Month: August 2023

America’s Obsession with War Has Made Us a Divided Nation

I am thinking back to that childhood adage about the hypocrisy of pointing fingers. Remember? When I point my finger at someone else, I always have three fingers pointing back at myself.

Funny how we tend to forget the wisdom of childhood.

Instead of pointing fingers, let’s look in the mirror and pay attention to our own faces.

Today Andrea Mazzarino, co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, has an article at TomDispatch analyzing the domestic blowback of

Andrea Mazzarino

America’s addiction to perpetual war.

A nation cannot keep itself on a continual war footing, as American has done for the past 20 years, without infecting its citizenry with a self-destructive “us vs. them, where’s the enemy?” attitude. It foments tribalism which spreads like a disease.

Those killer drones will come home to roost.

The article is titled “How War Divides Us.” Below is an excerpt:

As many Americans condemn Russia for its grim invasion, it’s easy to forget that for more than two decades now, others in our world have viewed our post-9/11 foreign policy in much the way we now view Russia’s — as imperialist and expansionist. After all, the U.S. invaded two countries, while using the 9/11 attacks to launch a war on terror globally that metastasized into U.S. counterterror activities in 85 nations.

This has, in fact, been the violent American century, but even less recognized here is how our war on terror helped cause us to turn on one another. It injected fear and the weaponry that goes with it into a country where relatively prosperous, connected communities like mine would have had the potential to expand and offer other Americans far more robust support.

If we don’t find a way to pay more attention to why this didn’t happen and just how we did so much negatively to ourselves, then a police-state mentality and its potential companion, civil war (like the ones we’ve seen in countries we sought to “democratize” by force of arms) may, in the end, become the deepest reality of an ever more polarized America. Of that, Donald Trump is but a symptom.

You can read the entire article here.

What Does ‘Respect Life’ Really Mean?

As “pro-life”, Texas governor, Greg Abbott, installs a murderous, floating fence of razor wire down the middle of the Rio Grand river to shred the bare flesh of illegal immigrants, Phillis Zagano asks a probing question at the Religious News Service: what does it really mean to “respect life?”

[A number of dead bodies have already been retrieved from Abbott’s killer fence.]

Below is an excerpt:

Before backing a law banning abortion in Texas altogether, Gov. Greg Abbott propelled a 2021 measure banning abortion after a heartbeat has been detected, saying he “would protect the life of every child with a heartbeat.” He happens to be Catholic.

So why did Abbott put razor wire and a floating barrier in the Rio Grande? Do migrant children not have heartbeats?

There is an angry selectivity when it comes to life issues. Abortion is certainly a tragic reality in too many places in the world. Without denying the ability of the polity to legally allow or disallow abortion, the better course is to make it unnecessary.

To respect life means just that: the unborn, yes, and the elderly and the stranger, the migrant, and the homeless individual. Respect life includes the “other,” no matter how defined — by gender, skin color, language, ethnicity — the list is endless.

Yet too many so-called pro-life advocates demonstrate an abject denial of others’ right to life.

You can read the entire article here.

What is ‘Cultural Marxism’ and Why is It the New Conservative Boogyman?

[I must thank John Fea’s blog The Current for drawing this Jacobin article to my attention.]

One can rarely find a conservative discussion of America’s so-called

Karl Marx

“culture wars” without discovering that most, if not all, “liberal” activism in favor of social justice or cultural transformation, alongside CRT, BLM,  feminism and gay rights, can all be solidly dismissed as scurilous examples of “cultural Marxism.”

Cultural Marxism is one of the Right’s new magic words. Somehow, by simply linking the two words together nothing else needs to be said;  incisive critique and definitive dismissal are miraculously accomplished, simultaneously. Voila!

My own attempts at uncovering the intended meaning of the label “cultural Marxism” has led me to conclude that — whether or not the person using the term has thought this through — it is used to criticize any attempt at instigating social or cultural change. That’s it.

Apparently, since Karl Marx is considered a revolutionary who wanted to change western society, anyone else who tries to change something that they perceive to be a social problem must also be a (cultural) Marxist.

Black Lives Matter activists want to change policing practices in America, so they must be cultural Marxists.

Union activists who want better working conditions for America’s working class must also be cultural Marxists.

At the end of the day, cultural Marxism descibes anything that scares conservatives. (For me, personally, that means all vampires are cultural Marxists.)

Unfortunately, evangelical Christians who consider themselves to be cultural critics have become especially enamored with this label. But while it appears to make its user sound smart, it only reveals the shallowness and dishonesty of their analysis.

To better understand why this is the case, I highly recommend this article by Ben Burgis.

Burgis has written a good article at Jacobin titled “Conservatives Think ‘Marxism’ is Anything That Scares Them.” He clearly explains what Marxism really is and why this new label consistently misunderstands the issues involved:

Here is an excerpt:

Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event sponsored by WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. A voter asked DeSantis, who often rails against all things “woke,” to define his favorite term. DeSantis replied that “woke is a form of cultural Marxism.” Speaking of Manchester, a few days after the DeSantis event a member of New Hampshire’s legislature accused the city’s mayor, Joyce Craig, of promoting “Marxist indoctrination” in the public schools.

“Marxism” seems to be taking up a lot of space in the heads of contemporary conservatives. But, as they use the term, what does it mean?

All too often, it’s a catch-all term for every left-coded trend they find frightening. . .

. . . What does Marxism mean here? What could it mean that’s consistent with the idea that “major corporations” are in Marxist hands? One would think any “Marxist activist” would want those corporations to be either nationalized or turned over to some form of worker-ownership. Why haven’t the Marxist activists controlling them taken steps in this direction since the summer of 2020?

If Marxist activists have taken over “most important news media,” shouldn’t such media be agitating for expropriating the means of production? If they’ve taken over the universities, shouldn’t economics departments long filled with mainstream, pro-capitalist economists now be populated by, well, Marxist economists?

You can read the entire article here.

Remembering that Forgiveness is a Christian Imperative

Mark Galli, former editor at Christianity Today, now manages of personal blog called “Peripheral Vision.” His most recent post is titled, “What to Do with Notorious Sinners: Maybe Befriend Them? Really?”

It is a fine post which I repost here because the church struggles with implementing Jesus’ teaching on this subject.

Of course confession, repentance and a request for forgiveness are important components in the overal process of personal forgiveness. But the radical — and I mean RADICAL — nature of Jesus’ teaching on the necessity of forgiveness cannot be sidestepped by the seemingly reasonable, psychological provisos that so easily qualify the Christian imperative of forgiveness.

Sit down and reread  one of the Synoptic Gospels and notice how often Jesus emphasizes the importance of forgiving others with the same graciousness with which God has forgiven us.

I am afraid that, on this score, we regularly lose sight of just how unbelievably radical is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt of Galli’s article:

A friend has committed a grave sin, and even broken the law—let’s say by having sex with a minor.  We may find it morally reprehensible even to remain friends, especially if we have a teenage daughter.  We may wonder if continuing the friendship will signal indifference to what the offender has done. Or we simply may be confused about how to reach out. In the end, we may not make a conscious decision to reject the offender, but we simply don’t reach out, we don’t stay in touch, we just slowly walk away from that relationship.

That response is understandable—we’ve all done it. But at this personal level, here’s the deal: Though God lets sinners walk away from him, he never walks away from sinners. (my emphasis)

You can read the entire article here.

Solving a Problem Begins with a Correct Diagnosis

Christian denominational leaders continue to fret over how to recoup the attendance losses suffered during the covid shutdowns.  Church attendance has not rebounded to its pre-covid levels, making sociologists and church-growing afficionados eager to offer their professional analysis, complete with recipes for reinvigorating local church life.

As I read such articles I am continually amazed at how many of them never bother to touch on the basic question of what a church is supposed to be. They never mention Jesus or the gospel message or worship or what it means to be the Body of Christ in a fallen world. [For one recent, woeful example, see this article in Christianity Today.]

Thankfully, today I came across the most perceptively biblical account of this issue I have yet seen. Dr. Kirsten Sanders offers an acute analysis of both the problems and the “solutions” that must be understood by anyone hoping to “restore” their local church.

Her article, addressing the question of “Why I should be a part of a local church?”, is titled “Why Church is the Wrong Question“. I highly recommend it, especially if you are asking similar questions yourself.

It is also found in Christianity Today.

Here is an excerpt:

One question I encounter regularly these days is why the local church matters. This, I think, is the wrong question.

Disaffected Christians want to know why they should attend church when it has sheltered so much harm. Pastors and leaders want to know how to communicate to others, especially young adults, what good the church has to offer.

We are in a crucible that should burn off wrong answers about the church. Two years of pandemic-related church shutdowns has led many congregations to move their worship online. Church services were livestreamed and accessed in people’s living rooms. Communion was sometimes taken at the kitchen table, or not at all. Music was streamed virtually. And Christians gathered—or didn’t—with their immediate families to worship.

It would be misguided to suggest that such arrangements are not worship. Indeed, the psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and the Lord himself says, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I” (Ps. 19:1; Matt. 18:20). The instinct that God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV is not wrong. The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything and can be near people through matter—even when conveyed by data packets to a screen. God indeed dwells with his people, gathered in homes across the world.

Yet it would be incorrect also to call such a presence “church.” The church is not God’s guiding, consoling presence in one’s heart or the very real consolation and correction that can come when a group of Christians meets to pray. Nor is it what we name the occasional gathering of Christians to sing and study in homes or around tables worldwide.

In the Bible, the concern of God in creating the church is not to form persons but to form a people. . .

. . .What God called for, however, was not a moral or powerful people, but a peculiar one. Now it is true that part of the church’s peculiarity should exhibit itself in a certain morality. But morality itself is not peculiar in this particular way. What makes the church peculiar is its knowledge of itself as called by God to be his representative on the earth, to be marked by unwieldy and inconvenient practices like forgiveness, hospitality, humility, and repentance. It is marked in such a way by its common gathering, in baptism and Communion, remembering the Lord’s death and proclaiming it until he comes.

A peculiar church is one that realizes that its existence is to witness to another world, one where the Ascension is not a sorrow alone but an invitation to live into a new moment when the Son is indeed seated at the right hand of the Father. Its witness to another kingdom, a commonwealth in heaven (Phil. 3:20–21), is what justifies its existence.

This is not to say that churches should become internally preoccupied and aloof from their communities. The church has an implicit social ethic, as Hauerwas discusses, and is guided by Jesus’ call to imitate him in love for neighbor and sacrificial concern.

But the church’s reshaped community is formed out of its worship, which witnesses to another world where the Lord is King. The authors conclude, “The church, as those called out by God, embodies a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know.”

You can read the entire article here.

Caitlin Johnstone: Disrupt The Culture Wars

Ever since the rise of the “Religious/Christian Right,” culture war combat

Caitlin Johnstone

has been the number one activity highlighted by some sectors of the evangelical/ fundamentalist church.

I believe that this has been the root cause of the widespread fracturing we have seen among Christian churches in the Trump era. Such is the deceptive power of culture war combat ideology. We are told that the battle is for the casue of Christ. When, in fact, Christ has never called us to do any such thing.

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone offers a good analysis of this error embraced by today’s culture-warriors. They miss the bigger picture. American evangelicals are particularly guilty of this particular blindness.

Because evangelical Christianity has always preferred to identify with the wealthy and the powerful, the church rarely addresses the class war continually being waged in this society.

Fortunately, addressing the class conflict between the haves and the have-nots does not require an either/or decision, choosing between either class or cultural issues.

It is possible to address both at the same time. Sadly, evangelicals prefer to remain blind to the one and pour all their energy into the other.

Though I do not fully endorse Ms. Johnstone’s solution to this problem of neglecting the class issues in our society. I do find her social analysis to be spot on.

Here is a brief excerpt:

One of the great challenges faced by westerners who oppose the political status quo today is the way the narrative managers of both mainstream factions continuously divert all political energy away from issues which threaten the interests of the powerful like economic injustice, war, militarism, authoritarianism, corruption, capitalism and ecocide and toward issues which don’t threaten the powerful at all like abortion, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

This method of social control serves the powerful in some very obvious ways, and is being used very effectively. As long as it remains effective, it will continue to be used. The worse things get the more urgent the need to fight the class war will become, anf the more urgent the need to fight the class war becomes the more vitriolic and intense the artificial culture war will become in order to prevent political changes which inconvenience the powerful. This is 100 percent guaranteed. And what’s tricky is that all the vitriolic intensity will create the illusion that the culture war has gotten more important, when in reality the class war has.

It’s just a straightforward fact that the more miserable, impoverished and disempowered the public becomes, the more hateful and all-consuming the artificial culture war will be made to prevent revolution. That’s what’s been happening, and that’s what will continue to happen. You can hate hearing it, and you can hate me for saying it. But it is a fact, and I think we all pretty much know it’s a fact.

You can read the entire article here.

John Mearsheimer Analyzes the Ukraine War

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science and international relations at the University of

WASHINGTON, USA – FEBRUARY 21 : John Mearsheimer speaks during a panel organised by Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) Foundation in Washington, United States on February 21, 2019.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Chicago.

He provides a rare, sane voice in the American landscape disagreeing with the pro-war, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian propaganda dished out day after day by mainstream news networks.

For a well-balanced perspective integrating factors typically ignored or covered up in US broadcasts, check out Mearsheimer’s analysis here.

His most recent article appears here. It is titled, “The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War is Headed.”

Here is Prof. Mearsheimer’s most recent YouTube interview with one of my favorite, award-winning journalist, Aaron Mate.