Author: Alan Bean

Dobson and Huckabee go over to the dark side

· 4 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

The Sandy Hook tragedy has sparked deep reflection nationwide.  President Obama served as Pastor in Chief when he prefaced his remarks in Newtown with a quotation from 2 Corinthians 4:

. . . do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away . . . inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

The president knew he couldn’t fix what happened last Friday, and he didn’t try.  But he spoke the words of comfort that were his to speak.  That is all any of us can do.

And then there are all those other guys.

If this was just about the latest outrage from the twisted souls at Westboro Baptist Church (must they call themselves Baptists?) I would let it slide.  By now, we are agonizingly familiar with their shtick.  “God hates fags and everybody who doesn’t hate fags as much as he does.”  Yeah, we get it.  The church has decided to picket the funerals in Newtown . . . a new low, I suppose, but not by much.

But it isn’t just folks on the fringe who feel honor-bound to make nasty at such a time as this.

Governor Mike Huckabee, preacher, Fox News celebrity and perennial presidential hopeful, just opined that God declined to stay the hand of Adam Lanza because “we’ve systematically removed God from our schools.”

Not to be outdone, James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame, gave us his take on “what’s going on.”  America has been complicit in the murder of 54 million babies since Roe v. Wade, and “the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition”, “so I think we have turned our back on the scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”

Huckabee, Dobson et al aren’t sure exactly what pushed God’s buttons.  It might have been gay marriage.  It might have been abortion.  Or maybe it was the 1963 Supreme Court decision making school prayer was unconstitutional.  Most likely it was a combination of all three–the trifecta of evil.  But at some point God decided to punish America by ordering the slaying of twenty innocent first-graders.

Really, guys!  That’s the God you worship.  Herod the Great slaughters innocents; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ weeps for them.  Jesus doesn’t have much to say about hell except when he’s talking about those who mess with his “little ones.”

Of course, these guys aren’t saying that God was directly responsible for the death of school children.  It’s just that he could have stopped it and declined to do so.  The Creator could be charged with being an accessory after the fact, but not with murder.

That’s comforting.  God tells the lost soul with the assault weapon, “Normally I’d put a stop to this, but these people need a wake up call, so, do your worst.”

That is precisely what the preachers are alleging.  So let’s get one thing straight: That is not God.  God is not that.  In the First John we learn that God is love . . . full stop.  Or, if we wish to quibble,  “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

The God of Huckabee and Dobson would be familiar to Darth Vader and his legions.  The preachers appear to have slipped over to The Dark Side.

How do we explain such strange talk from esteemed holy men?  The Apostles of the Religious Right have so consistently equated gay bashing, opposition to abortion, and school prayer with holiness that God has been subsumed under these headings.  For four decades, the culture war has reshaped American evangelicalism so successfully that abortion, gay bashing and school prayer have consumed all other concerns.

Don’t get me wrong.  The Sandy Hook tragedy should provoke serious moral reflection.  Violence works for the entertainment industry just like culture war wedge issues work for the Religious Right.  In both cases, an ugly product is hawked in the market place because it sells.  We have been raised on a steady diet of violence.  We love the stuff.  It shapes our culture, our national identity, and all too often our foreign policy.  We’ve got a problem.  We need help.  Badly.

But God is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for the slaughter of innocents.  That’s on us.  God is Love.  God is Light and in him there is no darkness at all.  None, whatsoever!

Rachel Held Evans: “God Can’t be Kept Out”

· 2 Comments ·

This reflection from Rachel Held Evans originally appeared on her website.

Those little Advent candles sure have a lot of darkness to overcome this year. I see them glowing from church windows and on TV, in homes and at midnight vigils, here in Dayton and in Sandy Hook. Their stubborn flames represent the divine promise that even the smallest light can chase away the shadows lurking in this world, that even in the darkest places, God can’t be kept out. 

It’s a hard promise to believe right now, I know. The children in the pictures are just too young, too familiar. Our hearts ache; the darkness seems so heavy and thick. (more…)

Re-Imagine Justice!

·
Dr. Alan Bean participates in a gathering of faith groups dedicated to ending mass incarceration.

“Nobody else out there does what you do.”

These words kept emerging as I talked to 100 members of a Pentecostal church in Colorado.  They shared painful stories of an ill-conceived federal prosecution tearing apart their lives and their church.

“Nobody else does what you do.”

It’s true.

The narrative campaigns sponsored by Friends of Justice spell the difference between hope and despair.  

“You saved our lives when no one would listen,” a woman in Louisiana told me a few months ago.  “Without Friends of Justice, my family would still be locked up.”

More than sixty men and women owe their freedom to the intervention of Friends of Justice.

But addressing the punitive roots of bad public policy requires a new conversation, a changing wind. Our narrative campaigns are designed to replace racial fear and resentment with reconciliation and a hunger for biblical justice.

With your help, in 2013 Friends of Justice will launch Mission Viento Contrario, a new kind of narrative campaign. 

Friends of Justice will film a series of documentaries dealing with the plight of undocumented families in the Rio Grande Valley, bringing ordinary men and women from big city suburbs along for the transformative ride.

Our documentaries will provide people in communities of faith, civic organizations and the mainstream media with an opportunity to re-imagine justice, to feel the changing wind of justice moving through the land.

This holiday season, we challenge you to Re-imagine Justice with a generous, tax-deductible donation to Friends of Justice. 

Yours for justice,

Alan Bean

Connecticut shooting rampage could be the worst yet

· 13 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

A shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school this morning has left 27 people dead, 18 of them children.

What is there to say?  We ask why anyone would want to carry two automatic weapons into a public place and start shooting.  There is no good answer to that question.  But we know that every so often somebody does just that.  The public place might be a theater, or a mall, but schools seem to have a particular attraction for young white men with guns.

The Connecticut outrage may be the worst such event in American history.  Unfortunately, that record won’t stand for long.

According to FOX news personalities it is tacky to argue for gun control in the wake of yet another tragedy.  We shouldn’t make important decisions while we’re still reeling in shock.  If people want to kill they will find a way.  After all, guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

But the people intent on killing people make a much better job of it if they can get their hands on an automatic weapon.  I have no problem with the guy next door having a hunting rifle under lock and key, but there is no justification for any American civilian owning a weapon designed for killing lots of people quickly.

That’s all they’re good for.

And that’s why they should be banned.

Immediately.

ICE officials say they were just doing their jobs

·

By Alan Bean

Two Latino parents were arrested in Detroit on Tuesday morning as they dropped their children off at school.  Immigrant rights groups are outraged.  Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) say they were simply following procedures.

Although Latino voters gave Barack Obama his margin of victory in 2012, more undocumented residents have been deported under his watch than under any previous administration.  Obama won because Latino voters perceived, correctly, that the situation would have deteriorated even further had Mitt Romney become president.

Were the ICE officials who arrested two men in front of their children following standard procedures?  Probably.  The Obama administration is ostensibly focusing on deporting criminals while going easy on undocumented residents with close family ties in America.  Unfortunately, as the article below makes clear, entering the country without documentation is now a federal crime even, as is often the case, the primary reason for entering the United States was to be re-united with young children.

If you were deported as an “illegal alien” while your citizen child remained in the United States, what would you do?

Nothing?  Perhaps, but if you didn’t do everything in your power to get back with your child you would lose my respect (and Jesus wouldn’t be impressed either). (more…)

DC exoneration raises painful questions

·
Sentae Tribble

By Alan Bean

Santae Tribble spent 28 years in prison for killing a Washington DC cab driver.   Prosecutors knew they had the right man because FBI forensic experts testified that a hair found in the stocking cap used by the killer matched Tribble’s hair sample “in all microscopic characteristics.”

According to the Washington Post, “In closing arguments, federal prosecutor David Stanley went further, saying ‘There is one chance, perhaps for all we know, in 10 million that it could [be] someone else’s hair.'”

That was long before the feds started running DNA tests in 1996.  When Tribble’s hair was finally tested he was ruled out as the killer.  By that time, he had already served the entirety of his sentence. (more…)

Catching Stones for Jesus, Bryan Stevenson

· 1 Comment ·

By Alan Bean

Bryan Stevenson dedicated himself to defending death row inmates after the justice-evangelicalism he imbibed at Eastern College collided with the entitled secularism of Harvard Law School.  The way he sees it, we are either throwing stones or we’re catching them.  Consider this bit from late in the piece:

Stevenson turns frequently to the Bible. He quotes to me from the Gospel of John, where Jesus says of the woman who committed adultery: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” He tells me an elderly black woman once called him a “stone catcher.”

“There is no such thing as being a Christian and not being a stone catcher,” he says. “But that is exhausting. You’re not going to catch them all. And it hurts. If it doesn’t make you sad to have to do that, then you don’t understand what it means to be engaged in an act of faith . . . But if you have the right relationship to it, it is less of a burden, finally, than a blessing. It makes you feel stronger.

Churches must choose, he says.  We can be stone throwers or stone catchers.  Or, after the manner of Saul of Tarsus, we can hold the coats for those who throw the stones in the mistaken belief that this absolves us of responsibility.

Stevenson draws parallels between the slave trade and the current blight of mass incarceration.  He knows people, particularly white people, won’t want to hear it, but he won’t let that deter him.

Chris Hedges, who wrote this piece for the Smithsonian Magazine, is open to Stevenson’s “mass incarceration is the new slavery” argument, but then Hedges is convinced the world is going to hell before the next decade is out.  Likewise, the folks who heard Stevenson’s TED talk were thrilled with his message.  So it isn’t as if all white people are resistant–just the 80% of us who have never been forced to wrestle with the full tragedy of America’s racial history.

I’m not sure a full frontal assault can reach these people, but I’m glad folks like Stevenson and Michelle Alexander are giving it a go.  Somebody needs to speak the full truth even if people can’t hear it.  Stevenson is right, mass incarceration really does define us as a nation, as does our immigration policy.

Why Mass Incarceration Defines Us As a Society

By Chris Hedges

The Smithsonian Magazine

Bryan Stevenson, the winner of the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in social justice, has taken his fight all the way to the Supreme Court

It is late in the afternoon in Montgomery. The banks of the Alabama River are largely deserted. Bryan Stevenson and I walk slowly up the cobblestones from the expanse of the river into the city. We pass through a small, gloomy tunnel beneath some railway tracks, climb a slight incline and stand at the head of Commerce Street, which runs into the heart of Alabama’s capital. The walk was one of the most notorious in the antebellum South.

“This street was the most active slave-trading space in America for almost a decade,” Stevenson says. Four slave depots stood nearby. “They would bring people off the boat. They would parade them up the street in chains. White plantation owners and local slave traders would get on the sidewalks. They’d watch them as they went up the street. Then they would follow behind up to the circle. And that is when they would have their slave auctions.

“Anybody they didn’t sell that day they would keep in these slave depots,” he continues. (more…)

Gross Inequality

· 3 Comments ·

By Charles Kiker

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . .” (from the Declaration of Independence)

All men are created equal? Probably the founding fathers were not using the masculine term “men” in the generic sense of “mankind.” It would seem they meant men. And more specifically white men. At least few if any of them treated females or people of color as their equals.

Is a broadened equality desirable? An equality more comprehensive than that mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, to encompass all humankind, is that kind of equality something we should strive for? (more…)

Ill Fares the Land

·

By Charles Kiker

Ill fares the land
To hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates
And men decay.

Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village” (1730-1774)

Here in the Texas Panhandle, we watched Ken Burns’ documentary on the dust bowl and were reminded of the consequences of the mistreatment of the land leading to that ecological disaster. Ill Fares the Land.

Later we wasted one of the most precious commodities—far more precious than silver, gold, or livestock feed—the non-renewable water from the Ogallala aquifer. A friend who worked in the seed business frequently traveled the dirt roads of Swisher County. He said, only slightly exaggerating, that every bar ditch in Swisher County was a running creek in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Those creeks, along with Tule Creek, run no more!  Ill Fares the Land.

On Black Friday people of faith participated in prayer vigils at Wal-Mart stores across the country, praying for the employees of Wal-Mart, seeking more just wages and health care benefits. Some of my family participated in one of those events at a Metroplex Wal-Mart. We were not picketing Wal-Mart. We were simply praying for their employees, and asking customers entering and leaving the store to pray for them and for other low paid workers in America. Since we were not disruptive, store management ignored us. At the end of our vigil we gave local management a copy of a letter which was sent to corporate management, asking for fair treatment of employees.

Where wealth accumulates—the average full time Wal-Mart associate earns about $15,000 per year. The CEO of Wal-Mart has compensation of over 18 million dollars, over 1,000 times as much as his average associate.

Where wealth accumulates—in 2010 six members of the Walton family had wealth equal to that of the bottom 42% of American families.

Where wealth accumulates and men decay—according to a news item in Amarillo Globe News, November 30, 2012, top executives of Hostess Brands Inc. will receive bonuses totaling up to 1.8 million dollars while they close down the company, putting 18,000 people out of work. The company has not contributed to its employees’ pension funds for the last year.

Where wealth accumulates—according to a Wikipedia article, the CEO of Goldman Sachs had earnings of 16.1 million dollars in 2011. Goldman Sachs was of course too big to fail, and received a massive infusion of low interest federal bailout dollars in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

It is a well-documented fact that wealth is concentrating more and more at the top in our country. And some, myself included, see that as unfair.

A Facebook “friend” not concerned about fairness asked the question, “But what is fair?”

A Federal judge, asked to define pornography, said that he could not define it but he knows it when he sees it. I cannot define “fair,” but I know “unfair” when I see it.

Hebrew law provides for a sabbatical year for land:

When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield, but in the seventh year there shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vine: it shall be a year of complete rest. You may eat what the land yields during its Sabbath—you, your male and female slaves, your hired and your bound laborers who live with you; for your livestock also, and for the wild animals in your land all its yield shall be for food (Leviticus 25:2-7, NRSV).

And for people:

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed. Of a foreigner you may exact it, but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you. There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you . … (Deuteronomy 15:1-6, NRSV).

And in the year of Jubilee—the fiftieth year—all debts are forgiven, and land is returned to its original owner (see Leviticus 25:8 ff.).  It is important to note that in Leviticus 19:33-34 the Mosaic Law commands that the alien residing among the Israelites should be treated as a citizen.

Evidently these provisions helping to guard against gross inequality were not being observed in the time of the prophet Isaiah, circa 700 BC, for Isaiah observes gross inequality, with land and people being abused.

Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land.
The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing:
Surely many houses shall be desolate,
large and beautiful houses without inhabitant.
For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath,
And a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah. (Isaiah 5:8-10, NRSV; a homer is approximately 6.33 bushels, and an ephah is .63 bushels.)

These Old Testament texts show that God was concerned with fairness to the people and for proper treatment of the land.

We cannot follow these texts literally, but it is high time and past time that we take their principles seriously!

Is the “fiscal cliff” debate a proxy for a conversation about race?

· 6 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

Are we talking about the “fiscal cliff” because we are afraid to talk about race?  Imara Jones of Colorlines thinks so.

This is not your standard, “hooray for our side” culture war trope; the argument here is that the blue team is just as responsible for muddying the waters as the red team.

According to this account, Republicans gained power in the late 1970s, and have held power ever since, by arguing that programs designed to help the poor are morally debilitating gifts squandered on lazy black people.  The argument proved so successful that Democrats challenged it at their peril.  As Jones points out, it was a Democratic president that ended welfare as we know it.

Among Republicans, the idea that black people vote for Democratic candidates because they want welfare is deeply entrenched.  But the success of the Republican “welfare is toxic” argument is best reflected in responses to the common opinion poll question about whether welfare does more harm than good.  When the question for first asked in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in 1995, 72% of whites, 57% of current or former welfare recipients, and 52% of African Americans agreed.  The numbers haven’t changed that much in intervening years.

It is difficult to argue that the government needs to do more to help poor people of color when even the recipients of government assistance think welfare is counterproductive.  Barack Obama knows that, given the current state of public opinion, Democrats can’t win this argument.  On the other hand, a majority of Republicans support the idea of raising taxes on the rich, so that’s the way the argument is framed.

It might be easier to argue for compassionate budget priorities if “welfare as we know it” was replaced by programs dedicated to providing meaningful work to unemployed individuals who aren’t responsible for raising young children.  Unfortunately, the jobs our economy creates for unskilled workers come with poverty wages.  Walmart routinely counsels its employees in the art of applying for government-sponsored poverty programs; they know most of the jobs they advertise don’t pay a living wage.    (more…)