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  • People who are Both Gay and Fat are in Serious Trouble

    The lobby for the overweight strikes back at Michelle Obama’s campaign against swelling waistlines:

    Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Monday, NAAFA public relations director Peggy Howell said the First Lady “essentially gave permission to everyone to condemn the children with higher body weights.”

    Howell called Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign “well-intentioned, but somewhat misdirected.”

    “What I mean by ‘misdirected’ is that rather than educating and encouraging our nation to create healthy practices for all children, focusing on the health of all our children, children of higher body weight have been singled out and the focus of the campaign is on weight reduction and not on improving children’s health.

    It’s orthodoxy in the LGBT community that being of same sex orientation is the reason for bullying, hence their campaign to protect young homosexuals in numerous ways, i.e., anti-bullying campaigns, hate crimes, teaching “gay history,” etc.  Unfortunately reality doesn’t always correspond with our politically correct rhetoric; in fact, it seldom does, which is why our society careens from one “insoluble” problem to the next.

    The reality is that you don’t need to be gay or fat or anything else in particular to be bullied.  You just need to be different.  In a society obsessed with shared values and socialisation, being different is dangerous.  The LGBT leadership has operated under the assumption that, if they can change what people think of as “different” they can improve their own position.  But in the process they will transfer the label of different to other groups of people.  That’s not progress.

    In the meanwhile, if you’re of same sex orientation, overweight and of school age, I’d recommend you’d lay low.  Your days of being a target for one reason may be over, but your days of being a target are not.

  • The Hole in the "Dominionist/Theonomist Plan" for America

    Ryan Lizza’s piece in the New Yorker about Michele Bachmann brings up what must rate as the most incoate dread the left has about the Religious Right: the “dominionist” movement, which I prefer to refer to as the “theonomist” movement.  You see this in left wing blogs (both in the articles and in the comments) and in places like the New Yorker.  The fear, obviously, is that these dominionists will finally give legs to the Religious Right’s agenda, take over the system and force everyone else to zip their mouths and pants, and not necessarily in that order.

    My own opinion is simple: if the Religious Right hasn’t accomplished this result in the thirty plus years it’s been at it under the circumstances it’s had, it won’t happen in the life of this Republic.  Evidently the left doesn’t share my view on this: they keep bringing this up, which makes you wonder about the level of paranoia floating around these days.

    But there’s a better reason to believe that the “dominionist/theonomist” agenda is a non-starter, and that is a purely Biblical one.  Most of the wellspring of this movement comes from the Old Testament, and specifically the law.  Intimately linked with the law are such things as the Jewish priesthood, the sacrificial system, and ultimately the worship system centralised around same priesthood and the Ark of the Covenant.  That system ultimately became the Temple sacrificial system, same Temple built by Solomon.

    That centralised system became a major issue in the life of pre-exilic Judah and Israel.  It’s not an understatement to say that the centralisation of worship, sacrifice and sacerdotal authority (all of which are necessary in the enforcement of the law) were a central issue in the history of pre-Exilic Judaism.  There was the running battle against the high places (which were syncretistic in many cases) but the major issue was the Kingdom of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  When Jeroboam seceded from the Davidic monarchy he set up alternative worship at Dan and Bethel, specifically to solve both his religious and political problems at one shot:

    And Jeroboam said in his heart: Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David, If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem: and the heart of this people will turn to their lord Roboam, the king of Juda, and they will kill me, and return to him. And finding out a device, he made two golden calves, and said to them: Go ye up no more to Jerusalem: Behold thy gods, O Israel, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other in Dan: (1 Kings 12:26-29)

    The point of all of this is simple: without a centralised authority, both religious and political, to both authoritatively interpret the law of God and to enforce it, the whole “dominionist/theonomist” dream goes up in smoke.  A cursory inspection of the wildly fragmented nature of evangelical Christianity, with its dicey authority nature, will show that such a structure is not in the cards.  Liberals always fear that the state can carry this agenda out on its own, but in Christianity that’s just not going to happen, not on a broad basis in any case.  If political victory were to ever be achieved, I think that the fragmented nature of Evangelical Christianity would dissipate temporal success.

    Back when our country was started and for many years thereafter, people understood that the greatest threat to religious liberty were organised, institutionally coherent and officially designated state churches.  The fact that the left spends so much time in fear of the amorphous blob that is Evangelical Christianity today is another sign of paranoia afoot.  Years ago, when Jack Kennedy ran for President, the fear was that the most accomplished of the state churches, Roman Catholicism, would run the country through its President.  (On the flip side, one reason I think Evangelicals deeply distrust Mitt Romney is that he is a member of the LDS church, which has the organisation to step into such a role.)

    After the Exile, the Jews pulled their situation together the best they could.  Part of that was ejecting the Samaritans, whose worship on Mt. Gerizim recalled Jeroboam’s golden calves, both spiritually and politically.  Our Lord directly addressed this issue to the Samaritan woman:

    “Believe me,” replied Jesus, “a time is coming when it will be neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem that you will worship the Father. You Samaritans do not know what you worship; we know what we worship, for Salvation comes from the Jews. But a time is coming, indeed it is already here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father spiritually and truly; for such are the worshipers that the Father desires.  God is Spirit; and those who worship him must worship spiritually and truly.”  (John 4:21-24)

    The sooner that the theonomists–and the liberals for that matter–grasp what Jesus was saying here, the better for both them and the rest of us.

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  • The Collapse of Political Trust = The Collapse of Expectations

    In his interesting analysis about The Collapse of Political Trust, Jonah Lehrer makes the following observation:

    And this returns us to the present dysfunction in Washington. If trust is about the distribution of rewards – about learning to expect bonuses from others – then it’s going to be a lot harder to share those rewards in an age of scarcity and deficits. For the first time in decades, congresspeople aren’t trading pork barrel projects and tax breaks – they’re negotiating steep budget cuts. Those cuts might be necessary, but they’re aren’t going to excite the caudate or generate that requisite burst of “social juice.” The traditional means of developing trust among Congresspeople have disappeared.

    In making this observation, he’s overlooked something else: developing trust through horse trading of patronage not only depends upon the availability of resources, but also on the expectation that the end result will actually benefit you or your constituencies.  That’s especially true of the Republicans.

    If we look at the long term positions of conservatives, we see an aversion to government action and control.   Although people today see that as a given, that hasn’t always been the case.  In the past conservative legislators and executives (especially conservative Democrats, today almost an oxymoron) garnered all kinds of benefits for their constituents, especially public works projects.  It was just the way things were done.

    What changed dramatically in the 1960’s and 1970’s was the nature of government action.  We started to see the wholesale expansion of government activities such as the EPA, OSHA and the like, which conservative business people (especially small business people) saw as inimical to their interests.  The course of the tax code and the legal environment of the financial industry only add to the irritation.  The longer this has gone on, the easier it is to sell people on the idea that any government action is inimical to their interests, thus the Tea Party agenda.  (We can chart this course of action with social issues as well.)

    That leads us to what almost brought the debt ceiling dance to a halt: increasing tax revenues.  There’s no way that our national indebtedness will decrease without these (and it’s more than probable that it won’t with them.)  But Republicans see any tax increase as only benefiting their enemies: those at the top of government, the financial industry and the legal one.  So they’ve gotten to the point where their interests are better served by bringing the house down rather than advancing a solution in a “rational” way.  So we forewent a tax increase, although the expiration of the Bush tax cuts extension means that the clock is running very fast on that.  (That is, if the gutless wonder we have in the White House doesn’t lose his nerve again, as he did in 2010…)

    Liberals always work under the assumption that conservatives are blind to the growing inequity of income and wealth in our country.  I don’t think so, especially since most conservatives (the rank and file, not our leadership) are in the group that’s being left behind.  Part of the problem is that most conservatives are too ashamed to admit that, the way the system is rigged these days, they can’t make it to the top, even if that inability isn’t really their fault, but reflects changes in the social system.  But until liberals figure out a way to advance things in this country without immediately and endlessly lining their own pockets (and that’s unlikely) we’re stuck in a political rut that won’t get filled or paved (just like our road system) any time soon.

    Contracting resources do make it harder to come to agreement, as they did in the debt ceiling crisis and will again.  But there are other things at work to bedevil our political system, and they’re not going away any time soon, either.

  • Month of Sundays: Time

    Take great care, then, how you live–not unwisely but wisely, Making the most of every opportunity; for these are evil days. (Ephesians 5:15-16)

    Many years ago, my family business established a branch operation in West Palm Beach, Florida. We built a facility and lined up personnel to operate it. We also brought in people from other facilities to help set things up.

    Across the street was a company called “U and Me Transfer and Storage,” who was helping to get the equipment into the new place. Unfortunately no one told the out of town people who “U and Me” were. When the plant manager went on and on about “U and Me will bring this in,” and “U and Me will set that up,” one man threw up his hands and said, “When’s you and me going to find time to do all of this?”

    That is frequently the way things go in the church. Jesus promised that “For where two or three have come together in my Name, I am present with them.” (Matthew 18:20), and when work is to be done, too often that’s it! We know the time is short to do God’s work, but too often our churches fulfill another one of Jesus’ statements: “The harvest…is abundant, but the laborers are few.” (Luke 10:2a)

    That’s why it’s important to disciple and train as many people as possible to do God’s work. We need to ask God first to send those our way, and then we need to disciple and prepare them for the work that needs to be done. We frequently skip that step, putting them to work before they have been discipled, but Jesus invested much of his earthly ministry in the preparation of his disciples. Can we do any less?

    Therefore pray to the Owner of the harvest to send laborers to gather in his harvest. (Luke 10:2b)

    Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Faith of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19)

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  • Rick Perry's Prayer Rally: It's Really Midnight Yell Practice

    This Saturday Texas Gov. Rick Perry is sponsoring a prayer rally called “The Response.”  In a country whose elites are sensitive to any serious demonstration of faith, the reactions have been predictable.  But in view of the buzz regarding Rick’s plans after The Response, I think we need to look at this another way.

    Ags, this is Midnight Yell Practice, only this time it’s 1000-1700.

    Rick Perry ’72 graduated from Texas A&M the year before I came there.  Not only that, Rick was a Yell Leader.  A&M’s whole cheering system was one of those culture shocks I experienced, but once an Aggie, always an Aggie.  So here goes, with some photos and reminisces in an era much closer to Rick’s time in College Station.

    Most colleges and pro teams use cheerleaders to fire up the team.  Since the early 1930’s A&M has always used Yell Leaders.  There are five of them, all men (they’re elected, a woman hasn’t been chosen yet.)

    Below: the five Yell Leaders, dressed in white, on the track during the game with Boston College, 29 September 1973.  They have an elaborate system of signals to keep the Aggies’ yell together, thus the need to practice.

    Yell leaders and cheerleaders contrasted; the yell leader is at the right, the cheerleaders towards the centre and left, for the Baylor game 27 October 1973.  In the middle is the drum major for the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, a military band.   What Baylor was trying to accomplish with the armed rabble in the background is a mystery, but they didn’t stand much of a chance against the Corps of Cadets.  Up in Fayetteville the Arkansas Razorbacks liked to throw whiskey bottles at opposing bands during half-time, but they kept them in their brown bags when the Aggies came on the field.

    Yell Leader Ron Plackmeier (one of the early civilians to get the job) trying to keep the yells going at the Baylor game.  The water on the track showed another occupational hazard of yell leaders: getting rained on, but everyone else had to put up with it.

    I mentioned the elaborate set of signals, and this leads to the need (?) for Midnight Yell Practice.  Generally held the Friday night before the game, to be honest it was a combination of pep rally, revival meeting (sometimes candles would be lit or handkerchiefs waved), military drill and pagan ceremony.  Usually we would gather near the Corps Quad and march over to Kyle Field for the actual practice.  “March” is a stretch; what we did was go shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-to-arm behind the band as a tightly packed group.  Many of us were drunk (drinking at 18 was legal when I was at Texas A&M) and pity the poor soul who didn’t keep up, it was easy to get trampled in the rush.  (Sober and tall, I had something of an advantage over many others).

    Once at Kyle Field the yell leaders would do their thing, interspersing the actual yell practice with all kinds of what Aggies call “good bull.”  Some of that good bull could be off-colour; A&M was still a predominantly male school, more so when Rick was there.  The best Midnight Yell Practice (and in some ways the most pagan) was before the t.u. game, when they lit the Aggie Bonfire, at the time situated on a high place in back of the Corps Quad.  When they lit the 70’+ high Bonfire, your face felt like melting off even when you were standing well away from it.

    In any case Midnight Yell Practice was frequently more exciting than the game itself.  The 1973 season wasn’t A&M’s best (5-6) and we had to stand (yes, stand, as in 12th Man) through four quarters of Emory Bellard’s (of blessed memory, he died of ALS earlier this year) Wishbone football, some of the most boring college ball to ever hit the NCAA.

    But to the present: Midnight Yell Practice was the natural prelude to the Aggie football game.  The Response, for its part, is the natural prelude to Rick running for President, and I would be surprised if he hasn’t made the analogy himself.  The big difference is that college football games are planned and scheduled openly years in advance, an upheaval in conferences (and A&M has experienced that) excepted.  With the complex theatrics we have in American politics, Rick’s announcement to run is anything but, although I have confidence that his team is warming up for that contest, too.

    Below: between Midnight Yell Practice and the game, warming up, as the Aggies did here for the Boston College game.

    Rick’s run for the Republican nomination is going to be one of the more interesting parts of this election cycle.  On  the one hand, his supreme advantage is that he is from the Republicans’ base region, the Old Confederacy.  People here may agree with the social and economic conservatism of a Tim Pawlenty or Michele Bachmann, but they’re still Midwesterners.  (Things really get dicey with Mitt Romney).  On the other hand, Rick, as an Aggie, is a product of a different kind of conservative than most social conservatives these days.  It’s a conservatism where religiosity coexists with some decidedly unspiritual things like Midnight Yell Practice.  (At A&M, the two coexisted well: the strong group strength and spirit was a boost to the various Christian fellowships there).  How a candidate who’s cool with NY’s same sex civil marriage based on the 10th Amendment will sit with today’s semi-theonomist remains to be seen.

    For me personally, having an Aggie break the dreary procession of post-Reagan Ivy Leaguers would be very satisfying.  It won’t be easy; in addition to his elitist snob credentials, Barack Obama can woo an electorate which has grown more accustomed to the dole and/or helicopter parenting than ever, and that in a background of economic uncertainty.  But don’t underestimate Rick Perry: like those to try to stand in the way of the march at Midnight Yell Practice, it’s easy to get trampled in the rush.

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  • The American Middle Class: When You Have Nothing to Lose, You Don't Care If The System Makes It Or Not

    That, according to “Spengler” is what’s going on with the Tea Party’s stubbornness in the recent debt ceiling debacle:

    The trouble is that both the Tea Party and President Barack Obama have existential reasons to force a crisis. Obama, as I wrote two weeks ago, faces probable defeat with a becalmed economy, and may benefit from a crisis in which he casts himself as savior-in-chief (see Obama could stir a Tea Party crisis, July 19). The Tea Partiers may conclude that no compromise will benefit them, and decide to take the system down in revenge.

    There is an underlying economic motive for this confrontation: the cure for the American economy is not necessarily a cure for the majority of the American middle class. The only recovery thus far (and the only recovery possible under the circumstances) has occurred in corporate profits and equity prices.

    But this benefits only the small minority of wealthy American families who hold financial assets. The majority of Americans hold most of their wealth in real property (mainly their own homes). They have had no recovery and have no prospect of one. And the quickest path to recovery is one that offers few benefits to them…

    Neither the middle-class Republicans who support the Tea Party, nor the core Democratic constituencies who elected Barack Obama, have much of a stake in the outcome of the budget debate. That explains why the debt ceiling has turned into a cliffhanger, to the consternation of financial markets.

    What we are seeing here is the disconnection of the prosperity and success of the country with the prosperity and success of a large portion of its population.  This is always dangerous.  We’ve averted disaster for the moment, but the cuts are inadequate, and there’s more political mischief to come.  Both Barack Obama and the Tea Party blinked, because the alternative is the abyss, and neither is sure who’s going to be alive when they hit the bottom.

    If the recovery drags out–and that looks to be the case–the desperation may increase, and someone may finally decide to pull the plug.  There are plenty more opportunities for that to happen.

  • Month of Sundays: Temptation

    Once more the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms in the world and their glory. The devil said to him, “I will give you all this if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Go away, Satan! Scripture says, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came to take care of him. (Matthew 4:8-11)

    The term “Faustian bargain” means a deal with the devil (literally or figuratively) which has a stiff payback. In English literature the story has its debut in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, written about the time of Shakespeare and the King James’ Bible. When Mephistopheles (Satan’s agent) first appears, Faustus asks him why he wants so many souls for his kingdom (Hell.) Put simply, Mephistopheles’ response was, “misery loves company.”

    Talk of heaven usually turns on it being the place where we will see our loved ones again. Unfortunately there are those of us who have the sinking feeling that some of ours have sunk to the other place. One pastor performed a funeral for a motorcycle gang member whose gang called itself “Hell is Our Home.” They left no doubt where they intended to meet for that last bike ride.

    Company or not, misery is still misery. Eternal misery is dreadful; it’s referred to as the “second death. (Revelation 20:14). Just because we think those we like in this life are there doesn’t mean that we should follow them.

    Jesus, as God, knew the emptiness of the devil’s promise of being given the world in exchange for the worship of Satan. The evil one knew the Scriptures, and knew this was included: “The earth and everything it contains are the LORD’S. The world and all who live in it are his.” (Psalms 24:1) But that didn’t stop him from trying.

    He still is trying, and tempting us to turn our backs on the God of the universe so we might have a little “pleasure” in this life. But the payback is eternal and unbearable, no matter who else is doing it.

    Will you yield to his temptation? Or serve the real Master of all?

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  • Boomer Christianity: A Victim of Its Own Leadership

    George Barna lets us know that Boomers’ enthusiasm for church is waning in their old age:

    Meanwhile, as Boomers have aged, they have been slowly distancing themselves from both conventional religious behaviors and beliefs – the typical expectation-breaking pattern we have come to expect from Boomers. (Just as they are reluctant to accept 65 as a reasonable or required age for retirement, so are they bucking the religious system regarding what to believe and carry out their beliefs.)

    It’s amazing that a generation which is approaching eternity more rapidly than ever would ostensibly bail on their only hope out of it.  But that’s the Boomers for you.

    Although Barna attributes this to the Boomers’ counter-intuitive ways, there’s another culprit that needs to be identified: the simple fact that Boomers have run the church for all of these years.  Or better, perhaps, they have run it in the ground, the same way they’ve done with the country at large.  After a strong opening with such things as the “Jesus Music era,” they’ve gone on with such things as Gothardian authoritarianism (and that includes covenant communities), grandiose building schemes, prosperity teaching, misuse (or non-use) of emerging technologies, excessive accommodation of the culture to inflate membership and revenue, and endless attempts in one way or another to “take the city (or the country) for Jesus,” none of which were backed up by sufficient conviction to finish the job.  The result we have now is a church that is in serious financial straits, clueless as to how to address its current situation, and now abandoned by members of its own generation which created the problem.

    If we cannot hold our own generation, how can we expect to hold the ones down the road?  The first step is to do now what Jimmy Buffett did in Margaritaville a long time ago: finger the culprit.

  • Les Reflets: De l'abondance du coeur, la bouche parle (Out of the Abundance of the Heart, the Mouth Speaks)

    When we think of “contemporary” Christian music, most of us restrict ourselves to the US, or throw in the UK for good measure.  But the revolution in Christian music in the 1960’s and 1970’s went far beyond the Anglophone world, and this album–from France–may be the best example of that.

    It’s conventional wisdom to characterise Christian music of any kind as “not quite as good” as its secular counterpart.  That conventional wisdom needs to be thrown out with this one: it’s a fantastic representative of European folk music, up to the including the recited Poème, where one feels like reaching for the beret.  That’s evidenced by the fact that secular people struggle with the album: they love the music but the lyrics drive them crazy.  But that’s what happens when we always follow the “conventional wisdom” (cf. 1 Cor 1:18)

    The songs:

    1. L’océan
    2. Ma vie
    3. Le navire
    4. Ecclésiaste 12.3
    5. La barbe
    6. Stopotan
    7. L’amitié
    8. La vérité
    9. Poème (Jean Peysson)
    10. Romance
    11. O Seigneur !
    12. Un aveugle à Jéricho

    For all of our music click here

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  • Barack Obama: Will the Caudillo Rise to the Occasion?

    Sounds like he’d like to:

    “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written,” Obama said at the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference.

    Back in the years after the Spanish Civil War, the dictator Francisco Franco emblazoned his image on the coinage and the words “…caudillo of Spain by the grace of God.”  Although secularist supporters of our President would like to skip the part about God, the truth of the matter is that he was elected with messianic attributes and expectations, neither of which have found their fulfilment but both of which are appropriate for a caudillo.

    Barack Obama has discovered that we are in a political system that has two opposing poles, neither one of which can be ignored and where the aspirations of neither can be fulfilled in a strictly constitutional manner.  He had his chance on immigration reform when he had an overall majority in Congress.  But instead he chose health care reform as the place to spend political capital, which is why so many of the other interest groups of his party are unhappy with him these days.

    Now he knows that only unilateral action is left to him, be that on the debt ceiling mess, immigration reform or just about anything else.  And it’s tempting, especially in a country where a large segment of the population is on one form of the dole or another and where real civics knowledge is not well disseminated.  But Barack Obama is no Andrew Jackson, who ignored Supreme Court decisions when it suited him.  He’s not even capable of “community organiser” type of mass mobilisation to get his idea to stick.

    Will he initiate serious unilateral action in the end?  It’s hard to tell.  Barack Obama is certainly cold-blooded enough to initiate it, but where he falls short–up to now–is his willingness to deal with the blowback.

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