What It's All About

I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Back in the 50s and 60s, when Martin Luther King was marching and preaching, he used to reassure congregations and movement participants that they had on their side a "cosmic companionship," a divine Force of love and justice that beckoned and challenged and encouraged the whole world towards healing and redemption. This is a crucial faith move, especially when the chips are down and evil has the upper hand. Pain, abuse, oppression and insanity seem to reign. But in the end, slowly but surely, after tireless commitment, love wins. Justice wins.

Rebecca Solnit reminded us of this in her beautiful piece this week:

If you take the long view, you’ll see how startlingly, how unexpectedly but regularly things change. Not by magic, but by the incremental effect of countless acts of courage, love, and commitment, the small drops that wear away stones and carve new landscapes, and sometimes by torrents of popular will that change the world suddenly. To say that is not to say that it will all come out fine in the end regardless. I’m just telling you that everything is in motion, and sometimes we are ourselves that movement.

In the Christian tradition, the Script echoes that God is there even especially in the toughest and deadliest of circumstances. This is the message at the end of Genesis, as the left-for-dead Joseph becomes Pharoah's right-hand-man and saves his family from famine. This is the message of cross and resurrection, the grain of wheat that can only grow if it dies. And it is small, slow and mysterious, like the mustard seed and the yeast.

Yet, so many of my non-religious brothers and sisters are participating in a Narrative that values justice before order and compassion instead of indifference. As King boldly proclaimed, "I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian." These blessed folks know intuitively (this Spirit blows wherever she pleases!) that all people should be given dignity and respect. There, indeed, is a Force or Power that is far greater than our own individual and family dramas, pulling and prodding us all towards Reality.

For all people of faith and conscience--movement people--this is The Primary Conviction: that there is something Divine saturating the world that conspires (from the Latin for "breathes") for us and that this gentle, compassionate, dignified, generous and humble divine Way will win. And that we desperately want to be on this winning side right now, going with the flow, the Breath of God...even if it feels like we are losing. The Truth is that we are not alone in our quest for redemption, but the time table goes far beyond watches and calendars. But it doesn't just happen. It's not inevitable. This Game's for real. And we must participate with the Source of ultimate Love: working, training, praying, fasting, joining up and sitting in.

Truly, this Conviction leads us to embrace all sorts of peculiar practices. Turning off our devices so that we can train our eyes to see the Divine everywhere. Eating foods that are grown locally without pesticides harvested by laborers who are paid a decent wage. Gathering with inspiring and nurturing People who are also compelled by the Conviction. Walking alongside (in a myriad of diverse ways) all our neighbors whom society deems "second-class" (our single-moms, our gay brothers and lesbian sisters, our undocumented, our jobless and homeless, our mentally ill and handicapped). Discerning when and where forces of power and privilege are exploiting vulnerable people and the Earth...and then doing something tangible to stop it.

Yet, today, as in each of the 100 generations since Christ, there are far too many so-called followers of Jesus who are far too comfortable with "the way things are." They will do whatever it takes to fight for the status quo. Take GOP congressman Stephen Fincher from Tennessee who quotes 2 Thessalonians 3:10 to defend his desire to cut billions from the federal food stamps program: For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. Seriously? Are the jobless really "unwilling?" A couple of years ago McDonalds reported that one million people applied for jobs at their restaurants in the US. They hired 62,000. Were the other 938,000 simply unwilling to work?

Fincher's bull$#*t interpretation is the tip of the ice berg. Using the sacred Script to turn Jesus into free-market fundamentalist Reaganite is pretty low, but it is just one example of ways that privileged people use God to both strategize and rationalize their advantage in society. This is absolutely insane. As Wendell Berry wryly quipped,

No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to “spiritual” subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.

God desperately wants us to join in on the Adventure of world-wide redemption. Yes, it's a conspiracy. And this means that those in privileged positions who use the name of the Divine while embracing a lifestyle--in both word and deed--that serves as an obstacle to the Flow of justice ought to be called out and nonviolently confronted by all people of faith and conscience who center their lives on the Primary Conviction that Life is all about consistently and creatively bringing the heavenly Way to this world.

The Homosexuality Debate & The Definition of "Christian"

I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time.
Jason Collins

Chris Broussard and L.Z. Granderson, African-American Christian ESPN analysts, debated Jason Collins' coming out party a couple of days ago on ESPN's Outside The Lines program. The Evangelical NBA expert Broussard predicably had qualms with Collins' decision and with Granderson's own out-of-the-closet "lifestyle":

I'm a Christian. I don't agree with homosexuality. I think it's a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is. [ESPN's] L.Z. [Granderson] knows that. He and I have played on basketball teams together for several years. We've gone out, had lunch together, we've had good conversations, good laughs together. He knows where I stand and I know where he stands. I don't criticize him, he doesn't criticize me, and call me a bigot, call me ignorant, call me intolerant.

In talking to some people around the league, there's a lot Christians in the NBA and just because they disagree with that lifestyle, they don't want to be called bigoted and intolerant and things like that. That's what LZ was getting at. Just like I may tolerate someone whose lifestyle I disagree with, he can tolerate my beliefs. He disagrees with my beliefs and my lifestyle but true tolerance and acceptance is being able to handle that as mature adults and not criticize each other and call each other names.

... Personally, I don't believe that you can live an openly homosexual lifestyle or an openly premarital sex between heterosexuals, if you're openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits, it says that's a sin. If you're openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, adultery, fornication, premarital sex between heterosexuals, whatever it may be, I believe that's walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. I would not characterize that person as a Christian because I do not think the Bible would characterize them as a Christian.

A few remarks about this drama:

1. Although I personally disagree with his particular stance, I adamantly believe that Broussard not only has the right to air his convictions, but that he did so in a loving and respectful way and that he should be commended for it. As the late Christian theologian James McClendon wrote a few decades ago, Christianity itself is "an essentially contested concept," which means that it is up for debate (in word and deed) what exactly it means to be a "Christian." This debate is more important than ever and is particularly interesting when it takes place outside the walls of the institutional church by non-professional religionists, let alone aired on ESPN. Broussard should not be labeled a "bigot" or "hypocrite" or "hater" because he holds a view that most Christians have held for the past 100 generations.

2. Broussard, rightfully, quoted Matthew 7:16, the words of Jesus, that "false prophets" indeed will be revealed by "the fruit" of their lives. However, Broussard, wrongfully, turns this fruits test into a (homo)sexuality litmus test. The words of Jesus in Mt 7:16 actually come at the end his most well known series of teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, a passage the theologian John Howard Yoder describes as "a description of how a person behaves whose life has been transformed by meeting Jesus." These exhortations include the command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to abstain from lusting over non-spouses and oath-taking and placing judgment on others, to pray in a secure location (rejecting the temptation to be revered as uber-pious), to place value in things that truly matter, to trust God instead of worry about wealth, food and clothing and more.

What it does not contain is any reference whatsoever to homosexuality. True, "homosexuality" is condemned by Paul in Romans and I Corinthians, but are these referring to the 21st century Western concept of sexual orientation and loving, covanental unions between members of the same sex? Of course not. These references allude to what 1st century readers of the letters of Paul would have recognized as sex slavery (a wealthy older man buying a pre-pubescent to gratify his sexual fantasies) or pagan temple worship (where one would have sex with a temple prostitute to glorify the gods) or military anal rape (a practice used to humiliate enemies after a battle). Sorry for the graphic definitions, but these need to be spelled out for obvious reasons: they are nothing like the kind of consensual, same-sex love that Jason Collins is endorsing.

3. Broussard adds insult to injury with his after-the-fact tweet:

Today on OTL, as part of a larger, wide-ranging discussion on today's news, I offered my personal opinion as it relates to Christianity, a point of view that I have expressed publicly before. I realize that some people disagree with my opinion and I accept and respect that. As has been the case in the past, my beliefs have not and will not impact my ability to report on the NBA. I believe Jason Collins displayed bravery with his announcement today and I have no objection to him or anyone else playing in the NBA.

Seriously, how can an act be described (by the same person) as both "walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ" and "bravery" at the same time. That's impossible. I am actually empathetic with my Evangelical brothers and sisters who boldly declare that "homosexuality is a sin" and that they truly love their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian. Love the sinner, hate the sin, right? I understand where Evangelicals are coming from when they live in this tension and I do not think that they are being "hypocritical" (even though I disagree with their conviction). But one cannot have this stance and still claim that the "sin" is an act of bravery. Can they?

Ultimately, I believe, Broussard is caught up in a conviction that is slowly unraveling before his very eyes. Evangelicals like Broussard, are experiencing some major cognitive dissonance in this debate. They are meeting more and more people who are coming out as gay/lesbian and these friends and family members desperately want to lead legitimate lives filled with faith and family. They want dignity and respect. Just like straight folks. But God's-Inerrant-and-Self-Evident-Word seems so clear, doesn't it? The Bible, like all sacred documents (the Koran, the Constitution), begs to be read both carefully and critically. When it hasn't been, the oppressed of society ("the very least of these" that Jesus spent all of his time advocating for: women, the poor, gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities, slaves, the disabled) almost always lose.

The Wretched Indignity of US Torture

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity. I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.
SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL

Our fear of Muslims can tell us what we fear about ourselves. Our charges of irrationality and violence against them can tell us about our own unreasoning fanaticisms and our own violence. Peace will not be achieved by torturing and bombing them into democracy. We have been making terrorists faster than we can kill them. Only by addressing the underlying causes of terrorism honestly is peace possible.
William T. Cavanaugh

Last year, our family participated in the 100 year+ Patriot's Day tradition of the Boston Marathon. In the wake of my father-in-law's death due to pancreatic cancer, my sister-in-law qualified...and then found out she was pregnant just a month before race day. She couldn't run the entire 26.2 miles so we broke up the course into bite size pieces and turned it into a relay. In 90-degree heat, we combined to finish just under 4 hours.

That was last year. If it was this year, my wife, brother-in-law and mother-in-law would have all been right in the path of two exploding bombs. Wrong place. Wrong time. The news on Monday of these bombings was rather vivid for me. I could picture the crowds and the finish line. Last year, the faces of runners signaled exhaustion and unseaonsal extreme heat. This year, panic and terror.

Our hearts burn with the pain and grieving of survivors and victims families. Understandably, the Boston Bombing has bloated the news cycle as we all wait for law enforcement to make arrests so that some sort of justice can be made. We all long for justice. That's why it is even more unfortunate that many of us have missed a key report released this week in the days following the tragedy.

Consider the eye-opening work of the Constitution Project, the 577-page nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs during the Bush years. The report is absolutely conclusive that the US government (from Bush all the way down) knowingly used "torture" and, to add insult to injury, did not really get any important information as a result of their dehumanizing tactics. The use of torture, the report concludes has led to:

1. Damaged the moral standing of the US
2. Increased the danger to US military personnel taken captive
3. Reduced the capacity of US government for moral censure throughout the world

Not only were suspected terrorists waterboarded, they were stripped naked, slammed into walls, chained into uncomfortable positions and kept awake for days on end. The post-9/11 US government has now officially gone down the road of Latin American dictatorship with "enforced disappearances" and "secret detentions." We should all be shocked, but most of us missed this news item, stashed on the 2nd page of the LA Times Extra section.

With some of the most ironic language used in the history of our country, former Bush crony John Bolton responded by saying the report is "completely divorced from reality." Of course, those in power, including Bush and Bolton, who signed off on the use of these tactics and have consistently denied using "torture" over the past dozen years, are themselves proven to be living in a fantasy world.

And perhaps even more ironic, today is the 25th Anniversary of the US government's signing of the Convention Against Torture, condemning the use of the very tactics we eventually used in the months and years following 9/11.

This week, as we rightly call for justice to be served for those who cowardly planted bombs in Boston, we must also be resolute in our demand for justice be served for all those who cowardly locked up "suspected terrorists" into a hidden-yet-all-too-real world of fear, violence, pain and complete loss of agency and identity.

It's gut check time for all Americans of faith and conscience. For followers of the tortured Jesus, this is particularly a vital issue. As William Cavanaugh writes,

The world did not change on 9/11; the world changed on 12/25. When the Word of God became incarnate in human history, when he was tortured to death by the powers of this world, and when he rose to give us new life—it was then that everything changed. Christ made friends of us who are enemies of God, and He thus made us capable of loving our enemies as ourselves.

May we never confuse the Pax Americana with the Pax Christi.

Pray for Guantanamo Bay detainees who courageously continue what Glenn Greenwald describes as "the escalating hunger strike to protest both horrible conditions and, particularly, the supreme injustice of being locked in a cage indefinitely without any evidence of wrongdoing presented or any opportunity to contest the accusations that have been made."

A Watershed Moment of Discipleship

We won't save places we don't love.
We can't love places we don't know.
We don't know places we haven't learned.
Ched Myers

We who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes.
Ella Baker

Every year the Global Footprint Network calculates the precise day that the demand for ecological resources and services overwhelms how much the Earth can actually provide. Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was on August 22. This year, no doubt, it will be earlier. And then next year earlier. And earlier. And earlier.

Unfortunately, this overshoot has largely been an oversight for most Christian communities in North America. Followers of Jesus are either ignorant (eco-illiterate) or are content to adamantly spiritualize the message of their Savior into a heavenly afterlife or Rapturous earth escape. Yet, these options come across as both awkwardly convenient and downright costly when examining the externalities of an overused and abused ecology.

For those of us desperately chasing a Christian faith that is radical, practical and indigenously biblical, I commend the work of The Bartimaeus Cooperative, led by biblical scholars/activists Ched Myers and Elaine Enns. In both word and deed, BCM preaches the good news of Sabbath Economics: the struggle to resist the culture of Mammon and to nurture the culture of Manna (see Exodus 16). Myers journeyed to Portland last week to deliver his message of "watershed discipleship," a call to make discipleship global by focusing on the sustenance and salvation of our specific locality ("our watershed") at this particular moment of time ("our watershed"), staving off ecological catastrophe after centuries of colonizing, industrializing and just plain hoarding stuff we obviously don't really need.

As it turns out, 99% of human history has lived bio-regionally (in a valley along a river, on the coast, etc). Lately, though, we haven’t lived mindfully in the places we live, exhausting our precious land while exploiting those who work it. In fact, we haven't just paved paradise and put up a parking lot: we've raped paradise and used the Bible to justify the whole sordid affair. The time has come to start calling this public addiction “sin." We need an intervention because we’ve become one with our accessories. Our hoarding and consumption and luxurious living has ruined the land and, in the process, decimated our souls. We need to repent.

Myers offered this challenge for 21st century people of faith and conscience: to identify our place as one governed by nature, not legislature. This translates into a transfer of our deepest loyalties (what the biblical Greek pistis really means) from state & nation to our particular watershed (see above photo for my own beloved Trabuco Creek watershed). This is a call for our discipleship to be connected to the land. Where we actually live.

Our bioregion is that particular corner of the universe that uniquely sustains us, yet most of us take for granted. And here in North America, we all live in a watershed, the space where the natives thrived more than 8,000 years before whitey started colonizing. It's all about the watershed: because, after all, every interdependent living thing depends on water for life. And as we examine Nature all around us (the soil, the insects, the water), we feel the breath of God whispering patience, interdependence and a timeless gift cosmology into our souls.

This is what the great wilderness man John Muir proclaimed a few pristine decades before the Peace Moment (the unleashing of 2 atomic bombs to end WWII): "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

And, indeed, this is what Martin Luther King proclaimed during his tortured and imprisoned lead-up to the Race Moment: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

A Christian faith that takes seriously biblical themes like incarnation, sabbath, identification of place and solidarity must shift our focus to this watershed. Indeed, there's no need to leave our sacred texts behind in our quest to save the land. These are just some of the texts Myers expounded upon last week (yet he challenged us beyond proof-texted passages to a "sensory" reading of the entire Bible, the way the original hearers of Scripture would, in fact, receive them):

Genesis 12:6f
Genesis 13:18
Genesis 18:1
Exodus 16:16
Numbers 11:34
I Kings 17:1-16
Psalm 147:9
Job 3:8-4:1
Jeremiah 17:11
Luke 12:13-34
Revelation 22:1

Consider prostheni. "This Greek word refers to our plagued longing to add stature to our lives. We live in a prosthetic culture.", Myers proclaimed Friday morning just a stone's throw from Nike headquarters in Beaverton. He was preaching from the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, an episode centering on Jesus' denunciation of the 1st century practice of building bigger barns to store grain during times of low commodity prices. Keep the goods on the sidelines and then unload it all when the prices go back up! Of course, we all know that's good capitalism, but this is bad practice in Jesus' Great Economy (a phrase coined by poet-farmer-theologian Wendell Berry for "the kingdom of God"), creating a gigantic income inequality gap while sapping the earth of her precious resources.

The Bible screams out for us to care for both The Land and The Less Fortunate by living with less. But unfortunately, Myers reminds us, we've been hemmed in by an invasive suburban theology that, like English Ivy, threatens to strangle the native message of the Hebrew Prophets and Jesus. This hyper-spiritualized, grow-the-economy-at-whatever-cost-to-the-biosphere "gospel" is nothing but bad news in this Earth moment. This is nothing but counterfeit exegesis and it has nothing to do with facts on the ground, as Bill McKibbon continues to interrogate us:

In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They'll just ask, "So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?"

Q: So what are some practical action steps to take in saving our respective watersheds?

A: Marching, lobbying, boycotting, letter-writing, “naming the lie,” talking to neighbors, organizing, support work—buttressing the work others are already doing, recognizing our privilege.

But here's where the prophetic Myers gets refreshingly pastoral:

Every single one of us can start right where we are. All we have to do is start paying attention.

As we seek to become eco-literate (reading the studies, listening to indigenous voices), we can commit ourselves to a lifestyle of simple awareness of the land where we dwell and work and love. Before we begin the arduously biblical task of converting our families, corporations and governments into this thinking, we must take the first step of our thousand mile journey of our own recovery from power and privilege.

In the wake of this uber-practical spirituality, many communities are getting creative. Some churches are tithing 10% of their parking lots to build community gardens. Community Roots Garden in Oxnard, California is taking it one step further: donating surplus to the impoverished Mixtec farmers who labor for (non)living wages in their watershed.

And in November 2013, Ched Myers and Chris Grataski of Ezekiel's Guild are organizing a Watershed Discipleship Summit in Maryland. This is something none of will want to miss.

It's been 20 years since Ched Myers "came out" as a bio-regionalist. It was fringe back then, but now, Myers is sure, this movement is in the thralls of a crucial watershed moment. Now, only one single question remains: will you be a part of it?

Checking In With EasyYolk

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than to be a soldier on the battlefield.
Cornel West

Last weekend, I sat down with myself to discuss the EasyYolk blog and life in general.

Me:Your posts deal with all sorts of issues: political, social, economic & theological. How exactly would you categorize your blog?

EasyYolk: EasyYolk is a spiritual blog (rooted firmly within the Christian tradition while embracing the beautiful and truthful voices from other faith backgrounds) with a firm conviction that healing and redemption will come when we seek to participate with God in every space of life. As Scripture duly notes, the breath of God blows wherever she pleases (John 3:8). A robust faith is determined to feel God's presence outside the walls of church, temple, mosque and synagogue. The Enlightenment (from 1650 until yesterday) produced leaders from church and government who were committed to dividing life into "church" and "state" and "everything else there is." These men just wanted everyone to stop killing each other over petty religious differences!

EasyYolk represents a post-Enlightenment Christian project that yearns to do what Jesus did in 1st century Palestine: claim a spirituality that exposes and confronts the corruption and nauseating indifference of religious elites (pastors, theologians and Bible scholars) while demanding social, economic and political justice from every sector of society. The establishment (a coalition of media, church, government & corporations) must be called on their bullshit. Hopefully, EasyYolk can do just a little bit of that calling out.

Me: Your posts most certainly do not reflect your grandmother's Christianity. Is there a name or label for this new brand of following Jesus?

EasyYolk: Most white suburbanites see EasyYolk as a strong divergence from historic or traditional "Christianity," but they are basically operating within a white suburban American Evangelical understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. This Evangelical notion is largely oriented around an individual salvation that guarantees forgiveness of sins and an eternal afterlife in heaven. Over the past 3 decades, this "gospel of sin management" is mostly combined with either an indifference to "politics" or a marriage to the Republican Party, largely focusing on the prohibition of both abortion and gay marriage.

EasyYolk represents a prophetic minority report of the 2000-year Body of Christ. The prophetic Christian refuses to blend the cross of Christ with the American flag. Patriotism too often diverts and distracts the disciple from the rigorous challenge of the Sermon on the Mount: the task of praying for and loving our enemies, basing our lives on trust instead of fear & anxiety, humbly serving our neighbors and living simply so that we can give generously. Christians pledge allegiance to the "kingdom of God," a multi-national movement to "save" the world of arrogance, economic exploitation, violence, oppression and wealth-hoarding.

These emphases aren't sexy. They don't preach. That's why the prophetic movement has been a minority report within global Christianity since the 4th century when the Emperor Constantine convinced the bishops of the Roman Emperor to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire, turning catacombs into cathedrals while baptizing militaries and markets.

EasyYolk is also unabashedly Anabaptist. Beginning in the 16th century, the Anabaptists were martyred all over baby-baptizing Europe for their unique dedication to adult baptism. One cannot commit to baptism until one commits to following Jesus' commands. And one cannot commit (for life!) to following Jesus' commands until one is old enough to make decisions for oneself. While most of Western Christianity has defined faith on the basis of "belief" or "belonging" systems, the Anabaptist litmus test is all about a lifestyle committed to simple-living, enemy-loving peace. For Protestants and Evangelicals, this all smacks of "works-righteousness (working your way to heaven!)," dangerously taking the emphasis off atonement understandings of the death of Jesus.

Lastly, EasyYolk is philosophically postmodern. I am completely allergic to both "absolutist" and "relativist" understandings of the truth. I grew up with the Evangelical obsession with The Absolute Truth mined from a self-evident and inerrant Bible. This, I've discovered, does not take into account the obviously interpretive nature of reading Scripture. We inherently read through lenses (what Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann calls "the zone of imagination": socio-economic status, family expectations, vocational identities, gender oppression/privilege, etc) that color all of our readings. We go on a journey to find truth as we critically examine our own life experience, vigilantly reflect on Scripture with others who are humbly committed to the task, passionately engage with social-scientific research and reverently honor the diverse tradition of Christianity. This is one hell of a task and it calls us all to humility, but it has virtually nothing to do with "anything goes" relativism. Not every interpretive option is equally valid and judgements (albeit with humility) must be made. For instance, I'm 99.9% sure that Sarah Palin was wrong when she claimed that the US invasion of Iraq was God's Will. But I might be wrong.

Me: Is there a more popular face to this prophetic postmodern Anabaptism?

EasyYolk: Martin Luther King. In just a few weeks we will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of his Letter From A Birmingham Jail which was initially published in an obscure Quaker publication, but is now widely regarded as one of the greatest works in the history of Western Civilization. He looked back on a pre-Constantinian notion of what it meant to be the Body of Christ:

In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society...Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?

Christian communities ought to be spaces that ruthlessly commit to afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. We ought to always take the side of the underdog. Chris Hedges quoted Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed in one of his recent posts, referring to the overlooked and even demonized working poor in the US:

When someone works for less pay than she can live on—when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently—then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.

Those words deserve to be read once a day for the next 40 days. An MLK inspired Christian takes her cues from below...because that's what Jesus did.

Ched Myers (see photo above) and his wife Elaine Enns are firmly committed to a Martin Luther King prophetic Christianity. I highly recommend it. You can sample their work here.

Me: Sometimes EY comes across as a bit antagonistic and judgmental, especially in regards to more conservative Evangelical voices. Is this a fair critique/assessment?

EasyYolk: Yes. I'm quite sure I've gone overboard with some of my critical posts and I confess that I've been unfair or punchy or just downright rude at times. I will make no justification for this, except that I'm an imperfect and broken man. On the other hand, I want to be clear that my targets for criticism and judgment are pastor heroes and theologian/Bible scholars and political leaders (all white male heterosexuals) within the Evangelical Christian movement. These men have enormous power and wealth and followings and they mostly remain within the provincial bubble of Evangelicalism. They consistently and unfairly bemoan and demean the “liberal media” and basically delegitimize anyone who doesn't agree with them.

I'm not referring to daimyo Bible Belt Bible Beaters like the Koran-burner in Florida, but specifically to those widely known and virtually canonized like Billy Graham (and his son Franklin who does most of his talking for him now), Rick Warren, John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Rick Santorum, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee. They are dualistic: everyone is either going to heaven or hell when they die, based on whether one has committed their lives to Jesus. They are reductionist: the Bible is a simple-to-read self-evident encyclopedia of timeless truths and principles of piety. They are simplistic: evil is found in abortions, homosexuals, illegals, criminals, terrorists, non-believers and liberals who over-regulate and over-tax job creators.

Most of the Hebrew prophets (including Jesus of Nazareth) were killed because they took on powerful men who did not give dignity to the most vulnerable and scapegoated in society. I believe that the nature of systemic power has not changed an iota since the days that Jesus walked the shores of Galilee during the first century. This power must be confronted consistently and creatively through nonviolent strategies of many kinds, including teaching, protests, arrests, letter writing campaigns, congressional visits, boycotts, lifestyle commitments, official pronouncements, healings, prophetic singing and comedy, as well as educating and exposing the public through various writings like books, websites, blogs, pamphlets and magazines (EY is just a tiny mustard seed in this last category).

Me: Isn't EY just a form of “liberal” Christianity? Is there anything conservative about you?

EasyYolk: If true conservatism means “honoring tradition” or even “a reasonable resistance to change,” then, yes, I most certainly have conservative tendencies. After all, I am still obsessively devoted to confessional Christianity. Many friends and colleagues have either ditched the enterprise or have hibernated into nominalism, for a variety of reasons (some quite legitimate, some highly questionable). My wife and I participate in a church community, read Scripture devotionally, pray before meals and sleep and for friends who are sick, give up "comforts" for Lent and celebrate Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas (as non-consumeristically as possible) and attribute events and effects to God. In short, it is our goal to be theological about everything, while not over-spiritualizing anything.

If “conservative” means personal responsibility then I, too, am guilty of right-wing ideology. There is far too much blaming and shaming going on in American culture at present. This is why the Christian practice of confession is so underrated. If we all truly took our own personal inventory and were far more transparent and vulnerable in our communities of faith about our weaknesses and struggles, then we would live in a far more gentle, loving and grace-filled world. This can only happen in communities that have the courage to be honest and disciplined about refusing to hide the shit “that so easily entangles us.”

But so much of what “conservative” has come to mean to so many of us who grew up in the Evangelical-Republican marriage is about fear-mongering and the protection of powerful interests. Those who proudly embrace the “conservative” brand boast of being all about “less government” to protect business executives and owners (low taxes and environmental regulations), homeowners (tax deductions), gun owners (against universal background checks & assault weapons bans), drug and health insurance companies (demonizing socialized medicine), religious leaders (tax exemptions on church property and pastor's homes), but actually seek policies that expand the government in their attempts to regulate against workers (anti-union legislation), women (criminalizing abortion), immigrants (increased border security and deportations), gays and lesbians (anti-same-sex-marriage legislation), recreational drug users (ramping up the Drug War) and enemies both foreign (increasing the US military budget and drone-killing) and domestic (PATRIOT Act eavesdropping and wiretapping). These conservatives consistently use the Bible to support all these powerful interests while accusing those with alternative interpretations as “reading their own agendas” into the Bible.

Meanwhile, many “liberals” turn a blind eye when Obama continues and justifies the same unjust policies started by his “conservative” predecessor: drone-killing civilians as “collateral-damage” in the “War on Terror,” deporting undocumented workers while slapping the wrists of employers who exploit them, refusing to hold bankers accountable for fraud and refusing to regulate their economy-threatening risk-taking and doing little to ease bloated military budgets while sustaining a highly unsuccessful and expensive drug war here and abroad.

Liberal and conservative, red state versus blue state. This narrative is not nearly as important as asking questions about power and discerning which groups are gaining privilege as a result of the policies instituted by political leaders and supported by faith leaders and their congregants (either overtly or through massive indifference and apathy).

Me: Where do you go to church?

EasyYolk: We participate in a house church that started 3 years ago as a “recovering couples” 12-step group. Two of our founding married couples were dealing with infidelity issues back in the Fall of 2009 and were working to repair and redeem their relationships. Our weekly meetings are about “checking in” with ourselves and with each other to support the ongoing work of healing in our marriages. We begin each meeting with the same “liturgy,” reading the rules that guide our time together, reminding each other that reconciliation is an ongoing process (starting with rigorous personal inventory) and that we aren't there to fix each other. We read the weekly Gospel passage from the lectionary and dialogue it for 15 minutes.

During some seasons we have homework, reading works like Manna & Mercy by Daniel Erlander, A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer and Sabbath Economics by Ched Myers and then discussing them at the end of our meetings. We have worked through our own family histories and patterns, taking the addictive cycle seriously through generations. We have dabbled with a corporate tax, using The Better World Shopper (categorizing industries and ranking all businesses A through F according to their labor, animal, community and environment practices) as a guide for making more conscious consumer decisions (we examine our credit card statements and tax ourselves for making purchases at stores with C, D & F grades). We are attempting (albeit imperfectly) to build into our lives alternative practices, “saving” us from the addiction, image-obsession, materialism and systemic issues (poverty, economic exploitation, ecological degradation) caused by a capitalism that idolizes selfishness, narcissism, affluence and hoarding.

My own recent journey into personal inventory has uncovered a "pain cycle" feeling worthless, devalued and alone. These patterns, since I was a young boy, have led me to cope by withdrawing, avoiding, performing and/or overfunctioning to find value and identity. As I identify these counterfeit moves throughout the day I can tell the truth about my world: that I'm not alone and that I am both worthy and unique (in the eyes of God and friends/family). This re-framing will lead me to live truthfully and peacefully, staying connected, being still and trusting others (especially my wife and those closest to me). The pain cycle is our autopilot. We don't even that we cope in these illlusive ways. As T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."


Me: A friend recently asked me a really good question that I want to pass along to you. How exactly does the death and resurrection of Jesus reconcile us to God and each other?

EasyYolk: The cross is not a magic formula. It is an event that reveals beautifully who this God is. God is so dedicated to justice that when God became a human being in Jesus, he confronted those who wielded power and privilege by exploiting and oppressing others. Jesus taught that God is accessible outside the halls of power and that he is on the side of those who are vulnerable, abandoned, abused and marginalized by elites. The cross is a constant reminder that the powerful have a god-complex and will even kill God himself to get their way in the end. The cross also exposes just how brutal scapegoating and violence is. It calls us to adamantly end both of those widespread practices.

The “message” or “story” of the cross unveils a God of love, in solidarity with the oppressed while holding up a mirror to the oppressors, eventually forgiving them of their ingrained patterns of hatred, cruelty and injustice. This was not a new message: the Hebrew prophets had been attempting to proclaim this to Israel for centuries—God does not desire animal sacrifices and organized religious rituals (fasting, kosher diets, temple tithing). God wants a contrite heart filled humility, justice and mercy. God doesn't need us to do a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo in order to be reconciled to God. We already are reconciled to God, fully present to us every second of the day, outside the walls of religious buildings. So, therefore, this “story” also inspires us to nonviolent reconciliation with each other.

We rest easy because God equals grace. When this story fills our heads and hearts we no longer have to hoard and hide from our neighbors or compete with and coerce our enemies. All God desires (commands!) is for us to love others quantitatively and qualitatively like God loves us.

The resurrection is a Divine vindication of Jesus' way and a glimpse into the future of what all death will become. But ultimately we see this pattern death-and-resurrection at work in our lives. God is the One who consistently brings new life out of a multitude of deaths. God is the Great Recycler, composting all our garbage to grow newness all around us. We do not need to fear death because it is The Way to a whole new world. When the shit hits the fan we live in a hope-filled tension of love and faith, knowing that God is going to raise up something we never could have imagined...eventually.

Me: Do you have any dietary restrictions?

EasyYolk: I'm a vegetarian trying to make the leap to vegan territory. 3 years ago, my wife and I gave up meat for Lent and we've never turned back. We've seen some documentaries (Food Inc, Food Matters) and read some books (Food Rules by Michael Pollan and Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran-Foer) about the factory farm system in the United States. Our diet is a component of our discipleship. We are boycotting meat (and most animal products like milk, cheese, butter, etc) because the way that it is brought to market. Animals are grossly maltreated. Workers (mostly immigrants) are exploited in dangerous conditions. The land is saturated in shit (literally), methane spewing into the atmosphere. Cancer rates and food-borne illnesses are rising due to hormone injections and the cultivation of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

Of course, the industrial food system affects poor people the most. They don't have the convenience nor the coin to choose “organic” or “free range.” They are stuck with the cheap options on their plate. And poor folks are the ones who have no other choice but to work the “shitty” farms and feed lots. Not everyone in our house church has committed to vegetarianism, but we've all made a conscious effort to eat less meat. If everyone ate less meat, our world would be more kind, clean, gentle and healthy.

Me: Who are you reading these days?

EasyYolk: I always come back to my trifecta: John Howard Yoder, James McClendon and Ched Myers. They are like my canon. This Anabapist tradition of scholars is seasoned with Martin Luther King and Walter Wink, Walter Brueggemann and, of course, Cornel West. More recently, I've been reading the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr and the creation spirituality of former priest Matthew Fox. Fox brings out voices throughout Christian history (especially Hildegaard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart) to combat the fall/redemption brand of Christian faith that has dominated Western Christianity since Constantine. I've got Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach and Dave Zirin's The People's History of Sports waiting on the shelf to read during Spring Break.

Me: Are there any good news sources available anymore?

EasyYolk: Not many, but I think Democracy Now is doing a great job of critiquing power whether Democratic or Republican, corporate or government and a whole slew of interest groups from across the political spectrum. Glenn Greenwald has consistently exposed Presidential power abuses, starting with Bush and now with Obama. Matt Taibbi has committed himself to investigating the fraud and abuse of the banking industry (and the governing class’ refusal to do anything about it). Other voices like Dean Baker, Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Hiltzik and David Korten.

These journalistic voices are not neutral, but the goal of journalism has never been about just laying out the facts for the world to see. The real objective is to keep “the powers” accountable which, in the end, doesn’t make any friends. If they are doing their job, people in high places are going to get seriously pissed off. Corporate media (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN and most radio stations) are motivated by profit and will cater to the interests of sponsors and viewers/listeners. They are not committed to telling the hard truth.

I personally still enjoy reading the New York Times and I get the LA Times delivered to my home every day. Both of those publications print commentary/opinion pieces from across the political spectrum (whereas the OC Register and Washington Post skew hard to the right). But I do read them critically. Spending a half-hour every day “catching up” on the action of the world is a worthy spiritual practice. But real journalism is vital today because our world just keeps getting more and more complicated: 2000+ page legislative bills, “sequestration” and “fiscal cliff” negotiations, the 2008 financial crisis sparked by a housing bubble (“credit default swaps” and “sub-prime mortgages”). We need voices we can really trust and we most certainly will not find them on cable TV.

Me: What do you think about the record performance of the Dow?

EasyYolk: No comment.

Me: You used to be an athlete. Do you still think sports are important?

EasyYolk: I still watch and read about sports a lot. I still read the sports page first. I’m a die-hard Kansas Jayhawk fan and I get too emotional watching them play. Sports can be such a beautiful art form. The creativity, athleticism, team work, discipline, strategy and sacrifice all blend together to make sports a legitimate leisure activity. But athletics is overemphasized and much of it is quite violent and glorifies hubris.

In the suburbs, where I’m from, sports takes our eyes off the real pain of the world: the income inequality, the joblessness, the homelessness, the disease and debt of the Third World, the killing over ethnic hatreds, power-games and oil, the patriarchy of our families, jobs and governments, the racism (especially with jobs, loans, the entire “justice” system from questioning to arrests to trials and prison sentencing) and ecological degradation. The whole ESPN 24-hour network turns the drama of the Lakers season into something far more important that any of these tragic struggles of real life.

Professional athletes make too much and owners make WAY too much. One of the most absurd spectacles in our society is the rampant public-funding of stadiums and arenas. Taxpayer dollars going to subsidize already over-privileged sports owners. The whole notion is genuinely a circus.

But there is something about sports that grabs my heart. Watching Game 6 of the 2011 World Series when the Cardinals came back in the bottom of the 9th to beat the George-Bush-owned-Rangers or watching the 2012 Kansas Jayhawks come back from 27-down to beat Missouri in the final game of their 100-year rivalry—these events are unscripted. These things are not supposed to happen. But they do. They bring out faith, hope and love in forms that ought to be mirrored in lifestyles and protests of peace and justice. These events give us a glimpse into the kind of mentality that Rebecca Solnit writes is required of real activism:

To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

Sports is filled with open hearts and uncertainty. We all need to learn how to live more like this.

Now's The Time To Legalize It

The War on Drugs fails—-and is doomed to perpetual failure—-because it is directed not against the root causes of drug addiction or of the international black market in drugs, but only against some drug producers, traffickers, and users. More fundamentally, the war is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war metaphor itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight, and factually researched scientific understanding.
Gabor Mate, In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts (2008)

The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve been prodded on several fronts to address our nation’s pathetic 30 year War on Drugs. This is a vital issue with economic, ethical, racial and international ramifications and something desperately needs to be done about it.

At the outset, let me confess that I’ve never actually experimented with marijuana, let alone “harder” drugs like cocaine and heroin. For one, I’ve always been a bit fearful that I might like it a bit too much and it would completely smoke out any motivation I might have to do anything productive for society. Besides, my poison is beer. I binged on alcoholic beverages during my latter college days and most certainly enjoy a beer (or 3) with friends today and, not to mention, all of the folks I’ve spent significant time with haven’t been into pot so it’s never been a relevant personal issue for me. But our own circumstances shouldn’t keep us from doing something about worn out and wrong-headed policies that negatively affect millions of people in the U.S. and south of our border.

First and foremost, as documented by Michelle Alexander’s marvelous work, African-American males are getting pummeled by racial profiling arrests, trials and sentencing, locked away in prisons for years on even minor marijuana possession charges. When paroled, with a felony on their records, they struggle to find legitimate work, let alone societal dignity. Statistics consistently show that blacks and whites possess and deal drugs and rates that reflect their percentage of the population, respectively. According to Alexander:

Millions of poor people of color have been rounded up for relatively minor nonviolent drug offenses. In fact, in 2005, four out of five drug arrests were for possession. Only one out of five were for sales. Most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.

Alexander adds:

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.

Infused in white suburban minds (like mine, growing up in Orange County, CA) is the picture of the black kid with his pants hangin’ below his ass, on the ghetto street corner either smokin’ or dealin’ the day away. Meanwhile, the wealthy honors white boy is out hotboxing his BMW in the parking lot of the pool in his gated community. When caught, the white boy’s parents hire a lawyer to get plea bargained out of a felony while the black kid gets public defendered into prison.

Second, the United States government is currently spending billions to fight the production of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in Latin America. While drug cartels who control the trafficking by violently intimidate populations, multinational corporations are reaping government contracts on inefficient and outmoded technologies and training. Meanwhile, world leaders like former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are pleading with the U.S. to stop the unsuccessful strategy of prohibition while the Obama Administration claims that the War on Drugs is somehow working. But the increase of drug, cash and weapons confiscations in Mexico has simply pushed the violence south into Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Third, American domestic drug policy is riddled with laughable double standards and inefficiencies. High school seniors readily admit that they have easy access to marijuana while their 21-year-old+ siblings can legally purchase alcohol and binge the night away, forming habits that have major personal & social implications, including drunk driving fatalities, increased cancer rates, alcoholism (etc) leading to higher health care premiums for everyone. And how is it that many forms of gambling, porn, cigarettes, credit default swaps and hydrocodone are all perfectly legal and (mostly) socially acceptable while bong rips are officially shunned and ostracized as the fuel for stoners, hippies and rastafarians? Of course, there are plenty (more than a million currently) of perfectly decent cancer patients, sufferers of chronic pain & anxiety and terminally ill who can (and do) benefit from the pain-killing, appetite-stimulating qualities of cannabis.

Lastly, we simply do not have any more room in our prisons for drug users and addicts who should be getting real help from 12-step groups, therapists and professional drug rehab centers instead of being shamed and punished in a de-humanizing cell. Consider the recent LA Times report on sex offenders who have been released early from CA prisons, mostly due to overcrowding.

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature's "realignment" program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Many of these predators are cutting off their GPS ankle bracelets and prowling around our neighborhoods for our children while government contractors paid to keep tabs on them are overwhelmed and virtually unresponsive. Meanwhile, Jamaal wastes away in the pen because he had the audacity to possess more than an ounce of Acapulco Gold. California's barbaric prison system is notoriously overcrowded. It is currently at 145% capacity. According to a November 2011 study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, as of June 30, 2011, 1,325 inmates in California prisons were serving sentences for marijuana offenses, including 1,224 imprisoned in 2010, both decreases from the previous year. Marijuana offenders—costing an average of $45,800 per year to imprison and serving an average of 13 months behind bars—cost the state $60 million in 2011.

In addition to all of these arguments, a legalized, regulated and taxed ganja market in California would produce a safer product and a windfall for our state budget. Legalizing pot brownies would mean less money for Mexican drug lords and American CEOs and more money for the rest of us in the form of health clinics, high schools and highways. And I like the smell of that

Ending the prohibition of ganja is not giving up on the Drug War nor is it giving in to the druggies. The experiment has quite simply not worked and it has had a terrible affect on poor urban minority communities while corporations have profited handsomely from mostly well-meaning taxpayers. This is not an issue only for potheads. Anyone who cares about racial profiling & poor and vulnerable youths, the epidemic of drug addiction, wretched prison overcrowding and the massive waste of tax dollars ought to think seriously about it and advocate against prohibition and criminalization of marijuana.

The Feminine Response of Jesus

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Luke 13:31-35

The only guide we have is this nonauthoritarian, powerless Christ who has nothing but love, who exerts no power, has no armies to call on, shoots no one down…who has nothing with which to save us but his love.
Dorothee Soelle

Jesus was a wanted man. The Pharisees wanted him to "get lost" or even better to die because he threatened the power and control they had over 1st century Palestinian society. The Pharisees were part of the rule-making professional religionist elite, ultimately determining who was "clean and "unclean." Meanwhile, Jesus was a rule-breaker for justice, pouring out dignity and compassion on the diseased, disabled, blue-collar workers, women, foreigners and the financially destitute.

Consider viewing Jesus through the lens of Martin Luther King and his nonviolent civil rights resisters who staged sit-ins, protests and rallies to expose the horrifying injustice, hatred and/or indifference of 20th century American Pharisees. Martin was wiretapped by the FBI and eventually gunned down in Memphis through a US government conspiracy. Jesus was betrayed with a kiss, arrested without habeas corpus and tortured on a Roman cross.

When it came to responding to the vicious tactics of the elites, both King and Jesus embraced a lifestyle the scandalously trumped the conventional masculine wisdom in their respective contexts. While King's colleagues demanded violence to deal with the white devil, Jesus' disciples asked (begged?) Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to consume their opponents, the dreaded Samaritans. Surely, King and Jesus endured name-calling ("Quit being such a queer and kick some ass!"..."What are you a girl? Fight back!"). Yet, these prophets had wisdom on their sides: King's closest advisor was, after all, openly gay, and Jesus' financial supporters were wealthy women. Truly, the roots of corruption and oppression will only be exposed and confronted with a creative blend of nurturing and compassion, using our bodies for embrace instead of revenge.

In response to Pharisaic fear-mongering, Jesus portrays himself as a mother hen with her brood of children, protecting them from the militaries and markets that oppress, exploit and mislead them. Jesus, after all, is just revealing God's feminine side that Isaiah exposed centuries earlier:

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

And, like the prophet Isaiah, Jesus came to invite God's children to embrace true religion:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

The way of Jesus is diametrically opposed to the overwhelming interpretation of Western-style Christianity from Constantine in the 4th century until yesterday. The masses of "Christians" have packed heat instead of taking the womanly challenge of bearing the cross. We follow Jesus when we commit our days to casting out the demons of violent empire and performing cures upon those ravaged by the exploitation of the American Dream. Love is patient and kind, the only hope of defeating death and numbness of the system, as the Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel harmonizes:

I live each day to kill death;
I die each day to beget life,
and in this dying unto death,
I die a thousand times and
am reborn another thousand
through that love.

Drones & Default Swaps: The Bankrupting of "Democracy"

The United States spends more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined. Between 1998 and 2011, military spending doubled, reaching more than seven hundred billion dollars a year—-more, in adjusted dollars, than at any time since the Allies were fighting the Axis.
Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, "The Force: How Much Military Is Enough?"

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight Eisenhower

Perhaps the most alarming, and the at same time most overlooked, issue on the political landscape is the slippery slope of political corruption in Washington DC and the 50 state capitals. In the past few days, two reporters--Jill Lepore of The New Yorker and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone--have clearly communicated the problematic nature of lobbying, campaign contributions and "the revolving door" of government regulators promised bribed with future lucrative jobs within the very industry they are supposedly regulating. This downgraded democracy is the root of societal ills like income inequality, subpar education, a diseased health care system and America's addiction to violent solutions like war and exaggerated prison sentencing.

In her essay "The Force: How Much Military Is Enough?," Lepore traces the bloating of defense spending over the past two centuries, especially the 60 years since Eisenhower's famous militar-industrial-complex speech. Sure enough, there's a collusion between corporations and politicians that, unfortunately, is far too often schleped off by everyday people as "just how the system works." Lockheed Martin is emblematic of the situation:

If any arms manufacturer today holds what Eisenhower called “unwarranted influence,” it is Lockheed Martin. The firm’s contracts with the Pentagon amount to some thirty billion dollars annually, as William D. Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, reports in his book “Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex” (Nation). Today, Lockheed Martin spends fifteen million dollars a year on lobbying efforts and campaign contributions. The company was the single largest contributor to Buck McKeon’s last campaign. (Lockheed Martin has a major R. & D. center in McKeon’s congressional district.) This patronage hardly distinguishes McKeon from his colleagues on Capitol Hill. Lockheed Martin contributed to the campaigns of nine of the twelve members of the Supercommittee, fifty-one of the sixty-two members of the House Armed Services Committee, twenty-four of the twenty-five members of that committee’s Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces—in all, to three hundred and eighty-six of the four hundred and thirty-five members of the 112th Congress.

The Defense Department has a serious weight problem. With more than 80,000 troops in Germany and Japan combined and hundreds of military bases all over the world, it is clear that the federal government has baptized our country into perpetual war. However, the military-industrial-complex is not primarily concerned with the task of defending our borders, but instead, with American Exceptionalism. We are addicted with the notion of being the best, outspending the entire world on soldiers, bases and weapons while leading the world in weapons manufacturing and trade. And all the while, our education and health care falls abysmally short of the standards set by other industrial countries.

Sure, the military budget creates jobs for soldiers and weapons manufacturers and many more. But Dean Baker points to a recent study of just how inefficient military spending (compared to government spending on education, health and clean energy) actually is:

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment requirement tables, they find that on a per dollar basis spending on health care or energy conservation creates 50 percent more jobs than spending on the military. Spending on education creates more than twice as many jobs as spending on the military.

In other words, if the point of spending is to create jobs, then the military is the last place that we would want to put our dollars. But, many in Washington believe in the military spending fairy who blesses the dollars spent on the military with unmatched job creating power that has no basis in normal economic analysis.

As defense contractors and Pentagon officials fearmonger for more funding, the Senate health committee held hearings yesterday to examine the mental health epidemic in the US, including the lack of resources to treat those suffering from crippling conditions like autism and schizophrenia:

...more than 90 million Americans live in areas where there is a shortage of mental health professionals. Fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of children with diagnosable mental disorders will actually receive mental health services in a year. The access challenges are particularly acute in rural America where there are not enough psychiatrists and psychologists to meet the mental health needs of young people and seniors.

Senate health committee member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) later tweeted:

The mental health problem is so severe that deaths of service members by suicide exceeded deaths in combat last year.

But unfortunately, the mentally ill and their advocates cannot match the lobbying power Lockheed Martin as these "interests" compete for billions of federal tax dollars.

On the financial front, Matt Taibbi, the journalistic prophet consistently reminding us that bankers don't get sent to jail no matter what forms of evil they devise, including money laundering for terrorists and drug dealers, lamented today the hiring of Mary Jo White to head the SEC. Remember: this position is supposed to be the top watch dog of the banking industry, but this will be tough for White to do since she has spent most of the last decade defending the horrific actions of the big banks.

Couldn't they have found someone who wasn't a key figure in one of the most notorious scandals to hit the SEC in the past two decades? And couldn't they have found someone who isn't a perfect symbol of the revolving-door culture under which regulators go soft on suspected Wall Street criminals, knowing they have million-dollar jobs waiting for them at hotshot defense firms as long as they play nice with the banks while still in office?

And back to Bernie:

The financial meltdown came as a result of very risky bets and massive oversights from the banking industry. Then, the feds bailed out the banks, freeing up billions for easy-profit investments while the rest of the US population has suffered economic stagnation.

But things have worked out the way they have over the past 5 years because this is how the system is set up. The defense and financial industries are "too big to fail," doing far more than they ought to in a healthy society. The military should keep us safe from the real terrorists and the banks should secure loans for entrepreneurs looking to create businesses that offer goods and services that make America better. Yet without robust regulation, these billionaires have morphed into becoming the producers of drones and default swaps. As a result, the rest of us, have far less political power and far more threats to our safety and well-being.

Django: A Critical Reflection

The gospel demands of us a commitment to a long-term process of self-examination in order that we might understand how our national past remains embedded in the present, like an unsevered umbilical cord.
Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away The Stone (1994)

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.
James Baldwin

I'm just a little more used to Americans than he is.
Django, on why he is less disgusted than his German partner Dr. Shultz when a runaway slave is ordered to be eaten by dogs

In his 3rd volume of Systematic Theology (Witness, 2000), published just days before his death, the highly underrated and underread Anabaptist ("baptist") scholar James McClendon, laid out a clear structure of cultural engagement for "radical" Christian disciples (and deeply useful for all people of faith and conscience). He offered a "theology of culture" that has three distinct "trajectories" rooted in three legendary theologians of the 20th century: Paul Tillich, who eagerly and irenically searched the secular landscape looking for meaning [HOPE]; Julian Hartt, who sought to expose the lies and illusions of wider culture that counterfeit our lives [WARNING]; and John Howard Yoder, who called upon communities to pledge allegiance to the biblical "reign of God" in ways that (more often than not) subverted American culture [DEMAND]. All three of these emphases are needed for an effective witness.

McClendon's cultural rubric rejects a simplistic either-or dualism that labels everything as either good or evil. Using Navajo religion as a case study, McClendon emphasized that Christians, by valuing both critical study and disciplined devotion ought to be neither relativists nor absolutists:

Its business is to affirm them where they are true, to correct them where they are harmfully wrong, and to complete them by showing the relation between these stories and an inclusive story of all the earth…to repeat, the gospel is not a simple no or yes to Navajo ‘religion’ but declares a simultaneous yes and no.

McClendon's work is a godsend in a world of mindless American entertainment consumption. We, indeed, are amusing ourselves to death. Building off the work of British philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre, McClendon dignosed American culture at the dawn of the 21st century, as "fragmented," a clash of competing metanarratives about what Life is essentially all about. Any work of art (including TV, movies, books, etc) makes claims about our telos (the goal of life) and the virtues and practices that make up our time on planet Earth. Unfortunately, our narratives awkwardly and uncritically fuse together, making life confusing and uncentered.

Borrowing from McClendon, I present to you a critique of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, a film garnering widespread acclaim, including $130 million at the box office and an Oscar Best Picture nomination.

Hope: Tarantino is a genius at unveiling just how gruesome humanity can be. In Django, he reminds us just how twisted race relations have been, particularly in the years anticipating the American Civil War. African Americans were so "thingified" (MLK) that they could be bought and sold, breaking up the family unit at will. Indeed, it was a shock to Southern whites when Django had the audacity to ride a horse, as Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie passionately pushes his slaves into vicious Mandingo fighting-to-the-death against slaves of rival slave owners. We know that Hollywood has fictionalized the Mandingo enterprise, but slave owners would send slaves to box it out for pure entertainment.

Tarantino's presentation of life in the 19th century American South beckons us to consider the continued racial injustice that plagues our nation and our world. Our overcrowded prisons and dilapidated schools are overwhelmed with African-Americans who have grown up in impoverished innercities, while our corporate farms are harvested by immigrant labor, undocumented and poorly compensated. On top of this, our corporations are getting more and more sophisticated outsource slavery to Third World locales that make everything from iPhones to the Dallas Cowboys.

In short, we must be reminded of the hideousness and insanity of our history, both personal and national. Indeed, we are all greatly shaped by the mentality and actions of previous generations. We do not start afresh. Only when we dare to enter the darkness of the past can we embrace a true journey of healing, joining our oppressed and marginalized brothers and sisters in their demand for personal dignity and systemic justice.

Warning: Django is porn for all those who harbor revenge fantasies. Tarantino soaked German Jews in redemptive violence in Inglorious Basterds and, who knows, perhaps will come alongside the 18th century frontier Native American or late 20th century gay high school student next. Tarantino, in fact, set out to make this film the photo negative of the legendary African-American Roots:

One thing both men agreed on was a scene in Roots that served as an example of what not to do in Django Unchained. The last act of the final episode features the character Chicken George being given the opportunity to beat his slave master and owner in much the same way he’d been punished and tormented. In the end the character chooses not to so he can be “the bigger man.”

“Bulls--t,” exclaim both Tarantino and Hudlin in unison as they discuss the absurdity of the scene. “No way he becomes the bigger man at that moment,” says Tarantino. “The powers that be during the ’70s didn’t want to send the message of revenge to African-Americans. They didn’t want to give black people any ideas. But anyone knows that would never happen in that situation. And in Django ­Unchained we make that clear.”

But this is a vital problem despite the longing we all have for the world to be put to rights, that the evil-doers will be done right. Redemptive violence is a myth on two major counts: (1) because over and over, throughout history, it has proven to both repeat and intensify what the Brazilian priest Dom Helder Camara called "the spiral of violence;" and (2) after the revenge fantasy (in all its glory!) has concluded there remains a deeply disappointing pit of unfulfillment in our souls--sure enough, evil is blown away by evil, but as Gandhi enunciated so beautifully, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind." Only forgiveness and a creative strategy towards restorative justice can heal the epidemic of abuse and atrocity lurking in the corners of our world.

Demand: If not revenge, then what? The narrative weaknesses of Django call all people of faith and conscience to a more bold and courageous vision of nonviolent resistence and enemy love. This is pacifism, not passivism. It will take power to assert ourselves, confronting injustice in its manifold forms. We will need to embrace a more strategic creativity that employs a variety of weapons of peace and love, like boycotts, protests, marches, artistic appeals, education, satire and a commitment to a holistic lifestyle of nonviolence that considers what we eat, how we communicate and where we work in our grand conspiracy to extinguish hate and abuse from the world.

According to Cornel West, it has been the African-American experience itself that has been a "leaven in the loaf" of American history. Isn't it a wonder, West asks, that there has never been an emergence of a black al Qaeda in the United States, after centuries of violence and terrorism against them? Indeed, Django flips the script on the legacy of Martin Luther King who, influenced by Jesus and Gandhi, consistently and coherently devoted his movement of confronting the vicious presence of racism, poverty and militarism on the American landscape to the practices of love and forgiveness. This, West consistently points out, is portrayed in the words of the grieving mother of Emmett Till: "I don't have a minute to hate. I am going to pursue justice the rest of my life."

Our world desperately needs practitioners who are militantly committed to peaceful confrontation with power and creative solutions to the many problems, both individual and systemic. A robust critique of Django, during a week celebrating King's prophetic witness, implores us that this task is fiercely urgent.
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So far I've only seen 4 Oscar nominated films: Lincoln, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook and Django. In my opinion, Playbook is at the top of the list because of its unique beauty, raw honesty and overwhelming redemptive quality. This narrative is committed to the last and the least becoming the first and the finest. The bipolar and broken are restored to sanity through dance and a daring embrace of the darkness in their souls. This is far more compelling that solutions and fantasies based on heinous killing.

The Real Gay Agenda

I can’t for the life of me imagine that God will say, ‘I will punish you because you are black, you should have been white; I will punish you because you are a woman, you should have been a man; I will punish you because you are homosexual, you ought to have been heterosexual.’ I can’t for the life of me believe that is how God sees things.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hope will never be silent.
Harvey Milk

Sexual minorities are some of the most vulnerable citizens of the world. Those that are courageous enough to come out of the closet in North America are ostracized and scapegoated within government, at the workplace, in families and faith communities, while our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters throughout the developing world are violently harassed, jailed and given the death penalty.

Now is the time that all people of faith and conscience recognize and promote the real gay agenda in the United States. No, not the “agenda” alleged by Rick, Huck and Rush, but the real redemptive work that is flourishing in the real lives of gays and lesbians (and their straight allies) everywhere. Let us not delay in highlighting some recent developments.

First, there’s the true life gospel story out here in Southern California of the gay hosts of an internet radio talk show whose billboard has been hatefully vandalized twice. Instead of replacing the billboard a second time, Robbie Laughlin and Craig Olson decided to commission an artist to use peace and love to cover the multitude of sins brought on by hate. Here’s the final product:

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We would also like to honor Jeanne Manford, the longtime elementary school teacher who walked alongside her gay son at a Gay Pride Parade in NYC in 1972. She was instrumental in starting up Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) with just a few other stalwart parents of sexual minorities. Manford’s love for her son Morty—who died of AIDS in 1992— overwhelmed any sort of cultural more or stigma that might possibly dare to keep someone neutral. Because of her commitment to a New World, PFLAG now has more than 350 chapters throughout the US with more than 200,000 members. Here she is in 1972, with the poster she made herself:

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Lastly, we applaud Barack Obama’s selection of Ricardo Blanco, the 1st generation Cuban and openly gay poet, to read at the inauguration on January 20. Here's an excerpt from America, the first poem he ever got published:

By seven I had grown suspicious--we were still here.
Overheard conversations about returning
had grown wistful and less frequent.
I spoke English; my parent's didn't.
We didn't live in a two story house
with a maid or a wood panel station wagon
nor vacation camping in Colorado.
None of the girls had hair of gold;
none of my brothers or cousins
were named Greg, Peter, or Marsha;
we were not the Brady Bunch.
None of the black and white characters
on Donna Reed or on Dick Van Dyke Show
were named Guadalupe, Lázaro, or Mercedes.
Patty Duke's family wasn't like us either--
they didn't have pork on Thanksgiving,
they ate turkey with cranberry sauce;
they didn't have yuca, they had yams
like the dittos of Pilgrims I colored in class.

.............
We desperately need more creative expressions of nurturance, compassion and humility in our culture. This, of course, is the real gay agenda: from the ranks of the marginalized comes a vigrous source of redemption. Let's participate in movements that confront the demonization gays and lesbians and pledge solidarity to their beautiful journey towards peace and justice. Pass it on. Straight folks need to have their own coming out party: ruthlessly advocating for the dignity and worth of sexual minorities everywhere. Let this gay agenda spread everywhere. It's contagious. Real love is an epidemic.

Scripting Peace in 2013

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still...This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Each one is to gather as much as he needs.'
Exodus 14:14, 16:16

...history belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being...The future belongs to whoever can envision in the manifold of its potentials a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable.
Walter Wink, Engaging The Powers (1992)

One hand on the bible,
One hand on the gun.
Jim Croce, Which Way Are You Going? (1972)

At the very heart of the great liberation event of the biblical narrative, God calls all people of faith and conscience to a deep level of trust in the face of violence and economic uncertainty. As the Christian theologian Jim McClendon wrote in the 80s, in the early days of Israel, "God planted a seed of nonviolence." The People of God escaped slavery without raising a single weapon and, once freed in the wilderness, gathered their daily bread, shunning the surplus so that everyone got to eat.

The Bible is called "Scripture" by the faithful because it functions as a script for radical living. After all, we are all just "supporting actors" on stage with the Main Character whose compassion and solidarity are vitally unique in the history of religions. This is a God who responds passionately to the shedding of blood on the 3rd page of the Hebrew Bible: "What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground." And yet, this God is strangely merciful, opting against capital punishment, offering Cain a 2nd chance for a hard-but-redeemed life of sojourning. And, so, this God calls us to do the same.

And the Bible is called "sacred" by those with a conscience because it mysteriously transcends the centuries millenia, always finding a way to stay current, as it variously confronts, challenges and comforts us along the way. This Word of God is by no means error-free or certain or self-evident, but for those (like Jeremiah and Jesus) who see with eyes of compassion and solidarity, the Sacred Script calls us to a new kind of Life over and over again.

The Bible, however mythical and metaphorical, is based in Reality. It has the tenacious tendency of wringing us free from the lies and illusions that soak up our surroundings like a sponge. But this Bible demands to be read carefully and critically.

Unfortunately, too many American Christians are spurning trust and humility by replacing the Sacred Script with the Myth of Redemptive Violence. As the old prophet Jim Croce sang four decades ago, they've got "One hand on the Bible/One hand on the gun." They fight the crazies with more guns, concealed in the hands of administrators, teachers and guards. They fight the terrorists with more drones and indefinite detention. They fight the illegals with beefed up borders.

Far too many "trust Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior" and then justify their fearmongering of "the other" with dualistic, us-versus-them jargon. In the words of the NRA's president Wayne LaPierre: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." This Manichean worldview divides the world into two distinct groups of people: bad guys and good guys. And the arrogant corollary: we know which one is which. Good = Us. Bad = Them.

This is not how the compassionate reign of God functions in the Sacred Script. In the New World that we dedicate our lives to advocating for, all our weapons will be welded into instruments of provision and sustenence (Isaiah 2:4). This, of course, is not a call for naivete and idealism. It is, however, a charge to wrestle with nuance and complexity, as we embrace creative and strategic policies that protect the innocent and rehabilitate those who have been wounded, sidelined, victimized and marginalized by the systems of our world.

In 2013, may we reject dualistic descriptions of life and become dialetical devotees of the Way of trust, simplicity, generosity, compassion and humility. May we be vigilant about taking personal inventory of our lives and may we be virtuous to our neighbors, especially those who think and look differently than us. May we reject narcissism, apathy and indifference and advocate for those less privileged and powerful than us: the unemployed, the undocumented, the adolescent and the aging.

In the aftermath of the Christmas season, may we reflect on the whole life of the newborn from Bethlehem. It's a lot easier to admire the infant in swaddling clothes than to follow his teachings: love your enemies, share your possessions, replace anxiety & fear with trust, give your life for the abused and abandoned. As Croce sang, "You say you love the baby/Then you crucify the man."
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A Prayer for us to meditate on this year (from the Mennonite Hymnal):

Spirit of Peace,
Quiet our hearts.
Heal our anxious thoughts.
Free us from our fretful ways.

Breathe on us your holy calm
So that, in the stillness of your presence
We may open ourselves to trust
And be transformed.
Amen.