Radical Civility

This was forwarded to me as an email. Hope you don’t mind shameless stereotypes:

There are 3 good arguments that Jesus was Black:

1. He called everyone brother.
2. He liked Gospel.
3. He couldn’t get a fair trial.

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Jewish:

1. He went into His Father’s business.
2. He lived at home until he was 33.
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God.
(Plus, he lived in Judea and followed Judaism. Duh.)

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:

1. He talked with His hands.
2. He had wine with His meals.
3. He used olive oil.

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:

1. He never cut His hair.
2. He walked around barefoot all the time.
3. He started a new religion.

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an American Indian:

1. He was at peace with nature.
2. He ate a lot of fish.
3. He talked about the Great Spirit.

But then there are 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Irish:

1. He never got married.
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.

But the most compelling evidence of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a WOMAN:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment’s notice when there was no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn’t get it.
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was work to do.
(Okay, okay: this is gender, not ethnicity. Sue me.)

A couple of days ago I got a call from a CNN producer who’s helping to put together a story on Pastor Russell Johnson. I gather it’s going to be shown later this week on Anderson Cooper 360. Anyway, she’d run across the photo of Pastor Johnson and me on The Ohio Twenty-first and thought I’d make a good interview.

Before I get into that, however, I need to wrap up an entry I began back in September,. As so often happens, I lacked the time to finish it. I’ll have to give you a very short version now. . . .

Mike Riddle, the speaker from AnswersInGenesis.Org, offered quite an extensive and well-designed PowerPoint presentation to about seventy people assembled in the Fairfield Christian Church sanctuary to hear him. It had its share of problems in logic — sometimes the Bible was used to interpret the geological evidence, sometimes vice versa, so that the argument betrayed some circular reasoning. It also played a little fast and loose with the facts. For instance, it showed a pretty impressive-looking canyon in Washington state, known to have been carved out well within a week or so in the 19th century, and averred that the Grand Canyon had been carved out in identical fashion and speed by Noah’s Flood. I would think that to make such a claim, in each instance you would at a minimum have to discuss the relative hardness of the ground. The walls of the Grand Canyon, I know, are formed mainly of limestone and sandstone. He didn’t mention the composition of the canyon in Washington state. I suspect there was a reason for the omission.

I did learn, however, why, in Christian fundamentalist theology, it’s so important to establish that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old. There’s no time to rehearse those details, though. And it doesn’t really matter. For two reasons.

The first is personal to me. My brother and his wife are conservative evangelicals who, over the years, have abandoned evolution in favor of creationism. My brother used to send me books on the subject. What he did not do was invite me to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays with his family, and aside from my sister, who also is a conservative evangelical and who doesn’t invite me, either, I have no other immediate family. A couple of years ago I was driving several hundred miles to spend Christmas with the familiy of a friend. From a hotel room en route, I phoned my brother and in the course of our conversation, said that I felt hurt that he did not invite me for the holidays. He bristled a bit, then said implacably: “Lori [his wife; not her real name] hates you.”

Concerning whether Christianity has any truth to it, that spoke to me a lot more loudly than creationism.

For Mike Riddle, though, creationism matters. At the end of his talk he offered an account of how came to be a Christian — in evangelicalspeak, his testimony. He told of a night in a silent hotel room when a personal crisis drove him to open the Gideon’s Bible in the dresser drawer. He began reading the first chapter of Genesis. “I knew I couldn’t believe any of the rest of the Bible,” he told the audience, “unless I believed the first chapter.”

(Continued)

On the eve of the campaigning season in the spring of 1864, two Union officers made their way to the summit of a mountain in north central Virginia. The mountain lay on the north side of the Rapidan River, which constituted the boundary between territory controlled by their side and that controlled by the Confederates. The day was cool and clean and through telescopes the officers could clearly see an enemy camp below them across the stream, where men were lounging about in shirt sleeves or doing their laundry or playing the new-fangled game called baseball. Finally the officers put down their telescopes. “My God, adjutant,” one of them said, amazed. “They’re human beings just like us!”

Human beings just like us.

This is an endangered concept in the struggle between the Christian Right and those they have identified as their enemies, a group that includes me because I am a college professor and therefore, presumptively, an agent of secular humanism; because I am a Christian who disbelieves in Scriptural inerrancy, which makes me something like a heretic; and because I hold other views which they find abhorrent. For example, I am a reluctant proponent of a woman’s right to abortion and I believe that condemnation of gays and lesbians is simply the behavior of bullies.

I may explain my views on these issues some other time. But for the present I want to explain the views of those who would despise and reject me. They have a perspective that makes as much sense to them as mine does to me. They have the same right as I do to express it, and they are children of God. Christ took the nails for them the same as for me.

It is late Wednesday afternoon and I am driving the forty-two miles that separate my home in north Columbus from Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, Ohio. The traffic is sporty at times but not too bad; I reach the church a good twenty-five minutes before the mid-week Bible study is scheduled to begin. The Bible study is taught by Pastor Russell Johnson, whom I have so far encountered only in his role as the guiding force behind the Ohio Restoration Project. The Ohio Restoration Project is a phenomenon of the political-cultural war that is ravaging this country, dividing it at a time when it is under attack and needs to be united. But as Pastor Johnson sees it, the role of his organization is defensive. He and the “Patriot Pastors” he is enlisting represent the traditional values on which this country was built and which they are only trying to preserve. It is other forces, outside forces, forces that involve people like me, that have obliged them to take up arms, as it were, and enter the lists of politics.

(Continued)

Cross-posted to The Ohio Twenty-first. If you’d like to comment, please do so on that site.

On Sunday I made it to church — well, mostly — and arrived in plenty of time to warble tunelessly through a couple of hymns before listening to the liturgical reading a sermon. The sermons at North Church bare only a nodding acquaintance to those i heard in my evangelical past. There’s no verse by verse explication, for instance. Rather, the day’s scriptural text serves as a jumping off point for mobilizing the congregation in favor of greater community and political activism — for with the mid-term election now just two months away, it’s time to either organize or cede the political battleground to the Christian right.

After church about a dozen of us hung around to partiipate in one of several “listening sessions” being organized under the auspices of the Industrial Areas Foundation Ohio, and, even more to the point, We Believe Ohio. The focus was to ask attendees, “What is the one thing the next governor of Ohio could do to make life in Ohio easier for your family and community?” The purpose of the sessions, ultimately, was

To identify the issues for our Faith Vote Columbus agenda platform which are most widely and deeply felt across congregations and neighborhood associations.

• To identify leadership for the Fall 2006 voter mobilization effort.

• To identify stories and testimonies which exemplify the issues of our agenda of our aganda platform.

• To create a broad, diverse constituency that has the experience of listening and of being listening to.

Here’s the rest of the game plan:

The point of the operation is to create a sort of counterweight to the legally questionable but politically effective efforts of the Fairfield Christian Church’ Ohio Restoration Project and the World Havest Church’s Reformation Ohio, both of which function brazenly as religious PACs (political action committes). The key difference between the contemplate effort and those of the ORP and RO is the determination to operate within the restrictions imposed by the IRS concerning partisan political activity.

Some of us approach the task with misgivings about the wisdom of entangling our Christian witness with the rough and tumble of electoral politics. Underscoring this ambivalence between partipation by religious organizations in the political process is an ambitious forum being organized by a member of my church, the indefatigable Leslie K. Although a moderator and additional panelist are still being identified, the heavy hitters are already in place. These include:

Jay Sekulow, JD, PhD, Chief Counsel for the “American Center for Law and Justice,” and as if that weren’t enough, “the European Center for Law and Justice.” Sekulow has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and forms a formidable challenge to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Next is Rev. Barry Lynn, JD, Executive Director of the the Washington-based “Americans United for Separation of Church and State.”

And finally there’s Marc Owens, JD, Former Director, Exempt Organizations Divisions, IRS, Washington DC office. His thorough grasp of the relevant IRS codes were indispensable in crafting a stong case against the excesses of the ORP and RO.

The forum will be held on Sunday, October 8, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM in the Vern Riffe Center, Columbus.

Basically, this event will be required viewing for anyone interested in the question of church involvement in the political process.

Once I know more I’ll start cobbling together a website devoted to the event. In the meantime, consider this a heads up.

I’ve been worried for several days now about the crisis in the Middle East. I mean the one involving Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah: there are so many crises in the Middle East to choose from. My concern stems mainly from the fact that a friend of mine is stuck in Beirut just a mile or two from the artillery and air strikes.

But inevitably, the unfolding events send a thrill down the backs of certain pre-millenialist Christians, as Richard Bartholomew demonstrates in Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion:

Rapture Ready has pulled a message thread that was coming under undue attention from the mockers and scoffers. Luckily, Google cache allows us to see the discussion members’ profound concern over the human tragedy currently unfolding in Lebanon and Israel. Here are the choicest entries; emoticons from the originals not included:

July 11th, 2006, 10:13 PM

Ohappyday

Is it time to get excited? I can’t help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lords appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won’t be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not.

[snips]

…July 12th, 2006, 08:15 AM

Bghtnpd4

I am excited beyond words that the struggle of this life may be over soon and I can finally be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Shelle circles her fist over her head and imitates Arsenio Hall by yelling WHOO-WHOO-WHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

July 12th, 2006, 09:15 AM

Waitin

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

There’s even more on Bartholomew’s post, but you get the idea.

For a nice, sane response, see Bene Diction Blogs On.

PS- Don’t miss . . .

Oops!