Tag: American Christianity

Sandhya Rani Jha on Politics in Church

Sandhya Rani Jha is a minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination and director of the Oakland Peace Center.

If you don’t know the story she refers to about the French village, Le Chambon, I encourage you to read the book by Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (Harper Row, 1979). It’s an amazing story of true kingdom citizenship lived out in a time of great danger.

The following excerpt is taken from the Christian Century article, “Do politics belong in church?”.  You can read the entire article here.

“My mind has been on the French village of Le Chambon recently. During World

The village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

War II, the village of maybe 5,000 people saved possibly as many as 5,000 people from the Nazis and the Vichy regime. As President Barack Obama noted on Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009, ‘Not a single Jew who came [to the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon] was turned away, or turned in. But it was not until decades later that the villagers spoke of what they had done—and even then, only reluctantly. “How could you call us ‘good’?” they said. “We were doing what had to be done.”

“In my current itinerating ministry, I have visited a lot of churches that are proud of their commitment to being nonpolitical because it makes them more inclusive. But a nonpolitical church’s politics supports the way things are. That

Jewish children hidden in Le Chambon

doesn’t make it an inclusive church. It makes it a church that is unwelcoming to people who want a different world. To riff off of a popular meme from the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, people of color are saying to the mainline church, ‘The American empire is literally killing us,’ and the mainline church is saying, ‘Yes, but . . . ‘

“The reason Le Chambon keeps showing up in my imagination is this: every Sunday for over a decade before France fell to the Nazis, the pastors of the village preached a message that reinforced their community’s identity and what that identity meant in practice. The message was:

  • We are Huguenots who survived persecution by the Catholic majority. That means we show up for people being persecuted.
  • We are Christians. This means engaging in nonviolent resistance to empires doing harm and protecting the people who are being harmed.

“In a sermon delivered the day after France surrendered to the Nazis, village

Le Chambon pastor, Andre Trocme

pastor André Trocmé said to his congregation, ‘The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit.’

“In Le Chambon, the church’s message shaped people’s identity and behavior.  That is not an inherently political message, but it is a message that demands people act out of a certain ethic.”  (emphasis mine)
Whenever I hear a pastor boast about his/her “nonpolitical” messages, I always want to ask a few questions, the same questions raised by Sandhya Rani Jha.
First, do the ethics of Jesus have any bearing on the way Christians ought to approach their politics?
How can any thinking pastor say no to that question?
Trocme’s congregation being taught to follow Jesus, conspiring to break the law and to protect the oppressed

 

OK then.  Secondly, if you are not teaching in ways that help your flock understand the the practical significance of Jesus’ radical, upside-down kingdom ethics for engaging the politics of this world, then aren’t you failing in your pastoral responsibilities?

The answer to the second question is a resounding yes.
The principle failure of Christian (at least evangelical) teaching on politics today is the near-complete absence of Jesus and his kingdom ethics.
For many pastors, politics is almost all they talk about, but the life and teaching of Jesus have been erased from their playbook.
But those who refuse to talk politics at all are really no different.  They have simply erased Jesus with a different brand of eraser.

A Faithful Disciple in Rwanda

Brandon Stanton’s Twitter account is called Humans of New York (@humansofny).  Recently, he has been interviewing various people from Africa and telling their stories on his feed.  This is one of them:

This gentleman is a pastor living in Kigali, Rwanda.  When the genocide began in the spring of 1994, many locals fled to this man’s home

A Rwandan Pastor who rescued over 300 lives while risking his own

for protection.  Despite the many threats against himself and his wife, they were prepared to give their lives in protecting others.

They saved over 300 people by hiding them in their church.

Below are a few excerpts from his amazing story:

“That very first evening the militia came to my gate. Some were carrying guns. Others were carrying machetes.  They’d been told that I was hiding people.  They demanded to come inside and search the property. I stood in the doorway and told them they’d have to kill me first.  ‘We’ll be back,’ they said. ‘And thanks for gathering all the cockroaches in one place.’…All of our friends abandoned us. They pretended not to know us.  Only one pastor stood by our side.  He came to me one night and warned me there was a plan to attack the church.  I told the news to my wife and we both agreed we were ready to die.

“The next time the killers came, there were fifty of them. All of them had guns or machetes. They pushed straight past me and entered the pastor’s residence. They began pulling people out of the ceiling. They were kicking us and dragging us along the floor. I knew this was the end…We were put in three lines. We began to say our last prayers. I scanned the mob of killers for recognizable faces. Many of them were Christians. Some were even from my congregation. Every time I recognized a face, I called to him by name. I said, ‘When I die I am going to heaven. Where will you go?’  I then pointed to the next man…and the next…and the next…They began to argue among themselves. Nobody wanted to be the first to kill…And they began to leave, one by one, until all of them had run off.

“…When I look back, I believe the genocide could have been stopped had more pastors taken a stand. We were the ones with influence.  The killers belonged to our congregations. And we could have held them back. But instead we did nothing. And every pastor had a different excuse. Some said they didn’t know things would get so bad. Some said they were too afraid. Some said the government was too powerful to oppose. But when you’re standing aside while people die, every excuse is a lame one.” (emphasis mine)

Naturally, we all love heroic stories.  This man’s actions were truly heroic, though I suspect that he would simply say that he was only doing what Jesus wanted him to do.

I hope that I would be as faithful were I ever to encounter a similar situation.  But I honestly don’t know what I would do.

There were other pastors and priests who tried to hide people inside their

Hundreds were killed while hiding inside this Nyamata church, Rwanda

churches, and they were regularly massacred.  But what about his claim that the genocide could have been stopped if at least a majority of Christian leaders had spoken out in protest, refused to follow tribal orders, disobeyed government demands, and boldly confronted fellow church-goers with Jesus’ radical demands to love everyone and to only  do good to our neighbors?

The majority of church-goers in Rwanda, like the majority of church-goers in Nazi Germany, were a part of the problem, not the solution to Rwandan racism and tribalism.

Given the many despicable things we are witnessing in the United States today, why should anyone imagine that the majority of church-goers in America are any different?

Stanley Hauerwas on the Place of Politics in Church

For my money, Stanley Hauerwas (retired professor of Duke University and prolific author) is the most important American theologian alive today.  And I don’t say that because he was kind enough to write a positive endorsement for my book, I Pledge Allegiance.

No one has a better grasp of the essential relationship between the Church and the Kingdom of God.  If only more of us could think and act as clearly as he does.

Below is an excerpt from Professor Hauerwas’ contribution to the recent Christian Century article, “Do politics belong in church?“.

“The only problem with [saying] ‘religion and politics do not mix’ is that the phrase is one of the strongest examples we have of political rhetoric. There is no escaping ‘the political.’ To refuse to take a political stance is to take a political stance. In particular, the presumption that the church is above politics underwrites the distinction between the public and the private that serves to relegate strong convictions, particularly if they are ‘religious,’ to the private. Private, moreover, is the word we use to describe a fictive political agent, that is, the individual whose political views are to be respected no matter what they may be.

“Moreover, the politics presupposed by the slogan ‘religion and politics do not mix’ is issue politics of election years. ‘Issues’ are what politicians use to distract ‘the people’ from considering the fundamental injustices of our political arrangements. We assume we can concentrate on the issues because given that we are a democracy all we need do is vote. Christians take it for granted that democracies are the Christian form of government, though they seldom ask what makes democracies democratic.

“So when Christians are in church they should be at their most political. But what is essential is how to avoid letting what passes as politics determine the political agenda of the church. Christians must learn again how to reframe issues in a manner that makes clear that the politics of Jesus is different. The church is its own politic, which means Christians cannot avoid being ‘political.’” (emphasis mine)

James K. A. Smith on the Place of Politics in Church

The Christian Century recently published a good article entitled “Do politics belong in church?“.  It is a compilation of 11 responses from pastors and leaders with a wide variety of backgrounds.

I plan to excerpt what I believe are the best of the bunch.  You can find the entire article here.

I begin with my friend and former colleague, James K. A. Smith.  Jamie wrote the foreword to my book, Encountering Jesus Encountering Scripture.  I also have reviewed his recent book Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology on this blog.

I greatly appreciate Jamie’s perspective:

“You might expect the obligatory nod to the challenge of preaching in our polarized climate—except for the fact that our congregations are comfortably partisan and have been engines of polarization, not some lingering holdout against it. Like our housing and education, Christianity reflects rather than resists what sociologist Bill Bishop calls “the big sort.” Congregations are predictable clusters of the politically like-minded. I expect that many pastors, whether on the left or right, can count on a certain slant of ‘us’ and reliably decry a ‘them’ on Sunday mornings.

“So the challenge is less how to avoid upsetting ideologically diverse congregations and more a matter of rightly upsetting the monolithic congregations in front of us. But how? What does faithful political discipleship look like?

“We don’t want to avoid being predictably partisan by falling prey to the illusion that the gospel is politically ‘neutral.’ If some partisan stands align with biblical concerns for justice, we shouldn’t soft-pedal biblical themes just to avoid appearing partisan. Here’s a way the lectionary is a gift. These biblical themes confront us. Preaching isn’t dictated by the pet priorities of a party but by the worldwide curriculum of the body of Christ at worship. And some days, by grace, that Word will come as a challenge to our own preferences.

“Nor does the unique ‘politics of Jesus’ give us license to sequester ourselves in alternative communities. Policy is how we love our neighbors, and purity doesn’t release us from the Great Commandment. The illusion of being nonpolitical is a luxury of privilege that only leaves the vulnerable exposed.”

 

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 3 — Do We Inhabit a Moral Universe Created by God’s Kingdom?

Brett Kavanaugh was officially appointed to the Supreme Court on Monday.  One of the “evangelical” representatives present at the White House ceremony was Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.  Jeffress is one of the president’s “spiritual counselors.”

Remember, Kavanaugh’s Senate hearings offered us the opportunity to watch a woman named Christine Blasey Ford expose her private humiliation to the American public as she retold the ugly story of her sexual assault.  Afterwards, the American president publicly vilified Dr. Ford.  He laughed and ridiculed her at a campaign rally in Mississippi, turning a woman’s trauma into his own personal burlesque comedy act.

Her family continues to hide in an undisclosed location because of the torrent of death threats they receive.

In the aftermath of all this, Robert Jeffress’ went on Fox News to describe Kavanaugh’s appointment as a sign that “good had triumphed over evil.”

Jeffress added, “I think, in many ways, the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh represents conservatives finally standing up and saying, to quote the movie: ‘We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take this any longer.’'”

Robert Jeffress and I do not inhabit the same moral universe.

The following excerpt is from pages 107-109 of my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believers Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).  I discuss Nazi Germany as one example of the ways different societies construct their own “moral universes” and the challenges these different social universes present to citizens of the kingdom of God.

The two books I refer to are:

 David Gushee, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: A Christian Interpretation (Fortress, 1994)

Peter J. Haas, Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Fortress, 1988)

“Although the decision to break the law by rescuing Jews may seem an obvious choice to us today, we should not forget that only a few in Germany actually made that difficult decision. The majority of German Christians offered no outward objections to Nazi policies. For instance, not a single public protest was ever launched by a Protestant church leader against Germany’s euthanasia laws when they were implemented.  When push came to shove, bad theology, fear, rationalizing, and self-preservation all trumped actualizing the gospel message, which leads us to Gushee’s second, tragic observation.

 “Christian rescuers were few and far between.  Rescuers, in general, were the exception to the rule in World War II; but rescuers claiming to be motivated by their Christian faith were rare even among this small group of heroes. This lamentable fact (at least lamentable for me as a Christian) requires a deeper analysis than we can give to it here, but it certainly illustrates just how difficult and unusual it is for self-professed Christians to give themselves over completely to the thoroughgoing, inside-out transformation desired by Christ. The widespread nature of this spiritual challenge is illustrated time and again by the historians who study the Christian church in Nazi Germany. For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall’s research on Nazi views of Christianity concludes: “Christianity, in the final analysis, did not constitute a barrier to Nazism. Quite the opposite: For many . . . the battles waged against Germany’s enemies constituted a war in the name of Christianity. . . . Nearly all the Nazis surveyed here believed they were defending good by waging war against evil, fighting for God against the Devil, for German against Jew.”

 “This is a chilling conclusion for anyone who loves Jesus.

 “My point in turning our attention to Nazi Germany is not to single out the German church or to suggest that the Third Reich was the only disastrous political movement that has co-opted Christianity and bastardized the gospel.  I have chosen these examples from the history of Nazi Germany because this is one of the few episodes in modern history that is relatively free of partisan wrangling. Almost everyone, regardless of nationality, political persuasion, or religion, will agree that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi doctrine were a consummate evil. I am confident that the majority of my readers will agree—whether their politics are Republican, Democratic, independent, socialist, Green Party, libertarian, or anarchist—that the bulk of the German church, both Protestant and Catholic, allowed the rules of this-worldly citizenship to smother their responsibilities as citizens of God’s kingdom. No one in a church composed of true pilgrims, strangers, and aliens in this world could ever uniformly adhere to the policies of the Nazi Party.

 “From this shared starting point, let me go on to say something that is perhaps more provocative: There is a close analogy to be made between the behavior of the American church today and that of the German church in 1933. No, America may not face the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or National Socialism (whatever the current administration’s political opponents may say). But, like the people of Germany, we all live within a shared moral universe that defines both good and evil and then brings various forces to bear in pressuring us to conform. The Nazis managed to create a moral universe where racism and brutality were approved, even encouraged. The German people behaved accordingly.  Anti-Semitism and eugenics were morally good, while racial integration and opposition to the state were morally evil. Peter Haas rightly insists that ‘the Holocaust was not the incarnation of evil but instead reflected the human power to reconceive good and evil and then to shape society in the light of the new conception.’

 “Haas offers a crucial insight. Whether we recognize it or not, we all live within analogous ethical systems, where we blithely accept cultural definitions of good and evil without exercising any critical thinking. The issue is not the particular guise adopted by evil—whether it wears the face of Nazism, communism, consumerism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, or the class system—but the fact that evil always exists without always being self-evident to us. The moral universe created by twenty-first- century America is not identical with the moral universe envisioned by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that will be shocking news to many members of the church in America.  This confusion makes the American church typical. The bulk of the German church did not fail because it was German but because it was human. The burdensome millstone hanging from the neck of world history is sinful human nature, a human nature that would rather create its own moral universe than live obediently in God’s. When given a choice, human nature always prefers to cling to its own precious, self-serving ideologies (no matter how idiotic, uninformed, xenophobic, or grotesque) over the self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, and servanthood demanded by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, all Christians of every nation must ask themselves in a spirit of repentance, humility, and self-examination: What kind of moral universe is the church inhabiting today? What redefinitions of good and evil have we accepted for our own cultural convenience? What kinds of immorality are we ignoring, or even heartily endorsing, because we are more heavily invested in partisan politics, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, discrimination, and the many other idolatrous ephemera born of the kingdom of this world than we are in following Jesus Christ?”

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 2 – The Mind of Christ Confronts Propaganda

 

Several recent on-line conversations have reminded me, although I never actually forgot, about the basic tools that make propaganda effective.  Abusive leaders (and there are LOTS of them) speak propaganda not truth.

Propaganda is the repetitious spreading of misinformation and lies in order to manipulate the public into believing falsehoods and behaving in ways that are unjust.  Common methods include:

  • Relying on one and only one source of information
  • Listening only to voices that agree with you and confirm your preexisting bias
  • Repetition; either listening to or repeating the same information over and
    Joseph Goebbels was Minister of Propaganda for Adolf Hitler. He was an expert at his job

    over again

  • Offering only one side of an argument, ignoring any contrary evidence or argumentation

Among conservatives of all stripes today, the principle propaganda outlet is Fox News.  This network, and others like it, are a blight on American society.  It’s product is not journalism but propaganda.  Fox’s blatant role as an outlet for

Republican talking points has been public knowledge for many years (here and here).  Loyal viewers repeat what they hear on Fox News because it’s often the only source they trust.

This repetitious feedback loop is now firmly established.

The Nazis understood the persuasive power of repetition

In one of my recent online debates, a gentleman emphatically repeated the same claims over and over again, regardless of my replies.  I answered him by pointing out the misinformation in his statements and giving reasons for why his argument was incorrect.  Yet, as is typical of folks who only “know” what they hear via propaganda, he simply repeated his false claims and errors more firmly, never adjusting his argument or responding to my points.  In other words, he restated what he had been told to believe.

THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR FOR GOD’S PEOPLE.

Here’s today’s excerpt, from pages 105-106 of my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018):

“Persuasive messaging is vital to authority. Whether that message comes in the guise of politics, philosophy, theology, ideology, theory, or propaganda, an authority figure creates legitimacy through the power of a convincing explanation. Effective messaging allows listeners to believe that their obedience is serving a desirable end, no matter how distasteful their obedience to those demands may be. The ends justify the means, at least when the authority’s words are convincing. ‘Control the manner in which a man (sic) interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior.’

“If the message is repeated often enough, and the listener becomes convinced enough, the authority’s explanation is eventually assimilated into the person’s understanding of the world. It is no longer questioned; it is assumed and becomes the believer’s default position, so that any new evidence challenging or contradicting the accepted message is automatically dismissed or ignored.  Do you remember your last political debate with someone who only watches the news from one particular television network? How open was that person to new evidence or counter-arguments offered from a different perspective? Once the content of repetitious messaging has been excused from answering questions posed by critical thinking, then it has become indoctrination: that is, a strongly held belief having its own internal logic, self-evident only to believers, hovering above the messy world of counter-evidence and public demonstration.

“But politicians, demagogues, and advertising agencies are not the only ones who use the power of messaging. The Christian church also has a message that requires communication. We first hear this message through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is then elaborated through regular Bible study into a comprehensive way of living, where obeying the Lord Jesus is life’s guiding directive. Christians discover what God asks of them by becoming familiar with the sound of his voice. Recognizing God’s voice is a gift to faithful, long-time students of his word who put the Lord’s directions into practice. This is how a depraved human mind is slowly transformed into the redeemed mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2). It is a process called sanctification, and it is neither easy nor automatic. Our human tendency is to cling to as much of the old, unredeemed mindset as possible, minimizing the amount of Christ-like upside-down transformation occurring and protectively maximizing the old-time, business-as-usual worldview preserved from our pre-Christian attitudes on life. It is a lifelong contest for supremacy.

“In this respect, every disciple resembles the character Gollum in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gollum is a slobbering, pathetic subterranean creature, clawing and clutching feverishly at his ‘precious’ ring, unwilling to let it go. For Christians, our own ‘precious’ thing is the carnal mindset and consequent immorality that we spent a lifetime inhaling from the materialistic atmosphere swirling around us before we first met Jesus. Allowing these precious, unredeemed preconceptions to be challenged, torn down, and replaced by the new, regenerate mind of Jesus is so difficult that it sometimes never happens. Occasionally, a dramatic historical event will pull back the ecclesiastical curtain to reveal the truth about God’s people and about whose mind is truly precious to them.”

I am convinced that American Christianity is facing one such “dramatic historical event” right now.  It is the rise of Donald Trump and the ethos surrounding him called Trumpism.

Whether Trump’s presidency is a flash in the pan or the permanent entrenchment of all the worst qualities displayed throughout America’s history as an international bully is beside the point.  Conservative

Trump with a few evangelical supporters

Christianity’s gleeful embrace and puppy-dog loyalty to this pathological liar and malignant narcissist is more than enough to reach a verdict.

The conservative church in this country has not only failed the test, it has demonstrated that it never studied for the exam.  It has slept through every class.  Never taken a single note.  Ignored the teacher and burned down the school.

For all its Christian bookstores, Bible study videos, booklets and supposedly expository teaching, the truth of God’s word is a stranger to many, far too many, who say they are God’s people.

The “ecclesiastical curtain” has been torn asunder from top to bottom; the church’s priorities have been exposed.  Many things are precious to American Christianity, but the mind of Christ is not one of them.

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 1 – Every Christian Must Be A Dissident

This is an excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).  “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is the title of chapter 7.  I intend to offer a series of similar posts, all taken from this chapter of my book.

I give my attention to the nature of authority, its abuse and how easy it is – frighteningly easy – for people to fall prey to the most outlandish abuses by

Swastikas cover the altar of a German Christian church

dangerous authority figures.  The classic example, of course, is the German Christian church under the spell of Adolf Hitler.

No. I don’t believe that the US is now comparable to pre-war Germany, though I will refer you in an upcoming post to an American historian who convincingly argues that the two are closer than you might imagine.

What I do believe, however, is that the mindset controlling vast swaths of American Christianity today, especially in its more conservative sectors, reflects many of the same dangerous errors that eventually led the German Christian church to support Hitler.

Trump may not be Hitler.  But widespread Christian enthusiasm for a morally repugnant president who delights in dehumanizing others – reflexively, without inhibition or remorse – who demonstrates all the traits of a sociopath, suggests to me that conservative Christians in this country have managed to lobotomize the mind of Christ – at least within themselves. We have become expert at steeling ourselves against the work of the Holy Spirit, of silencing the Spirit’s voice, ignoring His conviction, and perhaps of expelling Him altogether.

Resistance is the spiritual imperative for every true disciple.  But who, what

Leshia Evans stands against police while standing up for Black Lives Matter

and where do we resist properly?  And how do we resist in a way that pleases our crucified Lord Jesus?

Here is the first excerpt, from page 98:

“…we all regularly face the challenge of knowing when to submit and when to disobey authority. Often the authority is as seemingly benign as public opinion, the status quo, cultural expectations, tradition, or peer pressure.  Yet, for a people who believe they have been called out of darkness into the light, who understand that living by the standards of God’s kingdom will frequently put them at odds with the practices and expectations of a fallen world, defying authority in some way should be common practice. Perhaps it means befriending the outcast shunned by everyone else at school. Or calling friends to account for laughing at a racist remark. Paul’s admonition in Romans 13:5—to act “because of conscience”—is one of the implications he draws from Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (see chapter 4). Learning to defy the patterns of this world by renewing our minds after the model of Jesus and cultivating a genuinely Christian conscience requires learning when, where, and how to disobey any authority, no matter how familiar, issuing wrongful directives, regardless of the consequences. From this perspective, every Christian is called to be a dissident. Discipleship is the life of dissent from this world in the affirmation of Jesus and his kingdom.”

Don Lemon Exposes the Republican’s “White Men are Victims” Strategy for What It Is, Evil

Several days ago Don Lemon, an anchor at CNN, shared a moving testimony about how he was victimized by a pedophile when he was a young  boy.

Men like Mr. Lemon, and there are many of them, can easily identify with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s account of sexual assault.  They can also relate to the shameful Republican tactics, seemingly successful tactics, to silence the victim.  More than that, Republicans, with Donald Trump leading the way, have not only managed to silence Dr. Ford, they have erased her from their story altogether.

Please take a few minutes to watch Mr. Lemon’s excellent unveiling of the current Republican strategy for normalizing their disregard of sexual assault and all its victims:

Victims of sexual violence are non-entities today, at least in the realm of Republicanism.  They have announced that these women’s (and men’s) stories are not worth hearing.

Women like Dr. Ford are now mere specters floating in a moral vacuum.

Rendered invisible, even as she stands before us.

Made mute by the black magic of partisan voodoo.  Oppressive incantations intoned from the Senate floor.

Yet, if old white men like Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Rush Limbaugh and many others are to be believed, this non-existent, mute, invisible, female  victim — who is really a non-victim in their eyes — poses a dire, existential threat to every man…every powerful man…every powerful white man in America today.

Of course, black men like Mr. Lemon don’t count.  And black women aren’t worth mentioning by the likes of these white, old Republicans who strut their stuff from the Capitol steps.

And all the while, white conservative America stands to cheer them on.

They laugh, smile, applaud and cheer as they stand with their young sons and daughters at campaign rallies, watching their Sexual Predator/Serial Adulterer/Misogynist/ Unapologetic Pussy Grabber-in-Chief mock this non-existent, invisible, mute, non-victim named Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

It goes without saying that most of those white men and women from the  Mississippi heartland, who were applauding the president’s demeaning imitation of a victim’s heart-rendering testimony, would call themselves Christians.  They go to church.  They even read the Bible, sometimes.  They listen to sermons from pastors who gloat as they destroy their old Nike gear in the pulpit.

“Heck of a visual aid, pastor,” they say.

But they know nothing about the victimized, brutalized, beaten, scarred and crucified Jesus of Nazareth, the man who loved abused women (and children), held them in his arms, wept over them, healed their brokenness, and made them equals to the men who followed Him.

Their is no true Christianity without discipleship.  Their is no discipleship that does not share in the sufferings of our Lord Jesus.  No one who shares in the suffering of Christ would EVER laugh at, mock, ridicule or dismiss the sufferings of another human being, whatever the circumstances.

We are watching the putrefaction of America’s false religion, most fully displayed in patriotic “evangelicalism.”  Only from the dung heap of idolatry can such a stench arise.

I’ll give Donald Trump this:  he has torn away the mask of evangelical, America-First piety and revealed this Beast for what it truly is.

EVIL.

Pure, unadulterated evil.

Sexual Assault is More Common than Most of Us Imagine. The Church is No Exception

Weekend sleepovers are good times for teenage girls to share their deepest, darkest secrets with friends.  Some years ago, one of my daughters told me about the secrets she heard late one Friday night as she and three friends lay together in sleeping bags in the basement of our house.

First one, then two, then all three of her closest friends told their stories about being raped by an older brother.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Not because I didn’t believe that such things happened, but I wondered, what were the chances that ALL of these girls had suffered the same perverse abuse?

All three girls were members of church-going families.  I knew a bit about the first young lady’s home-life, and I didn’t find it hard to believe she was telling the truth.  But all three?!  I wondered if the others might be encouraging their friend with some sort of teenage bonding experience where they all share the same hardships, even if it meant confessing things that were not true.

I know that my daughter has a huge, loving heart, and that she has always befriended broken people.  But was sexual assault by a brother really that common?

I don’t know.  But I do believe a few other things very firmly.

I definitely believe the first young lady was a victim of rape.  I wish I had known at the time, but I didn’t.  I wish I could have done something.

I definitely believe that the other two teenagers deserved to be heard, to be

WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 27: Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. A professor at Palo Alto University and a research psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a party in 1982 when they were high school students in suburban Maryland. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

encouraged to tell their stories to an adult who might help them in one way or another.

I definitely believe that they all had/have the right to speak out publicly, if they ever chose to do so.  They have the right to live in a society where they are not mocked or ridiculed; where they are not automatically disbelieved or disparaged because they had “waited too long to come forward,” or had not otherwise conducted themselves “properly” in front of others imposing their own, irrelevant, judgmental expectations about how “real” assault victims “ought” to behave.

I believe that they deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt.  I do not automatically assume that every brother is a rapist.  I say this despite the outlandish remark of one Republican woman who glibly noted, with a smirk on her face, about the charges against Judge Kavanaugh, “Tell me, what boy hasn’t done this in high school?”

Well lady, let me tell you.  Most teenage boys are not rapists.  Most brothers don’t assault their sisters.  Whenever such serious charges are made, honest investigations are required by honest, impartial investigators.

But, tragically, far too many teenage boys and adult men ARE guilty of sexual assault, and they need to be held accountable and punished.  Women need to be believed.  Precious few ever make such charges easily, much less falsely.

I know that according to a study published in the Journal of Forensic Psychology  “false and baseless allegations of rape constitute about 5% of all rape allegations.” (For a good investigation into “the threat” of false accusations against innocent men, read this article by Sandra Newman.)

President Trump’s glib warning that “these are scary times for young men” in America is another thoughtless projection by a sex-offender who is intimately familiar with attempted rape and sexual assault.  Stoking conservative paranoia about raging feminists rampantly lodging false accusations against every man they’ve ever disliked is reckless fear-mongering spread among the already fearful.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks as Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on September 27, 2018. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read ANDREW HARNIK/AFP/Getty Images)

I can’t help but wonder what some of these red-faced, finger-wagging, bloviating men (both in the Congress and on TV), who were so outraged by Dr. Ford’s testimony, have to hide about themselves and their own pasts.  Could it be a massive, public display of collective guilt trying desperately to disguise itself as righteous indignation?

I can’t help but suspect that there was a mile-wide current of projection and personal identification on display as we watched powerful men behave so defensively on behalf of Brett Kavanaugh and so disparagingly towards Christine Blasey Ford.

My daughters and their friends do not deserve to live in a society like this, led by these kinds of men.

Senator Lindsey Graham’s explosive speech defending Kavanaugh after Ford’s testimony.

They deserve to feel safe and to be protected.  They deserve to be heard, no matter how long it takes them to speak up.  They deserve to be taken seriously.  They deserve swift, impartial investigations, no matter how old the evidence may be.  They deserve elected officials who don’t hide their grotesque partisan brutalities behind false pledges about “innocent until proven guilty.”

“Innocent until proven guilty” is NOT the issue facing us today.

The issue is discovering the truth.

The issue is the persistent abuse of too many women by too many men.

The issue is why men can come unglued, behave petulantly, rudely, cry,

Christine Blasey Ford is sworn in before testifying the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building at the Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., September 27, 2018. Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS

pout, let the fur fly and still be taken seriously, whereas any woman who behaved similarly would be summarily dismissed as hysterical, out of control and unbelievable.

The issue is why so many who claim to be God’s people mindlessly repeat the partisan – and frequently hateful – Fox News talking points without an iota of mercy or grace.

The issue is that sexual abuse happens within the church as well as everywhere else, and far too many ignore it, warn the victims to be quiet, and then hide behind their religiosity.

 

Senator Amy Klobuchar Speaks Truth to the Judicial Committee

Please take 15 minutes to watch Senator Amy Klobuchar (Dem. MN) provide a clear, straightforward summary of the important issues at stake in the

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D. MN)

contested nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court (watch here).

Yes, the charges of sexual assault are vitally important (see my previous posts here and here), but the Senator also refers to the history of Kavanaugh’s disturbing judicial rulings which have not received anywhere near the attention they deserve.

This is a man who believes that presidents should be exempt from criminal investigation (is this why Trump nominated him despite Senator McConnell’s objections?); supported the use of torture when he was in the George W. Bush administration; endorsed the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision (allowing unlimited, “dark money” political contributions from corporations); supports the Patriot Act (the single most unconstitutional legislation since the Alien & Sedition Act); the mass, warrantless surveillance of the American public; has been hostile to the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and anti-discrimination laws; and has consistently sided with corporations and CEOs against workers and workers’ rights in labor disputes.