Green religion confronts a blue-orange world

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By Alan Bean

In a recent post, I argued that the lack of a clear public theology has deprived “messy middle” congregations of a prophetic voice.  Messy middle congregations feature a complex mix of theological and political points of view that cover the range from conservative to liberal.  Intimidated by the lack of a cohesive world view within their congregations, I argued, opinion leaders in messy middle churches have a hard time applying the Christian faith to the public policy issues of the day.  We can talk about family and personal relationships, grief, prayer, courage and a host of other issues, but we have nothing to say about immigration policy, health care, homelessness, poverty or the criminal justice system.  For all practical purposes, we have no public theology.

We can get a better feel for the messy middle problem if we shift from the familiar conservative-liberal divide to a more sociological model.  In the late 1950s, on the cusp of the civil rights movement, a psychology professor named Clare Graves devised what he called The Emergent Cyclical Levels of Existence Theory (ECLET).  The basic idea was that moral thinking is closely related to the practical problems faced by individuals and the groups to which they belong.

If you are an adolescent living in an impoverished urban neighborhood, the need for physical survival is all-consuming.  So you join the toughest gang on the street and play follow the leader.   Those for whom survival is the pressing need, in Graves’ system, live in the “purple” zone.

If you are the toughest gang leader on the street (or you aim to be), your big concern is controlling the homies who flock to you for protection.  This “red” level of moral reasoning controls our streets and prisons.

Organized religion enters the picture with the “moving away from” orientation Graves associates with the color blue.  Here, the pressing need is to distinguish between the anarchy of the streets and law-and-order stability.  The emphasis in blue circles is on being right, thinking right and doing right.  This means black-and-white, right-and-wrong categories.  The big question is who’s in and who’s out; who’s acceptable, and who ain’t.  It is also important to know who’s in charge.  A stable social order requires taking guidance from a long list of authority figures (God, your parents, your boss, your pastor, or the founding fathers).   Blue thinking flourishes in cultures passing from a period of social upheaval into a phase of relative stability. (more…)

When worlds collide: B.J. Smith gets his day in court

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B.J. Smith

By Alan Bean

I have been following the case of B.J. Smith for well over a year now.  His plight was brought to my attention by a member of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth where Mr. Smith was once a member.  Like George Zimmerman, Smith is accused of using his gun to kill a man; only in this case, the shooting victim was carrying a knife and threatening bodily harm.

B.J. Smith is on trial because the two primary shaping influences in his life, the US Navy and the Christian faith, collided in the moments after Robert Fowler died.  The military taught Smith how to use deadly force.  Don’t draw your weapon unless you mean to use it, B.J. was told, but if you start firing, don’t stop until the enemy is no longer a threat.

That advice makes sense on the battle field, but in civilian life it can get a military vet into trouble. (more…)

Can American democracy survive the madness?

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obama girl lincolnBy Alan Bean

Last Tuesday night, David Dewhurst called for Barack Obama’s impeachment.  Like most politicians on the right, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas sees Obamacare as a kind of socialist overreach, but the “high crime” topping his syllabus of errors is the president’s handling of the Benghazi affair.  Contacted by reporters, Dewhurst elaborated on his outrage:

I’m very concerned about Benghazi, in which all of the national news reporting indicated that live video was streaming into the White House.  That means that there was an overhead platform, probably a drone in the area. At least that’s what it tells me.  And for not mobilizing some response to protect the ambassador and those three Americans is just outrageous to me. Just outrageous.”

It probably wouldn’t interest the Lieutenant Governor to learn that the “live feed theory” was debunked months ago.  Calling for Obama’s impeachment has become an article of faith in southern state politics.  When you’ve got Tea Party candidates running for your job you can’t afford to be out-outraged.  If it takes false facts to gin up the required level of vitriol, Dewhurst will pay the price. (more…)

Tucson activists close down Operation Streamline

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Protesters try keep deportation bus from leaving Tucson courthouse

By Alan Bean

Tucson immigration rights activists in Tucson successfully shut down Operation Streamline.  It’s only in one courthouse in one community, but it is just another indication that concern about Streamline is growing.  It takes courage, and a measure of desperation, to undertake this kind of protest.

Activists block Tucson courthouse, immigration hearings canceled for the day

October 11, 2013 8:12 am  •

Perla Trevizo Arizona Daily Star

A protest today by immigration rights activists continued in Tucson for more than four hours, prompting the federal court to shutdown a deportation process known as Operation Streamline for the day.

About 80 immigrant rights activists are protesting at the federal courthouse downtown, blocking entrances as well as buses carrying people to hearing that could result in their deportation. By noon police had used power saws to remove two of about 10 protesters who had used chains to attach themselves to the wheels of one of two buses. By 12:30 one of the buses was back on the road and officers worked on removing protesters from the second one. About 30 minutes later that bus was also able to leave.

The group stopped the buses on the Interstate 10 frontage road as they approached the courthouse, and some of the activists chained themselves to the wheels while others hung banners critical of the fast-track immigration deportation court process called Operation Streamline. (more…)

Expedited Indian Removal

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By Alan Bean

I have written a number of posts about Operation Streamline, a dreadful and dehumanizing process of “expedited removal” that unfolds daily, primarily in border town courtrooms in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.  To be honest, these posts don’t get a lot of attention.  I’m hoping this opinion piece by Roberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor in Mexican-American studies at the University of Arizona, will be different.

Rodriguez draws attention to the stark racial undercurrents that most observers are too polite to notice.  On a dozen occasions, he has taken college classes to witness these “cattle call” proceedings and they always come away sickened:

When my students leave the courtroom, they say they feel defiled, dirty … as if they have just witnessed something abominable, something that should not be taking place, something contrary to the US Constitution, something amoral. And all of it takes place compliments of our tax dollars.

Then there’s this:

There was a time when being apprehended on the border simply meant returning the migrants across the border … until someone decided that criminalization and incarceration could be profitable – literally, a big business. The more bodies, the more beds, the more money for the private prison industry.

And this:

I remember the first time I went to this operation, President George W. Bush was in office. When Sen. Barack Obama ran for and won the presidency, we all thought that this kangaroo court procedure finally would be shut down, something akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead, as written into the current comprehensive immigration reform proposal, this Expedited Indian Removal program will become three times bigger than its current form.

Operation Streamline: Expedited Indian Removal

Wednesday, 09 October 2013

By Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Truthout

On the left side of the courtroom, 60 to 70 short, dark-brown men and a few women are seated, handcuffed and shackled from the wrists, waist and ankles. All are silent. They take up about 20 rows, including the two corresponding to the jury box. The scene is surreal. Their chains, their color and height are very pronounced – yet in this courtroom, are hardly noticed by the lawyers and other court officials, including the judge.

This kangaroo court called Operation Streamline is America’s modern version of Expedited Indian Removal; chase, capture, pseudo-judicial proceeding, incarceration and deport. It convenes daily at 1:30 PM in Tucson, Arizona. (more…)

What kind of Baptists are we?

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By Alan Bean

In the 1950s and 60s, the unofficial public theology of America was dominated by theologians associated with what we now call “the Protestant Mainline”.  A public theology makes biblical teaching relevant to the pressing political, economic and social issues of the day; it gives the Church a public voice.

There was nothing particularly radical about the old public theology, but it gave voice to the “Christian realism” then in vogue.  Management and labor should work out their differences amicably.  The solution to the “race problem” was understanding and forbearance on all sides.  Families and governments should live within their means. That kind of thing.

Those days are gone.  America has a new public theology.

Theologians and judicatory officials associated with “the old mainline” denominations are still making the occasional moral pronouncement, but nobody is listening, least of all the folks in Washington.  The new public theology is a product of the Religious Right and its central tenets are so well-publicized that there is hardly any need to lay them out.  Free markets are God’s way of solving social problems and nothing else works.  Ever.  The role of government is to protect the nation from its enemies and protecting the free functioning of markets from excessive regulation.  Because corporate America creates jobs and leads innovation, labor must bend to the will of management.  The new American meritocracy places everyone on a level playing field so accusations of racism and sexism are just whining.

The new public theology begins with economics, moves to politics and ends with religion.

I could elaborate, but you get the idea.

The partial shutdown of the US government is largely a consequence of our new public theology.  Obamacare isn’t dismissed as bad public policy; it’s heresy. The free market provides the best of all possible health care systems and anyone who thinks government can make things better has rejected the revealed will of God.  When doctrinal purity is at issue, compromise is impossible.

I know what you’re thinking.  The new public theology I have described is a minority report that fails to speak for the majority of religious Americans.  True enough.

But just ask your average twenty-five year-old what “Christians” think about economics, social policy and the Bible.  I suspect you will get something very close to the public theology I have described.  Young people might not buy this perspective, and they might even see it as inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus, but it is viewed as the standard Christian view.

Let me get personal.  I have two sons who are convinced that most Christians, at least those in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, embrace the new public theology I have described.  Moreover, they see my take on Christianity (more on that below) as an odd anomaly.  “Dad, nobody else thinks like you,” they tell me.

I submit that this conclusion is common, even standard, among young adults.

This problem is particularly acute for Baptists.  “Moderate” Baptists can’t reveal the name of their congregation without appending a long list of disclaimers.  “I’m a Baptist,” we say, “but not that kind of Baptist.”

The new public theology is viewed as the normative Christian position by default.  Churches that identify with the Religious Right proclaim their public theology with vigor and without apology.  Everyone else in the American Christian community is strangely silent. Sure, our well-educated preachers have nice things to say about theological abstractions like justice, love, peace and reconciliation, but they rarely tell us how these virtues impact the economic, political and social life of the nation we live in.

Silence is considered the wise, nuanced approach.  “I’m not paid to tell my people how to vote, or how to think on policy issues,” preachers tell one another, “I tell them what the Bible says, and it’s up to them to make the application.”

But “making the application” is what theology is all about.  The Religious Right has the ear of the nation because they know what they believe and they spell it out for us.  They make the application.

Churches that limp along without a public theology become practically and morally irrelevant to the larger society.  They have nothing of substance to say to young adults who are eager (for a brief season) to devote their lives to a larger purpose.

Again, the problem is particularly acute for Baptists.  If you’re not that kind of Baptist, then what kind of Baptist are you?

Why have we lost our prophetic voice?

First, there is the problem of the “messy middle”.  Most congregations reflect the full ideological spectrum of American life.  A pastor preaching to a mix of conservatives, moderates, liberals (and a growing number of libertarians) can’t address social, political or economic issues in a substantive way without enraging and alienating somebody.

Members of messy middle congregations easily assume that “most people in my church think like me”.  But let real people start talking about real issues and this perception fades quickly.  Why force church members to focus on the ideological divisions within the body, pastors ask.

Having been a pastor, I fully understand the concern.  Job security is a valid issue.

Embarrassing theological questions emerge when we are forced to reckon with our diversity.  If we are all taking our cue from the same Bible and we’re drawing such different conclusions, who’s got it right and who’s wrong?

More likely, we conclude that the Bible doesn’t have much practical guidance to offer, so we’re all free to make up our own minds.  Diversity is hailed as the cardinal virtue.

But our loss of prophetic voice is only partially explained by the messy middle problem.  Here’s the deeper truth: we know what Jesus says about money and it doesn’t take a seminary degree to grasp the economic, political and social implications.

We can take refuge in complexity, of course.  The Bible is a very big book featuring a long list of authors responding to a crazy quilt of different circumstances.  There’s some stuff in Leviticus, Joshua, and Nehemiah that’s hard to square with the Sermon on the Mount.  Right?

Right.  But if we start with Jesus and the broad biblical tradition that shaped his message, the broad outline of a clear, prophetic theology is clearly discernible.

Our problem isn’t that the message is fuzzy; our problem is that the message is frightening.

If we take our cue from the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer and the Mary’s Magnificat where would that leave us?  Outside the camp, on the margins, numbered with the sick, the sinners, the poor and the desperate.  We’d have to ask where all these hurting people came from.  We’d have to move from charity to advocacy.

Worse still, our churches would be transformed from mainstream bastions of respectability to counterculture communities living on the fringe.

We might gain a prophetic voice, but we would lose almost everything else.

Hence our silence.

But the question won’t go away: if we’re not that kind of Baptists, what kind of Baptists are we?

Mississippi church issues apology for racism

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Two Mississippi pastors, Eric Hankins (left) and Andrew Robinson, have fostered healing between their churches in Oxford, a city that faced racial tumult during the civil rights era. Hankins is pastor of First Baptist Church; Robinson is pastor of Second Baptist Church. Photo by Kevin Bain.

By Alan Bean

It is easy to be critical of this Baptist Press story.  It reflects a rather superficial understanding of racism, and is written from a distinctly white perspective (there is little interest, for instance, in learning how Black Baptists experienced the racist past of Oxford, Mississippi).

On the other hand, the apology issued by First Baptist Church is commendable and remarkably rare.  Although the congregation voted to exclude non-white worshipers in 1968, pastor Hankins correctly observes that most Oxford congregations wouldn’t have felt the need to put the matter to a vote.  This is a small step in the direction of racial reconciliation, but it is a beginning, and for that we should all be thankful.

Mississippi church seeks racial reconciliation

OXFORD, Miss. (BP) — When First Baptist Church in Oxford, Miss., passed a resolution apologizing for its 1968 decision to exclude African Americans from worship services, it opened the door for racial reconciliation in its city.

“I had never seen a church or any organization move that seriously toward repentance and then apologize without any excuse,” said Andrew Robinson, pastor of Oxford’s historically black Second Baptist Church, a National Baptist congregation that accepted the apology and granted forgiveness. (more…)

In Memoriam: Herman Wallace

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Tory Pegram, Campaign Coordinator for the Coalition to Free the Angola 3, reports that Herman Wallace died after spending three short days in the free world.  The state of Louisiana, fully mindful that Mr. Wallace was nearing death, worked overtime to ensure that he died behind bars.  Fortunately, the judge who ordered his release refused to bend under pressure.

The persecution and prosecution of the men known as the Angola 3 has always been driven by an ideology that consistently trumped the facts and the requirements of simple justice.  This ideology was theoretically motivated by “Christian” values; but the tragic racial history of the South was always the real driver.

I should note that Tory has served on the Friends of Justice board, and was an invaluable ally in our successful fight for justice in Jena, Louisiana.

Tory Pegram reflects on the death of Herman Wallace

This morning we lost without a doubt the biggest, bravest, and brashest personality in the political prisoner world.  It is with great sadness that I write with the news of Herman Wallace’s passing.

Herman never did anything half way.  He embraced his many quests and adventures in life with a tenacious gusto and fearless determination that will absolutely never be rivaled.  He was exceptionally loyal and loving to those he considered friends, and always went out of his way to stand up for those causes and individuals in need of a strong voice or fierce advocate, no matter the consequences.

Anyone lucky enough to have spent any time with Herman knows that his indomitable spirit will live on through his work and the example he left behind.  May each of us aspire to be as dedicated to something as Herman was to life, and to justice.

Below is a short obituary/press statement for those who didn’t know him well in case you wish to circulate something.  Tributes from those who were closest to Herman and more information on how to help preserve his legacy by keeping his struggle alive will soon follow.

With deepest sadness,

Tory Pegram

Campaign Coordinator

International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

Obituary for Herman Wallace

On October 4th, 2013, Herman Wallace, an icon of the modern prison reform movement and an innocent man, died a free man after spending an unimaginable 41 years in solitary confinement.

Herman spent the last four decades of his life fighting against all that is unjust in the criminal justice system, making international the inhuman plight that is long term solitary confinement, and struggling to prove that he was an innocent man.  Just 3 days before his passing, he succeeded, his conviction was overturned, and he was released to spend his final hours surrounded by loved ones.  Despite his brief moments of freedom, his case will now forever serve as a tragic example that justice delayed is justice denied.

Herman Wallace’s early life in New Orleans during the heyday of an unforgiving and unjust Jim Crow south often found him on the wrong side of the law and eventually he was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for armed robbery.  While there, he was introduced to the Black Panther’s powerful message of self determination and collective community action and quickly became one of its most persuasive and ardent practitioners.

Not long after he began to organize hunger and work strikes to protest the continued segregation, endemic corruption, and horrific abuse rampant at the prison, he and his fellow panther comrades Albert Woodfox and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown in solitary.  Robert was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary but Herman remained there for an unprecedented 41 years, and Albert is still in a 6×9 solitary cell.

Herman’s criminal case ended with his passing, but his legacy will live on through a civil lawsuit he filed jointly with Robert and Albert that seeks to define and abolish long term solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, and through his comrade Albert Woodfox’s still active and promising bid for freedom from the wrongful conviction they both shared.

Herman was only 9 days shy of 72 years old.

Services will be held in New Orleans. The date and location will be forthcoming.

For more information visit www.angola3.org and http://angola3news.blogspot.com/.

 

What critics of Obamacare don’t get

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Drug

There is an obvious answer to this piece by Chris Arnade: Don’t abuse drugs and the problem goes away.  If that makes sense to you, read no further.  If you care about the woman in the picture because she is a human being, read on . . .

Ted Cruz and Obamacare critics clearly don’t get it

Opponents of reform don’t see how lucky they are to have easy access to healthcare. For homeless addicts, it’s a different reality 

Chris Arnade

The Guardian

Homeless drug addicts fall through the cracks in America’s healthcare system. Photograph: Chris Arnade

I arrived at 9am as planned, with $10 in my pocket and a sheet of phone numbers. Sonya was missing, her corner space now just a bed of cardboard, a bundle of dirty blankets, broken needles, and a Bible. Her kitten was gone, presumably given to a friend to watch, or maybe it fled, scared by the roar of semi-trucks only 10 meters away.

I walked the stretch of the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx, New York, where she begs for money.

At 10am I found her leaning against a pole. She smiled, “I just need to get straight before I go”. I have learned the language of addicts. She was talking about one last hit of heroin before entering detox. The thought of being dope sick in a waiting room is just too much.

Nobody had drugs available this early; she had to call for a delivery that came an hour later.

Most of her veins are dry, shriveled from overuse. Except in her foot. She took off her shoes and asked for privacy:

My feet really stink, sorry, get all soggy in these shoes. Out here you can’t really wear heels.

I grabbed her small purse, once red but now black. Inside was her paperwork: an expired driver’s license from a happier time, a Medicaid letter crumpled and torn. I struggled to make out her information; maybe it was a letter E or an F on her Medicaid ID, maybe a three or an eight. I wrote down the different possibilities.

I waited in the car, calling different hospitals and inpatient programs that accept those who only have Medicaid. Most calls went to voicemail, doomed to become messages unreturned. Forty minutes of calling netted me three rejections, all the places were filled or needed proof of residence. I explained she slept under an overpass. They shrugged. Rules are rules.

Desperate, I called a place nearby, a place most addicts hate, a place with “nasty doctors and nurses who treat you like shit”.

“What is her Medicaid ID?” I repeated the numbers and letters. “What is her drug of choice and when was the last time she used?” I looked over at Sonya, still hidden in her corner, working on her foot. “Her drug is heroin and the last time is five minutes from now.”

They had a bed. She slept in the van as I drove, overpowered by a bar of Xanax she neglected to tell me about. She slept again in the drab detox intake room, filled with others desperate to be clean. The smell of urine and bleach was overpowering.

Ted CruzUS Senator Ted CruzTwo college kids were giving a lecture on healthy eating, passing out flyers. They left one on Sonya’s lap.

After an hour of confusion, she was turned down. Her Medicaid coverage had expired. Renewal letters never reached her patch of dirt she calls home. Sonya returned to her spot, coiled on the cardboard and collapsed into the blankets, the Bible under her head.

I have tried about 15 times to take homeless addicts to detox. Only twice has it worked, and only after days of navigating misinformation and filling out paperwork.

One addict was turned down after eight hours of driving from clinic to clinic, because they were not in withdrawal at the time. I asked what in the hell I have to do to help get an addict clean. A doctor, angry at his time being taken, responded:

Just drop them off sick at the emergency room. They have to take them.

I did that once, waiting amongst families with ill children, families who are forced to use the ER as their primary care physician. We waited five hours. It ended with the addict running into the street to vomit, sick from withdrawal, his pants soiled.

After dropping Sonya off, I drove home. The radio news was filled with reports on Senator Ted Cruz’s 20-hour marathon rant against healthcare reform, which includes an expansion of Medicaid to cover an additional 21.3 million people.

Ted Cruz has access to wonderful healthcare coverage, available either through his government job or his wife’s job at Goldman Sachs.

I also have secure access to quality healthcare, because of my prior job on Wall Street. Unlike Sonya, when I was battling a penchant for beer, I had many luxurious options: weeks away in a country estate or a private suite that offered family visits. I never went that route, but it was always available to me and others as fortunate.

I understand now, after so many frustrations and failures dealing with one of America’s most neglected and at-risk populations, how lucky I am to have those choices.

Ted Cruz does not.

What’s all this about Conscious Capitalism?

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By Alan Bean

Have you heard of Conscious Capitalism yet?  If not, you soon will.

This article by Harvard student Lucia Hulsether describes the philosophy,  originally popularized by the photogenic Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOM’S shoes (pictured below).  Her primary interest isn’t in the nuts and bolts of Conscious Capitalism, nor is she offering a critique of the philosophy; she wants to understand why this marketing strategy is so appealing for consumers.

Her basic answer is that it feels good.  We want to be on the side of the angels, and we want to shop till we drop.  Being told that we can do both at the same time sounds too good to be true.

If you are looking for a positive take on Conscious Capitalism, this rapturous piece from the Harvard Business Review should fit the bill.

If you want a slashing critique of the Conscious Capitalism model, read this piece of wrecking ball journalism from CEO Jim Garrison.

If you are in the market for an excellent book on the theology of economics (or the economics of theology) Joerg Rieger’s No Rising Tide is a great place to start.

But if you just want to know why so many people shop at places like Whole Foods, TOM”S shoes, Trader Joe’s and the Container Store (all proud proponents of Conscious Capitalism), Lucia Hulsether’s article is an illuminating place to begin.

Lucia Hulsether

Here they are, smiling and crying, the words catching in their throats as they place tiny shoes to the feet of tiny children. Seven strangers, the YouTube video tells us—a recycling truck driver, a retired nurse, a special education teacher, a college student—all astonished to be invited on a special mission: to deliver free pairs of TOMS shoes to needy children in Honduras. (more…)