Category: Uncategorized

Kiker: Seventy Times Seven

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By Charles Kiker

On one occasion Simon Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother? Up to seven times?”

Now, Peter thought he was being generous. After all, seven is a complete number in Biblical culture. But Jesus said “No, not seven times.”

Let’s put scripture on pause at that point, and wonder what Peter was thinking during the pause. Maybe once would be enough. Twice at most. Jesus had said something like if someone slaps you on the cheek, just turn the other. And he hadn’t said what to do after that.

Maybe Peter was carrying a grudge about something that he knew he needed to forgive, but was hoping to get it settled at minimal emotional cost with the absolute least forgiveness possible. Surely twice would be enough, and surely seven times would be more than enough. Let’s release the pause button and hear Jesus out.

“No Peter, not seven times, but seventy times seven.” It’s seven times multiplied by itself and then multiplied again by another complete number, ten—an infinite number.

That’s the way it is with God’s forgiveness. It’s infinite. It’s perfect. Jesus tells us to be perfect even as our heavenly father is perfect. And this is in the context of loving our enemies, and praying for those who persecute us. We are in this to be like God, who makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Jesus modeled on earth this heavenly forgiveness even as he was suffering on the cross. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Nelson Mandela was a remarkable human being. He was a black man who lived in apartheid South Africa. Under apartheid, all black people were required to carry a kind of passport at all times, and if they were in an area restricted to whites, they had to have written in that passport permission, signed by an authority, allowing their presence in that whites only area.

Blacks and other non-white “coloreds” were in the vast majority in South Africa, and naturally chafed under apartheid restrictions. A large group came in nonviolent resistance to Sharpsville, intending to give up their papers, thereby becoming criminals, and surrender themselves for arrest. But instead of arresting them, the police opened fire with live ammunition, killing a large number of the protesters. Mandela, a leader of the African National Congress, decided it was time to abandon non-violence and engage in sabotage. He was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

International condemnation finally led to the abandonment of apartheid. Mandela was released after twenty-seven years in prison, and in the first free elections in South Africa he was elected president. He might have sought to exact revenge; instead he practiced forgiveness and worked for reconciliation with his oppressors.

Nelson Mandela died last week at ninety-five years of age. If any person from our times has understood seventy-times-seven forgiveness, it is Nelson Mandela.

May his tribe increase.

Moral Monday movement unleashes ‘linguistic trauma’

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William Barber II
William Barber II

By Alan Bean

I write this from my motel room in Raleigh, North Carolina after spending the day with the most energized group of movement activists I have ever encountered.  You may have heard of the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. These are the people that made it happen.

Dozens of gifted people have devoted their energies to the Moral Monday (or, more accurately, the Forward Together Moral Movement), but the undisputed leader is the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a man of gentle power who may be the most gifted civil rights leader to emerge in the United States since Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m serious.  Since Dr. King was murdered in 1968, I haven’t witnessed such an impressive combination of eloquence, strategic savvy, intellectual gravitas, and analytic sophistication in a single American individual.

But Barber is no demagogue.  A genuinely humble man, he provides leadership because someone must,  He knows when to step back and let others take charge.  “At our events, we don’t stick somebody up on stage by themselves,” he tells us.  “That sends the wrong message.  Instead, you will see speakers surrounded by a diverse group of supporters.”  This sends two messages: one, we have the back of the person at the microphone; and two, this isn’t about any single person.

Barber is president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of a Disciples of Christ congregation.  Professionally and educationally, he has deep experience with inter-racial coalitions and knows how to challenge white moderates without traumatizing them–an exceedingly difficult balancing act.  The trick is to create a genuinely inter-racial movement without resorting to pleasant lies about our nation’s toxic racial history.  “In the South,” Barber insists, “anti-racism must be at the center of any positive movement; otherwise, it’s going to implode.” (more…)

Ted Cruz shows us how to communicate in mixed company

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By Alan Bean

It has been heartening to read gracious statements from a number of conservative American leaders acknowledging the greatness of Nelson Mandela.  Consider these kind words from the Facebook page of Senator Ted Cruz:

HT ted cruz mandela status nt 131206 16x9 608 Ted Cruz Criticized for Praising Nelson Mandela

Unfortunately, many of the senator’s Facebook buddies were deeply offended by these sentiments.  In their eyes, Mandela was a communist agitator who advocated violence and torture.

On the other hand, the post garnered over 5,000 likes, so the reaction from the Cruz constituency was mixed.

When the hateful comments on the Cruz Facebook page were noted by outlets like MSNBC and ABC, the tone of the comments section changed markedly.  Go to the comments section now and you will find a raft of liberals hating on the haters.

I wish more of the left-leaning commentators had thanked Senator Cruz for acknowledging Mandela’s contribution to the cause of freedom.  Culture warriors rarely know much about the folks they oppose.  Most of what passes for common knowledge is culled from “look what the bastards’ are up to now” email subject lines.  What emerges is often a crude, unbalanced caricature of what the other side believes and why they believe it.

Liberals visiting the Ted Cruz Facebook page were driven there by news stories about the senator’s hate mail, so that’s what they focused on.  Still, when our ideological opposites do the right thing, they deserve our praise.  If we criticize the bad stuff, we should be prepared to celebrate the good.  And what Cruz said was admirably good.

That said, you can’t really blame the haters or the folks hating on the haters.  Both sides have been primed to respond as they do.  On the excellent Talk to Action site, Bill Berkowitz reminds us that the conservative movement, in both its political and religious expressions, supported Apartheid and demonized Nelson Mandela for decades.  After pointing out that conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney viewed Mandela as a terrorist thug, Berkowitz turns his attention to the Religious Right:

The Religious Right in this country — and the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in particular — were steadfast in its support of apartheid as well as  counter-revolutionary movements in Angola and Mozambique. “The liberal media has for too long suppressed the other side of the story in South Africa,” he said. “It is very important that we stay close enough to South Africa so that it does not fall prey to the clutches of Communism.”

“South Africa is torn by civil unrest, instigated primarily by Communist-sponsored people who are capitalizing on the many legitimate grievances created by apartheid, unemployment and policy confrontations,” Falwell said.

David John Marley noted in Pat Robertson: An American Life that Robertson said the ANC was “led by communists and was hostile to Israel” and “far too radical an element to ever work with,” while “his campaign literature made similar claims for the need to support the white government.”

In an infamous segment on “60 Minutes,” the Institute on Religion and Democracy excoriated the World Council of Churches (WCC) over its support for Mandela. The John Birch Society called Mandela “a communist terrorist thug.”

People who grew up listening to folks like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell took their inflammatory rhetoric to heart.   They go to the Ted Cruz Facebook page because it reinforces their antipathy for all things liberal–Obamacare in particular–and they aren’t disappointed.  But what do they make of the gracious memorial to Nelson Mandela?  All they know about the South African leader comes from religious right propagandists.  In other words, they are woefully misinformed.

Unfortunately, conservatives aren’t the only people who get most of their information from biased sourced.  In essence, the culture war amounts to two well-oiled and highly-financed propaganda machines speaking past each other.  Everybody shrieks soundbite mantras.  Concepts too complex for a bumper sticker shrivel and die in this world.  Messages aren’t intended for mixed company; messages are targeted to the passions (and ignorance) of “the base”.  Politicians voice their focus group-tested talking points.  Pundits weigh the soundbites in the ideological balance and render a verdict.  No wonder our national conversation has become so impoverished.

We need to learn how to speak in mixed company, because we live in an increasingly diverse world.  We need a real sharing of ideas grounded in respect for our ideological adversaries and a genuine desire to understand the social and emotional worlds they inhabit.  If we must disagree–and at times, we certainly must–let’s know enough about the folks on the other side to engage their actual position.

Next time you see a “look at what the bastards are up to now!” subject line, delete the email.   You are being propagandized.  Poorly paid interns have been browsing the web looking for ill-considered statements and inflammatory comments from leading figures on the other side that, taken out of context, can be used to fire up the troops on your side of the issue.  The intention is not to inform but to manipulate emotion.

I have written a great deal about “messy middle” churches.  Messy middle churches are home to folks embracing the full gamut of opinion on every conceivable issue; paleo-conservatives, radical liberals and everybody in between.  Pastors of messy middle churches rarely address the Christian gospel to hot-button issues like immigration, social security, the plight of the homeless and the wealth gap because they fear the inevitable disagreements these subjects elicit might prove divisive and unproductive.

If we approach these issues with bumper sticker slogans culled from media culture warriors the result will be divisive and destructive; but that isn’t the way real people of faith talk, especially in the presence of people who are likely to disagree.

Mixed company forces us to choose our words carefully, to think before speaking, to anticipate counter-arguments.  In mixed company, we are inclined to put the most gracious spin on our comments because we don’t want to be misunderstood.  In other words, mixed company encourages genuine communication.

Ted Cruz honored Nelson Mandela for at least two reasons.  First, Cruz sees himself as a freedom fighter and is willing to grant the same status to the great South African.  He could have enumerated the points on which he and Mandela disagree, but chose to emphasize commonalities.

Secondly, Cruz is smart enough to know that his Facebook comments would be scrutinized by the media, so he put a gracious spin on the ball.  He was speaking in mixed company, and he was smart enough to know it.

Dave Ramsey channels Ebeneezer Scrooge

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Dave Ramsey

We can thank Dave Ramsey for bringing clarity to the economic justice debate.  Ramsey wasn’t trying to shock and dismay thinking Christians, mind you, it was all very accidental.  He innocently published Tom Corley’s “20 Things the Rich Do Every Day: So what do the rich do every day that the poor don’t do?”  After giving us his list, Corley says:

I spent 5 years studying the daily activities of 233 wealthy people and 128 poor people.  What I discovered was that wealthy people have vastly different daily habits than poor people.  In fact, I tracked 140 daily activities that separate the wealthy from the poor and in this article I will highlight 20 of these activities. These Rich Habits are the financial equivalent of the Holy Grail. Because there is no research like this of any kind, these discoveries are revolutionary and will challenge everything you thought you knew about becoming wealthy.  The Rich Habits will transform your life from one of financial failure to one of unlimited financial success beginning in as little as thirty days. I will show you how easy it is to reinvent yourself in these 30 days.  In order to become wealthy you must learn how to walk in the footsteps of the wealthy . . .

Notice, Corley isn’t saying that the impact of poverty is worsened by poor decision making; poverty, in this view, is caused by those choices.  There are no other contributing factors.  Losing your job, a major illness, a serious downturn in the economy, a major drop in the value of your home, taking a leave of absence to care for a dying loved one . . . none of that stuff has anything to do with your economic standing.  It’s all about you and the decisions you make. (more…)

David Barton’s historical therapy: the twerking is working

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Therapeutic historian, David Barton

Earlier this fall, Politico’s Stephanie Simon chronicled the amazing rehabilitation of faux-historian David Barton.

Last year, Barton’s reputation was in free fall after seventy evangelical historians criticized the blatant inaccuracies in Barton’s The Jefferson Lies.  These scholars weren’t upset that Barton interpreted American history from a conservative perspective–most of them do the same.  They were troubled, nay outraged, because Barton was peddling falsehood on a grand scale.

When Barton’s publisher, Thomas Nelson, pulled the book in response to a chorus of hostile reviews, many assumed that Barton was finished as an evangelical icon.

Not a bit of it.  By October of this year, Glenn Beck was encouraging Barton to run against Republican John Cornyn and Ted Cruz was inviting the evangelical “historian” to appear with him at political rallies.

If the criticism hurt Barton it doesn’t show.  In fact, suffering for righteousness’ sake was a disguised blessing. (more…)

Sorry, Rush, this Pope ain’t no politician

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By Alan Bean

“The Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here,” Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience last Wednesday, “and this is pure political.”  

Although Pope Francis wasn’t speaking “ex cathedra” in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” (and therefore made no claims to infallibility) he does get to define Catholic teaching.  He is the Vicar of Christ, after all.  At least if you call yourself a Catholic.

A bit later, Limbaugh claimed that “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”

There is some truth to this claim.  Pope Francis has been influenced to a modest extent by liberation theology, an effort by Third World theologians to explore God’s “preferential option for the poor” from a Marxist perspective.  It is orthodox Catholic teaching to claim that God has a heart for the poor.  It should be orthodox Protestant teaching too, and, beyond the confines of American culture Christianity, it is.

But Pope Francis hasn’t been critical of capitalism, as such; his beef is with “unfettered capitalism”.

Limbaugh, correctly, points out that unfettered capitalism doesn’t exist anywhere.  Markets are always subject to some government regulation, the question is, how much.  But the rapid worldwide increase in wealth inequity is a direct result of steadily declining government control of global markets.  Moreover, the “trickle down” school of economics the Pope is critiquing largely endorses unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism. Markets may not be completely unregulated, but Limbaugh and his ilk seem to imply that they should be.

A 2011 poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute found that 44% of Americans believe Christian values are at odds with capitalism while only 36 percent believe that Christianity and capitalism can be harmonized.  In fact, only 56% of Tea Party enthusiasts think capitalism and Christianity are completely simpatico.  According to this survey, 61% of Americans don’t believe businesses would behave ethically without government oversight.

Capitalism & Christian Values

Not surprisingly, the study found that minority Christians believe the Church should address social and economic issues; white Christians want to hear sermons about social issues, but they don’t want their preachers talking about economics.

Limbaugh’s claim that the Pope’s critique of trickle down economics is “pure political” (sic) isn’t surprising.  The white Christians who don’t want to hear issues of economic justice addressed from the pulpit frequently make the same claim.  “I don’t come to church to hear political sermons,” they say.

They really mean that they don’t want to be reminded about Jesus’s statements regarding about the love of money and the fires of hell.

But how “political” are pastors being when they talk money from the pulpit.  When politicians talk about money they are trying to tell voters what they want to hear without losing support from deep pocket donors.  Politicians from poor, minority districts occasionally talk straight about money; but elected officials with wealthy constituencies (Democrat or Republican) deflect attention whenever possible from  the addiction to unrighteous mammon that has become an inescapable part of the political game.

A Brookings Institute economics values survey from this summer shows that 44% of American white evangelicals describe themselves as economic conservatives.  I suspect most of these people hold trickle down economics in high regard.  Among white Catholics and Mainline Protestants, only 34% embrace the economic conservative label.  But among Latinos, only 7% describe themselves as economic conservatives and only 3% of African Americans are comfortable with the label.  

When American Christians complain about “political” sermons, they are really objecting to prophetic biblical preaching that hasn’t been passed through a political filter.  We don’t hear this kind of talk from politicians or from political pundits.  If preachers don’t give us the biblical perspective we will have to find it for ourselves.  If we take our definition of normality from the political sphere, we can’t read the Bible with comprehension.

White American Christians insist on political sermons.  The kind that reinforce what we already believe.  The kind of that appeal to the handful of deep pocket contributors who keep the church finances in the black.  That’s political preaching, and we can’t get enough.  

Pope Francis gave us prophetic biblical preaching stepped in the ethics of Jesus.  Compare his frank rebuke with the pablum we have come to expect from politicians and the difference is stunning.   Pope Francis is an astute political philosopher but, thanks be to God, he ain’t no politician.

Pope Francis preaches good news to the poor

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By Alan Bean

Fox Business host, Stuart Varney, is mad at Pope Francis.

“I go to church to save my soul.  It’s got nothing to do with my vote. Pope Francis has linked the two. He has offered direct criticism of a specific political system. He has characterized negatively that system. I think he wants to influence my politics.”

He’s right, the Pope does want to influence his politics.  And, although the new Pope hasn’t criticized a particular brand of politics, he is demonizing the economic system near and dear to Varney’s heart.

The Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) doesn’t attack capitalism as an economic system.  The target is the brand of trickle down economics that is often associated, in the United States, with the Chicago School of economics.  Capitalism always comes with some measure of governmental regulation; it’s a matter of how much and of what kind.

The argument driving Evangelii Gaudium begins with a bold statement:

We need to distinguish clearly what might be a fruit of the kingdom from what runs counter to God’s plan.  This involves not only recognizing and discerning spirits, but also—and this is decisive—choosing movements of the spirit of good and rejecting those of the spirit of evil.

(more…)

Is concern over domestic sex trafficking overblown?

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By Alan Bean

Two posts with related content caught my attention this week.  First, defense attorney Mark Bennett takes the Dallas Morning News to task for repeating the bizarre accusation that over 300,000 sex trafficking cases are prosecuted each year in Houston alone.  Bennett checked the actual number and discovered that (a) only 105,004 felony and misdemeanor cases were prosecuted in Houston in 2012 for all crimes combined, and (b) only 2 cases prosecuted in Houston courts related unambiguously to sex trafficking.

Secondly, Fred Clark tells the story of Fran Keller, a woman from Oak Hill, Texas who was recently released from prison after serving 20 years for a “satanic ritual abuse” case created out of thin air.  Clark argues that there are zero confirmed and documented cases of satanic ritual abuse in the United States–the crime is the invention of the overwrought religious imagination.  As I document in my book Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, a satanic ritual abuse scare swept across the Bible Belt two decades ago, and lots of people exploited the opportunity.  Tragically, a lot of people also went to prison for non-existent crimes produced, in most cases, by counselors coaching three year old clients to repeat sordid tales that, all evidence to the contrary, must have happened.  This was certainly the case in the Fran Keller fiasco.

Sex trafficking is a hot item these days, especially in evangelical circles.  Unlike satanic ritual abuse, sex trafficking actually occurs and the victims are often vulnerable immigrants.  In some third-world countries, sex trafficking has grown to scandalous proportions.  Nonetheless, the vast majority of women involved in sex work in the United States do what they do because they need the money and they believe they can’t find a better way of earning it.  True, many of these career decisions are made in early adolescence (or pre-adolescence in some cases), so we sometimes must ask if a genuine choice is involved.

That being said, most women in the sex industry got in, and stay in, because the advantages appear to out-weigh the disadvantages.

I sometimes fear that evangelicals focus on domestic sex trafficking because it is one of the few moral issues that can be addressed without messing with systemic economic injustice.  On the surface, the issue appears to involve evil adults, normally male, who are easily demonized. Therefore, we can express moral outrage without having to take sides in the American culture war.  Nobody gets upset or pushes back.

Don’t get me wrong, I congratulate Christians who focus their love on women working in the sex field–these people need all the help they can get, no question.  But why are we talking about sex trafficking while remaining silent on immigration reform, mass incarceration, homelessness or white collar crime?

Is an exaggerated and narrow focus on sex trafficking the contemporary equivalent of the ritual satanic abuse craze of the mid-1990s?  I would appreciate it if those who know more about this issue than I do could critique my thesis which, I freely admit, is rooted in a gut suspicion.

 

Of hell and hell fire: it’s not what you think

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C.S. Lewis as a young man

We worship a bi-polar deity, most of us anyway.  Our God is the very definition of love . . . but, like the killer bunny in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “he’s got a vicious streak a mile wide.”

We are taught that God is love.  We are taught that God consigns the wicked to hell for eternity.  Surely both can’t be true?

C.S. Lewis (who, like Jack Kennedy, died fifty years ago today), captured this dilemma beautifully in The Pilgrim’s Regress.  It was his first crack at Christian apologetics written shortly after his conversion to Christianity in 1929.  The allegory is set in the land of Puritania where a young boy named John is taken, as all young boys eventually are, to meet the Steward.  Puritania is owned by “the Landlord”, a shadowy figure who has gone abroad and left his vast domains in the hands of a caretaker.  Lewis was always at his best writing about children, and his description of John’s visit to the Steward is so good I will give you the whole story just as he wrote it: (more…)

Is Texas giving up its war on Darwin?

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Creationists' Last Stand at the State Board of EducationBy Alan Bean

It’s hard for ordinary people like you and me to evaluate the creationism v. evolution debate.  We all have our opinions, of course, but most of us are taking a shot in the dark.  Young earth creationists generally believe that the “Christian world view” will be lost forever if the evolutionists win.  In other words, this really isn’t about science at all, it’s about tribalism.  If every member of the tribe could admit to being wrong about evolution at the same moment, we could pull it off.  But so long as embracing evolution means banishment from the tribe, few have the courage to change their convictions.

The pro-science people embrace the doctrine of evolution because the vast majority of biologists believe it.  Some of us have a course or two in evolutionary biology and may even have read a popular book or two on the subject.  But we are not scientists.

We believe in evolution because the theory makes conceptual sense.

More importantly, because an overwhelming consensus has emerged within the scientific community that evolution is the only theory available that squares with the evidence at our disposal.

Finally, we find it unlikely that 99% of the world’s biologists have joined a conspiracy to lie to the public. (more…)