A Blog from David Crump
I am happy to say that these two men are both friends of mine. In this video from the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME), Bruce asks the questions and Jonathan offers a discussion drawing from his years of experience as a lawyer of international and humanitarian law.
Jonathan does a good job of explaining the Christian perspective on the horrors of war.
The Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon is the Executive Director of the organization, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), an organization with which I am involved.
She is also a friend of mine. (By the way, Mae has two doctorates.)
In fact, we were both recently in Phoenix, AZ attending the same conference sponsored by the Netword of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME). I am a member of the NEME leadership committee.
Today, Rob and Mae discuss the political dimensions of the current war against Gaza. Mae’s work keeps her heavily involved in a great deal of lobbying and activism in Washington, D.C.
There is a lot of vital information here about what is happening right now in Israel, Palestine, and the USA. Check it out.
The Rev. Stephen Sizer is a vicar with the Church of England who has been a strong advocate for Palestinian human rights for many years.
He is also a staunch disciple of Jesus Christ who vividly examplifies what it means to love one’s enemies.
As a result of Stephen’s witness to loving his neighbors in Palestine, he has also suffered a great deal of persecution and unjust suffering at the hands of the pro-Israel lobby in England.
I was pleased as punch when he asked me to do an interview about my new book with him on his podcast. Take a look:
Nathan J. Robinson has an excellent piece in the online magazine Current Affairs detailing the utter disregard, indeed distain, with which President Joe Biden treats matters of human rights in international affairs.
Biden has filled his administration with neo-conservatives who push American imperialism above every other consideration. How foreign governments treat their own people, including their dissidents — most especially their dissidents — matters not one whit to this Biden administration.
He has proven his gross disinterest time and again.
Check out Robinson’s article filled with more than enough evidence to indict Biden as one of the most hard-hearted, inhumane presidents of all time.
Below is an excerpt:
. . . The pattern is consistent. Biden believes that U.S. global power matters far more than freedom and democracy (emphasis mine). As a result, he has totally ignored the pleas of human rights activists to exert even mild pressure on authoritarian regimes.
Consider the case of Egypt. Earlier this month, the U.S. “approved $235 million in military aid for Egypt that it had withheld for the past two years because of the country’s repressive policies.” The details of the policy are ugly. That money was legally only supposed to be provided to Egypt if it met basic conditions of human rights. Eleven members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Biden imploring him to withhold the aid, citing Egypt’s jailing of “journalists, peaceful civil society activists, human rights defenders and political figures.” Biden ignored the plea and waived the legal requirement that Egypt respect basic human rights in order to receive this aid. The New York Times says the administration concluded that “national security interests outweigh congressionally mandated benchmarks for Egyptian progress on human rights.” Of course, nobody ever says how our “national security” is served by giving Egypt hundreds of millions of dollars without imposing any of the human rights requirements that Congress had demanded. Egypt has certainly learned the lesson that it need not make any human rights concessions to the U.S., because the money will keep flowing regardless. . .
Read the entire article here.
This summer Charlie Kirk hosted another Turning Point USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, targeting Christian leaders, especially
MAGA pastors. Although, one would be hard pressed to find anything explicitly Christian about this gathering.
Below is the conference mission statement taken from the conference website:
“Turning Point USA empowers citizens of all ages to Rise Up against the radical Left in defense of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Join millions of patriotic supporters to Save America.”
Aside from the fact that Mr. Kirk would undoubtedly categorize me among “the radical left” he is fighting against, even my wildest imaginations cannot conceive of one Biblical argument requiring me to include free markets, limited government and saving America (from what? from myself?) as goals for Christian discipleship in the kingdom of God.
What does any of this have to do with Christian leadership? I’ll give you a hint: Nothing.
One of Kirk’s favorite speakers is Eric Metaxas.
Since writing his biography about the German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas has doubled down on styling himself as an American prophet following in Bonhoeffer’s footsteps, warning us about the imminent destruction of our nation.
Supposedly, just as Bonhoeffer resisted the Nazis on behalf of Christ, Metaxas (and his followers) are called to combat their political opponents for the sake of God’s kingdom.
In his most recent book, Letter to the American Church (which I reviewed here), Metaxas implicitly encourages Christians to resort to violence, if need be, as they fight to restore a godly America.
Godly, that is, insofar as Eric Metaxas understands godliness.
Furthermore, never in a million years would Bonhoeffer have said that he was resisting Hitler in order to restore a godly Germany. He was far too good a theologian to have deceived himself in that way.
Metaxas tells us that American Christians are now called to engage in spiritual warfare more than ever. Today’s American scene somehow making godliness and truth “many times more important than it was ten years ago.”
Really? Are you telling me that the contemporary relevance of God’s kingdom is determined by the ephemeral phases of human politics?
Are you kidding me?
Below is a clip of Metaxas’ Turning Point address where he exhorts Christians to pick up their weapons for holy war as did Bonhoeffer.
What Metaxas continually fails to tell his listeners, however, is that Bonhoeffer did not die because of his Christian witness.
No. That’s not what caused the Nazis to seal his fate.
Bonhoeffer was arrested and finally executed because he participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer did not die for Christ, though he certainly did live for him — faithfully and unfaithfully, as we all do.
Bonhoeffer died for attempted murder. Something that no Christian should boast about.
Ironically, in valorizing Bonhoeffer as he does; in stirring Christians to “fight” in “spiritual warfare” as he does, Metaxas is encouraging the American church and its MAGA pastors to repeat Bonhoeffer’s final failure.
And I suspect that this is exactly what Metaxas intends to say.
This is leading unthoughtful people to repeat the error of Esau, who gave up his rightful inheritance in exchange for a bowl of soup.
In much the same way, Eric Metaxas is asking us to betray God’s peaceable, eternal kingdom for the inconsequential rumblings of political skulldugery.
Don’t be deceived. Metaxas is a false prophet, a false teacher, who now points people away from the crucified Jesus.
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
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.
[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
“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.
Ever since the rise of the “Religious/Christian Right,” culture war combat
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.
I’ve never voted for a Republican. I’ve rarely voted for a Democrat. Most of my presidential votes have gone to 3rd party candidates.
It is difficult, if not impossible to find a national candidate who represents my values, my Christian values.
None of the establishment candidates who call themselves “Christian” are anything more than establishment hacks who paste a Christian bumper sticker over their predictable, partisan political views. And most of them lie, anyway.
If you think Mike Pence is an honorable man, I’ve got some swamp land to sell you in Florida.
In this regard, the philospher Cornell West is unique. Even though he has no chance of winning, he believes and says the things that I believe. He analyzes the world in the way that I believe it ought to be analyzed. He prioritizes the issues that I believe a Christian public leader ought ot prioritize.
And this is exactly why he will never win. But at least by supporting him we can have a presidential campaign that speaks the hard truths that America needs to hear.
Check out this 30 minute interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald:
Gay pride month, with its rumblings over pronouns, sexual identity, and LGBTQIA issues, has stirred me to share a few of thoughts about the subtleties involved in these gender conversations which are generally overlooked by many of those who argue over them.
Christians are no exception to this generalization. In fact, we are often the worst at neglecting the relevant nuances when we ought to be the most sensitive to them. For these subtleties are uniquely Christian contributions to the public discussion about gay marriage and sexual-gender identities. If we don’t offer them up, it’s unlikely that anyone else will.
Shame on us for not being more biblically and theologically astute.
[By the way, my pastor recently gave an excellent message on these issues. Here is the link if you want to listen. The entire message is well worth your time, but his discussion of Pride Month begins at the 20:10 mark.]
First, Christians must remember that sexual identity does not entail (much less require) sexual activity.
The secular world jettisoned this fact long ago. Society assumes that whatever you “are” – gay, straight, bi, trans, what-have-you – you will be engaging in that particular “mode” of sexual activity. To be a sexual person means to be sexually active. It is both natural and inevitable.
Tragically, the Christian church has fallen into the trap of sharing this assumption, not only concerning those outside of the church but for those within it, as well.
We assume that a sexual-gender identity will always entail sexual activity. This is why straight men can become particularly cruel and heartless when discussing gay men. They imagine the sex acts involved and are often repulsed. That sense of revulsion is then sanctioned by the demeaning attitudes too often shared by fellow Christians. Thus, base cruelty, born of presumption and self-righteousness, becomes acceptable among the “godly.” This ought not to be.
The fact that the New Testament does, in fact, prohibit gay sexual activity is beside the point for now. As a Christian I understand that scripture only approves of sexual activity within the confines of marriage – that is, a life-long commitment between one man and one woman. All other sexual practices, whatever they may be, with whomever they may happen, fall under the condemnation of that old fashioned word fornication.
Fornication is an equal opportunity sin. It does not discriminate between straight, gay, bi, or what have you.
Anyone engaging in sexual activity with anyone other than his/her heterosexual spouse is guilty of sin. The intimate, mechanical details of this activity are irrelevant. No one needs to imagine anything. The only relevant question is this: is it marital sex (biblically defined) or fornication? It’s really that simple.
We also see this confusion arise when conservative Christians insist that “gay people cannot hold positions of church leadership.”
This simply is not true.
Nowhere does scripture condemn people for being born with gay or lesbian inclinations. Same-sex attraction is no more sinful than heterosexual attraction. The restrictive question is not one of attraction or inclination but of activity (real or imagined) with a particular partner.
Of course, gay people can serve as church leaders, provided that they remain celibate. Just as straight people can serve in church leadership, provided they remain celibate if single and faithfully monogamous if married.
The Christian church has an ancient, venerable tradition of life-long celibacy among its leaders, notwithstanding the horrific legacy of sexual abuse now on display within the Roman Catholic and many Protestant churches. Sin needs to be corrected, not awarded the power to scuttle right practices. Vows of celibacy are as old and as respectable as the apostle Paul.
Christians who automatically reject the idea of accepting gay Christians into leadership roles reveal that they too are making false assumptions. Remember, sexual natures do not require sexual activity. Celibacy is possible, especially when that leader is surrounded by an understanding, compassionate community of faith.
The second neglected subtlety concerns the place of sin, specifically our understanding of the Fall described in Genesis 3, within the workings of creation.
Only last night I listened to an interview with one of the leaders of America’s largest Protestant denomination. He was discussing the current controversies surrounding the “treatment” of childhood transgenderism. With great authority he declared that God had created only two genders/sexes: male and female. Thus, according to him, there could be no such thing as a genuinely transgendered human being.
You’ve probably heard this kind of thing before.
Unfortunately, this Christian leader (and all those like him) are wrong on both their theology and biology.
For starters, the creation story is followed by a sequel – the horrific story of the Fall in Genesis 3. Satan successfully tempts the first man and woman to disobey their Creator, thereby throwing a monkey wrench into God’s original design. Original sin is all pervasive, creating brokenness, rifts, splinters, and unintended consequences all throughout God’s creation. Things are no longer the way they were supposed to be.
Every Christian ought to understand this.
Furthermore, as a result of the Fall, even though God may have originally created only male and female, the monkey wrench of sin has complicated the gender mix considerably.
Now precious human beings who bear the Image of God can also be born as “intersex” individuals, possessing some combination of both male and female sexual organs. In fact, some medical professionals estimate that intersex births may be as high as 2% of annual birth rates. [I recommend watching the touching documentary Some Body to begin your introduction to this issue.]
Gender dysphoria – where a person is convinced that their true gender is inhabiting the wrong sort of body – is a genuine psychological condition, I believe. The monkey wrench of sin has damaged human psychology and genetics as well the human will and imagination.
Though I suspect that gender dysphoria is much rarer than many activists would have us believe, the Christian church must be a place where people struggling with this type of gender confusion can find God’s grace and compassion extended to them through a flesh and blood community.
To insist that God only created male and female is wrongheaded because it tells only half the story.
The second half of God’s story reminds us that nothing today is that neat and clean. For Satan then stepped into God’s creation to make a mess of things. And, with our help, he succeeded royally. Today’s church is called to deal graciously with that mess, the mess we call real life, where very few things, including sexual identities, are as neat and clean as we might like.
To retreat behind bad theology or poor Bible reading; to neglect important subtleties due to thoughtlessness; to make unwarranted or false assumptions about others; to compromise with the secular norms around us; or to forget that Jesus loves broken, hurting people – including you and me – is to fail in our responsibilities as God’s people.
The beauty of the gospel is that God’s grace through Jesus Christ is extended to everyone without discrimination, whether gay, straight, LGBTQIA, or something else altogether.
If you are a sinner like me, then Jesus loves you.
The church needs to become more informed, less reactionary, more biblical, less susceptible to following in the steps of society, and more exemplary of God’s Amazing Grace extended to all.
