! And then admit, that we just don’t wanna do it.”
Stephen Colbert really amazes me sometimes. His eloquence, despite all the tongue-and-cheek comments, surpasses most of the socially-conscious activists and thinkers we watch and read in the media.
This would be one of the funniest things I’ve ever watched, if it weren’t so hopelessly tragic and desperately horrible.
I found this great list of quotations from Oregon progressive blogger and radio host Carl Wolfson:
If you have Tea Party friends who claim that America is a “Christian nation” or that the founders didn’t specifically call for a separation of church and state, send them the following quotes.
George Washington:
“The United States should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.”
Thomas Jefferson:
In his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut:
“State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Erecting the wall of separation between church and state, therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”
James Madison:
On February 21, 1811, President Madison issued his first veto, rejecting a bill that would have allowed an Episcopal church to use government funds to provide education for the poor. He wrote:
“The appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies is contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’”
Frankly, I can’t understand why America being an overtly “Christian” nation matters so much. I care more about policies that protect Christian interests (see: economics, liberation, justice, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, etc…). A nation that protects Christians, specifically, is the name of the game these days. That’s nothing less than obsessive self-interest.
I’m a liberal Democrat. I’m not happy about the way things are going tonight. I’m amazed at the short memories of American voters. But I still enjoy politics – I always have. It might be because I never really had a prayer competing in athletics. It might be because I’m an inherently contrary, adversarial person (I’m working on that, really) but I’d like to think it’s because I care so much about specific issues like gay rights, Civil Rights in general, Affirmative Action, protection of the poor through welfare and the sick through healthcare, equality for all, care for the environment (ALL of creation!) and protection from the interests of corporations and the exceedingly wealthy. I base it in Jesus’ distinction between the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25). But for most of my life, all the way through my undergraduate education, I was a vehement conservative Republican. I wrote a column in my weekly college newspaper, called “You Know I’m Right.” As I’ve confessed before, at 13 I rollerbladed door-to-door (the most heterosexual of all transportation) with anti-gay marriage literature. Even in 2002, after losing my dot-com job, I went to Salem to talk with the Oregon Republican Party about potential internships (to be honest, I had almost forgotten about that)… I used Scripture and Christian cultural agendas to support ALL of my Republican positions.
So people change. Priorities change. The spirit changes us, but so do relationships, and I’m a case-in-point for choosing my friends over esoterics.
I was listening to John Boehner talk about tonight’s victory: by his reasoning, when Obama won a landslide in ’08 that apparently wasn’t “the will of the people.” Subsequently, the Republican minority in both houses filibustered habitually, chronically, even obsessively – rejecting the actual voting process utilized in House and Senate, and undermining the recent majority of votes by American citizens. NOW, two years later, Boehner articulates his new majority as the REAL “will of the people.” It makes me glad I’m not in politics – the subtleties are lost on me.
Still, there are a few takeaways that I’m optimistic about, after this election cycle:
I’m pleased that in several local elections in Oregon, massive corporate spending was not able to “buy” elections.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the number of female candidates in the Republican party. Although they are not necessarily progressive on issues of women’s equality or women’s rights (many of them passive or entirely silent on these matters), I find it fascinating to see conservative Evangelicals supporting women like Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle when their own churches wouldn’t let them preach on a Sunday morning. Now these candidates are socially problematic for a whole host of reasons, but I’m willing to applaud any sign of equalization – especially in the midst of an ultraconservative movement like the Tea Party.
NO MORE F***ING POLITICAL ADS! Good Lord, let us have at least a few months of quiet before the ramp up to 2012.
You might disagree with my politics, and that’s okay. We can still be friends. But I will always choose my friends over other interests – corporate interests, theological interests, financial interests… the people I love get my vote.
I like politics because (A) politics are exciting and dramatic, and (B) because it gives me an opportunity to fight for the folks I love.
The son of racist former presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul is declaring that he has never-in-his-life “said or written anything un-Christian…” Wow! Quite a bold statement. I mean, by modern Evangelical standards, Jesus Christ probably said quite a few “un-Christian things” (he was sort of pro-welfare, for one). Billy Graham, George W. Bush, Joel Osteen, and your grandmother are all there, too. I certainly make a regular habit of saying un-Christian things.
Louisville, KY (CNN) – Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Dr. Rand Paul defended his Christian faith and sharply criticized his Democratic rival, Jack Conway in response to the now infamous “aquabuddha ad.” Conway’s TV attack ad accuses Paul of once belonging to an organization that mocked Christianity while the GOP contender was a student at Baylor University.
“In my entire live, I’ve written and said a lot of things. I’ve never said or written anything un-Christian in my life,” Paul said.
All right. I’m not really interested in defending or criticizing the “aquabuddha” stuff (although it makes me think two things: (a) that could make for a pretty cool super-hero-type religion, and (b) remember that band The Aquabats? …) but I have a pretty big beef with Rand Paul declaring such self-righteousness.
If you haven’t been reading the paper or watching the news, here’s one of many accounts and commentaries on Paul’s troubling racial attitudes:
The editorial board of Louisville’s Courier-Journal didn’t mince words following its sit-down with Rand Paul last month. Much of what the Republican Senate candidate supports, it wrote, “is repulsive to people in the mainstream,” including “an unacceptable view of civil rights.”
And yet Paul’s view that the federal government should not have the power to force integration on private businesses — part of 1964′s landmark Civil Rights Act — didn’t get the attention of the national press until Wednesday, following interviews with NPR’s Robert Siegel and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. (Paul subsequently changed his position Thursday, after an intense 24 hours of media fallout.) Click here for the full article.
Somehow, this outrageous attitude hasn’t translated into a significant hit in the polls. Despite believing that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake (he doesn’t think restaurant owners should be forced accept blacks as patrons, and he also doesn’t believe businesses should be required to provide access for the handicapped) Paul is still ahead in the polls and forecasted by most to win the election. Yeah, I guess he is just like his father: “a good Christian.” A good white Christian. Another good white Christian who doesn’t care for folks who aren’t…
I call that “un-Christian,” Rand Paul! And I’m in the same boat as you – I’m a real asshole sometimes. But I’m not a racist. I don’t oppose legislation that keeps people under the thumb of oppression, and the tyranny of the majority. Or the tyranny of corporate profits. I don’t use my Christian faith as a political badge of honor. Nobody’s impressed. Oh, also, my dad is a pretty kind and compassionate man. So we defer on those last few points…
I’m not much of a Ben Stein fan – his politics are conservative and his allegiances are to the wealthy – but he’s got a wry sense of humor that can be entertaining when it’s not sanctimonious (his Expelled documentary on Intelligent Design was atrocious but I loved him on TheWonder Years). He recently wrote an article for Fortune magazine, covering an interview with investing godfather (and social progressive) Warren Buffett.
“[The housing] recovery is still a long way off. That market got way out of equilibrium, and it’s going to take a long while for it to get fixed.” [says Buffet] . . .
What about taxes? Buffett thinks that taxes should be raised on really rich Americans — ones making $5 million a year, say, and especially ones making $1 billion a year.
“Why would we want to do that” I ask, “if we have a fiscal policy that is explicitly about running large deficits?”
The three of us — Buffett, my colleague Phil deMuth,and I — talked for a long time about the size of the deficits relative to “normal peacetime” and World War II, when they were far higher than they are even now. Then Buffett sums up his feelings about it, saying his wish to raise taxes on the very rich is really about social justice more than about fiscal policy.
“I would give anyone an exemption from the higher rates if he had a son or grandson in Afghanistan,” he said. “I meet a lot of people at these conferences of rich people, of billionaires,” he said. “None of them have anyone in their family in combat.”
The truth is, people like Buffett, Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates are easy tokens for guys like me: we use their wonderful example as validation that “GOOD rich people should WANT to take more responsibility for society at large.” And I think they should. But the truth is, despite these wealthiest of the wealthy, most wealthy people in America do not care enough about the general welfare of society. Ok, maybe a little – there’s a lot of philanthropy here in the states. But not enough to lead the wealthiest Americans (and the corporations they own and operate) to support tax policies or social agendas that might cramp their style. Look at the current fundraising being done by the RNC and its candidates this year. There’s a reason massive corporate donations to Republicans are dwarfing contributions to Democrats. Corporate America and its leadership continue to largely favor a laissez faire brand of capitalism that asserts the benevolence of the free market in the midst of a literal middle class extinction in-process. We’re watching it happen.
And maybe it’s not all the fault of individual rich people. Most believers in trickle-down economics genuinely believe that trickle-down economics works. Their parents told them. Their parents’ parents told them. Everyone around them keeps singing that tune. But it’s a fantasy. Or an outright lie. But sadly, it’s a fantasy and a lie that even America’s lower-middle class has bought into, as their Tea Party fury against taxation and corporate accountability would suggest. Their outrage is understandable and certainly justifiable. But they’ve been taught to identify the wrong enemy. They’ve been fed a lie. The lie says: the only way you can hope to live the American Dream is if you let the richest Americans get even richer by walking all over you. Then you can eat the crumbs they leave behind, and if you get work hard and obey the rules (“even though we don’t”), you might get rich like them, and do the same to your former-neighbors. But the second part doesn’t happen. Hard work doesn’t take a part time Wal Mart employee (because they’re not allowed full time) from food stamps to penthouse suites. And issues like gay marriage and American patriotism get sprinkled in to ensure they don’t lean left without fear of compromising their status as Christian Americans.
A recent NPR segment discussed America’s declining class mobility. The US, the country that was once DEFINED by the “Anyone can achieve ANYTHING” Dream-mantra is now a less economically mobile society than European countries like France and Germany.
Whew, I got long-winded and preachy there. How unusual. I really just meant to point out Buffett’s fabulous commentary, that his “wish to raise taxes on the very rich is really about social justice more than about fiscal policy.” I like that man.
Friends, I know I go on political diatribes from time to time, and you’re generally very tolerant of me. I know that for a lot of us who were tattooing “Obama-Biden 2008″ on our assess a few years ago, the last couple of years have been a little disappointing. I’m with you. The change we wanted hasn’t magically happened. Was it supposed to? Probably not, but I was high on groupthink and charisma.
(I also know that those of you who lean conservative, and think Obama is the scariest president in contemporary memory, have no clue how much more liberal the Democratic base is than its D.C. leadership… )
Today, my expectations are measured. I don’t think the world is going to change dramatically because of this president. I don’t think one administration can repair the damage that’s been done domestically and globally by American imperialism, rampant corporate capitalism, and the military industrial complex. But like Bill Maher recently said: “There’s a difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy.”
You may be underwhelmed. I am. But there is a deadly enemy, and it’s not about the label “(R)EPUBLICAN.” It’s about whether or not corporations should be allowed to control our politics and inevitably our lives (that’s called fascism by the way, and the result society is called a PLUTOCRACY) and it’s about whether or not fear should be the driving motivator of American culture.
I donated ten bucks today. President Obama sent an e-mail, and even though I know it went to hundreds of thousands of people, I took the time to read it. He admits that things haven’t gone the way he had hoped. Maybe that’s enough for me. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to make the necessary changes. Maybe we were. Maybe you’ll think about it, too…
* * *
Peter – I come into this election with clear eyes.
I am proud of all we have achieved together, but I am mindful of all that remains to be done.
I know some out there are frustrated by the pace of our progress. I want you to know I’m frustrated, too.
But with so much riding on the outcome of this election, I need everyone to get in this game.
Neither one of us is here because we thought it would be easy. Making change is hard. It’s what we’ve said from the beginning. And we’ve got the lumps to show for it.
The fight this fall is as critical as any this movement has taken on together. And if we are serious about change, we need to fight as hard as we ever have.
The very special interests who have stood in the way of change at every turn want to put their conservative allies in control of Congress. And they’re doing it with the help of billionaires and corporate special interests underwriting shadowy campaign ads.
If they succeed, they will not stop at making our work more difficult — they will do their best to undo what you and I fought so hard to achieve.
I know that sometimes it feels like we’ve come a long way from the hope and excitement of the inauguration, with its “Hope” posters and historic crowds on the National Mall.
I will never forget it. But it was never why we picked up this fight.
I didn’t run for president because I wanted to do what would make me popular. And you didn’t help elect me so I could read the polls and calculate how to keep myself in office.
You and I are in this because we believe in a simple idea — that each and every one of us, working together, has the power to move this country forward. We believed that this was the moment to solve the challenges that the country had ignored for far too long.
That change happens only from the bottom up. That change happens only because of you.
So I need you to fight for it over the next 26 days. I need your time. I need your commitment. And I need your help to get your friends and neighbors involved.
If you bring in a new donor today, your $10 donation will become $20. And our Vote 2010 campaign will have twice the resources to make important investments like putting staff on the ground, providing materials for volunteers, and turning out millions of voters come Election Day.Please donate $10 — and renew your commitment today: https://donate.barackobama.com/OctoberMatch
If we meet this test — if you, like me, believe that change is not a spectator sport — we will not just win this election. In the years that come, we can realize the change we are seeking — and reclaim the American dream for this generation.
I’ve been in discussion with a lot of folks whose idealism allows them to stay “above the fray” of declaring political allegiance. I can respect that. Hell, I even admire it. But I’m too cynical, too pragmatic, and maybe too base and “fallen” to be so balanced and thoughtful.
DEMOCRATS NEED TO VOTE THIS ELECTION SEASON. WE NEED TO GET SOME MOMENTUM GOING. THERE’S TOO MUCH AT STAKE!!
Lowering taxes is not going to repair a dissolving middle class. Keeping gay marriage illegal isn’t going to lower the crime rate or keep us safe from terrorists. And nothing the enraged Right is proposing deals (IN ANY WAY) with taking care of widows and orphans, feeding the poor, protecting the marginalized, healing the sick, or any of the other things a politically-nonpragmatic 1st Century Jew destroyed his life by preaching. He got himself killed. He undermined a political uprising by his zealous followers. He was completely impractical. Sort of like going against the free market or condemning the military-industrial-complex.
I’m not saying that Democrats are like Jesus. We’re a mess. A complete, politically-impotent, disaster of parlor games, complacency, arrogance and laziness. But at our best, we BELIEVE in greater things. Our ideas are better. Our hopes are higher.
There’s a rally taking place in Washington DC. I won’t be there (can’t afford it) but it sounds like a party! At the very least, I hope you get out and vote.
In less than 48 hours, tens of thousands of union members and civil, human, community and faith activists will be in the nation’s capital for the historic One Nation Working Together march and rally. The Oct. 2 march will call for renewing the American Dream for all people–the antithesis of the fear-mongering dominating too much of the national conversation.
Nearly 200 progressive groups, including the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Council of La Raza and many unions, have come together in One Nation, a multiracial, labor, civil and human rights movement whose mission is to reorder our nation’s priorities to invest in our nation’s most valuable resource–our people.
In an op-ed in today’s Detroit Free Press, UAW President Bob King says the march “will carry many messages, among them jobs, peace, equality and justice.
But the most important message of all is hope and optimism.
It’s 9-11 and there’s lots to be said, I know. The death toll of the attacks was 2,996, including the 19 hijackers. It was terrible, and I can’t comprehend the sorrow and pain felt by Americans there, who had loved one’s there, or who lived and worked nearby.
But in April, 2009 the Associated Press reported casualties of 110,600 Iraqis, due to the Iraq War.
In Darfur, there are various estimates on the number of human casualties, ranging from under twenty thousand to several hundred thousand dead, from either direct combat or starvation and disease engendered by the conflict.
Haitian President Rene Preval reported in January, 2010 that nearly 170,000 bodies had been counted after the Haitian earthquake. In February, 2010 Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive estimated that 300,000 had been injured.
On Tuesday September 11, 2001, at least 35,615 of our brother and sisters died from the worst possible death, starvation. Somewhere around 85% of these starvation deaths occur in children 5 years of age or younger. Why are we letting at least 30,273 of the most beautiful children die the worst possible death everyday? Every 2.43 seconds another one of our fellow brothers and sisters dies of starvation.
The world is filled with death and pain and suffering – so much that we tend to lose track of whatever is “out there” because it’s too overwhelming. We fixate on what’s “right here” (and even then, that’s not entirely true because we’re “so done” with post-Katrina aid).
I grieve for the 2,996 lives lost in the September 11 Terrorist Attacks in New York (I use the number including the 19 hijackers, because Jesus actually called us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us) but I also grieve for the thousands who die each day, the millions who are starving, sick, raped, tortured, enslaved, abused and murdered all over the world. Here in the United States and elsewhere. Christian, Muslim and atheist victims.
The world needs peace, not war rhetoric from Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the fool in Florida. Religious folks have to do better. We can do better. We can be better. WE CAN LOVE BETTER.
After his CNN interview on Wednesday, I think I’m a real fan of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. I know it’s hard to judge based on a quick television interview, but I kept thinking: “What a lovely human being.” The man speaks a language of peace. We can meet that language in-kind and still grieve for the Americans who lost their lives in the World Trade Center. It doesn’t have to be either-or. Revenge and outrage don’t honor those lost.
Great quotation from Rauf: “If you politicize a religion, it is dangerous!”
And he said he wanted to “establish a center that would be the space for a vision that I’ve had for over a decade… which is to establish a space which embodies the fundamental beliefs we have as Jews, Christians and Muslims, which is to love our God and to love our neighbor. To build a space where we have a culture of worship. And at the same time, to get to know each other. And to forge personal bonds. ’Cause that’s how our society, how a community is built. And how we can create something that will snowball, to push back against the radical discourse that has just hijacked the discourse in our country and in much of our world.”
Friends, we really can get past the divisive discourse that demonizes anyone who doesn’t share our worldview; who doesn’t speak our language; who doesn’t share our skin tone or carry a familiar surname. We don’t have to forget the past. But the past does not dictate the future. We can do better.
I’m an M.Div student at George Fox Seminary, and a contributing writer in Spencer Burke’s Out of theOOZE (NavPress), Leonard Sweet’s Church of the Perfect Storm (Abingdon Press) and Christian Piatt’s Banned Questions About Jesus (Chalice Press).
I’m a liberal, an egalitarian, a deconstructionist, an Outlaw Preacher, and a loudmouth. I want to be your friend...
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