By Alan Bean
Jared Lee Loughner, the man responsible for the Tucson shooting spree that left six dead and twelve, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, badly wounded, has been declared incompetent to stand trial. Authorities now have four months to restore Loughner to competency. How are they supposed to do that?
In a Slate article, Jeremy Singer-Vine gives us the answer: anti-psychotic drugs. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Leonard Pitts puts his finger on the key organizing principle of the freedom rider movement:
Everybody thinks they could get on that bus. It’s an easy thing to say. Then you remember the savagery, the violent attacks from people mortally outraged that these young men and women traveled in integrated groups and ignored segregation signs in bus-station restrooms and coffee shops. And you remember that the rules of engagement required pacifism: a willingness to get hit, and not hit back.
It required enormous courage to take the words of Jesus at face value:
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile . . . You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
The implication is clear: if we hate our enemies, if we demand a tooth for a tooth, we cannot be children of our Father in heaven. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Last week, Oprah Winfrey shared her stage with 178 veterans of the 1961 Freedom Rides. There they stood, black and white, mostly in their 70s, looking proud and maybe just a little embarrassed.
The fiftieth anniversary of the freedom rides has sparked more retrospection than introspection. Last summer, I discussed the freedom rides in detail on the eve of the trial of Curtis Flowers. How much had changed, I asked, since thousands of heroic young people flocked to the South to challenge segregation laws and, more often than not, pay a visit to Mississippi’s notorious Parchman prison (where, incidentally, Curtis Flowers now resides). The post has received 4,000 hits (that’s a lot by the modest standards of this blog), suggesting that interest in the freedom riders remains high.
An article in the Washington Post poses the obvious question: If all these young people were willing to place their lives on the line in 1961, why aren’t today’s young people demonstrating a similar dedication to justice? Few real answers emerge. American schools have essentially resegregated and nobody seems to care. Jackson, Mississippi was the primary destination of the freedom riders. In 1961, the Post article reports, Jackson was only one-third black, now, largely thanks to white flight, the school system is overwhelmingly black. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Hell has always been a hot topic in America. Rob Bell’s Love Wins created such a pre-publication stir that the book debuted at number 2 on the New York Times best-seller list and remains on Amazon’s top 10.
Bell’s take on heaven and hell rests on the recent scholarship of folks like NT Wright (on the evangelical side) and Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan (writing from a more liberal perspective). (Brian McLaren offers a slightly more cerebral, and original, popularization of this new scholarship.) The big idea is that salvation isn’t about going to heaven (or hell) when you die; eternal life (for better or worse) begins now.
In a recent chat with Welton Gaddy, Rob Bell offered this typically folksy summary of his perspective.
I start with the first century world of Jesus. Jesus spoke very clearly and forthrightly about this world: that the scriptural story and the Jewish story that he was living in was about the reclaiming of this world, the restoration and the renewal of this world. So, Jesus comes, He teaches his disciples to pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The action for Jesus was here on earth, about renewing this earth, about standing in solidarity with those who are suffering in this world. And he spoke of a kingdom of God, which is here and now: upon you, among you, around you, within you.
So in the book, I talk about this urgent, immediate invitation of Jesus to trust him, that God is good, that God is generous, that God is loving, that God is forgiving… And to enter into a new kind of quality of life with God right here, right now. So let’s bring some heaven to earth, let’s work to get rid of the hells on earth right now, let’s become the kind of people who love our neighbor… And that, for Him, it was immediate and urgent about this world. What happens when you die? He talks a little bit about that, but He’s mostly talking about this world. I think, for a lot of people, the Christian faith doesn’t have, for them, much to say about this world; that it seems to be all about what happens when you die. And so, the book, in some ways, flips it around and says: “I think this is actually what Jesus was doing.” (My emphasis, along with a few quick edits) (more…)
By Alan Bean
Why are so many right-wingers suddenly arguing the case for criminal justice reform? In this fascinating piece in Salon, Justin Elliot of Salon directs this question to Doug Berman, author of the influential Sentencing Law and Policy blog.
Here are the highlights:
1. Prison is far more brutal than most people believe it to be
2. Most of the conservatives currently leading the smart on crime crusade have been locked up: Duke Cunningham, Charles Colson, Pat Nolan, Conrad Black
3. The religious concept of redemption generally plays a large role in these conversions.
4. Historically, mass incarceration required the enthusiastic cooperation of the political left
5. When you do hard time you realize that harsh penalties are typically applied to crimes disproportionately committed by minorities
6. Busting budgets and historically low crime rates make this a good time for reform, but . . .
7. The political forces that drove mass incarceration are always lurking. (more…)
By Alan Bean
“So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.
Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Why must we love strangers? Because we are all strange in one way or another. With the exception of Native Americans, there are no homegrown Americans; we all came here from somewhere else. (more…)
This article requires no introduction or explanation, so I’ll shut up and let you read. Comments welcome. AGB
Phil Zuckerman. Professor of Sociology, Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. Dan Cady, assistant professor of history at California State University, Fresno.
The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message. (more…)
By Charles Kiker
On Sunday part of the scripture for the Sunday School class Patricia and I lead was from the sixteenth chapter of Acts, starting with the conversion of Lydia in Philippi, then to the exorcism of the spirit that possessed a slave girl. Now that slave girl and her spirit of divination was the source of considerable profit to her owners. So they were more than a little unhappy with Paul and Silas regarding this turn of events. The girl’s owners complained to the police, who arrested Paul and Silas, beat them, and threw them in the calaboose. So how did Paul and Silas respond? They had a prayer meeting and a hymn sing. (more…)
By Alan Bean
Megachurch pastor, Rob Bell has a new book coming out that claims hell is freezing over. “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die;” Rev. Bell asserts, “it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.”
Not surprisingly, Pastor Bell is being trashed by the evangelical establishment . . . and the book hasn’t even come out.
Have you ever noticed the strong correlation between a stout belief in hell and support for mass incarceration? I doubt anyone has done any polling on this, but there is a powerful narrative connection between hell and prison. If God plans to toss the miscreant into the lake of fire at judgment day, why should we be concerned about rehabilitation here below? God gives up on people; why shouldn’t we? (more…)
By Alan Bean
American liberals can’t fathom the appeal of the Tea Party phenomenon. Here we are, struggling to recover from a recession created by massive tax cuts, military adventurism, and an under-regulated financial sector and what are they asking for: more tax cuts, even less government regulation, and more military spending.
Moreover, this message sells in the heartland, big-time.
By every standard of rationality, progressive politics should be enjoying a renaissance. The alternative has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. And yet politicians aligned with Tea Party rhetoric are winning elections and shaping the political agenda. How can these things be? (more…)
Friends of Justice 