Month: February 2021

The ICC Opens Investigation into Israeli War Crimes

Juan Cole has a new article at his news site, Informed Comment, discussing

Professor Juan Cole

the recent decision by the International Criminal Court to investigate numerous charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity made against Israel.

I examine these issues in my new book, tentatively titled, Like Birds in a Cage: How Bad Bible-Reading Leads Christian Zionists to Collaborate in Israeli War Crimes and Palestinian Suffering (Cascade, forthcoming).

Israel’s defensive public relations campaign is already in full swing, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others unleashing the now standard canard of accusing such investigations as expressions of antisemitic hatred.

This action by the ICC is an important first step that needed to happen years ago. What will come of it is anyone’s guess.

But I know this: Christians must stand on the side of justice and oppose all oppressors. That means that God’s people must stand with the Palestinian people while condemning Israeli racism and apartheid.

Here is professor Cole’s article:

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing about which one can now quip about missing opportunities.

Israel has egregiously violated the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of people in Occupied territories by flooding its own citizens into the Palestinian Territories, by stealing Palestinian land from its owners and building squatter settlements on it, and by using disproportional force against Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza border.

The court will also look into war crimes by Hamas, which was elected in 2006 and retains control of the Gaza Strip.

It has been impossible for anyone to stop Israel’s repeated and serious crimes against the Palestinians because the United States backs them to the hilt and is deeply implicated itself in keeping Palestinians stateless. (The “two-state solution” long since became geographically impossible, and invoking it and an alleged “peace process,” as the Biden administration does, is just a way of keeping the Palestinians from enjoying any human rights).

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cynically called the ruling “anti-Semitic,” in the ultimate debasement of a term that has otherwise been central to human rights struggles.

Filistin al-Yawm (Palestine Today) quotes Rami Abdu, head of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor as saying that the International Criminal Court announcement that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian Territories represents a victory, won by many sacrifices, for justice, freedom and ethical values in the world. It is, he said, the fruit of a Palestinian struggle that has lasted decades to win recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

As a result, he said, Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes from various generations will gain the right to seek justice after decades of occupation and to see the perpetrators tried in the Hague. He cautioned, however, that “The decision does not mean the end of the road, and the task will not be easy. The hope is that the Biden administration will adopt a different course from its predecessor, and will refrain from putting any pressure on the court.”

In spring of 2020, Trump declared a national emergency as a pretext for being able to target justices and staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions because they were looking into alleged crimes by US military personnel in Afghanistan. These outrageous and ineffectual sanctions have been lifted by the Biden administration.

The International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute circulated to UN member states in the late 1990s and finalized in 2002. The United States and Israel refused to sign or to recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Some 123 countries have, however, ratified the treaty and so incorporated it into their national law.

The court can take up cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and Apartheid committed by officials in the signatory states. It can apply sanctions to individuals in those governments after trying them. It does not sanction states but individuals. So far its cases have been entirely from Africa.

But the court’s hands are usually tied with regard to non-signatory governments. It cannot move against their officials unless the United Nations Security Council forwards a case to them. Thus, when the murderous regime of Muammar Gaddafi attacked civilians in winter-spring of 2011 during the Arab Spring youth revolt, the Security Council referred the case to the ICC. Its justices considered evidence against Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif Gaddafi, as well as interior minister Abdullah Sanusi. Arrest warrants were issued by the court for these individuals on June 27, 2011.

The State of Palestine led by Mahmoud Abbas had little hope of the US Security Council asking the ICC to look into Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, since the United States almost always uses its veto to protect Israeli officials from sanctions for their illegal occupation policies in the Palestinian Territories that they grabbed beginning in 1967.

The Palestinian David very carefully and with foresight therefore moved to join the International Criminal Court. The first obstacle they faced is that court members have to be members of the United Nations. Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the eclipse of Labor in favor of the far, far right Likud and its offshoots, Israel’s policy against the Palestinian people has been predicated on preventing Palestinians from ever having a state. They are to be kept stateless and deprived of the basic human rights that come with citizenship in a state.

So, Palestine sought the same status at the U.N. as is enjoyed by the Vatican, of
permanent observer state. The General Assembly can grant this status, and did so for Palestine in 2012. Permanent observer states cannot vote, but they are not voiceless and can attend sessions. Palestine’s prerogatives were expanded in 2019 when the Group of 77 at the UN elected it their chairman that year.

In 2015, the state of Palestine (as the UN calls it) acceded to the International Criminal Court and recognized its jurisdiction in the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.

This is like three dimensional chess on the part of the Palestinians. Because they now have what is called in the law “standing.” They are a permanent observer state at the UN and they are signatories to the Rome Statute.

Now just one step was left, which was to take to the ICC those Israeli officials operating in the Palestinian Territories in such a way as to violate the Rome Statute. Palestine did not hurry to do so, hoping that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu would see the legal peril and become more reasonable. But Netanyahu kept stealing their land and urging Trump to cut their funding (which he did), and by 2019 the Palestinians concluded that they had nothing left to lose by filing a claim.

The ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, declared a delay while she sought reassurances that the court had jurisdiction over Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A little over a year later, she has been assured that it does, given the recognition of the Palestine Authority as the government of those region in the Oslo Accords.

As Mr. Abdu said, this step is more the beginning of something rather than its end. Netanyahu will attempt to obstruct the workings of the court. But this is a great day for the international rule of law, and all believers in human rights should rejoice.

 

What Biden Did and Did Not Say about the War in Yemen

This past week, president Biden gave an important speech on US foreign policy. He included a pledge to scale back US military involvement in the war that has destroyed the nation of Yemen.

However, as with every political speech, Biden’s words were measured

US President Joe Biden speaks about foreign policy at the State Department in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2021. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

carefully. In fact, they hid as much as they revealed — perhaps more.

While any reduction in US war investment is worth cheering, Biden’s verbal hedging was a deliberate strategy to appease peace activists while leaving lots of room for war-hawks to maneuver.

Those who care about the fate of the Yemeni people still have a lot of word to do.

Abby Martin does a good job of parsing the president’s words. Watch and listen as she explains the issues below:

 

Biden Administration Continues to Bully Iran on Behalf of Israel

American historian and investigative journalist, Gareth Porter, has a new article discussing US relations with Iran at The GrayZone.

Gareth Porter

The title is, “Biden admin’s coercive Iran policy threats serious new regional crisis.”

Below is an excerpt, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above.

In case anyone was worried about the new Democratic administration getting serious about peace and fair-mindedness in the Middle East, have no fear. Biden is here!

The Biden administration continues the good old fashioned saber rattling and bullying tactics that have made US gunboat diplomacy famous around the world.

Although all US intelligence agencies confirm that Iran was always in full compliance with the terms of the (JCPOA) nuclear treaty, president Trump unilaterally torpedoed the treaty anyway.

Trump then imposed additional economic sanctions on Iran. Why? Because Trump’s evangelical base believes anything and everything the Israeli government says about its neighbor-states.

Israel hates Iran. So, evangelicals hate Iran. Thus, Trump black-balled Iran, despite its innocence.

After WE withdrew unilaterally for no good reason, any reasonable person could be forgiven for assuming that the US should apologize for its petulance, reenter the treaty, and THEN talk with Iran about how we will move forward.

But, no. The USA never apologizes and must always be the dominant, authoritative player.

Thus, America’s bipartisan instincts for war-mongering and gunboat diplomacy are just too strong for this Democratic administration to resist. So, once again, Israeli demands for regional hegemony dictate Biden’s strategy for Iran.

And don’t forget: Israel has a large nuclear arsenal with warheads targeted on major Iranian cities. Israel also assassinates Iranian scientists willy nilly, bombs Iranian facilities inside the country, and kills Iranian soldiers in Syria (who are there at Syrian invitation).

Have no fear, Biden will remain as irrational as Trump. Here is the promised excerpt:

A close analysis of recent statements by members of President Joseph Biden’s foreign policy team indicates his administration has already signaled its intention to treat negotiations with Iran as an exercise in diplomatic coercion aimed at forcing major new concessions extending well beyond the 2015 nuclear agreement. The policy could trigger a renewed US-Iran crisis as serious as any provocation engineered by the Trump administration.

Although the Biden team is claiming that it is ready to bring the United States back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran comes into full compliance first, it is actually planning to demand that Iran give up its main source of political leverage. Thus, it will require Iran to cease its uranium enrichment to 20 percent and give up its accumulated stockpile of uranium already enriched to that level before the United States has withdrawn the economic sanctions that are now illegal under the JCPOA deal.

Meanwhile, the Biden team is planning to hold on to what it apparently sees as its “Trump card”— the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran oil exports that have gutted the Iranian economy.

But the Biden strategy faces a serious problem: Iran has already demanded all sanctions imposed after the JCPOA took effect must be ended before Iran would return to compliance. Iran expects the United States, as the party which initially broke the agreement, to come into compliance first.

The Biden administration is banking on a scenario in which Iran agrees to cease its enrichment to 20% and reverse other  major concessions Iran made as part of the 2015 agreement.

The Biden team then states it would start a new set of negotiations with Iran, in which the United States would use its leverage to pressure Iran into extending the timeline of its major commitments under the deal. Further, Tehran will be required to accept a modification in its missile program, as European allies have urged.

The Biden team’s Iran strategy was not hastily cobbled together just before inauguration.  National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan outlined it in an interview last June with Jon Alterman, the Middle East program direct at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You can get some early wins on the nuclear program but tie long-term sanctions relief to progress on both [nuclear and other issues] files,” Sullivan explained.

 

What is Systemic Racism?

(This post is a continuation of my series on Critical Race Theory. The previous post appears here.)

Recently, I have been working my way through the book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (W. W. Norton, 2017), by Richard Rothstein.

Rothstein provides an exhaustive (and exhausting) account of racist housing policies in American history, up to the present time.

If you have ever wondered how and why dilapidated, inner-city ghettos got started in the major metropolitan areas of this country, then Rothstein has the answers you are looking for.

He describes both the historical developments and the many legal arrangements that have enshrined racial discrimination, by way of legalized

Richard Rothstein

segregation and violent enforcement, into the fabric of American society.

He also documents the continuation of such policies into the late 20th and early 21st centuries, long after the laws had been struck from the books.

These things have happened at every level of government, federal, state, and local. It appears in housing regulations, real estate boards, zoning laws, banking practices, tax valuations (which affects local school budgets), unequal wages, you name it. The list goes on.

As he writes in the book’s Preface:

We have created a caste system in this country, with African Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies. Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied and their effects endure. (xvii)

In unearthing this story as extensively as he does, Mr. Rothstein has produced a definitive history of only one component of Systemic Racism in America.

Earlier I explained that Critical Race Theory offers three specific principles to the modern discussion of race relations: White Privilege, Systemic Racism, and Intersectionality. I briefly discussed White Privilege here.

Systemic Racism and White Privilege are mutually reinforcing.

White Privilege supplies both the ideology (whether overt or hidden, conscious or unconscious) and the motivation (both individual and communal) for maintaining white superiority and dominance over people of color.

That domination is sustained through Systemic Racism, which appears in the social, cultural, and legal structures created, typically by white folks, in order to maintain White Privilege.

Systemic Racism is a fact of life in this country. It is impossible to deny, even though many still try.

Christians who deny the reality of Systemic Racism typically base their criticisms on the personal, individual quality of human sinfulness.

To put things very simply – since people are sinners, people are individually responsible for their personal sins. People are not “systems” or structures, so systems, as such, cannot be held accountable for the racist sins of individual people.

Thus, ideas like Systemic Racism are damaging because they shift the responsibility for evil away from guilty individuals, who need to confess and repent, onto impersonal structures/systems.

These Critical Theories  may also impute guilt to all members of “the system” regardless of their personal attitudes or behavior. And that is unjust.

These critics go on to say that rather than condemning impersonal structures, Christian people within those structures should be living Godly lives in order to make a personal difference for others. (At least, this is what I gather from the Christian critics I have read.)

That is how systems change, by changing the individuals involved first.

Finally, for these critics, Critical Race Theory is wrong because it is not biblical. It is guilty of “allowing secular thinking to overtake a biblical worldview.” (I will save my criticisms of “biblical worldviews” for another day.)

Unfortunately, the vagueness of the Southern Baptist statement quoted above is typical of this conversation. Here are my thoughts:

One: A few weeks ago, my pastor and I were talking about the human tendency to trap ourselves into binary thinking – stop/go, left/right, up/down, good/bad, secular/biblical . . . you get the picture.

In human relations, binary thinking is the favorite blunt instrument used for carving out tribal boundaries. “My way is good; your way is bad” – that’s just about all the Baptist “secular/biblical” binary has to offer to us, unfortunately.

Two: Every disagreement cannot be reduced to an either/or, binary answer.

There is often a third alternative, or the solution may require a both/and answer. So, I insist that the sin and guilt for American racism appears in both individuals and social systems. Both must be held accountable and both must be altered, as necessary.

It is the convergence of these two sources of America’s social ills that makes racism so powerful and long-lasting.

Three: This criticism is stereotypically Western in its analytical devotion to individualism, first and foremost. I am reminded of the absurd remark made by the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. When asked about the nature of society, she famously replied, “There is no such thing as society. Only individuals.”

Thatcher’s comment represents binary reductionism in the extreme.

Four: We cannot forget that human beings are created as the Image of God. That Image remains in all human beings. It was not eliminated by the Fall in Genesis 3.

This means that human beings, including those who do not believe in God, can still possess valuable insights into solving life’s difficult problems.

I insist that the insights of Critical Race Theory are evidence of the continuing benefits of that Divine Image which characterizes all human beings. I can learn from any number of “irreligious” thinkers in this world. Thus, the Baptist binary distinction between secular/biblical thinking is actually counter–productive to this discussion. (It’s also anti-intellectual, but that too must wait for another post.)

Five: When sinful people get together to do sinful things, especially sinful tribal things intended to protect one tribe’s interests against another’s, oppressive social norms and systematic evils are the result.

Societies are built by people. Sinful people build broken, flawed societies that exhibit their brokenness through rigged systems that produce creepy-crawly things like Systemic Racism (among other social ills).

It’s not hard to figure out.

Frankly, I am shocked at the blinding power of Southern Baptist ideology (and they are not alone in this) causing their denominational leaders to ignore such simple observations.

They offer a good example of how “secular thinking” can sometimes be more in line with truth and reality than the supposedly “biblical thinking” of avowed Christians.

Finally, I am convinced that the Christian church must share in the responsibility of undoing the horrendous damage done by centuries of Systemic Racism.

It is not enough — in fact, it is down right unacceptable — for white Christians to insist that personally rejecting racism and not discriminating individually is a sufficient Christian response.

As Mr. Rothstein concludes in his book, Undoing the effects of de jure [legalized] segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility (217).

The Old Testament prophets believed in collective responsibility. They condemned wicked rulers for the systemic evils they inflicted upon their people.

When Christians refuse to take the systemic dimensions of human evil seriously, they close their eyes to important biblical truths and excuse themselves from the important task of social/cultural transformation.

They also blatantly suggest that they are more interested in protecting their current creature comforts than they are in performing the hard introspective, anti-establishment work required of those who “seek to maintain justice and do what is right” (Isaiah 56:1).

No, benefiting from the rigged structures constructed and maintained for the survival of Systemic Racism does not necessarily make every white person a racist. On that score, I disagree with the more extreme proponents of Critical Race Theory.

But it does demand that we recognize the issues at stake; acknowledge the unmerited advantages we have and do receive as Caucasians; and commit ourselves to undoing the lasting damage confronting us today.

How Would Jesus Have Stormed the Capitol Building?

Jack Jenkins has written a good article for the Religious News Service again discussing the dangers of Christian nationalism among Trump-devotees and Christian conspiracy theorists.

The article is entitled, “For insurrectionists, a violent faith brewed from nationalism, conspiracies and Jesus.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above. But first, I will share a few of my thoughts…

Sadly, I don’t think this problem is going away anytime soon.

One issue that jumped out to me as I read the article is the utter inadequacy of the way most evangelical churches approach adult education and “discipleship development” within their congregations.

Throwing a handful of Christians into a room together so that they can “share” their thoughts on the Bible is about as productive as giving a typewriter to a room full of monkeys and expecting them to produce the Declaration of Independence.

It ain’t gonna’ happen.

The Holy Spirit does not guarantee the gift of wisdom to those who will not study widely, do not read frequently, and will not begin humbly to confess their own misguided inclinations.

What DOES happen, quite predictably, is what we see today: the country-wide display of nationalistic, political idolatry erupting from huge swaths of the conservative, evangelical religious community.

Here is the excerpt:

As insurrectionists began the attack on the Capitol, a banner waved above the throng. It read: ‘Proud American Christian.’

Trump supporters climb inauguration scaffolding outside the Capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Moments before the assault on the U.S. Capitol began Wednesday (Jan. 6), a mass of Trump supporters gathered at a northwest entrance. They were angry: Footage highlighted the presence of Proud Boys, an organization classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who were

Women blow shofars during the Jericho March, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2020, in Washington. RNS photo by Jack Jenkins

shouting one of their favorite chants: “F— Antifa!”

As throngs surged toward a barricade manned by a vastly outnumbered handful of police, a white flag appeared above the masses, flapping in the wind: It featured an ichthys — also known as a “Jesus fish” — painted with the colors of the American flag.

Above the symbol, the words: “Proud American Christian.”

It was one of several prominent examples of religious expression that occurred in and around the storming of the Capitol last week, which left five people dead — including a police officer. Before and even during the attack, insurrectionists appealed to faith as both a source of strength as well as justification for their assault on the seat of American democracy.

While not all participants were Christian, their rhetoric often reflected an aggressive, charismatic and hypermasculine form of Christian nationalism — a fusion of God and country that has lashed together disparate pieces of Donald Trump’s religious base.

“A mistake a lot of people have made over the past few years … is to suggest there is some fundamental conflict between evangelicalism and the kind of violence or threat of violence we’re seeing,” said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University and author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.”

“For decades now, evangelical devotional life, evangelical preaching and evangelical teaching has found a space to promote this kind of militancy.”

A form of this faith was on display in front of the Capitol the day before the attack, when hundreds of Trump supporters massed near the building for a “Jericho March.” The event’s name was a reference to the biblical account of Israelites besieging the city of Jericho in the Book of Joshua, a religious tale liberal religious activists have also invoked for their own events. . . 

Politico Discusses the Dangers of Violent ‘Christian’ Extremism

The scare quotes around ‘Christian’ in the title are mine not Politico’s. I am loath to admit that anyone conspiring to commit acts of violence or terrorism can be called a Christian.

Yet, I realize that immaturity, including gross childishness, exists within every community, including the Christian household.

Zack Stanton has written an article at Politico interviewing Elizabeth

Elizabeth Neumann

Neuman from the department of Homeland Security. Ms. Neuman is a Christian herself, making her interview particularly interesting.

The article is entitled, “It’s Time to Talk about Violent Christian Extremism.” I have posted an excerpt below, or you can read the entire

Zack Stanton writes for Politico

piece by clicking on the title above.

For two decades, the U.S. government has been engaging with faith leaders in Muslim communities at home and around the world in an attempt to stamp out extremism and prevent believers vulnerable to radicalization from going down a path that leads to violence.

Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with many participants touting their Christian faith — and as evangelical pastors throughout the country ache over the spread of the conspiracy theory among their flocks, and its very real human toll — it’s worth asking whether the time has come for a new wave of outreach to religious communities, this time aimed at evangelical Christians.

“I personally feel a great burden, since I came from these communities, to try to figure out how to help the leaders,” says Elizabeth Neumann, a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security who resigned from Trump administration in April 2020. The challenge in part is that, in this “particular case, I don’t know if the government is a credible voice at all,” she says. “You don’t want ‘Big Brother’ calling the local pastor and saying, ‘Hey, here’s your tips for the week.’”

Neumann, who was raised in the evangelical tradition, is a devout Christian. Her knowledge of that world, and her expertise on issues of violent extremism, gives her a unique insight into the ways QAnon is driving some Christians to extremism and violence.

She sees QAnon’s popularity among certain segments of Christendom not as an aberration, but as the troubling-but-natural outgrowth of a strain of American

David Reinert holds up a large “Q” sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018 at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

Christianity. In this tradition, one’s belief is based less on scripture than on conservative culture, some political disagreements are seen as having nigh-apocalyptic stakes and “a strong authoritarian streak” runs through the faith. For this type of believer, love of God and love of country are sometimes seen as one and the same.

Christian nationalism is “a huge theme throughout evangelical Christendom,” Neumann says, referring to teachings that posit America as God’s chosen nation. . . . 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger Is Part of a Faithful Remnant in an Apostate Evangelicalism

Adam Kinzinger is a genuinely Christian man from the state of Illinois. He was  one of the 10 Republican members of the House of Representatives who

Congressman (R. IL) Adam Kinzinger

voted in favor of impeaching Donald Trump.

(Yes, remember that Trump was impeached while in office. His Senate trial this week is a continuation of an ongoing process, not something newly begun after Trump left office as so many want us to believe. And YES there is precedent for finishing the Congressional impeachment / Senate trial process after an elected official has left office. In fact, it’s happened three times in US history. It’s not common but neither is it an aberration.)

I call Rep. Kinzinger a “genuine Christian” not because he voted to impeach Trump — although this is the way many people will interpret that sentence nowadays when avid partisanship has become more important than rational thinking and honesty — but because of the reasons he offers to explain himself.

He both thinks and acts as a Christian should. No one can ask for better proof than that.

As I read this story two sayings of Jesus kept echoing in my mind:

Matthew 7:13-14, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Luke 6:26, Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their [the leaders and Pharisees criticizing Jesus] ancestors treated the false prophets.

As you read the article from Christianity Today below, an attuned reader will see that Rep. Kinzinger is in excellent company.

Family members have now disowned him. Many who voted for him are now calling for his head.

But this is the very predictable fate of faithful people who speak truth to power and stand for what is right while others conspire to spout lies.

One last observation before the article excerpt:

The entire drama of the Trump presidency, its aftermath, and the enthusiastic support (often bleeding into open idolatry) has demonstrated a massive  failure of leadership in the American conservative/fundamentalist/ evangelical church.

There are no two ways about it.

If our churches and our leaders had really been fulfilling the Lord Jesus’ “Great Commission” where believers are commanded to “make disciples of every nation [by] teaching them how to obey everything that Jesus has taught us [i.e. concerning how to think, understand, and behave as citizens of the kingdom of God] Donald Trump’s wholesale cooption of US evangelicalism would never have happened.

Yep, that’s right. The truth is that stark.

I know many will insist that equally sincere people can easily come to different positions on such things. My answer is Balderdash!

The issue here concerns spiritual maturity and faithful discipleship. BOTH of which have been in short supply among evangelical leaders these past 4 years.

CT’s article about Rep. Adam Kinzinger make this very, very clear. Read the

Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor for Christianity Today

entire piece below. It is entitled, “Meet the Republican Congressman Who Says His Faith Led Him to Vote for Impeachment.” The author is Kate Shellnut, Senior News Editor.

From his office in the Capitol, US Rep. Adam Kinzinger could see a little bit of the crowd on the lawn on January 6. He heard the flash-bangs go off on the steps as rioters made their way inside. And he could feel the spiritual weight of what was unfolding.

“I’m not one of these people that senses evil all the time or anything. It’s probably only happened maybe twice in my life,” the Illinois congressman said. “But I just felt a real darkness over this place, like a real evil.”

Kinzinger, a nondenominational Protestant, doesn’t talk much about his faith in public and is wary of conflating the mission of the church with the work of politics. But he saw serious implications for both in the wake of the Capitol breach and felt convicted to speak out.

“Although I’m not great at citing verse and chapter, I know the Bible speaks quite a bit about conspiracies and about allowing that darkness into your heart, about the importance of truth, the importance of being a light in dark places, of being truth,” he said on a call with CT and other news outlets this week.

“I’m not a Christian leader. I’m not a pastor. But I am a person who shares the faith and who looks at what that’s done to the political system in this country, and I decided to speak out.”

In the days after the attack, Kinzinger called on Christian leaders “to lead the flock back into the truth.” He opposed President Donald Trump for continuing to tout claims that the election had been stolen and was one of ten House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.

The backlash was swift, coming from Kinzinger’s district in northern Illinois, where a majority of Republicans disagreed, and from his fellow believers, with many white evangelicals continuing to support Trump even as his false claims encouraged rioters at the Capitol.

Franklin Graham condemned Kinzinger and the other Republicans who voted for impeachment for turning their back on the president despite the good he had done on issues like abortion, foreign affairs, and religious freedom. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal,” the evangelist remarked.

A relative sent the congressman a certified letter accusing him of “doing the Devil’s work.”

Kinzinger said that despite the opposition, the stance was the easiest of his career. Political analysts say it will likely cost him politically, though, and will at minimum isolate him from his party ahead of the impeachment trial set to begin the week of February 8.

At 42, Kinzinger has served in Congress for a decade and has been part of the church all his life; he was raised Baptist and now attends Village Christian Church in Minooka, Illinois. He has a conservative voting record and is outspoken in his stance against abortion, recently urging congressional leaders to preserve the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

But unlike most Republicans in Congress, Kinzinger has been openly critical about conspiracies spreading baseless claims that the election was stolen from Trump.

Last year, before Marjorie Taylor Greene controversially became the first open QAnon adherent elected to the US House, he said the conspiracy was a “fabrication” and had “no place in Congress.” Prior to the election being called for Joe Biden, Kinzinger urged people to stop using “debunked misinformation” to claim fraud and refused to challenge state results without solid evidence in court.

Kinzinger said Christians in Congress may, in good faith, take opposite stances, but he also sees them holding a unique responsibility to consider the spiritual implications of their decisions. He’s calling for fellow Republicans to join him to #RestoreOurGOP and had discussed concerns with friends in the party, such as Jaime Herrera Beutler. The Washington Republican, another churchgoing evangelical, joined him in voting for impeachment. “I’m not choosing sides,” she said. “I’m choosing truth.”

Other evangelicals in the party, like Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, voted no on impeachment, saying Trump’s words did not constitute an incitement of violence, but still reckoned with the deeper undercurrents of what happened on January 6. She acknowledged a “complete lack of leadership” and a “crisis of contempt in America” and asked Trump supporters like herself to take responsibility for enabling bullying behavior for the sake of favorable policies.

But Kinzinger said it’s not enough for members of Congress to have these kinds of tough conversations. He wants to see the church take the lead.

A Lifeway Research survey conducted in the fall found half of pastors in the US said they frequently hear members of their congregation sharing conspiracy theories. “I think there are scales on their eyes,” said Kinzinger.

He believes the spread of lies among Christians is part of a much more serious battle than political races, citing Ephesians 6:12’s reminder that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (KJV). He said too many Christians have been co-opted into prizing political victories over spiritual ones.

“If you think about the Devil’s ultimate trick for Christianity, really, he doesn’t care what the tax rates are. It doesn’t matter. What he cares about is embarrassing the church, and it feels like it’s been successful,” the congressman said. “But I also think this is an opportunity for the church to have a massive rediscovery of what our mission and our role in this world is.”

During his inauguration, Biden referenced Augustine’s line from City of God about a people being defined by their common loves. What he left out was Augustine’s teaching that love must be rightly ordered, with love of God above all, scholar Han-luen Kantzer Komline noted.

Kinzinger lamented what he saw as Americans’ disordered priorities—how they’ve allowed allegiances to the country, the economy, the president, or their political identities to distract from their primary identity as citizens of heaven.

“We get wrapped up on thinking that every little political victory we do, which has an impact on an election, is actually fighting for God and the truth. I think to an extent some of that is true. The Supreme Court now is very conservative. I like that. I think that is good for Christianity,” he said. “But I think we need to go a level above that … and say, What is our role as Christians? Truthfully, it’s to make disciples, to love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor.”

For Kinzinger, his faith offers an eternal perspective on his day-to-day work as a congressman. While he aims to fight for life, truth, and freedom, he believes following Christ trumps any political outcome. Right now, it means he can “accept his fate” among the minority of GOP lawmakers backing impeachment.

In the long-run, the debates over policies or political alliances are “not really going to matter,” he said this week. “But what does matter is what we did with this time on earth, how we talked about the Lord, how we stood up for truth.”

 

What Is ‘White Privilege’?

(This is installment 5 in my series discussing Critical Race Theory. From here on out, I will only provide the immediately preceding post. For all previous posts on this subject, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

Critical Race Theory has advanced three key concepts that help to identify and critique the ways in which racism works in society. They are the notions of White Privilege, Systemic Racism, and Intersectionality.

In this post, I will only talk about White Privilege. The other will have their turn.

Many Christians, like the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, have condemned all three of these ideas, for reasons will we explore as this series unfolds. Though I am not a sociologist, and am happy to be corrected by my readers, I suspect that only the idea of Intersectionality may be new – although that is probably debatable.

But what is most important is not whether these are new concepts, but how they are applied to illuminate (or to confuse, perhaps) how different people relate to each other in American society.

To put things simply, White Privilege identifies the fact that America is the product of (primarily) white, European culture and society.

Colonialism was a deeply embedded component of that European culture. As a result, having white skin as opposed to having dark skin became an encoded principle of Western, racial superiority.

After all, the white colonizers were always superior to the colonized, dark skinned natives.

Even though we now live (theoretically) in a post-colonial world – albeit with numerous exceptions, beginning with Jewish Israeli colonization of 5 million native Palestinians – in which the majority of Caucasian (white-skinned) people would (probably) deny the idea of racial superiority linked to traits like skin color, ethnicity, or physical morphology, the social/cultural norms and  structures (erected in order to enforce or “protect” those norms) generated by that white culture continue to exist.

Many researchers have demonstrated the reality of White Privilege today in such areas as business hiring practices, and mortgage approval or interest rates. Even now, white people continue to benefit in many ways that black people do not.

Numerous white folks have experienced this for themselves while temporarily “passing” for black.

More tellingly, there are profound historical reasons explaining why light-skinned, African Americans have sometimes chosen “to pass” as white.

While many white folks, especially conservatives, remain loath to admit this, White Privilege is a fact of life. And the sooner white America as a whole comes to grips with this fact, the better for everyone.

Frankly, for any segment of the Christian church, whether Southern Baptists or anybody else, to deny the reality of White Privilege is unconscionable. It reveals an area of life where Jesus’ call to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” has been in short supply.

In fact, the Christian church ought to be taking the lead in working creatively to identify, address and undo the practical effects of White Privilege in our world.

Our God is not a God of favoritism.

The Creator is a God of equality. He loves everyone equally. He values everyone equally. Everyone is equally sinful. Everyone is equally in need of Christ’s redemption. Salvation is equally available to everyone, and equally beneficial to all who will believe.

The kingdom of God is a realm of equality, which will be recognizable oh this earth where God’s multi-racial community of faith can be observed by all.

Ironically, the fact that no African-Americans were included on the Southern Baptist Convention committee, which wrote the document condemning Critical Race Theory is itself a rude example of White Privilege at work among Christian people.

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us that the preexistent Son of God willingly set aside his divine privileges; in fact, “he made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant” in order to elevate and to redeem people like you and me (Phil 2:7).

Every Caucasian who claims to follow Jesus Christ is obligated to live a Christ-like life, the life of a servant.

We need to acknowledge our privilege, identify it, and do whatever we can to share that privilege by rejecting it; to reconstruct a society where everyone of all colors stand on a level playing field – with some even being given an advantage where necessary – until our Creator’s vision of human equality is the norm.

One proviso: I suspect that the main reason the Southern Baptists rejected the principle of White Privilege was due to the way it has been misused by certain advocates of Critical Race Theory. (Another reason to remember that the abuse of an idea offers no necessary critique of the idea itself.)

Some intemperate anti-racist activists use the principle of White Privilege to define all white people as inherently racist. To be white is to be racist, no questions asked.

As a Christian, I must draw a line here and say that THIS application of the principle is wrong. It’s wrong morally and it’s wrong theologically.

Such a misuse of the White Privilege principle is, I believe, one of the reasons that certain older members of the Civil Rights movement (!) have also publicly denounced Critical Race Theory.

Regardless of their personal theologies, they too identify the moral problem at the root of any such blanket condemnation of an entire class of people.

Sadly, it is one more expression of human tribalism (and its many defects) which excels at taking good ideas and twisting them until they only shed light on my neighborhood.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream anticipating a day when black children and white children will all be judged “not on the color of their skin but by the content of their character” continues to ring true for these pioneering Civil Rights activists, as it also does for me.

Perhaps it is true that a very high percentage of US Caucasians remain blind to their privilege while happily enjoying its benefits without giving any thought to the related (even consequential) difficulties and discrimination faced by our dark-skinned brothers and sisters.

No. What every Christian can and must say is that all people everywhere are guilty of being sinful. Consequently, all people everywhere are intensely tribal. Thus, all people everywhere think and act selfishly.

Meaning that all people everywhere need the redemption and personal transformation available through Jesus Christ – which can ONLY work properly in integrated communities of faith where men, women, and children of every color share themselves, their histories, their stories, their personal experiences, and their hopes with each other.

I have more say on this topic, but I think I have gone on too long already!

Until next time…

Another Example of White, Male Privilege as Republicans Tell Democratic Congress Women to “Just Move On”

I recently posted a blog entry describing the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to issue a wholesale condemnation of Critical Race Theory without ever consulting a single African-American Southern Baptist (yes, they do exist).

How could that happen? It is astonishing.

I have a number of thoughts on this question which I will explore in a future post in this series on Critical Race Theory (for previous posts on this subject, see here, here, here, and here), along with my continuing observations

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib

about the problems of systemic racism in America (for a recent example see here).

I am a huge fan of all the members of the group of junior congressional women the media have dubbed “The Squad.” This includes Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and now Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Each of them continue to demand that those involved in the Capital attack on January 6th must be held accountable. Anyone who understands the nature of justice must agree with them. There ought to be broad bipartisan support for their calls of accountability.

Instead, many members of the Republican party are telling these representatives, and especially the women, to “move on,” that they are making a mountain out of a molehill.

More than that, several Republicans have publicly denounced these women

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar

as liars, making easily refutable statements about them never being endangered at all.

I realize that a major factor in this argument is political partisanship, which teaches you to never give your opponent a break. Add a dash of simply bullying and we have a good explanation of the human behavior now on display.

However, I am convinced that there is another powerful factor involved — white, male privilege.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley

White, male privilege thrives in situations allowing women’s feelings and experiences to be minimized or dismissed. Admittedly, the deeply damaged and incompetent congresswoman from Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is not a man. But there are always exceptions to every rule. I won’t pretend to know how to explain her.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has recently told her story about being a rape survivor.

She, together with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rahida Tlaib, and you

Congresswoman Cori Bush

can bet your bottom dollar that Cori Bush is now experiencing this as well, have received numerous death threats since arriving in Congress.

These women have good reason to feel traumatized after the events of January 6th. They are the physical embodiment of everything that violent mob of Trump supporters would love to eliminate from this country: emigrants, Muslims, people of color, and outspoken women who voice their disagreements loudly in public.

The heartless people now calling these female, public servants liars; accusing them of overreacting; or insisting that they just need “to get over it,” are behaving like abusers themselves. As AOC has said repeatedly, these are the things that abusers say to their victims.

It is no accident, then, that the majority of these voices come from white men. Men who have always enjoyed all the implicit and explicit advantages of being white men in American society.

Such men rarely have any reason to fear that they may be on the receiving end of a beating, or rape, or verbal assault from one of the other authoritarian men in their lives.

Such men are usually far too comfortable exercising power over others, especially when those “others” are powerless themselves.

Below is a video of the two, recent congressional speeches offered by AOC and Rahida Tlaib as they continue their calls for Congressional accountability.

If you can listen to these speeches impassively, without sympathy, without empathy, without concern, then I ask you to check your chest cavity, for you have no heart. I ask you to check your mind for your conscience has withered.

One of the primary qualities of a truly Christian life is the exercise of empathy.

It is the ability to see life from the other person’s perspective and to try to understand why they feel the way they do.

Jesus of Nazareth was extraordinary in the deep, deep levels of empathy that he possessed for the people he met. In fact, empathy is what led him to sacrifice himself on the cross at Calvary.

Let’s all pray for such divine-human empathy as we listen to these women describe their very legitimate fears on January 6th.

 

 

 

 

Jacobin Magazine — Jeff Bezos: Your Legacy is Exploitation

Jeff Bezos has gotten considerable attention lately in the MSM lately due to

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCTOBER 15: Jeff Bezos speaks onstage at WIRED25 Summit. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED25 )

his decision to step down as Amazon’s CEO.

However, he has not left the company altogether. He has made a lateral move to become Amazon’s Executive Chair. A chair from which you can bet he will continue to rule the roost in both Amazon and the global marketplace.

Jacobin Magazine has published a good article explaining Bezo’s longstanding predatory, exploitative business practices — the obscene practices directly responsible for making Amazon the mammoth monopoly power that it is today.

The last thing Jeff Bezos is is a business genius who deserves admiration. Rather, he is a textbook example of how the rich make themselves richer by exploiting and devouring smaller fry further down the food chain.

The article’s author is Paris Marx. It is entitled, “Jeff Bezos: Your Legacy is Exploitation.” The entire piece is well worth your time. I have posted an

Journalist, Paris Marx

excerpt below, or you can find the entire article by clicking on the title above.

Read it and get angry at over the way US predatory, crony capitalism works.

Jeff Bezos is stepping aside as Amazon’s CEO having made a fortune of almost $200 billion. It’s an attempt at reputation rehabilitation — but he can’t escape the legacy of exploitation he leaves behind.

Jeff Bezos, who you might also know as “the richest man in the world” or “that guy who ate a lizard one time,” is stepping down as the CEO of Amazon after twenty-seven years at the helm — or maybe it’s better to say he’s stepping to the side. Bezos will instead take on the title of executive chair, which means he’ll still have an influential role in company decisions, but will no longer be the face of Amazon. Yet there’s no reason to believe that means Amazon will become the friendly monopolist its smiling logo might suggest.

With Bezos at the helm, Amazon grew from an online bookseller started from a garage in Bellevue, Washington to one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world that not only controls key e-commerce and cloud platforms, but has extended its reach into a growing number of sectors. However, it’s important not to get distracted by the triumphalist historicizing of tech companies and their chief executives that’s become far too common since internet businesses exploded in the 1990s.

It’s often said that Amazon was started in Washington so it would be close to Microsoft and try to attract some of its talent, and while that’s partly true, it was hardly the deciding factor. Before founding the company in 1994, Bezos was the senior vice president of a hedge fund, and it’s said he made sure the first house he rented in Bellevue had a garage so he could spin the kind of founding story one would expect of a tech company. He was hardly poor, and he knew how to minimize his tax burden.

The real reason Bezos was drawn to Washington was because the state had no personal income tax and no corporate income tax, and at the time, Amazon only had to charge sales tax on purchases made in whichever state the company was headquartered in. With a population of just over five million in 1994, Washington was the perfect base from which to ship the other 260 million Americans all the books they could buy — not because Bezos had a particular love of books, but because they could be bought wholesale, were easy to ship, and independent bookstores had been decimated, leaving a market to be captured.

As Amazon began to attract customers and expand its product offerings, it took a different approach to growth. Instead of seeking to turn a profit as quickly as possible, Bezos played the long game, reinvesting Amazon’s earnings in the business to such a degree that it didn’t turn its first quarterly profit until 2001 and its first annual profit until 2003. For years to follow, Amazon’s profit margins remained slim as it expanded its empire.

This was undoubtedly a great business strategy, but it came with consequences. By operating at a loss for a decade, Amazon was able to provide goods and services below cost to drive out its competitors and dominate the markets it operated in. This only became easier as it grew, as the case of Diapers.com shows.

In 2009, Bezos saw that Diapers.com was gaining popularity with parents, so Amazon set up a meeting with its founders. When they refused to sell, Amazon set its prices on diapers and other baby products 30 percent below those offered by its competitor, and when Diapers.com adjusted their prices, the ones on Amazon changed accordingly. Amazon was using the profits from its other products to sell baby products below cost so Diapers.com would have to sell itself to Amazon or go out of business. Amazon even launched a service called Amazon Mom to offer baby products at even steeper discounts until, on November 8, 2010, Diapers.com finally sold to Amazon. Not long after, Amazon Mom was terminated, and prices returned to normal. . .