Religion

8 II 2019: Who is not a racist?

Virginia’s Governor, Ralph Northam, is being urged to resign because of the blackface photo. Isn’t this ridiculous? That was 30+ years ago. I don’t think he’s the same man he was then any more that Brett Cavanaugh is, any more than all of us are. “Racist” has become one of our default epithets. Though racism is still very much with us and must be identified and called out, use of the term “racist” has come to be used mindlessly, thoughtlessly, viciously, and if things continue as they are going, the charge of racism will become meaningless. 

I firmly believe that we are all of us racists to some extent, in some way, however one may be unaware of his racism, however well he may mask it. If we could create a litmus test to detect racism, I think very few could pass.

Some Virginians want to take down the statues of Confederate heroes, as frolicking students at the University of North Carolina took down Silent Sam. I do not think that the present can be saved by naively effacing the past. However painful the past, we cannot, must not make it go away. If we were to cater to everyone’s anger and resentment and tear down all monuments that are found somehow offensive to someone, we will very soon have no monuments left.

3 II 2019: Barbarous Christians

Father Edward L. Beck posted a tweet critical of the behavior of the Covington adolescents in Washington, D.C. He posted on CNN this account of the reception of his tweet: “The hate mail and threats I have received since my tweet and my on-air appearances about this issue on CNN and HLN have astounded me. Supposed Christians have said the most vile and uncharitable things imaginable. It is further indication of the vast political, racial and religious divides that still exist in our country.” 

I think it is, rather, a further indication of the division in our country between barbarism and civilization.

Everyone has a right to her/his own opinion. NO!

29 VIII 2018: Josh Hawley and pseudo-theocracy

The newspaper brings news of a new phase in Ivy-leaguer Josh Hawley’s senatorial campaign. A while back he tried out “Small Town Values.” The cynicism of this prep-school, Ivy-league, affluent phony’s affirming small town values of which he knows nothing was obvious and so this sales pitch was shut down pretty quick. His new slogan is “religious liberty” which, he says, “is under attack in this country.”

Now it seems to me that the opposite is the case. Our society’s freedom from the coercion and duplicity of the pseudo-evangelicals has been under attack and very near destroyed. What Hawley means by religious freedom is the social and political dominance of the “chosen people,” the “real Christians,” just like it was in the good ole days, when brand-x Protestantism was the established church, when we kept Catholics and Jews in their place, when we persecuted foreigners and, at God’s command, slaughtered the Canaanites, sc., the native American.

He thinks preachers ought to be able to pitch politics from the pulpit without losing their church’s tax exemption. I think, rather, that churches should have no tax exemption at all, for this tax exemption amounts to a union of church and state. Moreover, the tax exemption is hardly needed. The mega-churches and tele-churches are awash in cash. The so-called Christian churches are an instrument of the political right and the political right will make sure they are well financed.

I wish Hawley would say what he feels without camouflage: “I am a disciple of Donald Trump. I am exploiting the anti-intellectual and reactionary elements in Missouri in order to gain power.”

7 VII 2018: Where should we look for barbarism?

CNN reports some of the stated views of Kansas State Senator Steve Fitzgerald, a candidate for the House of Representatives:

“Outside of Western civilization there is only barbarism.”

This very statement suggests he knows much more about barbarism than about any civilization.

“Our Judeo-Christian ethic is what is civilization.”

But wait, he virtually excludes the Judeo- part:

“And that is under attack here and abroad.

It goes by a different name. Christendom. It’s under attack.”

Who does he think he is, Urban II? and here’s that buzz-word Christendomwhich is dog-whistle talk for “us” as opposed to “them.”

“And even speaking about it can bring you under attack.

It has brought me under attack.”

Why do you suppose he was he attacked and by whom? I am a Christian and would gladly attack him because in his speech and attitude he is traducing Christianity and making a laughing-stock of Western civilization.

The article also reports that he maintains that Planned Parenthood is worse than a Nazi concentration camp.

Clearly he must know nothing either about Planned Parenthood or about Nazi concentration camps, but that does not keep him from pontificating like Archie Bunker (remember when Archie was funny?). Mr. Fitzgerald looks like a ready candidate for the unFreedom Caucus. Is he really such so ignorant? or is he cunningly pitching this foolishness to the ignoramuses in his district? I’m afraid he and his constituency bear grievous testimony to the state of American education. Trump and all he represents are only symptoms of the decay of our schools. It is the collapse of our educational system that is undermining American democracy more extensively and more irretrievably than Trump and all his minions.

30 IX 2017: From the fourth chapter of the book of Daniel:

King Nebuchadnesar made an image of gold … He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. … And the herald proclaimed aloud, “You are commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages, that when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, bagpipe, and every kind of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nabuchadnezar has set up, and whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be ase into a burning fiery furnace.

Can we not see this in our times?

Our own Nebuchadnesar has set up the flag which he has usurped as an idol to be adored, and the national anthem as the music at which everyone must must now stand up and worship. Those who fail to do so will be branded “unpatriotic,” “ungrateful” and “Sons of bitches.”

7 III 2017: The State Legislators, for their next act …

Congress may be self-serving and stupid, but they can always point to state legislators to show us how crazy deliberative bodies can be. I’ve read that Oklahoma state senator John Bennett, a compulsive Muslim baiter, has imposed “extreme vetting” (a Trumpism?) that includes a religious test on any Muslims who want to see him. Why would any Muslim want to see him? If people in Oklahoma ever find out what Islam really is, they are going to be embarrassed. Right now, they probably believe it is whatever this two-bit demagogue tells them.

Then in Arkansas, Rep. Mickey Gates does not feel that the metal detectors and armed guards of the state Capitol are adequate protection. So he wants to bring his gun to work. He’s proposed that legislators licensed to carry a concealed pistol be allowed to bring their weapons into the Capitol and other public facilities (with the exception of prisons!). Is being a legislator in Arkansas really such a hazardous job, or does Rep. Gates simply want to have his pistol, like his pecker, with him at all times. I have long felt that many gun fanatics can’t tell their pistols from their peckers and are resolutely determined that the Feds will have to wrest both from their cold, dead hands.

6 III 2017: Well said, Izaak!

from Izaak Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne:

It hath been observed by wise and considering men, that Wealth hath seldom been the Portion, and never the Mark to discover good People; but, that Almighty God, who disposeth all things wisely, hath of his abundant goodness denied it (he only knows why) to many, whose minds he hath enriched with the greater Blessings of Knowledge and Vertue, as the fairer Testimonies of his love to Mankind ….