Levellers

10 Practices of Just Peacemaking

JPT Practice # 1: Support Nonviolent Direct Action

JPT Practice #2: Take Independent Initiatives to Reduce Threats

JPT Practice # 3: Use Conflict Resolution Methods

JPT Practice #4: Acknowledge Responsibility/Seek Repentance, Forgiveness

JPT Practice #5:  Advance Democracy, Human Rights, Religious Liberty

JPT Practice #6:  Foster Just & Sustainable Economic Development

JPT Practice #7:  Work with Emerging Forces of Cooperation in the International System 

JPT Practice # 8:  Strengthen the United Nations & Other Global Efforts for Human Rights/Cooperation

JPT Practice # 9:  Reduce/Eliminate Offensive Weapons & the Weapons Trade

JPT Practice # 10:  Encourage Grassroots Peacemaking Groups & Voluntary Associations

Hi, Folks. I’m sorry I don’t get to reply to all of your comments –questions, challenges, criticisms, hatefests (and lovefests, too), etc. I would get nothing else done. I do have to be husband, father, etc. and keep writing my new book, teach Sunday School, etc.  In other words, like most of you (but apparently not all of you), I have a life beyond blogging.  Sometimes, like this past week, I didn’t even check my email or go on the internet all week–too much to do.

Secondly, I have received several emails and blog comments from around the world concerning my post on the Global Baptist Peace Conference in February ‘09. Look, folks, I am NOT on the planning committee. I am not even going to be able to afford to go myself–although a trip to Rome (Italy, not Georgia! )to work on peacemaking with great Baptists (and others) from around the world would be WONDERFUL! So, I cannot help anyone get a scholarship to attend, etc.  Please go to the website of the conference (which I included in my blog post!) for all information, to register, check on lodging, ask for financial aid, etc.  I cannot help you and my email is getting full from mistaken requests for aid. I was just advertising the conference, folks. As a certain Agent 86 of Control (Maxwell Smart) used to say, “Sorry about that!”

One other matter:  Unless I am specifically quoting others (and I say so and usually link to original sources, whenever possible), all  opinions in these posts are my own. No one else in my family, church, denomination (the Alliance of Baptists), political party (Democratic–although always tempted to re-register as a Green), etc. is to blame for any of my views. I have just finished blocking as spam a comment that smeared and threatened my wife for (a) being an ordained minister with the (in the spammers’ view) “wrong” genital equipment for the job and (b) having a husband who says the outrageous things I do. I have saved and sent this comment to the Louisville Metro Police because I think it was from a local IPS. If not, it will go to the FBI. I am and remain a pacifist and, NO, I have NOT figured out entirely how police should figure into that view and do NOT want to discuss that–but I will NOT take kindly to any threats to my family or friends and will treat all as serious threats. I almost quit and deleted this blog, but I will not be intimidated–there is far too much loss of free speech in this country because of both official and private intimidation–and it stops here.

All views expressed in comments are those of the commenter and, unless I am that commenter, it should not be assumed that I agree with said comment.

Thanks for listening, Gentle Readers.

According to my blog counter, over 100,000 of you Gentle Readers have now visited this blog. And that’s since I moved from Blogger to here at WordPress! And, I see that you come from all over the world.

I’m flattered and moved that so many of you think this blog is worth reading–yes, even those of you who mostly disagree with me.

I doubt I deserve to be taken so seriously. Do none of you have lives? But I am humbled.

I’ll work harder to be worthy of this seriousness with which so many apparently take this blog. I’ll try to proof more posts and eliminate punctuation and grammatical errors. I’ll try to post comments and reply more quickly.  I’ll try to engage in more dialogue–although with my attempts to finish my second book and begin my third, I may not be able to do this as much as possible.

At any rate, thanks very much, Gentle Readers.  God Bless You All.

This is just hilarious. Tip of the hat to Howie Luvzus for this one. Share this widely. It’s both funny and tragic–like the last 8 years.  Note: The depiction of the evangelical leader opposed to abortion is an unfortunate stereotype and does nothing to advance the abortion debate. But the rest of this is funny.

Thanks to Bruce Prescott for this gem.  McCain claims that the U.S. Constitution establishes the USA as a “Christian nation.” Hello: The Constitution forbids any religious test for political office. And, as Bruce points out, the First Amendment explicitly says:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”  Now, I’m very aware of the attempts by fundamentalists to say that this just prevented the establishment of a national church or denomination, but that Christianity itself was firmly established.  That’s hogwash as numerous studies of the religious attitudes of the Founders have shown and also the last 50 years of Supreme Court rulings.

But, from the perspective of Christian theology, McCain’s error is even larger. There is NO SUCH THING as a Christian nation.  In the Great Commission (Matt. 28), the Risen Christ commands us to make disciples from among all nations.  In Revelation, the saints come from “every tribe and nation.” Nationalism of any sort is forbidden to Christians because our faith is universal. That is why I object to national flags in the sanctuaries of local churches.  ALL are welcome in God’s house on EQUAL basis and we worship the Lord of all history and nations, not a tribal god.  The path from this kind of “Christian nationalism” espoused by McCain (like Bush before him) to a Nazi-like worship of the nation itself is short. 

I don’t know if McCain is a true theocrat or simply will say anything to get elected–but I don’t want to find out, either.  U.S. citizens must insist that persons of all faiths and no particular faith are equal before the law of the land–no second class citizenship for Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, agnostics, etc.  And, true Christians must insist even more strongly that a “Christian nation” is a contradiction in terms and that there is no place for national chauvenism among the followers of the Lamb.

To see Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Pat Robertson on a couch, together, pushing for action on climate change, click here.

To help solve Climate Change, go to http://www.wecansolveit.org/

To help pass the Climate Defense Bill in the Senate this week, call your Senators and urge passage, now!

Jesus commanded his followers to talk with their enemies.  The Torah commands that one help an enemy’s ox stuck in a ditch.  And such political realists as FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, etc. all talked to enemies of the nation.  Now, the latest Gallup poll shows that most Americans (including 79% of Democrats, 70% of Independents and even 48% of Republicans) favor U.S. presidents engaging national enemies in direct diplomacy.

I wonder how McCain’s “talk is appeasment, especially when done by Democrats, but lobbying for enemies is okay if done by Republicans” line will spin this latest evidence that he is completely out of touch with the American people?

 The news has been full of McCain’s lobbyist-campaign workers and their ties to dictatorships, including Iran. (Talking with Iran is “appeasement” if you are Sen. Obama, but in McCain’s world, lobbying for Iran with the U.S. Congress is apparently just fine!) But, today, we find that a brand new McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, believes the Constitution gives the U.S. President “near dictatorial powers” in foreign policy.

Haven’t we just had 8 years of this terrible, misguided, illegal thinking?  There are movements in the American Bar Association to strip such Bush people as Alberto Gonzalez of their licenses to practice law for just such views–turned into policy by the Bushies.  This is a VERY GOOD REASON to support a presidential candidate who believes in the Constitution, and has taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago. 

Bill Moyers recently warned that democracy in the U.S. has been a history of narrow escapes and that our luck may be running out.  All those who don’t want a presidential dictator should, AT THE VERY LEAST, demand that McCain fire Goldfarb and repudiate his views–and then decide carefully whether to trust McCain’s word.

Sen. Clinton’s final, desperate, attempt to swing remaining superdelegates her way and secure the Democratic nomination involves the claim that she is the winner of the “popular vote” in the primary season.  Well, due to the huge turnout on the Democratic side of the primary season, she has won more votes than any presidential candidate in a general election–yes, she has won more than Bush did in his narrow victory over Kerry and his “victory” over Gore.  But her claim that she has won more votes than Obama in this season’s Democratic races involves fraudulent math: As reported here, Clinton’s “win” involves not only counting the vote in Florida (where all candidates pledged not to campaign) and Michigan (where she was the only candidate who disobeyed the DNC instructions to remove her name from the ballot), but also discounting all the states which held caucuses rather than primaries.  That’s 14 states holding legal elections she has to discount and 2 holding elections which broke the rules (in Florida’s case, but not Michigan’s, this was because the GOP dominated legislature forced the moving up of the primary, so I have more sympathy with FL Dems) which she must count in order to have “won the popular vote.” That’s a Soviet-style election math!

I doubt seriously that the superdelegates will fall for this specious argument (although some of the idiot mouthpieces on the media are), especially since Democratic leaders in both Michigan and Florida seem satisfied with the compromise worked out Saturday by the Rules Committee.  By the way, the Clinton campaign alienated that committee by making no attempt whatsoever to meet the Obama campaign halfway. Obama could have insisted on a 50-50 split in Michigan (which would make him even more uncatcheable now), but allowed the committee to give her the majority of delegates based on an exit polling formula.  He has played by the rules constantly and won anyway. 

His grassroots, outsider organizing is one part of the story. He also won over the majority of party insiders from the Clintons.  Let’s be clear: She started as practically crowned the nominee by the Party bosses and by the media for a full year.  She had most of the African-American vote until Iowa showed that Obama could win white votes. She still had nearly 50% of the black vote until racist remarks by Clinton surrogates near the time of the S.C. vote, after which the black vote became 90-10.  She has won more Latino votes, but not everywhere and in national polls, the majority of Latino votes are swinging behind Obama.  This race was Clinton’s to lose and she has lost it–and in such a way that her influence throughout the Party and nation is less than before February.

And Obama is STILL being magnamimous and reaching out to both her and her supporters as we move into the general election.

The campaign against McCain will be tough, but Obama has shown himself to be a very tough candidate. I think he has a very good chance at victory–both in the popular and electoral college votes (and, until we can abolish the un-democratic electoral college, we need both).  Obama said yesterday in South Dakota that he expects Sen. Clinton to be a very strong ally and assett in the general election.  I hope he is right.

This post is reprinted from D.W. Congdon’s great theology blog, The Fire and the Rose.

On June 8-10, one of the largest evangelical conferences in American history will be held at Princeton University. Entitled Envision ‘08, the conference is an attempt at uniting Evangelicals and mainstream Christians together in a conversation about how the gospel and politics interrelate in the current American context. The conference will feature around 60 speakers, including the following:

• Randall Balmer
• Rich Cizik
• Shane Claiborne
• Brian McClaren
• Miroslav Volf
• Jim Wallis
• Vincent Bacote
• Bruce Benson
• David Gushee
• John Perkins
• Ron Sider
• Christian Collin Winn

One of the innovative features of this conference is that in addition to plenary addresses, there will be “learning tracks” in which people will break out into small groups to discuss certain topics in depth. These various tracks will hopefully turn into groups that continue discussing and implementing these ideas for two years until the EnVision conference in 2010. Here is a list of the learning tracks:

• Arts for Transformation - Explore how faith and arts can be a way to inspire and lead social transformation and learn how to create such art. Led Bruce Herman & Lara Scott.

• Beyond Consumerism - Discover how faith can help us live simply out of care for our neighbor and the earth. Led by Ron Sider.

• Caring for the Earth - See what we all can do to care for creation and address climate change and other environmental problems. Led by Alexei Lauschkin.

• Evangelicals and Empire - Learn how faith helps us to resist the principalities and powers of the world and calls us to work for the Kingdom of God. Led by Bruce Ellis Benson and Christian Collin Winn.

• Evangelism and the World - Explore how the good news and God’s love can address the needs and injustices of the world. Led by Vincent Bacote & John Tyson.

These are just the first five out of 20 tracks. There should many fascinating and fruitful conversations at this conference.

Michael’s word: I hope this gets excellent press coverage, too.