Maggie and Martin

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By Alan Bean

In one of those odd quirks of history, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shuffled off this mortal coil just as we were remembering the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and his great “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” delivered a half-century ago in April of 1963.

I wonder what King and Thatcher would have had to say to one another had history arranged such a meeting.  I suspect they would have liked and, perhaps grudgingly  respected one another, but have two people ever looked at the world through such different lenses?

Bleeding hearts like me remember Thatcher for her “families and society” comment.  Let’s be fair and consider her words in full context: (more…)

Why seek the living among the dead?

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By Nancy Bean

Easter IS the Common Peace Community IS the Resurrection

The Common Peace Community is our expression for what Jesus refers to as The Realm or Kingdom of God. The Common Peace Community is the resurrection and the life that Jesus talks about. Debating the resurrection as physical or literal or spiritual or metaphorical distracts from the meaning of Easter morning. The resurrection is communal. The resurrection is social.

In Luke, Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread at meal with his disciples. In John, Thomas intimately fingers the wounds, the frailty, of Jesus in order to experience the reality of the living Christ.

In his parables and in his ministry, Jesus invites his disciples and the crowds to participate in God’s life of community: the Common Peace Community where the dishonorable is honored, where the least is greatest, where the outcast is the cherished child, where the blind see, where the deaf hear, where the sick are made whole, where the prisoner is free, where the hungry is full, where the stranger is welcomed. (more…)

Is the war on drugs a make-work project?

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By Alan Bean

Ripple effects from the sequester continue to proliferate.  Now it is local and regional narcotics task forces that are feeling the pinch because federal Byrne Grant funding has been ever-so-slightly reduced.  The article below appeared in Stateline, a daily news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts and it is essentially a scare-piece designed to pump up concern about the sequester.  But if you check out the chart a few paragraphs down the page, you will notice that Byrne Grant funding took a big hit in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis and then rebounded heroically in 2009 thanks to President Obama’s stimulus spending.  That funding has retreated a bit from these record levels is hardly surprising, sequester or no sequester.

Maggie Clark’s article is significant for what it doesn’t say.  It doesn’t say that the war on drugs is primarily a federal make-work project for hard up counties and municipalities.  But it is.  The Obama administration didn’t pump millions of fresh Byrne Grant money into the drug war to get drugs off the street; it was all about saving jobs and under-girding fragile rural economies that have little legitimate job-creation potential.

I have no problem with job-creation programs since I don’t think the for-profit economy, by itself, can prevent the kind of mass unemployment we have witnessed in recent years.  But sending the big bucks to narcotics task forces, for-profit prisons and incredibly wasteful projects like Operation Streamline is a radically inefficient and fundamentally dishonest job-creation strategy.  Why not sponsor violence reduction programs in poor communities while hiring potential gang-bangers to beautify their own neighborhoods; why not shore up a crumbling infrastructure that has become a national embarrassment?  Make-work programs can make the world a better place; but the war on drugs and the booming border security industry just recycle misery.  Sure, they provide some jobs and a few fat cats get fatter; but our culture is debased in the process.

I was glad to see that Clark mentions the Tulia fiasco, even if she did get most of her facts slightly askew.  Tulia explains why George W. Bush (governor of Texas at the time) didn’t like the Byrne Grant program and worked hard to scale it back.  Tulia embarrassed Texas and led to the virtual disappearance, at least in the Lone Star State of the kind of unaccountable and counterproductive narcotics task forces that depend on the largess of the DOJ.  Drug abuse is a big problem in every sector of American life, but the drug war is fought almost exclusively in poor, predominantly black and brown neighborhoods.  The real sickness is rampant poverty and unemployment, and so long as we focus exclusively on a symptom of that disease (drug abuse and drug dealing) we are tilting at windmills. (more…)

Football stadium won’t be named after for-profit prison company

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By Alan Bean

It was just a matter of time before this headline appeared.  First the student of Florida Atlantic University protested naming their school’s football stadium after GEO Group (the for-profit prison company) and then the tenured faculty, at the close of a contentious meeting, voted to protest the plan.  Seeing the writing on the wall, GEO executives decided to withdraw their $5 million gift and let the dream die.

I still say that the student who coined the term “Owlcatraz” (in honor of the FAU fighting Owls) drove home the final coffin nail.  But as this HuffPost article shows, GEO’s real problem was its well-documented record of prisoner abuse.  Too many courts had tossed out too many damning quotes for reporters to leave alone.  We can thank the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi ACLU for exposing the abuse at the Walnut Grove prison. (more…)

As Jesus Loved

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Brent Beasley preached this sermon on Maundy Thursday at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth

John 13:1-17, 31-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.  He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”  Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”  Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

. . . Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

There is actually nothing original or brand new in these words of Jesus that we are to love one another. The commandment to love one another goes back much, much further than Jesus himself. It is one of the themes that is cited again and again all through the Old Testament. And Jesus had certainly repeated those words again and again as he walked the ways of the earth during the days of his flesh.

So, what, then, is the special nuance that made this final mandate at the last supper so special and so memorable, as it is, right down to this very moment?

John Claypool, in preaching on this text, said that he believed what made Jesus’ words unique and special was that qualifying phrase that Jesus added: as I have loved you. Not just Love one another but As I have loved you, love one another. (more…)

Reader says Bible endorses capital punishment

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Dudley Sharp

The ABP’s recent article on the mock trial of Jesus staged at First Baptist Church, Austin has sparked an angry response.  Dudley Sharp insists that the New Testament endorses the death penalty.  Moreover, he appears to argue that we should rejoice and be glad that Jesus was murdered by the Romans because, had he been acquitted, we would all be headed straight for hell.

It should be noted that the mock trial of Jesus does not primarily concern the death penalty.  However, as the ABP article notes, “audiences must vote for or against death for Jesus using their own states’ laws on capital punishment” and, as law professor Mark Osler observes, “that often leads to a conflict between deeply held religious beliefs and support for capital punishment.”

Here’s Mr. Sharp’s letter:

To: Dr. Alan Bean Executive Director, Friends of Justice
        Dr. Roger Paynter, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church
        Dr. William Underwood, President, Mercer College (more…)

Where are the grocery stores in black neighborhoods?

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Posted by Pierre Berastain

A good article on the racial politics of grocery stores.  Not mentioned in the article, though still relevant, is the fact that one finds alcohol more readily available in poor black neighborhoods.  Discrimination, favoritism, and privilege bleed into too often imperceptible spheres of people’s lives.

Commentary: Where Are the Grocery Stores in Black Neighborhoods?

By Kellee Terrell

When we talk about obesity in America, especially in low income, Black and Latino areas, it’s impossible to have this conversation without acknowledging the fact that mounds of studies have shown us that there is a serious lack of access to healthy whole foods, fruits, vegetables and lean meats. (more…)

Coincidence or crafty staging: Senators witness woman climb 18-foot fence

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By Alan Bean

The Gang of Eight senators took a photo-op tour of the border fence in Arizona yesterday and, what-d’ya-know, they witnessed a desperate young woman successfully scale an eighteen-foot border fence.  We have just their word for it since no media people were allowed to accompany the tour and hence we have no video or pictures.  I’m not questioning the legitimacy of the report; I’m sure the senators saw what they say they saw.  But how convenient that a young woman made her move at precisely the moment the senators made their appearance?

Coincidence, or crafty staging?   (more…)

At Mexican Border, Four in Five Drug Busts Involve American Citizens

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ImagePosted by  Pierre Berastain

“Three out of four people found with drugs by the border agency are U.S. citizens, the data show. Looked at another way, when the immigration status is known, four out of five busts—which may include multiple people—involve a U.S. citizen.”

Amidst the accusations of people like Governor Brewer and Sheriff Apaio that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals responsible for smuggling millions of dollars worth of drugs , this article brings a new and fresh perspective.

At Mexican Border, Four in Five Drug Busts Involve American Citizens

by , , 

The public’s view of a typical Mexican drug smuggler might not include U.S. Naval Academy grad Todd Britton-Harr, who was caught at a Border Patrol checkpoint in south Texas in December 2010 hauling a trailer with 1,100 pounds of marijuana.

Nor would someone like Laura Lynn Farris leap to mind. Border Patrol agents stopped the 52-year-old woman at a border checkpoint 15 miles south of the west Texas town of Alpine in February 2011 with 162 pounds of marijuana hidden under dirty blankets in laundry baskets. (more…)