"Gundamentalism"? How Precious!

If you are not familiar with the writings of Mark D. Tooley, director of the United Methodist Committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, I would encourage you to make his acquaintance via this very astute (and accidentally hilarious) essay.

One cannot easily reasonably imagine that there is a person of the cloth, so to speak, who would opine that "gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding," but reality trumps reason, at least most of the time. Gundamentalism may indeed be a religion without grounds, but so, it seems, is gun hysteria; and nothing is more hysterical than the prophetic voice which is the Rev. Rachel Smith (Mr. Tooley has Ms. Smith's Christian name wrong, which disappoints me).

"Gundamentalism ... is without spiritual grounding," Ms. Smith? What does that even mean?

Look, I am no gun-toting redneck; I've never opined here one way or the other regarding gun ownership or gun control. But I have been quite outspoken about the fundamentalism of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Smith is very much a part. The Religious Left tirelessly claims that the Religious Right is tirelessly trying to impose its values and religion on the world; meanwhile, the Religious Left does nothing BUT impose its values and religious ideals on the world, the secular AND religious worlds. The hypocrisy, so blatant and obvious, is nonetheless always stunning. Religious Left blindness is incalculable, really.

And if Ms. Smith is concerned that the Supreme Court has got gun-rights wrong -- that it has found a right where there is none -- I would ask her to provide us the spiritual grounding she most likely believes provides Americans the constitutional right to kill babies in utero -- and out! -- with daggers, knives; our bare hands.

(As a total aside, I have never met a pro-life, anti-abortion vegan, have you? I am not suggesting such folks don't exist. I am suggesting that they are rather rare [and never medium rare].)

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Bow Your Heads

(I've been away for a few days. 'Tis good to be back.)

George W. Bush, you'll recall, has often been chided for his associations with the "religious right". He has been mocked for admitting during the 2000 presidential campaign that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ. He has been ridiculed for revealing that he prays every day that God would guide him to do the right thing; militant Bush critics even believe this revelation is tantamount to the Commander-in-Chief waging a holy war against Islam, all proof that Mr. Bush holds theocratic ambitions.

But darkness descends on the minds of too many men and women, blinded to the overwhelming fact that there is religion aplenty driving those who adhere to liberalism, or who work to transform the world into the image of the Democratic Party. Without question certain "believers" accept the grandiloquent damnations hurled at religious right activism; and without question they shut their minds to religious leftism and other forms of theocratic emanations.

Who is going to stand up to the great and swaggering behemoth which is the Democratic Party as it bowed its head in prayer the other day? Who is going to demand redress of great religious and ideological grievances brought upon Democrats for their unthinking connivance to appear tolerant, devout, and ever so peaceful?

If you have not already done so, please watch this video clip provided for us by HotAir.com of a Muslim imam invoking "god" at the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) Winter Meeting. It is enough to make one's prayer shawl crawl. It is enough to make one daven in disbelief; to genuflect in semi-conscious bewilderment.

Here is a transcript (thanks to Frontpagemag.com) of the whole prayer (the HotAir excerpt is too abridged):

In the name of God the most merciful, the most compassionate. We thank you, God, to bless us among your creations. We thank you, God, to make us as a great nation. We thank you God, to send us your messages through our father Abraham and Moses and Jesus and Muhammad. Through you, God, we unite. So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us God to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation. Ameen. [Emphasis added]

I am sure we all would agree that it would be wrong for a President of the United States, the Chief Executive of a nation devoted to separation of powers, particularly the separation of Church and State; it would be wrong of that leader to invoke God's "perfect will" in declaring war against a neighbor, all in the name of Christ. Americans recoil at such religious vigor; they expect there to be a "wall of separation" between the State and its many churches.

But I am equally sure that we all must agree -- along with the deconstructionists among us -- that nowhere in the history of America has any founding document called for the erection of a wall between Mosque and State. For it appears, or so it seems, our friends in attendance at the DNC's meeting have no problem sharing the same podium with an imam invoking Allah to guide national affairs; the Mosque is our political friend. All facetiousness aside, we must (must we not?) be perplexed by the sudden Islamophilism of the DNC.

How interesting it is -- or am I wrong about this? -- that the DNC would be of nearly one mind that it is wrong for any leader to seek God's guidance in starting war, and yet it is somehow right for leaders to seek God's guidance in ending war. How interesting it is that the DNC would countenance a prayer by a man asking for exclusive privileges for a certain set of special people, the good people, and that there would be no such privileges on those God has kindly chosen to "doom." And how interesting it is that God should -- with the Democrats' help and Islam's fervent plea -- bring an end to "occupation" and procure "equality" for all.

Ahh, men.



PEACE.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

A Newbie Attitude

It is a very messianic thing to be. One might wonder whether any deliverer would dare to be anything but; for to be something other than a bridge-builder -- a uniter -- is to be something less than a messiah. Messiahs bring people together; they are conciliatory, appeasing; they understand compromise and concession.

But this is not the least a messiah can do. A messiah can also reveal his or her salvific message once every four years or so, at least in America. He (or she) can remind us all -- once again -- what life can truly become -- if we but believe, if we but thrill in the audacity of hope.

Barack Hussein Obama has lifted his head from his pillow and in the silence of the night, he has heard a call, a voice, the voice of the people; and he has responded. His message? He wishes to bring together that which has been torn asunder; to mend the torn veil; to build on those things which unite rather than divide. In other words, he wants to deliver a message of hope, of optimism in the power of the human will when it works in collective concert. Mr. Obama believes that it is not the enormity of the issues before us, but the smallness of our politics in addressing those issues that has failed us all. Such issues can be rendered small, no doubt, by a politics that is larger than anyone has heretofore dreamed possible. It is all about a brighter vision in a darkness deceptively dark: things are not as black as they seem. Nor are they as white. For such simple distinctions betray us when confronting dire challenges: our tried yet failed policies based on categories of good and evil, light and dark, black and white, north and south, have proven themselves tired, myopic, weak; senescent.

And now, in the juvenescence of the year, in the season of Janus (the two-faced deity that guards against war), Barack Obama is a great light in the deep and lonely solstice of Northern Hemispheric politics. He is the newcomer with the right attitude, speaking new beatitudes. His name means blessed. He brings a message.

Two things, really. First, the message Mr. Obama brings is utterly old and not the least bit spry or sprightly. It is what we have heard in the United States from leaders ad infinitum: we have long been given empty promises that there shall be no more empty promises. We are promised an end to partisan bickering, to gridlock, to more of the same. We are promised the "setting of a new tone in Washington," of "forging a new direction for America," of coming together to "take America back" and building anew a "government for the people by the people." We are promised an end to rancor and discord; we are promised unity in a United States on the threshold of disunion. It is time to cease the fearmongering, the backbiting; the good-old-boy backroom favoritism; the special interest plundering of American goodwill and industriousness.

In short, we have heard all of this before, said the same way, at the same time of year, and even for the same reasons.

But what we have not heard enough is that a real messiah -- perfectly presented in the Christ of the Christian faith -- is the only religious figure in history who built a religion on the self-revelation that He came to divide, not unite; to separate, not combine; to winnow out, and not to blend; to cleave asunder and not to mend. Jesus the Christ is indeed exactly the sort of politician we need to hear from, though not on the airwaves or from the podium, or on the breakfast news shows or a podcast from the Jesus 2008 website. We need to hear from Him in our hearts, if for no other reason than to stop this insanity.

The messiah has already come, and He will come again. But He is not a politician from Illinois, or a president from South Africa, or a megalomaniac from Venezuela. He is not a man with a gun, nor is a he man with a Texas swagger. Nor is he a man with a soft, bipartisan voice.

"I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ... The poor you shall always have with you. ... I have come to set brother against sister. ... You have no part in me unless ..." This is what a deliverer says; these are the words of a real leader, a real revolutionary. He does not coddle his base, or stroke the hair of those eager to pronounce him god.

Just a few thoughts in this season of Hosanna Politics.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Thawing The Big Chill: More From The Religious Left

If I were pressed as to what defines this website, I would suggest that Contratimes is devoted to pointing out the hypocrisies and contradictions of the Religious Left. This is not this site's exclusive target, but if the entirety of my essays was boiled down, the remaining precipitate would consist mostly of a confrontation with my brothers and sisters on the Left who dwell in the halls of religion.

Somewhere it was said that "As the Church goes, so goes the culture." It is a debatable claim, of course, but it smacks of truth. My conflict with the Religious Left deals almost exclusively with a point which they make constantly: that the Religious Right is intent on creating a theocracy in America. For the sake of argument, I will stipulate that the Left is right, the Religious Right is filled with theocrats. But that is only part of the story, even a small part. For the essence of the story is this: The Religious Left are the real theocrats, expending far more energy shaping America into the image they think most pleases God, and they are blind to their own zeal. THAT is the essence of the story, and it is no doubt the essential goal of this website to make that fact clear. Indeed it is clear that as the Left wing of the Church goes, so goes the culture.

In one of the first Contratimes posts, "The God Of Love," I asked readers' permission to "announce my rejection of Christ. For if Christianity is as the United Church of Christ (UCC) suggests in its recent TV commercial, then I have no interest in being a Christian..." What follows continues in that vein, for I have read the "alternative State of the Union address" given by the National Council of Church's affiliate "Faithful America," and I'll be damned if I do not loathe it. I would ask that you read it. It is an amazing piece of rhetoric. And it pushes me even farther away from the Christ the Left adores.

Please realize that I am not suggesting that I approve of President Bush's speech or that his vision of the Christ is mine. It would be remiss of me to suggest that I even know what Mr. Bush believes about Jesus (the Christ). I know nothing. But I do know that Christ is not a socialist or a capitalist; He is non-partisan, I hope, through and through. If Jesus is indeed God Incarnate, which the Church has asserted for nearly 2,000 years, then it seems reasonable to conclude that He loves both the poor and the rich, equally. He is no "respecter of persons," to quote the King James Version of the Christian Bible. Christ loves all (and confronts all, too).

With that said, please note the grotesque irony of Mr. Vince Isner's citing of the Jewish prophet Micah at the outset of Mr. Isner's alternative State of the Union address: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?" For Mr. Isner offers little mercy to those with whom he disagrees, particularly the President of the United States. And talk about "walking humbly." Read this by Mr. Isner and ask yourself if this is not the most gratuitous self-congratulation you've ever seen:

"As persons of faith and conscience we hold ourselves to a standard that measures more than our economic wealth and military might. We recognize that we are more than consumers, voters in red or blue states, taxpayers, polling numbers, demographics, target markets and all the rest. As human beings living together on this planet we know that we are, as the Judeo-Christian tradition reminds us – our brother's and our sister's keepers."

You see, Mr. Isner is not like them, not like those greed-freaks who only see GDP and net profits. Isner is MORE than a consumer; he is more than a militarist, a taxpayer, a polling number. He is deep, humane, genuine; a caregiver. Of course, a President of the United States ostensibly involved in running a country on secular principles is not really supposed to be interested in the ontological and moral dimensions of Mr. Isner's personality; that's the Church's job. But more importantly, Mr. Isner is convinced, or so his mercy suggests, that President Bush is less than human. Mr Isner is "more."

And then note this:

"We are also the living agents of Micah's prophetic call. So let us examine just how we are doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly."

It seems Mr. Isner believes we should assess the United States of America, its entire government, according to the strictures of a Jewish prophet (whose audience, by the way, was not American at all). Clearly, Americans should submit to the Left's most beloved sacred texts and toss to the wind the separation of Church and State. That, to the Left, is what they mean by "doing justice," I presume.

As for Mr. Isner's explicit statements about American justice, he enlightens us with this:

"Few of us would dare approach the Supreme Court and openly declare, 'My views are better, truer, and more important, than theirs and therefore you should interpret the law in light of me.'

"That is why special interests choose the BACK door when trying to influence the courts. Recently some well-funded and organized fundamentalist groups have used massive media events to help load the open seats on the Supreme Court with ultra-conservative judges sympathetic to their fundamentalist agenda. They even said that those who disagree with them are “against people of faith.”

This speech, I realize, is offered in the name of faith, even in the name of Christ. So let us take seriously what Mr. Isner says about the "back door" and "fundamentalist groups" in his, well, reductionistic and unmerciful look at his fellow citizens. One wonders what planet he is on, for there are all sorts of groups using the back door of the judiciary, leftists and rightists and yes, even "people of faith." Does anyone really believe that the "right to privacy" found in the Constitution justifying the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision walked through the judiciary's front door? Does anyone really think that "special interests" during the Alito hearings were not pounding on the back door of Senators Schumer, Leahy, Kerry and Kennedy's chambers to resist the electorate's will, which elected, through the front door, a President who would appoint justices sympathetic to his convictions? Come, Mr. Isner. Surely you think your ideas are better than others.' How else to explain your "alternative" speech. You don't take us for fools, do you?

And there's this true conundrum:

"People of faith in the United States of America do not march lock step [sic] to the drums of fundamentalism, and we must resist the claims of those who claim to speak for people of faith and conscience everywhere."

Hmm. Does Mr. Isner realize that he has just spoken for people of faith everywhere : "People of faith ... do not march lock step [sic] ..."? Oh, yes, they do, Mr. Isner. They march in lockstep to the drumbeats of the National Council of Churches.

I can't stop myself:

"It is an arrogant dinner guest who seizes the conversation and shouts his proclamation so loudly that nobody else can speak. That is why all who love their faith and their country must work to insure [sic] that everyone has a voice around the national table. It is only through dialogue, the free expression of ideas, and respect for all points of view can justice reach its full height."

So much for respecting the points of view of those with whom you disagree, Mr. Isner. And I guess it's not an act of arrogance for a man of "faith" to presume to draft and deliver an alternative State of the Union address. God forbid that Mr. Bush's views are part of the free expression of ideas.

Alas! I'm snowballing! Read on:

"The world has been shocked and outraged by the revelation that the U.S. has engaged ... in torture of its detainees. ... Yet using 9/11, the White House has tragically adopted a policy that bears little resemblance to the example of Christ."

So Christ is indeed the model for American governance. Unite theocrats everywhere! And now I know why I am not a theocrat, nor am I fit to be in the liberal Christian halls: I am too dumb! I mean, I don't understand this at all:

"Looking at the earth from space, only a degree or two separates shadow from light."

I am glad to know that not only is Mr. Isner humble, merciful and just, he is an astronaut.

And so much for kindness and not sowing seeds of fear:

"Congress' cruel and reckless decision to cut billions from aid programs may seem like a small shift in a massive budget, but that tiny shift is critical to those already on life's margins. The consequences will be real – in the form of more children frozen into lives of poverty, young people succumbing to the fever of despair, unable to afford an education. ... On February 1, the House will have one final chance to vote on what has been called one of the most immoral budgets in American History [sic]. If it passes, millions will suffer needlessly."

Congressmen are "cruel" and "reckless," poised to pass the most "immoral budget" in "American History," (which is a course offered at Mr. Isner's alma mater, I believe).

Lastly, let it be noted that in not one single paragraph of Mr. Isner's lengthy speech is there anything resembling an argument. Not one paragraph! Accusations abound, as do insinuations. But not one conclusion backed by evidence. For shame!

I think my point has been made, and it is not a fun one. The Religious Left is really nothing other than the Democratic Party platform in religious vestments. There is nothing distinctly new here, nor is there anything uniquely Christian. What there is is the use of religion to inform the State, and to silence criticism of the Left's religiously held agenda. It is the citation of Scripture in order to make subjective what should be objective: If God has spoken through Mr. Isner, who can disagree? You see, Mr. Isner claims to want to keep open a national dialogue, but it is mere lip-service. If "God has spoken through the prophets," what else, then, can be said?

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Photo: Ice melting from tree branch. Dublin Lake, Dublin, NH.]

The religious left is no less threatening (A letter to the editor)

[This essay is a letter sent to the editor of the Peterborough Transcript, a small NH weekly. It is in response to comments made retired Franklin Pierce College professor, author and political activist Taylor Morris, who lives nearby. It is related to my "God Bless You Please, Mr. Robinson."]

Criticisms of the religious right, expressed in sundry letters to local papers and the audacious remarks of Bishop Gene Robinson of the NH diocese of the Episcopal Church, strike me as wildly hypocritical at worst and misinformed at best.

Taylor Morris, for instance, in his letter, How to define freedom? (Transcript, 4/14), fails to even consider that there might be a religious left equally bent on establishing a theocracy in America. Imposing religious ideals and principles in the public square is hardly a right-wing activity. The religious left has been doing it for decades.

One need only glance at Unitarian Universalism to rightly conclude that there is hardly a more strident and politically active religious institution in America. Its involvement in shaping society and politics in its own religious image is not only part of its foundation; it is its pride. If the religious right is against gay marriage, for example, the Unitarians are all for it. In other words, the legalization of gay marriage by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was a decision that promoted and affirmed the religious ideals of Unitarians everywhere. In fact, the two ministers who performed the first 'marriages' in New Paltz, NY, marriages now deemed illegal, were Unitarian ministers. Does anyone think that those two ministers performed those ceremonies because their church opposes gay marriage?

Moreover, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is nearly monochromatic in its political views. Find a Unitarian Universalist who is a conservative Republican, and I say you've found a miracle. (In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church, at least politically, is infinitely more diverse than nearly any Unitarian society on the planet.) The UUA in America endorses almost every political position held by the Democratic Party; and it rarely, if ever, supports one ideal that could be found to the right of that party.

Remember that the "religious right" is not a church. Unitarian Universalism, however, is very much a church.

Mr. Robinson's recent remarks at Franklin Pierce College, germane to this discussion in their hypocrisy, no doubt received applause by his liberal peers. But is there a more troubling irony than a man using his religious office politically in order to censure religion in politics?

And is it not hypocritical that Mr. Robinson would sow fears of theocracy by claiming that 'God is horrified' (Robinson's words) by the things being done in God's name by the religious right? For Robinson claims to know God's mind, a claim that should sound alarms in liberals the world over: Robinson assumes he not only knows what horrifies God politically; he knows what doesn’t horrify God. And what doesn't horrify God? Apparently the political views of Mr. Robinson, whose views are unsurprisingly identical to the Democratic Party platform.

Lastly, one wonders how Mr. Robinson can use his religion in politics to beat back religion in politics when the Book of Common Prayer, without flinching, expects fervent prayers in which weekly, if not daily, Episcopalians petition their Lord Jesus Christ to guide the 'President, Congress and Judiciary' so that they will perform, not some secular act, but God's very will. Perhaps Mr. Robinson would have me skip over that part of my Prayer Book.

The theocratic ambition of the left is also a real threat to the separation of church and state. Messrs. Robinson and Morris apparently hope to protect that separation. I pray they will.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved

Technorati tags: Religious Left, Religious Right, Gene Robinson, Episcopal Church, Episcopalianism,ECUSA, Unitarianism, Unitarian-Universalism