This wonderful post from Fred Clark deserves your attention.
Smothering the New America in the cradle: Chris McDaniel and the spirit of Tea Party conservatism
By Alan Bean
Chris McDaniel, a Mississippi Tea Party candidate vying for Thad Cochran’s senate seat, wants to turn back the hands of time.
“There are millions of us who feel like strangers in this land, an older America passing away, a new America rising to take its place,” McDaniel said this past week. “We recoil from that culture. It’s foreign to us. It’s alien to us. … It’s time to stand and fight. It’s time to defend our way of life again.”
This revealing remark is the frontispiece for an AP story that was picked up by the Huffington Post and Breitbart.com, suggesting that conservatives and liberals attach significance to McDaniel’s words, though for different reasons.
We often distinguish liberals from conservatives using an economic metric: liberals think capitalism works best when checked by government regulation supplemented by public projects and a robust social safety net; conservatives think capitalism works best without regulation and see unrestricted free markets as want to privatize every public initiative, with the partial exception of the military.
On the surface, Chris McDaniel’s rhetoric fits this pattern. He says the government has no constitutional right to educate the nation’s children. On the stump, he sounds like a typical small government, low tax conservative.
But there is more to the Tea Party phenomenon than low tax-small government conservatism. (more…)
Send us back to Mississippi!
Friends of Justice plans to travel to Mississippi June 22-26 and you can help make it happen.
First, a word about the trip.
We will be meeting with some film makers in Winona, MS who want to do a documentary about the Curtis Flowers case. I also hope to visit Curtis on death row at the notorious Parchman penitentiary.
Secondly, we will be touring the Mississippi Delta at the invitation of Dr. Paul Ortiz and the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, working with veterans of the fight for civil rights in Mississippi, like our good friend Margaret Block.
(By the way, oral arguments in support of Mr. Flowers’ appeal are set for July 21 and can be viewed online.)
We have already raised half the money we need for this trip and are depending on our supporters to do the rest. Your gift of $100, $50 or $25 will play a big role in getting Friends of Justice to Mississippi for these exciting and important events.
Charles Kiker: Messages from the Messy Middle
By Charles Kiker
Alan Bean frequently blogs about the messy middle, a term he uses to describe ministers and congregations inhibited from seriously proclaiming the good news of the kingdom by their captivity to the prevailing culture.
The messy middle—I might call it the messy muddle—came up most recently in Alan’s blog regarding the Rev. Frank Schaeffer, the Pennsylvania United Methodist minister who was recently defrocked for officiating at his gay son’s gay wedding.
Most United Methodist churches are messy middle churches, where, as Alan describes it, pastor and congregation alike wait for a clear cultural consensus to emerge before speaking out on any cultural issue. And this probably would describe the church Schaeffer served.
But a funny thing happened to Schaeffer on his way to whatever it was he was on his way to. He discovered his children were gay. Schaeffer had been pretty conventional in his views regarding homosexuality and same sex marriage. But when the issue intruded itself into his family, he began to rethink his views. But he was still silent. After all, there could be serious repercussions. But when his son wanted to marry his male partner, he took the plunge and performed the ceremony. The United Methodist Book of Discipline strictly forbids Methodist ministers to officiate at same sex weddings, so, at a church trial, Schaeffer was defrocked. Schaeffer expresses no remorse for his action, and vows “never to be silent again” on this issue.
He has broken out of the messy middle. (more…)
“I’ll never be silent again”: a defrocked pastor finds the heart of God
Alan Bean
There is a terrific article in the Washington Post concerning the plight of Frank Schaefer, the erstwhile United Methodist pastor who was defrocked for presiding at the marriage of his gay son, Tim.
A youth leader at his church, Tim was around 13 when he went with his dad to one of the denomination’s annual regional meetings. The group was debating Methodist language around homosexuality, and the conversation was often contentious. Tim was struck by how few people supported gay equality.
It never occurred to Schaefer to bring the topic up with Tim on the way home. “I had the impression Tim was excited about the democratic process” of the meeting, he says. “I had no idea what he felt inside.”
Within a few years, in 2000, Schaefer got an anonymous call. Your 17-year-old son, the woman said, is gay and suicidal.
Schaefer and his wife didn’t hesitate. “We lost it in tears, hugging him. We told him we loved him so much and he did not choose this. We just affirmed him,” Schaefer says.
Of course they did! What else were they supposed to do? How complicated is this issue, really? (more…)
Fixing our mental health system
By Alan Bean
The Guardian continues its series on the American mental health system with a practical article by Paul Appelbaum, Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine and Law at Columbia University. It seems the last rethinking of the American mental health system took place in 1955. Can we improve our mental health system without investing billions of dollars? No, we can’t. Therein lies the problem.
We have pretty good mental health services for those who can afford to pay. For those who can’t . . . well, just thinking about it can make you crazy.
How to rebuild America’s mental health system, in 5 big steps
Paul S. Appelbaum
No genuine system of mental health care exists in the United States. This country’s diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems are fragmented across a variety of providers and payers – and they are all too often unaffordable. If you think about it, the list of complications is almost endless:
- Families of loved ones with mental illness recount horror stories, as several have in the Guardian’s interactive series this week.
- Patients transitioning from inpatient to outpatient treatment often fall between the cracks.
- Mental health and general medical treatment are rarely coordinated.
- Substance abuse treatment usually takes place in an entirely different system altogether, with little coordination.
- Auxiliary interventions that are so essential to so many people with serious mental illnesses – supported housing, employment training, social skills training – are offered through a different set of agencies altogether … if they are available at all.
Our mental health system is a non-system – and a dysfunctional non-system at that.
Read the entire article here
Jails house ten times as many mentally ill people as state hospitals
By Alan Bean
I first realized that , prisons had become the go-to institution for treating mental illness when I met Adolphus, a man in his forties who lived in Tulia, Texas, with his elderly mother. Adolphus had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by the doctors at the state hospital in Big Spring, but he rarely stayed on his meds. They made him feel sleepy, he said, like his head was stuffed with cotton.
Dolphus, as his family called him, preferred to self-medicate. He used crack cocaine. It made him feel normal.
Dolphus showed up at the door one night asking for twenty dollars “so I can get myself a room.” I offered our guest bed. “You got any HBO back there?” he asked.
It was easy to get frustrated with Dolphus. His mother called the police when his delusions got so out of control that he made her afraid.
Eventually, Dolphus was caught with a few rocks of crack. Well, not exactly. When the police asked him to turn out his pockets, he swallowed the crack and then refused to give permission to have his stomach pumped.
The DA decided that Adolphus needed to be permanently removed from the streets, but there were no hospital rooms. Public health officials recommend that states maintain 50 psychiatric beds per 100,000 population; Texas has 8.5.
So Dolphus was charged with obstructing justice and, owing to his multiple prior convictions, the prosecution was asking for fifty years.
I learned that the trial was underway when the defense attorney remembered to call a family member when the trial was half over. We raced down to Plainview, arriving just as the defense was ready to present its case. The attorney didn’t know that Dolphus was schizophrenic. Nobody thought it mattered. Dolphus’s lawyer tried to put me on the stand to testify to that fact, but since I had no standing as a medical expert, the judge refused to let me testify and the jury was left in the dark. (more…)
Learning non-violence from John Dear
By Charles Kiker
Rev. John Dear is a noted peace activist and author. He is a follower of the nonviolent way of Jesus. He has traveled worldwide, rubbed shoulders with numerous peace activists including the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and the Berrigan brothers. He is a student, via their works, of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He is the author of numerous articles and books relating to peace, justice and nonviolence.
For several years he was the priest for several congregations in New Mexico. His persistent—Roman Catholic authorities called it obdurate—criticism of nuclear weapons and of those who build them resulted in his removal from New Mexico, with the result that now he is a priest without a parish. No, the nation, even the world is his parish.
Patricia and I were privileged to hear John Dear in Amarillo on May 16 at an event cosponsored by the Peace Farm and the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Amarillo. At that event I purchased his most recent book, The Nonviolent Life, and since then I have worked my way through that short but heavy volume.
The book is divided into three sections—Part One: Nonviolence Toward Ourselves; Part Two: Nonviolence Toward all Others; and Part Three: Joining the Global Grassroots Movement of Nonviolence. Each section concludes with questions for personal reflection and small group discussion.
In Part One Rev. Dear makes the case that all nonviolence must begin with nonviolence toward ourselves. We cannot love others if we hate ourselves. The great commandment of Jesus is to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And often we are filled with self-loathing. If we hate ourselves how can we love our neighbors? And if we hate our neighbors how can we love God? To cultivate nonviolence toward ourselves we need to acknowledge to ourselves the hurts and putdowns we have received. We need to acknowledge to ourselves our own self-worth. We don’t need to be afraid to pat ourselves on the back. Cultivating nonviolence toward ourselves is a daily lifelong attitude adjustment project.
If we are inwardly violent to ourselves it’s easy to turn our self-loathing outward and become mean and hateful to others. Peace and justice advocates, believing so strongly in their own cause, can become mean and hateful in the process and thus do more harm than good. I have to acknowledge that this strikes a sensitive nerve. I am not physically violent, but I can have a mean tongue and a meaner pen. Rev. Dear, along with the Epistle of James, reminds me to keep guard on that.
Becoming nonviolent to ourselves is not a one and done affair. It is a lifelong project. Rev. Dear returns to this topic throughout the book. Maybe it’s a problem for him, too?
Part Two emphasizes nonviolence toward all others, including God’s creation. This nonviolence is active, not passive. We don’t just roll over and play dead in the face of violence and injustice, but we do not return violence for violence. Glenn Stassen makes the case that turning the other cheek and walking the second mile shames the violent one in his violence. Dear emphasizes the environmental aspects of nonviolence. Raping the earth is violence. Brutality to animals is violence. (Rev. Dear is an advocate of vegetarianism). Working in industries which live off violence is participating in violence. After the session I had opportunity to speak with him briefly about this. I told him how so many of the young people in our church, in my church specifically, go into the military upon graduation from college. We are reminded to pray for them. I confessed that I am torn about this. I don’t say don’t pray for them, but neither do I want military service to be considered a badge of honor. He said, “Pray for them, but pray for the young people of Afghanistan too.” Pray for people who are subject to our drone strikes! Praying for our national “enemies” can be active nonviolence!
Some of us can become active in local organizations for peace and justice, such as Friends of Justice. We can witness impossible possibilities. I remember being at a meeting near the end of the trials of the Tulia Drug Sting victims. Everyone who went to trial had been convicted. Legal minds said it would be impossible to overturn the convictions. One woman whom I will not name jumped up and said, “No! We’re going to see that they all go free!” Within three years all those convictions were overturned.
Part Three regards becoming a part of the global movement toward nonviolence. Not all of us can be personally involved. But all of us can be advocates.
Meeting Rev. Dear has caused me to reexamine my own life, to try to be sure I’m not inwardly or outwardly violent, and to recommit myself as much as in me lieth to be a follower of the Way of the nonviolent Jesus.
Why Paige Patterson broke the rules
By Alan Bean
Paige Patterson says it’s okay for a devout Muslim to study at Southwestern Theological Seminary. Why is this a big deal? I doubt the seminaries affiliated with American Baptist or Cooperative Baptist congregations would have a problem enrolling Ghassan Nagagreh, a student who believes there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet.
But there are good reasons why even the Washington Post took notice when the president of Southwestern Seminary pulled strings on behalf of of a non-Christian student.
Paige Patterson is committed to Truth with a capital “T”. Scientifically verifiable truth; the kind you can take to the bank. Make no mistake, fundamentalism has its advantages. Start with the a priori assumption that every jot and tittle of the Bible springs directly from the mind of God, and things get real simple.
If the Bible says only orthodox Christians are bound for glory, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims need not apply. No exceptions.
If the Book says women can’t exercise authority over men, there will be no female pastors, simple as that. (more…)
We blame our teachers so we don’t have to blame ourselves
By Alan Bean
It takes time to wrap your head around education reform. The vocabulary is daunting: Common Core, charter schools, VAM, high stakes testing, Race to the Top. And just when you think you’ve mastered the material, you realize that the details don’t matter because the education reform debate is being driven by money. First you have the poor people who don’t have enough money to send their kids to school with a full stomach. Secondly, a handful of philanthropists has distorted the reform debate by placing far too much money on the table.
The school reform issue boils down to a simple question: who is responsible for low student achievement? Should we blame a society with a remarkably high tolerance for poverty; or should we blame educators and administrators who blame poverty for their poor performance? (more…)
Friends of Justice 