Where is "The Promised Land"?

There is yet another layer in the multilayered set of issues surrounding Israel and Palestine I find personally compelling. It is one thing to argue politics, or spin history (people "a" were "here first" vs. people "b" were "here for a thousand years" or whatever...)

From a Christian point of view, and even from a psychological point of view, where is the promised land?

Something strange happens between the Old and New Testaments. The idea of a promised land, a kingdom, moves from being a temporal kingdom on earth to being an eternal kingdom which, as Jesus says before his crucifixion "is not of this world." He calls it "the kingdom of heaven" rather than the kingdom of Israel. And while some wait for him to overthrow earthly authorities and re-establish earthly Jerusalem in mighty acts of power against Rome, he instead moves toward the humiliation and death that once and for all redefine everything.

As Luke 17:20,21 shows us, the kingdom moves from being external to internal ("the kingdom of heaven is within you" [NIV]) and/or from being a piece of real estate to being God-with-us ("the kingdom of God is among you").

Even the Old Testament agrees with this apparently radical reformulation of meaning far more than one might initially think. Over and over again, Jehovah God makes clear that Israel is a spiritual family -- even a spouse -- to whom he has a special relationship. The land comes, and the land goes. The earthly kingdom is broken in two, taken away by various other nations, restored in part only to be taken again. And this all in the context of God struggling to bring his people into conformity with himself....

As Christians, the Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven, is both our eternal home and our present dwelling place. It is not America. It is not Israel. It is not the West. No, our only safe dwelling place is in the arms and heart of God, and in the fellowship of his imperfect Bride, the Church.

From that place, we are to be children, because only those with the hearts of children may enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And we are to love our neighbors and yes, even our enemies.

The Promised Land is Jesus. The Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus. And we blaspheme Jesus' name when we suggest any earthly nation or place is God's inheritance to us. It is not. God's inheritance to us is love.

Hamas, Israel, and the "Right to Exist"

In my previous post regarding more pseudo-christian nationalists supporting Israel, I said that I supported Israel's "right to exist." A Muslim relative pointed out something, however, that I feel compelled to note. I think I'll simply share her words on the topic, then log a few responses and reflections of my own:

Jon, you wrote: "I support Israel's right to exist, and I hope the new government of Palestine also sorts that issue out." I doubt that any Palestinian organization will ever acknowledge such a thing (sincerely, anyway), if it it phrased like that, and it usually is. What Israel and the West ought to be asking Hamas to do is acknowledge Israel (within the 1967 borders, not including West Bank settlements or East Jerusalem or the Jordan Valley) as a fait accompli, one that is not likely to go away. In fact I have already heard Hamas leaders doing this - one said last week (I can't remember the exact words) that no one could destroy a nuclear power with a few homemade rockets and bombs. Hamas is smart - they know that they can't destroy Israel. They might be able to make the West Bank settlements too expensive to hang onto, as they did the Gaza ones, but the WB ones are much larger and more entrenched, and furthermore are in an area that Israel thinks God gave to them, so I don't expect them to have too much luck in getting rid of them. Israelis would have to decide to do that by themselves.

To ask Hamas to acknowledge Israel's right to exist would be to demand that they acknowledge that European Jews had the right to invade Palestine and take the land away from the Palestinians, and they certainly never had that right, either legally or morally. They might have had the right to take Bavaria, considering that it was the Germans who tried to exterminate them, but to take Palestine, making 1/3 of the Palestinians the new Wandering Jews with no right to return to their homeland ever, and another third or so prisoners in refugee camps for 58 years and counting, and the rest miserable people living under permanent occupation? NO WAY did they have that right. Palestinians had never done anything to deserve this catastrophe happening to them, any more than the Indians deserved what our ancestors did to them. The fact that many of these Jews who came from Europe were descended or partly descended from people who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago is no argument at all to anyone who does not accept the Chosen People or Rapture things. If Hamas said that they agreed with the formation of Israel on Palestinian land they would be either lying or crazy.

To ask that Hamas acknowledge pre-1967 Israel to be a permanent fait accompli ought to be enough. To have the arrogance to demand that Hamas agree that it was OK to have their country stolen is unspeakable.

Thanks, cuz. If I hear you right, the term "Israel has a right to exist" placed in the mouth of a Palestinian would be for him or her to say that God approved of what was done to Palestinians by the west and Israel from its founding until now. Remember, the central issue theologically for Zionists and right-wing Christians is this: both believe that God's creation of Old Testament Israel was in effect a "forever" thing. That is, the land then, now, and forevermore belongs to the Jewish people.... an idea Palestinian Christians as well as Muslims reject. (Amazing how Palestinian Christianity is completely ignored in the Christian Right rhetoric on Israel's "rights.")

There could be a different reading of history than the usual one we in the west encounter as fact. Start with the holocaust. No, Muslims shouldn't mock or deny the holocaust, as some have done. But why have they? Are they simply unreasonable, violent, and hateful by nature... unlike we civilized Judeao-Christian types? (Daisycutter, anyone?) Or is there a deeper subtext here, perhaps explaining some of that anger?

Who's fault was the holocaust, anyway? Did Hitler rise in a vacuum, or in an anti-semetic culture which had taught its citizens for 1900 years that Jews were "Christ Killers," even had secret ceremonies in which they drank the blood of gentile babies? Could this western culture, faced with the horrors of the 6,000,000 Jews who died due in part to such vicious theological ideas, hunt for the easy way out of our collective guilt? A new Christ, perhaps, to nail on the cross ourselves in place of the six million we'd already crucified? Did we try to erase the images of skeletal children and piles of gassed bodies by "giving" a slice of Palestine to the tattered remnants of the holocaust? It seemed a perfect solution. Our western guilt was eased, our Christian guilt over labeling fellow human beings "Christ killers" and other cruel and inaccurate names was eased. And all for the price of a slice of land no-one -- except intially Britian -- seemed all that upset about losing.

No one, that is, except Palestinians. No one but -- as an evangelical relative I admire much less than my Muslim cousin said to me once -- "those ragheads."

Maybe we can arrange another holocaust for them? Maybe then we can take someone else's land and give it to the shredded remnants of their families displaced by western occupiers.

Bottom line? How can the Islamic world relate to our suffering -- whether the suffering of Jews or the suffering of Christians -- when we refuse to recognize their suffering, or even their existence as persons?

I think current events offer abundant evidence answering these questions.

Christians United for Israel? Jesus Wouldn't Have Joined.

I guess I could make up something more stupid, less humane, and less Christian, than this. But why? John Hagee (John Hagee Ministies), Jerry Falwell of "Moral Majority" fame, Benny Hinn (flamboyant, even bizarre televangelist), Gary Bauer (President of American Values), and Steve Strang (owner of the Charisma magazine empire), have with others joined forces to create yet another pseudo-christian nationalistic front supporting Israel. The group, "Christians United," claims to represent 30 million Americans. I hope not.

Look, I'm not anti-Israel. I support Israel's right to exist, and I hope the new government of Palestine also sorts that issue out. I think they will. But I also believe the fundamentalist / charismatic nexus that supports Zionism -- no matter how henious the crimes Israel commits against her neighbors -- is diseased.

What is the disease?

Nationalism. And here, I'm not talking primarily about Israel but rather America. Note the logo of Christians United, which includes two hands meeting over an American flag and an Israeli flag. The unspoken assumptions embedded in that logo speak volumes. America as the new Israel is certainly a central theme in much of the Christian Right's worldview. It only makes sense for those confusing "American values" with Christian values to also confuse Israel's values with Christian values.

Until we root this nationalism out of our churches we can expect a humanity-denying Zionism to continue to infiltrate them as well. And we can pretend a baffled ignorance when reviled and hated by many in the Middle East for our amazing, and lethal, arrogance.

Of True and False Anxiety

(The below is a sermon I've prepared for our JPUSA "Senior Church" -- the older folk who share the top three floors of 920 W. Wilson with us JPUSAns. I trust there are political implications to the below which those who have ears to hear will pick up on... if not necessarily agree with. Apologies to Kierkegaard fans and/or scholars.)

Today, I’m going to talk just for a few minutes on a cheerful little Scripture. Just two verses, found in Phillipians 4 verses 6, 7.

4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Now, I said that is a cheerful Scripture. But that depends on how we understand what they’re saying.

What is anxiety, anyway?

There’s the kind of anxiety I had in school about a test. You know, that sort of hollow feeling you had when you knew you could have done a better job on the homework? Or maybe you were a good student… never mind.

There’s the kind of anxiety we have when we just finished some spinach at a restaurant and find someone glancing at us funny. Uh-oh… do I have some stuck between my teeth?

Or maybe we’re anxious because we’re meeting someone for the first time.

There’s the kind of anxiety we have when among a bunch of people who we want to impress. This anxiety is a bit scary. One strong-willed person with a bigoted, twisted idea and the boldness to arrogantly strut it can often get the rest of us – those of the right religion or color, anyway – to follow his lead. The results? American slavery. Auswitz and the gas chambers.

That brings up what I would call “false” anxiety as opposed to the deeper forms of anxiety which in fact are the mark of more whole human beings. A person can be anxious to please their friend, yet fail to be anxious about the evil and even demonic ideas their friend is promoting, for instance.

But even that anxiety is not the type of anxiety I’m most interested in. Let me tell you a story.

In 1973, my parents took a number of us kids to see the Grand Canyon. How many here have been to the Grand Canyon? It is incredible! Well, we went out onto one of the many tourist overlooks. These are basically giant flat outcroppings of rock where you can go right up to the edge of the canyon and look both across and down for miles.

Now I should tell you that as a teenager I really had little fear; I did stuff that since then has given me chills to recall. I once had a German Shepherd go after me, and instead of running away, I turned around and chased the dog! It fled, which really impressed my friends. You get the idea.

So here we are at the Grand Canyon. And I have this camera with me, snapping photos of this and that. We walk up to the edge of this cliff, and down below us is the Snake River. Someone said it was over a mile straight down.

For safety’s sake, there are these white steel railings about three or four feet from the edge. I took one look, and before anyone could say a thing, I put one of my long legs over the railing, put the other one over the railing, and sat down with nothing between me and a one mile drop to the bottom of the Grand Canyon except my backside on a foot-wide piece of flat rock. Then, I leaned forward, looked through my camera’s viewfinder, and took a picture. I had new tennis shoes, and I wanted to get a shot of them hanging out over the canyon, you see? So I stuck my feet out even further over the empty space below for better effect.

Well, once I was done, I stood up and looked at my Mother. She was a whiter shade of pale, if you know what I mean. She had five boys, so I guess maybe she should have expected something like that, but no, Mothers are always in a state of anxiety. For good reason.

But here’s the thing. Every last one of us is sitting on the edge of that cliff, looking down, with nothing between us and death except the faint pumPUM pumPUM of our heartbeat. I’m pushing the image here, but the Grand Canyon we’re staring down into is our own mortality. Hear me, now. It isn’t just about heaven and hell – it is about what we are, what we mean, why life itself is even worth living. Those are the deep anxieties, and frankly, the most surprising thing is how few people really seem to struggle with those anxieties vs. the “Do I look good in this dress” kind of anxieties. Never mind that I would look terrible in any dress….

This is what fascinates me. We are all anxious about one thing and another… but how many of us are anxious about the right things, the important things?

A brilliant, if often depressing, Christian thinker, Soren Kierkegaard once wrote a book called “The Concept of Anxiety.” The title is often translated “The Concept of Dread” – and no wonder. Kierkegaard wrote, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom… when freedom looks down into possibility…” Well, what did he mean?

I mentioned Auswitz a little bit ago. How did Hitler come into power? I believe he came into power because of the very thing Kierkegaard addressed. That is, we are all afraid of the future, all the possible futures, out there. And one future is not only possible, but absolute; we will die. Psychology says that we cope with death usually by denying death’s existence, or at least by selectively looking away at the right moments. Hitler, whether even he knew it or not, keyed in on those fears of death the German people had. And he picked the right people to pick on; Jews. And despite the fact that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, was a Jew, the Christians in Germany mostly went along with Hitler’s plans.

Why? Because Hitler’s lie was simple. He was establishing a Reich – a kingdom or empire – that would last a thousand years. Or so he said. A few million Jews here or there… what was that to establishing immortality for an entire nation? His lie offered meaning, a deeply satisfying, if completely false, meaning. Nationalism, racism, name your ism…. All of them are or were popular because they offered people meaning.

You see, our death can be experienced in a few different ways. We can die physically. That is one kind of death. But we can also die as far as our lives having meant anything. If we lived a life that meant nothing to anyone, maybe are living such a life even now, how much better is that than being physically dead? That is what the dictator promises…. A life of meaning and even heroism.

But let’s go back to anxiety. Because here we are. And we don’t want to go the way of the Nazis, the murderers of Martin Luther King, or the killers today who use various religions as an excuse. So I suggest going the way of Soren Kierkegaard instead. Listen to a very curious thing Kierkegaard said about anxiety:

“With the help of faith, anxiety brings up the individual to rest in providence.”

See, anxiety means you are awake. When I sat on the edge of that cliff, looking down at my shoes through the camera lens, I felt no fear – no anxiety – at all. But when I’ve thought back on it, I almost tremble with the absolute risk I took. One slip, one miscalculation, and I would have plunged into the abyss. I wasn’t awake. I was asleep to my true frail condition as a human being. I forgot that I was finite, that I had limits.

To Kierkegaard, true anxiety is our friend because it wakes us up to our peril. Not only that, but if we refuse to choose a cheap lying substitute and insist that we remain awake, anxiety will lead us up from the abyss of death and into the rest only Jesus Christ offers us.

The only other option to either remaining unconscious or submitting to God is despair, according to Kierkegaard. Some people admit they can find no meaning or purpose except pleasure. And pleasure wears out soon enough, doesn’t it? Others wallow in despair, making their agony a sort of heroic struggle.

It all comes back to where we started; those almost cute little two verses of Philippians. Only I hope by now you see that they are not cute at all, but instead are earth-changing, despair shattering words:

4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
4:7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In Christ, once our true, awakened sense of anxiety and dread bring us to Him, we will find a peace so deep it transcends all understanding. No, God does not promise us we will not suffer. That would be a lie. But he does promise us that we need not be anxious for our lives’ eternal meaning. Our only meaning is in Him, and in His love.

Colson vs. Young on Worship Music

Re the Colson vs. Young thing on music I mentioned yesterday, I decided on second thought to move it to the Cornerstone Festival forums. After all, the Cstone fest is yet another example of the very music Mr. Colson seems to be so displeased by. Sigh.... as Mr. Young points out, Mr. Colson's implicit assumptions re music are also reflective of assumptions he's apparently operating from on more weighty issues.

Of HIV/AIDS and Gabriel Marcel

Gabriel Marcel was a French existentialist... and a Christian. At one time he was a philosopher, interested in the abstract edifices of reason the human mind can construct. But as a Christian and an existentialist, which I think he saw as necessarily part of the same piece of cloth, he called his school of thought "the Concrete." That is, as opposed to the abstract.

I like that.

Fred -- that is the only name I know him by -- had never to my knowledge read Marcel. Fred was a homeless guy I met way back in the 80s while doing a three-day homeless sit-in on a site that was supposed to be for low-income housing, but had instead been left a vacant lot. Fred was African American, and at the time represented a Homeless Men's Union of sorts that Chicago had spawned. He was articulate, funny, and enjoyable to be around despite his habit of coloring the air blue at times w/ cursing.

He tended to call me "pastor" -- though I'm not -- and tried to mind his P's and Q's around me. This, too, made me smile.

After the "tent city" we'd built was forcibly torn down by Chicago's finest, and all of us evicted (how fitting!), I saw Fred often in the area. We remained friends. Sometimes he was friendly, but sometimes he seemed troubled, and a few times even surly. I suspected the latter times were caused by his drug use and his guilt upon seeing me, though I'd not said anything to him about what we both knew was going on.

One day, I saw him a few blocks from our building while I was walking. And as we chatted, he seemed sadder than usual, with no anger but also no joking exterior. Bluntly, he didn't look well. I finally asked him how he was, physically speaking. He hesitated.

"AIDS." He said. "I have AIDS. They just told me."

I prayed with him, hugged him -- it seemed especially important to hug him -- and walked home, numb. I called my wife, who was still working at our women's transitional shelter. And as I told her about Fred, I suddenly could not speak as sobs shook my body.

You see, Marcel was right. At that moment, the tyranny of the abstract had been crushed by the concrete. I wept my foolish, unhelpful tears, in a tiny pathetic shadow of the tears Christ wept at Lazarus' tomb.

Death is concrete. Evil is concrete. They come to all humanity, regardless of our abstract ways of seeing. Like the brick falling from a tower and crushing the one unfortunate enough to intersect the time/space continuum at that instance as the brick intersects it, their brains will be crushed by the concrete.

Love, Song of Songs says, is as strong as death. If death is the reality we all face, love is the reality death faces. Only love lasts. Love swallows death.

All our abstractions, all our self-judgements about right and wrong, will be crushed and are crushed or perhaps even help do the crushing.

Only Christ stands free from abstraction, only he IS the WORD that has died and now lives, and now draws us and any who would come to Him.

I hope and pray Fred is there. I hope and pray that I am there... I trust in Christ, or in nothing. Because without the Concreteness of Love, there is only the falling brick, the path, and the pull of time forward upon my feet which insures I will intersect that brick's path. Sooner or later...

Marcel understood, perhaps. Marcel saw the cartoonish nature of abstract logic, its pathetic -- really! -- pathetic failure in the face of existence's inevitability.

But as I stood holding the phone, weeping, all I could understand was that God Himself was weeping with me, and that that fact alone allowed me to feel such pain while remaining sane.

(Join the discussion on this post at Cornestone Festival Forums)
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Morehead on Mohammed; Colson vs. Young?

Worth a gander is John Morehead's post on the anti-Islamic cartoon debacle; he explores what many observers see as a two-threaded framework of belief in Islam, one thread being violent while the other is non-violent. John strives for more of a balance than perhaps I did with my own riff on the topic; John is a friend and co-founder with myself and others of the Sacred Tribes Journal. (The current STJ issue is on Neo-paganism and Christianity.)

Tomorrow, if I can get the time, I'll post Chuck Colson's riff on new Christian worship music, and a wonderful response to it by Professor Shawn Young of Greenville College. Prof. Young has given me thumbs-up, and we'll all have a good time. Why music in a politically-focused blog? Well.... guess you'll have to wait and see!

Evangelicals, Scientists Unite Over Global Warming -- Except for the Usual Suspects

One more hopeful sign in a week or two of positive events (including Bono's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast and Rick Warren's Nightline appearance)...

Evangelicals and Scientists held a press conference today in which they decried Global Warming and insisted that faith and science need to come together. Of particular concern to Christians is the fact that this warming trend will greatly impact not only the environment but also the poorest of the poor among humanity first.

"It doesn't matter whether you believe Darwin got it right or that the Genesis story is literally true," ABC News reported Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson as saying. "We can all agree that, however it got here, the living creation — on which we all depend for our existence — is something we don't want to see destroyed."

Eighty-six evangelical leaders signed on to the Evangelical Climate Initiative, as it is being called, including presidents of 39 Christian colleges and universities, leaders of various aid and parachurch groups, and even the afore-mentioned Pastor Rick Warren of "Purpose-Driven Life" fame. (I tip the hat to my own denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church, for their support of this idea.)

However, the usual suspects are rejecting the proposal. Chuck Colson (Prison Fellowship), James Dobson (Focus on the Family), and Richard Land (Southern Baptist Convention) -- ever the blind leading the blind, it seems -- lead the dissenters. Their argument is that "science isn't settled" on the issue, which seems pretty far-fetched when hearing from the afore-mentioned Edward O. Wilson. They recently mailed a letter to the National Assocation of Evangelicals to insure that organization would not back the Global Warming Initiative, nor allow any of its officers or staff to sign. It worked. The NAE, previously leaning in favor of the Initiative, went to a neutral position.

I have long observed the politics of Focus on the Family as being dictatorial. I well recall Dobson putting heat on the EPA (that's Evangelical Press Association, not Environmental Protection Agency) to discipline an EPA leader, Timothy Warner, who gently questioned Ronald Reagan's policies in an EPA Newsletter editorial. The threat from Dobson was straightforward. Discipline Warner or we'll quit the EPA. Of course, EPA buckled. So much for freedom of the press, eh? Focus was also involved in the attempted supression of Zondervan's TNIV, a gender-correct version of Scripture which removes excessive male-specific pronouns from the original text.

Charles Colson, as I've observed here before, is a real disappointment personally to me. (I doubt he loses sleep over that fact, but...) And Richard Land's denomination has consistently become more draconian in its measures against women, systematically removing them from roles of leadership since the 1990s and reinforcing the hierarchical marriage model widely rejected by other Christian teachers and denominations. Southern Baptist Missionaries are forbidden to allow the wife to teach or preach, even when not to do so would appear to any observer a waste of giftings and man (er, woman) power. Most recently, the Southern Baptists forbade any new missionaries on the mission field from praying in tongues -- even in the privacy of their own homes! Haala ki baraka! (Translation: Fascinatin' stuff. )

E. Calvin Beisner, whom I first encountered at a Christian conference as he railed at a panel of African Americans about their take on racism -- yeah, he'd know a lot more than they would about that topic -- also checked in on Global Warming. In fact, he's organized the opposition into what he calls "The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance." Hehehehe.... I love that. I hear they have a picture of James Watt on the wall.... remember the "Jesus is coming back so what me worry about the environment" Watt? He was Ronald Reagan's evangelical in the cabinet, until it turned out his china was cracked.

Hey, it's a blog. I'm venting. Trott needs a muzzle. Somebody get the Tazer...

Anyway, enough about the dissenters. Hoorah for the folks with eyes to see and ears to hear.

It really has been a good week.

Cartoon Reality: Islam, Christianity, and Loving One's Neighbor

(This respectful but sharply barbed cartoon articulates the Muslim viewpoint on this debacle.)

Recent cartoons published by a small Danish newspaper have caused an uproar in much of the Muslim world. (I would link to the cartoons, but feel that by doing so, I would be repeating the offense against my Muslim neighbors.) Those cartoons were doubly objectionable to Muslims, as they:

1. Pictorally represented Mohammed, founder of Islam; this is considered objectionable in and of itself by the majority of Muslims.

2. Mocked Mohammed in a variety of ways (in one cartoon, he appears nutty and his turban is portrayed as a bomb).

Further, it turns out this same newspaper rejected cartoons that mocked Jesus, even though their creator had shown them to Christian spokespersons before submitting them to the newspaper.

The above offers Christians an interesting set of ethical questions. What would Jesus do? Hmmm.

I do support the right of other human beings to mock my faith, though it may cause me great personal pain. If the God/Man Savior I believe in literally died in order that his enemies might live and have a chance to be reconciled to Him, how can I, a mere human being, expect better treatment? (If you smell a sort of apologetic for Christianity implicit in that last paragraph, you are correct; the Suffering Savior is the primary reason I am able to believe in God -- any God at all -- when faced with a world so filled with suffering and evil.)

I do not support the right of other human beings to abuse my neighbor, and that includes upon religious grounds (or irreligious grounds). Therefore, I protest what this newspaper has done to my Muslim neighbor. (I would also object to Muslim cartoonist attacks on the holocaust, such as the cartoon done of Ann Frank and Adolf Hitler in bed together. This too is an attack upon my neighbor, my Jewish neighbor in that case.)

I also, perhaps contradictorally, support freedom of the press even to say stupid, ignorant things. However, I again would say that Christians should very vocally protest the abuse of our neighbors at the hands of a careless press, just as loudly as we would protest a movie mocking Christ. (Interestingly, some years back, Muslims did protest one controversial movie, "The Last Temptation of Christ," on the grounds that it was disrespectful to Jesus; I'm not debating whether or not the movie was in fact blasphemous or anti-religious but rather showing that Muslims may have in that case shown more cultural sensitivity than we Christians show.)

Many Muslims feel that mocking Mohammed is no less objectionable than mocking the terrors of the holocaust. Perhaps we who don't see Mohammed as God's Prophet cannot agree on that one. At least, however, can we agree that it is an evil to belittle another human being's beliefs simply because we do not share them? That is my strongest feeling. If someone stomped on a picture of Christ, or -- remember this one? -- put a crucifix in a jar of urine and called the resulting "artwork" Piss Christ, I'd feel a deep sense of anger and beneath the anger, sadness.

Finally, the cultural context of all of this cannot be denied. Most news stories focus on the violence a minority of Muslims have indulged in as a reaction to the Denmark cartoons. But in-depth analysis of western reactions to Islam, many of them rooted in fear and ignorance, are few and far between. Fewer still come from the west.

Again, I think as Christians we should affirm our Muslim neighbors' pain, and object to western media and western culture's assault upon a faith our media knows little about. I for one think an apology is in order, not just from the initially offending newspaper, but from all those newspapers who reprinted the cartoons in question. While not supporting violence done by some Muslims in the name of their faith -- violence rejected by many, many Muslims as an aberration -- we ought to support the protests of our neighbors as being wholly legitimate.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Fairly simple, really.

My Mother and Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott's life ended yesterday, January 31, 2006. Today, the first day of Black History Month, begins with remembering her complex, multi-faceted, and sometimes controversial contributions to our collective life on this planet. Most of us, this blogger included, remember her as the loyal wife, the one who stood by America's greatest Twentieth-Century Giant, Martin Luther King. As history gradually revealed, she was that, but also much more. I can add little to what the New York Times said on that score, except a personal and perhaps selfish note.

My mother briefly met Coretta Scott at the college (Antioch) both attended. Their meeting was one where each woman was shy, my mother thinking at the time that Coretta was being aloof as they were introduced, and only later realizing that Coretta was more likely being reticent and careful toward this unknown white girl. My mother was also reticent, not wanting to do the improper thing and feeling an awkwardness there. How much of this was real, and how much imagined? Who can say? It sounded real to me.

It was, alas, a friendship that did not take root. Not from ill will, certainly. But rather from the subtle tensions race causes between human beings, and the mutual uncertainty each young woman had regarding the other. They remained in the same circles, but never again really interacted.

I looked at Coretta's 1968 picture in the Times article, a young woman and a young widow. And it reminded me very much of the pictures of my own mother from that time. Yes, they could have been friends. They would have looked very beautiful standing side by side. I think of Coretta Scott's early musical training for opera, and my mother's avid love for that same music. Yes, even the tilt of their heads, the almost regal look to their eyes and faces.

Coretta Scott King is now with her Maker. Is it any wonder that this woman, who I rarely think of without also thinking of my mother, would also remind me of life's preciousness and our common mortality? I may have to give my mother a call...

Tim LaHaye's Four Temperaments

Just mucking about on the web, I came across an article regarding Tim LaHaye. Mr. LaHaye, along with having done the first contemporary evangelical sex manual (The Act of Marriage), and also having co-written the wildly successful "Left Behind" series, began his authorial career with a pop psychology book called The Four Temperaments.

Katherine Yuricka delves into the background of that first book, and for a Christian in particular it makes interesting reading:

For the fact of the matter is that Tim LaHaye resurrected a discredited pseudoscience that owed much of its success to physiognomy, (the divinatory art of discovering temperaments and character from outward appearance as from facial features.) He simply borrowed his “Four Temperament Theory” from writers who borrowed from the long tradition that grew out of the ancient Greeks’ concept of causes of illness.

For centuries, people believed in the notion that four excessive bodily fluids (or humors) caused diseases. This belief later led physicians to the odious practice of bloodletting by using leeches or cupping. But the four bodily fluids were also linked to distinctive personality attributes, and this theory, called the “humoral theory of personality” was assiduously followed by everyone from crackpots to scholars from the early Greeks to the nineteenth century. It gave birth to the term “temperament,” which was used to indicate the prevailing mood of a person, which in turn was based upon the individual’s supposed prevailing bodily fluid.

Thus an excess of yellow bile would supposedly cause a person to be chronically angry, hence the word choleric (hot tempered, quick to react), which literally means bile. Similarly, an excess of black bile would supposedly cause a person to be chronically sad and depressed, hence the word melancholy. An excess of phlegm meant a person was slow-moving, impassive and apathetic from the cold, moist influence of the humor, hence the word phlegmatic. And an excess of blood was supposed to produce a warm, pleasant mood, hence the word sanguine, which literally means blood.

All that remains of the humoral theory of temperaments today are the four words with their singular meanings still basically intact from the original Greek usage. In fact, the word “temperament” has disappeared entirely from psychology textbooks in the modern western world largely due to the discrediting of such typological theories.

And Yuricka goes on to explore parallels between LaHaye's "typology" and that of Astrology, with somewhat painful results. Both, she concludes, are rooted in pseudo-science. She concludes:

After reading Tim LaHaye’s embarrassingly untrue and inaccurate historical facts; and after reading his own assertions that imply acceptance of his system by the scientific community; and after reading his claim that his scheme is not only “Christian” but compatible with the scriptures, I am tempted to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, who after hearing an incredible statement from a theologian said: “After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about anything in the world?”

And that sounds right from here. PLease read her entire article for the convincing evidence.

Perhaps I should hesitate to make the link between this sort of illogic and the Christian Right overall. But I think of the various theories offered by spokespersons such as Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Rush Limbaugh (who a Christian acquaintance told me yesterday had "converted" him from liberal to conservative politics; I groaned aloud and made a face!), Jerry Falwell, and the litany of others... and I find myself thinking about our collective need for simplification.

I could add a bit more re LaHaye.

There was 80s-era "Mother Jones" incident, where his wife Beverley helped out a reporter from MJ by givng him a cassette tape when his own interview tape with her filled. That tape, it turned out later, had been used by Tim to record thoughts involving a Christian Right coalition between himself, Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, and Rev. Jerry Falwell. THe tape was for Bo Hi Pak, a Moon lieutenant, and whistfully wondered if then-Vice President George Bush, Sr., could be replaced by Jerry Falwell. The fact that Moon viewed Jesus' mission to earth a "failure" and view himself as the one fulfilling the mission Jesus failed at didn't seem an issue at the time; Moon was then, and continues today, to donate money to the Christian Right. Again, the lesson seems to be that some people don't mind something unchristian as long as it is labeled "Christian"... or "conservative," which seems these days to be confused with Christian.

Today, LaHaye's Uber-Zionism is evident in the "Left Behind" series and echoed by Pat Robertson's recent scandalous comments regarding both Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin, that God was punishing both men for their allowing Palestinians any of "God's land." The theology / logic behind this is just as unconvincing as the psychology behind LaHaye's "four temperaments" theories.

And just as unbiblical.

Yet his books continue to be bestsellers, whether on the four temperaments, properly submissive female sexuality, or his own strange take on the Second Coming. In the end, the real issue isn't what that says about him. It is what it says about us.

Does Pat Robertson Speak for You?

Time for Christians to draw a line in the sand. Please go to the Cornerstone Festival site and vote (plus leave comments) on whether Pat Robertson speaks for you...

Pat Robertson: Sharon's Stroke Punishment for His Policies?

Maybe I'll get crazier and crazier as the years go by, and say whacky stuff that turns me into a joke. (Okay, okay... maybe to some I'm there already!) But Pat Robertson's latest in his own string of crazy statements -- and I do mean looney tunes, people -- must be logged, if nothing else.

Turns out that today he told his viewers, of whom there are too many if more than two, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke is because he's now an enemy of God. Well, Robertson tried to be more circumspect than that. Here's the entirety of it (thanks to Media Matters):

ROBERTSON: I have said last year that Israel was entering into the most dangerous period of its entire existence as a nation. That is intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. Sharon was personally a very likeable person. I am sad to see him in this condition. But I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who, quote, "divide my land." God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible, he says, "This is my land." And for any prime minister of Israel who decides he going carve it up and give it away, God says, "No. This is mine." And the same thing -- I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, and it was terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless, he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon, who was again a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with. I prayed with him personally. But here he is at the point of death. He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, "This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone."

Sigh... makes me warm and tingly all over.

Craig Murray offers more on US Torture -- Mirrored to B.Chr. by Request

December 29, 2005

Damning documentary evidence unveiled. Dissident bloggers in coordinated exposé of UK government lies over torture.

Help us beat the British government's gagging order by mirroring this information on your own site or blog!

Constituent: "This question is for Mr Straw; Have you ever read any
documents where the intelligence has been procured through torturous means?"

Jack Straw: "Not to the best of my knowledge... let me make this clear... the British government does not support torture in any circumstances. Full stop. We do not support the obtaining of intelligence by torture, or its use." - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, election hustings, Blackburn, April 2005

I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture... On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood. - Ambassador Craig Murray, memo to the Foreign Office, July 2004

With Tony Blair and Jack Straw cornered on extraordinary rendition, the UK government is particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence extracted by foreign torturers.

The British Foreign Office is now seeking to block publication of Craig Murray's forthcoming book, which documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray remove all references to two especially damning British government documents, indicating that our government was knowingly receiving information extracted by the Uzbeks through torture, and return every copy that he has in his possession.

Craig Murray is refusing to do this. Instead, the documents are today being published simultaneously on blogs all around the world.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful".

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Craig Murray says:

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.

First document: Confidential letters from Uzbekistan

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.
Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.
The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders.
We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

Second Document - summary of legal opinion from Michael Wood arguing that it is legal to use information extracted under torture:

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

Smell that Limbaughger Cheese? Rush on Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq

Ya know, when I want intelligent commentary from the Right, I go to Rush Limbaugh. Certainly, a man with this fella's sterling record of truth-telling should be trusted.

To prove the above, I merely point out what he recently said regarding the Christian Peacemaker Team members kidnapped in Iraq. (I should point out that today is the day they may be murdered by their captors, who promised to do so if "Iraqi prisoners" were not set free.)

Rush said "part of me likes this." Huh? "Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality. [...] [A]ny time a bunch of people that walk around with the[ir] head in the sand practicing a bunch of irresponsible, idiotic theory confront reality, I'm kind of happy about it, because I'm eager for people to see reality, change their minds if necessary, and have things sized up."

Uh, yep. I did love the rather confused image of someone walking around while their head was in the sand. I also loved the unique and never before used phrase "leftist feel-good hand-wringers." As far as being shown reality, there's little danger Limbaugh will ever encounter such a thing, thanks to his listeners' support that keeps him in money and on the air.

CPT is an incredible ministry, and I can only hope and pray the folks that are holding the four CPT hostages let them go. And if any evangelical Christian dares suggest that Rush Limbaugh's version of reality has anything to do with Scripture, Jesus, or loving one's neighbor, just don't dare say it around me unless you want both your ears pinned back and on fire.

As far as Rush goes, any press is good press, I guess. Open mouth, say outrageous and vacuuous things, and garner dollars. Hey, it is the American way. Praiz gawd!!

Social Glue vs. Is It True? Neo-cons Prostitute Christianity

Indulge me for a moment as I tell a little story about my testosterone-charged -- and God-charged -- teen years. It really does tie into the title of this bit.

In the summer of 1974, I went to Montana Boys State as a delegate from Fort Benton High School. Only one year earlier, I had become a Jesus follower after an existential and externally unverifiable set of events not worth hashing over at this time.

At Boys State, we were treated to Montana's Lieutenant Governor -- at least, that is who I recall it being -- speaking to us on the issue of morality in the public sector. Things were going along fine until he made the following statement, or something awfully close to it:

"As Americans, we need a moral glue to hold our social fabric together. Christianity serves as that moral agent." And he went on to explain why religion was important precisely because it was a sort of moral restraint and shaper of society.

After a bit of this, I'd had enough. Remember, I was only a teenager, and hormonally imbalanced. I lept to my feet and yelled, "BUT IS IT TRUE?!" at the top of my lungs.

You see, in my simplistic and young mind, I actually thought it mattered whether or not Christianity was based on history, particularly that history regarding Jesus Christ's existence, birth, life, death, and resurrection. To the speaker, whatever his personal thoughts, it didn't seem important enough to even mention.

At that moment, I now believe, I began the journey away from not only conservativism, but nationalism. I realized -- since I actually think I had a good handle on essentials back then -- that it was Christianity that governed all other questions of human meaning rather than societal considerations, or individual considerations for that matter, being the answer. As Jesus went, so I went. If he was a crock, then so was I, and I wasn't going to sit around playing house with dead moral codes written by deluded people thousands of years ago.

Neither would I pledge allegiance to the flag of twentieth-century religions whether fascist or marxist; they, too, were only worth confronting if in fact the God question had an affirmative answer. If the God question had no answer, or more appropriately, if the Jesus question had no affirmative answer, then there were no more questions really worth asking. Instead, I'd be a good little hedonist, breeding wildly or ingesting illicit substances until I was tired of either, and then perhaps blowing my brains out.

Oh, we'd ask them anyway, being the sad, lonesome creatures we would be without a Maker, Father, or Savior. We couldn't help but keep asking them. But they would never be answered. And some few of us might even have the guts to stop asking them. If I didn't believe I'd had a real encounter with God -- you know, that encounter I'm not going to offer as evidence since it wouldn't hold up as verifiable to the non-participant -- then I would have to believe, and act upon the belief, that no meaning at all exists in the universe.

Good grief, Trott, get to your point.

Okay then. Now it is 2005. James Wolcott's comments regarding conservative commentator Irving Kristol's apparently quite elitist viewpoint on God -- one which bears remarkable resemblance to that Boys' State speaker in 1974 -- bring up a nearly identical reaction in me. Now being fair, those comments (originally appearing on John Derbyshire's blog), stirred up a mini-controversy, and perhaps mis-represented Kristol as not believing in God when in fact he really might just think that whether or not he believes in God, religion is a social glue and worthwhile for that reason.

Either way (Kristol believing or non-believing), the idea of religion as social glue is one for those too timid to face the abyss. And he favors such social glue, since (like his mentor Leo Strauss), he fears what the results would be should religion's mitigating influence be removed from society:

"If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without...let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine--for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish."

The above quote from Kristol is cited by Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey, in discussing Kristol's views on Darwinian evolution. That topic, like my salvation story, is not easily verified, and I'll leave it alone here. But Bailey, along with Derbyshire and Wolcott, seems baffled by that line of reasoning. As am I.

Either Jesus really did rise from the dead -- and the evidence of lives radically changed by him is one reality hard to argue with -- or he did not. Don't offer me your crapulous social glue theory of Christianity. Such arguments are an abuse of my faith in order to prop up your nationalist agendas, your political and financial power base. They may fool people, but they will not do so indefinitely. And in the end, this whole hypocritical, snot-nosed edifice is going to come down on the heads of evangelicals and other Christians who supported and abetted it.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

One final note on the idea of being afraid to debunk religion because it might undermine social order... I don't think most people can or will let go of the idea which transparently suggests itself to any conscious being capable of rudimentary thought. "What a wonderful, perplexing place! Someone must have made it!" Whether you believe or not, I don't think you have to fear that the mass of people on this planet will cease believing in God, at least as an Object.

Whether they believe in Jesus, and enough to follow his teachings and example, well...

That is another topic.

Christmas and Consumption

Living in an intentional community, Chicago's Jesus People USA, and living in the inner city does help this soul to see American materialism as the blight it is. But that doesn't mean I'm not a participant in that blight. To what degree? is the real question. I fear I'm far more enmeshed than I will ever know.

By American standards, I live well below the poverty line. Last time I checked, that meant an income somewhere around $6,000 a year or so. I don't own a car, or my own house. I don't have a "nest egg" set aside for my old age. So praise me praise me? Mother Teresa, save a seat...?

Not quite. In fact, not even close.

I own four computers. Yes, two of 'em are really old. One I purchased for just 2 bucks at a yard sale and then took home, upgraded a little bit with cannibalized parts from other ancient boxes, and turned into an open-source SuSE Linux machine I use as a server/backup at work. Pretty thrifty, eh? And at home, I have another equally ancient Linux box I use as a second backup and just so I can play around with SuSE when I feel like it.

My laptop is very nice, though a little dated. And my main work machine is loaded. Those machines are worth far more than 2 bucks, probably around $2000 together. But why four? I guess just because I could, and because I enjoy putting old junk together and making it work.

I am surrounded by books. For a one room apartment, we have an incredible number of book shelves. And that's not all. Books are stacked on the floor both at home and at work, many of them books I meant to read, or mean to read, or half-read but never can quite finish. And then there's clothes... I have way, way too many T-shirts; I think they multiply whenever I open and close the drawers.

Now truth be told, I get many of my books and my clothes second-hand. It is a sort of Jesus People gospel, materially-speaking, that there is glory in getting a great deal at a local second-hand store called "Unique Thrift." And my wife and I haunt yard sales in the summertime; my entire stereo system cost me around 30 bucks, and includes a turntable, cassette deck, CD-player, modest home threatre amp/tuner, Stereo VCR ($5 from a friend; I fixed it up). Four speakers, two givent to me and two others costing me $10...

Oh, the DVD player was a gift from my wife last Christmas and cost $75.

The TV cost $225 around five or eight years ago, and is quite outdated these days. But speaking of TV, we're thinking of (ominous drum roll) getting DirectTV. Oh, great... now corporate America can beam into our home on a gazillion different channels instead of just Chicago's normal handful of broadcast channels. Is that a good idea?

Well, I hope so. Pretty tepid, but there it is. I think more in TV's case, despite the many witticisms that come to mind, really may be better. There is such a thing as quality television, as PBS is often able to prove (or sometimes disprove, but usually not as flamboyantly as its commercial competition). My wife and I in the evening often are quite tired, and like watching something vacuuous.

Yet isn't city life itself already making war on the contemplative? Do I really need more TV? Do I need more books? More stereo equipment? More computers? More clothes?

I guess I'm still sorting it all out. The real trouble is, of course, that I already am embedded into American materialistic culture like one of those reporters was embedded in Iraq when we invaded. My story is no more trustworthy than theirs, is it? The spin is pre-determined by the cultural blinders I am wearing.

All I can say is this: I'm trying, however feebly, to live a life that at least in some ways is not about consumption but rather is about Christ, the antithesis to consumption. That is the great irony of Christmas, that a holiday all about the Universe's Greatest Gift -- and Giver -- has become a generic "holiday" mostly about getting. Yet let me not be totally reductionist here. Even the buying is, on a vulnerable human level, also about wanting to bless with a gift, a shadow of the great Gift in that manger.

I consume, yes. But at least can I try to stay awake? Can I try not to be swept under by the relentless adverts blasting away from the soon-to-be more multichanneled than ever TV in my room? Can I keep yelling back?

I do in my tiny way want to keep living the life I am; living simply compared to many Americans, if more richly than 90% of the rest of the underdeveloped world. By sharing many of the material things of American life -- the building I live in, the cars I drive, the money I live on, the food I eat -- with others in intentional community, I do I hope and pray make a little difference.

These things are no hardship to me. I don't want a car, a house, a mortgage. By living as I do, I have been freed from some of that. And by enjoying "trailing edge technology" stereos and computers (i-pods are cool, esp. because I run a lot, but I don't think I'll get one until a newer "thing" comes along and makes them cheap), I'm able to avoid massive spending.

But there is the heart. And inside my heart, I cannot claim purity regarding lust for material objects. When I see my neighbor's new furniture, or brand new flat screen TV, I feel the tug of greed and covetousness. I bite on the lure, and the line of this materialistic culture begins to reel me in. Maybe has reeled me in!

All I can do is repent, try to live moderately, try not to be focused on material things but rather on relationships (both horizontal and vertical). After all, there is a simple rule I learned long ago about the inanimate world vs. the animate world. The more stuff I own, the less relationships I'll have. The stuff requires my attention. It breaks. It malfunctions. It needs updating. But so do my relationships. The stuff will burn one day, to put it into fundie terms. But the relationships, good or bad, have eternal consequences and eternal value.

Christmas. Where does it play into all this? Look, God is into material stuff himself. He came to earth, after all, in a body. That is an affirmation of "stuff" as being really cool, really wonderful. But more it is an affirmation of all humanity being wonderful.

If stuff is getting in the way of God, I'd better watch it. And if stuff is getting in the way of me loving my neighbor, I'd really better watch it. If stuff is instead helping bond me to my neighbor and to my Lord, then I will handle it with pleasure and even reverence as a gift. Yet it is a shadow-gift. Just as I choose not to drink alcohol for the sake of the many addicts I know, I choose to draw a line in my consumption. It may be a pathetic, half-baked line, one that many others who've drawn a harder line would laugh at.

It is Christmas. And this is a time to celebrate, give gifts, recieve gifts, and most of all receive one another.

Jesus Ain't No Ghost

Sometimes, I confuse people. And sometimes, they're confused because I'm not making sense. But other times, particularly when it comes to what I believe about Jesus vs. what I believe about politics, for me it feels like they're the ones that are confused.

Take as an example an article from commondreams.org, pointed out helpfully by Christianity Today's Weblog (Ted Olson's page that nearly everyone who tracks religious stories checks out regularly). "How the Christian Left Can Get It Right" purports to reclaim Jesus, and starts off doing a pretty good job. But then the author begins to drift into that vague, airy land of vacuum-packed spirituality where no one is sure about who Jesus is, much less why he's admirable. Todd Huffman, the article's author, puts Jesus into black and white:

Americans who consider themselves Christian can be generalized as thinking about Jesus in one of two distinct ways. For many, Jesus was a divine spirit who died for their personal sins. To accept him as your savior is to be saved, and the pursuit of one’s personal salvation is paramount to all other concerns. One’s personal and exclusive relationship with Jesus matters far more than his admonitions to care for the poor, the weak, and the oppressed.

For a smaller number of Americans, Jesus is believed as a peasant revolutionary who lived by example, and died for grace and compassion. To model your behavior after his is to bring heaven closer to earth. To turn away from your fellow human beings is to turn away from his teachings, and from God. This is the Jesus I believe in.

Uh, are there any other options? I mean, really! And when the author reveals he has stepped out of Christian tradition to embrace the Unitarian Church.... well, forgive my right knee, which doesn't get much exercise, from jerking just a little bit.

I am a political liberal more often than not precisely and only because I believe in a historical, real, flesh and blood Jesus who was both God and man and who did indeed come to earth to bring humankind -- one at a time -- into his kingdom family. Yes, this version of Christianity has been bastardized by an invasive, pernicious American nationalism that goes right to core of evangelical self-identity. But the way to cure the disease is not to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is either who the Bible says He was and is, or He is nada. And if he is nada, why bother with caring for one another? Build your theories, but without the singular form of Divine Love that the biblical Jesus is and gives, I for one find religious verbiage both a bore and an idiocy. Kill God and you've killed morals. That's what Neitszsche said. And I for one agree.

Or as an old song I heard once said, "Jesus ain't no ghost."

To the IRS, Some Churches May be More Equal than Others

Remember how all those gawd-haitin' organizations are out to make sure Christians can't be involved in politics by using the IRS to muzzle them? Well, if they have tried, it sure didn't work. And frankly, despite my objections to many evangelicals' political goals, I am glad it didn't work. But how about the current adminstration using the IRS to put the heat on Christians who don't toe the right -- and I do mean right -- line politically?

According to Canton, Ohio's The Repository, that's just what happened:

According to all accounts, the Rev. George Regas did not tell the congregation at All Saints Episcopal Church to vote for one candidate or the other. Instead, his sermon focused on an imaginary debate with Jesus and then-candidates John Kerry and President W. Bush. He focused on Christ’s message of pacifism and the need to care for the poor.

That was the day before the 2004 presidential election. In June 2005, All Saints found out their tax-exempt status was endangered, supposedly because they'd gone over an invisible line prohibiting non-profits from becoming involved in political campaigns.

As The Repository noted, Ohio in particular was a place where plenty of politicking from religious groups took place in 2004. But almost all of it came from the religious right, including Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition.

Yet in Ohio, it is one rather ambiguous but somewhat liberal sermon that seems to be the target of the IRS, and by extension, the current administration.

About par for the course, unfortunately.

Evangelicals Against Torture? Nope!

Well, here's something worthy of note. From theledger.com comes a Cary McMullen editorial entitled "Where are Evangelicals Against Torture?" A great question, and yet another indication of just how intermeshed the worldly interests of nationalism have become with the worldly (in the worst sense) interests of christendom. Here's a snip:

For an unequivocal condemnation of torture, it's hard to beat the late John Paul II, who said in his encyclical "Veritatis Splendor" that it can never be justified, no matter what the reason. The pope placed it on the moral level of abortion and euthanasia. U.S. bishops have followed that lead. Who does that leave? Evangelical Christians. I've done a couple of Google searches, plus a search of the excellent Christianity Today Web log, and I can't find one statement by any evangelical leader or organization condemning the use of harsh techniques by American forces. Where are the voices -- so otherwise outspoken on policy matters -- from the National Association of Evangelicals, from the Family Research Council, from the Southern Baptist Convention?

It gets worse. One thing that did turn up in Christianity Today was a portion of an article last year by Tony Carnes that found evangelical complicity among both administration and military personnel justifying the kind of treatment uncovered at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Of course, Mr. McMullen must not read BlueChristian, or realize our vast influence over evangelicalism worldwide! (Ha!) At any rate, make sure and read the whole thing. Then get to writing your evangelical leaders, denominations, and media voices.