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The other day, someone wrote that I was being inconsistent when I affirmed the work of Dr. King, but criticized the actions of the religious right. The writer asked, “Why it isn’t hypocritical to praise Dr. King as prophetic for putting his faith in action, and then turn around and criticize the religious right for doing the same thing?”

It is an excellent question. It seems to me that Dr. King and the religious right aren’t doing the same thing at all, so, I would like to point out what I take to be the differences, and then hear what others have to say. To attempt to illustrate those differences I will paraphrase MLK’s 6 principles of non-violent activism:
Difference 1: The religious right plays on our fears, Dr. King called us to courage.  

Whether it is homosexuality, feminism or immigration, the religious right is never without a feared scapegoat. Their opponents are pictured as a cancer eating at the American Dream, or as sinners infecting a Christian nation. Dr. King called us to end all such scapegoating and find the courage to make room for the stranger in our midst.

The religious right bases its activism on fear of the stranger, fear of change and fear of an angry God. To walk the path of nonviolence one must be willing to suffer violence rather than inflict it. This requires a kind of fearlessness. Dr. King was so serious about eliminating fearful reactions that he tested activists to make sure they were not too angry or fearful to represent the cause.

Difference 2: Whereas the goal of the religious right is the defeat of one side by the other, Dr. King sought reconciliation with all.

Dr. King was as concerned for the fair treatment of his opponents as the people for whom he marched. He sought not to defeat his opponents, but to bring about a new level of dialogue that would clarify the principles by which all parties might find justice. His goal for the struggle was not political victory, but the “beloved community” which included all sides of the struggle. So, even though Dr. King entered the political process, he never sought to hold office. His goal was not power but understanding.

Difference 3: The religious right tends to see our problems as stemming from bad people, Dr. King saw our problems as a result of bad systems.

The nonviolent struggle recognizes that the jailer is caught in the same prison as the inmates. Dr. King believed that oppressors were also victims of a bad system. His struggle was against bad ideas and unfair hierarchies, never against specific people.  Unlike the religious right, Dr. King never used religion to get special rights for one group that would be withheld from others. He quoted scripture, but not as an unquestionable authority to be imposed on everyone. When he quoted scripture, it was primarily to people who claimed to be Christian, but were acting in ways which were inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus.

Difference 4: The religious right keeps a score card of every time it has been slighted or mistreated, Dr. King called us to take on suffering rather than inflict it.

Every male ever mistreated by a female, every white person ever been mistreated by a person of color, every Christian ever slighted by a Jewish or Muslim, becomes a case study used by the religious right to justify the mistreatment of the targeted group. Dr. King called his followers to take on suffering as a way of revealing to the oppressors the violence hidden in their systems of power. His goal was not to restore an imagined past, but to work for a just future.

Difference 5: The religious right plays off our frustrations and hatreds, Dr. King trusted the power of love.

I understand that no one from the religious right thinks of themselves as hateful, but one does not have to feel hatred to be its captive. The essence of hatred is not a feeling of anger, it is a perception that the other is inferior to oneself or one’s group. Hateful persons use themselves or their group as the norm, and then treat difference as a degeneration from what they claim to be the God given norm.  So while hatred seems like a sensible emotion toward our enemies, Dr. King constantly reminded us that love is the most durable force in the universe.

Difference 6: Dr. King believed the universe is on the side of justice, the religious right believes everything will fall apart if we do not intervene on God’s behalf.

It is very difficult to muster courage or love if we feel we are going to be cheated. The religious right calls us to hyper vigilance on God’s behalf. Dr. King famously believed that we should live in trust that the universe tends to justice. It would be foolish to believe that love will necessarily deliver justice to us within our own lifetimes. Instead, our trust is that love will make us the best possible ambassadors for justice for future generations.

     The other day, outside a restaurant, I sat tossing tortilla chips to a group of tiny birds.  They had formed a little flight path and would tentatively land nearby and hop over to grab a morsel before fleeing away.  Suddenly, a large grackle swooped down and cleared out the area.  The giant black bird hopped in a circle humbling all challengers.  Finally, it tilted its head to appraise its booty only to realize that the tiny morsels were not worth the effort.  After a moment’s hesitation, it lunged back into flight.  Before I knew it, the little birds were back.

In that scene, I witnessed the hope of the weak.  The inefficiency of the large makes them more vulnerable to the shifting tides of fortune.  The tiniest rodent could endure what killed the mightiest dinosaur.  Large nations, like large animals, are betrayed by their large bellies.  Though the world’s poor may appear helpless against the mighty armies that strut unopposed across every boundary, it is the weak who will inherit the earth.  Over time, the small can survive what the large cannot.

The link below leads to a summary of the latest Presidential Polls. My assumption has been if it’s close going into the election, people will tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the incumbent. I personally would be surprised to see Obama lose, but it’s amazing how close this race seems to be in the polls.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/27/2012-polls-lead_n_2031046.html

This poll won’t be a surprise to any person of color, but it is important for people who aren’t the targets of racial prejudice to soak in this information. According to the figures of a recent poll given by the Associated Press, racism is popular and growing. According to the poll, 51 percent of Americans expressed an anti-black prejudice. This figure had actually risen since 2008. According to the article:

Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to express outright racial prejudice, 79 percent to 32 percent. But the implicit test found that the two are far closer in attitudes, with 55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans having anti-black feelings. Experts aren’t really surprised by the findings. “As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said a Stanford University professor who helped develop the survey.

What this means is that every person of good will must renew the struggle against racism. The Leviathan of racial prejudices lives just below the surface of our lives. It is fine to recognize progress, but as long as our prisons are filled with persons of color, and our halls of power are not, we all have serious work to do.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/10/27/poll_finds_majority_of_americans_are_racist_prejudiced_against_blacks.html?wpisrc=sl_iphone

I’m still at our Presbytery meeting in Mercedes, Texas. We had three candidates for ministry presented yesterday. The same two people grilled all three with questions about the Trinity and atonement. One man asked about the infallibility of scripture and then walked back to his seat smirking as the poor candidates squirmed.

Sometimes I get too angry to respond constructively. Some of these candidates are shaking in fear. I have always hated bullying and, to me, using religion to bully others is the most pathetic thing a person can do. My first impulse is to look for the jawbone of an ass and clear the room like Samson. But then the spirit of Gandhi pokes me and whispers. “Only kindness can dispel hatred.” I tell him to shut up, and let me be Samson just once, but, alas, he always wins in the end.

It’s very clear that such gauntlets are only for those who try to use  inclusive theology in their statements of faith. When candidates give a statement of faith that has sexist language for God, or implies that only Christians will avoid eternal torture, they are accepted without question.

One thing has become clear in my thirty years of serving the church. When most people say the word “God” they have in mind an enlarged image of themselves.

Some things never change. Camp Lemonnier was built for the French Foreign Legion to do the dirty work of empire. The legion consisted of misfits from France and also mercenary soldiers who could no longer serve their own nations. Africa was a treasure trove of resources that Europe feared would want to control its own destiny. The Legion was “outside the flowchart” in that they could be used for questionable purposes without the population protesting as much.

The Legionnaires were like pirates with a badge. The Legion’s job was to fight the “terrorists” of their day and to pacify occupied populations. “Terrorist,” of course, is a relative term. It can rightly mean someone who uses violence against civilians to send a political message, but since empires do that as a matter of course, the word has been limited to those who resist empire by nontraditional means.

To “pacify” a nation is code for ending its resistence to colonization, in other words, ending its claims for self-determination. After an empire has “pacified” local populations, those who continue the struggle are, by definition, “terrorists.”

At the time, I’m sure the French people were given romantic and principled reasons for why the Legion was being deployed, but today the legionnaires are simply remembered as mercenaries. They were killers for hire. One would have to assume that the only thing better than hired soldiers would be killer drones.  Drones  ask no questions, and since they don’t come back in body bags, the population doesn’t ask many questions either. They are the perfect legionnaires.

And, yes, you heard right. Our human mercenaries in Africa are calling themselves “pirates.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/remote-us-base-at-core-of-secret-operations/2012/10/25/a26a9392-197a-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html

In a nutshell, this article asks whether a lack of transparency in the voting process could allow corporate interests to usurp the integrity of the voting process. Its answer, in a nutshell, is “Damn Skippy.”

Like many of my childhood friends, I was taught religion through a method known as “catechism,” which is a method of questions and answers. The child does not get to ask her or his own questions, nor does the child have a say in the answers. Both questions and answers are finished products that the child is supposed to memorize. I suppose I emerged from catechism intact, but I hated the whole process for a reason I did not understand at the time.

A catechism class can be an act of violence from which some children never fully recover. To teach religion as a bunch of finished answers robs a child of intellectual agency and asks them to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It is hard to imagine a violation more intrusive.

Fortunately for me, by the time I reached confirmation age, I had already figured out that the adults didn’t know what they were talking about. I realized they were just repeating the answers they had been given by the same process. So, I was not intellectually hobbled by confirmation class, but, I never lost the chip on my shoulder for the educational bullying of children.

A child’s mind and heart are sacred tender things that need to be honored and protected. I’m not saying a child should have to figure out the world without adult help. We do have answers to share, but they are our answers not the child’s. A child will not live their whole lives in our world. They will live in a future world we cannot comprehend. Children will need to outgrow much of what we teach them. We need to approach religious teaching with great humility. Their questions will guide them much further into the future, than will our answers.

Most of the people who come to this blog tend to be progressive, so as the election gets closer, and conversations get tenser, it might be wise to think about how we want to conduct ourselves in the coming weeks.

However frustrated you might be with Republican tactics, it is important to remember that our problems are deep and systemic in this nation. In many ways, our worst problems are bi-partisan. We live in a nation that values property over people. We live in a nation that values religious belief and political propaganda over reason. We live in a nation that sees itself superior to the other peoples of the earth. These are some of the illnesses that infect our nation. These problems will not be overcome by “our” side winning one election. They can only be overcome when both sides stop embodying such bad values.

I believe George Lakoff is exactly wrong when he claims that the only way to stop rightwing propaganda is with leftwing “framing.”  Think about it. When the other side twists information for propaganda purposes, we don’t call it “framing” we call it “lying.” We cannot end propaganda with more propaganda. We can only stop propaganda with appeals to reason and putting our “facts” to the test. We cannot defeat the sleazy methods of the other side by using the same tactics ourselves. Or rather, when we do use the same methods, the nation is worse off regardless of who wins.

Winning this election will not save our country if we do not move in a new direction. We need to restore civil conversation in political struggles. That cannot be done with superior taunts. We need to restore our lost humanity. That cannot be done if we wound one other in a struggle for power. I would like to respectfully request that in the coming weeks we focus not merely on winning the election, but also on modeling the values we want to see others use. To that end I want to suggest 5 ways NOT to attack Romney:

1. Do not focus on his verbal slips ups. “Binders full of women.”  Is a funny line, but you probably will not convince anyone on the other side by bringing up gaffes their candidate made. Instead, use this time to point out the devastating effects his policies would have on women’s lives.

2. Do not keep bringing up his past. If you are tired of hearing about what Obama did in college, then don’t model the bad behavior you detest.  The problem with Romney is not where he has been. It’s where he wants to go.

3. Do not attack Romney just for being rich. All of our leaders are rich. That’s the problem. Instead, talk about how Romney’s economic policies will make the problem of worse.

4. Stop attacking, Ann. Period.

5. Do not attack Romney for doing things Democrats also do. Model behavior that shows you are not an ethical partisan. That is to say, demonstrate that you don’t condemn actions just because they were done by the other side. Show that you use the same scale for both parties.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou pleaded guilty yesterday to charges based on the Espionage Act of 1917.  He is expected to serve 30 months in prison for releasing information on the Bush era torture programs and on the identity of one of the CIA agents who tortured prisoners. It is important to point out that, while the torture took place under George Bush, the policy of ignoring those who have tortured and punishing those who have revealed the torture is that of President Obama.  Even if the President is a nice person, a part of the job description is covering up the dirty work of empire. People of character have to be silenced so the population may sleep blissfully unaware of what it takes to hoard so much of the world’s resources.

It is a great thing to love one’s country. But to love one’s country more than one loves justice is but the devotion of a criminal.

To read more, click here:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/23-9