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The Evangelical leaders who issued “An Evangelical Manifesto” do not mince words: Evangelical does not mean “useful idiots” for one political party or another. Well, that’s frank and frankly refreshing. These Evangelical leaders have come to rue the day they were discovered as a voting bloc by Republican strategists. They have been manipulated and “that way faith loses its independence.” All people of faith should heed this warning
Like thieves who steal a car and cut it up in order to sell the parts, the radical right is now chopping up the sermons of Rev. Otis Moss, III, incoming Senior Pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, and trying to peddle the parts to generate new controversy.
First, Newsmax.com's staff ridiculed a Moss sermon, objecting to ways in which the young pastor was plainly trying to make his message appeal to the younger generation and their cultural images. Then other right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity used those same spare parts this past weekend to attempt a further political spin.
The United States has become a “liar society.” I regret to say that I think the electorate, and not the candidates and elected officials, are most to blame for the wide-spread acceptance of the fact that it’s pretty much okay for people in public life to lie to us. People may respond to pollsters that they find this or that candidate less than honest, but it doesn’t seem to prevent them from supporting the candidate.
The Question: Jeremiah Wright's sermons continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign. Why? What do you think of his preaching style? What do you wish you understood better about it?
Senator Obama has built his campaign on the premise that Americans can reach out to one another across historic divides and regain national strength and purpose after decades of “divide and conquer” politics. It has become clear to me this week, and I think probably to many Americans, that this is who he really is and what he most deeply believes. It plainly pained him terribly to separate himself and his campaign so decisively from the statements of Rev. Wright, but he had to do it because their views of the future are so different.
We are at a national crossroads on race. There is a way forward out of this current mess and that way requires us as white Americans to refuse to accept making race a political wedge to divide us, white and black, yet again. As white Americans, we can delve more deeply into the African American preaching tradition represented by Rev. Wright, or we can accept the distortions of this tradition zipping around on YouTube. It is critical for our national future that we make the choice to move toward understanding and away from a new, sharper race divide.
The Question: In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: "Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted . . . To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
I agree profoundly with Pope Benedict that religion that restricts itself to the private sphere alone is missing a vital spiritual component. Indeed, I think on this we agree completely that it is a matter of your very soul.
The Question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America?
A papal apology to those sexually abused by Catholic priests is certainly long overdue and it is good that Pope Benedict met with some of the victims of sexual abuse by priests on his U.S. trip.
But as Mother Jones was fond of saying, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” We need to know from Pope Benedict how future abuse will be stopped.
Bill Kristol starts his recent New York Times editorial attacking Senator Obama’s faith by acknowledging that he doesn’t know much about the subject (Marx) about which he’s writing. Confession is good for the soul, Mr. Kristol, so you’ve started well, but you ended up demonstrating you also know nothing about faith, especially faith in the Congregational tradition.
The “Compassion Forum”, sponsored by Faith in Public Life and held at an evangelical college in Pennsylvania, did put an end to the idea that only Republicans have values. It also succeeded in drastically broadening the concept of morality to include trade policy, global poverty, protecting the environment and the struggle against the AIDS pandemic.
The Question: Pope Benedict's recent baptism of a well-known Italian Muslim has prompted criticism in much of the Islamic world. Has Benedict done enough to build bridges to Islam?
More than 70,000 bridges across America are rated structurally deficient like the span that collapsed in Minneapolis and it is estimated that repairing them will cost $188 billion dollars and take at least a generation to complete.
But that task is beginning to look less daunting than the bridge work that is needed between Pope Benedict and Islam.
The Question: John McCain's spiritual guide, televangelist Rod Parsley, calls Islam a "false religion" that should be "destroyed." Should McCain renounce Parsley? Will Islam be an issue in this year's U.S. presidential election?
John McCain should immediately renounce Rod Parsley not only for his astounding hate mongering against Islam, but also for his extreme views on a range of issues including his denunciation of separation of church and state.
The Question: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago. What are your memories of that day? What impact did it have on you? How is King relevant to you and to us today?
On April 4, 1968 I was in my dorm room at Smith College when I heard someone yelling, “Dr. King has been killed.” I rushed out and there on the television in the lounge was the news bulletin. “Dr. King has been killed.” I went back to my room alone and beat my fists on the top of my dresser until they were bloody.
A member of Trinity United Church of Christ, the church once led by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and where Senator Obama is a member, told me there are “spies” among them in the pews, strangers who take notes during the service and try to record the message.
Check it out for yourself. Go to the Trinity UCC website, select "Why The Black Church Won't Shut Up!", and listen to Rev. Otis Moss politely ask that there be "no recording equipment." He repeats over and over, "We are in worship. We are in worship." When visitors are asked to stand, you can see those with paper and pencil in hand. Are these folks members of the press or political operatives? Impossible to know if they don't, as Rev. Moss requests, sign in.
This is what happens when politics intrudes into the sanctuary of the church, a sacred space.
The Question: Which "ism" is more entrenched in America, sexism or racism? Which should religion address?
For many years I have taught a class called “Good and Evil.” One of the most important things I hope students take away from this class is the complete and total uselessness of dueling “isms” in considering social sins. In fact, when people square off against each other, shouting that the particular form of oppression to which they are subject, whether racism, sexism, classism or any other ism, is the most sinful, that itself is just more evidence of the interlocking ways human beings fail each other under the conditions of sin.
The Question: How should Barack Obama have responded to inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Are you responsible for what your spiritual leader says from the pulpit?
So this is what it looks like when a political leader tells you the truth. I had forgotten. I had forgotten what it looks like when a political leader talks to the American people, as one CNN commentator said, “like we were grownups.” Obama spoke to all of us yesterday not just in complete sentences, but in complete thoughts. He did not move away from the deep and abiding conflicts of race in America. He moved toward those conflicts. His speech was more invitation than pronouncement. He didn’t say ‘Here’s how we fix this’. He performed the truth that when you tell the truth, as the Bible says, it will set you free.
On March 19, it will be five years and counting on this war in Iraq. Five years ago, just before the attack, I appeared on a special Nightline Town Meeting with John McCain (and four others) to debate whether the United States should attack Iraq, a country that had not attacked us. McCain, along with Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, argued in favor of this pre-emptive attack. Ambassador Joe Wilson, Senator Carl Levin and I argued against.
E-mail is the electronic evidence for the existence of good and evil. Furthermore, it is an accelerant, like gasoline, so that when something gets out electronically it spreads like wildfire. It also removes the personal from the ethical equation, so it is likely E-mail does more harm than good.
Geraldine Ferraro, former vice-presidential candidate in the 1980’s and a prominent fund-raiser for the Hillary Clinton campaign, last week told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
President Bush has just vetoed the bill that would have made it uniformly illegal to engage in waterboarding, the interrogation technique where a restrained prisoner has water poured over the face until they are willing to answer the interrogators' questions. This is torture.
What the gospel portraits of Jesus of Nazareth and contemporary politics have in common is that both were and are conducted during war.
Thirty years after the death of Jesus, a Jewish rebellion broke out against the Roman occupation. This became a horrible and devastating war, culminating in massacre and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman legions. All the gospels were composed after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem; the gospel of Mark perhaps in the last year or almost immediately in the wake of that devastating event, and the other gospels somewhat later. In this sense, all that we know of Jesus, his life, his teachings and his death and resurrection should be read as wartime literature—and read in that light.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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