A New Day Post

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In an unexpected turn of events the devil will be doing some advertising work for NY area church.

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This is an idea that no serious politician can be caught handing out, but there is speculation that some are trying to encourage this line of thinking.

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Reportedly a young student removed the Senator’s prayer from the Western Wall shortly after Obama left the holy site. Then the prayer was turned over to the local media, who chose to publish it.

You can read Sen. Obama’s prayer here

You don’t have to be a Hebrew or a Christian or a Muslim for these images to stir complex emotions. As a wise friend of mine recently said to me, “History usually dawns on us after the fact; we are not used to looking it right in the face, and knowing that we are doing so.”

If there’s one thing Bill Maher and I disagree on, and there is, it is the importance that faith plays in the life of some believers. That being said, Maher is about as close as it gets to the ideal fusion of humor and honesty. Though I think Bill can tend towards a closed mind on maters of the spirit, I give him the benefit of the doubt to have done some thoughtful, sociologically relevant, and hilarious work in his new film.

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Now this is a question my friends and I have asked from time to time, but it’s interesting to see this posed at the Huffington Post.  On a related note, there is a book about “engaged Buddhism” called Mindful Politics that is worth reading. It is a new day indeed when numerous faiths work to confront the social failing of our society; oppression, violence, the state of the working poor.   

It is not hard to find people who think that spirituality somehow negates social responsibility. It seems however that serious contemplation of the words and the life of the Buddha (or that of Jesus) calls one to engage in the struggle for human rights and dignities where ever sentient beings are found. I don’t mean to suggest that all devotional paths lead necessarily to an activist role in a human liberation theology movement. For some the monastery is the appropriate and superior choice, but for many who are in and of the world a bold and unyielding commitment to the dignity of every human being is what is called for. That is the spiritual battlefield upon which much good work can be done.

Read the Huffington Post story here.

This week, while speaking in front of the NRA who interestingly banned guns from their convention, the former republican presidential candidate, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee made what I guess we can call a joke, about Barack Obama diving for cover when someone aimed the barrel of a gun at him. He has since apologized for his poor delivery of a joke that he says came out wrong. But its hard to figure out how any comment with those components could come out any way but wrong. After Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, what does Mike Huckabee think is funny about a gun being aimed at the man who may well be the first black president of these United States? And what are we to think of these sort of people, people like former preacher Huckabee, good natured , quick to laugh, presumably wholesome, and then they say something like this, something so racist and treasonous.

Here again we have people using their “faith in God” to try to obscure their racism and failing. The Jonesville church of God Pastor Roger Byrd cant seem to understand why all the controversy over the sign that he says was meant to “make people think” . Read more here  

Get your “If you want to catch Osama you’ve got to vote Obama” bumper sticker here

(This is not news, this is an unmeasured, and sure to be regretted later, reaction to all the anti-reproductive rights, anti-woman’s rights, anti-black equality, anti-Islam propaganda that I have the misfortune of being privy to. If you too have been wanting to vent self-righteously about this subject then you might well enjoy what follows, but if you are worried that the angst contained here in might harsh your ‘one love’ / ‘yes we can’ mellow, then by all means skip this piece.) 

              I’m sorry, but I have to say something about all these closet racists who keep passing around their outrageously ignorant, stubbornly uninformed, not-so-subtly bigoted propaganda. I grew up in the church and spend a lot of time standing up for people who have values, and beliefs, and faith communities, but I must say that this stuff come almost exclusively from people who are quick to identify them selves as good Christians. Some of you folks out there are being duped by these people. If  you’ve come in contact with this, then perhaps it came from your barley literate, never been out of the country, family members/co-worker/classmate; Mr. or Ms. White Anglo-Saxon (so called) Jesus-fan..

              (These particular) Jesus-fans who, mind you, know nothing about Judaism, or ancient Israel, or Roman Occupation, or the crusades, or the dark ages, or the reformation, or any fair notion of anything from modern philosophy. I cant understand why anyone would trust these people about the unknowable; what happens when you die, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, when they have made no effort to become informed about the knowable; natural selection, climate change, world history! 

            Now I am a person who has a lot of sympathy for working class people, and poor people, and rural people, and religion, tradition. I am white myself, and not as well educated or well traveled as I wish I was, and I, like Sen. Obama and almost every american, am even related to people who share some of these views. I’m the last person who wants to hold working class American traditionalist feet to the fire. But I have my limits.

              Everyday I get email forwards from people who I actually know in which the racism is about as subtle as a big burning cross in your front yard. Do people not realize that their racism is showing? Do these people not worry what others will think of them, or do they assume that everyone shares their prejudices?  Some of us are intellectually curious adults, some have read a book or two, a few have even been to philosophy class.  That fact in mind, you shouldn’t send us this of hardly disguised white power rhetoric.

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          Some in the media and opposition operatives have been working hard to bring into focus Barack Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright, his retired pastor from the United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose controversial comments the senator has denounced. But in a time when Obama’s connection to Wright, is coming to be a big story we should remember the role that neoconservative ideologues and evangelical fanatics played in the approach of the Bush administration. If the media and rival campaigns think that the political integrity of a candidate’s spiritual adviser is worth investigating, then they should look closer at the people from whom John McCain is taking council.

            For seven years now the foreign policy of the United States seems to have been loosely based on one organizing principle, ‘don’t’ mess with Texas’. Now that the Bush years are drawing to a close, many around the country are hopeful that our next president will have a more sophisticated world view than does the current occupant of the oval office. Most people assume that the next Commander-in-chief will bring to the office, an understanding of the world that is more nuanced, one painted with more shades of gray and less black and white; not so fast.

            If John McCain is elected the country might be in for more of the same. Though he is known as a reformer and a maverick, and though conservatives are quick to point out all the ways he has failed to tow the party line (on immigration, torture, campaign finance, tax cuts or the rich), indications are that McCain may not be free from the type of absolutist dogmatic ideology that ruined the Bush administration.

            Recently Rod Parsley, one of the evangelical preachers who McCain counts as an spiritual adviser, said that America should aim to destroy Islam. Now that really is a daunting goal, perhaps not as daunting as when George W. Bush’s pledge to wipe evil of the face of the earth; he couldn’t even get it out of his White House.  But Islam is the one of the world’s largest religion with over a billion adherents. Maybe that is what McCain has in mind for the troops he says he might keep in Iraq for the next hundred years. However most educated adults understand that a war with Islam is the last things anyone should want.This is the stuff that makes s everyone from Ron Paul to Ralph Nader go nuts. This is just an idea, but what if we keep the American Government out of the business of regulating what people believe about what happens after you die.

            As David Corn of Mother Jones points out, Parsley calls Islam an “antichrist religion” and charges that Mohammad “received [his] revelations from demons”. Perhaps somehow there is still some debate about the inherent ethnocentrism, foolishness and disrespect contained in those words, but this must is for sure, it clearly makes you politicaly dangerous for a Presidential Candidate to stand with.

           Parsley is not the only fundamentalist fanatic that McCain has courted in his attempt to win over the  Republican party’s evangelical fringe. We shouldn’t forget about McCain spiritual adviser John Hagee, who called the Catholic Church “the great whore”. If Sen. McCain wants to have any chance of appealing to moderate voters in the general election, he must distance himself from these phonies who use their ‘spirituality’ as a front for their hateful, intolerant, bigotry. What do you know? Here’s one of those things that really is black or white; either you reject the political support of hateful Fanatics or you don’t.

Read David Corn’s article in Mother Jones mentioned above

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Now here are some reasonable things to feel guilty about; “pollution, mind-damaging drugs, genetic experiments, and social injustice” 

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Bob Moser of the Nation asks an important question this Easter season, and it comes with some surprising new answers. 

Give it a read

          The ugliest campaign tactics so far this season have been seen in the mailings and internet sites that question Sen. Obama’s Christian faith, and patriotism. It has been a whispered misconception that Obama took the oath of office on the Koran and that Obama doesn’t pledge elegance to the flag, but the favorite fabrication of fanatics, racist and fear-baiter alike is that claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim.

          This week on CBS’ 60 Minuets Hillary Clinton had an opportunity to send a signal to anyone in her campaign who might be spreading these reprehensible lies, but she passed on that opportunity. When Steve Kroft asked Clinton if she believe that Obama was secretly a Muslim She said, “No” but when pressed added the caveat, “as far as I know”.

            Hillary knows very well that Sen. Obama has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years. She also knows that this misconception on the part of some voters benefits here politically, so she lets it stand, some might say even encourages it. The Clinton Campaigns “kitchen sink” approach sows the seeds of her destruction when she has this on her hands. It is possible to kneecap the most promising young democrat on the national stage in a generation, it is not possible to do it an simultaneously appear likeable and presidential.

            We have heard him compared to great presidents of the past and civil rights leaders. We have noted that he gives voice to believers whose faith calls them to social responsibility rather than smug condemnation. We have noticed that his speaking style evokes images from the historical black church, and the Ivy League lecture hall. And we have seen him argue that politics can be conducted in a more humane way.  But some are wondering out loud if Barack Obama is more than just a candidate. Now admittedly, those people doing the wondering are nuts, but its still something to keep an eye on.

            As ABC news senior correspondent Jake Tapper points out in his blog Political Punch, there are those who are calling the Illinois Senator the Messiah. And just as a side note here, there is actual real speculation that Obama could be the Antichrist as well. I mean after all, he is a smooth talking, young, non white, who used to ride on a magic carpet to his Madrasah every day when he was an opium dealing child in Mecca.

            Now that Satan has hidden all those fake dinosaur bones that have fooled scientist into believing that the earth is more than 10,000 years old, he really hasn’t had that much to work on. There was that time when he caused the wardrobe malfunction at the super bowl, but until Obama came along who was he going to corrupt into a world dominating tyrant with no regard for human life. It sure is a good thing that the united Church of Christ going, inner city organizer, Harvard law school graduate Obama wasn’t in office after 9/11 or Satin could have manipulated him into opportunistically parlaying the tragedy into a power grab. Maybe after Obama consolidated his power the devil could have convinced him to play upon the public’s fears to justify a war that would funnel our national treasure into the hands of unaccountable war profiteers. Too bad for the devil, that there wasn’t anyone around who he could fool.

            Now as ridiculous as all this is, I tend to think that this type of thing help make the argument that Obama supports are naive or that they have unrealistic expectations about what a President Obama would be able to accomplish. But the phenomenon is real; the websites do exist, so I guess that makes it real. And when a story comes along that is this rich in potential for jokes that only my buddies from the philosophy and religion department would appreciate, I have to use it.

Just as the South Carolina primary race was heating up, President Clinton was nodding off. In a service on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day, Clinton was less than riveted. Take a look, he might not be fired up, but he is certainly ready to go.