The Reformed Pastor

The Rev. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, made an extraordinary statement outside the White House today. The subject was torture, but the application far wider:

“The churches that make up the National Council of Churches do not agree on all things,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, NCC General Secretary, addressing the interfaith gathering in front of the White House, “but on this we agree: all human life is precious because it bears the image of God.

There was no immediate word regarding when various NCC denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, the PCUSA, the ELCA, or the UCC, will be changing their statements on abortion to bring them into line with this ecumenical agreement.

The tragic killing of a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington on Wednesday, combined with the murder of abortionist George Tiller in Wichita last week, has got various liberal and media commentators asking: is right-wing terrorism on the rise??? For instance, Daniel Burke of the Religion News Service suggests that the Homeland Security report that caused such an uproar in the spring was right after all:

The shooting at the Holocaust Museum on Thursday, after the murder of Dr. Tiller two weeks ago, makes clear that U.S. Department of Homeland Security knew whereof it spoke when it warned, last April, about a rising tide of right-wing extremism. People got po’d about the report, but it seems to have been on target.

Given the vague terms in which the report was couched, it was a virtual certainty that something would happen that would be said to be what DHS was talking about. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite makes the same point at “On Faith,” and puts her foot in it at the same time:

Conservative America ridiculed the Department of Homeland Security when it issued a report just two months ago that warned right-wing extremism was likely to rise in this country due to economic and political changes. The report was aptly titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” In it, the DHS specifically talked about the “potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

In April, Rush Limbaugh specifically derided the DHS report, intoning “There is not one instance they can cite as evidence where any of these right-wing groups have done anything.”

Limbaugh is now proved wrong and the DHS proved to be right, frighteningly right.

BZZZZ! That’s wrong, but thank you for playing. Limbaugh mentioned “groups,” while the Tiller murderer and the Holocaust Museum killer both acted alone. In that regard, they were just like most other Ameicans who commit murder.

Then there’s Paul Krugman of The New York Times, an economist turned op-ed gasbag:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

At this point, one can’t help but ask: if the Tiller and Holocaust museum murders mean that we can now tar all “mainstream conservativism” with the label of “terrorist,” does that mean we can now call all American Muslims the same thing? What none of the writers of these pieces seemed to remember is that while Tiller was being killed, and a lunatic was charging into the Holocaust Museum (and venting his rage at Fox News on paper), two Army recruiters were being shot and one killed in Arkansas by a Muslim bent on punishing the army for its actions in the Middle East. And a few weeks ago, four American Muslims were found with (fake) explosives and arrested on charges of preparing to blow up two New York synagogues. Interestingly enough, there has been nothing like the outrage directed (rightly) at the Tiller and Holocaust Museum killers directed at the Arkansas shooter–the White House, which issued a statement of outrage within hours of the Tiller murder, took almost a week to say anything at all about the dead Army recruiter, and then did so in muted tones.

My point isn’t that the Tiller and Holocaust Museum murders aren’t horrible injustices. It’s that they are hardly indicative of any kind of trend among conservatives, any more than the Arkansas shootings and New York plot are indicative of any kind of trend toward violence among Muslims as a whole. The people using the tragic events in Wichita and Washington to demonize their political opponents ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office….They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is….I said from the beginning: He’s a politician; I’m a pastor. He’s got to do what politicians do.

–The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, United Church of Christ pastor, explaining why he hasn’t spoken to Barack Obama since his inauguration

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: According to the Religion News Service blog, United Church of Christ president John Thomas thought today was an appropriate day to speak out about anti-Semitism. He doesn’t say why today is a good day to do so, but I’m sure he must have had something specific in mind:

The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has consistently called on its members to speak and act in ways that honor God’s enduring covenant with the Jewish people, that nurture deep relationships with the Jewish community, and that recognize how careless readings of our sacred texts, our own use of language, and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes can lend support to persistent anti-Semitism in our culture. Years of rich and thoughtful Jewish-Christian dialogue locally, regionally, and nationally has taught us much about how we speak to and about one another with respect even in the midst of disagreement. … that important prophetic witness, no matter how difficult for our Jewish partners, will be effective only within the context of disciplined speech and behavior that honors the broader Jewish community.”

The United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion and Race applauds the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The reason? Because she extends the racial spoils system, according to an article from the UMC’s General Board of Church and Society newsletter:

The United Methodist General Commission on Religion & Race (GCORR) applauded President Barack Obama’s historic nomination of an Hispanic woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 26, Obama nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter.

If confirmed, Sotomayor will become the first Hispanic ever seated on the Supreme Court, as well as only the third woman to take a seat on the bench.

Judge Sotomayor hails from New York where she grew up in the Bronx projects. She is the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants. “She has Ivy League credentials and has enjoyed bipartisan acclaim as one of America’s finest legal minds,” GCORR pointed out.

Those credentials, and that acclaim, would aptly describe a good many more judges and lawyers in America (I also have real doubts about the validity of the statement that such acclaim is “bipartisan,” but let that be). Sotomayor’s nomination has nothing to do with her attending Yale Law School or her “legal mind,” it has to do with her ethnicity and her gender combined with her reliably liberal judicial philosophy. The president is certainly free to pick someone of the latter mindset, but why exactly do the other items matter?

GCORR joins a list of national civil rights and advocacy organizations that see Sotomayor’s nomination as a major step towards bringing the ideology of inclusiveness to all levels of the nation’s political system.

Ah, there’s the rub. It’s actually about the “ideology of inclusiveness,” which is another way of saying that we’ve jettisoned Martin Luther King’s vision of America, and replaced it with a racialist system that is based on irrelevancies such as skin color, ethnic background, and gender in placing people in positions that are supposed to be colorblind and gender-neutral.

“For the Latino Community, to have a Latina nominated to the highest court offers the prospect of providing a voice that has been lacking in the Court’s long history,” said GCORR assistant general secretary for Latino concerns, the Rev. Eliezer Valentín Castañón. “The opportunity for the Senate to affirm this nomination is to embrace the future of this country. We will be praying for Ms. Sotomayor and praying that she will judge with justice and compassion.”

“A voice that has been lacking.” To show how ridiculous this is, consider this: in the long history of the Supreme Court, there has never been a justice of Slavic descent, nor has there been one of Asian descent. No American Indian has ever served on SCOTUS. When do those millions of Polish and Russian immigrants, Japanese-Americans, and Cherokees get their seats? And if they do, how will that change the decisions the Court makes? And why should it?

The fact is that racial spoilsmen such as Castañón don’t understand that we aren’t supposed to have “Latina judges” and “African-American judges” and “women judges” and “white judges.” We’re supposed to have judges, individuals who lay their race and ethnicity and gender aside when they rule on a case. The people who come into their courtrooms aren’t supposed to be judged on the basis of their skin color or their language but on the basis of the justice of their claims before the law. And if such is not the case, then we are right back where Jim Crow had us–treating people on bases that civilized society should have rejected as proper bases for judgment long ago, and would have, but for the corrosive effects of sin. It’s amazing, really. Instead of combatting the continuing tendency of sinful people to divide up humanity into little pieces based on color or language or ethnicity or chromosomes, GCORR has bought into that sin hook, line, and sinker.

I don’t have any particular axe to grind regarding whether Sotomayor is confirmed or not. But as one who believes that Dr. King spoke out of the heart of the Christian tradition when he envisioned a nation that judges people not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character, I can’t help but see this racial cheerleading on the part of some United Methodists as a step backwards for us all.

We’re in the middle of the most important week for the Middle East since…well, last week, anyway. It’s the World Council of Churches’ “World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel,” an entity that exists no where but on pieces of paper floating around Geneva. Anyway, the WCC put out an article today on this epochal event, and as you might imagine, it was suitably one-sided:

“There is really no situation that is intractable – none,” said Nobel peace laureate and retired Anglican Archbishop of Capetown Desmond Tutu in a speech at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey near Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday, 7 June.

“Each [situation] is capable of being resolved, even this one that seemed so utterly intractable,” he added, comparing the Palestine Israel conflict to the seemingly deadlocked situation in South Africa before the downfall of apartheid.

For the archbishop, there is no international conflict that can’t be compared to South Africa, but I agree with his point that the situation is not “intractable.” There are solutions even to conflicts such as the one in the Holy Land, though it requires all parties to be rational, forgiving, honest, and willing to grant the humanity of its opponent, something that is rarely seen in American politics, much less in the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.

“It’s time to assist settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to make their home in Israel,” say WCC member churches and others who join the week.

I’ve been against the settlements from the beginning, and have said so repeatedly. But two points need to be made here: 1) Israel pulled all of its settlements out of Gaza, along with all its military forces, in 2005, and was immediately rewarded by the start of a daily bombardment of southern Israel. 2) Why exactly is it necessary for all Jews to evacuate the West Bank? Consider this: over 1.5 million Palestinians live in Israel. They are not always treated as they should be, but they have free speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, and to be politically active. Arabs have sat in the Israeli Knesset for decades. How about if the West Bank settlers are given a choice–you can stay in your homes and become part of a new Palestinian state, with all the rights and privileges of citizenship, or you can be repatriated back to Israel. That puts the onus of decision where it belongs, relieves Israel of the responsibility of forcibly removing people (the evacuation of Gaza was a nightmare for the government), and gives Palestinians the opportunity to prove that they are actually willing to live side-byb-side with Jews, rather than insisting that their territory be Judenrein.

“It’s time to share Jerusalem as the capital of two nations and a city holy to three religions,” say the churches.

Because, even though we keep hearing that Jerusalem is one of the most important “final status” issues, the WCC has already decided how this one should go.

A public seminar in Norway tackled the topic of “Promised Land” as part of the action week. The 5 June event featured a pastor and author whose understanding had changed after a visit to the conflict zone.

“It’s time to learn from past wrongs,” says the World Week message. “It’s time for equal rights. It’s time to stop discrimination, segregation and restrictions on movement,” it adds.

“It’s time to stop discrimination,” says the WCC, but there is not a word here, nor has there ever been a public word spoken by anyone in the organization, regarding the daily treatment of Jews–not Israelis, all you “anti-Zionists,” but Jews–in the Palestinian press and education. (The ceasing of anti-Semitic education and propaganda was one aspect of the Oslo Accords that has been a dead letter since the day they were signed.) “It’s time to stop segregation,” says the WCC, at the same time that it calls for the annihilation of any and all Jewish presence on the West Bank. “It’s time to stop restrictions on movement,” says the WCC, supporting the right of suicide bombers to enter Israel at will (they don’t just want West Bank checkpoints eliminated, of course, but the security barrier that has virtually eliminated suicide bombings scrapped as well).

“It’s time to be revolted by violence,” say the churches, “and for civilians on both sides to be safe.”

Well, amen to that. Now all they have to do is convince Hamas that there are civilians in Israel. Maybe Sam Kobia can take that on as his last act before leaving office.

“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

–Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, maintaining his journalistic integrity to the bitter en…oh, wait. Never mind.

(Via Newsbusters.)

UPDATE: The Anchoress goes off on what she calls the “suckling press,” as well as a list of other links of commentators skewering Newsweek‘s resident idolator.

(Hat tip: Dave Moody.)

According to Bible Belt Blogger Frank Lockwood, the fat lady has sung taps for Kevin Thew Forrester, the Buddhist lay ordinand who had been elected Episcopal bishop of Northern Michigan:

The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Bethlehem decided today to withhold consent to the election of the Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester as bishop-elect of Northern Michigan.

The vote was confirmed this evening (June 4, 2009) by committee president Canon Robert Wilkins. The committee is preparing a statement explaining the vote and hopes to have it ready tomorrow.

Fifty-six standing committees have now decided to withhold consent, while 29 have given consent, according to a survey by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock. Roughly 16 committees, including seven based outside the United States, are still in the discernment process. Another 10 or so committees have voted, but are currently declining to reveal their vote.

Barring last-minute vote-switching by dioceses across the country, Thew Forrester will not be seated by the House of Bishops. He would be the first bishop-elect to be vetoed by a majority of the Episcopal Church’s 111 standing committees since at least the 1930s.

Forrester was derailed not so much because of his Buddhist-Christian syncretism, but because he mucked around with the Book of Common Prayer. For many of the bishops and standing committees members who have voted against Forrester, the BCP is far more important than the Bible or Christian teaching. Bishops are free to reject the incarnation or resurrection of Christ, or the atoning nature of His death, or even the personal nature of God, but messings around with BCP rubrics or language is verboten. So while Forrester’s defeat is to be welcomed, it doesn’t really signal any kind of turn-around in the Episcopal Church’s slide toward apostasy.

The Tiananmen Square massacre has largely faded from the collective memory of a world that would rather do business with China than hold it accountable for its actions. These two statements, from today’s AP story, tell you all you need to know about the willingness of the Chinese government to face its actions honestly:

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that China, as an emerging global power, “should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang attacked Clinton’s comments as a “gross interference in China’s internal affairs.”

“We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations,” Qin said in response to a question at a regularly scheduled news briefing. Qin refused to comment on the security measures [that are preventing any kind of public commemoration in Beijing today] — or even acknowledge they were in place.

But not everywhere in China is so helpless in the face of government repression. Hong Kong remembers, as 150,000 gather for a candlelight vigil:

May the truth win out.

This one is Daniel Maguire, an allegedly Catholic professor of moral theology at Marquette University who has been a thorn in the side of those who belive Catholic colleges and their faculty should actually teach something approaching Catholic belief for years. At a Web site called “The Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics (which looks more like a fanatically anti-Catholic site to me), he writes:

It has become American policy to use torture, bombing, and killing to achieve our ends. George Tiller believed that women must be able to exercise their legal and constitutional right to kill their children abortion in problem pregnancies. For honoring the law of the land, he and his family and medical staff were for years tortured, even bombed, and now he is now killed. He is not the first doctor to so die and unless we get serious about this form of terrorism, he will not be the last. Religious and political leaders who fan the flames of anti-choice, anti-woman fanaticism are not without guilt. [Crossed-out snark and emphasis added.]

In the world of allegedly Catholic moral theologian Daniel Maguire, to be “anti-choice” is to be “anti-woman,” to be “anti-choice” is by definition to be fanatical, and to speak out and try to convince the public that the unlimited abortion license is wrong is to “fan the flames of…fanaticism.” (Check the whole site of you have difficulty beliving that.) So once again, as with Susan Thistlethwaite and Leroy Carhart (see previous two posts), we have a pro-abortion activist using the actions of a lone nutjob to smear the moral convictions of tens of millions of Americans, and in Maguire’s case, tens of millions of his fellow Catholics, including all of the leaders of his church.

By the way, and somewhat off the topic, this paragraph also illustrates nicely why many people have a hard time understanding the controversy over “torture.” When Maguire says that Tiller, his family, and his medical staff were “tortured,” and connects it with an allegation regarding American public policy, he effectively drains the word of all meaning. Yes, Tiller was given a hard time over the years, and yes, he was even shot once before, and that’s awful, but nothing that has ever been done to him qualifies under any known defintion of torture. By itself, that makes one wonder whether Maguire, and many who agree with him who are similarly careless in their use of language, are really serious about the issue.

Oh, and speaking of misusing language–do you think it ever occurs to someone like Maguire that decrying “killing” as “American policy,” at the same time that you uphold the right of women to kill their unborn children for any reason and at any stage of development as a matter of public policy, is just the slightest bit contradictory?

(Via LifeSite News.)

This one is Dr. Leroy Carhart, the Nebraska abortionist whose name is part of the infamous 2000 Supreme Court decision Stenberg v. Carhart that overturned the state’s partial-birth abortion ban. His statement is on the Web site of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, of which he’s a board member, so I assume the RCRC approves of this:

It is time to condemn those who commit violent acts against abortion providers, and those who support and incite these violent acts, the radical religious right fundamentalist terrorists, as domestic terrorists. It is time to demand that these activities be added to the list of hate crimes, and that the perpetrators be prosecuted for hate crimes.

Once again, we have the act of a lone maniac used to justify libeling tens of millions of people who believe that abortion is wrong. They are now “terrorists,” who perpretrate “hate crimes.” Of course, the language here is nearly incoherent, so it may be that he’s only referring to the tiny handful of fellow maniacs who think that murder is hunky-dory. If so, he has no business using language such as “radical religious right fundamentalist[s],” which in the lexicon of the RCRC basically means anyone who disagrees with their blanket approval of any and all abortions.

Is it any different to plant white crosses in front of a clinic or a clinic workers residence than it is to place one in the front yard of a minority member?

Aside from the fact that one is meant as a memorial and the other meant to intimidate and implicitly threaten (oh, and one is burned and the other isn’t), I can’t think of any. Please note that he’s just equated those who silently and non-violently protest abortion with the KKK.

Why do you allow these terrorists that dedicate their lives to deny rights, and that support murder of physicians and medical workers, the right to be identified as “pro-life”. They are certainly not.

Not at all sure who he’s talking about. Every single statement by pro-life leaders and organizations have been completely condemnatory of Tiller’s murder, and they’ve made clear that murder is not a pro-life act. As for whether guys like Tiller’s murderer identify themselves as pro-life, I’m not sure what he wants pro-life organizations that have already repudiated them to do. Gag them?

It is time to chastise and, if necessary, replace local, city and state legislators that openly support hate crimes and terrorists. Every time a member of a government agency, looks the other way when any “illegal” activity is reported, they enable, perhaps even encourage the escalation of, further illegal activity. There is a difference between “freedom of speech” and bullying and harassment. There is a difference between civil disobedience and terrorism. There is a difference between protesting and forced invasions.

Again, I have no clue who he’s talking about, but I think that the mixing of terms in the paragraph make clear that for him and his buddies at the RCRC, any dissent from the current abortion regime that doesn’t take a form they approve of (which is to say, invisible and unheard) constitutes “hate crimes,” “terrorism,” “bullying,” “harassment,” and more generally, “Illegal activity.” The fact is that I don’t know of any public officials that have ignored crimes ranging from murder to trespassing. But Carhart wants them to consider some activities that are plainly legal–such as praying in front of an abortuary–to be beyond the pale, and for  officials to stop them.

Carhart is one of the country’s leading proponents of a procedure that is the moral equivalent of infanticide, so it isn’t surprising to hear him libel the entire pro-life movement. That the RCRC would give him a public platform to do so is disgusting, but entirely in character.