American foreign policy — both good and bad — has always been deeply influenced by Christian theology.

Note: This is part of FPIF’s new Religion in Foreign Policy Focus. for more, visit www.fpif.org.

American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Some of the people who make our foreign policy may understand that foundation. Most probably aren’t even aware of it. But foundations are hidden underground. You can stand above them, and even take a strong stand upon them, without knowing they are there. When it comes to foreign policy, we are all influenced by theological foundations that we rarely see.

For example, few Americans have read the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, the most influential American theologian of the 20th century. Many have never even heard the name. Yet Niebuhr’s thought affects us all. In the 1930s, he launched an attack on the liberal Christianity of the Social Gospel, a movement that powerfully influenced U.S. foreign policy in the first third of the 20th century. The liberals were starry-eyed fools, Niebuhr charged, because they trusted people to be reasonable enough to resolve international conflicts peacefully. They forgot the harsh reality of original sin.

Niebuhr wrapped that traditional notion of sin in a new intellectual package and sold it successfully, not only to theologians but to the foreign policy elite. Since the 1940s, foreign policy has largely been reduced to an endless round of debates about how to apply Niebuhr’s “realism.” Policymakers who still tried to follow the Social Gospel path have been marginalized and stigmatized with the harshest epithet a Niebuhrian can hurl: “unrealistic.”

It’s a Jungle Out There

Many policymakers, like much of the public at large, have come to find a strange comfort in the world as Niebuhr described it. They see a jungle where evildoers, who are all around, must be hunted down and destroyed. Though frightening, this world can easily become the stage for simplistic dramas of good against evil. And the moral certainty of being on the side of good — the side of God — can provide a sense of security that more than makes up for the constant terror. That was not what Niebuhr had in mind. But as he found out so painfully, once you let ideas loose in the world, you can’t control what others do with them.

Niebuhr would have been pained to see what the neoconservatives have done with his ideas. Their theory starts out from his own premise: All people are born naturally selfish and impulsive. The godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, was (like most of the early neocons) an intellectual — a teacher, writer, and editor — and (like many of the early neocons) a Jew. But he turned to Christian theology to describe his Niebuhrian view of human nature: “Original sin was one way of saying this, and I had no problem with that doctrine.”¹ Selfish impulses, when they get out of control, can tear society apart, he warned. To preserve social order we need a fixed moral order. We therefore need a clear sense of the absolute difference between good and bad, strict rules that tell us what is good, and powerful institutions that can get people to obey those rules.

According to this worldview, organized religion has been the most effective institution to promote moral absolutes and self-control. Religion now needs to be strengthened to stave off a rising tide of moral relativism that, along with secular humanism, is breaking down the bulwarks of social order and threatening to release a flood of selfish impulse to drown us all in chaos. A favorite neoconservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, complains that American mass culture, dominated by skepticism and pleasure, is an “engine of social breakdown.” The best antidote would be a “self-abnegating religious revival.” Since that is not likely to happen, Krauthammer admits, the best place to recover moral discipline and will power is in foreign affairs: America must find the will to exercise its strength and become “confident enough to define international morality in its own, American terms.”²

Original Sin Goes Global

When neoconservatives apply their views to international relations, they deviate from Niebuhr’s teaching. All people may be sinners, they imply, but not all nations. They assume an (often vaguely defined) hierarchy of nations. At the bottom are the enemies of America, consistently described as chaotic, irrational monsters who are incapable of self-control and bent on provoking instability and evil for its own sake. Above them are neutral nations and then U.S. allies near the top of the pyramid. At the top is the United States, in a class by itself because its national motives are good and pure, somehow untainted by original sin.

Neoconservatives insist on this hierarchy, with its dramatic contrast between the good United States and its evil enemies, because it gives them the sense of moral clarity and certainty that they rely on to hold back the relativism they fear. They bolster their sense of certainty by reducing international affairs to simplistic myths: black-and-white tales of absolute good versus absolute evil. (Here I use the word “myth” in its religious sense of a narrative story that expresses a community’s worldview and basic values.) George W. Bush tapped into this mythic world when he said that the war on terrorism is “a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail.” The outcome is certain, according to Bush, because “we all know that this is one nation, under God.” But Americans must do their world-ordering job pretty much alone, since other nations and international institutions are too selfish to be trusted. The United States must rely primarily on military might, since the only language that the sinful evildoers understand is force.

The neoconservatives did not invent this myth. It goes back to the Puritan belief in “the new Israel” and Americans as God’s chosen people, with the special privilege and responsibility of bringing order to a sinful, chaotic world. Most Americans are still likely to see their nation as the global hero fulfilling that sacred task. Only the United States, they believe in a great leap of faith, is moved by an unselfish desire to serve the good of all humanity by spreading ordered liberty.

Throughout the Cold War era, across the political spectrum, there was no doubting the name of the threatening evil: Communism. After a decade of drift and uncertainty in the 1990s, the September 11 attacks, despite their horror, allowed the nation to breathe easier, at least in terms of the theology of foreign policy. Once again, it seemed that everyone agreed on the name of the monstrous sinners, the source of instability. Rudolph Giuliani could have been speaking for most Americans when he explained that the cultural payoff of the war on terrorism was moral stability: “The era of moral relativism…must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion.” That crusading tone of certainty gave Bush and the neoconservatives a very free hand in the early post-September 11 days, when they launched the invasion of Afghanistan. The administration then invaded Iraq with the approval of 75% of the U.S. public and nearly all the foreign policy elite.

Iraq War

The myth of U.S. moral and global supremacy - Americans as the world’s chosen people - went largely unchallenged until the U.S. venture in Iraq went sour. The myth says that the good guys are supposed to win every time, because they are good. When the myth does not get played out in reality, people start to complain. If you look at the current debate about Iraq from the standpoint of myth and theology, the complainers fall into three broad groups.

First there is the mainstream of the foreign policy elite, made up of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. They complain that the Bush administration is pursuing the right goals but using the wrong tactics. That’s because the elite still hold on to some shreds of the old Social Gospel view. They give most of the world a bit more credit for rationality; they fear the impulses of original sin a bit less. So they see military strength as one of several ways to secure America’s global hegemony. They are more willing to take a multilateral approach and use the carrot as well as the stick - to pull diplomatic and economic levers before calling out the troops.

But these differences, though they can be very important, are largely ones of degree and tactics. Across the board, members of the foreign policy establishment, even the liberal Democrats, still give a very respectful (sometimes slavish) hearing to the great theologian Niebuhr. But they apply his “realistic” view of original sin only to other nations. The liberals among the elite, too, want their sense of moral clarity and certainty reassured by seeing it played out in a global drama of good against evil. So they make a huge exception for the supposedly pure and innocent motives of their own nation, the chosen people. They believe that the U.S. has a higher moral standing, which gives us the right and duty to rule. That’s how they can justify the most ruthless policies against anyone who stands in their way.

The bipartisan elite may not value the display of American strength as an end in itself, the way neoconservatives do. They are willing to risk a short-term appearance of weakness in one place in order to bolster long-term U.S. strength everywhere else. But long-term strength (including a long-term military presence in Iraq) is still crucial, because they feel a sacred calling to enforce “stability” - their favorite code word for a single global order that protects U.S. interests - everywhere and forever.

The second group of war critics is on the right. A growing number of traditional conservatives criticize the administration and the bipartisan establishment for betraying genuine Niebuhrian “realism.” These hard-core “realists” want the United States to recognize that it too is a sinful nation, limited in its goodness as well as its resources, all too likely to overreach and eventually destroy itself if it doesn’t scale back its hubristic dream of enduring empire.

Thus the right-wing “realists” become strange bedfellows with the third group of war critics, the left-wingers, who, starting from very different principles, arrive at the same anti-imperialist conclusions. Though most of them don’t know it, what makes leftists leftist is that they still champion many of the basic values of the Social Gospel movement. They do not accept the doctrine of original sin; they don’t think people are inherently doomed to be selfish and unreasonable. They assume that the vast majority of people, if treated decently and given decent living conditions, will respond by being decent people. For the left, order and stability are not as important as human growth, creativity, and transformation. The key to a better world is not strength and dominance, but sharing and cooperation. And leftists often assume - or at least hope - that the long-term trend of history is leading to that better world, a view that is rooted in the biblical hope for redemption.

In Middle America

Leftists who are consistent extend their Social Gospel view to its logical conclusion: There are no monsters - no inherently bad people — only bad conditions. So the good guys versus bad guys myth always distorts reality. But a surprising number of leftists sacrifice logical consistency for the emotional pleasure of the traditional myth. For them, of course, the monsters are the Bush administration, the neoconservatives, sometimes the mainstream Democrats too, and always, above all, the corporate elite whose hand they see behind every gesture of U.S. imperialism.

This left-wing version of the myth does not play very well in middle America, or even on the coasts apart from a few ultra-liberal enclaves. The hardcore “realist” view may get slightly higher ratings, but not much. Most Americans still demand a heavy dose of moral idealism in their foreign policy. They want to continue believing in the myth of American innocence. They won’t give in to a full-blown Niebuhrian pessimism about human nature - at least not when it comes to American humans. And they don’t want to believe that the economic and political leaders of their nation are utterly cynical “realists,” devoid of ideals, caring only about money and power.

So the mass of the citizenry, sick and tired of losing in Iraq, swing in line behind the only critical voice they can support: the foreign policy elite. The public criticizes the administration for its inept effort in Iraq. But most citizens don’t raise any questions about the long-term goals or the theological premises underlying them.

Only when something looks broken do people think about fixing it. The last time the U.S. foreign policy system broke down was when the United States suffered defeat in Vietnam. However, after a short period of radical questioning, a powerful reaction set in, fueled by the deep and widespread need for idealism and moral certainty. The neoconservatives got control of the public conversation in the late 1970s because they recognized that need and offered a Cold War myth that satisfied it.

The same need for moral clarity arose after September 11, but it’s been bitterly betrayed by the failure in Iraq. How can we avoid a similar neoconservative reaction as we question the underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy in the years to come? And if the Iraq debacle boots the neoconservatives out of power for good, how can we use this window of opportunity to challenge the most powerful alternative view, the bipartisan establishment consensus? From the outset it won’t help to scorn the average citizen’s idealistic view of America. That’s like wishing away the Rocky Mountains. Claiming that this worldview is unrealistic would be caving in to a simplistic Niebuhrian “realism.” After all, we on the left believe in our own idealism. We are happy to hear right-wing “realists” argue that Americans are no more idealistic than anyone else. But we forget that Americans are no less idealistic either. That includes even the most powerful leaders of the nation. Rather than demonizing them and dismissing their claim to good intentions outright, we would do better to look for common values that we can all agree on and then find progressive programs that can put those values into practice.

Different Moral Certainties

Just about all Americans, from Bush and Cheney and the CEOs of Exxon and Lockheed-Martin on down, sincerely want the nation to be secure. As long as our notions of security are built on the myth of well-meaning Americans versus ever-threatening evildoers who embody original sin, we can never dispense with the evildoers. They are as necessary in U.S. foreign policy as sin is in Niebuhr’s theology. They always have to be out there threatening us, in our imaginations at least, in order for our pursuit of national security to make any sense at all.

The bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy calls for us to be powerful enough to dominate them. But every step we take to dominate only antagonizes more people and makes some of them really want to harm us. As long as we keep on this self-defeating road, we are not a national security state. We are a national insecurity state. So, we need to redefine national security in a way that meets people’s need for a second value that so many of us share: moral certainty. This involves a faith in some rock-bottom kind of goodness in the world, which many Americans believe has a special home here in the United States.

There is a special kind of goodness, rooted in a special kind of theology, that does have an old and honored home here — the goodness of nonviolence. There have always been Christians who were certain that the only moral way to treat others, even enemies, is with love, not violence. They knew it because Jesus said it, right there in the Bible. In 19th-century America, the abolitionists and Thoreau turned the theology of nonviolence into a homegrown strategy for political change.

Martin Luther King, Jr. took this strategy a crucial step further. He preached that it’s the government’s role to help bring all people together in what he called “the beloved community” (something very much like what the Social Gospel called the Kingdom of God). Every government policy should promote “the mutually cooperative and voluntary venture of man to assume a semblance of responsibility for his brother [and sister]” — the responsibility to help every person fulfill their God-given potential.

In King’s words, no matter how bad a person’s behavior, “the image of God is never totally gone.” So, government must serve everyone, everywhere. No one can be written off as a monstrous evildoer, sinful beyond redemption. That was a moral certainty for King, an essential foundation of his religious faith. King knew all about moral clarity and certainty. He was willing to die for the truths he believed in so firmly. But he was not willing to kill.

A Different Narrative

With King as our guide, we could have a distinctly American foreign policy based on the conviction of absolute moral certainty we find in the Social Gospel and nonviolence traditions.. Our goal would always be to move the world one step closer to becoming a universal beloved community. We would no longer act out the myth of good versus evil. We would not demonize a bin Laden or Saddam — or a Bush or Cheney. We would recognize that when people do bad things, their actions grow out of a global network of forces that we ourselves have helped to create. King said it most eloquently: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

We can never stand outside the network of mutuality, as if we were the Lone Ranger arriving on the scene to destroy an evil we played no part in creating. Just as Bush is tied to Osama, so each of us is tied to all those who do things that outrage us. We cannot simply destroy them and think that the outrages have been erased. To right the wrongs of the world, we must start by recognizing our own responsibility for helping to spawn those wrongs. Indeed, fixing our own part in the wrongs we see all over the world may be all that we can do.

But in the case of the United States in 2007, that alone would be more than a full time job for our foreign policy. We would have to, among other things:

• end the occupation that creates a breeding ground for violent jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan;
• reverse the policy of supporting authoritarian regimes in the Middle East;
• stop participating in the mad rush for power and resources in Africa, which breeds disasters like Rwanda and Darfur;
• withdraw support for the corporations and financiers who would strangle the emerging popular democracies in Latin America;
• and treat everyone as our brothers and sisters, even the leaders of North Korea and Cuba and Iran.

In short, we would have to create a new notion of “national interest” based on the moral certainty that we are all threads in a network of mutuality that is the foundation of our national as well as individual life. Since our foundation is infinite and eternal, no one can threaten to destroy it, or us. Embracing that principle as the basis of foreign policy could set us on the road to a radically new way of thinking about genuine national security.

If that’s not something all Americans can agree on, at least it’s a program that gets the debate down to our most basic assumptions. This is a democracy. If the people want a religion-laden foreign policy based on the doctrine of original sin and the myth of good against evil, it’s what we should have. But at least we should all talk about it together, openly and honestly.

Notes

1. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 5.
2. Charles Krauthammer, “When to Intervene,” The New Republic, May 6, 1985, p. 10.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu

Author: Thomas Merton
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, pp.165

An Excerpt from the Jacket:

“In this long-withheld manuscript, Thomas Merton identifies the readiness of many nations – led by our own – to prepare for and threaten mass murder as the most urgent moral crisis of our time. Ringing across four decades, his profound warning is more timely than tomorrow’s headlines.” Daniel Ellsberg

An Excerpt from the Book:

(Click here to read the Forward to the book)

This then in conclusion: the Christian is bound to work for peace by working against global dissolution and anarchy. Due to nationalist and revolutionary ideologies (for Communism is in fact exploiting the intense nationalism of backward peoples), a worldwide spirit of confusion and disorder is breaking up the unity and the order of civilized society.

It is true that we live in an epoch of revolution, and that the break-up and re-formation of society is inevitable. But the Christian must see that his mission is not to contribute to the blind destructive forces of annihilation which tend to destroy civilization and mankind together. He must seek to build rather than to destroy. He most orient his efforts towards world unity and not towards world division. Anyone who promotes policies of hatred and of war is working for the division and destruction of civilized mankind.

We have to be convinced that there are certain violences which the moral law absolutely forbids to all men, such as the use of torture, the killing of hostages, genocide (or the mass extermination of racial, national or other groups for no reason than that they belong to an “undesirable” category). The destruction of civilian centers by nuclear annihilation is genocide.

We have to become aware of the poisonous effect of the mass media that keep violence, cruelty and sadism constantly present to the minds of unformed and irresponsible people. We have to recognize the danger to the whole world in the fact that today the economic life of the more highly developed nations is in large part centered on the production of weapons, missiles and other engines of destruction.

We have to consider that hate propaganda, and the consistent heckling of one government by another, has always inevitably led to violent conflect. We have to recognize the implications of voting for extremist politicians who promote policies of hate. We must consider the dire effect of fanaticism and witch-hunting within our own nation. We must never forget that our most ordinary decisions may have terrible consequences.

It is no longer reasonable or right to leave all decisions to a largely anonymous power elite that is driving us all, in our passivity, towards ruin. We have to make ourselves heard.

Every individual Christian has a grave responsibility to protest clearly and forcibly against trends that lead inevitably to crimes which the Church deplores and condemns. Ambiguity, hesitation and compromise are no longer permissible. We must find some new and constructive way of settling international disputes.

It is clearly the mind of the Church that every possible effort must be made for the abolition of war, even though the theory of the “just war” and the right of legitimate self-defense remain intact. But appeal to this right must not blind us to the much higher and more urgent duty of working with all our power for peace.

This may be extraordinarily difficult. Obviously war cannot be abolished by mere wishing.

We have still time to do something about it, but the time is rapidly running out.

Table of Contents:

1. Preamble: Peace – A religious responsibility

2. Can we choose peace?

3. The dance of death

4. The Christian as peacemaker

5. War in Origen and St. Augustine

6. The legacy of Machiavelli

7. Justice in modern war

8. Religious problems of the cold war

9. Theologians an defense

10. Working for peace

11. Beyond east and west

12. Moral passivity and demonic activism

13. The scientists and nuclear war

14. Red or dead? The anatomy of a cliche

15. Christian perspectives in world crisis

16. Christian conscience and national defense

17. The Christian choice

This book has my highest reccomendations. It has helped seal my understanding of the issue of the Christian perspective on warfare once and for all.

Concerning the term “post -Christian” Merton writes this:

“Whether we like to admit it or not, we are living in a post- Christian world, that is to say a world in which Christian ideals and attitudes are relegated more and more to the minority. It is frightening to realize that the facade of Christianity which still generally survives has perhaps little or nothing behind it, and what was once called “Christian society” is more purely and simply a materialistic neopaganism with a Christian veneer… Not only non-Christians but even Christians themselves tend to dismiss the Gospel ethic on nonviolence and love as “sentimental”. “

Merton’s book was written in 1961 at the onset of the “Cold War” and the Vietnam conflict. Not only was it very prophetic for that time as well as this, but it recognizes the rise of the hardline neopagan pseudo- Christianity that holds sway in today’s toxic political discourse. If one were to substitute the word “terrorist” each time Merton wrote the word “Communist” he would be speaking directly to us today about the “War on Terror”.

For instance:

“At one extreme we have the “hard” and “realistic” view. It excludes all other considerations and concentrates on one inescapable fact: the “terrorist” threat to western society. It considers that negotiation with “terrorism” is for all practical purposes futile. It is thoroughly convinced that only the strongest pressure will be of any use in stopping “terrorism” and the victory over “terrorism” by any available means takes precedence over everything else. Hence this “hard” position is in fact favorable to nuclear war and makes no distinction between preemption and retaliation, except perhaps to favor preeemption as more likely to succeed…
…they tend to regard anyone who strongly favors peace and disarmament as a “terrorist” dupe or fellow traveller, simply because of the worldwide propaganda given to the “terrorist strategy for peace”.

The simplicity and ruthlessness of this view makes an immediate appeal to a very large proportion of the American middle class. It is simple. It is clear. It promises results. It has the advantage above all of permitting disturbed and frustrated people to discharge their anxieties upon a hated enemy and thereby achieve a sense of meaning and satifaction in their own lives. But unfortunately this kind of satisfaction leads to moral blindness and to the stultification of conscience. The fact that this “solution” at the same time favors nuclear war, and considers it fully morally justified by its “good cause” and also appeals to certain types of Christians, shows that it is a SERIOUS danger. To be succinct, it produces a state of invincible moral ignorance. It consecrates policies that have very dubius justice, blurring the ethical clarity of Christian thought, making base emotions and hatreds with the specious appearance of christian zeal.”

This book is the most refined, comprehensive and persuasive tesament on this subject i have ever read.

I recently discovered this set of comments on the Sojourners blog where I entered the fray by asking someone what defines someone as a “leftist christian”. Below these comments by someone calling themself “Semper Fi”, I make a few coments myself:

Semper Fi said:

“We need a president with the testicular fortitude to wage a serious war to end all wars. It’s time re-awaken the “Sleeping Giant”. Time to start kicking booty like we mean business. The only way we will win this war on terror is to strike first, strike extraordinarily hard, and create a massive wake of devastation large enough that no nation would dare cross the line in the sand for fear of being next to incur our wrath. We have the technology and resources to do this. What are we waiting for.

That won’t happen with a Hillary in office. It probably won’t happen with a Rudy in office. But, I’m putting my vote on the candidate that’s not willing to put up with any more crap from the Islamic sector. If they want a holy war, let’s give them one that puts Hiroshima and Nakasake to shame, and restore the balance of power to the only nation with the ability to hold that power and maintain justice on this spinning chunk of rock.

Jesus was not a wuss. He was obedient to his Father. Had he not been, he would not have died on the cross. He had the power to do something different, but was obedient. All this silly “Christian” talk about playing footsies with our enemies is hogwash. God is not a wuss. He instructed Israel to utterly destroy every that lived and breathed when they went to war. They did not listen, and here we are today, post 9/11, with a bunch of retarded Muslim infidels causing problems for the whole pamn dlantet.

Time to wake up, America. This is not a fire drill. This is for real. Let’s fight to win. I’m not a fan of Pat’s, but what in the world is wrong with some of his ideas, like hiring a hit man to take out Chavez, or even Castro. What ever happened to real Americans, like Truman and Eisenhower, and real soldiers, like Patton and Churchill? That’s not anti-Christian. It’s anti-stupid!

I’m not an extremist. I’m a realist. What have we done lately that has worked? Nothing meaningful since Reagan left office. Nothing. We took giant steps backward under the “leadership” (ha ha) of Slick Willy. Why in the world would we elect his goofy witch of a wife for President? It amazes me that it’s even an option for some people. And this Barak Osama clown? Tell me I’m dreaming! Anything on the Republican ticket is a better option than any of our Democratic options.

The right choices are simple:
(1) Stop murdering our unborn children;
(2) Stop putting up with crap off of nations that house radical Islamists;
(3) Stop putting up with people that want to force us into embracing their choice to live a sinful and sexually perverted lifestyle;
(4) Stop supporting government that takes our hard earned wages and handing out gifts to those that have not done as well;
(5) Start teaching our children there ARE moral absolutes;
(6) Start electing officials that govern of, by and for the people.
(7) Start using our own oil and let Venezuela and watch all the Arab nations economically implode when we stop purchasing anything from them, and stop selling anything to them, including food. Let’s see how tasty they find them steel barrels.

9/11 - WE WILL NEVER FORGET! Shame on those who think we should. How dare you call yourself a Christian, or an American?

“Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.”

Semper Fi!”

Scott says:

This is the epitome of secular humanist, miltary- humanitarian, antithetical to the gospel, self idolatrous, nationalist propaganda …. and yet somehow it is considered “conservative” theologically? Rather this type of position is immoral, irresponsible and irrational and in fact helps to perpetuate and create factors that make terroism, mass violence, hatred and the self perpetuating cycle of violence and revenge more likely rather than less.

I have just read a book entitled “Peace in the Post-Christian Era” by Thomas Merton the famous Christian author. Concerning the term “post -Christian” Merton writes this: Whether we like to admit it or not, we are living in a post- Christian world, that is to say a world in which Christian ideals and attitudes are relegated more and more to the minority. It is frightening to realize that the facade of Christianity which still generally survives has perhaps little or nothing behind it, and what was once called “Christian society” is more purely and simply a materialistic neopaganism with a Christian veneer… Not only non-Christians but even Christians themselves tend to dismiss the Gospel ethic on nonviolence and love as “sentimental”. “

Merton’s book was written in 1961 at the onset of the “Cold War” and the Vietnam conflict. Not only was it very prophetic for that time as well as this, but it recognizes the rise of the hardline neopagan pseudo- Christianity from which Mr. Semper Fi speaks. If one were to substitute the word “terrorist” each time Merton wrote the word “Communist” he would be speaking directly to us and those like Mr. Semper Fi. Let me demonstrate:

“At one extreme we have the “hard” and “realistic” view. It excludes all other considerations and concentrates on one inescapable fact: the “terrorist” threat to western society. It considers that negotiation with “terrorism” is for all practical purposes futile. It is thoroughly convinced that only the strongest pressure will be of any use in stopping “terrorism” and the victory over “terrorism” by any available means takes precedence over everything else. Hence this “hard” position is in fact favorable to nuclear war and makes no distinction between preemption and retaliation, except perhaps to favor preeemption as more likely to succeed…
…they tend to regard anyone who strongly favors peace and disarmament as a “terrorist” dupe or fellow traveller, simply because of the worldwide propaganda given to the Communist “peace line”.
The simplicity and ruthlessness of this view makes an immediate appeal to a very large proportion of the American middle class. It is simple. It is clear. It promises results. It has the advantage above all of permitting disturbed and frustrated people to discharge their anxieties upon a hated enemy and thereby achieve a sense of meaning and satifaction in their own lives. But unfortunately this kind of satisfaction leads to moral blindness and to the stultification of conscience. The fact that this “solution” at the same time favors nuclear war, and considers it fully morally justified by its “good cause” and also appeals to certain types of Christians, shows that it is a SERIOUS danger. To be succinct, it produces a state of invincible moral ignorance. It consecrates policies that have very dubius justice, blurring the ethical clarity of Christian thought, making base emotions and hatreds with the specious appearance of christian zeal.”

Taking into consideration Luke Chapter 6 which contains these quotes straight from the mouth of Jesus

“Love for Enemies
27″But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ lend to ’sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

39 He also told them this parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

41 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
A Tree and Its Fruit
43 “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.
The Wise and Foolish Builders
46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? 47I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. 48 He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49 But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.”

…there is simply no way Mr. Semper Fi can justify the quote I cited above from him. In fact, on point with the discussion of “conservatism” and “liberalism” his views are not biblically conservative at all… but in fact they are rather an extremely “liberal”, authoritarian self serving, humanist, idolatrous perspective. Before someone turns around the scripture about not judging and condemning others on my statements here… I am not judging or condemning anyone… The Word does that. However, I do love Mr. Semper Fi as my countryman and fellow sinner and only offer a rebuke because I care enough to confront and offer a rebuke so that he and anyone else reading this will reconsider their position in the light of scripture. I have much more to say on these topics… but as for now this will do.

For the curious… I am niether republican nor democrat nor do I care much for either party, so this assertion;
“Whose ever side your politics are on , that is what defines your Faith.”
…is groundless and basless and another skewing of biblical perspective.

For more thoughts along these lines Google the Geotheology blog and look for the post “Loving America By The Book” from October. You can also use the search bar at the top of the Blog to locate it.

God Bless.

I recently attended the World Missions Workshop at Oklahoma Christian University as I mentioned in the previous post. There I met some good folks and heard many inspiring things. I have exchanged e-mail with a few of the presenters that spoke at the conference now. I expressed my desire to do missions work and plant Churches of Christ among Native American Indians to someone I met there who in turn asked me about my personal history, my family heritage and my desire to reach Indians for Christ. Here is the response I wrote to him, I want to share it with the world:

Well, This is a long story, but I will tell it and tell it as concisely as possible so that you’ll understand my motivations concerning Indians. I am from the suburbs of Oklahoma City, Del City to be specific. I grew up there and now live right next door in Midwest City. I am a life long member of the Del City Church of Christ. I did spend about 12 years in Texas, 3 in Waco and then 9 in Dallas.

I graduated High School way back in 1982 in Del City. I then spent two years at Oklahoma Christian and then moved on to Oklahoma State and OU. My field of study was in Media, Journalism and Radio Television and Film.
I never did get a four year degree. I ended up getting a two year technical degree at Texas State Technical College in Waco. I have many unused college credits and am working on getting into a degree completion program asap. From there I want to get further education in theology and ministry. I had run out of time and money in about 1987 and had entered the work force. In 1987 I lost my support system. My mother and father divorced in 1987 after 29 years of marriage and my maternal grandparents which had lived nearby and always been supportive fell into very poor health and died. All this had a devastating effect on me.

I will return to that, but first let me lay a little background. Before that turn of events my relationship to the lord had been touch and go for quite a while. In high school I was a football player and typical jock. I had discovered beer drinking and women. I carried this affliction with me to OC and with me everywhere for years.
One reason this happened was because I had never been comfortable with the conception of God that I had been raised on.

For starters, I am half Cherokee. Thus, the official version of American history I was presented with at school and even church did not match the political, cultural history of the American Indian as I knew it as a tribal member. At school I was told all about the glory of the U.S. and manifest destiny. At church I was told how God adored the US and had blessed its Christian forefathers and “gifted” them with this land. As a Cherokee I was taught about the other side of the story…The Trail of Tears and the treaty breaking mendacity and graft of these allegedly Christian forefathers. When I visited my Cherokee kin folks I saw the poverty, bitterness, heartbreak and ongoing oppression. It was very difficult for me to understand how God could allegedly condone this situation. I myself harbored confusion, bitterness and rebellion over this. I had also developed a taste for alcohol to fill in the void, so when life got tougher and more disappointing… I drank more. Substance eventually became a real problem.

As I was saying, the Christian God I had been raised on and learned about in school did not hold all that much attraction for me. As I am sure you know, the Church of Christ has in the past been known for its legalism, ultra conservatism and intolerance. In Del City where I grew up there was at the time one the largest Southern Baptist Churches in the country. If you’ll remember, the early eighties saw the rise of the Christian Right and the “reconstructionists” as a political movement with the Southern Baptists leading the charge. As a Cherokee, this reminded me a little bit too much of the politics and policies that led to the near genocide of my Native ancestors. Its also worth mentioning that there is a large Air Force base nearby Del City. As you know, the rise of the “reconstructionist” movement in the Church and American politics and the pro-military-industrial- complex mindset of the Christian-right political movement has gone hand in hand for quite some time now. Add to all that the constant tension between the Church of Christ I attended and the local Southern Baptist crowd and it was a recipe that I was simply not interested in imbibing in. Nowadays, in the toxic political environment that has grown out of all this, when I discuss these matters I am typically labeled as a liberal. I find this ridiculous. The truth is that I am so gospel oriented and biblically orthodox and conservative that people simply think I am liberal because I dare to challenge some of the notions of the so called “Conservatives” that have held sway for 25 plus years now. Enough about that. Simply put, the labels don’t fit.

It was my Cherokee grandfather that eventually pointed me back to Christ- believe it or not. I had always known him as a full blooded, traditional minded Indian. He was also an alcoholic that was abusive to his family and my father in the past. He had also been a “Medicine Man” since the 1940’s. Before, he would never set foot in a “White man’s Church”.

By 1989 my life was out of control and I was exceedingly unhappy. I was estranged from God because of the dynamics and events I wrote about above. Yet, my conscience kept pointing me back to God and telling me I was missing something about Christ and the Church. Then the paranormal activity began. For the sake of brevity I won’t go into all that- but let’s just say some things started happening around me that I did not understand. I eventually learned that it wasn’t just going on around me, but also other members of my family. It wasn’t my imagination. I finally decided to go and talk to my Cherokee grandfather that I had not seen in five years. I knew that he was a Medicine Man and supposedly a spiritual leader that was supposed to know about all this paranormal stuff. I told him stories and poured my heart out to him…looking for answers…looking perhaps for the back door to Christianity and the doorway to Native spirituality. When I was done talking I just looked him in the eye with one question burning on the tip of my tongue.

“What do you know about the spirit world?” was that question.

Before I even asked, he reached into a drawer beside him and pulled out a worn out copy of the Bible. He held it up and said, “The answer to every question and concern you have is in this book.”

That is NOT what I expected to hear. So began my journey back to Christ and my education in spiritual warfare. Reaching my present state of mind, spiritual understanding and relationship with the Triune God has been a long process fraught with many trials and personal weaknesses, but by now, I can keep it to myself no more.

My grandfather went on to tell me how this transformation had come about in him. Due to the years of hard drinking he had had an aneurysm in his esophagus. When it bursted, he had died.. or had one of those near death type experiences. He had been “dead” for several minutes. When he recovered and was aware after a time he asked to see my dad and his half brother, my uncle. Both of them have their own stories and had become Christians many years before. Grandfather told his sons that he wanted to hear more about this Jesus because he had just met him. He said Jesus had told him that he was very sorry about the plight of the Cherokee and all the other Native races… that this had NOT been the will of the Father. He went on to tell him about how Indian people had always known the Father and been loved by him but that now they must “Come through me” to the father.
Grandfather was basically given the same message as in John 14:6-7

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Grandfather was further told to return to his life and begin to teach other Indians about Him. He was given some tasks to perform and told to instruct his people that they did not have to stop being Indians to follow him and to pray in the name of Christ from now on. I know this is a bit of a fantastic story, but, I have to acknowledge the profound transformation in my grandfather and the results it produced.

And so it began. When my grandfather began to carry out what he had been told, so began the spiritual warfare. This explained the “paranormal” activity that had been going on. Simply put, the forces of darkness seen and unseen did not want this change to occur. As I now understand it, the reasons are clear for this dynamic. When everyday, pew sitting, material thinking Christians begin to see the world again through spiritual eyes like the typical Indian does… like Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter 6, in the context of Christian discipleship, they’ll be stomping all over the works of darkness and reaching the unreached like never before. The forces of darkness of course do NOT want this to happen. Unfortunately, the Church of Christ does not have much of a body of teaching about spiritual warfare. It should. My desire to evangelize Indians is wound up in these things and this is why I have the motivation, love and concern to reach out to them.

I find the message of incarnational ministry and its implications very attractive.

I know how far fetched some of this sounds. I have never been entirely comfortable sharing these things in a Church of Christ context because of the heritage of legalism in that group. After all, where I was raised we were so “conservative” it was essentially taught that even the Southern Baptists were Hellbound for their doctrinal liberalism. Can you imagine the amount of prayer and study I have had to engage in to reconcile all these things without falling into syncretism or extra biblical doctrine? By now I have my own body of experiences and insights on spiritual reality and the nature of God and Christ. I have to be able to share these things and talk about them comfortably and have mentors to carry out the calling I have.

I would be glad to hear your thoughts and/or advice.

Matthew 6:9-13
“`Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. ‘”

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
The Lord Jesus Christ is my Commanding Officer.
The Holy Bible is my code of conduct.
Faith, Prayer, Love and the Word are the only weapons of warfare I need!
I have been taught by the Holy Spirit, trained by experience,
tried by adversity, and tested by fire.

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
I am a volunteer in this army and I am enlisted for eternity.
I will either retire in this army or die in this army;
But, I will not get out, sell out, be talked out, or pushed out.

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
I am faithful, reliable, capable, and dependable.
If my God needs me, I am there!
I am a soldier!
I am not a baby.
I do not need to be pampered, petted, primed up,
pumped up, picked up, or pepped up.

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
No one has to call me, remind me,
write me, visit me, entice me, or lure me.
I am a soldier!
I am not a wimp.
I am in place, saluting my King,

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
I am ever obeying His orders, praising His name, and building His Kingdom!
No one has to send me flowers, gifts, food, cards, candy, or give me handouts.
I do not need to be cuddled, coddled, cradled, cared for or catered to.
I am committed!

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
I cannot have my feelings hurt bad enough to turn me around!
I cannot be discouraged enough to turn me aside!
I cannot lose enough to cause me to quit!

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
When Jesus called me into this army, I had nothing.
If I end up with nothing, I’ll still come out ahead.
I will win without violence!
My God will supply all my needs.
I am more than a conqueror!
I will always triumph!
I can do all things through Christ.

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
Evil cannot beat me!
People cannot disillusion me!
Weather cannot weary me!
Sickness cannot stop me!
Battles cannot defeat me!
Money cannot buy me!
Governments cannot silence me,
and hell cannot handle me!

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
Even death cannot destroy me!
For when my Commander calls me from this battlefield,
He will promote me even higher.

I am a soldier in the army of my God!
In the army I am ever advancing and claiming victory.
I will not give up!
I will not turn around!

I am a soldier in the army of God, and I’m marching,
claiming victory in every stride.
I will not give up!
I will not turn around!
I am a soldier, marching Heaven bound!

~Author Unknown

Psalm 15

I have been asked more than once and by more than one person over time why I do not seem to spend anywhere near equal time criticizing Democrats and Liberals and seem to be focused on Republicans and “Conservatives”.

Here I shall answer, borrowing recycled lines from a recent exchange in e-mail. I will also add further commentary:

Ok, heres my honest answers,

As far as I can tell the Democrats are also in on this completely un-neccessary missile deal as well (see the post Missile Chess).
I do not see this particular post as a focused attack on Republicans. If one were to watch the “Why We Fight” clip embedded in one of my previous responses they would be able to ascertain that in our highly militarized society, Democrats are equally guilty. Everyone must bow to the god of war it seems. I have even been guilty of qualifying and dulling my own statements for fear of being dismissed as completely bonkers. From now on I won’t do that.
The questions you ask regarding my criticisms of Republicans and percieved lack of criticisms of Clinton and the Democrats is a fair question and I shall answer.

Its because of the heresy. The Democrats are guilty of much. However, they are not the ones who have hijacked the Christian faith and twisted it into something that shames the name of Christ. That will surely change as the pendulum swings back the other way. I simply don’t think its “Liberals” thathave done the most damage to our planet or our society or the church in the last 500 years. Take note that political liberalism has NOTHING to do with the matters usually attributed to “Liberals”.
Concerning the Clinton years- I was not vocal during those. Nor was I blogging. So my thoughts on those years have generally not been expressed. If it will make people feel better I’ll do some Bill bashing. I just figure the “conservative” pundits had the market cornered on that one and frankly I was quite tired of hearing about it… especially when the talk show crowd has so worn it out and spun facts in a way that is favorable to so-called “conservative” views. I can spend time on those points if necessary…. in fact wait and see.

I do blame Bill for much of the backlash that ushered in the Neocons. Thanks Bill. Those had to be the most expensive and consequential blowjobs in history.

Concerning the ire I have for Republicans- I have already told the tale and commented much about the false campaign Bush ran as a sober and Christian candidate. Perhaps I will never get over that. I am quite more familiar with the players on the RNC world stage than you might think, due to my former line of work. In my latest blog posts entitled “The Jesus Factor”, there appears more than one commentor that I have met and held conversations with. The men I refer to are from both sides of the fence. Most notable of these is Doug Wead, author of “The Raising of a President”. An interesting article about Mr. Wead that reveals the context in which I met him, Amway conventions where I handled AV,-can be found HERE.

I have met GWB and been in his home… and have actually made physical contact with him. I have been heavily exposed to Republican politics and politicians because of the area of the country I live in, my line of work, the ladies and gentlemen I work with and many of my personal friends. My thoughts on these matters have generally been illy recieved. My first political memories were of Richard Nixon…. ’nuff said, who was pardoned by Gerald Ford, another Republican. Then there was Jimmy Carter. I do not think Jimmy Carter was a great leader but I do think he generally got a raw deal. He takes the most heat for his handling of the Iran hostage crisis. However, his goal was to get the hostages home safely and not start a war. He succeeded. Carter also gets undue credit for faciliatatingthe rise of radical Islam. The trend actually started in about 1953 with the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah. Check out that story in the article entitled: “50 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government We Take a Look at the 1953 US Backed Coup in Iran”.

The president of the U.S. in 1953 was Dwight D. Eisenhower (R).

I will say that Carter was president during the invasion of East Timor which I recently blogged about. The invasion was supported and supplied by the U.S.. This travesty is a perfect example of the selective humanitarianism and selective truth engineering of the corporate media and the western powers in general. No one I know has ever heard of this conflict. I myself did not learn about it until my trip to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics. This conflict ran though every presidency including the first stages of the current one. Thus, Carter and Clinton share some of the terrrible blame on that one. Carter was also president when the U.S. backing of the right wing extremists and death squads began in El Salvador which I have commented about at great length in the collection of posts found HERE. The assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero also occurred on Carter’s watch very shortly after Romero made pleas to President Carter to stop funding and arming the terror forces that were killing his people. Under Reagan, the funding of these terror groups was magnified greatly. This is where the Republicans and the “Conservatives” totally lost me. These crimes generally are as yet unacknowledged and un atoned for… not to mention the Iran Contra scandal (make SURE you visit this link- taking note that the scandal began in 1980). Instead history has Reagan and the band of Neocons that served under him, including the loathesome Dick Cheney and the disgraced Donald Rumsfeld and the criminal Robert Gates (see also Robert Gates, Neocon or Paleo-Neocon) as some of the greatest heroes of the modern era. I won’t pretend I don’t resent that. I could go into how Reagan allegedly fixed our country and allegedly won the Cold War almost single handedly- but I will allow the curious to read the rest of the blog- paying special attention to the subject of Blowback , terrorism and the military industrial complex. Its also worth noting that this particular confluence of events of the rape of El Salvador and the enabling of Saddam and the actions of the REAL appeasers in the Middle East happened at just about the same time I entered high school and began to process political information data and make comments about it.

Then there was the enormous amount of e-mail propaganda I recieved during the run up to the war in Iraq. Perhaps much of what i have to say can be attributed to refuting such propaganda and an attempt at un- indoctrinating those within my circle of influence.

Maybe my take on things appears as unobjective or one sided to some…. but I am actually writing from what I know, have been exposed to and what I percieve as most threatening. I am sure some people simply think that I just make it up as I go because of some kind of unreasoned malice for Republicans- but it simply isn’t so. If one were to actually read and process all the information I provided in the links strewn in this post- I think the record speaks for itself. Yet, as requested I will find more about the crimes of Clinton and the Democrats to “balance things out”. The one that comes to mind first would be the travesties at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. There is also plenty of blame to go around for democratic leadrship in the recent post “The Torture Question Part 2″

Now, as I have said before:

Nowadays it seems , all one has to do to become a “Liberal” (a dirty word) is to refrain from singing the praises of the so-called “Conservatives” in power, dare to question them or, God forbid, challenge them on any matter. I don’t think I need to elaborate on how counter- productive and yea even dangerous this trend is. It has gotten so bad, that I no longer insist that I am actually a Conservative in these discussions. I have come to the conclusion that the definitions of conservative and liberal have become so muddled, confused and overused that the whole conservative/liberal debate is pointless, meaningless and an impediment to everything we need to be trying to accomplish as a community if people with common interests. I believe that the whole conservative-liberal debate is indeed useless and the terms are devoid of any real meaning. There is no left and right - just authoritarian/worldly and more authoritarian/worldly. There is left and further left and right and further right so that they both really fall in approximately the same position on the dial. I often encourage my fellow men, Christians and citizens to climb out of those respective boxes and become discerning human beings again. I consider myself a disciple of Christ/spiritual warrior and nothing more or less.

Though I put no stock in such accolades I find it quite ironinc that Mr. Al Gore, the sworn enemy of all that’s holy according to some, has now had a movie that won an Oscarand and an Emmy and the Nobel Peace Award while Mr. Bush, the most overtly Christian president perhaps ever, has become one of the most reviled men in the world and is considered by a vast majority across the planet to be the worst leader that the US has ever had. Not that public opinion means anything…or does it? This cannot be good for evangelism. It also has made the blowback of terrorism far more likely.

I do not necessarily consider myself as an evangelist by the way. I do consider myself as engaged in a spiritual war. Making headway in such a war can and will make work easier for those that have the gift of evangelism. I percieve my own function in the body as different. To be sure I am weary. I am anxious for this toxic trend in American politics to bleed out or at least drop to more tolerable levels. I pray every night that a man like Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani does not become our next president. If that means I am stuck with Hillary then so be it. I won’t be happy about it- but I can live with it. I would like to say it doesn’t really matter. However, there are young people in my family that I do not want to see shipped to the deserts of the Middle East to fight in un-necessary wars.

All that factors in quite nicely to my theories and observations. I do not see my life as a false dichotomy between the spiritual and carnal. The world I live in is both and so long as I am alive I cannot escape that truth. Perhaps worrying about national leaders and wars and heretics is carnal to some… but to me its all very spiritual in essence.

In response to this: “All of your posts are connected to the previous, and the previous, and the previous; and that connection started and ended at the Republican pary head-quarters back in 1980.”

It actually goes back further than that. Its true that the hostile takeover of the Christian faith started with the “reconstructionist” movement in 1980. Therer’s more about that HERE and HERE. I witnessed a lot of that as I lived in close proximity to one of the country’s largest Southern Baptist churches. If you really want to know how far back it goes- you must go back to 1492 and further… perhaps all the way to Constantine and the idea that the church should rule the world also known as the constantinian cataract.

Anyhow…

Click this article:

The Evangelical Roots of American Unilateralism: The Christian Right’s Influence and How to Counter It

If anyone can find data as damning to the Democrats as these are I will be glad to post them and/or comment on them. I will note that the current day “conservative” movement sprang out of the politcal philosophy of Woodrow Wilson and “Wilsonian” democracy. Look that up. Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat and a secular- humanist- authoritarian- heretic as well.

Perhaps all this seems unobjective. Perhaps it is. I am very concerned with this particular dominionist political movement at this particular window in time. I see myself as focused on a specific target and specific matters and specific offenses rather than unfair. I don’t think I ever advertised as “fair and balanced” anyway. I am focused on defending the honor of the Church against political opportunists and the accompanying heresies. Show me the Democrats who have done what the Falwells and Robertsons and Bushes and Dobsons have done and I will gladly filet them.

(James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization has on its board of directors Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater Security which is currently involved in a scorching scandal in Iraq- a raw fact that may well speak volumes on why Dobson and his cohorts are so pro war in Iraq- because its worth zillions. This is perhaps the very epitome of a conflict in interests on the Christian side of things. Its also worth noting that this right- wing -”Christian ” coterie of political operatives are supporters of Bush and the Republican party- donating bazilly-illions to the cause)

I have been told that the Republican party is NOT Satan. I agree. However, I think there is clear evidence that they work for the World and thus for the God of This World (Satan). The same is true for Democrats of course. Yet, it is said in the Bible that the institution of government was created by God. Many institutions were created by God and yet because of the sinful and fallen nature of many of them operate outside of God’s intent and design. Consider that before I am labeled as a rebel or heretic. The Bible simultaneously tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, love our enemies, submit to government authority and yet NOT love the World or anything in it. What sayeth thee?

source

LEFT BEHIND:

The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media

It would surprise few people, conservative or progressive, to learn that coverage of the intersection of religion and politics tends to oversimplify both. If this oversimplification occurred to the benefit or detriment of neither side of the political divide, then the weaknesses in coverage of religion would be of only academic interest. But as this study documents, coverage of religion not only overrepresents some voices and underrepresents others, it does so in a way that is consistently advantageous to conservatives.

As in many areas, the decisions journalists make when deciding which voices to include in their stories have serious consequences. What is the picture of religious opinion? Who is a religious leader? Whose views represent important groups of believers? Every time a journalist writes a story, he or she answers these questions by deciding whom to quote and how to characterize their views.

Religion is often depicted in the news media as a politically divisive force, with two sides roughly paralleling the broader political divide: On one side are cultural conservatives who ground their political values in religious beliefs; and on the other side are secular liberals, who have opted out of debates that center on religion-based values. The truth, however is far different: close to 90 percent of Americans today self-identify as religious, while only 22 percent belong to traditionalist sects. Yet in the cultural war depicted by news media as existing across religious lines, centrist and progressive voices are marginalized or absent altogether.

In order to begin to assess how the news media paint the picture of religion in America today, this study measured the extent to which religious leaders, both conservative and progressive, are quoted, mentioned, and interviewed in the news media.

Among the study’s key findings:

• Combining newspapers and television, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed in news stories 2.8 times as often as were progressive religious leaders.
• On television news — the three major television networks, the three major cable news channels, and PBS — conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed almost 3.8 times as often as progressive leaders.

• In major newspapers, conservative religious leaders were quoted, mentioned, or interviewed 2.7 times as often as progressive leaders.

Despite the fact most religious Americans are moderate or progressive, in the news media it is overwhelmingly conservative leaders who are presented as the voice of religion. This represents a particularly meaningful distortion since progressive religious leaders tend to focus on different issues and offer an entirely different perspective than their conservative counterparts.