Thursday, September 28, 2006

Nice Jesus vs. Mean Jesus?

Today, I listened to an interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I love this program, but was troubled by some of the commentary offered by today's guest.

Terry was interviewing Jonathan Kirsh, who's new book is
A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization

Kirsch is a very thoughtful guy. Check him out at
http://www.jonathankirsch.com/

But I take major issue with the way he characterized a distinction between the Jesus of Revelation and the Jesus of the Gospels.

I'm going to paraphrase here. Listen to the full interview to judge how I'm doing.

Kirsch says the Jesus of Revelation is this warrior, wrathful, king, doing battle with evil forces, and destroying the wicked. In contrast, the Jesus of the Gospels is this nice, gentle teacher, who goes around hanging out with people and teaching them to love one another.

Don't forget to listen to the interview and post a comment if you disagree with how I characterize Kirsch's position.

Because I think it's extremely naive, dangerous, and frankly, tragic, to posit an image of a happy, nice Jesus against one of a vengeful, wrath-filled Jesus in one's reading of the New Testament.

The Jesus of New Testament narratives is a prophet, decrying the evils of the world's structures of oppression, and offering hope to those who suffer under those structures.

Clearly Jesus is concerned with how people in communities treat each other, but he is always oriented toward consolation of the dominated/outcast and indictment of the powerful.

For a good example of this, check out Luke 6:20-26

Kirsch rightly indicates that The Beast spoken of in the book of Revelation was probably the author's reference to the Roman Emperor (probably Nero) under which Christians of the day were being persecuted, as opposed to being some alternative name for Satan. This is consistent with Jesus' gospel rebuke of the world's agents of brutality.

Contrast the images of Jesus in the Gospels vs. Revelation, but not his character. In both, Jesus has come to preach good news to the poor (Luke 4:18)

Saturday, September 23, 2006

All Saints to reject IRS summons

Hey hey!

All Saints Episcopal church has voted to defy the IRS! Read the church's press release here.

An excerpt from the pastor, Rev. Ed Bacon:

"We have gathered and reviewed the most relevant of the documents requested by the summons. They fully support our position that we have always respected the IRS regulations against campaign intervention... We are today defending our religious responsibilities to criticize any public policies that demean or destroy any member of the human family. Our faith demands that we say without fear or intimidation that every human life is sacred and that in God's eyes every human life is equally precious. This calls us to speak to the issues of war and poverty, bigotry, torture, and all forms of terrorism... Because these responsibilities are required by our faith, they are therefore constitutionally protected."

Regardless of the specifics of our politics, all progressive persons of faith need to take an important lesson from these folks: You have to really OWN your commitments, or they're not commitments.

Torture Compromise

An agreement has been reached between the Administration and the Graham/McCain team on the bill intended to limit US interpretation of Geneva Convention

Read the New York Times write-up here.

A positive feature of the new bill: It spells out in detail a number of specific examples of what should be considered violations of Geneva Convention Common Article 3 (the part banning torture).

Cause for concern: The bill is described as functioning to prevent "grave violations" of the Geneva Convention.

Hmmm...

If the rule is "Don't torture people," wouldn't any violation be a grave violation?

Another question, prompted by reader Becky Boggs' comment on an earlier post of mine: "Where is the national outrage? Are we really a nation unwilling to question policies that endorse humiliation and torture of human beings?"

To that I would add, why would you ever leave it up to one party to critique their own party's priorities. I have a lot of respect for John McCain, but it shouldn't be up to a handful of decent Republican senators to confront the president.

I know it's fun to sit back and let Republicans fight with each other when they're usually such a united front, but when you do that, when you don't get a non-Republican dog in the fight, you end up still letting a bunch of guys on the right decide what the solution to the problems will be.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

All Saints Sermon response to IRS attack

Click here to read the sermon given this past Sunday by Rev. Ed Bacon in response to the IRS demand that All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena provide official documentation of sermons, newsletters and financial records surrounding their alleged "campaigning" during the 2004 presidential election season.

Daley's veto of Chicago Big Box ordinance

In Chicago, a huge initiative to pass legislation requiring Big Box retailers like WalMart to pay a living wage with benefits to all employees has failed, at least for the time being. The city council passed the measure, but mayor Richard Daley vetoed it, and last week his veto was upheld.

Chicago Tribune story

In reading some reader opinions on the Tribune page I saw folks falling into two camps.

  1. All efforts to garantee equitable compensation need to be made: social pressure, boycotts, and yes, LAW. (Quite interestingly, several labor unions were involved on this side of the argument, which stands out to me. When labor standards are enacted and enforced by law and not contract, that can take the steam out of movements to organize labor, ironically enough. The fact that the unions were on the side of the ordinance passing speaks to me of their integrity and authentic commitment to working people.)
  2. Fair wages are a good thing, but it's just too dangerous to have a municiple government regulating what the private sector has to pay its workers.

My question is: What exactly is a government for, if not the protection of members of its society from abuse and exploitation?

On the national level, all of our current administration's rhetoric around foreign policy boils down to the thesis that they are in the business of protecting Americans. But on the domestic front, our national minimum wage is still set at $5.15, where it has been for the past nine years. Currently, a person working full-time at this rate would earn $10,712, which is more than 30% below the 2005 federal poverty line of $15,735 for a family of three. (check out stats on the Economic Policy Institute website.)

A common critique of the City of Chicago Big Box ordinance was that rogue municipalities shouldn't arbitrarily set standards which ought to be regulated at the national level. But the folks at the national level aren't doing anything for working people. 21 states and District of Columbia already have minimum wage laws that set a standard higher than the federal requirement.

If capitalism, the bottom line, the demands of stockholders, etc. dominate the minds of corporate managers and CEOs, what dominates their hearts? What has to occur in the spirit of a person that he/she would conclude that he/she has no obligation to pay his/her employees enough money to live on? At what point does a person look directly at the economic realities of US cost of living and say, in effect, "It's okay for us to pay you less than you need to survive?"

Monday, September 18, 2006

Prophetic Voice or Liability?

"History is shamefully littered with the moral bankruptcy of people who were Christian in name but not behavior." - Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena California.

The IRS is threatening to strip this church of its tax-exempt status on the basis of a sermon given there by a guest preacher (the church's minister in years past) two days before the 2004 presidential election.

In the sermon, the pastor takes on the voice of Jesus, who is extremely critical of Bush's policies and attitudes. Several times in the sermon, the preacher, Rev. George Regas emphasized he was not endorsing either candidate, and he was critical of John Kerry as well. But way harder on Bush.

From the LA Times:

All Saints came under IRS scrutiny shortly after Regas, the church's former rector, delivered a sermon that depicted Jesus in a mock debate with then-presidential candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. The sermon did not endorse either candidate.

Regas' suggestion that Jesus would have told Bush his preemptive war strategy in Iraq "has led to disaster" prompted a letter from the IRS in June 2005 stating that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be a tax-exempt church."

Read the LATimes full article.

Read the controversial sermon from 10/31/04

Possible contemporary 1st world paraphrase: Mark 8:34 "If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their tax and follow me".

This weekend, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, the president of my seminary, Chicago Theological Seminary, will give several talks at All Saints, on various topics. I'm sure an op-ed will emerge from her experiences with that community. I'll link to it when it comes about.

Keifer and George

In the past couple years I've gotten into watching shows on DVD. There're no commercials, and you can watch as many episodes in a stretch as you want or have time to. So my wife and I borrowed the first two seasons of the Fox series 24 from a neighbor, and I have to say, the first season really hooked us. Cliche dramatics notwithstanding, this is a serious first-rate, keep-em-guessing, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

After finishing the first season, I was pumped to move on to the second. But somewhere a long the way, I became very disturbed by the themes and messages in this show. The storyline of the second season revolves around a plot to detonate a nuclear bomb somewhere in the continental U.S. High stakes indeed, and the hero of the show, played by Keifer Sutherland, does whatever the writers portray as "necessary" to prevent this from happening. During the first episode, Sutherland's character, Jack Bauer, shoots point-blank, then decapitates, an unarmed prisoner awaiting trial, so that he can use the head of this man to gain credibility with a group of criminals he is infilitrating to acquire important information about the terrorist plot.

Also, in various episodes in Season Two, and I am told subsequent seasons, Jack Bauer tortures with his enemies with various tactics, to acquire important information for saving the world.

The creators of this show aren't interested in the nuances of human character and motivation. The stories in 24 are crafted so that the audience will have total confidence that Jack is the Good Guy, through and through, and that the people he's countering are quintecientially, ontologically evil. We, the viewers, may have each upcoming plot-twist withheld from us until just the right moment, but we are at all times given a view of the Bad Guys' deeds and desires, so that we'll know the threat is real.

And this lets us know that Jack is our man - he knows what's really at stake, and whenever he does something that seems vicious or irrational, we need to just trust him, and we're always own within the next episode or so that he always makes the right choices, that his unorthodox, go-it-alone tactics are always for the best.

This show has been a smash hit for about five years now. And it came to my mind this past week as I read and listened to President George W. Bush's comments regarding the bill submitted by the Senate Armed Services committee to which would, among other things, strike down the CIA's license to "alternative interrogation techniques" (torture). Read about the bill here.

The challenge to President Bush comes from many well-respected members of his own party, including Sens. McCain and Graham, as well as former Sec. of State Powell, but in his press conference Friday, and his weekly radio addres, he argued strongly against limiting the powers of the CIA in this respect, with broad remarks that alternative interrogation techniques have saved lots of American lives.

One of Jack Bauer's trademarks is his constant manipulation or sidestepping of the rules of his agency because they keep him from being able to do what he has to do to get the bad guys. I see a real parallel here to Bush's constant emphasis that he doesn't need international approval or US conformity with the Geneva Convention to authorize his foreign policy decisions.

Much has been made of Colin Powell's statement last week that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," which I'd call a long-overdue understatement. I think it's certainly true, but in addition to the importance of this statement for global politics, I'm thinking about the blasphemy inherent in many of the attitudes guiding U.S. foreign policy.

We want to believe the U.S. is like Jack Bauer - all-knowing, always doing the right thing, however grisly its presentation. We may struggle with tactical decisions in the War on Terror, but we are crystal clear that the U.S. is really right about all the stuff that really matters. Broadly speaking, we and are friends are for Freedom, and our enemies are for Tyranny/Terror. And so we let our self-righteousness guide and authorize our actions.

This transgresses all sorts of ethical and theological boundaries. Whether we are persons of faith or simply consciencious citizens of the planet (two categories not mutually exclusive!) the idea is to have principles and ideals, for justice, peace, etc., that transcend us, exist beyond our local interests, so that we can strive for them, be guided by them. When we attempt to take the place of these ideals, or, in faith terms, to take the place of God, by saying we ourselves are actually that which is Right, we commit a most egregious blasphemy and propel ourselves down the path to atrocities. Like torturing people.

And the world where my, and George Bush's, and the CIA's choices and actions are played out is real, not the fantasy arena of a Fox t.v. series.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Welcome friends

I've created this blog to have the opportunity to explore and develop my ideas about theological aspects of the major issues and events in our time. A number of us in my seminary have joined together in an online community to create blogs, op-eds and other public statements about our positions on important social, economic and political issues, and to critique each other's perspectives and arguments.

If you're a friend who I've invited to this page or someone who just stumbled upon it, I invite you to PLEASE leave comments and responses to my postings. I am not only a person of faith and a man of conviction, but perhaps most importantly I desire to be helped and challenged voices different from mine.

Welcome!