Month: March 2019

Why Did Early Political Zionists Want to Confuse Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism?

(This is the second in a series of posts discussing the recent debate over anti-Semitism vs. anti-Zionism.  You can find the first post here.)

I have a favorite book shop in the Palestinian section of Jerusalem.  It’s only a short walk from our favorite hotel just down the road from the Damascus Gate of the Old City.

Terry usually steps across the street to shop for children’s books while I search the long rows of “alternative” books on the history of Palestine, Israel, Zionism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the political debates fueled by the post-Zionist movement, and much much more.

I never cease to be amazed at the ready availability (at least, if you know where to look) of anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian literature in the heartland of ethnocratic, political Zionism.  I suspect that I could never find these titles in anything but the most exotic, well-hidden American bookstore.

My regular pilgrimage to this wonderful, mental oasis — owned and operated by a most congenial Palestinian family, whose children can operate the cash register as easily as their parents — always concludes as I carry away arm-loads of new books to devour during our stay.

I like to read as many of these titles as possible while we are living with our Palestinian family in the refugee camp.  It allows me to share what I am learning and ask questions of my friends, Ayed and Ghada, to compare their personal knowledge with the things I am reading.

One of the books I read this past November was State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, by Thomas Suarez, published by Olive Branch Press, 2017.  I encourage you to read it.

Suarez’s work is built upon extensive research in various national archives, and is bolstered with copious citations from these first-hand sources.

The esteemed Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote about this book:

The book is the first comprehensive and structured analysis of the violence and terror employed by the Zionist movement, and later the state of Israel, against the people of Palestine.

A German, Jewish physicist, Wolfgang Yourgrau had emigrated to Palestine but decided to abandon the Zionist project in 1948.  On the front-piece of

Wolfgang Yourgrau

his book, Suarez quotes Yourgrau from the February 1943 edition of the Orient.  Yourgrau wrote:

The growth of Fascism in Palestine at a time when the liberated nations will put it into its grave is a tragi-comedy.

These two citations will give you a sense of the story-line waiting to unfold when you pick of a copy of State of Terror. It’s a book that makes for horrific reading, especially for anyone not already familiar with the revolutionary, nationalist-racial movement known as Zionism.

Heck, I’ve studied this story extensively, and I still found myself horrified by the new things I learned while reading Suarez.

David Ben-Gurion

One of the themes Suarez documents is the efforts of men like David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first prime minister) and his circle of cronies to identify anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Weaponizing the charge of anti-Semitism so that it could be lobbed like a hand-grenade at anyone critical of early Zionism and their methods was a deliberate rhetorical strategy devised by Zionists in public debate.

Ben-Gurion and his comrades were shrewd.  People were especially sensitive to accusations of anti-Semitism before and during the Second World War.

Defenders of Zionism knew they could get away with such slanderous smears with minimal push-back in the era of Adolf Hitler.

But more importantly there was an important ideological basis for this particular word game.

The early Zionists insisted that their new state of Israel would become THE

Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the AIPAC policy conference, 2011

national homeland for all of world-wide Jewry.  Even today, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, can insist that when he opens his mouth, he speaks “not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people.”

As the author of this piece in Haaretz (Feb. 12, 2015) says, the leader of Israel readily claims to “speak for all Jews whether they like it or not.”

Ben-Gurion and his cohorts believed what they wanted to believe: Israel was going to represent all Jews everywhere.  All Jews everywhere were automatic citizens, whether or not they had ever set foot in Palestine.  Zionist Israel would become the global, collective “Jew” standing astride the world stage.

By this logic, if you accept it, wittingly or unwittingly, criticizing Israel is transmogrified into criticizing Judaism and all Jews.  Anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism because there is no longer an independent concept of Jewishness apart from the life, health and prosperity of the new Zionist nation-state.

Consequently, from its very early days, Zionist leaders worked to exacerbate anti-Semitism (real or imagined) whenever and wherever possible in order to motivate immigration to the Promised Land — the only place for all Jews to properly belong.

Many people do not realize that before Israel was officially established, Zionist leaders refused to assist European Jews escaping the Holocaust unless they first pledged to settle in Palestine.  If you were a refugee fleeing the Nazis and you wanted passage to Canada or American, for example, David Ben-Gurion happily left you to your fate in Auschwitz.

Early Zionism also fomented anti-Semitism in order to encourage increased in immigration through fear.  Suarez provides documentation describing the well-known Zionist bombing of an Egyptian movie house for the sole purpose of stirring up anti-Jewish sentiment.  The resulting Arab attacks against Egyptian Jews prompted a sizeable increase in Jewish emigration from Egypt into Palestine.

In fact, Suarez documents internal conversations confirming that early Zionist leaders depended on something they called “the eternal crisis” of global anti-Semitism.  The never-ending threat of this “eternal crisis” became an important means of fueling the perpetual fear and insecurity that Zionists could exploit in motivating people to immigrate to Palestine, the only land where they could ever “be safe.”

Fortunately, many people, both then and now, have seen through the web of lies and illogic at the root of Zionism’s language games.  The Jewish authors mentioned in my previous post well describe how to untangle this web of misrepresentations.

Israel does not represent all Jews or all of Judaism.

Zionism is not the same as Jewishness or Judaism.

Orthodox Judaism can be thoroughly anti-Zionist

In fact, the earliest and most vocal anti-Zionists were orthodox rabbis and their congregations who saw the identification of a nation-state with the aspirations of their revered religion as nothing short of blasphemy.

Anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism.

They are not synonyms.  They are two separate things all together.

It’s not hard to see how the ghosts of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Menachim Begin live on in the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the current crop of pro-Israel spokespeople attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The US Congress is powerfully haunted by the illogic, deceit and deliberate misconceptions planted by pro-Zionist apologists.  As Mark Twain said, A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is still lacing up its boots.

However, that only means that those who know and speak the truth, people like Ilhan Omar, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Phyllis Bennis and numerous orthodox rabbis will need frequent encouragement never to give up.

I pray that my readers will join their ranks and defend the universal principles (applicable to all people in all nations) of human rights, dignity and justice for all, without discrimination.

 

When is Anti-Semitism Not Anti-Semitism?

Answer 1: when the alleged anti-Semite is actually defending Palestinian human rights by highlighting the oppressive, anti-Palestinian policies implemented by political Zionist parties in the state of Israel.

Answer 2: when the alleged anti-Semite is criticizing Israel’s political Zionist policies that discriminate against and overtly oppress the Palestinian people within Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Answer 3: when the alleged anti-Semite is criticizing specific actions taken by and/or specific policies advanced by a Jewish individual or a Jewish organization that intends to support and defend the anti-Palestinian policies of political Zionism in the state of Israel.

An anti-Semitic cartoon from pre-war Germany

Anti-Semitism has historically been defined as belief or behavior that is hostile, discriminatory or prejudicial against Jews as a religious or ethnic group simply because they are Jews.

Sadly, since the rise of Donald Trump and the political victories of extreme right-wing groups in Europe, the vile beast of anti-Semitism appears to be growing and spreading its hateful influence.  That is very, very troubling.

But another cause for sadness is the pernicious way in which political Zionism has deliberately muddied the waters through its longstanding propaganda tactics of confusing anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.

It is no accident that Rep. Ilhan Omar is this very day (Wednesday, March 6, 2019) being reprimanded (though her name is not mentioned) on the floor of the House of Representative through a bi-partisan Resolution

Graffiti found by Rep. Omar in a public bathroom

condemning anti-Semitism within the halls of Congress (read the text here), at the very moment she is receiving death threats and public excoriation for her criticisms of the pro-Zionist Israel lobby in this country.

Political Zionism’s confusion of (a) conscientious antagonism against the discriminatory practices of an exclusive, ethnocratic, Jewish-only state with (b) a “belief or behavior that is hostile, discriminatory or prejudicial against Jews as a religious or ethnic group simply because they are Jews” is one of the most stone-cold, cynical exploitations of human suffering imaginable.

I’m sorry, but it’s not much different from Jack the Ripper dressing himself up as a virginal washer woman innocently roaming the London streets.  Anyone perceptive enough to see through his disguise risks immediately being tackled and beaten up as one more would be rapist.

On the one hand, the mainstream victory of Zionist polemics in manipulating the terms of public debate is a remarkable achievement in public relations, deserving of the highest accolades in the halls of modern propaganda.  As long as we remember that propaganda prefers to work for liars and con-men.  People who stand for the truth never need propaganda’s trickery.  In that respect, Josef Goebbels would be proud of what political Zionism has wrought.

On the other hand, these tactics also pave the way for government officials to strip people of their civil rights, especially the freedom of speech.  We see this trend already embedded in Israel, Canada, France and the United States where bills outlawing the BDS movement as anti-Semitic are being passed faster than a crippled snail at the French Grand Prix.

Here is the million-dollar question, however:  How is criticizing Israel any different than criticizing Russia, which is every pundit’s favorite punching bag nowadays?  It isn’t.

How is criticizing a powerful lobbying organization that devotes itself to promoting American financial aid, arms shipments, as well as domestic and international support for the state of Israel any different than criticizing comparable organizations that do the same for China or Cuba or Kazakhstan?  It isn’t.

The root of the problem is political Zionism’s successful confusion of Jewishness with Zionism in the public mind.

Unpacking that problem will require more space and time.  I will have more to say about this problem, but for now please take some time to read and/or listen to the following excellent defenses of Rep. Omar and her criticisms of the Israel Lobby in America offered by two outspoken American Jews who also criticize AIPAC, Israel and political Zionism.

Who is going to call them anti-Semites?!

Well, actually, many political Zionists will call them “self-hating Jews.” But that, too, is a discussion for another post.

First, “I’m Jewish, And I Find the Hypocrisy of Republican Islamophobes Hounding Ilhan Omar Breathtaking,” in Newsweek magazine, by Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a staunchly anti-Zionist organization.

Here is an excerpt:

“It has never been more important to be able to distinguish between the critique—even the harshest critique—of a state’s policies (Israel,) and discrimination against a people (Jews.)  Israel does not represent all Jews.  Not all Jews support Israel. Speaking out for Palestinian human rights and their yearning for freedom is in no way related to anti-Semitism, though the Israeli government does its best to obscure that.  And yes, there are anti-Semites who support Palestinian rights. They have no place in any movement for justice, which Palestinian leaders of the movement have made very clear.”

Second, “The Democratic Party Attacks on Ilhan Omar are a Travesty,” in The Nation magazine, by Phillis Bennis, another staunch anti-Zionist Jew.

Here is an excerpt:

“Attacks on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar are rising. One of the first Muslim women elected, Omar is also black, an African immigrant, a former refugee from Somalia, and wears her hijab in the halls of Congress. She is under attack from the leaders of her own party for anti-Semitic statements she never made, for anti-Jewish prejudice she never expressed, for hatred of Jews she doesn’t hold. And the Democratic Party leadership is considering a resolution whose early text, at least, while not mentioning Omar by name, is clearly aimed at accusing her of precisely those things, despite the fact—ignored by the Speaker of the House and other top officials—that she never said or believed any of those words.

“The most recent attacks on Representative Omar are based on her answer to a broad question about anti-Semitism during a recent town hall meeting at Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC. I was there, sitting just a few feet from Omar, asking a question during the Q&A. She never said that Jews have dual loyalty. She never expressed “prejudicial attitudes” or supported “discriminatory acts” against Jews or anyone else. And yet that is the language being proposed for a Democratic Party–sponsored resolution aimed at undermining Omar’s credibility, and likely that of Rashida Tlaib, the other Muslim woman just elected to Congress. Like Omar, Tlaib, who is Palestinian, stands forthrightly in support of Palestinian rights, against the power of the pro-Israel lobby and other lobbies that use money to influence Congress to support guns, environmental destruction, and Israeli violations of human rights—and she stands against racism and anti-Semitism.”

 

 

Yes, AIPAC is Much Too Powerful

Yesterday the New York Times published an article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg entitled, “Ilhan Omar’s Criticism Raises the Question: Is Aipac Too Powerful?”

Her article offers a clear answer to the question.  You can read an excerpt

Israel’s prime minister speaks to the annual AIPAC convention

below (all emphasis is mine). You can read the full article by clinking the title above:

“When Representative Ilhan Omar landed a coveted seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Stephen Fiske began working the phones to Capitol Hill.

“Alarmed by messaging that he saw as anti-Semitic and by Ms. Omar’s support for the boycott-Israel movement, Mr. Fiske, a longtime activist with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, began texting and calling his friends in Congress to complain. He is hoping Aipac activists will punish Ms. Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, with a primary challenge in 2020.

“On Wednesday, House Democratic leaders will mete out one form of punishment: Spurred by outrage over Ms. Omar’s latest comments suggesting that pro-Israel activists ‘push for allegiance to a foreign country,’ they will put a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on the House floor.

“”Many other people involved in the pro-Israel community, a lot of Aipac-affiliated members, there’s a lot of concern; there’s a clarion call for activism,’

A bi-partisan meeting of Congressional leaders with Israel’s prime minister, hosted by AIPAC

said Mr. Fiske, who is the chairman of a political action committee that backs pro-Israel candidates…

“’It is so disingenuous of some of these members of Congress who are lining up to condemn these questioning voices as if they have no campaign finance interest in the outcome,’ said Brian Baird, a former Democratic congressman from Washington State, who became a vocal critic of Israel, and Aipac, after a constituent of his was killed by an Israeli Army bulldozer in Gaza while protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in 2003.

“’If one dares to criticize Israel or dares to criticize Aipac, one gets branded anti-Semitic,’ Mr. Baird added, ‘and that’s a danger to a democratic republic…’

“Mr. Fiske’s Florida Congressional Committee is one of a string of political action committees with anodyne names — NorPac in New Jersey, To Protect Our Heritage PAC outside Chicago, the Maryland Association for Concerned Citizens outside Baltimore, among others — that operate independently of Aipac but whose missions and membership align with it.

“Countless individual Aipac members and other pro-Israel donors give on their own — including megadonors like the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a onetime Aipac backer who has started a harder-line rival to the group…

“[I]n a recent article in The Nation, M.J. Rosenberg, who worked for Aipac in the 1980s and is now a critic of the organization, described how ‘Aipac’s political operation is used precisely as Representative Omar suggested,’ including during policy conferences, when members gather ‘in side rooms, nominally independent of the main event,’ to raise money and ‘decide which candidate will get what.’…

“In 1982, Aipac activists organized to oust Paul Findley, an Illinois House member who had embraced the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat. The To Protect Our Heritage PAC, run by Aipac activists in Skokie, Ill., backed Richard J. Durbin, according to Marc Sommer, a PAC official.

“Two years later, Aipac activists mobilized to replace Senator Charles Percy, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a backer of a deal allowing the sale of sophisticated military planes called Awacs to Saudi Arabia, with the Democrat Paul Simon. Mr. Simon wrote in his memoir that Robert Asher, an Aipac board member in Chicago, asked him to run.

“The back-to-back victories established Aipac as an organization not to be trifled with. In the more than three decades since, Aipac has helped create and maintain a staunchly pro-Israel Congress…”

The Cultural Captivity of the Church:  Corporate Worship as Group Therapy

(This is the second in a series of posts that I am calling The Cultural Captivity of the Church.  You can find the first post here.)

I recently attended a Sunday morning service where the sermon topic intended to answer the question, “why do we sing together during worship?” (Check out my series about the Biblical understanding of worship vocabulary here.)

The message had three points. We sing “worship” songs together because it:

  1. Stirs our faith.
  2. Helps us to remember the truth.
  3. Connects our emotions to the truth.

At no point was there any discussion of the lyrics or the content of these songs; of the importance of understanding and reflecting on the words we are saying, and whether they are appropriate words; of how or why the words we repeat may help or actually hinder us in remembering and becoming emotionally connected to “the truth.”  (The clear implication was that we simply trust our worship leaders and sing – with more enthusiasm and raised hands, no less – whatever we are shown on the big screen.)

Don’t misunderstand me.  I do not begrudge the fact that each of these things may happen when we participate in well-planned, well-led, congregational singing with meaningful content.  And I agree that they are three important experiences when song leaders lead well.

But notice the final outcome of this three-point outline.

From beginning to end, the message is entirely self-centered.

The clear implication is that we attend congregational worship and sing praise songs purely and simply because of what it does for us.

So, I should go to church because of what I can expect to get out of it.  I worship my God because of the things that I expect him to do for me.

The further implication, then, suggests that I can determine whether or not a service “has been a good worship service” by how it makes me feel.  Did it excite me?  Did it make me feel happy, or elated, or boisterous, or whatever – fill in the blank here.

In fact, the message’s final application was a rather guilt-manipulating insistence upon louder singing from more people with many more hands lifted higher into the air.  Apparently, the outward measure of worship “acceptable to the Lord” is measured by our conformity to denominational traditions about public, physical gesturing and emotional elation.

I couldn’t help but wonder what a Roman Catholic visitor might say about the absence of their traditional kneeling benches and the fact that this church never provides time for a congregation of sinners collectively to confess their sins.

I am sorry, but devoid of any broader context reminding us of God’s holiness (see my series on holiness here), of God’s majesty and his worthiness of our adoration, such messages are nothing more than lessons in religious self-gratification. (Note – the speaker did offer a 30-second introduction about glorifying God.  But it was so brief, so hurried and so undeveloped that the speaker left the impression that God’s nature was incidental to the things he had to say about music.)

Why do I offer this Sunday sermon as my first illustration of the cultural captivity of the American church?

In 1966 Philip Rieff, a professor of sociology at the University of

Prof. Philip Rieff

Pennsylvania, wrote an extremely insightful book entitled, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (check out the 40th anniversary edition, published by ISI Books in 2006).

Reiff was a keen social critic who observed a self-destructive trend in American society.  According to Reiff, the public role of traditional, Western religion had been to function as a faith community that defended (and even enforced) moral standards and ethical expectations in society.

But American life after Freud had begun to shift dramatically.

In post-Freudian America, the purpose of all religion was purely therapeutic; that is, religion is now supposed to cure our ills, not point out our wrongs.  How will we know when that’s happened?  The church will become a principle agent in teaching us to feel good about ourselves.  Our spiritual, that is, egocentric, dreams will be realized.

Let me share a taste of Reiff as he first quotes and then critiques a British spokesman for this new “therapeutic Christianity”:

“’Any religious exercise is justified only by being something men [sic] do for themselves, that is, for the enrichment of their own experience.’  Attached as [this writer] is to the word ‘Christian,’ the writer even seeks to make Jesus out to be a therapeutic…

 “What then should churchmen do?  The answer returns clearly: become, avowedly, therapists, administrating a therapeutic institution – under the justificatory mandate that Jesus himself was the first therapeutic.  For the next culture needs therapeutic institutions…

 “Both East and West are now committed, culturally as well as economically, to the gospel of self-fulfillment…Grudgingly, [church leaders] must give way to their Western laity and translate their sacramental rituals into comprehensible terms as therapeutic devices.”

 Sadly, professor Reiff was a secular prophet.  Though he lamented this social transformation (rooted in an American abuse of Freudian psychology) as the growth of an “anti-human” culture, his predictions have been realized.

Worse yet, American Christianity jumped on board this therapeutic railway, stoked its engines to overflowing and commandeered the controls.

Rather than challenging our culture, we have surrendered to it, replacing the glorified Lamb of God with a cosmic therapist whose greatest achievement is to help us ensure our emotional well-being.

Rather than proclaim the gospel of Christ which confronts a culture of self-centeredness, we float with the prevailing current wherever it takes us, as long as it helps us fill the seats, maintain the budget and grow the church.

And to add agony to agony, we are such inept students of our times, so unreflective, so lacking in self-awareness, and so ignorant of Biblical theology and church history that many evangelical leaders are dining happily with the devil while imagining they are exorcising the demonic.

Representative Ilan Omar is One of My New Heroes

The infamous, vile and ignorant poster place in a West Virginia gathering of Republicans

Rep. Ihan Omar receives death threats and is publicly humiliated on a Republican poster placed in the West Virginia House of Delegates crudely identifying her with the attacks on 9/11, yet according to both the Republican and Democratic leadership, she remains the problem.

I have never seen such cowardice and shameless pandering — actually, I take that back; we see it all the time — before the Zionist lobby in our nation’s capitol.

I intend to write one or two posts in the near future about the ways in which political Zionism has weaponized charges of anti-Semitism in order to shut down any and all debate about Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine.

Rep. Omar is an intelligent, brave soul who is speaking truth to power.  And the power of the Zionist lobby in this country can be ruthless.  It does not hesitate to destroy careers, reputations and businesses.

Omar is saying what others know but are afraid to declare, and she is paying the price of genuine leadership.

I pray for Rep. Omar’s safety, as well as that of her children and extended family.

Rather than write more today, I offer a selection of good articles discussing the current situation.  Each one is well worth your time.

“As Ilhan Omar Endures Anti-Muslim Racism, Most Lawmakers in Congress Remain Silent, by Elham Khatami at ThinkProgress.

“Israel Lobbies Slam Ilhan Omar Even as They Try to Bankrupt Small Leftist Arkansas Paper Over Israel Boycott,” by Juan Cole at Informed Comment.  Please go to the bottom of the piece and watch the 9  minute video of Omar explaining herself at a public meeting.  You may also see it here on YouTube.

“The Best Congress AIPAC Can Buy,” by Michael Hager at Foreign Policy Journal.

“AIPAC Doesn’t Contribute Directly to Candidates. Which Pro-Israel Groups Do?” by Raymond Arke at Open Secrets News.

The Cultural Captivity of the Church — Prelude

(This is the first in an unspecified number of posts that I will periodically produce addressing what I believe is the #1 silent killer of Christian faith in America:  the average believer’s failure to recognize the dangerous, cultural smog polluting our spiritual lungs every single day.  The posts will consist of various thoughts as they emerge from the mists of my own mental confusion.  I have been thinking about the issues involved for a long time, but have held off on posting my thoughts for reasons that I no longer feel are binding.  So here goes.  Please, let me know what you think.)

Here is my thesis:

A primary responsibility of every Christian leader in every Christian congregation is to help God’s people learn to see through the lies, distortions and misrepresentations of reality that are created for us by our culture.  (I begin by assuming that knowing reality fully requires knowing Jesus Christ.)

The most dangerous distortions are those that warp our perception of the things that matter most – questions of human existence, meaning, purpose, responsibility, and, of course, a right relationship with our Creator.

So here is every Christian’s challenge:  We spend the majority of our lives

swimming through an unfiltered stream of cultural pollution.  No, I am not condemning all things secular.  Neither am I suggesting that we should try to jump into a different, a more Christian, stream.  I am afraid that’s not possible, despite the testimonies of its many proponents.

I am afraid that we are what we are where we are.   Period.

Our culture permeates everything, usually in ways that we don’t understand or even begin to recognize.  Which is one important reason why the oft-repeated arguments in favor of solving our cultural problems by creating an alternative, Christian culture with Christian schools, Christian unions, Christian political parties, etc. is always doomed to fail.

These attempts at “engagement by means of alternatives” will always fail to address the problem because, first, we cannot extricate ourselves from ourselves.  We will always be the people creating the alternatives.  We are bound to who we are, where we are, and where we come from, alternatives be damned.

Secondly, even if we withdrew into the hinterlands of the furthest wilderness, we will always bring the pollution along with us.  The source of that pollution is a part of us, buried deep within, because we are all fallen sinners.

Thankfully, this life is not painted solely in tones of black and white.  The question is not about who is good and who is bad.  Everyone and everything in this world are always a mixture of both.

Even a polluted stream can contain elements of its original, God-ordained balance, the biological diversity including fish, insect life and vegetation that makes it all worth preserving.

Sadly, however, those polluted fish now have no choice but to breathe the dirty water, inhaling the pollutants along with the oxygen.  Human beings have so successfully polluted this planet that scientists can find mercury polluting the flesh of those flightless, tuxedoed birds coddling their eggs on the ice flows of Antarctica.

We are like those penguins and those fish.

The church’s cultural corruption is every bit as universal, which is why working to learn how to recognize the problem, working to learn how to address the problem, working to learn how to remedy the problem together within the Body of Christ is an essential part of spiritual maturity.

It is also a non-negotiable requirement of responsible church leadership.

Every Christian leader ought to be making this challenge a central ingredient in his/her job description. How do I recognize cultural corruption within the church?  How do I learn to see it within myself?  How can I help others to do the same?  Then, having learned to recognize it, what can we do about it?

How can we survive swimming in this culture without being suffocated by its corruption?  And, in what, precisely, does its corruption consist?

These are the kinds of questions we have to ask ourselves.

I’ll give you a hint of where I’m going with this argument.

The usual suspects of sex, divorce, alcohol, and tithing are the not church’s greatest threats.  They are significant problems, but they are not the “heavy metals” of our cultural corruption.  They are only the bacteria that eat away at a weakened body already diseased.