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  • Harry Reid and Mitt Romney: When the Aspiring Gods Fall Out

    When they’re a)Mormon and b)in American politics:

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a response to Mitt Romney’s claim that he will “reach across the aisle” to work with Democrats in Congress, if he becomes president: Don’t bet on it.

    “Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his ‘severely conservative’ agenda is laughable,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement Friday morning. He went on to list a series of Republican-backed measures he said Democrats would never support.

    Reid even goes on to attack his fellow Latter Day Saint in that role:

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pivoted from his baseless charges that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay taxes to a new criticism that Mitt Romney is a bad representative of the Mormon religion.

    Reid held a conference call ahead of Romney’s upcoming visit to Utah, where Reid said the Republican will meet voters who “understand that he is not the face of Mormonism,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune’s Thomas Burr.

    In my piece Half a Million Roubles. Is it Enough? I noted the following:

    This is the promise of Mormonism; to make men gods. Their missionaries use this as an incentive, and portray this as superior to Christians’ promise of eternal life with the one true God. The problem is this: once you’ve made millions of men gods, what does it mean? How significant is that, even if you give them authority to rule, as Mormonism does?

    A good illustration of this is the current situation in the United States Senate. Senate Majority Leader and Mormon Harry Reid, resplendent in his Temple underwear, wanted to get his and President Obama’s agenda through the Senate, if for no other reason than to show who’s boss. So why did someone who is waiting for deity have so much difficulty pulling this off? Because there are one hundred senators, and many of them didn’t agree with him! And one of these was none other than Temple Mormon Orrin Hatch! How can someone expect to rule with millions of other gods around when he couldn’t even rule over one hundred senators, and in many cases over all of those in his own party? Or his own religion?

    Looks like Reid’s “LDS Poop List” is getting longer.  But, to be fair, I should note that a) Mormons are overwhelmingly Republican, so Harry’s the black sheep of the group and b) Mitt Romney is by far a better example of what the LDS church can produce than Harry Reid will ever be.

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  • North Korea Calls It Quits on Karl and Fred

    And Vladimir, too:

    Recently journalists from The Guardian newspaper reported an important change during stays in Pyongyang: two large portraits of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin – long a prominent feature of Pyongyang’s central Kim Il-sung square – were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the images have been replaced by a more dominating portrait of Kim Il-sung.

    This news was repeated by countless outlets worldwide, but the reports were slightly outdated. In fact, the portraits were removed almost half a year ago, in early April 2012.

    In a sense, the disappearance of the portraits is yet another sign of the ongoing ideological transformation in North Korea. Even though it is routinely described as a ‘communist country’ by outsider observers, North Korea has long ceased to label itself as a Marxist-Leninist state.

    For someone on whom Marxism has made a significant impact, this is a jolt.

    In fact, this has been the pattern of “Marxist-Leninist” states in Asia.  Kim Il-Sung, like Mao Zedong, was a peasant fighting for national independence and self-determination (well, determination by its leader).  Unlike the ideologically obsessed Europeans, for the Chinese and Koreans Marxism was a means to an end.  The Soviets recognised this in the Chinese Communist Party from the start, which is why for so many years Stalin and his minions supported the Kuomintang.  It was only the Kuomintang’s serious flaws and corruption (which lead to its decline) that forced the Soviets to finally back the CCP, a backing that ended in the early 1960’s when Mao excelled the Soviet “experts” from China and Communism became plural in the world.

    The difference between China and Vietnam on the one hand and North Korea on the other is that, over time, the Chinese and Vietnamese have used their nonchalant attitude towards ideological purity to incorporate capitalist features in their economies and thus improve the material prosperity of people and country alike, with the North Koreans have gone the other way: tightening the rigidity of their system to make state control of everything and everyone all-pervasive.

    One aspect of Marxist-Leninist thought that the North Koreans were glad to dispatch was its denunciation of religion.  The religious nature of North Korea’s regime’s hold on its people (one which also has a parallel in Chinese Communism, especially when Mao was alive) is simply a given; denunciations of religions in Marxist literature only undermine the main program.  That’s a warning to atheists in our own society who are debating “Atheism 2.0”: atheism with religious trappings to milk its benefits while denying its theism.  After years of promising to abolish religion, the reality is that atheists on both sides of the Pacific were only gunning to change it, which in part explains why Asia has been fertile ground for Christianity.  They’re not going to abolish religion, why should we?

  • One City's Halloween Horror is Another's Way of Life

    That’s what they’re learning in the wake of Hurricane Sandy:

    A casket floated out of the grave in a cemetery in Crisfield, Md. after the effects of superstorm Sandy Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012.

    This phenomenon–the effects of a high water table and not of demonic activity–was one of the first rude awakenings the early French settlers of New Orleans.  Their response was to build the elevated crypts that are a hallmark of the city (some of which contain my own ancestors).

    My prayers are with those who found themselves in the path of this storm–and that includes family who are descendants of those buried in above-ground crypts.

  • Trumpeting Ethnic Minorities at Home, Trashing Them Abroad: Our New Mistakes in Myanmar

    Under the guise of “democracy”, we’re setting ourselves up for trouble:

    Americans have fought at home and on many a distant shore with resolve in truths that they hold to be self-evident, “that all men are created equal”. Under the Barack Obama administration, America appears to have abandoned this principle through its recent engagement policy with until recently military-run Myanmar.

    To be sure, Myanmar matters. The country has emerged as China’s main gateway to the Indian Ocean, with massive natural resource wealth at home and important international markets beyond. Myanmar has thus emerged as a key state in the US’s “pivot” policy towards Asia.

    The flaws in the US approach are threefold, including: (1) failing to understand the unambiguous, enduring power of ethnic populations; (2) failing to engage them fully as equal stakeholders in the country’s future; and (3) forgetting that many have been faithful American allies going all the way back to World War II.

    It seems like an obscure place, but Burma/Myanmar has an important role in American history, as students of World War II will attest.  Now it’s trying to emerge from years of centralised dictatorship and it looks like we’re about to repeat some of our earlier mistakes such as those in other multi-ethnic situations like Afghanistan.

    The ethnic composition of the country has always been the key.  As the article notes, although the name of the country would indicate otherwise, only about half of the population is ethnic Burmese; the rest are a variety of minorities, some of which are predominantly Christian (which hasn’t endeared them to our elites) and fought with us in World War II.  The British, in their (and our) trademark style, elevated the ethnic minorities against the Burmese majority in the colonial bureaucracy to insure their own dominance.  When Burma became independent, the Burmese got even and the ethnic minorities went to war, starting a brutal cycle which has continued to the present.

    Now, after years of military rule, Myanmar is trying to establish “democracy” with Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi becoming the well-known “face” of the “new” Myanmar.  Her father attempted to establish a more even-handed balance after independence, and he paid for that with his life.  There’s evidence now that such even-handedness is lacking on the ground, setting the stage for more conflict.  This time, however, Washington is complicit.

    Here and elsewhere American foreign policy suffers from two serious flaws that keep dogging our steps in the world:

    1. A tendency to be enamoured by elitist romanticism of leaders who talk a good game but either lack the authority to make it a reality or are just fronts for other less noble power holders.  That’s not just a foreign policy problem either; that’s why our elites went overboard for Barack Obama in the first place.
    2. An obsession with “democracy” and democratic process when the realities on the ground indicate that the process goes one way and the reality goes another.  The classic example of this right at the moment is the Arab Spring; we’re getting plenty of “democracy” in the Middle East but in reality it is a hegemony of the religious/ethnic majorities at the expense of everyone else.  You’d think a country like ours with an elite obsessed with identity politics would apply that to other situations, but that’s how delusional the people who run this country really are.

    If our elites really want to show they are as cosmopolitan and worthy of dominance as they say they are, they can start by avoiding mistakes such as we are making in Myanmar and elsewhere.

  • Freshman? Just Call Them "Fish"

    Political correctness makes life more complicated on campus, this time at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill:

    The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill has removed the word “freshman” from official university documents, citing as their reason an attempt to adopt more “gender inclusive language.”

    We are “committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our community,” reads a statement administrators sent to Campus Reform on Monday.

    The University of North Carolina…dropped the term “freshman” in an effort to adopt more “gender neutral language.”

    “Consistent with that commitment, gender inclusive terms (chair; first year student; upper-level student, etc.) should be used on University Documents, websites and policies,” it continues.

    Since most college students are admitted as freshmen (I have known exceptions) and most college students admitted are women, there is absolutely no evidence that this terminology has hindered women from entering and advancing in their undergraduate academic careers.  So why, other than job security for the diversity officers, would an institution do this?

    But, if they really want to cut to the gender-neutral chase in a hurry, they could call undergraduates below the first credit hour break point what we called them at Texas A&M: fish.  That of course is the source of Fish Camp and many other freshman-oriented stuff in Aggieland, although a lot of what fish put up with from their superiors (especially if they were in the Corps of Cadets) didn’t add much dignity to the designation.

    And that, Ags, is today’s good bull.

  • We Only Have One True Country

    It’s the home stretch for our election season.  This is a “make or break” election in many ways.  It will both define and set the course for the kind of country we are and kind of people we are.  And it’s been competitive.

    As I discussed in the last post but one, it’s also been a dilemma for Evangelicals, with a Mormon and a Roman Catholic on the ticket.  But the Evangelicals, true to form, have risen to the occasion at last and started rallying the troops with talk about the role of this election in “bringing revival to America” and “re-establishing our covenant”.  (The Scots and their progeny are obsessed with the business of “covenant” because in real life they tend to be fickle and erratic).

    The fact that we have to go through this every election cycle (or seems that way) betrays, I think, our poor understanding of who we really are as Christians vis á vis the country we live in.  It’s ironic that the Mormons have wrapped their religion around the country and Constitution the way they have; a big reason Brigham Young led them to Utah to begin with was to get away from the long arm of Uncle Sam and enable them to practice their faith (which included polygamy and blood redemption).  The Mexican War fixed that, and they’ve had to make the best of it since.  But Christians have better options.

    It’s very common for Evangelicals to make analogies between ancient Israel and the United States, with the implication that the United States is, in a sense, a new Israel, with all the special provisions that go with that.  But there’s no Biblical support for such a position, especially if we really believe that the New Testament is the fulfilment of salvation history and that Jesus Christ’s work depicted there is finished and final.  There are two basic Biblical facts that we need to internalise if we are both to be faithful to our calling and get through whatever might come to us in this life.

    The first is that we only have one true country, which is heaven. To see how this plays out, let’s consider the meaning of the term “apostle”.  The term is a loaded one in Christianity because it’s wrapped up in the idea of authority.  On the Roman Catholic side–Paul Ryan’s church–we have the idea that the church is authoritative because its leadership are the successors of the apostles, thus they can teach with apostolic authority and act with the special apostolic chrism.  On the other side, until recently Protestant and Evangelical churches have avoided the term for people walking on the earth, but now we have “apostles” with more authority and anointing than they know what to do with (and the results usually speak for themselves).

    But to invoke another authority–Strong’s–the Greek term ἀπόστολος (apostle) means the following:

    From ἀποστέλλω a delegate; specifically an ambassador of the Gospel; officially a commissioner of Christ (“apostle”), (with miraculous powers): – apostle, messenger, he that is sent.

    And about the term ἀποστέλλω:

    From ἀπό and στέλλω set apart, that is, (by implication) to send out (properly on a mission) literally or figuratively: – put in, send (away, forth, out), set [at liberty].

    The whole idea of authority is certainly there, but at the root of the word is the idea that someone is sent out as a representative–an ambassador, if you please.  Sometimes that role can be tragic, as our experience in Libya reminds us.  In the ancient world, and until recently, slow communications actually enhanced an ambassador’s authority, because he (usually) could not get a quick answer from back home in a timely fashion but had to make decisions on the spot that reflected on the people he represented.  Now ambassadors are pretty much portes-paroles for the country that sent them; the real authority and decision-making is done at the centre.  (If it’s done at all: that’s an issue in our current election cycle).

    Irrespective of how far you think the “apostolic chrism” goes into the Body of Christ, at best we are representatives of our God, and given that he is omniscient and omnipresent, our latitude in that role is limited at best.  All of this, however, underscores the fact that our highest and best calling is to be an ambassador of one country–heaven–and not of the earthly country in which we find ourselves.  When our time here is done, we return to that country where our proper home is.  The sooner American Christians get that simple reality into their beings, the better for everyone.

    And that leads to the second point: there’s strength in that reality.  A heavenly destination has been generally regarded as escapist.  But being put beyond the final authority of the state is empowering, which is a big reason secularists hate it so much.

    Let’s think this through.  Are there enough secularists willing to shed their élite lives to defend themselves against the serious attacks of Islamicists?  Now that homosexuals can serve openly in our military, can they fill the ranks that we might leave empty?  Everyone knows that defence is largely a “Red State” business, what happens when people from these places walk?  On another level, what happens when we decide we’ve had enough of feeding this beast that hates us and just go on the dole?  (That decision is already being made more often than people care to think).

    The truth of the matter is that this country needs its socially conservative Christian population more than the Christians need it, if nothing else to keep the birthrate up enough to afford the retirement system.  Neither our current elites nor the Christians themselves really understand this.  The former keep thinking that secularism will lead to paradise (when did we hear that before, Marxists) and the latter keep hog-tying their Christian life to “bringing America back to God” which will only bring disappointment when the country doesn’t respond the way we think it should.

    We as Christians have only one true country, and we are ambassadors from same.  We need to stop investing so much of our greatest hopes in this one and use that as a bargaining chip, if you please, to secure our freedom to worship, to follow God’s way and to share our faith as he commands us to do.

    Unfortunately our identity politics and our obsession with “taking a stand” when we should be on the move don’t make that easy in our current political climate.

    I’m good with voting for this Republican ticket, not because I think they’ll renew our national covenant with God or bring “Christian” leadership to this country, but because they’re more likely to keep our freedom.  It’s that simple.  That’s the key.  The sooner we realise what the end game is down here, the sooner we can use that to make our way to the true country better for ourselves and those who might like to join us on the way.

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  • Diocese of South Carolina: The Last Drama for the Episcopal Church

    The Anglican/Episcopal blogosphere received a jolt when TEC highest levels decided that the Diocese of South Carolina, and especially its bishop, had “abandoned” its own church.  Here are some of my thoughts on the subject:

    1. The only thing really “shocking” about this was the complete lack of Episcopal decorum that the Presiding Bishop and her minions have exercised in taking this action.  Episcopal decorum, however, is another one of those things that has gone out the window in the transformation of the Episcopal Church from what it was to what it is.
    2. DioSC’s final disposition will be the last act in the drama of TEC’s division of its orthodox minority from its revisionist majority.  The rest of the dioceses are either in litigation over their secession, agree with the Presiding Bishop’s course, or just too apathetic/ignorant over the real course of the church to be a threat to anyone but themselves.
    3. The major difference between this situation and that of the other seceding dioceses is that TEC’s central administration took the first move and not waiting for SC to secede such as, Ft. Worth or San Joaquin have done.  Jefferts-Schori has decided evidently that it’s time to carry out revisionist hegemony.  That decision has been buttressed by their successes in retaining the property, although those victories have been, financially at least, Pyrrhic.
    4. This result is the inevitable result of the takeover of TEC by revisionists that has been ongoing for half a century.  Where we are at now would have happened a long time ago if the orthodox had recognised how far “behind the eight ball” they have been from the beginning in TEC’s internal situation.
    5. TEC’s current leadership does not have a practical game plan to reverse the decline of the denomination, as is the case across the Main Line.  Their idea is that, by eliminating internal competition such as DioSC offered to their vision of success, they can move forward.  But ultimately they have no forward to move, because what they have to offer can come from secular organisations/movements with much less “baggage”, something that is more obvious to younger people than to the Boomer leadership.

    My prayers are with the Diocese and its leadership; they’re going to need all the help they can get.  They have put together as strong of an exit strategy as could be done; whether it will survive our legal system will be the final question.

  • Ever Wonder Why the Republicans are Running a Mormon and a Roman Catholic?

    Our hopelessly biased media brings up the subject of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism on a regular basis.  One way they can do this while not attracting attention to themselves is to go out and interview Evangelicals on why they’re struggling with voting for a Mormon.  This is a clever diversion that, while bringing up an interesting subject, deflects attention from the fact that anyone with a serious belief in God (i.e., one who acts on it) gives them the creeps.

    But let’s turn the question around: how come it is that Evangelicals, doubtless the main driving force behind social conservatism in the Republican Party, cannot seem to get one of their own nominated these days for either spot on the ticket?  Most would give the stock answers: the media will pummel any Evangelical nominated, George W. Bush, the “Regular Republicans,” etc.  The basic concept behind this is that Evangelicals are the recipients of a raw deal in the public square and that, if our system were more “fair” things would be different.

    It’s true that the media, by and large, love to pummel Evangelicals.  It’s also true that George W. Bush did nothing to advance the reputation of Evangelicals in this country.  Evangelicals’ biggest mistake re GWB was to canonise him after 9/11 the way they did.  When he ran in 2000, many Evangelicals had reservations about him which proved justified.

    But, as I always say, if you believe that everything bad that happens to you is someone else’s fault, you’re a failure.  Now that our nomination is done, three out of four debates are in the can, and the election fast approaches, we need to stop the blame game and ask ourselves: why cannot Evangelicals manage to get at least one of their own on the ticket?  Or, to turn the question around, why do we have a Mormon and a Roman Catholic–two bêtes noires to Evangelicals if there ever were–there in the first place?

    I think the answer to this lies in the way the various religious groups/organisations cultivate their leaders (or don’t).  Let’s start with the Mormons.  Mitt Romney reminds us regularly that he was a leader in his church, not only on a lay vestry/deacon board but of the stake itself.  My first personal contact with this was an attorney friend of mine whom I found chowing down at the local buffet (and with the waistline to go with it) before he headed off to a ward meeting.  Mormonism, for all of its faults, does not distinguish between clergy and laity the way that Christian groups do, and so the leaders of their stakes and wards and ultimately of the church itself are drawn directly from their membership.  That’s enough to give someone the kind of socialisation and leadership experience which is valuable in politics.

    The situation with Roman Catholics is almost the opposite.  You have a celibate priesthood who “hold the keys” to just about everything, and unless you are ready to enter that, you can just about hang it up in the church.  What Roman Catholicism has, however, is an unmatched intellectual tradition that challenges those who can get past the banalities of parish life to find it.  So lay people who want to move forward do so with secular achievement, which is why SCOTUS has so many Roman Catholics.

    With Evangelicals, as they say, it’s complicated.

    In the past, Evangelical churches have certainly encouraged lay leadership within, if not political involvement without.  The Southern Baptists even elected one as SBC President one year, and the career of Judge Paul Pressler has had a major influence on the course of that denomination.  Trends in the last forty years, however, have mitigated against that, especially with men.  Gothardian authoritarianism, coupled with the Boomer tendency to think “it’s all about me” have centralised control in churches in the hands of pastors who dislike power sharing.  In a male dominated field, the men of the church are the greatest potential competitors to that control, so rhetoric notwithstanding the system mitigates against the development of strong male leadership in the church apart from the clergy.

    By the time Evangelicals woke up to the state of things and started to run people for office, prominent “values” candidates tended to be drawn from two sources: the ministers (Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee) or the women (Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann).  (In regions where Evangelicals are strong, a more traditional pattern of laymen continue to present themselves for public office).  Ministers, for all the skills they may bring to the table, are not in general ideal for political life, especially beyond the state level.  That’s because in many eyes they’re always associated with the church they come out of, and that can be a liability both within and without Christianity.  Conservative women of any kind are a horror to our left; their ascendancy would do more than anything else to wreck the hegemony of identity politics, which are the bedrock of the left’s own hegemony in American political life.  They will do just about anything to take down a conservative woman.  That was the hard lesson of 2008.

    One other factor that works against Evangelicals in politics is the lack of a strong intellectual tradition within Evangelicalism.  While this makes the faith easily comprehensible and adoptable for new converts, for those looking for different horizons, it discourages “out of the box” type approaches and solutions to problems.  (The whole conundrum of civil marriage is a classic example of this, but in fairness neither the LDS nor the RCC has done any better).  It hasn’t always been this way; Charles Finney, for example, was very much an “out of the box” kind of thinker whose impact on the advance of American Christianity has been enormous.

    Until Evangelical churches go back to a more democratic way of operation, they will never develop the kind of lay leadership–men or women–who will make the kind of impact in the world around them that’s necessary, either in the political sphere or elsewhere.  As long as the Boomers are in charge, that’s highly unlikely, and so will be a viable Evangelical candidate on a national level.

    There’s also the argument that Evangelical Christianity, for all of its move into the political arena, is by design not suited for the task.  But that’s for another post.

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  • The Stimulus That Actually Worked (For the Moment)

    The campaigns’ and Super PACS’ junk mail has injected cash into our strapped postal system:

    The 2012 election season couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. Postal Service.

    While still low on cash, the postal service has enough to avoid insolvency this month, thanks in large part to the mountains of political junk mail and the influx of Super PACs paying top postage rates.

    It’s heartening to know that, for all the posturing our Federal elected officials take about the postal system, the system has actually worked in its favour, at least during this election season.  It’s not bad either that (atheists shriek in horror!) the Christmas season carries things through at least through the first of the year.

    Overall, however, our dysfunctional political system has done the postal system a tremendous disservice.  We all know that changes in the way we communicate change the role of the system, a Constitutionally mandated one at that.  But while the USPS has sunk deeper into insolvency the Congress has blocked solutions such as ceasing Saturday delivery and consolidating post offices in the name of short-term political expediency.

    Our political system gives us two stark choices: the government should be everything or the government should be nothing.  Our Constitution, however, sets forth a limited government and presupposes a people with enough self-responsibility to maintain it.  Part of that is not only to make the burden on private enterprise and individuals as minimal as necessary, but also that the functions which government does be led effectively.  Currently we have the worst of both worlds; our private sector is over-regulated and the public sector poorly led.  Fixing these problems will be the measure of whether we are responsible enough to keep up this Republic or not.

  • Churches Aren't the Only Institutions Ruined by Egos

    Works even for a “place” like WikiLeaks:

    But leading Anonymous accounts on Twitter…have now withdrawn their support (of WikiLeaks)…Calling the split “the end of an era”, Anonymous tweeted: “It was an awesome idea, ruined by egos.”

    I’ve commented on the adverse effect of “egos inflatable to any size” ruining efforts in the church, especially with the recent spat centred around Chuck Murphy.  People inside and outside the church are quick to criticise Christian churches when egotism and pride get in the way of the real mission of the church.

    This is justified.  Humility and servant leadership are quintessentially Christian concepts, something I pointed out in When the Sheep Have Anthrax.  In authoritarian societies, humility is drilled into the population by the power holders.  Jesus Christ introduced the idea that it should be a voluntary act, one he demonstrated when he washed the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper (and by going to the cross afterwards).

    In a world where freedom is an obsession (not enough in some ways, but…) and secularism is widespread humility starts to look like one of those old “fuddy-duddy” things.  Arrogance and overweening self-confidence become the order of the day.  It creeps into the church and it’s a tragedy.  But it’s no better when it gets into an enterprise like WikiLeaks, irrespective of the merits of that enterprise.

    Humility isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we think of “one nation under God”.  Maybe it should be.  You can’t have “one nation” or one church or one anything if everyone is trying to be first (cf. 3 John 9-11).

    Or one WikiLeaks…

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